JimCon '09 - Beginning & List Design

For the first tourney I plan on documenting, JimCon '09 seems like a good place to start. It's a nice tournament that the infamous Jim Livers has been putting on for the last few years in Lexington, KY. Situated out of the always friendly Albright's Store, JimCon has been for the last few years a place you could always bring a nice army to and not expect to get your teeth kicked in by the latest netlist-using chump. In fact, I managed to go 2-2-1 with Dogs of War last year if that's any indication. So of course I decided to take daemons this year...

Now before you strangle me too much, I know this is not the event to bring the BDS (Broke Dick Special) to, so the daemons that I brought had to try to end up being balanced all around the board, while avoiding the numerous cliched item combos that seem to exemplify everything people complain about with the army book. This would be a bit of a challenge, since I was both strapped for painting time, and also was under a 'no new models' ban because of my new house. With that in mind, I decided the best way to start was to load the list down with the biggest boat anchor unit I could: a Daemon Prince. Consulting the piles of unpainted models I had sitting in my basement, an unpainted 4th edition Bloodthirster caught my eye. Worst mark for the worst unit in the book? Check and double check. With this in mind, and the malice of forethought to know I had mixed daemon troops already painted, here was the 2250pt list I came up with to play:

Daemon Prince of Khorne w/ Winged Horror, Armour of Khorne, & Axe of Khorne
Herald of Nurgle w/ Battle Standard, Level 1 Mage, & Stream of Corruption

24 Bloodletters w/ Champion & Standard
18 Horrors w/ Champion & Standard
21 Plaguebearers w/ Champion & Standard
12 Daemonettes w/ Champion & Standard
5 Furies

5 Flesh Hounds
5 Seekers of Slaanesh
5 Nurgling Bases

3 Flamers

Slide show of my Army:

*****
The lack of musicians is both due to a lack of points working out, and also a lack of musician models on my part. This is a very similar list to my list for the Hillbilly last year, with the primary changes being the removal of three of the four heralds and the removal of all the gifts I had originally taken. 8 'Letters were added to make up for the lack of a herald & juggernaut to bulk out their numbers. I didn't expect the Daemon Prince to accomplish anything on his own, but he would be useful at killing heroes and the like as well as taking out small cav units that bother me. So I got down to painting both my objective marker and my Daemon Prince, and about 4 hours later I emerged from my mancave holding something that bordered on being acceptable looking.

As luck would have it, both my buddies that planned on coming out with me decided to back out. Logan's boss decided that he wasn't ready to give him his 40 acres plus mule quite yet, and Pugs didn't want to come along so he didn't have to miss the 49ers game on Sunday night. Skipping a weekend of cool gaming so you can watch the NFL equivalent of a mass suicide-- good call man, good call. However, my cool girlfriend and gamergirl Gina decided to head on out with me. Things were looking up for a cool weekend. After a seven hour drive, we arrive on site in Lexington, KY at about 9PM on Friday night.

With a much larger number of players over previous years, the event was now hosted in the unused storefront area next to Albright's. Of course, Jim shows up late, but Gina and I did get a chance to meet Amigos extraordinaire Paul Vinton and Jim Allen in person. Great guys to deal with, and both were sporting good looking armies this year. Paul even offered to lend me some furies to make up for the unit that I left at my house in my attempt to get out roughly on time Friday morning-- you kick ass Paul. Good guys all around. After a few minutes waiting around for Jim to show and looking at some of the armies arrayed out on the tables before us, (most painted better than mine) Gina looked like she was fading after the long car ride , so we made haste back to the hotel.

Next: Actual Games