Gathering a small company for an early moring Saturday four Middlesbrough Wizkids regulars travelled the A19 and A1 to make the journey to Leeds (it was 169 miles round trip from mine so was an early start but not as bad as the London trips). We arrived in Leeds at around twenty past ten and quickly got settled in an uncannily quiet car park for a meagre £8.70 for the full day (you have to love NCP rates, we are spoilt with Middlesbrough Council rates methinks). A short walk to Travelling Man, organisers of the Con, enabled us to tag a follow of a courteous chap who was on his way to the event himself. It was only a couple of minutes walk and we soon arrived at the Golden Lion.

Wizkids had agreed to support the Convention so I was meeting a team of three other Envoys at the venue, unfortunately a fourth who was scheduled to run BSG could not make it. Jonathan was organising a Heroclix programme, Ben was here to run some MechWarrior and Mike had the glory, or should that be gory pleasure of introducing the crowd to Horrorclix and of course the Mighty Cthulhu! There was a huge amount of prize support avaible as participation prizes and winners/fellowship and spot prizes and I was pretty staggered by the level of swag that had been sent. Everyone doing a demo of Horrorclix got to keep a two figure demo kit and they came in handy later on for those who wanted to take part in one of the mini events running over the weekend. I was blown away by my first view of the Horrorclix starter set and the set poster, but on the downside that just made me want 31st August to get here sooner for the official release.

I think it's fair to say that numbers at the convention were disappointing for Travelling Man's first forray into this sort of event. But with a bit more planning and taking on board some of the feedback hopefully there will be a bigger and better Wrath of Con next year for us Northerners to trot along to. As it was the Heroclix games were quieter than hoped as a Sealed Booster event, a Secret Wars themed Side Event, a Tag Team Tussle and a Giant Tournamnet were held over the two long days. Well done to Jonathan for keeping things flowing for us on the Heroclix front. MechWarrior also suffered from lack of numbers and Ben ran a series of demonstration events for new players and the odd small game for two players giving out spot prizes that included the awesome Ares Mech ... I have to say my favourite is the orange one, even if its arm was prone to fall off on occassion.

A new player is given a demonstration of the Heroclix system whilst Galactus and a few players watch proceedings

Fear me for I am extremely large and have multiple clix dials!

Saturday's mini event ran multiple times during the day and offered participants the opportunity to use the two player demo kit the had collected earlier (or got in order to play this game) to team up and battle Cthulhu on his second 'Juggernaut' dial. This was very generous Mike, I'd have used his 'Immortal Fury' dial for sure! Using some cunningly prepared flipchart paper, pend and post-it notes a Cthulhu Premiership Table was created to display the players who had impressively done the most dame to Cthulhu. The player with the most clix of damage at the end of the last event got to take Cthulhu home after Mike had given him one last cuddle. As it happened it was a really close scrap in the last Cthulhu battle that saw a score of ten clix pip the previous best of nine to the Cthulhutastic prize.

On Sunday another glut of demonstrations were given and the mini event for the day was "The Summonings". Playing on a six figure demo kit map a hoard of cultists were intent on summoning monsters to our realm. The monsters already occupying our realm were none to chuffed at the thought of competition so decided to stop the cultists plans dead, quite lterally. Again players got to use their two figures from a demo kit, this time to try to stop the cultists from completing the four corners of an Elder Sign square tile and summoning a monster in its centre. The top players (who killed the most cultists) in the day got to choose either a Horrorclix booster supplied by Wizkids or a discount voucher for a starter set, supplied by Travelling Man as a prize.

Feedback on the Horrorclix was extremely positive and the only shame was that it wasn't available for people to buy as it was a pre-release event. Hopefully having seen and tasted (not literally, no not even Mike) Horrorclix and the Mighty Cthulhu it is hoped that early sales in the area are boosted. Personally I can't wait for 31st August to rip open my preordered booster case and start planning the first seires of scenario themed Horrorclix events to run at my venues. For anyone wondering, Cthulhu will be avaialable to purchase for anyone who collects a special voucher available from a Brick (twelve boosters) of Horrorclix with a Bricks and Mortar store recipt and 12 booster barcodes. Go on, you know you want it, treat yourself to one.

HThe winner of Cthulhu is prented with his reward as a very sad Mike Jarvis preapres to kiss the big slimey one goodbye. Don't forget boys and girls, "That which is not dead can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die"!

Cthulhu reeks havok amongst a land filled with monsters. If you look closely you will see he even held a shocked Razor Vixen in his grubby mits

There were two main function rooms to the convention on top of the small side rooms that the Wizkids events and demos were based in and these had a smattering of lots of different games as described as well as items for sale and an area with some visiting artists (who I believe were involved in bringing Dreamscape to life).

I was more than impressed by the 3D terrain boards that were being used for the wargames over the weekend and much say a big thank you to Matt from Travelling Man for taking the time to talk me through how they had been created. Having heard how painstakingly time consuming they were to create I don't think I have the patience to make anything so magnificent looking, so kudo to you guys who do. Having said that I bet you don't get out much whilst these little gems are in the works do you?

Some nice 3D terrain on display for the wargames. Matt from Travelling Man gave me a good rundown on how he and his colleagues had created them. They really did look splendid and made me consider building one for Horrorclix!

It was a long and hard two days, especially with the drive to and from Leeds two days in a row but it was worthwhile and I would gladly do the same next year to support this event. Travelling Man is hoping to run more events through Approved Play in the north (perhaps in their York and/or Newcastle stores) and if this gets off the ground it will be great news for us players and for widening the fantastic community of players and customers that Wizkids and the Approved Play system they run facilitates. The more of us the merrier and if we get more of us from the north involved that's even better.

Happy gaming!

There were some artists at the Con displaying their work and doing signings too

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