Warhammer 40K: BAO 2014 (San Jose)

Hi everyone,

This summer we went to the Bay Area Open 2014 (BAO 2014) in San Jose.  We did a short blog write-up about it - but now that we have played quite a bit more 40K, thought it would be worth a quick reflection.  (It was really quite cool!)

We signed up for the Friendly Tournament.  This was great.  Though we were well short of being ready to play "with the big kids", we were really pleased to find everyone there very accepting.  And, when we asked if we could battle with our armies on one of the unused (very cool) tables set up with terrain and cool battle mat, the answer was, "no problem - sure :)"

Also great was that (since we were still figuring out some of the rules), we had a room full of people to ask for guidance.  Of course many were in the midst of serious battle.  But, others were taking breaks, just watching, or having lunch -- and they were happy to be helpful.

The Pink Orks line up against the Space Marines in one of their first (now of many) battles.  Note the very cool terrain!

Looking back it's fun to see how far we've come in terms of setting up our armies.  We still hadn't fully painted very many of our models when BAO 2014 rolled around....  We didn't even know what we didn't know - ha ha!  (Hadn't had a hard time with Resin models; hadn't melted our attempt at pink foam terrain; etc....)

A reversed view of the set-up - clear to see the Space Marines lined up to punish the Orks!

 

The Space Marines quickly did damage to the Orky's Deff Dread.   We paused the battle to pick up some of the very cool plastic flame indicators (seen here).

Turns out that Gretchins don't do so well in close combat with Terminators!

We are certainly looking forward to going to another event link this one (BAO 2015).  We'll keep an eye on the Frontline Gaming website to see if one is posted.  (Link here)

Other cool notes:

• We saw some amazing paint jobs.  Really too many to list.  The Eldar armies painted with airbrushing were terrific.  The Ork army with looted vehicles with lighting were great.
• We learned how diverse armies could be.  From huge mobs of Orks to an army made up of only 5 Imperial Knights.
• We saw someone else who went crazy with Pink Ork type coloring
• We saw very cool LED kits (which got us thinking about things we could do along the same lines)