DieCon/Privateer Press Weekend Wrap-Up

Privateer Press Weekend 2008 in St. Louis, MO

As exhausting and draining as it was, Privateer Weekend was a phenomenal success. The PP Weekend committee did a fantastic job organizing the events and putting the weekend together. We had a number of great players come in from the surrounding areas and every tournament that was run was packed. And to top it all off we were able to reach the 32-man requirement for our Official Hardcore tournament and still had about a dozen people playing in a Hordes Steamroller event that ran simultaneously!

Ignore the unpainted Angelius.  He\'s painted now, I swear!The amazing attendance all three days was one of the most pleasant surprises for the weekend.  We had anticipated having enough players to have our official Hardcore event on Saturday but no one expected we would still have over 30 players sticking around to play the post-Hardcore 350 event.  Both events Friday were up at the 30-man mark as well and Sunday’s two simultaneous events had nearly 40 players between them!

While there was a lot of local players we did have a large number of out-of-towners, a number of which I had met before at a previous events.  They were really good guys and it was great play against and visit with them over the weekend.

DieCon 8 Privateer Press Weekend Door PrizesOne of the my favorite features of the convention was the models that were given away as door prizes throughout the weekend.  When the event was being first planned the DieCon Privateer Press Weekend Committee contacted a number of local painters and asked them to donate some painting time to the convention.  There were a few individual models and units given away at the smaller events (I painted a Broadsides Bart) but the big prize was an entire 750-point Shae army that was given away to the person who won the Eternal War event that lasted all weekend.  That was a lot of painted pewter that some of the other local painters did an amazing job on.

I played a lot of games over the weekend over three events and a single sideline Eternal War game against Saulty Dog. I would have gotten another half dozen in but I bowed out of the 500-point mixed Steamroller Friday night to touch up some models for Saturday’s Hardcore and I helped run Saturday night’s 350 event.  I went a respectable 11-4 on the weekend but my biggest achievement was winning the Master Craftsman award for our Hardcore event.  There were a number of beautiful armies on the tables Saturday and I was honored to be able to walk away with the medal for best painted.

The other Hardcore medals went to Dacarnix, who won the Executioner Award for most VPs throughout the event, and DP6, who won both the Vanquisher (overall champion) and Mage Hunter (fastest caster kill) Awards.  There was a Mage Hunter time of around 9 minutes late in the day but DP6 managed a top of turn 1 caster kill 1:31 (yes, that’s one minute and thirty-one seconds) into the championship match, securing both his medals in one dramatic swoop.

DieCon 8 Hardcore Participants DieCon 8 Hardcore Medals Vermillion Menofix - Hardcore Detachment

A huge thanks to the members of the DieCon Privateer Press Weekend Committee – Aslain Kheog, D.Vader, FlipFlops, Neomorte, Saultydog, and Xanathon – for organizing and running the weekend and making sure all of the events went off without any problems.

Saultydog took all of the pictures seen on this page.  The entire gallery can be found here.