Good day to everyone on Hive! I am going to showcase my experience and photos of an absolutely massive wargaming and card game event, the like I have not seen since long before the "plague" of 2019-2021.

This is Swordcon 2022, the first of its kind. I hope that they host another one next year and I feel that with the turnout they got at this event that it will be a sure thing!

I have posted about them before, the Sword and Board hobby shop is located on Koeberg Road, Milnerton, Cape Town, South Africa is an amazing venue and shop where you can buy and play a massive variety of boardgames.

While there are many stand-alone delights one can read and play in an evening with your family of all ages, some games require skill, investment and dedication. Some games have a massive following and the players number in the thousands around the world. When there are a lot of people that play a game, just like any sport - this leads to competition and tournaments!

I will fill you in on what is what below!

So Swordcon is a convention and a range of tournaments from its many groups of hobbyists. Some people merely came to Swordcon to play whatever game they enjoy the most.

A 2 day event. I took the kids - @merenludick, @matthew-williams and Meren's friend Evan there on the Saturday to have a look. They brought their cardgames and some board games and I walked around and socialized.

I had not seen many friends and familiar faces for many many years. Many invited me heartily to join them more often. I am gearing up to do just that - more posts to follow!

The event was hosted at the Italian Club, which I will cover in more detail in another post. The Sword and Board shop is actually really big and can host a large gathering of hobbyists, but not Swordcon. This was huge!

Let me try to break down the content into groups.

Warhammer 40,000 Tournament

Now THIS is the hobby I want to get back into. I am extremely old school, so the game has changed over time and all armies seem to have new things I have never seen... or even armies that I have never played against before...

What is Warhammer 40,000? Seems like a whole other (series) post... in a nutshell it is a table top wargame where you pit various sci-fi armies against each other.

There is a ever evolving rules rollout of editions and you use strategy and dice to play. There are probabilities at play so with good strategy you have a good chance of victory, but there can always be a little freak accident here and there to make things different!

Let's start with the table where Nic was playing a game. The guy on the left is Nicholas Roric. That's @lex-zaiya's SO. He and I have been friends for... like more than half of my whole life and he and I played our first 4th Editoion Warhammer 40,000 game together a long long time ago... before that I played in an introductory game of 3rd Edition. I think so anyway... the memory is foggy.

In today's world, they are playing 9th Edition Warhammer 40,000!

Let's just do a camera roll of 40k from here on. I will see if I can make comments about what we are looking at.

First up is some of Nic's Space Marines. He was playing a Blood Angels army against another Space Marine army. (Who know's which?)

Some sort of Tyranid Flyer. I have never had to fight this before... I guess I will find out how bad it is. Brennon Nickerson's army. Tyranids are a swarm of dino-bugs that eat everything.

A battlefield. Astra Militarium (Imperial Guard) and Blood Angels.

The guy on the right is Johnathan De Waal. I have known him for an extreme number of years as well. He is the only Guard player still running around. In a galaxy filled with super soldiers and aliens, he has regular humans... who have lots of tanks and lots of guns.

More Tyranids. You get big ones and small ones, all alien, all deadly.

A bigger view of the battlefield. Note the dice tray. Vetran players use these as it is easier than picking up stray dice off the floor. Having needed to crawl around on the floor a lot looking for dice in the distant past I appreciate the tactic.

What I really like is the oversized tables that allow a lay down area instead of ONLY having the 6' x 4' gaming space for the battle as the table.

Some Space Wolves on the side of a battlefield and a scoresheet. These are either in Reserve... or they are dead. I don't know. It feels rude to ask.

More of Brennon's flappy and floating gribblies. Tyranids. Looks like Chaos Space Marines on the other side. They are like Space Marines, with extra evil.

Ah yes. Definitely Chaos Space Marine. Look how many Zoanthropes there are! (The floating headaches. They are mostly just brain.)

Aha! Battle-Nerds! The Adeptus Mechanicus are the Brotherhood of Mars. The Techpriest of the Omnissiah!

True to form this Battle Nerd has printed data sheets that follow his squads around so he can keep track of all their weird and wonderful gear.

An Ork Warboss! Everyone knows what an Ork is! These are Green and brutal and kunning! He is riding a... shark-squig? I don't even know if there is an actual model and rule for this.... after checking I found out that it is! This is the Warboss Mozrog Skragbad of the Snake-bite Clan. He is riding the great white squiq! 🤣🤣🤣

This, I think is a Beastboss on Squigosaur.

Grey Knights and Orks battle. Grey Knights are Daemon Hunters.

Yes, this one over here... I am going to attack him.

This big guy is a Nemisis Dreadknight. Beyond him is Ghazzkull Mag Uruk Thraka... I know that out of my head, no google. He is a legendary Ork Warboss that is like their best of the best.

Warhammer 40,000 also have some small ones. Here are the Gretchin, the grots. They are the slaves of the Orks.

More Space Marines!

Aeldari (back in my day we just called them Eldar). They come in several different flavors. These are the nutty, rainbow sprinkles kind - the Harlequins. An absolute astonishing paintjob though! Those squares needed to be painted on!

Looks like the Harlequins are battling against some more Chaos Space Marines.

Specifically, these look like the Possessed. They are extra-chaosy and have extra things growing out of them. Quite the propensity for crab hands I see.

More Chaos Space Marines.

Here we have something interesting. An Ork unit that has been converted so it looks corrupted by one of the Chaos Gods - Nurgle, the God of disease.

People are allowed to change their models and create really good looking stuff (or horrible looking, disgusting in fact). So they create their own backstory. This whole Ork army has been corrupted, but it counts as an Ork army.

This Stranger Thing is probably a Chaos Spawn that has been captured and tamed to draw their war machine called a Kill Rig. Usually drawn by a Giant Squig.

Another shot of the Kill Rig.

... these look like Dark Elves but they are probably being played as Slaaneshi Daemonettes.

Orks in Blue against the Corrupted Orks. Blue is the color of luck for orks.

Another converted Kill Rig! So Awesome! Look how the tentacles look wet! (Varnish I believe)

The 2nd Kil Rig again.

And another view from the top.

Multiple battlefields. Not going to try see what armies are being played in this picture. More for the vibe.

Just checking out that Space Wolf's Axe...

A rather grainy picture of the Sisters of Battle, the Adepta Soriritas, the Nuns with Guns. Ok the last one is not an official name, more like a colloqial slur.

BTW, all armies have slurs connected to them, it is part of the banter.

Grey Knights and Blood Angels. Like I said, I am a big fan of this out of combat zone.

Also a great place for a Tactical Beer!

Card Games - Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic the Gathering

Another big hobby and following can be found in the Collectible Card Game arena. There was both a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament and people playing MTG - Magic the Gathering. I have dabbled in the latter.

The MTG tournaments were being held on the Sunday so we missed that.

Here are the boys having a quick game of Pokemon. They also got a stack of cards from the organizers.

Unfortunately there was no Pokeom tournament, this time. Maybe next year!

Here are some guys playing Magic the Gathering.

At the same time guys were playing a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament.

And here on the left was their winner of 1st place. On the right is the event organizer.

@merenludick and Evan showing off their best cards pulled out of booster packs they bought at the event.

Other Games!

A room full of people playing Catan!

I am not sure about the game system here but it was a large scale warfare with ranks of men and knights and whatnot.

Bolt Action, WWII tabletop battles.

Bolt Action. That's a dice bag in the distance.

Look at this amazing terrain! You can have a look at that some more on the [TableTopHobbies. Terrain Technician - Youtube Channel] (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiASfCu21Nsiq-DRGRl7D-g) where AJ shows how he builds his terrain.

Another view of the city table.

Final Word

After this weekend it has really gotten me excited to get my boys out of their very dusty boxes. There is a LOT to talk about when it comes to the Lore, the miniatures and the game.

Now imagine if ALL these people in this post were blogging about their games on Hive... imagine that...

Cheers!
@zakludick