Cauldron OSR Eurocon 2024 Days III+IV

    The first two days of cauldron had exceeded any expectation that I could possibly have! Every game was great, from the crazy Braunstein game to the deadly tournament module and the slaying of dragons and mad cultists, we were all having a great gaming time! Personally, my only concern was to get down for lunch on time in order to be able to enlist myself for the games I wanted. But that was not the case for the third day of Cauldron. 

    You see, the previous day we were informed that a great naval wargame would take place and we had already signed ourselves up! Just like the Braunstein game, it would take place on the gaming world of the ADDKON campaign and me, Nico and Mitch were excited to take part in this! So, we woke up, ate our breakfast and got ready to fight!

NAVAL WARGAME BATTLE

The table is set for battle

    DM Ghoul have made the ambitious decision to run a great naval wargame on Saturday with 7 different factions forming up two different sides! The Slavelords and the Scarlet Brotherhood on one side and five independent states on the other were ready to collide to determine who is going to run the seas! I will be handling the forces of Badwall! The small city had performed terribly on last year's chainmail battle and now, despite the fact that they had less ships than the rest, they wanted to prove their courage and their worth!

    Technically speaking, while I had the weakest faction I had a solid chance to win because I was taking a lot of extra points whenever I destroy an enemy ship! So, if I could destroy a couple of our enemies ships I could win this, provided our team prevails!

    Everything was set for us to begin. Ghoul explains us that we won't be allowed to talk during the game to strategize but we could talk before the game starts and even set up a few codes to communicate with each other. So, our side meets outside. We decide to use flag colors to give simple orders like retreat, boarding etc. Also, we made the assumption that our enemies, being evil organisations, should have their own agenda. Because of that, on Nico's request, we decided to focus our fire on Mitch's Scarlet Brotherhood who had less ships than the Slavelords, hoping to force him to retreat to minimize his losses. We doubted that the evil team would be so commited to fight to the death.

Badwall's ships: The Mayor's Pride and The Punisher

    After both sides talked about their battle plans, we were ready to begin. At first, we were all away from each other, so we spent a few rounds trying to get on formation and testing how the mechanics work. It was good that we spent some time before the actual fight began because by the time we came face to face with the enemy, we were all familiar with how everything works.

The two opposing sides start approaching each other

    A few rounds later, the two sides are about to clash. The first strange thing that we noticed was that while Mitch's ships were approaching, the Slavelords' armada, played by Premier, was approaching causiously. This was a perfect scenario for our plans, because now we could all charge at the Scarlet Brotherhood without being concern with the Slaverlords.

    Our strongest ship was the Shadow of Hecate, controlled by Ahriman. My two ships were right next to it as we advanced. Our greatest weapon however would be Nico's Amazons, who while ferocious in battle, it was extremely difficult to get them involved since their ships were bad.

    

Our ships charging against the two ships of the Scarlet Brotherhood

    The Shadow of Hecate led the charge against the Scarlet Brotherhood. My ships were right next to it being the most exposed ones to the Slavelords. However it was a risk we had to take because if were able to eliminate one of our two opponents fast, victory should come easily.

    Unfortunately, when our main ship clashed with the two ships of Mitch, we realised that the Brotherhood had a lot of trick's up her sleeve. They had a lot of monks on their ships who were reflecting our arrows and their wizards were really strong. They even used a crazy magic protection spell and both of them attacked our flagship, causing it a lot of damage and leaving us speechless. The Punished, one of my two ships, sunk in the bottom of the oceans thanks to the Slavelord's catapult attacks.

The Shadow of Hecate trapped between two enemy ships, one of them (the one with the white circle) with spell protection

    We were in a really bad place, despite some damage we did using phantasmal ships we didn't cause our enemies any trouble and our main weapon was trapped. I was getting ready to use Mayor's Pride (the green one) to attack the ship with the spell protection right in front of me, even if that would be a suicide mission, to free the Shadow of Hecate but then we had lunch break. We didn't realise it but we started at 9 am, the hour was beyond 1 pm and we were still in the middle of the game. So we went to eat and while our opponents were cheerful, our faces were long. Things were looking bad for now.

    Once we came back, the time for the real battle began. Everyone started charging, my ship being the first to ram onto the Scarlet Brotherhood's flagship. He tried to board my ship but thankfully I stopped him. After that, several other ships from both sides were added to the mix, creating a strange centipede made by ships.

In the center you can see 4 ships attached to each other

    I caused a lot of damage to the SB's ship and when Settembrini's ship hit it, it sunk! Unfortunately, one of the Slavelords's ship rammed mine and also destroyed it. However, I started boarding his ship and at the same time, Mitch started boarding Settembrini's ship.

`I managed to win the battle (we were using chainmail for that) by having mine and Premier's wizards kill each other and then winning the brawl that followed.

My men boarding the enemy ship at the top of the picture while Mitch's men boarding Settembrini's at the bottom

    I celebrated this victory which was important both for me and my victory points and for my team. Unfortunately, it would be proven to be a short lived one, as without a wizard I didn't have much of a chance to survive a future battle. The battle came in the next round, when another one of Premier's ship approached and boarded us. With his spells, my men were defeated and Badwall's forces were out of the game, having however redeem the city of last year's shame with their courage and ability in battle.

    However I was not the first faction to get out of the game. Mitch, being sandwiched by everyone was destroyed. Unfortunately for us, when his forces perished, they has another crazy trick to pull. His men had their skin tored out(!) and then some flying insect-like monsters start flying, ready to attack!

The flying monsters appeared and we used a bottle to have them flying and calculate distances

    A few rounds later, Nico's forces managed to board most of Premier's ships that were involved in the battle, turning the game on our side. The Slavelords retreated with the few of their ships that survived and we claimed victory! There were many other battles that took place but since I was out I was going to refill my bottle with beer and taste some of the incredible cake that was offered so I don't remember exactly how these things played out. 

    When we calculated victory points, I was just one enemy ship destruction away from victory, which belonged to Nico if I am not mistaken! Anyway, the game was unbelievably good!

    Also it's worth mentioning that the battle ended somewhere close to 6 pm, so we were gaming for more than 9 hours with a few minutes of break for lunch! People had played a morning session, went to eat, sleep, returned for an evening one and were watching still battling it out! We were the attraction of the day! This couldn't be accoplished without Ghoul's effort! I still cannot believe how he managed to pull of something like that and keep DMing it for so many hours! Hats off to that!

DINNER AND AUCTION

    Once this exhausting session was over, we took some rest and then went to eat. In one of my highlights of all the con, Settembrini, to honor Badwall's bravery during battle, offered me the first bottle of beer of the new ceg in front of everyone! Hahahaha, that was a great moment, cheers to that!

    Once we ate, the austion started! I didn't want to bid on something, but then the Judge's Guild tomes appeared and I couldn't believe in my eyes! I managed to get on my hands on the first one and I am really happy with that, money well spent!

    There many great books there and we had a ton of fun in many occasions, as when Prince of Nothing fought to buy The Arrows of India (he failed)!

    The auction ended a little after 10 and while we were exhausted, me and Nico joined a Odnd game while Mitch started playing on another table.

THE SINISTER SECRETS OF THE MUSHROOM MEN

    We were seriously thinking of just sleeping it out but Orlando offered us a chance to play odnd with everything that came out of the random tables of strategic review vol 1. I love odnd so we decided to join. He allowed us to roll 5 level characters and I used a magic user.

    We first rolled to see what the theme of the dungeon would be. Everyone gave a theme, we rolled and we had a mushroom themed dungeon. We started exploring it and we were attacked by dead bodies controlled by (you guessed it) mushrooms. My and one other guy's character died, so we had to go back, get reinforcements and continue our delving. I just renamed my character from Fletcher to Bletcher and got ready for round two.

    I have to admit that Orlando, with no prepared material, did an amazing job to improvise and connect all the random results of the tables to something that made sense. And he did it! It was a great dungeon and we had a ton of fun! However, after 1 am my eyes were closing and I could hear the other fighter of the group snoring from time to time. being defeated by exhaustion, we decided to have our characters go back with whatever loot they got and go to sleep!

THE LAST DAY

    The fourth and last day of the convention had no gaming sessions in it. We cleared our rooms by 10, ate our breakfast and then had the awards ceremony. When me, Nico and Mitch were discussing, we believed that I would have won the most memorable deaths award and Mitch's team would have won the tournament module. 

    We believed that because they ended the module really fast and had 0 deaths. Also we thought they had more loot than us. I basically thought we ended up last. However, if you add the magical items we brought back, we were actually the team that had the most loot and while our 3 deaths costed us the victory, me and Nico were surprised to receive the runner's up reward!!!

Well done team!!!

    The most crazy moment of the awards for us however, was when it was announced that there was a triple tie at the top with Mitch on it! Not only that, but because most of the players said that he was really helpful during the sessions, he won the MVP award of this year!!! Congratulations Mitch!!!

Me, Mitch and Nico with our awards! Room 11 ftw!!! :D

    Premier won the Most Hirelings Used Award as the Slavelords! As he mentioned however, most of them weren't hirelings, they were slaves! Unfortunately I lost the most memorable deaths awards for just one death to James (Damn you James!!!)! The awards ceremony, jokes aside, was a very cheerful moment that ended with the best DM's award that went to Settembrini, who then made a small speech were he invited us all to step it up and be the change we want to see on our community and our scene! Wonderfull!

    With that, the convention ended similarly to how it started. The hero named Ollie, once more drove back and forth to the station a million times to help us! It's also worth mentioning that my main concern at the time was how I would be able to carry my huge tome of Judges' Guild. A great guy named Felix offered me a bag from his car that fit perfectly! If you are reading this, cheers mate, you saved the day!!!

CONCLUSION

    The convention ended and most of us couldn't hide our eagerness for the next one. Me (and several others) held back tears of joy and sadness that this was over so fast! An overdose of non stop gaming, where everyone's main concern was to be on the enlisting table on time to get on the games he wante to play!

    My concerns in the beggining were proven to be wrong! Everyone wore the brightest and most honest smile they got, the organizers made you feel as you were on family vacations, every game was PERFECT and every DM and player brought his A Game! It was by far the greatest convention I ever participated and I can't wait for the next one!!! See you there!!!

FIGHT ON!!!