Geekend 2025: The Games

What do Irish Coffees, a house built in 1641 and four beautifully painted armies for Warhammer: The Old World have in common? Well, I guess the post title gives it away: they all featured as part of Geekend 2025. This is the first of two blog posts about the weekend. This one will be more logistics and games focussed. The other will cover the narrative context and evolving story over the sequence of battles.

This year I don’t arrive into Hamburg by plane. I’d been down in Freiburg for a research project meeting and then took the train up through the country. It was a relaxing and easy train journey. My new Warriors of Chaos army was snuggly packed in a plastic tub in my case… as was the Elector Counts card game… and a nice bottle of Black Bush.

Phil met me in Hamburg and we travelled out to his new house where we’d meet up with the others the next morning before heading to the rented house. In the morning the cars were packed with terrain, models, food and drink! The house was in the village of Kuden (a placename that could well be somewhere in the north of the Empire!), which is about an hour and twenty minutes north-west out of Hamburg. It was beautiful… and a bit eclectic! It was comfortable also, with room for setting up our Wargames tables. It had a decent kitchen and plenty of room to eat. There was also room to lounge around in the evening. All the things needed for a good Geekend!

We decided to use a GenAI as the narrative engine for the weekend. We fed it the context before the battles and asked it to set out a plan for each round of the weekend. We reckoned we’d have time for 4 games, so with 4 players that was each playing each other once and then a team game. With two Chaos armies (Warriors of Chaos and Beastmen) and two ‘good guys’ armies (Empire and Wood Elves) we had good reasons to fight each other and the potential for two alliances.

Game 1

My first game was against Dan’s Wood Elves. It was billed as a Chance Encounter, so there was a chance units from both forces would be delayed.

My infantry must have been lagging behind and neither of my footslogger units arrived on turn one. The Gigantic Spawn must have gotten distracted somewhere too. This left Zeeta, my Tzeentchian Sorcerer, and my battle standard bearer without protecting units. Dan sought to take advantage deploying some archers into my backfield, hoping to pick them off. The Wood Elf line was quite complete. Facing it I had Dragon Ogres, Chariots (including one with my general) and a large unit of Chaos Knights.

I decided to hit the right side of the Elven line hard, my general and Dragon Ogres causing real issue. Dan reduced the line to limit flanking charges. On the left my Gigantic Spawn along with the Chosen Chaos Warriors arrived to harry the line there. Meanwhile my Knights joined the general and Dragon Ogres to push against the enemy.

Zeeta dealt with the archers with her dark magics, this freed up my backfield and meant there was nothing for my units arriving to do than to push up.

And that’s what I did: I began to push hard and bit by bit the Elven line dissolved. They had some success, dismantling my Knights with their magic and there was a back and forward fight between the Chosen and Wild Riders.

The Elves melted back into the trees, leaving Zar Druhska’s force free to advance on Hagendorf.

An interlude for Food and Irish Coffees

Game 2

Steve’s Empire next. They were tasked directly with defending the outskirts of the town. His artillery arrayed in the centre of his battleline made the effort look serious. Serious enough that I deployed as much out of sight of them as possible! The Empire reacted with their other troops, possibly setting up a large unit unit of halberdiers in a place they might struggle to dig themselves out of.

I pushed hard on both flanks, hoping to limit the time I was exposed to fire from the Empire. My Knights were (again) well mauled, but other than that most of my force struck the Empire line intact. The Dragon Ogres caused real problems for the halberdiers, while my Gigantic Spawn and general smashed unit after unit on the left. My Chosen caused real problems for the Empire Knights including their general. It took time, but both of my flanks moved in in a pincer movement on the artillery, hitting warmachine after warmachine and routing its crew.

The path lay open to Hagendorf. However, converging towards the town were the Brayherd Beastmen. The whispers of their gods were not in harmony with Tchar.

Another interlude for Food and some Elector Counts

Game 3

There was a site of great power beside Hagendorf. It lured the chaos forces there. Phil and I played a game of cat and mouse around a central obelisk/tower, that was the main objective of the game.

(When I was a kid, if you’d told me I’d play a game that looked this good when I was older… quite a bit older… I wouldn’t have believed it.)

The tower dominated the battle. Particularly for me. I ended up sending units the long way around, but Phil had an answer for them. His Shaman melted the Chosen turn after turn with effective magic and the other units were stalled by Chaos Warhounds and a chariot. Things were trickier on the other side, with neither force wanting to make the first move.

My chariot and Dragon Ogres hit the giant and a large unit of Gors respectively. It ended badly for my units.

With half of my army going the long way around and the rest caught in a bottleneck, Phil having. A similar issue, we jockeyed for position.

It ended in a win to Phil. I hadn’t managed to damage anything substantial and he’d taken out enough to give the win to the Beastmen.

The Chaos gods had wanted this fight, but they hadn’t wanted their forces destroyed by it. They had other plans.

Game 4

We decided to do a team game, with 1000pts per player. I downgraded my general to an Exalted Champion, representing her second string role to the Beastmen. Again we would fight around the obelisk. This time an allied force of Beastmen and Warriors against the troops of the Empire and their Wood Elf allies.

The Chaos gods are rarely in agreement, but this day their wills aligned. The ‘good guys’ didn’t know what hit them. Everywhere the forces of Chaos struck their foe was vanquished.