ICI V Part One - Background and Introduction
Last year, Jacen and I ran, hands down, the best, most complicated, and most work-intensive 40k event I’ve attended (and easily within the top ten events I’ve even heard of). Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a “Deep Dive” of sorts about the planning of the event and how it went. Tune in every Saturday for the next four weeks!
Of Saints and Soldiers
My life has changed pretty significantly since I got back into 40k. I picked up the game again in 5th edition, and around the start of 6th I joined a local gaming club in Windsor, Ontario (where I used to live). The club was great, and I miss those friends, who I’ve unfortunately lost touch with: hopefully you’re all still rolling dice and doing okay!
During my time with the club, I ran three campaigns: the War for Raxxus, the Hunt for the World Thief, and the Romanov Heresy. All three of these ran for a few months and ended with a climactic apocalypse game. They were work intensive, each with a campaign booklet I wrote and designed, and with ongoing obligations as there were bi-weekly phases (or, in the case of the last campaign, weekly map moves). Back then, I was young and had lots of time for such things.
I moved to Toronto, Ontario and hooked up with the group centred around the local Games Workshop store. We have an informal club that still exists today. When I first started, I ran or helped with a few 40k campaigns and even an Age of Sigmar campaign. But even then, Real Life ™ was starting to get in the way.
At some point, Jacen and I had a conversation with the joke that the only way I’d win a tournament is if I ran it myself and rigged the results. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to run an event, and thus the ICI was born.
But it was no tournament.
Invitationals
The first ICI in 2017 (the Ian C. Invitational, as it was originally called) was two or three tables in my apartment playing Carnage games. Players were invited via a facebook event and paninis were served. All models were required to be fully painted and based. It was a great day of gaming, but didn’t really have any narrative hooks (the campaigns mentioned above all took place in the Pilgrim Sector, a narrative space I created that has carried over between my gaming groups).
The ICI II had mailed out invitations and custom missions, elements of which have carried forward to all other ICIs. These were 1v1 (or 1v2) games rather than the 4 player free for alls. This event still lacked an overarching narrative though. Paninis were once again served.
These were both one day, stand-alone events. There were others I hosted at home over the years (small hammer game days, apocalypse, the much-loved Tanksgiving tank battles), but the ICI was fast becoming my best annual event.
The Weekender
As I said above, the commitment of a months-long campaign was quickly becoming a distant memory, especially as a game master/organizer. But if that could be distilled into a short timeframe, two or three days, it could still be doable.
Enter the third ICI, held in late 2019 at a large cottage with a spacious, unfinished basement to hold the half dozen or so 40k tables. The event ran Friday night through Sunday with six games, including a 2,500 point team game as a capstone finale. The war was for the planet Progress, within the Reach subsector of the Pilgrim Sector. Each table represented a different location on Progress and vaguely themed around references to The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Victory at a table gave your team control of it and the associated bonus.
To put it simply, this event was wildly successful. Good food, good company, excellent vibes. Each night, we watched a movie and hung out late. Everyone was looking forward to the fourth annual ICI, which was going to be another cottage weekender.
Then the pandemic hit.
The next weekender wasn’t until 2022. This was to be the first 40k event most invitees had attended since the pandemic. My household was still extremely strict about Covid precautions due to high-risk family members, and hosting a dozen people in close proximity for an entire weekend was a big red flag. Vaccines at this point were widely available in Canada, as were home tests. I instituted a vaccine requirement and sent a home test with the mailed out campaign booklet (the first ICI booklet).
By this time, we were well into 9th edition. Rather than planning everything on my own, I recruited a team of volunteers to help plan the event, which became a mostly helpful sounding board and research team. I say mostly, as some of the ideas were not ideal for a campaign weekender (specifically bringing a pre-existing Crusade roster when most participants started from scratch), but I acquiesced as the majority of the planning committee was in favour.
From what I could tell, everyone except me enjoyed the event. A disproportionate amount of cleaning and household duties fell to me, and this soured the weekend. I was frustrated at the end and swore off running such events.
Another issue was using full-on Crusade rules. Any time between or after games was taken up by Crusade homework, as opposed to previously when we just hung out and had a movie night: by the time the games were done and people finished updating their rosters, most people were burned out and just wanted to call it a night.
The next ICI
After running a stellar gaming weekend for my bachelor party, Jacen approached me about running another ICI. It would be at a venue, not a private dwelling, and would focus on immersion and narrative, even more so than previous events. And we’d expand beyond our immediate friends, with an aim to grow the event. We renamed it the Inquisitorial Conclave Invitational and started planning.
The venue solved my biggest issue with the previous event, ensuring the housekeeping was taken care of. We chucked Crusade rules out the window and agreed to use only a sprinkling of them. For the planning committee, we reached out to only a few and installed ourselves as tyrants rather than having a democratic committee. One lesson from the ICI IV was that saying “can someone help me with X?” meant I got stuck with it. This time, we’d assign tasks to committee members or volunteers: if they were too busy or couldn’t do it for whatever reason, that was fine, but we wouldn’t be waiting around for someone to jump in.
I’ve known Jacen since the 4th grade and worked with him on other projects before. We’re a good team, and having him as a partner was an immense help throughout. Frankly, I don’t think I’d do it again without him.
It had begun
With the stage set, we began really planning the meat of the event. Tune in next Saturday for a look at the goals and planning.
Have questions about running your own events or want to share stories of your experiences? Drop us a line at contactus@wrongsideofthemaelstrom.com.
Credits
Unless otherwise noted, photos by Ian.
Salamander models by Greg.
Ultramarine models by Chris.
Chaos beastie by Recusant.
Tyranid models by Mike (cover photo).