LGS on the Road - L'Abyss

By: Dozer

I've always believed that our hobby needs the Local Game Shops (LGS) to keep our games healthy. We need to support the LGS to keep our games on the shelf. We need our games on the shelf to keep the games alive.

Canada has a healthy relationship with their game shop and I want to post about my experience about the many shops that dot Canada.

This year I am travelling all across Canada  for my day job. When I stop at a new city, I will be visiting and playing at as many LGS as I can. 

I'm in Montreal for two weeks and while I was here I made sure to reach out to a local Martin. I had met him at Capital Conflict and he represented Montreal very well. He was a positive player and showed up with an desire to have fun.

So I was going to play at his local shop, a nice spot called L'abyss. I felt like I was at my Local Game Shop and that was another reason why I'm doing this series. I wanted to share the places where we play from all across Canada.

Since I'm on the road I haven't had the time to setup and get into a painting mood I decided to bring and play the two lists I used at GENCON. It made sure my minis were painted and my list were ready to play. I wanted to bring my A game to Martin at his shop and not embarrass myself.

Lucky for me my Hotel is 6km km away from the shop and the route was very direct. It's a Friday night traffic should be light and I'm eager to get my game on.

When I arrived I discovered there was plenty of parking at it was a direct line into the shop. I walked down so fresh painted stairs into a basement and I was expecting one of those dirty but very well stocked games area.

Boy was I wrong!

L'Abyss is like it's name. You wander slowly going deeper and deeper into the abyss and once you get to the end of the stairs you find yourself in front of great doors opened wide and inviting. Inside is a clean, well lit, and well stocked place of gaming that any patron would be proud to have in there area.

Inside lies a great place to game!

 When I walked in there was four folks playing magic at one of their tables and there was a pair of folks playing Warmachine and Hordes. On Saturday (I walked in on Friday) there was a 30 player Warmachine and Hordes tournament planned.

 The first thing I noticed outside of how clean and well stocked the shop was - was the tennis balls bought in bulk to save the hardwood floors from getting all beat up. A nice result of this is never tripping of the edge of the chairs or tables. Folks were constantly aware of where things are and no one bumped into anything - a small oddity with some LGSs.

Since I was there to play Infininty I started looking for Infinity products. I've always believed that their is a symbiotic relationship between the game makers, the game stores, and the game players... without one we cannot have the other two. So when I stop by and play at a shop I try to pick something up that is related to why I'm there. It supports the game makers and it tells the shop to keep stocking the product.

I snagged a few things for Burns; some 40mm cammo tokens and a box of Yaogat. For myself I picked up the Season 9 packet. It is something I really like that Corvus Belli did this ITS year. A simple nice printed book with all the current ITS rules and scenarios. It also came with the four Kidnapping Classified Objective Cards that replace the HVT: Retroengineering Classified Objective Cards in the current deck for this season.

I hung out and bothered some of the players including the Warmachine and Hordes event TO and the nice staff behind the counter. Being stuck teaching all day and in a hotel solo all night makes for a build up of nerd needs. Since I'm not one for chat rooms, BBSs (yes I've now aged myself), and posting on Facebook I crave the face to face direct social aspect of being a nerd.

Zond being gunned down

Martin shows up on time and we set up a table in the back. He's showing up with the alien jerks that make up the Combine Army. He won the roll and took the deployment, making me deploy first. Since we were playing Quadrant Control - a simple game for me since I haven't played in a while, I took second turn.

My idea was to play the scenario with my hidden units and steal points when opportunities showed up. If the dice or Martin provided me chances to work out some objective points I wanted to be in a place to take advantage of them. I also needed to make some opportunities with a few tricks and flanking activities.

I had a Bandit (forward observer), Zero (minelayer), and Spektr (forward observer)ready to reveal and throw in a wrentch in Martin's plans. I also had a Hellcat (assault hacker) ready to jump in as needed. The rest of my army was a tool box of various Hackers, Smart Missile Launchers, a TAG, and a Warcor.

The first to fall was my Salut Zond with EVO hacking device. Even though he was hidding in a tree line I failed to notice the straight diagonal line that put him in line with Martin's HMC (love that weapon) sporting TAG and the Rocket Launching Batroid in the five man link team.

Umbra like a ghost

It died after a few orders and that was my only solace as things got worse. My first turn was failing to put down repeaters and expand my hacking radius and with my limit order pool I was unwilling to show my hand early after such a poor showing. I figured the second turn I'd be able to get off one single successful roll.

Martin had more zones and his Data Tracker was in one of them so the score was 3 to 0 for Martin.

Martin's second turn started with a back and forth firefight between my Interventor (who died) and my Lizard (who also died) from that Batroid link team.

It was made even worse as his Umbra who had moved around like a ghost now that my Zond was out of the way was moving into a position to start killing my three infiltrators.

Lucky for me that Umbra decided to engage and beat up that lone camo token that the Batroid's could not discover.

The marker was a mine.

Mine meet Umbra
Boom

The Umbra died from the shock and suddenly I was happy with my position. He only had his MSV Fracta and the small TAG as real threats to me. I had some simple solutions for both since the Frata was facing towards the center of the table and not the side where my Hellcat would be able to walk on from.

So my turn started with my Bandit getting in a gun fight with the Batroid link team and after a series of crits from both me and Martin I decided to shift gears and not commit all of my orders when there were two higher priority targets.

First off I revealed my Spektr who targeted the TAG and took cover around a building. I was now present on the right side of board able to contest quadrants. There was also the HVT to kidnap and once the TAG fell all that was left was the Fracta.

So I dropped a Smart Missile on the TAG and Martin rolled only 18+ for his armour checks. I accepted the dice and fired a second missile getting a 20 and missing the TAG. Now I was getting short on orders but my priorities had not changed so I fired once more and once again Martin's dice would only show 18 or higher.

I was no longer willing to waste orders but I was now contesting zones... until we measured and found out my Bandit had moved to far up and no longer contested the zone. Lucky for me the Umbra was the Data Tracker and Martin only gain 2 objective points instead of 3 that turn. It was now 5 to 0.

I wanted to play so I didn't concede. Also if I was in a tournament I still had chances to get precious tie break objective points but to also prevent Martin from getting 5 or more objective points giving him a major victory and a higher tournament standing.

So Martin procedded to kill my Spektr with his HMG Fracta in close range. It came around the corner pulled out it's pistol and dropped the Spektr.

My Bandit was next as he fought hard over three orders in a prolonged gun fight with a 4 man Batroid link team. The last order had him dead with two fallen Batroid for the trouble.

That was game, with only three working minis I called the long but awesome game to an end. There was no chance for me to move up and start taking points when Martin's classified objective card was ready as an Intel card to swing the points in an area to his favor. With only 1 objective point within reach and Martin guaranteed another 2 I was ready to call it quits.

We put away the tables and looked at l'Abyss game area prepaired for the next day's tournament. Chess clocks and tables set up for folks to come down and play.

I said my goodbyes and left the place happy with my experience with the intent to show up this week before I returned home on Friday.

If you're in Montreal and you have a chance to hit l'Abyss do yourself a favour and visit. The staff are awesome, fully fluent in French and English with a great selection of games to buy and play. They also have a after market for used minis some of which have some awesome paint jobs.

Super sexy painted figs for Cthulhu Wars 

Plenty of room, plenty of tables, and plenty of terrain. The place is bright and clean (even the washroom). The shope has snack and pop machines for munchies and the store is dedicated to investing in local talent and smaller games.

The selection is some of the best I've seen in Canada and within two hours of Ottawa.

Check it out.

- Cheers

Dozer