Monday, September 30, 2013

Fantasy Shop Warhammer 40k 1000 Point Tournament

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So we had a very cool event this past Sat. I held a 40k 1000 Point tournament at the local Fantasy Shop store in St. Charles MO. We had about 19 sign up ahead of time. Of those 19, 16 showed up and an additional 8 people came. So we had a showing of 24 people. About 6 regulars from our local area did not attend. There was a $10 entry fee and each game was given a 2 hour time limit. I would have to say that I think the 2 hour time limit was great because people actually finished their games.

Things that went well in my opinion


 photo temporary_zps8ed1da32.jpgThe time limit was great because folks actually finished their games. I did see a clear difference in the folks that play tournaments and the people that don't though. We had a few games get done pretty fast but no one had a true 5 round game in less than 1.5 hours except one. had a lot of people through in the towel early and one that got tabled pretty fast due to bad reserve rolls.

New players came out of the woodwork for this one. I loved seeing the new faces form around the St. Louis area show up. We had some really good balance of the usual people and others come out. We had pretty much our bases covered from each corner of our community. Even had some folks that don't usually play give it a go.

We had some pretty cool painted armies that made judging painting fun for those that attended. I have everyone who is playing in the tournament vote for the best army. Of the 9 armies submitted for painting 3 of them had 5 votes or more.

Forgeworld was allowed and we didn't have a single person take advantage of it. I restricted it to 2 FW models only. Also we had folks who own plenty of forgeworld models but still chose to stick to codex.

We had ZERO big issues this go around. No real big rules disputes that I heard and each dispute I was brought in for the book covered. For me as a T.O. I love it. I try to stay away from the games completely that way I don't interfere. Now I will say in round three I spent time around the tables of the lower tier just to see what issues they were having and to give some pointers.

 photo temporary_zps7c04266e.jpg Things that need work on my part


I should have posted the scenarios a week out which was the plan and I just failed to do it. I think that would have allowed people to build better balanced lists for the missions. I am still up in the air on whether or not I want to do that but I think I will the next go around to see how it works out.

More story driven missions like what I have done in the past. I think it gives us some cool things to do and provides for some other areas for people to win something.

Track the army types playing. Now this may sound petty but I want to make sure in the future the same guy doesn't face three straight rounds of Chaos Space Marines or another army. Most of the FUN of tournaments is that you play armies you are not used to playing and you get variety the day you play. That was not achieved for a couple of players where with the point spread I could have mixed it up better.

Set up the tables further apart so each player at least has a 1' x 4' area to place their armies and they can put their display boards away. I actually knocked over a guys ork army while announcing pairings and that really made me sour for the next hour. I wanted to stop what I was doing to help put three of his models back together but I had to get all the pairings out.

 photo temporary_zps333199f7.jpg Terrain needs work


One thing our club needs to work on is terrain at the store. It's great that this location has about 15 8x4 tables but we only really have about 5 tables worth of terrain and it's in disrepair at best.

I want to work with the shop to see if they can get us some terrain of at least a deal on some so we have a good count for at least 10 tables.

I also need to focus more on ensuring that each table has basically the same design so there is no advantage from being on one table over another.

In Summary


 photo temporary_zps724dd6e9.jpgAll in all it was a ton of fun to run the event and with numbers we had I will continue to run them at the lower point cost. I think its easier and leaves more room for newer players.

I didn't here any complaints during the event so that's always a plus and we had the whole gaming area to our selves this time which is awesome.

Hoping for the next event I can have a couple armies on a 4x4 to do demos because we did have about 10 folks walk up to see what we were doing and it left me an opportunity to show them the game where I got kind of lazy. Hopefully everyone that attended truly had a good time.

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