I'm trying to rope in a number of my local Warmachine players down here for the event and I have a couple questions:

1. Tiebreakers: In SR2011 the tiebreakers are strength of schedule, then scenario control points, then VPs killed, in that order. The tournament is listed as using the SR2011 rules straight out of the book, but I wanted to double-check that this is how the tiebreakers will be handled.

2. Rounds and timing: Will it be a five-round event if less than 17 players show up? Are we using secret total match time as described in SR2011?

3. Space: How much room is left?

I have a few guys on the line and some clarifications on the above might help reel them in. Thanks!

-Dis.

1. Yes tie breakers will be as per the SR2011. Strength of Schedule, CP then VP's
2. Rounds will be random time length as per SR2011. We will only go as many rounds as we need to get a winner. So that could be less than 5 if there are fewer than 16. (Though I think we are already above that for both day)
3. There are some spaces left. I would DM Reecius to find out exactly as he taking care of ticket sales.

If you have any more questions ask away. Hope to see you guys there!

We've only got about 10 40k and 4 fantasy tickets left before we will be at capacity. If anyone wants to come and have a great weekend of gaming, move quick!

Warmahordes is also well over half full and tickets move every day.

Dakkanauts assemble!! Form dakkatron!

OK, that was random but it made me laugh to say it.

See you guys in less than two weeks and counting!

Reecius wrote:
Dakkanauts assemble!! Form dakkatron!
OK, that was random but it made me laugh to say it.

That made me chuckle too

I liked it so much I sigged it!

I may have missed it in all the posts, but are Missions available for preview?

dkellyj wrote:I may have missed it in all the posts, but are Missions available for preview?

Missions have been posted since day one haha. Check out the website.

Its book missions 3X3. The only one I dont like is the last game on the first day is ties ville (spearhead, capture&control). I think its there to seperate the field a little but after 3 games I'm beat down from the day. Its gunna be a tough match to get a win.

@Kelly
Yeah man, book missions the whole way through. The order of the missions is on the site. The only thing that needs a little thought is the bracket points but they're super easy and the same for every mission.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Levi
yes, spearhead, cap and control is a tough one, but it will definitely spread out the field.

Yes but its also the fourth 1850 point, 2hr15min game of the day. See... I'm tired just thinking about it :p

I played a game in a tournament this weekend that was Spearhead, Capture and Control.

I controlled both objectives at the end of that one! Booyah! Maybe you and I will play each other in that mission, Grimgob. I'll show you how it's done.

Oooh, talking a little Yang! I like it! That would be awesome if you guys did get to throw down.

We're talking about switching to 1500 for next year as it plays so much faster. We'll ask Dakka and the event attendees what they think. At 1500 we can shave 2 hours off the day or an hour and have longer breaks between.

You can show me Monster, but I might not get it for a little while (some are just to thick to get through to). I'm a pretty feeble player so your gunna have to take it easy on me

Looking forward to it. I get more games in a weekend than I've had in a year.

I volunteer to be the gimmee win for everyone. It's going to happen anyway, so I might as well embrace it.

@odmiller Same for me I'm going to hopefully pick up some tips from more experienced tourney players and have a great time enjoying a weekend of 40k!

@Reecius 1500 with longer breaks in between sounds awesome.

Grimgob wrote:I'm a pretty feeble player so your gunna have to take it easy on me

I know better than that!

I would like to get in a game with you, though, one way or the other.

Is there open gameing on Friday? And if so who is going to be there? I'd be looking to get some practice games it.

Transportation notice:
For anyone thinking of flying to Frisco/Oakland consider this:
Due to the current impasse in DC over the budget, the FAA funding is now late. That means except for vital functions (Air Traffic Control) the FAA will essentially shut down.
Now the good news: This will NOT effect any airline schedules or flights.
The BETTER News: The FAA will not be allowed to collect taxes on airline tickets as of Midnight friday, 22 July, until their dudget is authorized.
This means if you buy your ticket this weekend you can potentially save between 40 and 100 dollars (yes, that how much just the FAA hits you for in hidden taxes whenever you fly) on your ticket.
Just an FYI.

Damn, that's a good tip!

And remember, anyone flying in that needs a lift from the Bart station needs to coordinate with us.so far no one has said anything so we aren't planning on providing any rides.

@red lives
Yes, there is open gaming Friday night at battle Bunker games, a game store litterally a half a block down the street from the hotel. We didn't ask for an rsvp for attendances but it's safe to say there will be a good crowd there. the staff will be there for sure and we'd be happy to give you a game as it's the only game's we're likely to get!

@huckelberry
I was thinking the same thing. We'll see what the majority thinks. 1500 plays so much quicker, it would make the day much more manageable.

1500 points is a great points level.
You can not bring all the toys, so you have to make compromises...and yes, it would be easier on us older gentlemen and our aching backs....
...they might not be aching yet, but after 7 games...

Yeah, I agree. I run 1500 point tournaments frequently and we get through 4 rounds in 7 hours with breaks and lunch, no problem.

We're going to have a feedback form in the packets for everyone to fill out and hear what they'd lie to have for next year. I'm voting for 1500 for purely logistical reasons, but I also really lie like that size as well.

Where are these Player Packets mentioned in the email?
Am I just brain dead?

Magilla Gurilla wrote:Where are these Player Packets mentioned in the email?
Am I just brain dead?

I assume that they will distributed on the day.

Janthkin wrote:

Magilla Gurilla wrote:Where are these Player Packets mentioned in the email?
Am I just brain dead?

I assume that they will distributed on the day.

We'll be giving the packets out to people the day of the tourney. Or to early registration the night before.

We're approaching 100 players for 40k! Only a few spots left and I know some folks are planning on showing up to play. Grab your tickets while they're still available!

Fantasy had a spot open up, so we still have 3 tickets left.

Warmachine has 10 spots left.

We still have a few days, grab a spot now and have a weekend of gaming!

Open gaming and apocalypse at battle Bunker games Friday night, plus battletech pod battles!

Open gaming Saturday night at battle Bunker games!

See you all this weekend!

@Reece

Awesome job on making this such a huge event the first year. I'm already making plans to attend next year. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of this and hearing some great stories.

Regarding next year if you're going 1,500 next year I'd like it as long as you ran 7-8 games. Could be a lot of fun as a different type of tournament since Nova is 2k, Adepticon is 1850, and Wargames is 2k so a 1.5k would be something nice to add to the big event circuit.

Good luck guys, wish I was still in Cali so I could be there!

@Hulksmash

Ducking me again huh? You still owe me a game for taking my spot in the Nova invitational (I think I'm 0-1-1 with you now). Your presence will be missed

Thanks, Brad! We're all bummed you won't be making it but hopefully you can make it next year. You can always crash at my pad to save some dough.

Yeah, Frankie, Will, Louise and I have been busting our asses to pull this thing off and it looks like it's going to be great fun. We're all really stoked for this weekend to see all the work come to fruition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I agree that 1500 would make us stand out from the other big events, which is a good thing in my opinion.

Also, some last minute updates.

Fantasy start time will be 10:00am with check in at 9:30am. Enjoy the extra half hour of sleep!

If you are staying at the days inn and suites for the event, call the hotel and let them know what day you're checking in and when out. The manager called me and said it wasn't clear on some of the reservations. 925-522-0010

For 40k, we forgot to tell players to bring their own objectives as we thought it was assumed. Assuming is bad! You must all bring three objectives on either 25mm or 40mm bases and since this is last minute and our mistake, they don't have to be painted.

See you all in a few days.

The wife is coming with and her travel companion (someone to visit the city while I'm gaming) dropped out at the last minuit. Any other solo wifes going that would want to buddy up for a museum trip or something else on Saturday?

Dkellyjs wife is coming I believe.

Also guys, we had some last minute drop outs, so we'll have room for a few walk ins if anyone gets a wild hair and decides to crash the party!

Looking forward to having you all!

Good luck to everyone this weekend!

As of Day One I have to say that this may be the most fun tournament ever.

Its pretty fun, there is alot of cool people here. Nice to put a face to the name Monster.

This is pretty much the best tournament my buddies and I have ever been to. No bad games. Lookin' forward to day 2.

Four great games thus far, looking forward to the final three. This tournament has been great in all regards.

Thanks for coming out everyone! We had a blast hosting you all. It was a lot of work, but worth it to hear all of the positive feedback.

We'll get results up soon.

That was tons of fun, and really not that exhausting; seven games isn't that hard to stand through, tough guys. Thanks, Reece and the rest, for your service.

Thanks Reece & Y'all

I had a blast.

Doc

Grimgob wrote:Its pretty fun, there is alot of cool people here. Nice to put a face to the name Monster.

Likewise, buddy! I just wish we had gotten a game in! Next time, I suppose.

Reecius wrote:Thanks for coming out everyone! We had a blast hosting you all. It was a lot of work, but worth it to hear all of the positive feedback.

I really liked the scoring system, man. It was totally transparent and you always had a good idea where you stood. Great job, guys.

Can't wait for the next one.

Longer feedback:

Ups:

-All the tournament organizers seemed like cool, friendly guys, and the event ran very smoothly. On the one occasion I had to call for a judge, the ruling was quickly, efficiently, and diplomatically handled. I want to give a special shoutout to Reece for loaning my friend an entire army to play for the event when he couldn't get his previous one done in time. That type of stuff is really above and beyond and it gave me a great first impression of the event.

-Dollar-a-slice pizza was a great idea. Not much more to be said there-- it was a fairly good deal that also allowed for a shorter lunch break.

-The venue was quite good; the spacious area allowed plenty of room for seating, walking between tables, etc. and also prevented the tournament from overheating.

-The players, too, were great. I had six great games out of seven, and while the seventh wasn't too fun (thanks to issues that I'll explain later), my opponent was a great guy and we chatted afterwards for a while. The level of play was also high, and there were several very impressive armies out there. The range of armies represented was also quite impressive-- I think every Codex except Black Templars and Witch Hunters made an appearance, which is always impressive.

-Using rulebook scenarios was a bold move, but IMO one that paid off. Same goes for no comp/sports.


Downs:

-Terrain was VERY sparse. Some tables did not even have significant line-of-sight blocking terrain in the midfield; my game seven was on a board that had a large ruin in the middle, but windows on all sides of it made it impossible to use it to actually screen much of anything. This basically ruined the game. I know it's hard to get terrain for an event like this (and props to the GW employee who loaned some stuff), but there was a table covered in unused Cities of Death buildings for some time, and seeing this while playing with a really poor terrain setup on our own board wasn't too fun.

-Several people I talked to complained about how the paint scores were handled, either because they thought their army was scored too low or because they took issue with the rubric. Personally, I had no issues, except that the paint judging also didn't take place during the announced time. Instead, a judge walked up to me in the middle of my game and said "Do you want me to do your paint score? It doesn't really matter, since we already know the winner there, but I'll score you if you're interested" This was a distracting interruption and could have been handled more effectively.

-The three color standard did not appear to be enforced at all, despite the fact that the tournament rules said it would be strictly enforced. My friend ended up not taking the new Dark Eldar army that he'd been preparing for because he wouldn't be able to reach that standard on everything, and when we got there we saw many armies that were substantially less complete.

-Why no favorite opponent vote? I know it's a very battle points-oriented event, but I always think this vote/award helps bring out the best in people.


Overall, this struck me as a great event, especially, for my first GT and I hope to be able to attend tournaments of a similar caliber in the future. Well done Reecius and everyone else who worked to help make this event a success.

I have to disagree about the terrain.

While this was only my second large tournament, I found the terrain to be significantly better than my last experience....
....More importantly I found it to be of the right type and in the right amount. Sure, as a Deathwing player I would always welcome more terrain....
....Especially when Grimgob's orks were shooting me to death! (Yes, I said Orks and shooting-in the same sentence)....
...however, all 7 tables I played on were great.

I am on the road back to SoCal, but I will post pictures of all 7 of my games and the terrain we played on.
In the meantime, there are a few photos on my blog.

www.tabletopwar.net

Thanks for the great tourney guys. I had 7 great games, met lots of new players in the area, and thought it was really well run. I also played 7 different armies funnily enough (if blood angels and Pedro marines can be called diff) so I ended up with a different game every game.

I only saw a couple of armies with a couple of unpainted figures. Everything else seemed to meet the standard, but I could have missed some I guess. The problem here seems to be that if you don't find out the army's partially unpainted until the round's underway, and the army comes out of the case, with 40+ tables going, how do you deal with that as a TO? I guess you'd have to require the armies to be paraded before sign in? Not sure how else to do it but not sure how feasible this is.

Straight win loss seemed to take the venom out of a lot of the games, as you didn't need to table someone to have a hope at the top. Using the book missions was a great call to me, as everyone knows them, and should be expected to at least try to deal with them frequently in their gaming lives.

I liked the painting rubric (after I saw it after the event) and thought the final results were pretty much right. If this was published beforehand I missed it, but I knew what was missing to push my army to the top, and that's what the judges identified too. ( I was the guy with the pig iron IG and Vendettas with nose art).

Great event, great turnout, nice low key atmosphere.

So who won?

Reecius said he was going to put up the results, so I don't want to steal his thunder.

Thanks for the tourney reece I had a blast for my first big 40k tourney. I played against all great guys and my poor dark eldar needs a repaint me thinks. I had the black and yellow dark eldar army. if I played against anyone on here give me a shout. I'm also glad I met my goal of winning 2 games lol.

All I'm saying was that was a rough last game. I would've much rather played blackmoor again or the Ork player whose name I didn't catch, haha. But all the games were real fun. Can't wait for next year!

Dok wrote:All I'm saying was that was a rough last game. I would've much rather played blackmoor again or the Ork player whose name I didn't catch, haha. But all the games were real fun. Can't wait for next year!

Wait, what happened, and which Ork player (might have been me, with the speed freaks)?

Ya, we'll have the results of both fantasy and 40k once we get a chance.

Glad everyone had fun, we worked hard to make this event what it was. And hope to see everyone out there next year or should I say this April, March haha.

I played Warboss Russ on table #2 in the last round.

And DoK, I wanted a shot at the winner too, but I kept on missing him. Oh well, I did go undefeated on the weekend.

I was hoping you'd get a crack at top table, too. You had less bracket points than the grey Knight player who played him in the final though, which is why he played up and not you.

Hey guys, Big Jim here, I was the photo dude for the weekend, you know the guy that kept blinding you with the flash photography! It was great putting faces with so many of you guys I know from the interwebz!

Here is a link to my Photbucket album that I will be uploading the all the photos I took over the weekend.

Bay Area Open Album

I have started with some shots of the tables before the 1st rounds began.










There are more in the album, I will be editing and uploading more throughout the week.

Cheers,
Jim

BDJV wrote:I have started with some shots of the tables before the 1st rounds began.

Ah, yes. This is the table I had an issue with. You can't see from the photo, but there are windows all along the other side of that ruin-- so with Spearhead deployment meaning it was bottom right corner versus top left corner, the table had basically no line of sight blocking terrain. Most of the other tables at least had central terrain in a blocking position, but this one was a letdown.

I thought the terrain was pretty good. Certainly better than the terrain at most tournaments I've been to recently in terms of LOS blocking. If I'm able to take cover saves on a Land Raider I think that the terrain is sufficient!

Perhaps some drapes for the bottom-level windows would solve the problem?

A great event Reece...especially when you consider it's your first time out of the gate.
Quite a large turnout. And with no "Con" associated with the event it was a pure gamers world (no 180 pound teenage LARPer girls stuffed into size 1 fishnets wandering around, no grubby 'gamestore kids' breaking your stuff).
Although the only 2 hot chicks in Antioch showing up the morning of day1 passing out free Red Bulls was pretty cool (I thought they were players at first and I was going to call "Shenanigans" on the top she chose to wear...LOL).
Putting the matchups on an overhead screen was great. Everyone could see who they were matched up with within seconds, rather than having 50 dudes crowding around an 8" sheet of paper while time winds down.
The venue (a warehouse) was large and airy. With the end doors open and the swamp coolers running it was comfortable with fresh air (not recycled building air) which made the afternoon gamer funk non-existant. The windows gave plenty of natural light and really showed everyones army off in a "different light." The only downside was the first matchups on the eastern side had to deal with some extra heat from the mid-morning sun shining through the window (WHATS THAT>>>Natural light...IT BURNS!!!!!!!).
The TOs and Judges were plentiful, knew the rules, handled disputes gracefully, and were wandering the floor readilly available.
The moring of day2 the TOs showed up early and reset all the terrain on the boards to their original locations. This prevented any big open spots (from people moving terrain to facilitate putting armies away the previous day) from being taken advantage of by someone who insists on playing the board exactly as you find it that morning (really? do you really think the TO wanted all the cover-save terrain on your side and nothing on mine???).
No comp was great. It let everyone bring the army they wanted without worrying about a subjective ding. It was pretty neet seeing the variations of standard lists (their were 4 or 5 DA Deathwing Armies...and they were all different in makeup).
Sports was great. No way to chipmunk someone and with the rule of potential expulsion if your going to be TFG, everyone was adult and on good behavior. Even the guys who brought beer/booze moderated and were really cool.
I thought the painting rubric was fair and kept someone from being dinged just because the Judge dosn't like Blue Marines. Your Army is what it is and as long as the standard is met you get the point. And we got to keep the scoresheet so we can see what we need to improve on.
The downside was doing the scoring during play. I got minimum points for conversions, despite having a scratch built HQ (Vulkan) scratch built bases, and stained glass windows on a Land Raider. However those models were o the table being played so the Judge was not able to get a really good look at everything.
Perhaps a way to change that would be to have everyone who WANTS their painting judged (some of us know our armies don't stand a snowballs chance, so don't really mind not getting judged...other guys are all about the painting/modelling and don't care about coming in 0-7...as long as they walk out with Best Appearance) to put their armies on some empty tables (plenty of room at the venue) during lunch/ between matches so the judge can give them a better inspection.
Use of Standard book missions was great. It levelled the playing field without someone getting cheesed for loosing points because they happened to not bring any specific FOC slots. The breakout points were simple and standard game to game. Everyone knew what they were and were able to deal with them as they wished.
W/L/D was a great format, if rather heart breaking. I had 4 losses, and they were all of the "last turn, last shot, last failed save, lose by 1 KP type of losses (a minor victory or even a draw at at other events). The strait format made it important to keep track of what the mission was and where you were in relation to your opponent. Again, no need to Table your opponent 6 times to get to table 1, so no need to bring the super uber-cheese list of death.

All in all a really fun time and well worth the 9 hour drive. The Hotel (Days Inn) was cheap (75$ a day), clean, less than a block from the venue (and about 100 feet from the LFGS), and close to plenty of eating establishments.
Congrats to the TOs for a unique and REALLY fun event.
It was also nice matching our NorCal Dakka members to a real person.

Fetterkey wrote:Ah, yes. This is the table I had an issue with. You can't see from the photo, but there are windows all along the other side of that ruin-- so with Spearhead deployment meaning it was bottom right corner versus top left corner, the table had basically no line of sight blocking terrain. Most of the other tables at least had central terrain in a blocking position, but this one was a letdown.

I wasn't there, but I've been following this.

That actually doesn't look too bad. I mean, less terrain than I would use normally, but considering that this is the "problem table" at a large tourny with a lot of tables to cover, that's not bad at all. Just judging from the photos, the only large tourny I've seen with better terrain was Da Grand Waaagh, but their terrain was above and beyond.

I didn't play on that particular table, but out of 7 games, only 2 tables were lacking terrain. And both were the games where we had spearhead deployment. I would say, in regular straight up games the terrain was alright, but in retrospect, I am betting that the same terrain didn't cover nearly as much in a spearhead set up. Hard to have it perfect both ways. I would like slightly larger terrain in the center, or maybe 10% more than what I saw on the tables, but if not, I'd still be up for next year :-)

All in all a great tournament. I have never attended a GT before so I can't really say if it was better or worse than normal, but I thought that all the tournament organization was handled very well, from the overhead projector for pairings, to the building used for the tournament, TO rulings, etc. I did not hear of any blatantly bad rules issues, "that guy" moments, or other major upsets. The use of basic rulebook scenarios made issues with missions nonexistent and made games go smoothly. The terrain was all painted and more densely populated than many tournaments I have seen pictures of. I even had a great IG vs IG on Reecius's personal terrain table of which I must give props to both the table and my opponent's army for looking awesome. The ventilation was great and there was a low amount of stereotypical "nerd funk" in the tournament.

Personal thanks go out to Reecius for lending me his personal/ringer army to use in the tournament when I could not get my Dark Eldar up to 3 color standard. I had an enjoyable 7 games and it was fun change playing the "mixed bag" IG, though I think the 250 points of extra armors and breathing room that were used a mighty zero times might have been better spent elsewhere . MVPs go to the Vendetta for killing two Mephistons (which I must say were both awesome conversion models), and the 30 man blob unit that bravely held its own in every game played, taking down assault marines, drop podders, and even a Daemon Prince!

My greatest complaint stems not from my experience, but from the experience of some of those that I spoke to during the tournament. Many people felt that the paint judging was overly harsh, with my last opponent Ian Gahner's well painted and forgeworld conversion'd Salamanders receiving a confusingly low 22/40 points, and talk of paint judges asking people if they wanted their paint scores judged, as they had "already found the winner". Additionally to be a bit specific, the basing paint scores were odd, favoring multicolored/bits covered base styles heavily, which in my experiences can be distracting and detract from the overall aesthetic of the army, particularly if the army already uses vibrant or multicolors. Oh, and I must complain that the ventilation messed up my hair

Overall the tournament was a great experience and I look forward to bringing my fully painted army next year in the spring!

Hey Everyone, I will get to individual questions here in a minute, but I wanted to post a letter I sent to all attendees which answers a lot of questions.

@ph34r
Hah, sorry about the list being short points, I forgot to add Marbo and an autocannon HWT! You did well with it though, considering you were short points. I am glad you got to play though, all the same.

Letter follows.

First off, thanks to all of you for coming to what turned out to be a great weekend. All of the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars (and yes, we managed to break even on our fist year!) we put into getting this event off of the ground was worth it to hear the vast majority of you tell us you had a great weekend and that you look forward to coming back next year. That made working for months for free all worth it!

Attached you will find the final results sheets. I also wanted to take the time to address some of the concerns you all had expressed to us in your feedback (which we really appreciate, by the way). The good, bad and ugly all help us to build a better event next year.

1.) Pairings. People asked about this, specifically the top tables for all the marbles in the final games of 40K and Fantasy. We use a Swiss pairing software called Swiss Perfect. It is a big part of the reason why things went so fast and stayed on time. However, it has limitations. It bases pairings off of these parameters: W/L/D record, strength of schedule, bracket points achieved, and bracket points given up. It also does not randomize tables (which is why the top dog stayed at table 1 until he was dethroned) and it won't allow players to play each other twice. This is why some of the pairings at first seemed odd, but they were all mathematically accurate. Each player's destiny was totally within his or her control. As for club mates or friends playing each other round 1, that will not happen again as we can input a tag for club mates to have them avoid first round pairings. After that though, we can't show favoritism and the pairings must be adhered to. The bracket points worked very well. No one maxed out on points which is perfect. It allowed us to keep the GW standard missions but still stratify the field in the case of ties. We will be keeping these and keeping them simple (if not identical) for next year.

2.) Painting. We had originally intended to judge everyone's army. We had a snafu with the WiFi (the venue never provided us with the password and wouldn't give it over the phone during the event) which prohibited us from printing out the Rubric the day of. This is half our fault and half that of the venue. They should have given us the password, but really, we should have had them ready to go before the event. That won't happen next year. So, in order to get the paint judging done on time, we had to make the tough choice of visually inspecting all of the armies, selecting those that were clearly of superior quality and then judging them closely to find a winner. This was not meant to undermine anyone's efforts to build and paint their creations, it was simply a matter of logistics. We didn't have time to judge everyone and we had to get to those who would possibly win and to as many others who wanted our feedback as possible. We apologize to anyone who felt slighted by not getting judged, it was not intended. Next year this aspect of the system will run smoother. Also, the rubric was available from day 1 on the website for anyone who wanted (or still wants) to see it.

3.) Terrain. We know all too well how important terrain is to a fun and fair game. One of the reasons my missile wolves perform so well in most tournaments is because I know going in the terrain will most likely be lacking. I wanted to avoid this and we worked, litterally, for months on terrain to have adequate coverage for each table. I can say honestly and without hesitation, that in all of the events we have gone to as a team (and we are tournament junkies) that our average Bay Area Open table outshone most tournaments' average tables both in quality and quantity of terrain. If anyone feels they got a bum deal on a particular table, we apologize and in the next 8 months till the next event, we will strive to ensure each table is both functional and fun for 40K and Fantasy.

4.) Sports and Modeling. A few (and I mean VERY few, we had nearly no sportsmanship/modeling issues at all) people expressed concern over a few issues during their games. If you read your player packet we had specific guidelines for issues with modeling or poor sportsmanship. In every case I was involved with, had the players followed the guidelines in the player packet, it woul dhave been dealt with swiftly and efficiently. Read your packets everyone!

5.) Venue. Overwhelmingly positive feedback on the venue. Plenty of space, parking and the concessions we provided were adequate (apart from some requests for coffee which we will have next year). Next year the event will be in the spring, so temperatures will be down and since the venue is by far the least expensive we were able to get, it fiscally makes sense to go there again as most people were happy with it and it allowed us to keep ticket prices reasonable and prize support high.

6.) Rules judging. We had only very minor issues here, but for the sake of completeness I will let you know our process. As a rules committee we all boned up on the Rule Books, INAT FAQ and GW GAQs in preparation for the event. If a rules issue came up, we went first to the rule book and GW FAQs, then the INAT, and then to a vote by judges present. Speed and accuracy were our priorities. We also took a hands off approach, only stepping in to a game if someone was making a rules error or if asked. We try to stay out of the games as much as possible. On the Fantasy side, I have been told the judge was more active in the games and if anyone has an opinion on that, please let us know.

I hope this addresses everyone's concerns! We are listening to you and want to build this into the Adepticon of the west coast. Tell us what you are thinking, positive or negative, and we will give it careful consideration for years to come.

For next year we are going to be adding events, prizes and all kinds of gaming goodness, which we will be alerting you all to as these things develop.

Thanks again, everyone! We had a blast (if a little bit exhausted!) and look forward to a bigger and better event next year.

I will post armies once I have a minute.

BAY AREA OPEN JULY 30-31 2011

40K

W/L/D Bracket points

1 James__Curry, 7-0-0 16
2 Nathan__Whitacre, 6-1-0 13
3 Allan__Hernandez, 5-0-2 11
4 Christian__Aleesi, 5-1-1 10
5 Michael__Oade, 5-1-1 10
6 Michael__Bass, 4-1-2 17
7 Levi__Joos, 5-2-0 16
8 Josh __Sellers, 5-2-0 14
9 Julian__Houghtby, 4-1-2 14
10 Jon__Regul, 5-2-0 13
11 Jeffrey__Kaminsky, 5-2-0 13
12 Russell__ Jacobsen, 4-1-2 12
13 Russ__Adderson, 5-2-0 10
14 Robert__Pace, 4-2-1 16
15 Joshua__Bousquet, 4-2-1 14
16 Steven__Smith, 3-1-3 14
17 Benjamin__Wilder, 4-2-1 12
18 Gordy__Danke, 4-2-1 11
19 Paul__McKelvey, 4-2-1 11
20 Jason__Gurule, 4-2-1 9
21 Ehren__Epstein, 4-2-1 8
22 Joaquin__ Villagrana, 3-2-2 15
23 Pablo__Caballero, 4-3-0 13
24 Douglas__Miller, 4-3-0 12
25 Tom__McLaughlin, 3-2-2 12
26 Michael__Tangney, 3-2-2 12
27 Peter__Ferrell, 4-3-0 11
28 Kevin__Brown, 4-3-0 11
29 Keith__Holt, 4-3-0 9
30 Doc__Glenboski, 3-2-2 7
31 Mike__Entrope, 3-2-2 7
32 Mathew__Loukides, 3-3-1 12
33 Davis__Kingsley, 3-3-1 12
34 Michael__Moore, 3-3-1 11
35 Casey__Steele, 3-3-1 10
36 Charles__ Pierce, 2-2-3 9
37 Ian__Chadwick, 3-3-1 8
38 Jack__Lemly, 3-3-1 7
39 Scott__Webster, 2-2-3 7
40 James__Reeser, 3-3-1 6
41 Andrew__ Bruch, 3-3-1 5
42 Kenneth__Heater, 3-4-0 14
43 Xavier__Frazier, 3-4-0 13
44 Alexander__Cotton, 2-3-2 11
45 Daniel__Nieuwenhuis, 2-3-2 10
46 Nick__Kirkendall, 2-3-2 7
47 Ian__Gahner, 3-4-0 6
48 Paul__Cornelius, 3-4-0 5
49 Jon__ Machado, 2-3-2 5
50 Kelly__Jernigan, 2-4-1 9
51 Pete__Setchell, 2-4-1 8
52 Scott__SCGWL, 2-4-1 8
53 Peter__Hoover, 2-4-1 8
54 John__Weyermuller, 2-4-1 6
55 Jason__Hoover, 2-4-1 4
56 Brian__Kishimoto, 1-4-2 10
57 Timothy__ Trammel, 2-5-0 9
58 David__Doan, 1-4-2 9
59 Phillip__Ruggiero, 2-5-0 8
60 Thomas__Gordon, 2-5-0 8
61 Douglas__Bevard III, 1-4-2 7
62 David__Key, 2-5-0 4
63 Joshua__Jung, 0-4-3 10
64 Dante__Saraga, 1-5-1 7
65 Nick__Myers, 1-5-1 6
66 Carlos__Franklin, 1-5-1 5
67 Chris__Saraga, 1-6-0 6
68 Adam__Bredt, 1-6-0 3
69 Jeremy__Ecklin, 2-2-1 11
70 Nick__Hayden, 1-2-2 7
71 Dustin__Neu, 2-2-0 6
72 John__Ruiz, 2-2-0 2
73 Jesse__McGowan, 1-1- 2 7
74 Andrew (AJ)__Spalding, 0-4-0 3
75 Michael__Wood, 1-2-0 4

FANTASY

W/L/D Bracket points

1 Chad__Pond, 4-0-1 6
2 David__Inman, 4-1-0 10
3 Brad__Feliz, 4-1-0 6
4 Josh__Rosenstein, 3-1-1 10
5 Micheal__Hengl, 3-1-1 6
6 Dustin__Harnois, 3-2-0 8
7 Larry__DeTomasi, 3-2-0 8
8 Edmond__Phillips, 3-2-0 7
9 Jeffrey__Sterre, 3-2-0 6
10 Derek__Wiswell, 3-2-0 6
11 MCLOVIN, 2-2-1 6
12 Ben__Mitchell, 2-3-0 12
13 Van__Nguyen, 2-3-0 5
14 Colin__Mayfield, 1-2-2 5
15 Sergio__Alvarez, 2-3-0 4
16 Adam__Bienvenu, 1-2-2 4
17 Andy__Garcia, 2-3-0 3
18 Stewart__Roud, 1-3-1 5
19 Kirk__Lund, 1-3-1 3
20 Joshua__Fricke, 1-2-0 2
21 Peter__Franco, 0-5-0 3

thunderingjove wrote:

Dok wrote:All I'm saying was that was a rough last game. I would've much rather played blackmoor again or the Ork player whose name I didn't catch, haha. But all the games were real fun. Can't wait for next year!

Wait, what happened, and which Ork player (might have been me, with the speed freaks)?

Russ I believe was his name.

@blackmoor: I would've gladly given him to you. That was a rough game for me as I have little IG experience which led me to make some mistakes in deployment. That game and the game against you were the only real obvious mistakes I made during the tournament I think. The event was awesome though and the TO guys were pretty swift in helping me with the couple rules questions I had in the last round.

@Reece,

Thanks for the quick posting of results. Any chance for a breakdown based on codex? I know it's a lot to ask, especially after all the free work you folks have done, but it would be a curiosity to chew on.

thunderingjove wrote:@Reece,

Thanks for the quick posting of results. Any chance for a breakdown based on codex? I know it's a lot to ask, especially after all the free work you folks have done, but it would be a curiosity to chew on.

Indeed, I am always interested in the codex/armies used by armies that do well in tournaments, as well as how many of each show up to the event.

Where are the painting scores at (I never saw them)?
How was Rennisance man decided When you didnt do everyones paint score if it was for all around gamer?

ph34r wrote:Indeed, I am always interested in the codex/armies used by armies that do well in tournaments, as well as how many of each show up to the event.

These sort of stats are a great starting point for sports-like conservations of our nerd-hobby. One of my buddies started the tournament with his (very) mechanized Eldar against the only Necron player. He was pretty proud of his win, and I had a good time laughing the pride off his face. I expected the Necron player to be 0-5-2. Man, shut my mouth. The Necron player ended up being 4-3-0. Wow.

I've played that army before and if I had not been so lucky so early on it would have been quite a hard fight. He's also a good general that knows his army well which helps.

The Necron army was easy to spot, being bright orange. It was really cool looking.

ph34r wrote:The Necron army was easy to spot, being bright orange. It was really cool looking.

Agreed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grimgob wrote:I've played that army before and if I had not been so lucky so early on it would have been quite a hard fight. He's also a good general that knows his army well which helps.

Clearly it was all him.

thunderingjove wrote:

ph34r wrote:The Necron army was easy to spot, being bright orange. It was really cool looking.

Agreed.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grimgob wrote:I've played that army before and if I had not been so lucky so early on it would have been quite a hard fight. He's also a good general that knows his army well which helps.

Clearly it was all him.

#29 Keith Holt is my guess. He's been shaking things up at Game Empire's RTTs. His orange necrons look good too.

Keith's Necrons were indeed bright orange. I dub'd them the Crons of the Tombworld Mopar! I must say he put on an impressive showing with a 3rd ed codex!

It was a really fun weekend. Props for the TO's hard work setting it all up.

I was pleased with ending the weekend with a winning record of 4-3, although 2 of those wins I was apologizing to my opponents for most of the match. They had no weapon capable of doing more than immobilizing a Monolith, so basically I just shoved my road cones up front and fled like a big orange chicken with everyone else.

Hopefully the new codex will make me less cowardly.

Thanks for all the comments on my paint scheme. I always tend to get a pretty low painting score as I have no conversions and I really don't have a lot of detail work, but all the positive feedback from people makes me really not care about painting score too much.

Woo, number 9! I think that makes me top tyranid player which was my goal haha. granted there were only 4 there....

skrewpa wrote: ... so basically I just shoved my road cones up front and fled like a big orange chicken with everyone else.

"Road cones" to go with your avatar? Oy, Keith, that's bad.

Worse, because I've lost to just that tactic ...

-Casey
aka

Anyone know the Tau player that I played in round #5? He was on the top tables late in the tournament. I was really tired on day #2 and I was like a zombie and I forgot his name.

As a side note, I played 3 guys named Josh.



BAY AREA OPEN JULY 30-31 2011


40K

W/L/D Bracket points

1 James__Curry, 7-0-0 16 Mech Guard
2 Nathan__Whitacre, 6-1-0 13 Battlewagon Orks?
3 Allan__Hernandez, 5-0-2 11 Purifier Spam Grey Knights
4 Christian__Aleesi, 5-1-1 10 Death Cult Assasins+Psyfleman Dreds
5 Michael__Oade, 5-1-1 10 Dante and Mephiston Mixed Blood Angels list.
6 Michael__Bass, 4-1-2 17 Wrack and Grotesque Dark Eldar
7 Levi__Joos, 5-2-0 16 Battlewagon Orks
8 Josh __Sellers, 5-2-0 14 Crowe Grey Knights
9 Julian__Houghtby, 4-1-2 14 Tyranids
10 Jon__Regul, 5-2-0 13 Kan Wall Orks
11 Jeffrey__Kaminsky, 5-2-0 13 Chaos Space Marines
12 Russell__ Jacobsen, 4-1-2 12 Grey Hunter Heavy list with inly one squad of Long Fangs.
13 Russ__Adderson, 5-2-0 10 Battlewagon Orks
14 Robert__Pace, 4-2-1 16
15 Joshua__Bousquet, 4-2-1 14 Mech Blood Angels
16 Steven__Smith, 3-1-3 14
17 Benjamin__Wilder, 4-2-1 12 Chaos Plague Marines
18 Gordy__Danke, 4-2-1 11 Grey Knights
19 Paul__McKelvey, 4-2-1 11
20 Jason__Gurule, 4-2-1 9 Deathwing
21 Ehren__Epstein, 4-2-1 8 Dark Eldar
22 Joaquin__ Villagrana, 3-2-2 15
23 Pablo__Caballero, 4-3-0 13 Paladin and DCA dual Stormraven list.
24 Douglas__Miller, 4-3-0 12 Mech IG variant
25 Tom__McLaughlin, 3-2-2 12 Vanilla Marines
26 Michael__Tangney, 3-2-2 12
27 Peter__Ferrell, 4-3-0 11
28 Kevin__Brown, 4-3-0 11 Genestealer Tyranids
29 Keith__Holt, 4-3-0 9 Necrons
30 Doc__Glenboski, 3-2-2 7 Horde/Blob Imperial Guard
31 Mike__Entrope, 3-2-2 7 Mech Eldar
32 Mathew__Loukides, 3-3-1 12
33 Davis__Kingsley, 3-3-1 12
34 Michael__Moore, 3-3-1 11
35 Casey__Steele, 3-3-1 10
36 Charles__ Pierce, 2-2-3 9
37 Ian__Chadwick, 3-3-1 8 Tyranids (Trygon x3)
38 Jack__Lemly, 3-3-1 7
39 Scott__Webster, 2-2-3 7 Long Fangs/TWC Space Wolves
40 James__Reeser, 3-3-1 6
41 Andrew__ Bruch, 3-3-1 5 Deatwing
42 Kenneth__Heater, 3-4-0 14
43 Xavier__Frazier, 3-4-0 13 Dark Eldar
44 Alexander__Cotton, 2-3-2 11 Eldar
45 Daniel__Nieuwenhuis, 2-3-2 10 vanilla marines with las/plas razorback spam, 3 typhoons/ 3 preds
46 Nick__Kirkendall, 2-3-2 7
47 Ian__Gahner, 3-4-0 6 Vulcan Drop-pod Marines
48 Paul__Cornelius, 3-4-0 5 Space Ork Trukkboy Speedfreaks
49 Jon__ Machado, 2-3-2 5 DoA/Baal Preds Blood Angels
50 Kelly__Jernigan, 2-4-1 9 Space marines (Vulkan Hammer-spam)
51 Pete__Setchell, 2-4-1 8 Tyranids
52 Scott__SCGWL, 2-4-1 8 Dark Eldar
53 Peter__Hoover, 2-4-1 8
54 John__Weyermuller, 2-4-1 6
55 Jason__Hoover, 2-4-1 4 Blood Angels
56 Brian__Kishimoto, 1-4-2 10
57 Timothy__ Trammel, 2-5-0 9
58 David__Doan, 1-4-2 9
59 Phillip__Ruggiero, 2-5-0 8 Dark Eldar
60 Thomas__Gordon, 2-5-0 8 Flesh Tearers
61 Douglas__Bevard III, 1-4-2 7
62 David__Key, 2-5-0 4 DoA Blood Angels
63 Joshua__Jung, 0-4-3 10 Speed Freak Orks
64 Dante__Saraga, 1-5-1 7
65 Nick__Myers, 1-5-1 6
66 Carlos__Franklin, 1-5-1 5 Tau
67 Chris__Saraga, 1-6-0 6 GKs (Inquisitor Henchmen heavy)
68 Adam__Bredt, 1-6-0 3 Tau
69 Jeremy__Ecklin, 2-2-1 11
70 Nick__Hayden, 1-2-2 7 Space Marines
71 Dustin__Neu, 2-2-0 6 space wolves razorback spam/ 3 long fangs
72 John__Ruiz, 2-2-0 2
73 Jesse__McGowan, 1-1- 2 7 Purifier Spam
74 Andrew (AJ)__Spalding, 0-4-0 3 DoA Blood Angels
75 Michael__Wood, 1-2-0 4

Number 5 was a Dante and Mephiston Mixed Blood Angels list.
Number 12 was a Grey Hunter Heavy list with inly one squad of Long Fangs.
Number 23 was a Paladin and DCA dual Stormraven list.
Number 62 was Razorspam BA.
Number 41 was Deatwing
Number 59 was DE


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Number 43 was DE

Thanks MG I updated the list.

I would also like to say that I an not upset at the TOs about how the pairings worked out. It is, was it is. I am just lamenting the fact that I never got a shot at him. I ended up with 2 ties and that is my fault.

Why do they have to be "Vanilla" Marines?

There's nothing vanilla about the Iron Hands!

What?
I thought you were shelving the Iron Hands for the.....
.....Beard Wolves!

Yes, or Iron Beards or Bearded Hands... I'm still working out the details.

Some updates for the codical win/loss/draw ratio.

#31 Mike Entropo, Super Mech Eldar
#48 Paul Cornelius (me), Space Ork Trukkboy Speedfreaks
#62 David Keys, Jump Blood Angels (no Razorbacks)

thunderingjove wrote:Some updates for the codical win/loss/draw ratio.
#62 David Keys, Jump Blood Angels (no Razorbacks)

Oops, I wrote this one wrong...
...my mistake.

17. Ben Wilder: Chaos Plague Marines
38. Jack Lemly: Tyranids (Trygon x3)
44. Alexander Cotton: Eldar
50. Kelly Jernigan: Space marines (Vulkan Hammer-spam)
67. Chris Saraga: GKs (Inquisitor Henchmen heavy)

73. Jesse - Purifier Spam

21. Ehren Epstein: Dark Eldar
24. Doug Miller: Mech IG variant

#45 was vanilla marines with las/plas razorback spam, 3 typhoons/ 3 preds

#71 was space wolves razorback spam/ 3 long fangs

Looking forward to seeing some of the in game shots.

BDJV wrote:Hey guys, Big Jim here, I was the photo dude for the weekend, you know the guy that kept blinding you with the flash photography! It was great putting faces with so many of you guys I know from the interwebz!

Here is a link to my Photbucket album that I will be uploading the all the photos I took over the weekend.

Bay Area Open Album

I have started with some shots of the tables before the 1st rounds began.

There are more in the album, I will be editing and uploading more throughout the week.

Cheers,
Jim

I believe AJ (74) was playing DOA.

39. Scott Webster Long Fangs/TWC Space Wolves
49. Jon Machado DoA/Baal Preds Blood Angels
51. Pete Setchell Tyranids
60. Thomas Gordon Flesh Tearers
68. Adam Bredt Tau

18 Gordy__Danke was playing Grey Knights
39 Scott__Webster was playing Space Wolves, I believe
47 Ian__Gahner had Vulcan Drop-pod Marines
66 Carlos__Franklin had some gorgeously-converted Tau (every suit was individualized)

#54 John Weyermuller had pre-heresy grey Njal GH Spam

I have added more pics to the album.

Here are a few in game shots.

Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Redbeard wrote:Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Yes. Two purifier spam in the top ten.

Since Orks did well, clearly the tournament was made up of incompetent players with sub-optimal lists.

Gotta love the cognitive dissonance of the ork Haters.

In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

olympia wrote:

Redbeard wrote:Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Yes. Two purifier spam in the top ten.

I think this is an error-- if I recall correctly, Allan (Blackmoor) was running Paladins, not Purifiers.

skrewpa wrote:In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

4 of my 7 games went to turn 7 and all of them were finished within the time frame with usually 45 minutes to spare.....

....did I mention I play Deathwing?

I think 1500 points would be fun as well, as it would allow for longer breaks and/or shorter day.

Fetterkey wrote:

olympia wrote:

Redbeard wrote:Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Yes. Two purifier spam in the top ten.

I think this is an error-- if I recall correctly, Allan (Blackmoor) was running Paladins, not Purifiers.

Blackmoor didn't have any purifiers. He was running a crazy paladin list with draigo.

My list(Josh Sellers) had three squads of purifiers. I don't know if that qualifies as spam... but i don't run this internet, so who knows.

Dok wrote:

Fetterkey wrote:

olympia wrote:

Redbeard wrote:Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Yes. Two purifier spam in the top ten.

I think this is an error-- if I recall correctly, Allan (Blackmoor) was running Paladins, not Purifiers.

Blackmoor didn't have any purifiers. He was running a crazy paladin list with draigo.

My list(Josh Sellers) had three squads of purifiers. I don't know if that qualifies as spam... but i don't run this internet, so who knows.

I made the list of armies, so I get to put whatever I want for mine!

Haha, true that.

Monster Rain wrote:Since Orks did well, clearly the tournament was made up of incompetent players with sub-optimal lists. Gotta love the cognitive dissonance of the ork Haters.

Space Orks did do well. My Sppedfreaks less well, with a 3-4-0 record. However, against two of those opponents, I can honestly say I defeated myself, by 1). foolishly breaking off from my synergistic plan by reserving my weak wing against another Ork player (Yakface himself, nice guy), and 2). after having nearly table a Salamander player (including cooking Vulcan's squad alive), allowing his foot-slogging terminators to pull the most massive multiassault in the world. Otherwise, they did well against leafblower, razerback Blood Angles, and Dark Eldar. Not well at all against Grey-Knight Grey Knights & Grey-Knight Inquisitorial Assassins. Those were tabling games. Fun though, in their way.

I saw the top Ork player post-game complaining that Orks had no chance against a 1000-pt deathstar Paladin unit, the army he was playing at table two, and I thought of only three words: Shokk Attack Gun!

skrewpa wrote:In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

Magilla Gurilla wrote:4 of my 7 games went to turn 7 and all of them were finished within the time frame with usually 45 minutes to spare.....

....did I mention I play Deathwing?

I think 1500 points would be fun as well, as it would allow for longer breaks and/or shorter day.

All my games were timely too, I think for two reasons: 1). All my opponents knew how to play fast, with a constant dialogue of what was happening, and 2). The extra 15 minutes went a long way to finish games out. I think if they want to down the point cost to 1500, it's for the reasons of codex balance, rather than time.

Great times were had.

This is my Army.

67. Chris Saraga: GKs (Inquisitor Henchmen heavy)

I prefer GK (Inquisitor Henchmen) (Pre Heresy Thousand Sons)

That way my months of painting and conversions are at least displayed since I had my teeth kicked in game-wise. Heck my 13 year old son did better.

I had a great time though. Watch out for me at The Grand Waaagh in Alameda. I am gunning for best painted and I really can only go up in game score!

That army was cool. Great concept.

I liked playing the 1850pts. I think the timing and the format worked well. I like 1850 because there's still a little room for character in the army. At 1500 the lists really start to look the same IMHO.

The only game that really came up against time was against Thunderingjove's Speedfreak orks, but we still squeezed in 4 full turns. I think we both moved along pretty fast there, just a lot of stuff happening on the board.

I see my IG army in one of the pics on the page before, about to lay some hurt on some poor assault marines.

Despite playing more games in the weekend than I've played in the last year and a half, I did decently, 4 wins, 3 losses (I alternated each game, up down, up down...) despite playing my Hydras as having one autocannon each all Day 1 instead of 2 twin linked. What an Idiot! Talk about handicapping yourself. Thanks to my IG opponent first game of Day 2 who pointed it out to me without laughing at me (At least not to my face).

Hey guys!


First of all, wanna thank Reece and his crew for running a fantastic event - I really had no complaints at all, had a great time and met some really awesome folks. I think 1850 worked fine - it was a long haul, but everything was run so tightly I didn't feel as though it dragged. I was in a position to make a run at it day 2, and the only 2 people I lost to were the champion and Blackmoor!

One question though - I see the 4-1-2 and 5-2 folks going back and forth on the standings... how were the final rankings determined? Usually in a Swiss system it's 3 points for a win, 0 for a loss and 1 for a tie which would put all the 5-2s ahead of the 4-1-2s by one point. Is it the bracket points? Just curious.

All in all I'm really happy I made the trip up and will definitely try and make it next year. Cheers!!!

Hey guys, we love to see all this feedback so please keep it coming.

Some more answers:

Bracekting. A win is 1, a tie 0.5, a loss 0. Bracket points were then the determinates for rankings.

Painting for the Renaissance man award went as follows: w/l/d record, then paint score. You couldn't win two awards so we dropped down to the third bracket of rankings and then judged the armies in that standing. Since christianA was the only army in that bracket painted beyond a three color standard, it was an easy choice.

What we're hearing so far on points is pretty close between 1500 and 1850 with most people leaning towards 1850. We want to give hoi guys what you want so we'll gather more data and make that decision soon. At this juncture, I'd say to expect 1750 as a nice compromise.

We will get the rankings with armies up soon. We love crunching that data, too. We will also submit this info to rankings HQ and post the top lists for further discussion.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and on non three color models, there were some armies with a few modles not up to three color standard. Logistically it is very difficult to check this before the event starts. What I think we will do next year is start players with a thumbs down on sports if they come with unpainted models. It is an easy solution with a strong consequence or those who choose to violate it.

Reecius wrote:
Oh and on non three color models, there were some armies with a few modles not up to three color standard. Logistically it is very difficult to check this before the event starts. What I think we will do next year is start players with a thumbs down on sports if they come with unpainted models. It is an easy solution with a strong consequence or those who choose to violate it.

One thumbs down is a strong consequence? What about disqualifying them? If the rule is, Every army must be painted to a three color minimum, no exceptions. Primer counts as a color, then what about actually enforcing the rule? One ding on a sportsmanship score? I mean, it's not even really a three-color standard, as you're counting primer as a color, so it requires all of painting two colors on a model. You tell people that they'll get one ding on their sports score if they come with an unpainted army, next thing you know, you'll get people who willingly give up that ding and play just for the generalship awards.

Which, if that's what you want, so be it, it's your event. But if you're going to have a minimum painting standard, actually enforce it, don't give the offenders the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.

I hear what your saying and I agree to an extent. The problem is logistical. We had a lot of people there and we can't realistically check every model in every army before the event on as tight of a schedule as we kept. It just isn't realistic. And, a thumb's down on sports is a big deal. Two and you can't win the event. It means their buffer is gone, one misstep and they're out of contention for the event. I'd like to hear what others have to say but I feel that it would be a pretty strong deterrant. Negative sports marks in our event carry a really strong consequence. Getting a negative mark isn't easy though, and the parameters for it are narrow and clearly defined.

Next year we'll be more specific on the painting requirement and how we'll enforce it. Now we know the reality of what we're facing and will be better equipped to handle it.

So renassance man was just 3rd best general with painting score as tie breaker? I thought it was for all around hobby person (battle scores with painting scores).

That is how we weighted it this year, yes. The system we used weighted your win/loss/draw record more heavily than hour hobbiest score. We are open to ideas of making the two scores more evenly matched though. What we did was take the total battle score and multiply it by ten, and added in the hobby score (up to 40 points) which meant a total of 110 points for Renaissance man. In effect though, since the tournament champion couldn't get it, it was really a range of 100 points.

We will play with the system and see if we can come up with a better one. Next year we also plan on having deeper prizes as a lot of our upfront costs have been covered and we can put more money towards prizes and give second and third best in hobbiest and Ren man awards.

Reecius wrote:
What we're hearing so far on points is pretty close between 1500 and 1850 with most people leaning towards 1850. We want to give hoi guys what you want so we'll gather more data and make that decision soon. At this juncture, I'd say to expect 1750 as a nice compromise.

We will get the rankings with armies up soon. We love crunching that data, too. We will also submit this info to rankings HQ and post the top lists for further discussion.

I know my position on this question is, if anything, over-stated at this point, but I do want to say that I think 1,750 pts with the same schedule as this year sounds like a great compromise.

One of the issues with this particular venue is that it isn't adjacent to a hotel and/or any food places/things to do, so people who do finish their rounds exceedingly early don't really have any options of things to do unlike many other tournaments. Therefore, I think my normal request for copious amounts of time vs. game point limits needs to be tempered until the day when/if the BAO moves on up to a venue with more adjacent attractions.

I like 1850 and I like 1500 but for some reason 1750 has always felt off to me. I thought thats why GW and FLGS stopped using it (and also why the nova invitational was using it). I say keep it at 1850 (or 1500 and shorten both days)and add time to the second day to complete your paint scoring with an extra long lunch or something (even doing half of it during lunch the first day).

skrewpa wrote:In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

It worked great. The time limit was generous; all my games made it all the way through.

I have added more pics to the album.

Here are some more in game shots.

14. Robert Pace- Vect w/ Dias Venom heavy DE
19. Paul Mckelvey- Tau( The guy your talking about Blackmoor)
38. Jack Lemly- DS Nids

Almost complete.

Would it be appropriate to count games where the player left (for whatever reason) early?

35. Casey Steele Herohammer BA

BDJV wrote:I have added more pics to the album.

Here are some more in game shots.

That is my Thousand Sons Army getting the crap kicked out of it by Mike B's Dark Eldar...

So much greenstuff in that picture!

Mike b dang near won the event, so I wouldn't feel bad. And, Dark Eldar are MEQ killers. They have a tough go of it with Missile Wolves, but otherwise are brutal.

I really like your Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons. They were one of the cooler armies there, IMO.

veritechc wrote:
That is my Thousand Sons Army getting the crap kicked out of it by Mike B's Dark Eldar...

As you can see by my avatar I have been working on some pre-heresy Thousand Sons myself. Did you use the chapterhouse studios shoulder pads?

Reecius wrote:I hear what your saying and I agree to an extent. The problem is logistical. We had a lot of people there and we can't realistically check every model in every army before the event on as tight of a schedule as we kept. It just isn't realistic. And, a thumb's down on sports is a big deal. Two and you can't win the event. It means their buffer is gone, one misstep and they're out of contention for the event. I'd like to hear what others have to say but I feel that it would be a pretty strong deterrant. Negative sports marks in our event carry a really strong consequence. Getting a negative mark isn't easy though, and the parameters for it are narrow and clearly defined.

Next year we'll be more specific on the painting requirement and how we'll enforce it. Now we know the reality of what we're facing and will be better equipped to handle it.

I think the easiest way to enforce it is to let the players play, but just count all unpainted models as casualties. They can't be on the table. Make an announcement reminding everyone before game one so that opponents don't feel pressure to let them play the units in question. This means someone who shows up still plays, but their unpainted stuff stays in the bag. This will make people resist the temptation of sneaking in a model they know they won't paint in time.

Reecius wrote:So much greenstuff in that picture!

Mike b dang near won the event, so I wouldn't feel bad. And, Dark Eldar are MEQ killers. They have a tough go of it with Missile Wolves, but otherwise are brutal.

I really like your Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons. They were one of the cooler armies there, IMO.

Thank you very much. Coming from you that is particularly cool. They will be finished at the Grand Waaagh. Hope to see you there.

Blackmoor wrote:

veritechc wrote:
That is my Thousand Sons Army getting the crap kicked out of it by Mike B's Dark Eldar...

As you can see by my avatar I have been working on some pre-heresy Thousand Sons myself. Did you use the chapterhouse studios shoulder pads?

Good eye! I have all of the items detailed in the post on my signature. Just click that link.

Yeah, the entire Zero Comp team is going to Da Grand WAAGH!, we like to support local events....and we go to pretty much every tournament we can just because we really like them!

@odmiller
That is a good idea and we are going to do something like that next year. It isn't fair to those who took the time to paint their models to play against those who didn't.

Part of the fun of a big tournament is seeing all the beautiful armies.

Okay, now that I've had a few days to get back in the groove of things, here are my thoughts on the Bay Area Open.

First, though, a big round of applause for everyone involved in getting the tournament assembled & running. This was a huge event for a first-time outing, and it is remarkable how smoothly everything went. Good job, guys! Please understand that the criticisms that follow are not complaints; they are intended in the nature of feedback, directed toward improving what was already a very successful event.

Venue: Tolerable. The event was in a convention "hall" at a county fair grounds. It had plenty of space, which reduced the collisions during games, and high ceilings, so we didn't feel cramped. Airflow was strange, though - there were a couple of swamp coolers, which threw a LOT of air...in a straight line across the hall; if you were 5 feet to either side, you got little benefit. The place got pretty warm, if you weren't in a breeze. Shifting the event to March will help with that aspect, for as long as they maintain this venue. It was nice of you to order pizza, and not gouge for it.

The bathroom, however, stank. It was fairly clean, mind you; it just had a perpetual funk. And bare concrete floors are really hard on the knees/ankles if you stand on them for 10 hours.

Hotel: On a related note, the Days Inn in Antioch. On the plus side, it was recently refurbished, it has a (minimal) breakfast included, and the rates were very cheap ($75/night). My room even had both fridge & microwave, which kept the beer cold. But at the end of the day, it's still a Days Inn - the towels are small & scratchy, the beds aren't especially comfortable, and it lacks things like a hot tub (which would have been GREAT after 4 rounds on Saturday). It's also not in the best part of town.

Recommendation: I understand the desire, especially the first year, to keep costs low - that allows people to try out the event for less, keeps the financial risks low for the organizers, and leaves room to grow. I'm hopeful, in a year or two, to see the BAO get a little more upscale; I'd be happy to pay $65 for a ticket (instead of $45), if it means playing somewhere a little more comfortable, and preferably somewhere with more food options than Little Cesar's - my digestion ain't what it was back in college, which was the last time I ate that stuff. And let's find a Holiday Inn Express or something to partner with.

Terrain: Adequate, but disappointing. Not from the general tournament perspective, as they certainly provided as much or more than many other large events, but solely from a "delivering on expectations" perspective. Reece over-promised, and then reality caught up with the crew.

Recommendation: It wasn't bad, but there is room to improve. The good news is that improvement is easy - you get to build from this year's efforts, and so you always are in a better place than previous years. As I already mentioned, had I known there was a terrain creation issue, I'd have been happy to help, and I don't think that I'm alone in that. Let's have some Bay Area terrain-making parties before next time, and we can bump terrain from "adequate" to "fantastic" with just a little work.

Armies: A nice mix. I was cheering for the Necrons the entire time, and I was thrilled to get paired against Carlos' Tau in round 1. I actually fought 6 different armies over the course of the 7 game event, and didn't even get a mirror match (Tau, BA, CSM, GK, GK, SM, SW). That's fairly remarkable. Many were pretty; some, as previously noted, weren't completely painted. Some people (especially my round 6 opponent) were very unhappy to be asked "Do you want your paint scored? We already know who won, but we'll score it if you want us to."

Recommendations: I'm sticking Painting here. I, too, would encourage you to stand by your minimum painting threshold. You're asking for relatively little, as compared with most other events - enforce it! Painted armies on painted terrain is a strong aesthetic draw for many players; some players feel almost cheated to run into incompletely-painted units, particularly if they spent the last week or so hurriedly finishing up their last squad. You don't have to kick them out, if that's too harsh, but a simple "you are ineligible to win anything but a door prize if your army isn't fully painted" would go a long ways to ensuring that you don't run into situations where only 1 player in your 3rd bracket is eligible to win "Best Hobbyist" because he's the only one with a fully-painted force. And that's easy to determine - just go look at the top bracket in round 4, and note down who is ineligible to win.

Better, of course, is to paint score everyone. It'll take some effort & time to do so (pretty much has to be during lunches, to prevent the issue of "my best models are still in play, and you're only scoring my dead/Reserves"); you might be able to free up some time by allowing pre-judging on Friday night.

Missions: Book missions. Everyone knows them, and there was no goofy language to interpret. That's a good thing. I'm not as sold on the bracket points: some armies (Tau) have a really hard time getting scoring units to the middle of the board without completely compromising their battle plan; some armies have a harder time keeping their HQs alive; and for 2/3 of the missions, there's no reason to reward someone for keeping their scoring units intact, beyond allowing them to claim the objectives needed for winning.

Recommendation:I do like the general mix of the bracket objectives (i.e., 1) Kill something; 2) control some portion of the board; 3) preserve some portion of your army); I'm just not enamored of those particular examples of the general objectives.

Organization: Solid. The projector was a great idea; the bullhorn was okay in practice. Pairings were available quickly, and time only became an issue in one of my games.

Recommendations:I'd love it if pairings were posted online, so people w/smartphones could access them just by refreshing a web page or reading an RSS feed, but that'd be pretty cutting-edge. Of course, this is the Bay - we expect a lot from technology!
You need some table randomization in your pairings. A lot of people played on the same table more than once, and that's unnecessary. Even something simple like modifying your excel spreadsheet for each round to shift table numbers by +5 per round would have been great, and it would have gradually moved your top table towards the middle of the hall.

Games: I had 4 great games, 2 distressingly-short games, and 1 game with a distasteful ending. My great games were just that - great; I won 2, and lost 2. My distressingly-short games both involved my opponent conceding on the bottom of turn 2; I understood why they were doing it, as my army played paper to their scissors, but it's not something I would do myself at a tournament. The last game, time ran out when I needed approximately 5 seconds for my turn 7 (I was going last) to move one unit 3"; all I could think of was the two minutes or so my opponent had spent on his half of turn 7, trying to decide where a rhino was going to end up, which was nearly irrelevant. Frustration!

Recommendations:I had movement trays for my genestealers, to ensure adequate time for my games; I also started several of them completely in Reserves. Time was adequate for an 1850 event. I'd still vote for a 1500 event, both to make Saturday a little shorter, and to make this event that much different from the other major tournaments around the country. Nobody else is targeting the 1500 pt level, after all - it could be one of the "things" that make the BAO different.

In closing, it was a great event. I'll cheerfully be back next year, regardless of whether anything changes. And remember - you don't have to do it alone; your attendees can be drafted to handle quite a few tasks for you! Make use of that labor pool!

Janthkin,

Were you the one with the Tyranids with the broodlord with the converted claws? If so your army was great. Did it get scored?

What was the paint score result.

I was the dark chap who asked you all about your army. My so and I were there. Hope to see you at the Grand Waaaga.

Nope, no broodlords in my army. But somewhere out there, you just made some 'nid player a little happier, I'm sure.

(I'm not going to win paint awards with my tyranids, but I'm happy with them.)

I have to second the genius of bring the projector. It made getting pairings so much easier.

Grats on a great tournament Reece!

Do you have the top 8 lists posted somewhere?

Some links to Battle Reports from the event!

http://forum.onthestep.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1299

Mike, our guest from Ireland, and one of their ETC member's report from his excellent showing at the BAO.

http://www.3forint.com/2011/08/drunken-master-bay-area-open-and-me.html

Dok's account of his time at the BAO, Dok played on table 1 for all the marbles round 7!

http://www.tabletopwar.net/2011/08/bay-area-open-deep-thoughts.html

http://www.tabletopwar.net/2011/08/400-posts-slide-show-of-bay-area-open.html

Magilla Gurilla's blog with loads of battle reports, slide shows and commentary on the event.

http://galaxyinflames.blogspot.com/2011/08/bay-area-open-gt.html

Evil Genius' Battle Report with his awesome Necrons.

http://ninjahut.blogspot.com/2011/08/bay-area-open.html

A report from the Ninja Hut! on the Warmahordes side of the event.

If anyone else out there has any reports on the event they'd like to share, please fell free to send me the links!


@Janthkin
I appreciate your thoughtful commentary and I think they are all good points. We do our best to prevent our feelings and egos from getting in the way of listening to good, constructive criticism. The only way to improve is to face the mistakes we made and seek to fix them.

We are in all likelihood going to stay at the fairgrounds for another year as it is so affordable. Year three will most likely be the year we level up into a hotel. We want to really build up our reputation first, to minimize the financial risk.

A lot of what you are saying is being repeated by other players and as such, we are gong to take steps to enact all of those changes.

I personally like 1500 for all the reasons that have been stated. I will send out an email asking for opinions on specific sticking points such as this and run a poll here on Dakka and then we will make our decision as a team soon so people can plan.

@skrepa
Yes, the projector was such a great idea and time saver. We got that idea from Adepticon!

@Kevin Nash
Thanks! A lot of the ideas we implemented in our tournament came directly from the Sprue Posse events, such as the use of the Swiss Perfect pairing software (thanks for that!).

I hope you guys can join us next year, it would be great to have the Sprue Posse in attendance.

As for lists, I will post the top lists tonight, along with a list of who was playing what army and then get that off to RankingsHQ for you guys.

1500 makes GK sad. I'm not sure what I would do with that...
Thanks for pimping my link as well, I was gonna post it here but I don't want to be an internet whore.

reecius wrote:

@Kevin Nash
Thanks! A lot of the ideas we implemented in our tournament came directly from the Sprue Posse events, such as the use of the Swiss Perfect pairing software (thanks for that!).

I hope you guys can join us next year, it would be great to have the Sprue Posse in attendance.

As for lists, I will post the top lists tonight, along with a list of who was playing what army and then get that off to RankingsHQ for you guys.

Thanks Reece. I apologize for not being able to attend this year. My schedule just wouldn't allow it. It hasn't allowed a whole lot of any kind of 40k lately for that matter. I'm really excited you had such a successful event. I know exactly how challenging it can be to organize and run a tournament of that scale. It's very difficult to do correctly and it sounds like you guys pulled it off with great results. That is really impressive


Edit: Regarding the venue: Hotels can be very expensive (I did my own research believe me). Convention centers on the other hand are surpisingly affordable and signifanctly less than a hotel, but also have nice amenites like air conditioning and food and also tables and chairs onsite. Maybe something worth looking into for next time.

@Dok
No worries man, pimp away. We love getting the feedback about our event and it helps you out, too. That's what we like to call, Twin-Linked Pimpage!!

I am a part time comedian.

@Kevin Nash
No worries, I totally understand how hard it can be to make events. I had to back out of Nova again this year because of some unexpected financial issues that sprung up.

If you guys can make it next year that would be killer.

I will look into convention centers. While researching a location, everything we saw was crazy expensive and the Fair Grounds was really the only viable location for our first year.

Just some more general pictures of the event.
The Venue.


Looking in the door


From the other side


Reecius (fixing terrain on the morning of day2)


Staff support (with the overhead display on the wall)


My army ready to go on a typical table.


Typical table setup (note the extra 2' on the end for your stuff)


And some Armies:
Dark Angels

More Dark Angels

Even more Dark Angels

Drop Pod Sallies

Foot Guard Girl Army

Imperial Fists trying to do the DoA thing (scouts for scoring)

Converted Tau...the white was very nice and smooth.

SW Rhinos freehand paint...very nice.

Daemons

Daemons closeup

Pre-Heresy standing in a Death Cult Assassins.

dkellyj wrote:
More Dark Angels

I recognize that army!
Your picture turned out better than mine, and it is my army!

@dkellyj
Those are some great pictures!

Here are results for 40K and Fantasy with Armies per player.

40K Results
1 James__Curry, 7-0-0 16 (Imperial Guard) Mech Guard
2 Nathan__Whitacre, 6-1-0 13 Battlewagon Orks
3 Allan__Hernandez, 5-0-2 11 Grey Knights (Paladins/Draigo)
4 Christian__Aleesi, 5-1-1 10 (Grey Knights) Death Cult Assasins+Psyfleman Dreds
5 Michael__Oade, 5-1-1 10 Dante and Mephiston Mixed Blood Angels list.
6 Michael__Bass, 4-1-2 17 Wrack and Grotesque Dark Eldar
7 Levi__Joos, 5-2-0 16 Battlewagon Orks
8 Josh __Sellers, 5-2-0 14 Crowe Grey Knights, Dual Dreadknight
9 Julian__Houghtby, 4-1-2 14 Tervigon Tyranids
10 Jon__Regul, 5-2-0 13 Kan Wall Orks
11 Jeffrey__Kaminsky, 5-2-0 13 Chaos Space Marines
12 Russell__ Jacobsen, 4-1-2 12 Grey Hunter Heavy list with inly one squad of Long Fangs.
13 Russ__Adderson, 5-2-0 10 Battlewagon Orks
14 Robert__Pace, 4-2-1 16 Dark Eldar
15 Joshua__Bousquet, 4-2-1 14 Mech Blood Angels
16 Steven__Smith, 3-1-3 14 Dark Eldar
17 Benjamin__Wilder, 4-2-1 12 Chaos Plague Marines
18 Gordy__Danke, 4-2-1 11 Grey Knights
19 Paul__McKelvey, 4-2-1 11 Tau
20 Jason__Gurule, 4-2-1 9 Deathwing
21 Ehren__Epstein, 4-2-1 8 Dark Eldar
22 Joaquin__ Villagrana, 3-2-2 15 Purifier/Psyfilemen Grey knights
23 Pablo__Caballero, 4-3-0 13 Paladin and DCA dual Stormraven list.
24 Douglas__Miller, 4-3-0 12 Mech IG variant
25 Tom__McLaughlin, 3-2-2 12 Vanilla Marines
26 Michael__Tangney, 3-2-2 12 WWP Dark Eldar
27 Peter__Ferrell, 4-3-0 11 Imperial Guard
28 Kevin__Brown, 4-3-0 11 Genestealer Tyranids
29 Keith__Holt, 4-3-0 9 Necrons
30 Doc__Glenboski, 3-2-2 7 Horde/Blob Imperial Guard
31 Mike__Entropo, 3-2-2 7 Mech Eldar
32 Mathew__Loukides, 3-3-1 12 Razorspam Blood Angels
33 Davis__Kingsley, 3-3-1 12 Space Marines
34 Michael__Moore, 3-3-1 11 DoA Blood Angels
35 Casey__Steele, 3-3-1 10 Blood Angels
36 Charles__ Pierce, 2-2-3 9 Blood Angels Razorspam
37 Ian__Chadwick, 3-3-1 8 Tyranids (Trygon x3)
38 Jack__Lemly, 3-3-1 7 Triple Trygon Tyranids
39 Scott__Webster, 2-2-3 7 Long Fangs/TWC Space Wolves
40 James__Reeser, 3-3-1 6 Triple Deathstrike Guard
41 Andrew__ Bruch, 3-3-1 5 Deatwing
42 Kenneth__Heater, 3-4-0 14 duke Dark Eldar
43 Xavier__Frazier, 3-4-0 13 Dark Eldar
44 Alexander__Cotton, 2-3-2 11 Eldar
45 Daniel__Nieuwenhuis, 2-3-2 10 vanilla marines with las/plas razorback spam, 3 typhoons/ 3 preds
46 Nick__Kirkendall, 2-3-2 7 Mech Guard
47 Ian__Gahner, 3-4-0 6 Vulcan Drop-pod Marines
48 Paul__Cornelius, 3-4-0 5 Space Ork Trukkboy Speedfreaks
49 Jon__ Machado, 2-3-2 5 DoA/Baal Preds Blood Angels
50 Kelly__Jernigan, 2-4-1 9 Space marines (Vulkan Hammer-spam)
51 Pete__Setchell, 2-4-1 8 Tyranids
52 Scott__SCGWL, 2-4-1 8 Dark Eldar
53 Peter__Hoover, 2-4-1 8 Daemons
54 John__Weyermuller, 2-4-1 6 Mech Space Wolves
55 Jason__Hoover, 2-4-1 4 Blood Angels
56 Brian__Kishimoto, 1-4-2 10 Battlewagon Orks
57 Timothy__ Trammel, 2-5-0 9 Doublewing Dark Angels
58 David__Doan, 1-4-2 9 Predator/Razorspam Blood Angels
59 Phillip__Ruggiero, 2-5-0 8 Mech Dark Eldar
60 Thomas__Gordon, 2-5-0 8 (Blood Angels) Flesh Tearers
61 Douglas__Bevard III, 1-4-2 7 Venom Spam Dark Eldar
62 David__Key, 2-5-0 4 DoA Blood Angels
63 Joshua__Jung, 0-4-3 10 Speed Freak Orks
64 Dante__Saraga, 1-5-1 7 Eldar
65 Nick__Myers, 1-5-1 6 Space Marines Imperial Fists
66 Carlos__Franklin, 1-5-1 5 Tau
67 Chris__Saraga, 1-6-0 6 GKs (Inquisitor Henchmen heavy) Pre Hersey Thousand Sons
68 Adam__Bredt, 1-6-0 3 Tau
69 Jeremy__Ecklin, 2-2-1 11 Space Marines
70 Nick__Hayden, 1-2-2 7 Space Marines
71 Dustin__Neu, 2-2-0 6 space wolves razorback spam/ 3 long fangs
72 John__Ruiz, 2-2-0 2
73 Jesse__McGowan, 1-1- 2 7 Purifier Spam
74 Andrew (AJ)__Spalding, 0-4-0 3 DoA Blood Angels
75 Michael__Wood, 1-2-0 4 Deathwing

Fantasy Results
1 Chad__Pond, 4-0-1 6 Skaven
2 David__Inman, 4-1-0 10 Daemons
3 Brad__Feliz, 4-1-0 6 Warriors of Chaos
4 Josh__Rosenstein, 3-1-1 10 Skaven
5 Micheal__Hengl, 3-1-1 6 Lizardmen
6 Dustin__Harnois, 3-2-0 8 Orcs & Goblins
7 Larry__DeTomasi, 3-2-0 8 Warriors of Chaos
8 Edmond__Phillips, 3-2-0 7 Vampire Counts
9 Jeffrey__Sterre, 3-2-0 6 Vampire Counts
10 Derek__Wiswell, 3-2-0 6 Bretonnia
11 MCLOVIN, 2-2-1 6 Bretonnia
12 Ben__Mitchell, 2-3-0 12 High Elves
13 Van__Nguyen, 2-3-0 5 Empire
14 Colin__Mayfield, 1-2-2 5 Lizardmen
15 Sergio__Alvarez, 2-3-0 4 Dark Elves
16 Adam__Bienvenu, 1-2-2 4 Beastmen
17 Andy__Garcia, 2-3-0 3 Dark Elves
18 Stewart__Roud, 1-3-1 5 Beastmen
19 Kirk__Lund, 1-3-1 3 Beastmen
20 Joshua__Fricke, 1-2-0 2 Warriors of Chaos
21 Peter__Franco, 0-5-0 3 Orcs & Goblins



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Results have been sent to RankingsHQ. Tyson will handle Warmahordes results once he is back from GenCon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
1. James Curry
Imperial Guard
HQ
CCS: P.Gun x 4, OoF, Chimera HHF
Troops
Vets: P.Gun x 3, A.Cannon, Chimera, HHF
Vets: P.Gun x 3, A.Cannon, Chimera, HHF
Vets: M.Gun x 3, 1x Shotgun, Demolitions, Chimera, HHF
Vets: M.Gun x 3, 1 x Shotgun , Chimera, HHF
Vets: M.Gun x 3, 1 x Shotgun , Chimera, HHF
Elites
Ratlings x 5
Fast
Vendetta: H.Bolters
Vendetta: H.Bolters
Heavy
Manticore
Manticore
Hydras x 2


2.) Nathan Whitacre
Orks
HQ
Ghaz
Big Mek w/KFF
Troops
19 Slugga Boyz: Nob, Klaw, B.Pole
20 Slugga Boyz: Nob, Klaw, B.Pole
Grots x 12: Runtherd
Nobs x 8: 8xCybork and Eavy Armor, 2 Klaws, 2xBig Choppas, Painboy, WAAGH!! Banner, B.Pole x 3
Battle Wagon: Red Paint, A.Plates, 2xB.Shoota, Boarding Plank
Heavy
Battle Wagon: Red Paint, A.Plates, 2xB.Shoota, Boarding Plank
Battle Wagon: Red Paint, A.Plates, 2xB.Shoota
Fast
Deff Kopta: Buzz Saw
Deff Kopta: Buzz Saw
Elite
Lootas x 13
Lootas x 5
Lootas x 5

3.) Alan Hernandez
Grey Knights
HQ
Draigo
Librarian: Warding Stave, Hammerhand, Might, Quicksilver, Sanctuary, Shrouding
Troops
Paladins x 10: Sword x 3 (1 M.C.), Hammer x 2, Halbred x 4 (1 M.C.), Bro Banner, M.C. Psychannon x 3, P.Cannon x 1,
Strike Squad x 10: Psycannon x2, M.C. Sword
Fast
Interceptors x 10: M.C.Daemonhammer x 1, Psycannon x2
Heavy
Psyfilemen Dread

4.) Christian Alessi
Grey Knights
HQ
Xenos Inquisitor: Rad Grenades, Psykotroke, Hammer Hand
Coteaz
Elites
Techmarine: Rad Grenades, Psykotroke, 3 x Servo Skull
Ven Dread: Psyfilemen
Troops
Warrior x 3, Psyker x 5: M.Gun x 3, Chimera, Searchlight
Warrior x 3, Psyker x 5: M.Gun x 3, Chimera, Searchlight
Warrior x 3: M.Gun x 3, Chimera, Searchlight
Death Cults x 6, Crusader x 3, Crusader x 3: Chimera, Searchlight
Death Cults x 6, Crusader x 3, Crusader x 3: Chimera, Searchlight
Heavy
Psyfilemen Dread
Psyfilemen Dread
Psyfilemen Dread

Interesting draigo list.

Interesting considerations:

3 each for tau and eldar for the whole list. Deathwing, too. A few more bugs armies than that. One necron & one daemon.*

GKs, Orks, & DE dominating the Top 20, with only army to represent IG ... albeit #1 !

Only 2 each for BA and SW in the Top 20. Izzit that they're no longer so competitive, or just not the most recent of Codexes? The mid-field seemed to be majority BA and vanilla SM with various xenos tossed in for color.

Overall, the IG numbers seems kinda thin for the whole GT. Earlier this year, it seemed that every monthly RTT had at least 3 outta 20 guys with IG, sometimes 6 or so.

It'd be interesting to see actual data on how the tides of one armies' presence ebb and flow over the tourney scenes. Does somebody have more time than I do to do that?


*I might've missed something here or there.

More pics from the open

@Ultraraider

Wow, those are some killer pics! Thanks for posting those!

@Brotherrekose

The Sprue Posse guys aggregate some awesome tournament data, by far the best I've seen on the net. www.chaoswins.com

We're going to crunch some of these numbers into a more easily digestible format and I am going to try and get some graphs up.

I noted a lot of the same things you pointed out and I have to agree. I think that what has happened, is that a lot of the top level guys have transitioned over to DE and GK.

IMO, GK's are the top army. They have a tool for everything. One of the best shooty units (Psyfilemens), assault units (Death Cults/Crusaders/Grenade Chuckers), anti horde (Purifiers), anti-deepstrikers (strikes), and a million other tools for every occasion. So far, they only armies I have seen that pose a real threat to them are Eldar, Tau and Night Shield DE against certain GK builds. Two of the three of those builds are not common in tournaments.

So, we saw less top tier armies because the most competitive gamers have shifted with the meta.

IG still have all the tools to crush people, and with less missile wolves, their counter IMO, they can shine again.

The mid-field players, IMO, are guys who bring what they have and aren't chasing the meta, so they bring their normal lists.

We saw a LOT of BA players, they were far and away the most common army. Razor/Pred Spam, or Hero Hammer BA are the only lists I personally consider top tier, although good players are doing well with mixed lists. We saw lots of DoA BA lists, which really only do well against other MEQ lists and static shooty armies. They just don't do well against assault armies with superior assault units like Bugs and Daemons who ignore all the benefits DoA armies pay lots of points for.

It is interesting data and I will spend some time aggregating it for everyone to munch on. Next year we are going to implement some systems so we can really break down the numbers and dig into it.

Reecius wrote:@Ultraraider

Wow, those are some killer pics! Thanks for posting those!

@Brotherrekose

The Sprue Posse guys aggregate some awesome tournament data, by far the best I've seen on the net. http://sprueposse.wordpress.com/

That site is defunct. The current site with army lists is here: www.chaoswins.com

Hey folks, James Curry here. I just wanted to thank Reece and the rest of the folks for putting on this fantastic event. The only other big tournament I have been to was the Broadside Bash last winter, and I have to say that this experience was much much better. The venue was perfect, reminded me of the fairgrounds back in my home state, I'll just have to remember to check for dead mice before putting my stuff in a corner next year. The staff was very proactive about rules question,anytime even the smallest thing came up, they were there, within seconds of someone raising their hand, and the question was answered quickly, allowing us to get on with our games.

One thing I do have to comment on was the large amount of ties that happened on the first day among the top bracket. With two ties being equal to a win and a loss as far as the scoring system was concerned, this led to me fighting someone who already had a loss going into the final round. Looking at the final score, I see that even if he had one, and gotten all 3 bracket points, and me none, both of us would have ended up with a 6-1 final score, and I would have had more bracket points, so the last game was a little anti-climatic. Maybe have a tie count for .6 wins or something would have fixed this.

I do see an error with my list that Reece posted: My command squad should have a 4th plasma gun, and there should be a 2nd squad armed with 3 plasmas and an auto-cannon, for a total of 5 veteran squads. I also posted my list over on the LATCS forum, you can find the thread here: http://latcs.ultrabb.net/view_topic.php?id=1021&forum_id=4

Overall I had a great time, and thought it was a very well run tournament. I just missed being able to play Allan Hernandez and his grey knights, who I understand was one of the favored to win, and was the only other person to go undefeated at the tournament, perhaps we can get a game in if you are ever down in SoCal sometime. I will be in Ohio next year, so I can't promise I will be able to make it back. However with any luck, I will be able to get a few day off and come defend my title!

-James

IGJames wrote:
One thing I do have to comment on was the large amount of ties that happened on the first day among the top bracket. With two ties being equal to a win and a loss as far as the scoring system was concerned, this led to me fighting someone who already had a loss going into the final round. Looking at the final score, I see that even if he had one, and gotten all 3 bracket points, and me none, both of us would have ended up with a 6-1 final score, and I would have had more bracket points, so the last game was a little anti-climatic. Maybe have a tie count for .6 wins or something would have fixed this.

This is a more an issue with bracket points than the scoring. If you play someone head to head and beat them in true swiss and you both finish with the same record, the head to head winner is going to be ranked higher.

@IGJames
It was good to have you. Congratz on the win! The reason you played down in the last game is because there was not 128 players there. Had there been closer to max, there would have been two players (most likely) with undefeated records playing in the finals.

In our test tournaments with Bracket points, we never had a situation in which the leader was so far out that he couldn't lose the tournament in the last game.

Kevin Nash's point about the head to head victory in true Swiss is a good one. The reason we implemented bracket points at all, was because we wanted total control of the player's destiny in their hands. Strength of schedule takes some control away in that it limits the tactical advantage of playing for the tie in a bad match up, which I feel is a viable tactic in 5th ed 40K.

We may have to implement a new series of tie breakers, or as you suggested, make a tie count for slightly more than half of a win in order rectify those types of pairings.

@Kevin Nash
Thanks for the input and the updated site, I fixed it.

Funnily enough, most sports that allow ties actually count them as one third a win. They are better than a loss, but a win is a big deal. Playing for the tie is valid when you're staring at a loss, but there's really incentive to put it all out there and go for the win.

skrewpa wrote:In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

I have mixed feelings about 1500 vs 1850. 1500 is a much more tactical game, I think, because alot of the big broken stuff gets left at home. So your troops etc and use of them become much more important. On the flip side, many army builds can't be done at 1500. My Wolfwing army would cry at 1500. 1850 seems to me to always be the level I can make any army and be happy with it, 2000 though is king.

I also prefer 2,000pts. That is my favorite.

Logistically though, 1,500 is SO much faster. ToS was 1,500 and people enjoyed it.

I think the issue with a lot of the resistance to 1,500 is that people don't play it much. I used to be a staunch 2,000 guy, but having been running and playing in a lot of 1,500 tournaments, I can honestly say that I think it is the best points level for tournament play, strictly due to logistics.

I think if people played that points level more, they wouldn't have the resistance to it that they show. It makes people feel like they can't bring all their toys to the game, which is understandably not a great thought. But with exposure to it, I find it to be a great way to play the game.

Hell, I love 1,000 point tournaments. One of the best tournaments I ever played in was 6 rounds in one day at 1,000pts on 4'x4' boards. Such a good event!

I'm right there with you, Reece. I love the larger sizes for the greater variety of stuff you can get in an army, but the smaller sizes are awesome for logistics and time considerations.

The Cold Steel Mercs' annual invitational is 1k just so we can get in a bunch of quick games in a day.

1500 all the way.

The notion that you cannot get all the toys you want in 1500 is just silly to me. What you cannot do is get 3 of the same thing over and over. So when people say you cannot get everything in 1500, it makes me wonder if you played 2000 points what are you taking differently? The answer is you are just taking the same stuff at 1500 but spamming it.

1500 is logistically great, but also hurts the all-comers ideal, as it's harder to fit in all the tools you need to deal with various "trick" armies, like Land Raider spam. IMO the current game/time setup was ideal; that said, I neither fielded nor played against a true swarm army, so I can't speak to whether it was sufficient for armies on the higher end of the modelcount spectrum. One player I talked to did say he was in a frustrating situation with a slow opponent, but from his descriptions, it was the player rather than the list who was at fault.

tastytaste wrote:1500 all the way.

The notion that you cannot get all the toys you want in 1500 is just silly to me. What you cannot do is get 3 of the same thing over and over. So when people say you cannot get everything in 1500, it makes me wonder if you played 2000 points what are you taking differently? The answer is you are just taking the same stuff at 1500 but spamming it.

I don't think this is necessarily true. Especially with some of the more expensive armies like Chaos, often at 1500 you're taking just what you see as the core essentials of your list, without breathing room for specialized stuff. My Boston Brawl List added terminators to my Throne of Skulls list, as well as adding some more CSMs and LDs.

Yeah, 1500 is definitely more restricting for some armies, and the balance of power shifts somewhat. Chaos and eldar shine at 1500, whereas guard lose a lot of steam and crone are even worse.

There are pros and cons to both points values.

Reecius wrote:Yeah, 1500 is definitely more restricting for some armies, and the balance of power shifts somewhat. Chaos and eldar shine at 1500, whereas guard lose a lot of steam and crone are even worse.

There are pros and cons to both points values.

You just outlined exactly why you shouldn't do 1500 points. At 1850 the game is more balanced across the codices where as at 2000 some codices run out of steam and at 1500 other codices, as mentioned, run roughshod over the competition. At 1500 I think the codex to beat is Orks, the Kan Wall is an amazing list to run at 1500 points. If you play most marine variants (CSM and SW excepted) 1500 points is far below an optimal level, I would argue C:SM, C:BA, and C:GK are not even worth taking at 1500 when you look at the potential armies that can be arrayed against you at 1500.

tastytaste wrote:1500 all the way.

The notion that you cannot get all the toys you want in 1500 is just silly to me. What you cannot do is get 3 of the same thing over and over. So when people say you cannot get everything in 1500, it makes me wonder if you played 2000 points what are you taking differently? The answer is you are just taking the same stuff at 1500 but spamming it.

Much too narrow of a viewpoint, I'd argue. My 1500 Tyranid lists look nothing like my 2k lists. The spam all occurs at 1500, when you take nothing but duplicated essentials (looking at you, Hive Guard); variety is possible when there's enough points to get the same synergy in other ways.

I agree with Janthkin. My issue with 1,500 has always been the lack of variety. It feels like essentials only which causes a lot of lists to look alike at that point value. That said running Nids at that level is hilarious since you can still fit 40ish T6 wounds

Reecius wrote: Chaos and eldar shine at 1500, whereas guard lose a lot of steam

Though it's funny that it seemed to work out the opposite at ToS.

What Janthkin said. At 1500 I take 6 vet squads and 2-3 vendettas. At 2k I have Al'Rahem and less vet squads and the same # of vendettas and more flash or fun stuff that I think can change up an opponent's plan without screwing with my functionality.

Also, re: the guard ... yeah. 6 vet squads alone in chimeras is always a powerful force for its points, b/c of its capacity to deal with most any threat while being relatively durable (av12 fronts, 6 models can die per squad w/out harming firepower all that much). They get stronger there, not weaker.

odmiller wrote:Funnily enough, most sports that allow ties actually count them as one third a win. They are better than a loss, but a win is a big deal. Playing for the tie is valid when you're staring at a loss, but there's really incentive to put it all out there and go for the win.

I know the conversation has mostly shifted to points values, but I wanted to throw in my 2c on this - I really think that this is the way to go. It seems somehow... wrong... that a player with fewer wins can end up higher in the standings than someone with more. Maybe it's just because I'm used to the 3-1-0 (win-draw-loss) weighting from soccer, Magic, etc.

I am not worried about lists, or how good certain armies are at certain point levels.

I worry about time. When you are trying to squeeze 7-8 rounds in a weekend, smaller, faster games are better.

Also people do not take the armies that they want to because of time limits. People do not bring horde armies just because they will not be able to finish their games in time. I want to see the full spectrum of armies, and I want to play an entire game against them.

And for ties I see both sides of the argument. If someone went 6-1 they have more wins than someone who went 5-0-2. On the other hand the person who tied went undefeted.

Blackmoor wrote: When you are trying to squeeze 7-8 rounds in a weekend, smaller, faster games are better.

8? Serious?

Nova is going to be 8 rounds over 2-days. It happens in about 3 weeks

7 is the upper limit of games I would play in one weekend over 1500 points.

My record is 8 in two days, 11 in three, and I'm interested in beating that.

Was that at Adepticon last year?

Every time I popped into the gaming room Mannahnin was there!

It's going to be 13 games in 3 days for me in a few weeks. 5 for the invitational and 8 for the GT. Gonna be a long weekend

Monster Rain wrote:Was that at Adepticon last year?

Every time I popped into the gaming room Mannahnin was there!

Yeah, that's Adepticon pretty much every year. Before that my record was nine; my first GT was six games, and I played three pickup games as well.

Hulksmash wrote:It's going to be 13 games in 3 days for me in a few weeks. 5 for the invitational and 8 for the GT. Gonna be a long weekend

Awesome! I need to win an Invitational ticket for next year!

I must be old, I.was drained after 7 games in two days....
.....And my feet were killing me.

Magilla Gurilla wrote:I must be old, I.was drained after 7 games in two days....
.....And my feet were killing me.

Nah, it's not that, or not merely that.

I am old, and fat, but I'm used to standing, 12 or 13 hours strait, with almost no breaks, a few times a week. You just get used to it. Most of us don't. Stand more, sit less.

Like blackmoor and Mannahnin said, I think the really seasoned tournament gamers who have played in lots of events at multiple points levels will be less concerned with points values. I know that experience is what made me embrace 1,500 when I was a staunch 2,000pt man.

And yeah, every year tournaments get longer as the big events move towards the Swiss system. The Swiss system is just better, but it does require more rounds of play. That is the price you pay but it produces a clear, undisputed winner.

Here's one thing about having 'enough' time for tournament games that I've been thinking about in the last few days that I think is kind of interesting:

Many times, the discussion about round length tends to revolve around what most players are able to finish their games in, and that's certainly an understandable way to look at things.

However, thinking back to the throne of skulls tournament this year in Vegas, where the round time limits were (I hope by everyone's standard) ridiculously over-long, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: In not a single one of my games did either me or my opponents concede the game. Not only were there no concessions, but the topic never even came up.

This could be attributed to the fact that I was rocking the Tau, which don't tend to blow people out and I like to play to the bitter end even if I'm getting stomped, but I don't think that's entirely it.

My hypothesis is this:

When you actually have more than adequate time for people to finish their games, then people actually focus more on the process of enjoying the game (win or lose) and therefore are more likely to play all the way to the end and generally enjoy their games more.

At the Bay Area Open this year, I had one game actually finish when we rolled the end of the game on turn 5, but the rest of my games either ended at a called turn 4 or 5, or when me or my opponents conceded defeat. Concessions like this are certainly not rare. There are many people out there who just do not like to play the game anymore when it is obvious (to them) that they have no further chance of victory.

These types of people are obviously never going to enjoy playing the full game regardless of time limits. But I think most players tend to enjoy the actual game of 40K, but when you're in a tournament where time is of the essence and you only have X amount of time until the next round starts, etc, then it actually helps to force players to look solely at what the outcome of the game is going to be and if they don't think they can win, then its time to clean up and get ready for the next game.

The problem with this mindset IMHO, is that the main purpose of a tournament should be for players to have X amount of great games of 40K and determine a tournament winner. I believe the moment the overall tournament results become more important than players actually getting great games, you have a big, big issue.

However, when time is tight at a tournament, I really believe that players get so caught up in the move, move, move mentality of finishing their games in a short amount of time that they start to forget that they're actually supposed to be enjoying the actual games.

I really think that concept was highlighted by the throne of skulls where the attitudes I saw in my games was just really different than standard tournaments. There simply was no 'reason' to concede based on time at all. If you conceded your game early then you probably had at least an hour to kill until your next round, so I think a lot of players didn't even consider it and instead enjoyed playing their games all the way to the bitter end.

That is another good point by our fearless leader. At 1500, with ample time, you play games to finish because otherwise you don't have anything else to do! Haha.

Here are some pics of the winners receiving their prize vouchers. Instead of just giving them stuff they may not want or use, we gave them store credit so they could get anything they chose.

I was so happy that John won that door prize.

I played him in the first round, and his dice were absolutely atrocious. I mean, everything went wrong that could have gone wrong.

Blackmoor looks like he's about to go slap someone off camera when he's done shaking your hand, Reece!

He did... and it hurt!!!

Hey guys, I have been sick as a dog, so did not get the rest of the pics up last week, sorry about that; I will be getting them up this week.

My coverage of the event is at the end of episode 19 of Deepstrike Radio, check it out if you'd like to hear my views.

Thanks for the positive C&C, BDJV! I didn't know you did paint commissions. Magilla Gurilla's army looked great, I am sure you will be getting more requests for business.

Here is some more coverage of the event on the Independent Characters Podcast http://theindependentcharacters.com/blog/?p=1196&cpage=1#comment-176
The in-game interview begins around 1:51:00

Haha, Blackmoor does look like he's about to lay the pimp hand down in that picture!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Monster Rain

Yeah, I was glad John won, too. After that terrible luck round one he could have been a debby downer, but he kept his chin up and still had a fun tournament. He definitely deserved it.

The door prize was donated by Heroes on Paper of Stockton, California.

Feel free to swing by if you're in the area; we're about 40 minutes from Antioch and are hosting the 'Ard Boyz prelims this weekend.

http://www.heroesonpaper.com

Janthkin wrote:

tastytaste wrote:1500 all the way.

The notion that you cannot get all the toys you want in 1500 is just silly to me. What you cannot do is get 3 of the same thing over and over. So when people say you cannot get everything in 1500, it makes me wonder if you played 2000 points what are you taking differently? The answer is you are just taking the same stuff at 1500 but spamming it.

Much too narrow of a viewpoint, I'd argue. My 1500 Tyranid lists look nothing like my 2k lists. The spam all occurs at 1500, when you take nothing but duplicated essentials (looking at you, Hive Guard); variety is possible when there's enough points to get the same synergy in other ways.

What exactly are essentials? Are they just you taking your 2000 point list and trimming it down? I play 1500 with the only essentials being the required FoC and maybe an additional troop selection. I have gone over this in a series of articles I wrote about 1500. This is just one link about 1 1/2 years old.
[url]
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2010/04/29/in-defense-of-1500-you-can-eat-the-cake-and-have-it-too/[/url]

You have to see army books beyond what you consider "essential" because at 1500 you can still get what you want you just have to cut off the right fat.

tastytaste wrote:What exactly are essentials? Are they just you taking your 2000 point list and trimming it down? I play 1500 with the only essentials being the required FoC and maybe an additional troop selection. I have gone over this in a series of articles I wrote about 1500. This is just one link about 1 1/2 years old.
[url]
http://bloodofkittens.com/blog/2010/04/29/in-defense-of-1500-you-can-eat-the-cake-and-have-it-too/[/url]

You have to see army books beyond what you consider "essential" because at 1500 you can still get what you want you just have to cut off the right fat.

Tasty, I've been playing a lot with Tyranids over the past 18 months. I happen to like 1500 pt games (for many of the reasons Yakface provides above), but this isn't the place to hash out what "essential" means to me.

My comment was directed at your statement of "you are just taking the same stuff at 1500 but spamming it" - that is not the case with my lists, at least. Similarly, it's not "just [me] taking [my] 2000 point list and trimming it down." If we can avoid the sweeping generalizations in a post about the BAO, that'd be great - we can have this discussion elsewhere.

After the event I got a chanced to play against Christian's GK, man that list is filthy.

Congrats to all the winners and kudos to Reece and crew for putting on what looks like a great tournament. I'll be there next year with *another* Deathwing army...

I have to give kudos to Christians list building skills as they usually are all filthy. I'm sorry I didnt meet you Ozy as I was there also and I always like to meet dakkites.

Oh, I wasn't there this year. I got back from a week long vacation right before the tournament and I work weekends and couldn't take any more time off.

Next year though, I'll do my best to be there!

@robpace
Thanks for donating that door prize, we appreciated it! I am putting a link to your store up on the BAO web page.

Congrats also on doing so well in the event with your DE.

@Grimgob
Yeah, ChristianA brings nasty armies, they are definitely all optimized.

@Ozzy
No excuses! You better be there next year, buddy! haha

I just wanted to make a point that GK are over the top at this tournament. I only had 4 games with them before the bay area and still did well with them. They do have weaknesses but not many.

From Menelker, the Warmahordes TO:

"I want to thank everyone that came out to The Bay Area Open this year. I sounds like everyone had a great time and I can't wait till next year. Sorry for the late post but I had to leave for Gencon right after the Tournament. Here are the results and some pics!

Day One:
1st place Brian Carrol (Kador) who won a 35 point army
2nd Place Brian Egger (Trollbloods) with a very nice painted army
3rd Place Brandon Crafting (Menoth)

Day Two:
1st Place Bradon Cating (Menth) who won a 35 point army
2nd Place Brian Egger (Trollblood)
3rd Place Ray Snyder

Grats to all the winners!

Next year will be March 2-4th so it will not be in the middle of con season!
Next year we will have 3 days of gaming and I also spent some time talking with the people at PP at Gencon for what we can do to work directly with them for the next con. So it is only going to get better!"

Grats to my buddy Brandon for placing both days!

I also wanted to jump back in and give a big thanks to Reece and the crew for putting on an exceptional first event (better late than never). I know tons and tons of things can go wrong when you're trying to put on something of this size for the first time in a location, and to their credit everything ran really, really smoothly all things considered.

I kept telling everyone all weekend that Reece had peer-pressured me into coming (and its true ), but I definitely had a great time and never regretted it for a second. I had 7 great games of 40K with some quality individuals and even faced some interesting army builds that I'm not accustomed to seeing in tournaments which is always a nice and refreshing.


Anyway, Reece asked me to post my review of the event, so here it is (and yes, I stole much of the 'review' format from Janthkin's review post):


Venue: The good was that the venue was generally spacious with tall ceilings, and there was no issues with, or cost for parking.

The bad would be that the floor was bare concrete (hard on the feet after many hours), the temperature was quite hot (although as has been said, a change to March should help that quite a bit), and despite the overall high ceiling, it was still quite loud to the point where I could certainly hear Reece on his blowhorn, but I usually couldn't tell what he was saying. The other big problem with the venue was that it isn't adjacent to anything, which means if you do finish your games early, you're pretty much stuck with nothing to do but watch other games in progress & if you don't want pizza for lunch, then I hope you brought something along with you!

I know cost dictates that this is the place to be at least for one more year, but as with Janthkin I would gladly pay more for my ticket if the venue was nicer overall...but again, I think the venue was great for the first year (or first few years) of the event.


Hotel: What can I say...its a Days Inn. After staying at actual hotels for Adepticon & Throne of Skulls, going back to a Days Inn was definitely a change. Of course, I don't need that many amenities and the complementary breakfast was nice. The only real 'problem' was again that the hotel was a drive from the venue, which is obviously not as nice as having the venue be within walking distance of your room so you can go take a nap when you finish early.

Overall the hotel was fine and again, totally acceptable for a first time event.


Terrain & Tables: I want to give you major props on this. Your terrain coverage was much better than many tournaments that have been doing it for years. I know that must have been a major undertaking, so I can only say: Great job! And a big thanks to the SCGWL (did I get all the letters?) for bringing their terrain to add to the mix as well.

With that said, I definitely think that there still wasn't quite enough terrain...but that's the issue that pretty much every tournament struggles with, and I think you guys got off to a fantastic start on this front. I did see a couple of tables where it seemed like the largest line of sight blocking terrain wasn't in the center of the table (like a Bastion, which IMHO should always be right in the center of the table), which was odd, but overall I think you did a great job of arranging the terrain you did have in a fair and competitive way.


Missions: Book missions, while perhaps not my favorite style for tournament missions, totally work for me. I'm always glad to see Capture & Control not paired with Dawn of War, as I personally think that's worse than with Spearhead (but I know some disagree),...so I had nothing but a good time with all the missions selected.

As for the bracket points, I always believe it is a mistake to allow both players to achieve the same points in the same game. Because bracket points don't affect the outcome of any individual game and because both players can achieve the same goals simultaneously, I personally saw in several instances in both mine and other games where players were freely willing to 'fudge' the facts a little bit to allow their opponent to 'claim' a certain bracket point they technically didn't get. I think it would be a better idea to make these goals be only achievable by one side or the other to really make the people who earned more bracket points stand out.

Off the top of my head I think you could do stuff like:

1) Killed the highest point enemy HQ while keeping your own alive (if both sides have their highest pt HQ alive or both are dead then neither player gets this point).
2) Whichever player has the highest percentage of scoring units remaining at the end of the game (so if you started with 5 scoring units and had 3 remaining your percentage would be 3/5=.60, where as if you started with 2 scoring units and had 1 remaining your percentage would be 1/2=.50, so the first player would get the bracket point)...although this may be too difficult a concept, I'm not sure.
3) Whichever player controls the center of the table (or the most table quarters, you can really do either), but make it so you actually have to have a scoring unit within range to do it and not have an opposing unit within range at the same time (like a normal objective), that way only one player can get this point at a time.

Whatever the case, I think sticking with the concept that bracket points can only ever be achieved by one player or the other is always the better way to go.


Organization: Another big massive props to you guys on this one. Everything stuck to the schedule, pairings were up quickly and I had absolutely zero problems the whole time with finding the table/opponents on time to start my games.

I love projected timers...I think they're hugely helpful in getting your games done in time. But in order for them to work you need to be able to see them from your table. Because of the layout of the hall, only a very small percentage of the tables could actually see the projection, so I think that could definitely be improved on...exactly how I'm not sure, but it would be helpful if the time was visible to more tables. Perhaps look into getting a screen to project onto so you can angle it towards more of the tables instead of just the dead-zone in front of the judges tables?

The bullhorn was a great concept in theory, but although I could hear you using it, I couldn't actually hear what you were saying 95% of the time. Maybe if you had a bigger/louder bullhorn then the problem would be solved?


Tournament Structure: I'm a big fan of playing a wide variety of tournament structures, I don't think there is one 'right' way, so I certainly can appreciate the pureness of the pretty much straight-up W/L/D format. I don't think I would want to play that format exclusively (but I'd say that about *any* format), but I did enjoy it for what it was and would look forward to it again.

The one thing that kind of concerns me (and correct me if I'm wrong on any of the details here), but I think if you're going to do a W/L/D format like NOVA, then you really need to have a strong 'Renaissance Man' in place to counterbalance the feeling that you have knowing that once you lose one game you're likely out of the hunt for the rest of the tournament.

I know you *did* have a 'Renaissance Man' award, but from what I can tell it was just the 3rd place finisher via W/L/D using hobby scores for a tiebreaker?

If I'm correct about this, there are several issues with this:


1) Looking at your 'prizes' page, this doesn't seem to match quite how you said it would be determined ahead of time:

This award will go to the player with the highest combination of Hobbiest points and W/L record.

That makes it sound like it will be an even combination of Hobby scores and W/L/D record.


2) More importantly, by making it essentially 3rd place W/L/D with only hobby as tiebreaker again means that players who lose their first few games will feel like they have no hope of winning the tournament anymore (whether that is strictly true or not).


I think it is absolutely imperative if you are using a W/L/D system that you include a whole bunch of other secondary means for people to win awards/prizes. I know you don't have the same resources (yet) as the NOVA, but I think they utilize all sorts of other methods to make sure that players who lose their first games still feel like they have a reason to keep playing. Looking at the results, it looks like you had 7 players not come back for day 2? I'd be curious to know how that compares to other tournaments, but it seems like having nearly 10% of the field drop after day 1 might be a bit indicative of how brutal the format is in relation to the types of awards/prizes available.

I know for my money, I did definitely have a feeling once I lost a game or two that my destiny was completely out of control and that only catastrophic failures on the part of others could allow me any chance to win something. Having you come up to me on day 2 and asking if I'd be offended if you didn't paint judge my army pretty much let me know I had no chance to win anything, even though I went a respectable 5-2 for the tournament. I really think adding in some sort of 'favorite opponent' award along with paint judging that counts equally towards 'Renaissance Man' could really help to make players feel like they have a shot at something even though they've racked up a loss or two.


Finally, as for the number of games...7 games ain't my thing. I did enjoy each and every game and I know that if I had a little more time vs. point values being played I'd probably enjoy it even more, but that many games in a weekend has never been my thing and there is literally nothing much you could do to alleviate this (except perhaps providing some complimentary lady masseuses and hot tubs ). At the end of the day I think I had about as much fun as I could playing that number of games and I would definitely come again if I'm up for that challenge. If I don't come next year it would ONLY be because I don't particularly care to play that many games of 40K in 2 days. Everything you and your crew did was absolutely phenomenal for the first year and you deserve a great big pat on the back and a cold beer for everything you did manage to achieve!

Glad the tournament went well, wish I could have shown up but my brother had to go and get married that weekend. I think the hot tubs and lady masseuses idea would definitely improve my chances of showing up at the next one.

I've always liked the W/L/D tournament format best for various reasons, but I think the idea of feeling like you're out of the running after one loss is a legitimate one. Personally, I think the solution is to try to deepen the prize pool. Obviously this requires more sponsors or more cost or lessening the top prizes so I'm not saying it has to happen, but when you have 70 players having the top 8 get at least a $25 box set may be good way to make people feel more engaged on day two even with a couple losses (people 5-2 or better may have ended up with one of those prizes in this case, and probably 25-30 players would have still felt they were potentially in range of a prize even in their last two games).

@yakface
Thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it and have taken all of it into consideration. I'm glad you made it and hope you can come again next year.

@lambadoy
Yeah, what happened to the spriest posse? You guys sort of vanished. I was hoping to see more of you guys there. Hopefully next year we'll get more of you out.

Man, beats me what happened. Had a tournament in May and not enough people showed up...and then poof. Either real life or Warmachine got in the way, probably a combination of both. I know for me personally house hunting and having a real job has really cut into my hobby time.

Yeah, that is understandable. Do those guys till play 40K?

GW really does need to get their gak together. Their idiotic policies leaves the door wide open for competition to gobble up market share.

Congrats on the house! That is awesome. Now is the right time to purchase, the market is low and rates are awesome. If you need any help with that let me know, I used to be in that industry.

Well, hope you can make it next year, it would be good to see you (and hopefully the rest of the sprue posse guys) again.

At least you got pizza the first day Yakface.

Speaking of food, maybe next year in addition to the pizza you could get a big sub and have sandwiches as a 2nd option.

Also, some non-meat pizza would be nice as well as possibly having fruits (apple, oranges, bananas) in addition to the candy for snacks.

Other than that, the actual tournament (fantasy side) ran smoothly and the timer on the wall was great. I do think the result sheet should have been done with first game at the bottom of the page instead of at the top though, so I didn't need to tear that whole page out.

Reecius wrote:6 Michael__Bass, 4-1-2 17 Wrack and Grotesque Dark Eldar

Oooooh... I'd love to know what this list was, since it finished so high and I assume is a little different than the normal DE lists that I see being taken for tournies!

RiTides wrote:

Reecius wrote:6 Michael__Bass, 4-1-2 17 Wrack and Grotesque Dark Eldar

Oooooh... I'd love to know what this list was, since it finished so high and I assume is a little different than the normal DE lists that I see being taken for tournies!

If I was guessing I would say that his list was:

HQ
Asdrubael Vect

Haemonculus w/Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun
Haemonculus w/ Venom Blade, Casket of Flensing
Haemonculus w/Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun

Elite
Court of the Archon:
1 Lhamaean
1 Medusae
1 Sslyth
1 Ur-Ghul
Venom w/2 Splinter Cannons, Grisly Trophies

3 Grotesques w/ Liquifier Gun
1 Aberration w/Flesh Gauntlets
Raider w/Dark Lance, Grisly Trophies

3 Grotesques w/ Liquifier Gun
1 Aberration w/Flesh Gauntlets
Raider w/Dark Lance, Grisly Trophies

Troops
5 Wyches w/Shardnet & Impaler, Haywire Grenades
Hekatrix w/Agonizer
Raider w/Dark Lance, Grisly Trophies, Flickerfield

5 Wyches w/Shardnet & Impaler, Haywire Grenades
Hekatrix w/Agonizer
Raider w/Dark Lance, Grisly Trophies, Flickerfield

3 Wracks w/Poisoned Weapons
Venom w/2 Splinter Cannons, Grisly Trophies

3 Wracks w/Poisoned Weapons
Venom w/2 Splinter Cannons, Grisly Trophies

Heavy Support
Voidraven Bomber w/Shatterfield Missile

@frenrik
I think we will do subs next year as well. You may not have seen it, but we did have cheese pizza his year for any non meat eaters.

http://www.tangtwo.com/11thcompany/episodes.cfm

Coverage of the BAO, starts around 59:05

Hi Reecius.

Again great tournament! I remember the software you used was Swiss Perfect for the rankings. Do you happen to have a copy of the file you used. I would like to use the same format for a Firestorm Armada tournament I am running.

Thanks!

You can download it for a free 30 day trial if you'd like. I actually don't have the software, Frankie does. His handle is white925 if you want to drop him a line, but downloading it for the free trial is probably the easiest way to get it.