I plan on going. Great event, hope to make some new friends, there!

This would be a fun trip

It would! London is a fun city.

Planning on attending and bringing Team Stronghold South with me

Hey all - just an update to remind anyone thinking of attending that tickets are almost sold out.

The 40k GT is at a little over 300 entrants now, and a sure fire way to bump yourself up the ITC rankings.

Tickets can be bought from www.LGTpresents.co.uk/store

Got my ticket!

See you all there.

Likewise! First visit to the London GT!

Lets start to talk about London GT.

Anybody know what kind of terrains will be in use?
Any pictures available?

I'm not really sure what they mean about line of sign blocker,will be possible see through they windows or doors or basically is just a big wall 8" x 8" ???

If its line of sight blocking it should mean just that. It blocks line of sight so no there shouldn't be windows or doors to see through.

Terrain layouts/setups can be found in the event pack -
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/a7e101_fcd941316ad84f13a7e563f9d78fa9bb.pdf

Looks like 3 different table setups, all with some form of LoS blocking terrain and "multi level hill like terrain". Looks like the LoS stuff is normal "corner" ruin style bits.

I personally, just hope that the FAQ comes out soon, to allow for list and army creation in time.

Does the event award ITC points. I cant find it on their website

Booger ork wrote:
Does the event award ITC points. I cant find it on their website

Yes, it just doesn't follow the ITC championship mission format.

Or at least i'm pretty sure it does... Will try to find the reference later.

had a day here today, not playing but watching.

great mix of games I thought. EVERYTHING was being played. The competition tables quite packed together but coul dget a reasonable view of the narrative tables.

The players seemed to be having a good time and the atmosphere was really good.

One thing I would say is that the entry to the venue was a bit of a mess. at first they only had one bag check and the queue was massive and obviously everyone had bags full of minis.

Eventually they got more bag searchers outside and things progressed but the whole shebang was delayed an hour.

I'll leave it to the players to give a more insider view.

I’m so glad I didn’t go.

Awful tables and apparently no food provided too.

A lot of the scenery on the 40k tables looks awful from the photos. Unpainted chunks of polystyrene! Also very little space between tables. Does not look like a well run event. I hope the people there are having fun.

Looks like 5 quid well spent!

Wait...

I thought Dakka would of been all over this. I feel so sorry for the guys who went. London ain't cheap, the event wasn't cheap, and there was everything cheap about in this event. I'm surprised there wasn't an angry mob refusing to play and wanted their money back. Friends had to wait ages to get in, then arrived to a play on exactly the same tables as each other, a mat and some polystyrene cut outs that were unpainted, partly painted, or grey. And as said the space between the tables, absolute joke. Hopefully no one's army get broke due to it.

I couldn't make this year's, but honestly, after seeing the pictures and hearing about the general disorganization I'm actually relieved I didn't spend the money to go down for the weekend.

Yeah around £40000 taken and looking at it very little spent.

Scenery pulled from the Bins round back, 2 security guards for 700+ people, no facilities worth mentioning, very little space.

I know people who cut there losses and left despite dropping £100 to get in because it was that gak.

Be interesting what GW shows of this "flagship" event as they were streaming it, seems appropriate overpriced and under delivering the GW way.

Whoever organised this ... didn't.

Complete shambles on every level. I hope they enjoy the profit and I hope no one goes to another one.

interesting to see the opinions of those who have been to more than one of these, I just assumed this is how it was.

To be honest, we spent more time around the narrative tables, these had proper scenery but still packed.

People mentioned the food, this certainly would have been more of an issue for the players as they only had one cafe serving in the whole place, for us it was fine as obviously we went when everyone was playing, but the queue in between the games was huge!

The pictures of the scenery speak for themselves, I just assumed this was "the norm"

Wow...

This is just amazing in how poorly ran this sounds.

I hope the people who paid that price got some enjoyment out of it at least.

Id like to chime in with what I thought.

This was the first ever tournament I ever went to. I didn't play, I had a friend who was playing so I went along to support him/buy some stuff. I was very, very disappointed with what I saw.

1: No signage or anything to find the place. While you don't need to go excessive, a couple of notices here and there would help to find the place. Same with the layout, there was no indicators of where the vendors actually were, a lot of the vendors looked very bored, guessing not many people finding their stalls hidden away on the upper floor.

2: Very rude staff. Combined with the above point, I had to ask the staff a couple of things. First time, I was in the queue at the desk, the guy simply went "Well?" in a very "What do you want, you're wasting my time" tone. Second time, my friend and I wanted to grab a beer during the break, the queue was horrendous. We asked a girl behind the counter if there's another bar due to the queue, she basically said "Well everyone's got to queue haven't they, so should you". A simple "No, I'm afraid that's the only bar open" would suffice.

3: Just the way it was run was poor. I didn't even pay the £10 to get in. I just walked in. The announcers were pretty poor, and the app to upload scores didn't work on either mine, my friends, or his opponents phone. There was no real way to find any judges, my friend's game was delayed by about 10-15 mins while they had to hunt around for a judge.

4: The aforementioned issue of terrain. In the 40k tournament alone there had to be close to 400 people. At £50 each that's a £20,000 budget. Combined with the AoS, 40K narrative, 30K, etc, and you have to have at least a £35,000 budget, and yet the terrain was crap. Just crap.. Some guy had gone to B&Q after work, bought a few polystyrene sheets at £5 each, cut them into chunks and glued them.

For a first tournament experience it was piss-poor. While I'd like to compete for the first time I'd have been sorely disappointed if that was my first one.

The painting competition was a disaster that pretty much nobody entered and was poorly run, with no security for the miniatures.

flashmanandy wrote:
The painting competition was a disaster that pretty much nobody entered and was poorly run, with no security for the miniatures.

I agree, the raffle table was left unattended for a good few hours on Saturday. Anyone could have pocketed the models left there, models that have been wonderfully painted and very kindly donated.

 Valkyrie wrote:
Id like to chime in with what I thought.

This was the first ever tournament I ever went to. I didn't play, I had a friend who was playing so I went along to support him/buy some stuff. I was very, very disappointed with what I saw.

To make you angry/sad or more disappointed. These are the crates of scenery lent to the organiser by GW, with GW staff driving the crates down from Nottingham, to be ignored and not get used!

They had decent scenery available and chose not to use it.

Did that terrain match the terrain as specified in the rulespack?

Because when you specify what terrain each table has so that all tables are equal you can get crates of terrain that are, basically, useless.

Yes the terrain looked like gak, I dont deny that. And if you pay good money to play in the tournament I can certainly understand people being disappointed.

But terrain for a dozen tables when you have 366 odd players and therefor over 180 tables in the 40k tournament alone it is a drop in a bucket.

flashmanandy wrote:
The painting competition was a disaster that pretty much nobody entered and was poorly run, with no security for the miniatures.

I was the only person to enter by the specified time on the event pack. So even by default should have won. They extended it to try and get some more entries but only gained another 2.

Rather than the lockable glass cabinet I was expecting, I was told just to leave my miniatures on a table alongside a pretty busy thoroughfare next to a raffle.

Leave my Golden demon and slayer sword winning miniatures just on a random table and walk off......nah.

I loitered around there for another 6 hours because the TO said I had to come to the awards at 1700.

I don’t really know what to say about it all really.

Ok, i've just got home from playing in the 40k GT, so a couple of thoughts from my POV.

Day 1 organisation was pretty horrendous. I was pretty "lucky" in that i managed to get close to the front of the queue when they called for it to be formed (everyone was just milling around out front before then). The bag searching was ok for what it was. Some of the security were out giving entry wrist bands to everyone in the queue (didn't even have to show them a ticket... lol...) but they started the bag search area inside, crammed into a corner. With only 3 tables. Not long after i got in they moved the setup outside, which made things easier but yeah. The "bag search" pretty much amounted to a super fast look inside and that was it. A couple of the guards were doing more thorough checks though - possibly at random.

Once through security there was registration area which amounted to 3 tables next to each other for all the events.
THEN, i had to join the queue for 40k registration and BCP event setup.
Entry was everything but streamlined.

Day 1 start was delayed for probably close on to 2 hours or so. Fortunately i spent most of the delay inside, but hundreds of people didn't.

Initially there was 1 bar open, on the 1st floor, that no-one could find easily. They also only started out with 1 member of staff behind the bar from what i was told. Queues got pretty big at times, and if you wanted a hot drink you had to queue to the tills then go back down the queue and push through it to get your own hot water and milk etc from jugs at the end of the bar.

In regards to the competition itself.

Terrain was embarrassing. Lots of people were playing the terrain differently. The "woods" amounted to an A4 sized board with cement? around the edges, the "hills" were stacks of polystyrene in a pyramid shape, and the rest was just L shaped polystyrene. None of it technically should have provided cover bonuses, but, people were just going off agreements at the start of their games. In some cases, the bits of polystyrene weren't even glued together. In most cases, it wasn't even painted or half painted.

Table wise - space was "generally" ok AFTER the 1st game. 1st game they had crammed way to many tables into 1 room they got told off for being a big fire hazard so the event then moved to tables across 3 floors.
The main issues i had was in some cases there was not enough space for people to get past each other, not all the tables were level (my game 1 and 4 were played on a table which had a massive ridge down the centre because the 2 tables the mat was on weren't the same height....) and the tables were too wide for most people. The extra width helped in some ways, but made things difficult when you had to move units on the other side of the table when you couldn't get past people to walk around.

Event organisation.
We were meant to get warnings at certain points in regards to the games remaining time length. I think this was followed maybe once. The rest of the time it was just completely random.

Table numbers were completely random as well. You'd be following the table numbers along, then suddenly you'd just up 50 tables, because the next set were on the other side of the hall for some reason.
This got even worse after game 1, because the moved the tables around, changed the numbers on the tables and then didn't tell anyone or announce it.
There was no signage on day 1 in regards to what tables were on what floor. This was semi rectified on day 2.

BCP app was, as usual in my experience, hit or miss. Sometimes it would ask for pin codes for score submission, sometimes it wouldn't. It kept logging people out randomly, and, in mine and others cases, it did not recognise the event submission pin so i had to go to the desk every game to submit scores there. It'd also often tell me i couldn't view lists due to not being in the event, after going through the "my events" section of the app and selecting the event....

The only food available was from the stadium bar, as you couldn't take any in with you. Not much in terms of options BUT, the food did come out quickly.

Due to how things went, some people didn't get a lunch break day 1 (from what they were saying though).

I only found out about things like the raffle etc due to playing one game on the top floor and i had to walk past it to get to the table... Not sure how successful it was, due to it not being advertised.

Day 2, was also delayed by an hour for some people. My game 4 started on time due to us both being at the table, many others were still stuck queuing outside. Was quicker than day 1 though.

Same issues with the tables though. Took one group of people about half an hour to find their tables due to some tables not even being numbered and tables 55-59 were nowhere near 40-54 and 60+.

Didn't have a clue where they were doing the announcements and presentation at the end until i overheard someone mention it was "upstairs". Presentation amounted to a list of names and awards being read out quickly and not always clearly. Prizes were given out on the side, away from the "stage", so i don't think i even saw one of the winners.

Didn't really get to see much in regards to the other events, beyond some guy in the 30k event having an amazing looking Thunderhawk.


365 people took part in the 40k event (well, recorded at least 1 result anyway).


I know someone joked about the terrain having been delievered a couple of days before the event somewhere on dakka sometime midweek, but, i didn't expect them to actually be right.

On the plus side, atmosphere and players were pretty fantastic all weekend, despite all the confusion, eye rolling and organisational frustrations. I certainly had a good time when playing my games, but, it was the people that made them, and not the event. Whether or not i go next year is completely 50/50 at this stage, as i know i can go to better events around the country for less cost.

Kdash's account is pretty accurate. I had a good time, played some really nice guys - but it was definitely the worst organised event I've been too, even as the scale was pretty impressive. The two are probably linked...

But yeah, it seems like poor planning. The choice of a venue with no car park/public transport outside of a 15 minute walk (with huge bags), bag checks, no outside food, escalators (seriously taking my models up and down those was pretty nerve racking), floor length windows in summer, and not enough space for a reasonable table layout (saw an eldar flyer get destroyed by someone squeezing through tables) was dubious at best. The terrain was functional and tbh not unreasonable for one of that size (if a little sparse, but that was advertised tbf) - the issue was more the unfinished nature of it. A quick spray and drybrush (and gluing it together) would have been much much better.

But yeah, I am holding off on re-attending until I have seen evidence that it has improved (i.e. not next year). There's plenty of well run events round there to take my money instead!

I can't say much about how things were run in other rooms, because I was just the TO running a couple of tables of Inquisitor off in a corner (to be clear, if you have anything other than the Inquisitor event to complain about, I am by no means responsible - I was only brought in to handle that, I was not included in the main organising), but I was around during set-up and tear-down to hear some notes that probably need to be inserted into this discussion:

This is the first time ever that the London Stadium has handled any kind of event like this (and that's from the mouth of one of the main Stadium staff involved). They normally do corporate events with boring businessmen doing presentations. When it comes to the issues with the food service, not enough bag checkers*, staff behaviour and such, a lot of that is down to the fact that the venue simply didn't know the challenges of this kind of event.

* Although speaking personally, I'd rather not have this at all for a gaming tournament where everyone has bags, cases, etc full of stuff that could be easily dropped and damaged during a check. (... and apparently were, from one story I heard from my players).

(And the other thing you should infer from that is that the first time that the LGT has gone to the London Stadium).

Benlisted wrote:
escalators (seriously taking my models up and down those was pretty nerve racking)

The venue also has lifts.

Holy hell that looks like a bad joke. And I wouldn't really care if it was the locations first time as the venue, the organizers completely dropped the ball on conveying what the requirements of the event were to be. There has not been one image or story that has come out of that event that would give me any faith the organizers could fix things in a year, or should be trusted to accomplish that.

In regards to terrain, I will say, it was setup exactly as advertised in the player pack and, it was pretty effective if you took it at face value and nothing more. The only issue really was every nudge of the table or passing breeze often resulted in one of the smaller pieces moving or falling over.

The walk to and from Stratford tube station was a bit of an inconvenience, I agree. Especially on the Sunday due to everyone that travelled down and checked out of hotels then had to carry all their extra baggage. Unavoidable I guess, but it was what it was. I didn’t get to see much of the other rooms, so I don’t know if other venues would have been just as suitable for the event. Could easily have fit the whole thing in one of the Excel centre halls though.

@MarcoSkoll I agree that it was a different challenge for the stadium staff and they probably weren’t fully aware of what they were getting themselves into – but, I can only then presume that it wasn’t properly talked over with them before the event in regards to planning.

It was an enjoyable event from the perspective of playing the games and talking to other players.

I don't think the venue can take any of the blame for this - I just don't think the organisers planned this properly at all.

Allegedly one of the main organisers was in Asia for a couple of months and only got back a couple of weeks before the event....

I organise events as part of my job (although not on this scale - the largest event i have managed was about 300 people) and can tell you this would have been months of planning and liaising with the venue.

One of the first things that would have been done would have been a needs assessment and a risk assessment.

I would say from experience that neither of these were conducted or both were ignored.

The needs assessment would have highlighted that with between 700-1,000 people attending the venue would need additional staffing.

The venue told the organisers this but they chose to ignore it (no doubt due to cost).

This would have sped up bag checks, would have allowed for more than one bar to be open and would have meant the food court could have been opened.

The risk assessment would have highlighted the venue wasn't large enough to accommodate the number of players planned.

From the photos I have seen Health and Safety and Fire regs were completely ignored. There was also no disability access, if there had been an accident / incident there was no access/egress and you wouldn't have had a hope in hell of a First Aider being able to respond in 3 minutes.

If I had been the organisers I would have either dropped some of the narrative / 30K tables or decreased the size of the tournament.

I also wouldn't have started sorting out the scenery 11 days before because the organiser was out of the country.

And you can build effective, LOS blocking scenery cheaply that still looks nice.

This just seems amateurish at best but really highlights the event organisers were well and truly out of their depth.

That doesn't mean they should necessarily be hauled over the coals or anything, and to be honest once you add up the cost of the venue hire etc I don't think this a big scam and they've run off with the money.

This is a classic example of somebody with a big dream running before they can walk.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:

Benlisted wrote:
escalators (seriously taking my models up and down those was pretty nerve racking)

The venue also has lifts.

I'll be honest, I didn't think of this. But equally, I needed to get upstairs round 3 in a really short break due to the day compressing, so I was rushing to get my stuff together, get it out of the maze of tables, and find my table in the section I'd never been to before (which is still as big as a normal event). I'd been using the escalators all day and didn't really have time to think, which I think is where a lot of people were at given how many people I saw doing the same. If everyone had tried to use the lifts there could also have been a huge bottle neck given how many people were trying to move in a short space of time.

StraightSilver wrote:

I also wouldn't have started sorting out the scenery 11 days before because the organiser was out of the country.

I don't know the organisers or how they had structured things but it seems to me like this was a case of one person with a strong personality getting things done and giving out instructions and everyone else just waiting to be told what to do by that guy. The reason I say this is because I know what it's like to be that one guy and I know that if you leave people of a certain disposition to their own devices they'll just shrug and think "I dunno what One Guy wants done so I'll just wait till he tells me." A pet hate of mine is people faffing about and not using their own initiative (possibly because I did the jobs of 3 people by myself for about 2 years) so I have a lot of sympathy for whoever One Guy is. Less so for anyone else.

I have no love for tournament players but they deserved better than this. People like to think (especially if they live near the location) that a tournament is just the cost of entry and a day off work/family but always forget that travel, accommodation and food costs money and all those small costs add up. The TOs should be ashamed of themselves and I hope this comes back to bite them next year.

Well that terrain provides los cover so that's good but apart from estethics of pieces my god that identical layout is boooring. I' m lucky local tournaments have much more nicer looking boards which aren't symmetricals and often themed.

It's nice when organizers focus on quality over quantity

So I'm finally back from my weekend at the GT and I thought I'd offer my thoughts. ~

Bag Checks - This was pretty ridicious. We turned up an hour before the start time on Saturday, having already pre-registered for the tournament and the event on Friday, [At which point nothing helpful about arriving early was mentioned] to find ourselves in a line. I counted, and there were roughly 350 people ahead of us in said line, which took about 1 and a half hours for us to get through. While some of the security staff were civil or even helpful,some where rude and models were damaged by 'Bag Checks'. To add insult to injury, while some peoples bags were searchedto the point of model damage, most people got off with such light searches to have been completely pointless. If I'd wanted to smuggle food or explosives into the building, I certainly could off. [For example I did in fact take unauthorized food into the building by accident on occasion.] If you're not going to do a job properly, why bother doing it at all? There was, for example a completely unsecured, open and unmonitored disabled side door I could of just stepped in through and bypassed security entirely.

Terrain - Yeah. I mean. Functional. Check. Equal across the tables? Sort of check. Many of the tables had hills that were higher on one side or another, and somewere missing the "Area Terrain" entirely,so it wasn't perfect. I know they were trying to keep things fair, but when someof the pieces are half spraypainted and others are flat out not done at all, it does cross the line from cheap and verging into disorganised and lazy. And this wasn't a cheap event either, so I was expecting a little more than this.


Organisation - Day one delayed by over an hour. Day two delayed by over half an hour for a considerable number of people. The awards ceromony [more on this later] which we were assured would start on time - Delayed by half an hour, this time without warning or explination.. Round times were occasionally, but not often announced. I couldn't actually find the speed painting competition at all, and the best painted competition almost slipped me by too. Thank heavens I wasn't entering it, but then like posters above, I'm not sure leaving unguarded minitures of considerable value lying around on tables for hours is my cup of tea. I couldn't find either of the GW FAQ's either.
The staff were a 33/33/33 mix of friendly,annoyed, or clueless.
I did run into a couple of the other TO's [I was playing in the 40k GT] and while they were all super nice, they were utterly clueless about everything outside their event. It would have been helpful if it'd been more of a team thing were most people at least new the basics, like where things were. Given that some people had helpful Tshirts, most people didn't have Tshirts, and of the T-shirted people there was no way to tell who was supposed to know what about anything, I was discouraged.

No idea who was judging or rules enforcing the 40k event either. Never got told who they were, where they were, how I'd go about finding them in an event that stretched up to three floors, during the middle of a time limited game or what the proceedure would be for solving disputes. In the endif anything came up we just resorted to asking the table next to us.

Fellow Gamers - A generally wonderful bunch. I met a lot of really nice people - The Harliquin player from Brazil was my favourite, but a shout out to my first Tyranid Opponent and the army of Carnifexs, the local Bristol Crew,and the guys from Tabletop Tactics.

The Awards Ceremony - So as mentioned this was delayed and I had to wait in a standing room only room full of people shouting for a good 30 minutes past the start time with no announcements or indictations if I was going to be waiting another hour or thirty seconds. When it eventually began, as well as hardly being able to hear anything I was treated to a list of awkward names, and who won them. The only qualifier was 'Most Dapper Gent', which was won because of someone wearing a suit, but I couldn't tell you what army any of them were playing. If you're going to announce the results for the largest tournament in all of Europe, it would have been nice to at least announce the faction played by the winner? Maybe alittle bit about his list? What was the best general for the Imperium playing? Where did they place? Anything?

As far as I know, the only way to view your rankings or anyone elses was by using an external app. Which is fine for most people, but not everyone. And ultimately if your main awards ceremony for a 2/3 day long event that's the second largest in the world is going to contain less information than looking in an app,delivered in a manner harder to understand, to which I had to wait over an hour after the conculsion of my last game for, and then the delay on top of it, then what's the point in having one?




I'm not even going to comment on the food and drink issues. [£5 for a large cranberry Juice, anyone? No outside water allowed in the building for the first two days?]

I had fun playing Warhammer. I had fun meeting my opponents.But as an event the LGT left me very dissapointed. A lot of potential, sadly wasted.

 gkos wrote:
interesting to see the opinions of those who have been to more than one of these, I just assumed this is how it was.

I’ve been to all three, so here’s my little ‘history of the LGT’.

The first year was around 100 people. The group came from nowhere announcing themselves as the biggest club in London despite none of the other clubs ever having heard of them, and refused any help. They offered 40k and Heresy tracks, and then at the last minute folded all the Heresy players into the 40k GT, pissing them off. The event was then run as perfunctorily and without-fun-or-ceremony as it could be. Small painting event, but only a few people entered so one guy won all the prizes. Really old fashioned scoring systems (like GTs 15 years ago) so best general tends to win best overall too. Announced they would play ITC on the Frontline podcast then switched to the competitive-lager-lads’ shitfest of ETC later, pissing off some attendees. Terrain was expensive mats with four identical unpainted wooden corners of MDF ruin, and the biggest complaint. My review was at https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/692504.page

The second year was around 350 people total. They got Greg from the Imperial Truth in to run the Heresy track, which I played in. That was fun and well organised, but the terrain was now the same identical MDF corner ruins but SPRAYED GREY (same terrain regardless of what the terrain mats had pictured, and terrain was the main feedback point from the year before). Again, local clubs offered to help with terrain for the Heresy event but were overruled by the organisers. The TOs for the smaller events couldn’t access the main LGT ticketing site so had a really hard time getting lists in or viewing changes. Big delays to entry because of queues and terrible registering system. All the prizes seemed to go to the same few people, hardcore tournament mates of the organisers. ‘Best Newcomer’ went to the guy who won Best General because, while a regular on the tournament scene, he didnt usually win them (!!). My review was at https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/726346.page

This year was around 600/700 people at the Olymic Stadium. Lots of breakout events run by separate non-LGT TOs. I signed up for Necromunda, but had to work on the Saturday night so ended up just going along and using my tournament pass on the Sunday, chatting with friends, and picking up some hobby bits. As far as I can tell by talking to friends who played in almost all the events, the issues were

- Massive queues to get in as only two security on the door. Organisers were offered more security ahead of time but declined. Every event was therefore delayed. Heresy had to ditch a lot of the campaign stuff because of this.
- Same problems with external TOs getting information. Necromunda weren’t made aware of people who cancelled. Heresy sold 96 tickets but we’re only given 40 tables. No space allocated for painting pods that they’d booked. No space or security on the painting comp.
- Only one of the four bars/restaurants were open, and totally unprepared for everyone (now delayed) to eat at the same time. Many people had no lunch.
- Terrain! So, they were so intent on having indentical, ETC style terrain that they refused to use either all the stuff they already had from previous years OR any of the stuff GW brought along to help! Thanks fully, the GW stuff went to Heresy and Narrative, and AoS and Necromunda brought their own, so external events were ok for terrain. However, the LGT organisers decided that ordering a truckload or white polystyrene a week before the event and live-blogging how they totally failed to make enough terrain over the course of the week was a better option. Even given that they didn’t manage to paint it, they STILL opted to use this instead of existing painted terrain to make the event as competitive as possible. So every table had the same identical corners of polystyrene regardless of beautiful game mat it was played on.
- Tables so close together that you were literally back to back with people trying to get around them.
- Some events given rooms made for half the number of people and with no air con.
- People preordered merch which either didn’t turn up OR was sold to regular customers because the merch staff hadn’t been told they were pre-orders!

I left before the awards but apparently that was a shitshow too.

Generally, while I think the TOs were probably originally well-intentioned, they are so intent on running the biggest, most COMPETITIVE tournament, and doing it all on their own narrow terms, that they seem completely unaware of what their attendees actually want. They seem to not give a gak about terrain, comfort, timing, organisation or any of the side events, seeing all of it as extra revenue so that the fifty ETC-style ‘competitive players’ attending (the only people the organisers give a gak about) get big prizes or the most competitive setup possible. It feels, sometimes, like a deliberate scam and that the organisers really couldn’t give a toss about the majority of people attending, or feel like they should all be greatful for being there.

I’ve attended plenty of tournaments and events, from GW events up to NOVA a few times and not only is this consistently the worst organised I’ve attended, it’s also the one with the worst aftertaste - instead of a big fun celebration of geeking, you just get the impression the organisers don’t really want you there for anything other than the ticket money, partly because everyone has something bi to gripe about.

I really shouldn’t have attended this year. I won’t be attending next year, and I know a good number of people feel the same way. In my ideal world, GW would pull support and the LGT would be forced to either massively scale down and work their way towards big events while re-learning who they’re making them for, or someone else will poach all the external TOs and run something better.

There’s a great amount of appetite for a big London event, but this isn’t it.




Edits for spelling

This event was poorly run and the excuses I got were embarrassing. I wish I never went, because while every player I met and played with was great.

The organising was just horrible and I told them that with specific feedback for improvement, but I will not go again.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:



I'm not even going to comment on the food and drink issues. [£5 for a large cranberry Juice, anyone? No outside water allowed in the building for the first two days?]

So, I can’t comment on the cost of juice, beer or other soft drinks, I found that the cost of the coffees were somewhat reasonable – despite the fact you had to essentially make it yourself.

In regards to water, thankfully this got sorted out pretty quickly, and jugs of free water and plastic cups where put out in several places and on a few of the bars. This WASN’T communicated though.

Day 2 however, had a full table of water jugs in front of you as you walked into the 40k main room, so at least it was more visible then.

Facebook site makes no apologies or even recognises issues, but does call out publicly one player for cheating on stream and bans him, then deletes his posts when he tries to respond. The GT that keeps on giving ...

They called someone out for cheating? Not seen anything on the facebook page about it, but I’d be shocked if they did.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
FYI, full results are found at -

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DIRs_CZsfrKfBDelZa_tVUrlkSgyk-Koevd-wQH1RrU/edit#gid=0

Currently, the vast majority of “list” scores are wrong, painting scores are apparently wrong or in question.

To be fair, I’m pretty much past caring about the final scores now, as the only thing I’m focused on is the 5 enjoyable games I played and the final result of which army and player won the tournament, not the event.

You mean calling out the man who is associated with a tool made out of glass?

The Machiavelli in me wants to think that its a deflection tactic by the LGT organisers but perhaps I am being too much of a tin-foil hat addict.

Apparently they posted some pictures on Facebook to announce how well it was going using images from another event to disguise how atrocious the scenery was!

I can only conclude this is a giant con. I can’t understand, however, as to why so many people signed up. You only have to look at pictures from a previous year to realise the organisers don’t give a hoot about the attendees.

https://www.facebook.com/LondonGrandTournament/posts/1884689458248487

I'm conflicted on it myself. On one hand the community should take a strong stance against cheating and trying to push the envelope of what you can get away with against a player happens a lot at tournament, but mistakes also do happen, especially after 12 hours of playing on the second day of competition.
What gets me is that when the finals continued the next morning (they had to pause cause the venue was closing) he still miss played FTGG on his Hammerheads. I would think someone who found out he had been playing something wrong would double check the rule. Apparently not.

Plus there were multiple people commenting that he is known for skirting the edges.. I don't know how much truth there is to that tho.

Eh, ok, so i saw the start of that post on facebook, but didn't read it as i thought it was just a "hype up the winner" annoucement post... My bad.

So, my problem with this is 2-fold.

1. This should never have been posted on facebook in the first place. If all those things were noticed, called out and correct then I fully support the ban. But how it has been reported is a bit, dangerous. I can fully understand -why- they have made the post though, but, it should have been somewhere other than facebook – i.e. their own website as a notice or something. If they didn’t make the post, then the public outcry would have been just as bad, about them “knowing about cheating but not doing anything about it”. It really is a catch-22 situation where they can never win.
2. If it was spotted in the first half of the final game, at the end of day 1, then they needed to call into question his day 1 GT results, which it doesn’t appear to have happened. He won all 3 day 1 games, and 1 day 2 game. The GT 100% means more than the invitational, so you have to question if it happened in a smaller, more visible event, did it also happen in a harder to spot, packed gaming hall. I’m NOT saying this happened, I did not play the guy, or see any of his games, just pointing out something that doesn’t seem to have been handled correctly.
HOWEVER, if this was reviewed after the event finished, the question must be asked as to “how” they identified/were alerted to the issue. You would have thought that they would have had a visible judge around the table watching – as it was a live streamed final, so, if it wasn’t caught then, it just highlights again how bad 40k judges are.
If they were told about the issues during the event, then, we need to ask the question as to why it wasn’t dealt with, while the event was on-going, due to its potential impact on the main 40k GT.

It also needs to be noted, that they’ve scored Alex a standard 15 points for sportsmanship during the GT event.

Unfortunately, this is another example of players ranking in the top 10 of an event being caught acting in an improper manner.

The LGT organisers have now posted on Facebook regarding the feedback on the terrain, organisation and venue:
https://www.facebook.com/LondonGrandTournament/posts/1885047368212696

(Some people might think this is a bit slow as a response goes, but speaking as one of the people who was there for tear-down until late in the evening*, I'm pretty sure that they were just as shattered as I was yesterday).

*Although, again, I was just the TO for the Inquisitor event and had no part in organising anything else other than helping pack it all up at the end.

 torgoch wrote:
Apparently they posted some pictures on Facebook to announce how well it was going using images from another event to disguise how atrocious the scenery was!

If you're talking about this post:
https://www.facebook.com/LondonGrandTournament/posts/1882266568490776

... I can assure you that it's all legitimately from the overall London GT (which included several sub-events - 40k, 30k, Narrative, AOS, Warmaster, Epic, Necromunda, Inquisitor, Blood Bowl, etc), and the gallery does actually include some tables from the WH40K event showing unpainted terrain, so it's not entirely disingenuous.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:

... I can assure you that it's all legitimately from the overall London GT (which included several sub-events - 40k, 30k, Narrative, AOS, Warmaster, Epic, Necromunda, Inquisitor, Blood Bowl, etc), and the gallery does actually include some tables from the WH40K event showing unpainted terrain, so it's not entirely disingenuous.

The other tables were much more like it. Still ridiculously thin on amount but that's more acceptable than styrofoam unpainted blanks.

Note to self: If ever I go to this event go to sub-events. They are more professional than the main one)

Those tables would have looked better if they'd turned the mats upside down and used the neoprene side. At leas that way there wouldn't have been as much of a contrast between the table surface and the "terrain".

Kdash wrote:
Eh, ok, so i saw the start of that post on facebook, but didn't read it as i thought it was just a "hype up the winner" annoucement post... My bad.

So, my problem with this is 2-fold.

1. This should never have been posted on facebook in the first place. If all those things were noticed, called out and correct then I fully support the ban. But how it has been reported is a bit, dangerous. I can fully understand -why- they have made the post though, but, it should have been somewhere other than facebook – i.e. their own website as a notice or something. If they didn’t make the post, then the public outcry would have been just as bad, about them “knowing about cheating but not doing anything about it”. It really is a catch-22 situation where they can never win.
2. If it was spotted in the first half of the final game, at the end of day 1, then they needed to call into question his day 1 GT results, which it doesn’t appear to have happened. He won all 3 day 1 games, and 1 day 2 game. The GT 100% means more than the invitational, so you have to question if it happened in a smaller, more visible event, did it also happen in a harder to spot, packed gaming hall. I’m NOT saying this happened, I did not play the guy, or see any of his games, just pointing out something that doesn’t seem to have been handled correctly.
HOWEVER, if this was reviewed after the event finished, the question must be asked as to “how” they identified/were alerted to the issue. You would have thought that they would have had a visible judge around the table watching – as it was a live streamed final, so, if it wasn’t caught then, it just highlights again how bad 40k judges are.
If they were told about the issues during the event, then, we need to ask the question as to why it wasn’t dealt with, while the event was on-going, due to its potential impact on the main 40k GT.

It also needs to be noted, that they’ve scored Alex a standard 15 points for sportsmanship during the GT event.

Unfortunately, this is another example of players ranking in the top 10 of an event being caught acting in an improper manner.

How would you expect them to deal with point 2?
Its not like they can go back to replay the tournament from round 1. You can change the results to 20-0's but then they played the wrong opponents in subsequent rounds and your whole swiss ranking is out of wack.

Are there any examples of sporting events - tournaments where there's something worth worrying about as a prize - where results or standings are retroactively massaged when someone's caught cheating? In the Olympics, for example, if you're caught cheating, you're kicked out and everyone below you moves up a place, that's all. There's no effort to try and figure out what might have happened in the previous rounds.

 Ordana wrote:

Kdash wrote:
Eh, ok, so i saw the start of that post on facebook, but didn't read it as i thought it was just a "hype up the winner" annoucement post... My bad.

So, my problem with this is 2-fold.

1. This should never have been posted on facebook in the first place. If all those things were noticed, called out and correct then I fully support the ban. But how it has been reported is a bit, dangerous. I can fully understand -why- they have made the post though, but, it should have been somewhere other than facebook – i.e. their own website as a notice or something. If they didn’t make the post, then the public outcry would have been just as bad, about them “knowing about cheating but not doing anything about it”. It really is a catch-22 situation where they can never win.
2. If it was spotted in the first half of the final game, at the end of day 1, then they needed to call into question his day 1 GT results, which it doesn’t appear to have happened. He won all 3 day 1 games, and 1 day 2 game. The GT 100% means more than the invitational, so you have to question if it happened in a smaller, more visible event, did it also happen in a harder to spot, packed gaming hall. I’m NOT saying this happened, I did not play the guy, or see any of his games, just pointing out something that doesn’t seem to have been handled correctly.
HOWEVER, if this was reviewed after the event finished, the question must be asked as to “how” they identified/were alerted to the issue. You would have thought that they would have had a visible judge around the table watching – as it was a live streamed final, so, if it wasn’t caught then, it just highlights again how bad 40k judges are.
If they were told about the issues during the event, then, we need to ask the question as to why it wasn’t dealt with, while the event was on-going, due to its potential impact on the main 40k GT.

It also needs to be noted, that they’ve scored Alex a standard 15 points for sportsmanship during the GT event.

Unfortunately, this is another example of players ranking in the top 10 of an event being caught acting in an improper manner.

How would you expect them to deal with point 2?
Its not like they can go back to replay the tournament from round 1. You can change the results to 20-0's but then they played the wrong opponents in subsequent rounds and your whole swiss ranking is out of wack.

Point 2, essentially revolves around games 4 and 5. I agree, you can't change games 1-3 but, if it was spotted and he was allowed to continue to play in the main event, that then has an impact on the final standings.

 Sim-Life wrote:

I don't know the organisers or how they had structured things but it seems to me like this was a case of one person with a strong personality getting things done and giving out instructions and everyone else just waiting to be told what to do by that guy. The reason I say this is because I know what it's like to be that one guy and I know that if you leave people of a certain disposition to their own devices they'll just shrug and think "I dunno what One Guy wants done so I'll just wait till he tells me." A pet hate of mine is people faffing about and not using their own initiative (possibly because I did the jobs of 3 people by myself for about 2 years) so I have a lot of sympathy for whoever One Guy is. Less so for anyone else.

I get the same impression but a different sympathy. I've known plenty of "One Guy" style leaders who wouldn't delegate a shred of responsibility and then get their knickers all in a twist when their team didn't show one shred of initiative. IMO that's on One Guy. If that's the way you want to run the show, you'd better be putting in sixteen hours a day every day of the week, because you've basically decided to do it all by yourself anyway. You sure as hell can't be out of the country then.

I should probably add that I don't know any of the people involved, don't have any stake in the LGT one way or another, and may well be talking out of my rear end This post is more a politely-intended response to Sim-Life's sympathies than to the actual LGT organization.

Alex Harrison being called out for cheating again
Who would have thought it.
Banned at last. Bout time. People joke about his play style continually but looks like things have caught up to him at last. Don't know the guy but his reputation proceeds him.

So.

Everyone got 15 points for sportsmanship bar _one_ person that got 20 points.
This seems more suggestive of a sportsmanship system which the players didn't understand or didn't use, rather than one person being amazingly sporting and everyone else being perfectly average.

I also notice my list scores are wrong. I did not/should not have scored the 15 points as I did, as my list was late, and not free of errors.
[It was, at least, correctly formatted.]

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
So.

Everyone got 15 points for sportsmanship bar _one_ person that got 20 points.
This seems more suggestive of a sportsmanship system which the players didn't understand or didn't use, rather than one person being amazingly sporting and everyone else being perfectly average.

I also notice my list scores are wrong. I did not/should not have scored the 15 points as I did, as my list was late, and not free of errors.
[It was, at least, correctly formatted.]

Sounds about par for the course with this event. Only thing that seems to be even across the board was the gakky terrain. One positive aspect out of this, there seems to be a new case study on how -not- to run a large event.

Scarecrow20 wrote:
Alex Harrison being called out for cheating again
Who would have thought it.
Banned at last. Bout time. People joke about his play style continually but looks like things have caught up to him at last. Don't know the guy but his reputation proceeds him.

Ad hominem attack - nice.

 Ordana wrote:
https://www.facebook.com/LondonGrandTournament/posts/1884689458248487

I'm conflicted on it myself. On one hand the community should take a strong stance against cheating and trying to push the envelope of what you can get away with against a player happens a lot at tournament, but mistakes also do happen, especially after 12 hours of playing on the second day of competition.
What gets me is that when the finals continued the next morning (they had to pause cause the venue was closing) he still miss played FTGG on his Hammerheads. I would think someone who found out he had been playing something wrong would double check the rule. Apparently not.

Plus there were multiple people commenting that he is known for skirting the edges.. I don't know how much truth there is to that tho.

Never heard of the guy before today, but where there is smoke...

Looks to me like LGT threw him under the bus to distract what a poor job they did. Really poor form to make such a public disclosure IMO.

On one hand it is bad form to publicly out someone. On the other he has been caught cheating and dq'd at multiple events. in both 40k and AOS. Quiet words and discrete attempts at changing his behaviour have not worked. I think it may be justified here, if they feel he has cheated.

What other events was he DQd?

 Primark G wrote:
Looks to me like LGT threw him under the bus to distract what a poor job they did. Really poor form to make such a public disclosure IMO.

Not defending it. But this is what the community has been asking TOs to do. Unfortunatly it came "after the fact" adding to the feeling of disorganization.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
So.

Everyone got 15 points for sportsmanship bar _one_ person that got 20 points.
This seems more suggestive of a sportsmanship system which the players didn't understand or didn't use, rather than one person being amazingly sporting and everyone else being perfectly average.

I also notice my list scores are wrong. I did not/should not have scored the 15 points as I did, as my list was late, and not free of errors.
[It was, at least, correctly formatted.]

Yeah I didn’t see many favourite game votes going in, if I am honest. The 1 player who got 20, was the 1 player who got 4 votes and thus auto won the “most sporting” prize.

As for the list scores, they are wrong for pretty much everyone, but I don’t know if they are going to be updated or not.

Scarecrow20 wrote:Alex Harrison being called out for cheating again
Who would have thought it.
Banned at last. Bout time. People joke about his play style continually but looks like things have caught up to him at last. Don't know the guy but his reputation proceeds him.

Precisely, you don't know me. There are a few on the scene who dislike me personally so have slandered my name and others just assume therefore that it is true. Play me first then make your own judgement mate

Primark G wrote:Looks to me like LGT threw him under the bus to distract what a poor job they did. Really poor form to make such a public disclosure IMO.

This is exactly the case. Ive spoken to Zach who apologised at how he has handled it. The post wasnt even directly from LGT but someone online hwo went through every inch of play i made, but not once went through what Geoff did. I was hung to dry, not much I can do.

CassianSol wrote:
On one hand it is bad form to publicly out someone. On the other he has been caught cheating and dq'd at multiple events. in both 40k and AOS. Quiet words and discrete attempts at changing his behaviour have not worked. I think it may be justified here, if they feel he has cheated.

Now this is the problem. You hear chinese whispers so assume it's true. I have never been DQ'd from a 40k or AOS event. Once I told a TO to dock all my points at 1 event about 3 years ago (Cally) because I used a brand new Forgeworld model incorectly. It was brought to my attention and i told the TO to give all my opponents a max win. But then people twist the truth and state that I intentionally cheated.

zedsdead wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
Looks to me like LGT threw him under the bus to distract what a poor job they did. Really poor form to make such a public disclosure IMO.

Not defending it. But this is what the community has been asking TOs to do. Unfortunately it came "after the fact" adding to the feeling of disorganization.

If I had made clear cheating during the game then fair enough. But minor mistakes which had 0 impact on the game only to be branded as a cheat is completely different. If players went through every single streamed game in the detail this man did with mine they will find a lot more "Cheaters".

Overall its LGTs way of pushing the gak fest of a tourney it was onto me. The TO, Zach, even apologised to me and told me he would do a public apology which has not happened. Its just an absolute joke.

 KillswitchUK wrote:

Scarecrow20 wrote:Alex Harrison being called out for cheating again
Who would have thought it.
Banned at last. Bout time. People joke about his play style continually but looks like things have caught up to him at last. Don't know the guy but his reputation proceeds him.

Precisely, you don't know me. There are a few on the scene who dislike me personally so have slandered my name and others just assume therefore that it is true. Play me first then make your own judgement mate

Primark G wrote:Looks to me like LGT threw him under the bus to distract what a poor job they did. Really poor form to make such a public disclosure IMO.

This is exactly the case. Ive spoken to Zach who apologised at how he has handled it. The post wasnt even directly from LGT but someone online hwo went through every inch of play i made, but not once went through what Geoff did. I was hung to dry, not much I can do.

CassianSol wrote:
On one hand it is bad form to publicly out someone. On the other he has been caught cheating and dq'd at multiple events. in both 40k and AOS. Quiet words and discrete attempts at changing his behaviour have not worked. I think it may be justified here, if they feel he has cheated.

Now this is the problem. You hear chinese whispers so assume it's true. I have never been DQ'd from a 40k or AOS event. Once I told a TO to dock all my points at 1 event about 3 years ago (Cally) because I used a brand new Forgeworld model incorectly. It was brought to my attention and i told the TO to give all my opponents a max win. But then people twist the truth and state that I intentionally cheated.

zedsdead wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
Looks to me like LGT threw him under the bus to distract what a poor job they did. Really poor form to make such a public disclosure IMO.

Not defending it. But this is what the community has been asking TOs to do. Unfortunately it came "after the fact" adding to the feeling of disorganization.

If I had made clear cheating during the game then fair enough. But minor mistakes which had 0 impact on the game only to be branded as a cheat is completely different. If players went through every single streamed game in the detail this man did with mine they will find a lot more "Cheaters".

Overall its LGTs way of pushing the gak fest of a tourney it was onto me. The TO, Zach, even apologised to me and told me he would do a public apology which has not happened. Its just an absolute joke.

Your post is full of contradictions.

First you say someone that is not part of the TO did this to you for personal reasons. Then you said the TO did this to deflect attention away from their organizing issues? Which is it?

It seems like you don't consider micro cheating actual cheating, and just want to deflect anything to the TO, people with agendas or your opponent does it too!
You say that previously you have not been DQ but offered to give away your points for playing a unit wrong. If that indeed happend , why didn't you offer the same this time since you played units incorrectly this time as well?

Where is your accountablity? You blame the TO, accuse your opponents, but little ownership speaks volume of your behaviour.

Luckily anyone can watch the video and form their own conclusions, there is no reason to play you to confirm you are certainly one of "those", which is the "personal issue" some players have with you I'm assuming.

 KillswitchUK wrote:

Scarecrow20 wrote:Alex Harrison being called out for cheating again
Who would have thought it.
Banned at last. Bout time. People joke about his play style continually but looks like things have caught up to him at last. Don't know the guy but his reputation proceeds him.

Precisely, you don't know me. There are a few on the scene who dislike me personally so have slandered my name and others just assume therefore that it is true. Play me first then make your own judgement mate

Primark G wrote:Looks to me like LGT threw him under the bus to distract what a poor job they did. Really poor form to make such a public disclosure IMO.

This is exactly the case. Ive spoken to Zach who apologised at how he has handled it. The post wasnt even directly from LGT but someone online hwo went through every inch of play i made, but not once went through what Geoff did. I was hung to dry, not much I can do.

CassianSol wrote:
On one hand it is bad form to publicly out someone. On the other he has been caught cheating and dq'd at multiple events. in both 40k and AOS. Quiet words and discrete attempts at changing his behaviour have not worked. I think it may be justified here, if they feel he has cheated.

Now this is the problem. You hear chinese whispers so assume it's true. I have never been DQ'd from a 40k or AOS event. Once I told a TO to dock all my points at 1 event about 3 years ago (Cally) because I used a brand new Forgeworld model incorectly. It was brought to my attention and i told the TO to give all my opponents a max win. But then people twist the truth and state that I intentionally cheated.

zedsdead wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
Looks to me like LGT threw him under the bus to distract what a poor job they did. Really poor form to make such a public disclosure IMO.

Not defending it. But this is what the community has been asking TOs to do. Unfortunately it came "after the fact" adding to the feeling of disorganization.

If I had made clear cheating during the game then fair enough. But minor mistakes which had 0 impact on the game only to be branded as a cheat is completely different. If players went through every single streamed game in the detail this man did with mine they will find a lot more "Cheaters".

Overall its LGTs way of pushing the gak fest of a tourney it was onto me. The TO, Zach, even apologised to me and told me he would do a public apology which has not happened. Its just an absolute joke.

Hi.

Would you mind posting screenshots of those messages from Zack for us, particularly his apology and note that he'd be making an apology, and the admission that one of his staff single handedly undermining him by posting this kind of offical attack on you without his knowledge or consent?

Thanks.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

Hi.

Would you mind posting screenshots of those messages from Zack for us, particularly his apology and note that he'd be making an apology, and the admission that one of his staff single handedly undermining him by posting this kind of offical attack on you without his knowledge or consent?

Thanks.

Im not sure it was his staff that did it. The post was shown to us in a Facebook group chat where we all laughed it off and thought nothing of it. The fact that someone went into such minute detail just goes to show how hard they wanted to see me get done for making mistakes. I am currently going through all the other footage of other players and noticed plenty of mistakes but they wont be shown publicly. Anyways, the lads in the group all said there is no way anything like that would be posted as it’s all a joke and extremely petty. Zach, the TO, is also in the group. He then basically copied and pasted said post into a LGT Facebook post for the world to see and bans me. Of course the chat goes mental as does the post. Zach messages me saying he shouldn’t have done it and an apology would be made. Ill post up later said message as I am currently at work (oopsie shouldn’t be on here dirty cheat).

As for Georff, had a chat with him and he said he had a few people warn him of me because of this “rep” of being a cheat because of the previous event I mentioned. Anyways, we had a great game and he even said he had no issues at all. The problem we did have was the mistake I made with the FTGG which I honestly did not know. We resolved the issue and moved on. No issue at all. Problem is there will always be someone on stream that will shout “cheat” at the earliest opportunity.

 KillswitchUK wrote:
The problem we did have was the mistake I made with the FTGG which I honestly did not know. We resolved the issue and moved on. No issue at all.

But you still used FtGG and your hammerheads incorrectly on day 2? It was constantly being posted in twitch chat, so that the TO's would hopefully catch it.

 KillswitchUK wrote:

If I had made clear cheating during the game then fair enough. But minor mistakes which had 0 impact on the game only to be branded as a cheat is completely different. If players went through every single streamed game in the detail this man did with mine they will find a lot more "Cheaters".

Overall its LGTs way of pushing the gak fest of a tourney it was onto me. The TO, Zach, even apologised to me and told me he would do a public apology which has not happened. Its just an absolute joke.

I see it the other way. You got called out and are trying to diffuse it saying that tourney was a gak show, where the two are mutually exclusive. How does the tourney being a gak show have anything to do with the footage? If the tourney was run crisp and clean, would it make any difference to what the footage shows? No.

You picking up the wound marker at 9:04 where you rolled one dice for a save, and picked up both that dice and another dice that was not yours looks extremely "slight of hand" https://www.twitch.tv/videos/263408718?t=0009m04s Especially when you then "realize" you picked it up and put it down with a different number. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/263408718?t=00h15m14s

The whole bumping the Hammerhead is shady AF. It looks like you were worried that Geoff was going to try to land in the middle of all of them with the charge and you were trying to close the gap. It wasn't a tap. It was a push, plain and simple. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/263408718?t=00h25m21s

The thing will you rolling the dice over in your hand saying it was a 5 instead of a 3? Again, shady AF. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/263408718?t=00h12m21s

There is plenty to look at here for anyone to make an informed opinion. These are not minor mistakes. Trying to play the victim card and say the event is using you to deflect is sounds like you are trying to deflect yourself. I was wondering why Geoff was playing so tight when I was watching the stream. Now I understand. How much of this crap would you have gotten away with if he wasn't playing you so tight? How much of this did you get away with in your other games?

Problem is you've made your mind up and won't have anything soo no point. You clearly don't know how the game was going.

Think about it....do you really think I'd change the dice rolls for my last markerlight shot to get 2 hits...you do realise 2 hits = use seeker missiles at normal BS

..which I had none of. Why the hell would I CHEAT to gain that? Use your brain instead of following the crowd and have a deep think!

As for the hammerhead. Why the hell would I nudge him forwards? He couldn't charge me as he left combat and I was already directly on the objective. Again I gain NOTHING. It's literally making me cringe how many people think I'm trying to gain an advantage which gives ZERO benefit to me!!

As requested:

https://ibb.co/cQRkY8

I'll be going through those 40 hours of footage and will be posting all the other "mistakes" people make for you all to realise we are human beings that want to just play a GAME.

I am glad to see you stand up for yourself. It is in many ways unfair for you to be subjected by multiple allegations from anon posters who were not there and going simply on hearsay. Bravo man!

Yeah I can only reiterate what has already been said, Organisation was very poor, but met and played a bunch of nice people.

I think my first game was against AdmiralHalsey who's lovely other half was able to fetch food for us during our game or I wouldn't have eaten all day.

Doubt I will return next year off the back of this, particularly when there are other events that I can go to instead. Maybe if they get their act together next year I will return the year after.

I did not go to the London GT and I have not been to 40k event, I got back into the hobby with the 8th ed release last year.

But as someone who has been looking to start going to events I have tried to follow the larger events this year, the ones I have seen in the States look awesome; nice venues, tables etc. And from the outside look like something I want to get involved in, playing games against people well painted armies on good boards whilst enjoying a few drinks. But the pictures from the London GT are shocking, not only have they let down the people who attended it but they have let down the wider community. The London GT has the reputation for being one of the grand slams of 40k and surely has the responsibility to showcase the hobby in the best possible way, I am sure people who traveled far for the event will think twice about doing it again and I hope it has not put people off attending events again. There are some who would love to see the 40k tourney scene progress to something close to the esports model, it is a long way from that and is not helped with a streamed event this big having so much negativity around it.

The other "should be large" event surely has to be the GT final at Warhammer fest? With a qualification process, this should be the event with massive hype. The fact its open to the public at a paid event like Warhammer fest with a wide range of hobbyists in attendance should be showcasing what Warhammer at the top end looks like, the tables at the GT final whilst better than the ones posted at London where pretty uninspiring... bland terrain with poor LOS blocking. Also the fact only half of the invited field turned up is pretty damning, this due to the Friday night game stuff and the weekend before the "biggest event" surely they need to come together to get these tournaments a few weeks a part at least? With regards to the terrain they gave a load out on the bits box tables. Surely GW could have provided much better terrain, I'm sure if they worked with local gaming clubs in the midlands to do a terrain build weekend where clubs spend a day making as much scenery and painting as possible with the promise they can have the terrain after the event. What would this cost GW? Not much and would help out some local groups win/win. If Games Workshop can't host an event with amazing tables then something wrong.

The community is growing strong in 40k at the moment and some people may be put off by what they hear or see or just aren't inspired enough to give up a weekend to play on poor tables and be uncomfortable all weekend. The big events need to be thinking bigger IMO, to showcase the game to a wider audience than people who can see the practicality of getting away with foam board as terrain and show the enjoyable side of entering such an event; the social aspects, enjoying the game, hobby awards etc. not just streaming the WAAC top tables.

Just out of interest how many people are part of running the London GT? I can understand its a massive task whilst working full time with organising and trying to sort terrain. Maybe they need to get some other groups in to help with certain aspects. Be awesome to see groups from all over the country pitch it to make one amazing event, a real showcase of what the UK scene can do. The States are putting us to shame at the moment.

p00rstudent wrote:
Yeah I can only reiterate what has already been said, Organisation was very poor, but met and played a bunch of nice people.

I think my first game was against AdmiralHalsey who's lovely other half was able to fetch food for us during our game or I wouldn't have eaten all day.

Doubt I will return next year off the back of this, particularly when there are other events that I can go to instead. Maybe if they get their act together next year I will return the year after.

Carnifex player!

You were great fun, it was probably my favourite game of the whole event, and definately the one with the most space to move around!
Perhaps we'll battle again, one day.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

p00rstudent wrote:
Yeah I can only reiterate what has already been said, Organisation was very poor, but met and played a bunch of nice people.

I think my first game was against AdmiralHalsey who's lovely other half was able to fetch food for us during our game or I wouldn't have eaten all day.

Doubt I will return next year off the back of this, particularly when there are other events that I can go to instead. Maybe if they get their act together next year I will return the year after.

Carnifex player!

You were great fun, it was probably my favourite game of the whole event, and definately the one with the most space to move around!
Perhaps we'll battle again, one day.

Were you the bloke with a dozen black-and-yellow Carnifexes? If so, lovely army, how did they get on?

Yup that was me, Came mid table which I consider good, Lost every game on the first day, but won every game on the second so pretty happy overall

KillswitchUK wrote:Problem is you've made your mind up and won't have anything soo no point. You clearly don't know how the game was going.

Think about it....do you really think I'd change the dice rolls for my last markerlight shot to get 2 hits...you do realise 2 hits = use seeker missiles at normal BS

..which I had none of. Why the hell would I CHEAT to gain that? Use your brain instead of following the crowd and have a deep think!

As for the hammerhead. Why the hell would I nudge him forwards? He couldn't charge me as he left combat and I was already directly on the objective. Again I gain NOTHING. It's literally making me cringe how many people think I'm trying to gain an advantage which gives ZERO benefit to me!!

As requested:

https://ibb.co/cQRkY8

I'll be going through those 40 hours of footage and will be posting all the other "mistakes" people make for you all to realize we are human beings that want to just play a GAME.

Watching the videos, either you cheated deliberately, or you got the brain of a gnat and have no business playing a tourney. Regardless not being able to play against you in a tournament is going to make a lot of people happy (please don't be dumb and say oh they're gonna be happy because I am so good) as you just seem to be the worst person to play against.

Yes the event seemed poorly organized and that sucks, and yes you appear to have cheated, and maybe even yes they are publicizing it to divert attention on to you and that is a $**TTY thing as well, but just because the event or TO is a "villain" doesn't mean you are not a "villain," We don't have to have a good guy and a bad guy here.

Edit: Also I am not sure what intentional cheating is going to look like if not like what we are seeing here, minus maybe a "look over there" maneuver... Any sort of cheating caught can be played off as a minor mistake or slip of mind, the consistency is what is really alarming. No one is going to expect a cheater to say, "okay they are STR 900 AP 47 cause I am cheating and that's how its gonna go."

TLDR: event looked disappointing to participate in, this guy appears to have cheated. Life is a series of disappointments, nothing new here.

 exploited751 wrote:
Life is a series of disappointments

Aww :(

It is impossible to know if some posters are posting these lengthy diatribes like exploited751 due to some grudge - as such they do not really carry any weight.

 Primark G wrote:
It is impossible to know if some posters are posting these lengthy diatribes like exploited751 due to some grudge - as such they do not really carry any weight.

My grudge is:

One, he played Tau and cheated, I play Tau.
Two. He cheated.
Three. Its hilarious to watch someone defend himself on the internet so lets just say that removes one grudge point due to the LOLs that this has cause.
Three again see above. It brings shame to the community.
Four. He cheated a lot
Five. He is literally doing the exact same thing he claims the Event Organizers are doing. He claims he is a scapegoat because the event was so disastrous, meanwhile he is using the event's disaster as a scapegoat to mitigate thoughts on his cheating.

I have never participated in an ITC event to date (although I am signed up for one in August) and I have never been to England and I have never met this dude, so clearly I have a personal vendetta against him due to the atrocities of the War of 1812 when the UK 9/11'd the 'muricah White House.

The only thing I know is what were in those videos on twitch.

I am not trying to be mean but I have to say you are an anon poster on the internet - your word carries no weight with me.

For someone who doesn't attend tournies you seem to know a lot about how people play mate.

 Primark G wrote:
I am not trying to be mean but I have to say you are an anon poster on the internet - your word carries no weight with me.

Welcome to the internet, did you know there are pics of naky ladies on it and you can do gambling? Also I heard you can download music from this hip new thing called napster.

This discussion isn't about me and its really not about you, this is about terrain/slightly upgraded shoeboxes, organization or lack thereof, and some dude accused of cheating. And this discussion is on the internet, and no one really knows who is who on the internet. Glad you're all caught up.

I am sorry you are unhappy with the location of the conversation you are participating in???? If you want we can all meet up at a different equally convenient location of your choosing to further this conversation and to strip away the anonymity that has plagued these forums for what seems like since they got put up.

Anyways, we are off topic, yes you don't know who I am, yes I don't know who you are, I don't care, 40k tournaments are interesting to me and I follow them slightly and this is what there is to discuss so, I, anon #312,778,014,003 am voicing my opinion of what I have perceived to have transpired from video, pictures, and second hand accounts, and I do not like what I am seeing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KillswitchUK wrote:
For someone who doesn't attend tournies you seem to know a lot about how people play mate.

Yeah there was literally hours of videos to watch. Mate...

Haha KillSwitchUK that was quite timely and relevant.

 exploited751 wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
It is impossible to know if some posters are posting these lengthy diatribes like exploited751 due to some grudge - as such they do not really carry any weight.

My grudge is:

One, he played Tau and cheated, I play Tau.
Two. He cheated.
Three. Its hilarious to watch someone defend himself on the internet so lets just say that removes one grudge point due to the LOLs that this has cause.
Three again see above. It brings shame to the community.
Four. He cheated a lot
Five. He is literally doing the exact same thing he claims the Event Organizers are doing. He claims he is a scapegoat because the event was so disastrous, meanwhile he is using the event's disaster as a scapegoat to mitigate thoughts on his cheating.

I have never participated in an ITC event to date (although I am signed up for one in August) and I have never been to England and I have never met this dude, so clearly I have a personal vendetta against him due to the atrocities of the War of 1812 when the UK 9/11'd the 'muricah White House.

The only thing I know is what were in those videos on twitch.

Which are pretty normal mistake you can make when tired and in a hurry(8th ed being slow as hell even if you don't slow play). If all you have is that one video you would have to be fool to claim he's cheating(which requires intention).

I mean for christ sake you are claiming him deliberately cheating extra marker light hit when it gains him nothing(literally. Seeker missile hits on normal BS. Very useful when you don't have any seeker missiles to shoot!). That's stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 exploited751 wrote:


Yeah there was literally hours of videos to watch. Mate...

Funny YOU then ignore all the similar cases from other players and focus on one person.

So according to you huge number of players at London GT cheated yet you only focus on one. Fair!

Fair play to Alex for coming on here and defending himself. Not the easiest thing to do I imagine.

I've seen a lot of noise about this and to be honest it does seem a lot like a distraction technique. Which is absolutely bogus.

I haven't watched the videos and I'm not going to, to me they are kind of irrelevant. Only Alex knows if he intentionally cheated and that's all that matters for me. Anyone can brain fart and make a mistake (or series of mistakes), particularly when they've had no sleep.

This whole debarcle is really negative for 40k, not just the alleged cheating but also the way it's been handled, the rules lawyering from both parties on stream and the awful terrain at the event. I can imagine why someone who is new to the game but interested in competitive events would be entirely put off by this whole affair. That is the crime here - between Alex, Geoff, the London GT organisers and the myriad of people commenting on various media outlets about this (including myself now) we have actively put people off the hobby and have tarred the reputation of its players, the game and the competitive scene.

Kdash wrote:
Ok, i've just got home from playing in the 40k GT, so a couple of thoughts from my POV.

Day 1 organisation was pretty horrendous. I was pretty "lucky" in that i managed to get close to the front of the queue when they called for it to be formed (everyone was just milling around out front before then). The bag searching was ok for what it was. Some of the security were out giving entry wrist bands to everyone in the queue (didn't even have to show them a ticket... lol...) but they started the bag search area inside, crammed into a corner. With only 3 tables. Not long after i got in they moved the setup outside, which made things easier but yeah. The "bag search" pretty much amounted to a super fast look inside and that was it. A couple of the guards were doing more thorough checks though - possibly at random.

Once through security there was registration area which amounted to 3 tables next to each other for all the events.
THEN, i had to join the queue for 40k registration and BCP event setup.
Entry was everything but streamlined.

Day 1 start was delayed for probably close on to 2 hours or so. Fortunately i spent most of the delay inside, but hundreds of people didn't.

Initially there was 1 bar open, on the 1st floor, that no-one could find easily. They also only started out with 1 member of staff behind the bar from what i was told. Queues got pretty big at times, and if you wanted a hot drink you had to queue to the tills then go back down the queue and push through it to get your own hot water and milk etc from jugs at the end of the bar.

In regards to the competition itself.

Terrain was embarrassing. Lots of people were playing the terrain differently. The "woods" amounted to an A4 sized board with cement? around the edges, the "hills" were stacks of polystyrene in a pyramid shape, and the rest was just L shaped polystyrene. None of it technically should have provided cover bonuses, but, people were just going off agreements at the start of their games. In some cases, the bits of polystyrene weren't even glued together. In most cases, it wasn't even painted or half painted.

Table wise - space was "generally" ok AFTER the 1st game. 1st game they had crammed way to many tables into 1 room they got told off for being a big fire hazard so the event then moved to tables across 3 floors.
The main issues i had was in some cases there was not enough space for people to get past each other, not all the tables were level (my game 1 and 4 were played on a table which had a massive ridge down the centre because the 2 tables the mat was on weren't the same height....) and the tables were too wide for most people. The extra width helped in some ways, but made things difficult when you had to move units on the other side of the table when you couldn't get past people to walk around.

Event organisation.
We were meant to get warnings at certain points in regards to the games remaining time length. I think this was followed maybe once. The rest of the time it was just completely random.

Table numbers were completely random as well. You'd be following the table numbers along, then suddenly you'd just up 50 tables, because the next set were on the other side of the hall for some reason.
This got even worse after game 1, because the moved the tables around, changed the numbers on the tables and then didn't tell anyone or announce it.
There was no signage on day 1 in regards to what tables were on what floor. This was semi rectified on day 2.

BCP app was, as usual in my experience, hit or miss. Sometimes it would ask for pin codes for score submission, sometimes it wouldn't. It kept logging people out randomly, and, in mine and others cases, it did not recognise the event submission pin so i had to go to the desk every game to submit scores there. It'd also often tell me i couldn't view lists due to not being in the event, after going through the "my events" section of the app and selecting the event....

The only food available was from the stadium bar, as you couldn't take any in with you. Not much in terms of options BUT, the food did come out quickly.

Due to how things went, some people didn't get a lunch break day 1 (from what they were saying though).

I only found out about things like the raffle etc due to playing one game on the top floor and i had to walk past it to get to the table... Not sure how successful it was, due to it not being advertised.

Day 2, was also delayed by an hour for some people. My game 4 started on time due to us both being at the table, many others were still stuck queuing outside. Was quicker than day 1 though.

Same issues with the tables though. Took one group of people about half an hour to find their tables due to some tables not even being numbered and tables 55-59 were nowhere near 40-54 and 60+.

Didn't have a clue where they were doing the announcements and presentation at the end until i overheard someone mention it was "upstairs". Presentation amounted to a list of names and awards being read out quickly and not always clearly. Prizes were given out on the side, away from the "stage", so i don't think i even saw one of the winners.

Didn't really get to see much in regards to the other events, beyond some guy in the 30k event having an amazing looking Thunderhawk.


365 people took part in the 40k event (well, recorded at least 1 result anyway).


I know someone joked about the terrain having been delievered a couple of days before the event somewhere on dakka sometime midweek, but, i didn't expect them to actually be right.

On the plus side, atmosphere and players were pretty fantastic all weekend, despite all the confusion, eye rolling and organisational frustrations. I certainly had a good time when playing my games, but, it was the people that made them, and not the event. Whether or not i go next year is completely 50/50 at this stage, as i know i can go to better events around the country for less cost.

All of this is as expected. I listened to the Allies of Convenience episode with the organiser Zach and all I can say is that I think he's delusional. Everything he says is focused on getting a bigger event as fast as possible, and every time the host tries to bring him back to reality he dismisses it with 'we'll just work harder!' or 'maybe... but we want to be as big as Adepticon!' I have very little faith that the event will be an better run next yesr.

As someone who worked on Adepticon staff in the early years, he couldn't be taken a more incorrect approach.

Adepticon is not successful because it is large. Adepticon is large because it is successful. The amount of weekends we put in on terrain building alone. The help we accepted from local clubs to get all of the tables up to snuff. The planning for the next year that begins almost immediately after the last box is put away from the current year.

There are lessons to take from Adepticon. "Size" is not one of them.

Shotgun wrote:
As someone who worked on Adepticon staff in the early years, he couldn't be taken a more incorrect approach.

Adepticon is not successful because it is large. Adepticon is large because it is successful. The amount of weekends we put in on terrain building alone. The help we accepted from local clubs to get all of the tables up to snuff. The planning for the next year that begins almost immediately after the last box is put away from the current year.

There are lessons to take from Adepticon. "Size" is not one of them.

"It's not how big it is, but what you do with it"

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Fair play to Alex for coming on here and defending himself. Not the easiest thing to do I imagine.

I've seen a lot of noise about this and to be honest it does seem a lot like a distraction technique. Which is absolutely bogus.

I haven't watched the videos and I'm not going to, to me they are kind of irrelevant. Only Alex knows if he intentionally cheated and that's all that matters for me. Anyone can brain fart and make a mistake (or series of mistakes), particularly when they've had no sleep.

This whole debarcle is really negative for 40k, not just the alleged cheating but also the way it's been handled, the rules lawyering from both parties on stream and the awful terrain at the event. I can imagine why someone who is new to the game but interested in competitive events would be entirely put off by this whole affair. That is the crime here - between Alex, Geoff, the London GT organisers and the myriad of people commenting on various media outlets about this (including myself now) we have actively put people off the hobby and have tarred the reputation of its players, the game and the competitive scene.

There is no better summary than this. Only he will know what he did and the rest of us can spout our opinions and the relevance is lost because we are all internet nobodies here. Kudos to Alex for coming on and facing the hate. I however have watched the video and have made my opinions clear on this in another thread and the way the London GT handled this was just poor. It does just leave a bitter taste to what should have been a landmark event for the UK scene. I live in London and was sorely disappointed that I didn't get a chance to go but now I'm kinda happy I didn't. I will probably try and make it next year but Zach's attitude in this whole debacle seems to be shocking. They need to make an unreserved apology to Alex for the way they handled this even if they choose to maintain the ban.

 Corrode wrote:

All of this is as expected. I listened to the Allies of Convenience episode with the organiser Zach and all I can say is that I think he's delusional. Everything he says is focused on getting a bigger event as fast as possible, and every time the host tries to bring him back to reality he dismisses it with 'we'll just work harder!' or 'maybe... but we want to be as big as Adepticon!' I have very little faith that the event will be an better run next yesr.[/quote

Sigh. That's what you get when you get illusions of grandeur and think bigger is automatically better.