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Did Christian steal the initiative?

No, he didn't need to.

In both games, he went 1st.

congrats on the win! i'm pretty bummed I couldn't make it out there. I had ZERO illusions of making it past round one, but it still sounded fun.

Blackmoor wrote:
If a TO wants to run a large event they need to make a lot of terrain like Mike Brandt at the NOVA Open, or limit the numbers of entrants like the 11th Company does for their tournaments.

Yeah, that photo shows the terrain being unloaded, not actually set. Each table had roughly 25% coverage (although we did have an issue with someone repeatedly removing two ruins from table 18 and putting them on an empty table in the back of the room).

Top four finishers, in order:

Necrons
Grey Knights
Eldar/Dark Eldar
Sisters of Battle

Thanks for coming, everyone! We had a great time. We'll be posting an in-depth tournament breakdown sometime this week.

robpace wrote:Yeah, that photo shows the terrain being unloaded, not actually set. Each table had roughly 25% coverage (although we did have an issue with someone repeatedly removing two ruins from table 18 and putting them on an empty table in the back of the room).

I had quite a bit of fun at this tournament, and I greatly appreciate the effort that you & your crew put into the event, Rob. Excepting the "cash only" nature of the adjacent (beer-selling!) snack bar, the venue was fantastic, and once we got started, everything seemed to run pretty smoothly. I ran into a few first-major-event players, and they were very happy with the experience, so you've brought some fresh blood into the fold. Please accept my sincere thanks, and my sincere congratulations.

But that wasn't 25%. 25% of a 6x4 table is 6 square feet of terrain; most of the tables might have had half of that. Worse, most of the hills tended to be lurking towards the edges of the boards (or up against the edges, as with those otherwise nice large hills with one completely flat edge), where they had zero game impact. A fair number of the tables had zero area terrain (because the ruins had no bases, there were zero forests, and the few rivers/lakes aren't area terrain in 6e), which presents a unique problem for Tyranids - "lurking" Tyranids have no where to run to (and it's not a great situation for my poor Ymgarl, either).

Janthkin wrote:But that wasn't 25%. 25% of a 6x4 table is 6 square feet of terrain; most of the tables might have had half of that. Worse, most of the hills tended to be lurking towards the edges of the boards (or up against the edges, as with those otherwise nice large hills with one completely flat edge), where they had zero game impact. A fair number of the tables had zero area terrain (because the ruins had no bases, there were zero forests, and the few rivers/lakes aren't area terrain in 6e), which presents a unique problem for Tyranids - "lurking" Tyranids have no where to run to (and it's not a great situation for my poor Ymgarl, either).

The lack of bases on ruins is something we'll address prior to future events. We fully planned on basing each ruin (you probably noticed that a number were based, but the Shrine of the Aquila kits weren't), but we spent the past week dealing with insurance and police over a burglary at the store and that put us way behind schedule on terrain. Construction of additional area terrain also got cut, and for the same reason. Future events will feature a more balanced selection of terrain on each board.

Thanks for coming, and I appreciate the feedback. We had a great weekend, and I'm glad you enjoyed yourself!

Put out a call for help building terrain before your next event - I'll come help!

It can be difficult to keep on top of battle reports and feedback in different forums and sites. If you attended the Golden Throne San Jose, please use this link to give us your feedback!

Great tournament!

We had a lot of fun and for a first year event, it was very good.

I will write up a detailed report (as I do for every tournament) very soon with all my and the team's input.

Glad to see so many friends!

Congratz to Jy2 on the win, well played to you.

Cinematic moment of the tournament for me:

Tyranids vs. Sam Hain Eldar (with Dark Eldar biker & Venom-mounted allies).

Top of turn 2, the Eldar jetbike Seer council approaches the one mysterious forest on the table (possibly in the entire hall), and discovers that it is a Carnivorous Forest.

Bottom of turn 2, Ymgarl Genestealers erupt from the forest, Gargoyles fly over & through it, and lock the Seer Council into combat, in the carnivorous forest, for the rest of the game. For a while, the forest had a higher body count than the two sets of combatants combined.

Any info on the lists used? I'm super curious to see the initial take on tournament lists in 6th.

As we predicted the top lists were MSU, Flyers and Deathstars.

Stoffer wrote:Any info on the lists used? I'm super curious to see the initial take on tournament lists in 6th.

We'll be posting an in-depth breakdown of the metagame this week.

Reecius wrote:As we predicted the top lists were MSU, Flyers and Deathstars.

I'm having a rough time figuring out what else there is in the game. Help?

robpace wrote:

Stoffer wrote:Any info on the lists used? I'm super curious to see the initial take on tournament lists in 6th.

We'll be posting an in-depth breakdown of the metagame this week.

Reecius wrote:As we predicted the top lists were MSU, Flyers and Deathstars.

I'm having a rough time figuring out what else there is in the game. Help?

Awesome, thanks.

robpace wrote:

Reecius wrote:As we predicted the top lists were MSU, Flyers and Deathstars.

I'm having a rough time figuring out what else there is in the game. Help?

Hybrid/Foot Sisters?

Amerikon wrote:

robpace wrote:

Reecius wrote:As we predicted the top lists were MSU, Flyers and Deathstars.

I'm having a rough time figuring out what else there is in the game. Help?

Hybrid/Foot Sisters?

Tyranids.

Janthkin wrote:

Amerikon wrote:

robpace wrote:

Reecius wrote:As we predicted the top lists were MSU, Flyers and Deathstars.

I'm having a rough time figuring out what else there is in the game. Help?

Hybrid/Foot Sisters?

Tyranids.

I was just going to add Nidzilla . Tyranids are not too , Vince was pretty high up on the last round wasn't he? What place did you end up finishing in?

Reecius wrote:As we predicted the top lists were MSU, Flyers and Deathstars.

Weren't the top lists balanced Necrons (four flyers is not a spam), non-MSU Grey Knights/IG (all ten-man squads), balanced Sisters, and deathstar Eldar/Dark Eldar? Aside from the one Eldar list, I'd say the tournament was more than anything a victory for balanced armies...

Yeah, Nids were kicking ass, too. I was going to bring Nids as well, but I just didn't have time to put them together.

And Amerikon's sisters I think are a good representation of a solid 6th list as well, with a majority of skirmishing infantry units on foot. Celestine in book missions is crazy good, too.

@Robpace

Are you being sarcastic or was that a literal question? There are tons of other builds. Those three were the builds we were thinking would be the top and they were, that was my only point.

It was good to see a lot of the theory applies in a tournament setting as a lot of the stuff we were worried about turned out to be no big deal and a lot of the stuff we thought to be crappy, really were.

It definitely affected how we will structure our events gong forward as I thought it would. The more experience we get, the better the format we can build.


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@Fetterkey

No really. The GK list was hard core MSU, the Crons were Flyer/Wraith spam, and the Dark Harliestar list was what it was.

The Sisters army was the only one I think you could call balanced, TBH.


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And I guess you could call say that 4 flyers wasn't spamming, but at 1500 pts it was more than anyone could deal with. He only had 4 minimum sized warrior squads for troops and wraiths. It was not what I would consider a "balanced" list per se, but that is pretty subjective.

Maybe I'm mixed up-- I thought the GK army was Julian's GK with IG allies?

Reecius wrote:@Robpace

Are you being sarcastic or was that a literal question? There are tons of other builds. Those three were the builds we were thinking would be the top and they were, that was my only point.

It was good to see a lot of the theory applies in a tournament setting as a lot of the stuff we were worried about turned out to be no big deal and a lot of the stuff we thought to be crappy, really were.

No, I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm just having a hard time following you. In the top four we literally had one deathstar army, one Flyer army, one MSU army, and one 'standard' army. Each of those armies made it to the top four through exceptional play -- Jim in particular was interesting to watch, because his mastery of his Flyers was fantastic. I think we may just have different ways of thinking about things. No big deal. I'm glad to hear that you're not worried about sixth being difficult to play competitively anymore.

Just to clarify, Christian Alessi's MSU army was the Grey Knights, and he finished in second place. Julian's army was the IG/GK allies.

Nope, it was Chrsitian's Coteaz GK, with 3 man units in Psybacks, Psyfilmen dreads, 5 man purifier squads and a Dreadknight. Like 19 KP or something crazy?

It was a bummer because the last mission was Jy2 vs. Christian for the second time. Christian beat him in an objective mission round 6 of the event, and then Rob said the finals would be KP. Jim only had 11 KP, 4 of which were flyers, and 2 of which were Wraith squads. Wasn't much of a game which stinks as the 2 semi-final games were incredible, both came down to the last toss of the dice.

I really don't think KP is a good choice for a final game in 6th (or any edition, really). It is too imbalanced of a mission, and it is only 1/6 of book missions. I think choosing the least common mission for the final game of a GT is a poor choice. It would be like choosing dawn of war, cap and control for a final mission in 5th, IMO.

I can see his logic though, as game 7 was just straight objectives, and the finals were straight KP. It was just a bit of a bummer to see such a lopsided final game as Christian had nowhere to hide on the table (first year tournaments suffer from a lack of terrain as we know all too well) and just got shot up by flyers.

Rob also made a really questionable rules call in that game that essentially gave the game to Jy2. He ruled mid-game that Coteaz couldn't use his special rule to shoot units coming in from reserves from inside a vehicle after both players had decided to play that you could, and Christian had geared his entire strategy around it.

After rolling 4 6's to hit an incoming flyer, Rob said he couldn't complete the action despite the fact that the two players had already been playing it that way and Christian had completed a shooting action using that rule form inside his Rhino once that turn already. He also wouldn't allow Christian to get his unit out of the transport which he could have done had he known that was the way the game was going to be played from the start.

After both players had already agreed to go one way, that was a bad call, IMO. I am not at all trying to throw Rob under the bus here, but as an observer it felt like a really, really bad way to rule it as neither player even asked about it. I think it was too late and far too harsh on Chrsitian to go that route literally, mid action. Had he at least been able to get out of his transport (which he would have done had he known that was the ruling that would be made) it would have been somewhat fair. But having just rolled 4 6's to hit an incoming flyer with psycannons and then being told you couldn't do it was rough. At that point it was game over as Chrsitian was completely over-extended in Jim's deployment zone and his entire plan fell apart as he and Jim had been playing that he could in fact do that.

Jim came in from reserves with some Wraiths thinking he could assault, but found out he couldn't, and wasn't allowed to change his move, which was Rob's counter, but I don't think that was a good analog. That is a basic rule book rule that Jim forgot, while Christian's ruling was based off of the Necron FAQ, I believe, and not so clear cut. Both players had agreed to it pre-game as well.

At any rate, I don't want to bog this down, and there are no hard feelings on any of our side as we understand rulings have to be made, but we did feel that that was a really bad call and it essentially decided the game.

Reecius wrote:I really don't think KP is a good choice for a final game in 6th (or any edition, really). It is too imbalanced of a mission, and it is only 1/6 of book missions. I think choosing the least common mission for the final game of a GT is a poor choice. It would be like choosing dawn of war, cap and control for a final mission in 5th, IMO.

I can see his logic though, as game 7 was just straight objectives, and the finals were straight KP. It was just a bit of a bummer to see such a lopsided final game as Christian had nowhere to hide on the table (first year tournaments suffer from a lack of terrain as we know all too well) and just got shot up by flyers.

My understanding is that the two final missions were determined randomly ahead of time, but kept secret.

robpace wrote:

Reecius wrote:@Robpace

Are you being sarcastic or was that a literal question? There are tons of other builds. Those three were the builds we were thinking would be the top and they were, that was my only point.

It was good to see a lot of the theory applies in a tournament setting as a lot of the stuff we were worried about turned out to be no big deal and a lot of the stuff we thought to be crappy, really were.

No, I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm just having a hard time following you. In the top four we literally had one deathstar army, one Flyer army, one MSU army, and one 'standard' army. Each of those armies made it to the top four through exceptional play -- Jim in particular was interesting to watch, because his mastery of his Flyers was fantastic. I think we may just have different ways of thinking about things. No big deal. I'm glad to hear that you're not worried about sixth being difficult to play competitively anymore.

Just to clarify, Christian Alessi's MSU army was the Grey Knights, and he finished in second place. Julian's army was the IG/GK allies.

Must be a disconnect here as we essentially said the same thing.

We predicted MSU, Deathstars and Flyer based lists would be the lists to beat.

In the finals we had:

MSU
Flyer based list
Deathstar
Standard list

Pretty much the exact results we anticipated are what we got.

I am not in any way trying to say the lists won (I never say that, and 2 of those guys were my teammates, haha) just that those were the builds we felt would be most powerful. Combine that with good players and you get somewhat predictable results.


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Amerikon wrote:

Reecius wrote:I really don't think KP is a good choice for a final game in 6th (or any edition, really). It is too imbalanced of a mission, and it is only 1/6 of book missions. I think choosing the least common mission for the final game of a GT is a poor choice. It would be like choosing dawn of war, cap and control for a final mission in 5th, IMO.

I can see his logic though, as game 7 was just straight objectives, and the finals were straight KP. It was just a bit of a bummer to see such a lopsided final game as Christian had nowhere to hide on the table (first year tournaments suffer from a lack of terrain as we know all too well) and just got shot up by flyers.

My understanding is that the two final missions were determined randomly ahead of time, but kept secret.

I don't know how they were determined and could only speculate (which is what I was doing, maybe I wasn't clear enough in that). I was assuming it was decided ahead of time, but I do not know that.

Why they were kept secret I don't know, there's no reason to.

And I want to be crystal clear, we are not even insinuating that anything improper was going on, but when we're all gearing up for the finals and they announce it's KP in a really bad match-up for our guy, it is a bit of a bummer, obviously. It is what it is, and I was offering my opinions on it as a final mission (whether intentional or not). Honestly, even if it was random, the final game in a GT shouldn't have a random mission, IMO.

Reecius wrote:Nope, it was Chrsitian's Coteaz GK, with 3 man units in Psybacks, Psyfilmen dreads, 5 man purifier squads and a Dreadknight. Like 19 KP or something crazy?

It was a bummer because the last mission was Jy2 vs. Christian for the second time. Christian beat him in an objective mission round 6 of the event, and then Rob said the finals would be KP. Jim only had 11 KP, 4 of which were flyers, and 2 of which were Wraith squads. Wasn't much of a game which stinks as the 2 semi-final games were incredible, both came down to the last toss of the dice.

I really don't think KP is a good choice for a final game in 6th (or any edition, really). It is too imbalanced of a mission, and it is only 1/6 of book missions. I think choosing the least common mission for the final game of a GT is a poor choice. It would be like choosing dawn of war, cap and control for a final mission in 5th, IMO.

I can see his logic though, as game 7 was just straight objectives, and the finals were straight KP. It was just a bit of a bummer to see such a lopsided final game as Christian had nowhere to hide on the table (first year tournaments suffer from a lack of terrain as we know all too well) and just got shot up by flyers.

Rob also made a really questionable rules call in that game that essentially gave the game to Jy2. He ruled mid-game that Coteaz couldn't use his special rule to shoot units coming in from reserves from inside a vehicle after both players had decided to play that you could, and Christian had geared his entire strategy around it.

After rolling 4 6's to hit an incoming flyer, Rob said he couldn't complete the action despite the fact that the two players had already been playing it that way and Christian had completed a shooting action using that rule form inside his Rhino once that turn already. He also wouldn't allow Christian to get his unit out of the transport which he could have done had he known that was the way the game was going to be played from the start.

After both players had already agreed to go one way, that was a bad call, IMO. I am not at all trying to throw Rob under the bus here, but as an observer it felt like a really, really bad way to rule it as neither player even asked about it. I think it was too late and far too harsh on Chrsitian to go that route literally, mid action. Had he at least been able to get out of his transport (which he would have done had he known that was the ruling that would be made) it would have been somewhat fair. But having just rolled 4 6's to hit an incoming flyer with psycannons and then being told you couldn't do it was rough. At that point it was game over as Chrsitian was completely over-extended in Jim's deployment zone and his entire plan fell apart as he and Jim had been playing that he could in fact do that.

Jim came in from reserves with some Wraiths thinking he could assault, but found out he couldn't, and wasn't allowed to change his move, which was Rob's counter, but I don't think that was a good analog. That is a basic rule book rule that Jim forgot, while Christian's ruling was based off of the Necron FAQ, I believe, and not so clear cut. Both players had agreed to it pre-game as well.

At any rate, I don't want to bog this down, and there are no hard feelings on any of our side as we understand rulings have to be made, but we did feel that that was a really bad call and it essentially decided the game.

Reece, a whole bunch of that post is a fabrication, and the tone's pretty damn offensive.

I was not watching the match when Jim walked onto the board with his Wraiths and asked me if Christian could Overwatch from a transport. I told him that he couldn't assault from Reserves, which he either didn't know or had forgotten. When determining how far past moving those models on the board the game had progressed, Christian told me that he'd already fired with Coteaz at them. At that point I made it clear that 1) both players had agreed that the Wraiths were on the board and moved past that action, so they were to stay where they were, and 2) Coteaz needs line of sight for his ability, which per the BRB he can't claim from inside a transport.

Those were my rulings. Christian didn't ask if he could disembark (you did, which was inappropriate during a final game where spectators should never influence strategic decisions).

While players do have some amount of flexibility in their games (like deciding what's area terrain vs. a Mysterious Pool, etc), these are hard-and-fast rules and it's fully my responsibility as a judge to make sure that the final game is not determined by a misunderstood rule.

Insofar as Kill Points go: it was a rough matchup for Christian, that's for sure. It was also randomly determined prior to the event (as was the semi-final game), and I'm sure that a player as skilled as Christian took the possibility of Kill Points into account when building his list. On our end, we took the possibility of bad dice or matchups in the finals into account and gave both players a 2000pt army for making it to the finals -- the last game was to determine the dollar value of those armies. I don't know of many other Grand Tournaments that go to that level of expense to make sure that players are rewarded for skillful play and not unduly punished by poor luck.

None of my post was fabrication, actually. You are right though, that it was my suggestion to at least allow him to get out of his transport. That was inappropriate, and I apologize. But nothing I said was a fabrication, I watched the entire thing play out.

If I offended you, then I apologize again. I went out of my way to say that I was not trying to demonize you or your event. if you read my post again you will see that I was empathizing with a lot of your choices, I just disagreed with a couple very critical ones.

As with Jim's game against Frankie, when Jim rolled too many attacks in the combat that decided the game, and then rolled a 9 for his leadership check, Jim and Frankie decided that Jim would reroll his 2 warriors' attacks and the result was that Jim lost combat by 2, which means he would have failed the morale check and most likely lost the game. You then ruled that he should be able to reroll his leadership test, which he passed and that was the game. Jim got the benefit of his mistake but not the penalty. His leadership check should have remained as it had already been rolled. His making a mistake should not have resulted in a benefit to him.

Again, I want to be TOTALLY clear. No one here thinks it was on purpose, no one thinks you were being improper, it just FELT like 2 judges rulings had a very big part in determining the result of both games in the finals. In the heat of the moment you have to make a choice though, and I am sure there are folks out there that feel that I have made bad calls too, and I am sure that I have.

There's no sour grapes on our end, we aren't trying to say the event was anything but fun and a success. It was just tough to see that twice in a row in the finals.

I don't mean to offend, but I am also not going to not express an honest criticism. How you choose to receive it is up to you. We fully intend to support your events going forward and to help to grow them in any way we can. Like I said, there's no hard feelings on our end at all so I ask that you take this in the spirit it is intended and not as a slight.

Congrats jy2 on the win, very interested to read the reports from all the participants. How many attended the event?

Reecius wrote:I don't mean to offend, but I am also not going to not express an honest criticism. How you choose to receive it is up to you. We fully intend to support your events going forward and to help to grow them in any way we can. Like I said, there's no hard feelings on our end at all so I ask that you take this in the spirit it is intended and not as a slight.

Sorry for not being more clear: I'm cool with listening to your opinions, whatever they are. I get that it's not intentional, but I'm not cool with your post getting facts wrong and putting a spin on my actions. Saying that I made a ruling specifically to hurt one player as a counter to another ruling made to hurt the opponent is totally wrong and out of line -- not to mention the fact that you got the sequence of events mixed up.

I understand that you don't think KP should be the finals match. I disagree, but I'll put your opinion in the mix when we're discussing the format for future events. I appreciate the feedback, and I do want to know if you have any other concerns you'd like to see addressed for future events.


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BladeWalker wrote:Congrats jy2 on the win, very interested to read the reports from all the participants. How many attended the event?

Watching Jim play was nuts -- I've played a lot of games, and I've watched even more. I rarely see games where I go, "Wait, what?", but Jim's games were like that. The biggest drawback to Necron Flyers is their limited range of motion, and I learned a lot by watching his strategies.

We had 60 total players.

Rereading my post I can see why you would think I was putting a spin on it, sorry about that. I probably didn't word it the best way that I could have.

We don't think that you were trying to influence the game at all, we understand all too well how hard it can be to make judgement calls in a game, particularly when you're doing it on your own, that's rough.

So, I owe you an apology, I can easily see how that came across as an attack, but I truly didn't mean it to be. It was like watching your Football team play and get a touchdown called back due to a call you disagree with and shouting at the TV.

You did a great job, Rob, it was a super fun tournament and we're excited for next year. If you need extra terrain or anything like that, all you have to do is ask, we've got piles of it and would be happy to bring it out.

And you have every right to run your event the way you want to. You can take mine (or anyone's) advice and toss it in the old round file, and that would be totally fair and I wouldn't take offense. I know a lot of the advice that we get on how to run the BAO we don't use. I appreciate the fact that you do listen to us, though, as our intention is only to help improve things as we want you to succeed.

So sorry for presenting my beef in a bad way, I should have said it better. I hope there's no hard feelings.

Reecius wrote:Rereading my post I can see why you would think I was putting a spin on it, sorry about that. I probably didn't word it the best way that I could have.

We don't think that you were trying to influence the game at all, we understand all too well how hard it can be to make judgement calls in a game, particularly when you're doing it on your own, that's rough.

So, I owe you an apology, I can easily see how that came across as an attack, but I truly didn't mean it to be. It was like watching your Football team play and get a touchdown called back due to a call you disagree with and shouting at the TV.

You did a great job, Rob, it was a super fun tournament and we're excited for next year. If you need extra terrain or anything like that, all you have to do is ask, we've got piles of it and would be happy to bring it out.

And you have every right to run your event the way you want to. You can take mine (or anyone's) advice and toss it in the old round file, and that would be totally fair and I wouldn't take offense. I know a lot of the advice that we get on how to run the BAO we don't use. I appreciate the fact that you do listen to us, though, as our intention is only to help improve things as we want you to succeed.

So sorry for presenting my beef in a bad way, I should have said it better. I hope there's no hard feelings.

Not at all, buddy. Next time we hang out I'll buy you a beer with a straw.