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So I just got a reply from "conquestion". They didn't give me any rules, but they did tell me they have a team of judges assembled and everything is in order... worst case I'll see you guys in the lounge!

This is looking kinda dismal...

Thats almost why I am pumped to go. I am looking at this like its a teijuana donkey show. Its going to be the most horrible thing ever witnessed, but I won't be able to avert my eyes out of sheer curiosity. That and I have family/friends in the area to get drunk with. Worst case scenario, I play some new people and play some boardgames with the pals all night.
~Q


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ps- I'll be the huge bearded guy playing Brettonians, probably wearing a packer hat.

So how did it go?

Don't know, I wound up getting viiolently ill and had to cancel my flight and hotel booking. In the grand scheme of things, I think I was probably better off sick in bed all weekend, though I could have lived with without the money blown on the plane ticket.

My 2 cents having come back from the tournament:

First, the bad:

-Everything said about lack of organization was true, and the con overall was pretty poorly attended and not much going on, from what I saw in between and after games.

-The judges for the GT were all assembled within a week of the event, and the terrain was collected last minute from local stores and clubs.

- Some of the tables were very difficult to roll dice on, as they were very thickly textured, and some of the terrain was rather dismal.

The Good:

-The judges and organizers really did a good job of bringing the event off. I think that whoever organized the entire event and held off on assembling judges until the last minute deserves condemnation, but the folks who actually showed up to run the thing were awesome. Hats off to the crew.

-The layout for the tournament was very nice- spacer tables were provided so there was plenty of room for display boards, chairs, and drinks.

-The missions were challenging and required some out of the box thinking. Even though some of them were rather disadvantageous to my army, they were all at least fresh.

-The Players: this is the best part of the whole tourney. There were over 70 players there and the majority of those were really well-painted, well-themed armies with display boards and the whole nine yards. I think I saw only 2 armies that weren't finished, and I would say the bulk of the armies there were well above average for appearance and display. I didn't have a bad opponent in five games, and had two of the best 40k games of my life on the second day. I met several great people over the weekend who I will hope to be gaming with over the years to come.

Overall, the Con was rather rough around the edges, but very fun. If the current crew of judges and organizers (I'm talking about the people who were in the room, not whoever decided to wait until the last minute to get them there) come back next year, I'll most likely go again.

So in summary, some elements were a little lacking, and I might be more disgruntled if I was a serious tournament player, but I'm a hobbyist and I met great people, saw and played against many beautiful armies, and really, that's what makes the hobby for me, so I'm quite glad I went.

I am happy all went well. 70 players is a big drop from the 140 last year.

How did you do?
Doc

Thanks, Doc. I placed 10th overall with 2 draws, 2 wins, and a loss, which is a quite a bit better than I expected, as I don't play tournaments often.

Josh Dearth and Jared Maggard did an outstanding job considering they picked it up at the last minute. I've seen people step up. But these guys stepped up BIG and filled some big shoes. They called people they know in the community including store owners and bargained with local GW shops to bring terrain. Josh personally brought hundreds of dollars worth of unopened boxed sets in addition to the provided prize support.

I think most people know the shenanigans the original "organizers" and certain participants have pulled the past couple years. Hopefully next year the Convention can build on the success (albeit rushed preparation) of this year's tournament. If they bring back Josh and Jared and give them enough time to prepare... then I think they will have all the prizes, tables, judges, computer-scoring software, etc. to pull off a smooth tournament.

Josh and Jared were outstanding!
The missions were cool and made you think.
And as I had expected, the players that were there were great to hang out with and had some pretty stellar models.
As said above, if those two guys knew they were putting that tournament on next year it will be just grand (pun intended).

Joshua Dearth and Jared Maggard did a fantastic job with the short notice they had... I ♥ their faces...

I figured I'd apologize for those last couple of scenarios if anyone had a major problem with them. I know they were rather unorthodox. I am not trying to excuse them in any way, but we had very little time to write them and even less time to play test them. We were hoping the balanace was maintained well enough, but as we saw there were definitely a few things that would need to be tweaked if we ran anything similar again.

But on to the main reason for this post. I hope that everyone was able to at least enjoy themselves enough to fight back a little bit of this negative image that Conquest has generated in the past few years. With that I also learned how much I actually enjoy running these tourneys and how rewarding they can be as a judge rather than a player.

So my question to the community is this: Would the community like it if there were more of these style tournaments in the year? I was thinking of organizing four tournaments a year to include a 40K tourney, a Fantasy tourney, a Team 40K tourney, and a Team Fantasy tourney. I have already assembled a crew to start building themed terrain/tables. I am already in negotiations with a couple of locations to hold the events. They would be two day events with food provided and hopefully quite a bit of really good prize support. I would be hopefully be able to alleviate some of the issues that arose this past weekend by being able to have ample time for planning and execution. I just need to know if the community wants it to happen.

I was looking at trying to keep the event in the Tacoma area so that it would be centrally located for the majority of the community. If this seems like something you all would like to see happen, please let me know as I would love be able to contribute to bringing the NW Gaming community back to the previous glory it once had. Thanks again for everyone who showed up this past weekend and I hope to see you all again in the future.

can you post the missions? maybe a results sheet?
Thanks

Josh:
Is the GT at the con completely out from under Mondo Vega now or is he still in charge?

I actually saved a copy of the scenario for the first game on Sunday. I can't wait to try it again with some friends of mine.
You shouldn't second guess yourself at all J_Dearth, for what you were handed you did an excellent job. I would definately try to make it out if you ran another tournament. You bring a great combination of "fun with an iron fist".

And a team tournament would be a blast!

J_Dearth wrote:So my question to the community is this: Would the community like it if there were more of these style tournaments in the year? I was thinking of organizing four tournaments a year to include a 40K tourney, a Fantasy tourney, a Team 40K tourney, and a Team Fantasy tourney. I have already assembled a crew to start building themed terrain/tables. I am already in negotiations with a couple of locations to hold the events. They would be two day events with food provided and hopefully quite a bit of really good prize support. I would be hopefully be able to alleviate some of the issues that arose this past weekend by being able to have ample time for planning and execution. I just need to know if the community wants it to happen.

First of all major kudos for stepping and up and ensuring that ConQuest happened. I know I was a bit negative in this thread but at the end of the day a lot of people had shelled out money and made plans to attend -- I am glad they were rewarded with a solid event.

As a resident of eastern Washington and a frequent traveller to events on the coast I am all for it and would try and make it to your 40k event if the date works out.

My only plea/comment is to take into account the other events being planned around the area. There's TSHFT that already does something similar to what you propose (40k in March and Sept, WHFB is May and Nov). OFCC in Portland/vancouver area in mid August. For us Eastsiders there's GameCon in January and SpoCon in late July early August. There's also events up in Canada and there's a good chunk of Canuks that make the trip down to Seattle area events. Now of course you can only do so much in that regard, just something to consider.

Phazael wrote:Josh:
Is the GT at the con completely out from under Mondo Vega now or is he still in charge?

Unfortuantely (and yes, I realize I'm not Josh, but I did help out with the GT with Doc Dragon last year) the con is ran by Mondo and because the GT is part of the con, he unfortunately does have his hands in it.

Ewwww, I vote run an event the same weekend somewhere else. Don't let that bastard get a single penny out of this community. But that's just me.

J_Dearth wrote:I figured I'd apologize for those last couple of scenarios if anyone had a major problem with them. I know they were rather unorthodox. I am not trying to excuse them in any way, but we had very little time to write them and even less time to play test them. We were hoping the balanace was maintained well enough, but as we saw there were definitely a few things that would need to be tweaked if we ran anything similar again.

Hey there,

First off, thanks again for stepping up and making the event come off. I really had a blast. I have mixed feelings about the last 2 scenarios - I felt that the whole game night fighting was a biiiiig disadvantage to my Imperial Guard army, especially considering the amount of bonus points that could be earned through killing units in hand to hand. However, it was very interesting in that it got us to play the game in a little different way, and I can see what the intent was - to get people out of their comfort zones for the army and engaging in desperate close-guarters firefights and assaults. In retrospect, I wish I could play that mission again, because I think I learned a lot from it, and you did warn us that if we tried to play it in our regular way, we would probably lose. I proceeded to do just that! I wish I had thought a bit more about it, because now I would do things very differently. I might actually replay it with my friend Jason who was there also, and see what happens.

The very last mission, with the search for the one objective mechanic, was a little too random for my tastes, as if the single objective of the game happens to turn up in the back corner of your opponents deployment zone, it could be a very freakish outcome, with some armies struggling even to contest. (In my case, the game was actually EPIC and the most fun game of the day for both my opponent and I.)

I appreciate the stress that y'all were under to get those missions up, but in future, my 2 cents of feedback would be to minimize randomness in such crucial elements of the game, and if a mission seriously disadvantages some styles of army, then another mission at the tourney better reverse that! (I joked with my friends that after the night fight mission, we needed a mission where all troops were having very emotional days, and would only fight in close combat on a 4+) .

The funny thing is, even though I felt the scenarios could be better in the last 2 games, they were the best games of the whole weekend for me, and I had the most fun on Sunday. I really appreciate the work that went into the event at the last minute, and I would be interested in seeing what else you folks put together! I especially LOVED the idea of a terrain-building tournament! That is one of my favorite parts of the hobby, and one that is underlooked.

I would definitely be down for some more events in the Seattle / Tacoma area. I am not sure how much else is going on there already, and if more events would just cannibalize players and enthusiasm, but I for one would definitely be interested in getting to more events in the area.

Cheers,

My vote is to put one on up north (Snohomish County). I can't remember the gentleman's name that helped you with the judging that was from Lake Stevens. But I'm sure he'd support the fact that GW is starting to grow on the north end, there's no tournaments on this end. I'm sure nathonicus would second the vote (support me on that one man), along with any player coming out of B.C.

Let me know if you'd consider it J_Dearth, I know an excellent location.

There was another local event running on the same date to grab those who did not like Mondo and all that he did.

Tharbickmonoploid wrote: My vote is to put one on up north (Snohomish County). I can't remember the gentleman's name that helped you with the judging that was from Lake Stevens. But I'm sure he'd support the fact that GW is starting to grow on the north end, there's no tournaments on this end. I'm sure nathonicus would second the vote (support me on that one man), along with any player coming out of B.C.

Let me know if you'd consider it J_Dearth, I know an excellent location.

Seconded!

A good thing about events that are more Northerly is that they can draw a fair number of Canucks as well.

I will try to post the results as soon as I have authorization from the official con organizer as it was there con. If you want more information soon, mesage me with your email address and I will try to get them emailed to you. Thanks.

I would also like to take this opportunity to present what I have come up with thus far in regardst to additional tournaments:

I would like to host four tournaments a year not to conflict with other local events. The tournaments will be a single 2-day 40K tournament, a single 2-day fantasy tournament, a 1-day 40K tournament combined with a 1-day team 40K tournament, and a 1-day fantasy tournament with a 1-day team fantasy tournament. Every event will span a two day weekend, it will just be up to the players whether they wish to participate in the two seperate one day events or not. I have already gotten tentative support from various locales to assist in building themed terrain and tables. I was looking at having food and refreshments provided during the tournaments as well as random door prizes and the such. The main focus for these tournaments for me is to bring some major glory to the Pac Northwest region. Similar to that of the Adepticon renown, but instead of this glory revolving around a single game shop/club/event, this glory will revolve around who it should have belonged to all along. The entire warhammer community within our region.

I have already lined up specialized paint judges, rules judges, and potential prize support. If anyone would like to be added to a email list to be sent any updates in information or to offer assistance in any way please email me and I will add you to the list. Thank you all again for all of your support as this past weekend would not have been possible without you guys/gals. Thanks again.