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yakface wrote:

kirsanth wrote:I am a bad painter and comp is worse than just being honest and making a new game.

I am sad that a national tourney that supports my play style is gone.

If only there were people in the East Bay of California who liked to run events that have no comp and only require a 3 color minimum (and whose paint score has no effect on your overall tournament placement)...

What I think he's trying to say is that some people either just don't have the time, the skill, the money to afford for others to paint their minis, etc. Where I live, I have no way of painting (don't have an open ventilated area to primer them) I've also never painted anything before, so if there's some sort of workaround that I could be using, I haven't found it. So the only painted guys I have at the moment are ones I've bought from other players. As much as I would love to paint my guys, this situation won't change for at least another month or two. Does this mean that I shouldn't be allowed to play at all until then? (I know this isn't what other people are implying, its just how it comes across some times, and it can sound elitist, hence how people always get so defensive about it )

Some people just aren't interested in the painting aspect, and its understandable that they wouldn't want to get docked over something that (to them) is stupid or pointless. My FLGS has always been lax about painting because of this, with the attitude being "paint them if you can, but you're welcome to play as many games and tourneys as you want in the meantime."

Most of the players at my store didn't like 'Ard boyz, and preferred to go to adepticon instead, so I don't think they'll miss it. I do feel for the guys who enjoyed it though. Maybe you guys can run your own 'Ard Boyz now?

You can get brush on primer dude

This is a good thing: While getting rid of quite possibly the worst format and poorly run event out there which has basically become the bottom of the barrel of tourney gaming, it leaves room for better formats to fill the local population's needs.

I feel like an event can be WYSIWYG unpainted with solid missions and well-enforced rules without being a trainwreck like 'ard boyz. Maybe someone will organize an independent 'day of tourney' where a lot of independent stores can all run events the same weekend and have the rules equally enforced and missions actually be fair and good.

I see opportunity here and I am glad hardboyz is gone.

nkelsch wrote:...I see opportunity here...

QFT

It's really too bad that a nationally sponsored tourney is gone. It ultimately loses GW and all of their retailers money. Hopefully GW will replace it with some other tourne format and not leave everyone just high and dry. Ard Boys itself was kind of meh for me, it's formatting had some high and low points so I'm middle of the road on the Ard Boyz itself. But a countrywide event, just gone...that's bad business any way you cut it. Hope individuals in the various regions will use this gained time to release some badass events. Keep us posted in the tourney board.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

mikhaila wrote:Not really a surprise at this point, since I was having no luck trying to get info on the yearly tournament series for the last 3 months, and if you can't find out who's in charge of something at GW, then no one is, and it's not being taken seriously. But did get official word that they cancelled it, so at least they gave us that bit of info.

Do you think it was cancelled due to the upcoming release of 6th, or is that unrelated (or only tangentially related)?

mikhaila wrote:Ed Spettigue and Chris Woodward are gone.

Who were they, if you don't mind me asking?

Ed Spettigue was a force of nature. He was running Canada for a while, the Chicago Bunker a decade ago, many other jobs in the US and UK. Recently headed up promotions and was making games day better, and was the force pushing the Indy tournament circuit. Rumored to have run such events as "drunk bowling for Thunderhawks". Ed had to step down for health reasons.

Chris Woodward was the head of US Trade Sales.

Both good people.

Ugh, that is too bad. Never played in one, but know it was a good draw at my FLGS. Just points to the big problem with support at GW, if a program/event does not have an advocate or champion in the company, it dies.

MrMoustaffa wrote:

yakface wrote:

kirsanth wrote:I am a bad painter and comp is worse than just being honest and making a new game.

I am sad that a national tourney that supports my play style is gone.

If only there were people in the East Bay of California who liked to run events that have no comp and only require a 3 color minimum (and whose paint score has no effect on your overall tournament placement)...

What I think he's trying to say is that some people either just don't have the time, the skill, the money to afford for others to paint their minis, etc. Where I live, I have no way of painting (don't have an open ventilated area to primer them) I've also never painted anything before, so if there's some sort of workaround that I could be using, I haven't found it. So the only painted guys I have at the moment are ones I've bought from other players. As much as I would love to paint my guys, this situation won't change for at least another month or two. Does this mean that I shouldn't be allowed to play at all until then? (I know this isn't what other people are implying, its just how it comes across some times, and it can sound elitist, hence how people always get so defensive about it )

Some people just aren't interested in the painting aspect, and its understandable that they wouldn't want to get docked over something that (to them) is stupid or pointless. My FLGS has always been lax about painting because of this, with the attitude being "paint them if you can, but you're welcome to play as many games and tourneys as you want in the meantime."

Most of the players at my store didn't like 'Ard boyz, and preferred to go to adepticon instead, so I don't think they'll miss it. I do feel for the guys who enjoyed it though. Maybe you guys can run your own 'Ard Boyz now?

The point would more be "you wouldn't be able to play in events with a painting requirement" then you wouldnt be able to play at all.

But, to your point on "I can't paint", don't let excuses keep you out of something you can 100% do at present, just give it a shot, you might really enjoy it!

You can:

1) Buy brush on primer
2) Buy a cheap airbrush setup and build a spray booth out of a couple air filters, a cardboard box, and a box fan
3) Bring them to a store to prime, or just walk outside to prime in a box (many people do this)
4) Not prime your miniatures! (I know, I know, blasphemy, but for about the first 10 years in the hobby I didn't prime a darn thing and I still scored highly/won awards at times for painting).

@general thread:

I'll be sad to see it go in some ways, as (depending on your player-base) it could be a fun event, and it was free (for those of us that already own too much GW). However, I have seen over the years the players with less time/experience in the hobby to fall back on taking the event too seriously and adopting the attitude of the event (which is meant more jovially then it is usually played in reality..) and forgetting the general 'thrust' of the hobby, which (imo) is to relax, have fun, and game with friends. So, it's a mixed bag for me!

That being said, remember when the GW official tourney circuit was cut? Suddenly we had an explosion of indy GT's, maybe we'll see a similar surge of growth to fill this niche!

I hope this doesn't count as too off topic, but does anyone have any information regarding the 2011 Ard boyz finals?

I have done multiple searches on forums and google (admittedly, I have a hard time finding anything I want anyway), and I only ever find posts about the preliminary and regionals.

I am not sure if the finals were even split up like in 2010.

I had fun playing in my local prelim, but I was wanting to know the armies and places of the finalists.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Ultramar Custodian wrote:I hope this doesn't count as too off topic, but does anyone have any information regarding the 2011 Ard boyz finals?

I have done multiple searches on forums and google (admittedly, I have a hard time finding anything I want anyway), and I only ever find posts about the preliminary and regionals.

I am not sure if the finals were even split up like in 2010.

I had fun playing in my local prelim, but I was wanting to know the armies and places of the finalists.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I to, have been wondering about this. Makes me wonder even more how far back they were thinking about dropping ard boyz. Before finals perhaps?

It's a sad day to lose any tournament where I can enter for free and then win $600 worth of minis of any army I choose in a mere 6 games.

AgeOfEgos wrote:They had a fantasy and 40k version right? They're both out? Does that represent the last GW sanctioned tourney?

/Adepticon just got bigger

Tball of Skulls is still around but its not really a tournament, its a popularity contest where the best liked person wins.

I like how there's pretty much no official announcement on this. It just..disappears and you're crazy for ever thinking it existed.

Wow, that was fast. Lasted what, 2-3 years?

Ultramar Custodian wrote:I hope this doesn't count as too off topic, but does anyone have any information regarding the 2011 Ard boyz finals?

I have done multiple searches on forums and google (admittedly, I have a hard time finding anything I want anyway), and I only ever find posts about the preliminary and regionals.

I am not sure if the finals were even split up like in 2010.

I had fun playing in my local prelim, but I was wanting to know the armies and places of the finalists.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

It appears they didn't bother mentioning the Semi Winners either.

2011 'Ard Boyz Results and Info

They really haven't cared about 'ard boyz since the first year

i must say 'ardboyz was a highpoint of my year. Not because I like playing unpainted (I worked my butt off to paint my 'ardboyz army), or because of the large armies (I prefer smaller, and had to do some serious converting to try to get to "all GW figures" for a competitive army), but because of the prize - it was the only way I would ever get a huge pile of brand new GW miniatures. I'll never be that rich, and even if I was, I probably wouldn't be able to justify it. I came close, but now I never will.

My dreams are crushed. : ( What will I do with the rest of my life?

This sucks cause this was one of the few tournaments that i had a chance of winning.
I gone to it for two years and never ran in to the WAAC people you all clamor about. I don’t have the money to pay out 50 + dollars to go to some of the bigger tourney or to have a army painted for I get top score in painting. On top of that my painting is average at best.
To lose to a painting score seam unfair, if I have the best win / lose record. Nit 9th place or less, as I have seen happen in some tournaments.

One of the worst instances of of 'Ard Boyz poison' I witnessed was the local store allowing 100% proxied armies during the regionals... So things like a SM drop pod army where the 'pods' were styrofoam balls or pop cans, or else a SW lazorback rush where every single razorback was a piece of cardboard with the words 'las/plas' written on it and other equally stupid garbage. (half-built models with the words 'meltagun' or 'power fist' were also quite popular )
Then to add insult to injury, the TO at the store juggled the pairings and fudged the results to ensure his three friends pretty much auto-won the event for the shot at the semi's prize.

One of them did win the semi's, got their stuff, and then tried to fudge parts of the kits around like mixing up some of the frames, or else outright removing a frame from the box and then brought it into the local GW store and tried to scam an exchange for about $300 worth of stuff.
Luckily we'd had word from a local regular that this guy had won the semi's so when half of an army's worth of boxes turned up like this, we just called mail order told them what had apparently happened with all the 'mispackaging'. They basically told us to simply offer to replace the actual box in question and not allow them to pick out whatever they wanted as they'd recieved similar calls from people on the winners list.

'Ard Boyz brought out the very worst in the hobby. I'm glad it's dead on the national level!

Talonwinter wrote:This sucks cause this was one of the few tournaments that i had a chance of winning.
I gone to it for two years and never ran in to the WAAC people you all clamor about. I don’t have the money to pay out 50 + dollars to go to some of the bigger tourney or to have a army painted for I get top score in painting. On top of that my painting is average at best.
To lose to a painting score seam unfair, if I have the best win / lose record. Nit 9th place or less, as I have seen happen in some tournaments.

In almost all events I can think of, there is a general track (pure win/loss or battle points) and an overall track (a combination of battle + paint and sometimes sports). I'd say to lose best overall to a paint score is totally fair, it's not billed as an award purely based on winning, that's the generalship award.

Practice your painting, you'll be proud of the results you start to achieve, and trust me, average painting can still hit 80-90% on a tournament rubric if you paint to the rubric. Who knows, in a year or two you may look back at your lovely painted army and be happy that GW ended ard boyz (though I too enjoyed the free tournament).

I have never seen any other event that openly promoted such wide scale cheating.

Never liked ard boyz. It was just 10 hours of playing games much larger than I like with people too serious about winning them.

Damn shame if there is no more tourney, because I might have been able to participate this year. I know the WAAC attitude would have been a big turnoff for me, but I would have liked to see some competition outside of my FLGS.

Have never been a fan of this tourney. It did, however, have an impact on local play as I started seeing folks wanting to play 2500 point games (40K-wise) and more widespread seas of gray plastic.

With the way this past year went, I'm glad to see it go away. If it is really desired by many, the indy scene can create something much more desirable than Ard Boyz.

Experiment 626 wrote: I hated it as it has poisoned my local scene and fostered nothing but a WAAC's style of play where even 'friendly' pick-up games on open gaming nights are nothing but filthy cheddar fests. .

Well, it's cancellation isn't all bad, since it introduced me to the delightful phrase "filthy cheddar fest".

I was told the yes Ard boyz was cancelled and it was cancelled because it actually took away from the hobby as a whole, and hurt the hobby that had been built up over the years. (thier words.) Also that a new tournment system is being worked on that will encompass painting and sportsmanship, something along the lines of the old GTs.

Also that said tournament style has a rough draft idea of making local GTs then a regional and national similar to the ard boyz style. But that is no way set in stone just a idea stage right now. Hoping to launch tournament ideas to the community this summer.

I've not been a fan of ard boyz due to points size and missions, but sucks that they aren't replacing it with something better.

I also never had a bad game due to opponent shenanigans, it was always the mission or just plain lack of time that ruined ard boyz for me.

Also that a new tournment system is being worked on that will encompass painting and sportsmanship, something along the lines of the old GTs.

I've heard the opposite, that there is no plans or anything in the works to replace ard boyz with something that supports the whole hobby like the old GTs. This was second hand though via store owner and his rep.

Remember the original point of the 'ard boyz was to make people want to BUY armies up to 2500 points (because probably a bean counter determined that the average player had too small of a collection).. I really doubted that the SALES DEPARTMENT ever cared about the tournament itself

All the 'ard boyz tournament did was farm out the responsibility to the indy stores really that had to deal with all the high stress gaming that came with those style of events

Granted, 'ard boyz got me nearly 4 armies over the 4 years I played in it but I still found the entire format anti-competitive. An event in which the majority of games only last until turn 4 is NOT an indicator of skill, but merely who can play "stomp da new kid" the fastest... Thats like saying whoever wins the superbowl in 33 minutes is the best team.. Also the missions were so poorly done they might as well of just used standard mission rulebooks or had a 4 year old write them

GW's throne of skulls isnt any better either.. its just extremism in the opposite direction with the win conditions being so obscure and arbitrary.

The best tournaments involve those in which everyone acts like responsible adults, has little to no outright cheating, has missions which show that the TOs CARE ABOUT THE players time commitment, and allows players reasonable time in which the majority finish their games

Our 'ard boyz went well once the local law of land started being handed out and GW's conduct rules were rescinded. Just because there is no sportsmanship doesn't mean you can't be DQ'd from the event for acting like a tool

I dunno. On the one hand, I've really grown to dislike power gamers and they're hatred of all things fluffy. On the other hand, It doesn't seem right that a painting score should determine if you win a tournament or not, especially since that favors the artistic folks who may spend more time painting than playing, and as such have fantastic-looking armies with mediocre results. In addition, scoring things like Comp are completely subjective (such as someone hating WoC simply because they CAN field a chosen deathstar or hating GK because they heard a bunch of whining online about the overpowered book, and then reflecting those opinions in their comp scores), while a game result is objective; A win is a win and a loss a loss. You don't see points awarded in Nascar or F1 because of the cool paint job on the cars!

I will say that here in Louisville, we don't really see a difference between a 'standard' tournament and an 'Ardboyz tourney. The armies are pretty much the same at their core. The only thing 'Ardboyz did was add in some higher level characters. No big deal there. If you can't kill teclis, you have no right to be playing the game, so don't cry 'cheese' everytime you lay eyes on that T2 monstrosity (I use him as an example because he was the biggest complaint I've seen most people say about WAAC tourneys, which always struck me as odd. There are LOTS of units I hate more than Teclis!)

but I digress. I seldom play in tournaments, and when I do its only because I think it will be fun and I like competing for sportsmanship awards.

Grundz wrote:You can get brush on primer dude

Holy crap really? So how viable would that be to paint roughly 120 guardsmen and 3 tanks?

In all seriousness though, I'll have to look into that, thanks for the headsup!

@ Target, I've wanted to paint, just didn't know there were other ways to do it. I'm just glad my store lets me play in the meantime. I've heard of stores that literally will not let you play a single game without painted minis, and those are more what I'm worried about I guess. Thank you for the tips though, as maybe I can start painting soon and knock out a few guardsmen a day

I can understand why tournaments would have that restraint though. I'd imagine they want all the armies to look nice.

To the OP, where in your original post do you show any evidence of your subject? There is no news or even close to a rumor in this, just two resignations and a bit of a whine.

Evidence, please...