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Good luck to everyone this weekend!

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

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

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

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

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

We'll get results up soon.

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

Thanks Reece & Y'all

I had a blast.

Doc

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

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

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

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

Can't wait for the next one.

Longer feedback:

Ups:

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

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

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

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

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


Downs:

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

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

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

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


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

I have to disagree about the terrain.

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

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

www.tabletopwar.net

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

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

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

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

Great event, great turnout, nice low key atmosphere.

So who won?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bay Area Open Album

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










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

Cheers,
Jim

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Letter follows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will post armies once I have a minute.

BAY AREA OPEN JULY 30-31 2011

40K

W/L/D Bracket points

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

FANTASY

W/L/D Bracket points

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

thunderingjove wrote:

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

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

Russ I believe was his name.

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