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From what i recall of Christian's army (I'm at work after a nice 6.5 hour drive back to San Diego on sunday night and his list is at home) He had 5 Vet Squads (mixed between melta-vets and plasma-vets) in Chimeras, CCS in a Chimera, 3 Vendettas, and 6 Hydra's in 3 squads of 2.
And a lucky horseshoe in his butt.

He's also very aggressive with his chimeras and will usually push forward rather than sit back and shoot. It also helps he rolls an inordinate number of sixes to steal the initiative.

I had a great time and played 7 great opponents. Went 4-2-1 bu missed out getting best DA player. Best thing, I only had to play GK once, in my last game (for a draw no less).

Thanks for the event reece. I went 4-1-2 tieing the last game in an epic mirror match with Warboss Russ for best Ork player knocking each other out and letting Dugg slide past us for the spot (was a 4 way tie between the former and Blood Lord Soldono from 3for Int). I think I feel a trip to San Diego coming up

Ozymandias wrote:He's also very aggressive with his chimeras and will usually push forward rather than sit back and shoot. It also helps he rolls an inordinate number of sixes to steal the initiative.

I had a great time and played 7 great opponents. Went 4-2-1 bu missed out getting best DA player. Best thing, I only had to play GK once, in my last game (for a draw no less).

Ozymandias, did you play me turn one, the Speed Freak player?

Awesome event although I would REALLY love to see expansion into the adjacent hall to spread out the players more. It got really hot and loud towards the end and think that contributes to tensions running high.

Overall A+ from me though.

See you next year.

Blackmoor wrote:

Hückleberry wrote:Thanks to everyone at zero comp for running this event! Got to play Blackmoors Draigowing in a very close game with my dark eldar!

Your huckleberry? Now you tell me!

hahaha I didn't know I was dakkadakka famous enough for you to know my dakka name. What did you think of my list? Your input would be awesome.

Californiagamer wrote:

Overall A+ from me though.

All you guys need is a bullhorn.

Kelly I didn't steal the initiative on you if you recall, you just didn't understand how searchlights worked and that's how I killed those things.

Californiagamer wrote:Awesome event although I would REALLY love to see expansion into the adjacent hall to spread out the players more. It got really hot and loud towards the end and think that contributes to tensions running high.

Overall A+ from me though.

See you next year.

Some people did not like the venue and would welcome a change.

1st time at bay area open. Had a great time and did well with my IG 5-1-1. Had some epic moments with Marbo, but was unable to top the time at socal slaughter when playing csm against Reece's IG I charged marbo with an unwounded summoned greater deamon and Marbo curbstomped it.

Amazing event from Team Zero Comp. I had such a blast. I am still amazed that I went seven games most of which I think were in the competitive range for the tournament and did not get a single douche bag opponent.

My Tyranids went 5-0-2 and I can honestly say that my game against Christian round 5 was a truly amazing game. I still am having a hard time believing how close it was.

@Christian: I look forward to the next time we get the chance to hit the table again. That was an awesome game.

@Blackmoor: Great game man. That was a brutal tooth and nail fight all the way. Thanks again.

Thanks again to Team Zero Comp and I can't wait til next year.

A few thoughts and observations on the BAO.

For context: I played Tyranids throughout the weekend, starting with the Team Tournament on Friday. Yakface & I paired up to form team TnT (Tyranids 'n Tau, or Tau 'n Tyranids, depending on your orientation). We went undefeated, and our combined paint & theme scores were just enough to edge the other undefeated teams to claim the big prize. The Tau lost 2 units all day, safely cradled in the Hive Mind's embrace.

Turns out all Tau need to be really nasty are some Tervigons. Go figure.

I went 5-2 in the singles tournament, losing to Blackmoor's Draigowing and Dugg from Tablewar's Battlewagon Orks. I suspect the pairing software of having a twisted sense of humor, as it paired me against Blackmoor in round 3 and Yakface in round 6 for some lovely Dakka Detachment One in-fighting.

Side note: Yakface, playing a Kan Wall, and myself, with a Tyranid horde, were able to finish our game to the bottom of turn 7. It can be done!

Random Thoughts:

Logistics : the event ran very smoothly. Initial check-in was a little laggy, but we stayed pretty much on-schedule after that. While I still couldn't hear a damn thing that was being announced during the rounds, most of the time announcements were also distributed on a more personal level via circulating staff. The single projector onto a bare wall is a poor solution for showing pairings, though - it has a very poor viewing angle (as the wall isn't anything like a reflective projector screen). Best possible solution involves texting table assignments to players (there is software to mass text in this manner), or emailing it, or even just posting it on your website. Otherwise, print some paper copies & post them.

Terrain: Much improved from last year! It's obvious the team put some good effort in here (terrain is a never-ending project, I know). But those can towers shouldn't be confused with LOS-blocking terrain. Blackmoor demonstrated quite clearly that it was impossible to hide even a single Hive Guard from more than a 30-degree arc behind those cans. And given that "Table 1" relied primarily on can towers for middle-of-the-board terrain, the dominance Christian was able to obtain with a massed Hydra list is understandable. Not to diminish his victory - he's a damn good player - but when there is literally nowhere to hide from massed IG firepower, cover saves aren't going to be enough.

Organization: just one bit of constructive criticism here, directly related to that last thought. Please RANDOMIZE YOUR TABLE ASSIGNMENTS. Terrain was distributed in clumps, such that the top 14 tables or so all relied on can tower-themed terrain, then some snow tables, a cool volcano table, and some other neat things that I never got to see. Mix it up! Don't make Christian play on the same table over and over again. Make Blackmoor have to move his Strike Squad to get LoS once in a while. Give the poor DE player someplace to hide from a Hydra.

The BAO mission is an interesting experience. After a number of games with it, it seems to encourage defensive play - you want to protect your KPs and your Capture & Control objective, and you can probably defend a nearby Seize Ground objective at the same time. I hope they stick with the mission concept (6e allowing), as I'm curious to see how the BAO metagame will adapt to the scenario in the future. There are ways to build lists that would better play to the mission than most of us were using this year (myself definitely included).

Venue: I'm trying to find something nice to say about the venue. I guess it was cheap? But this will be the last time I attend an event at the Contra Costa Fairgrounds. The concrete floors suck for 3 days of continuous standing. The acoustics are miserable - it's hard to hear your opponent across the table from you, much less any announcements from the organizers. The amenities are poor: there is no on-site potable water, and the restrooms are old, smelly, and quickly disgusting. The location is bad, both on a local level (there is no food close enough to run out and grab during the short breaks), and on a more general level (Antioch is obnoxious for travelers to get to, and has very few options in the way of hotels). There is no climate control worth mentioning, and you are at the mercy of the sun's position relative to the windows for the first round of the day.

I have literally nothing good to say about the recommended hotel. Our experience was actually worse than last year - we tried one of the Days' Inn "suites," which turned out to be a normal room, from which they remove the second bed and replace it with an incredibly bad sleeper loveseat, plus add an extra sink to the fridge & microwave. As a bonus, our loveseat was broken.

At this point in my life, time & comfort are more precious than a few dollars; I'd rather travel to an comfortable event in SoCal, Vegas, Chicago, or Texas for the weekend than an uncomfortable event 1.5 hours from home.

Overall, the organizers ran a very tight event for a very large crowd, and deserve tremendous praise for their work. A big "Congratulations!" to all the various winners, and a huge "Thank you!" to everyone involved in preparing for and running the event.

thunderingjove wrote:

Ozymandias wrote:He's also very aggressive with his chimeras and will usually push forward rather than sit back and shoot. It also helps he rolls an inordinate number of sixes to steal the initiative.

I had a great time and played 7 great opponents. Went 4-2-1 bu missed out getting best DA player. Best thing, I only had to play GK once, in my last game (for a draw no less).

Ozymandias, did you play me turn one, the Speed Freak player?

No, I played Daemons first round. My DW were all terminators with 2 speeders.

Janthkin wrote:
Random Thoughts:

Terrain: Much improved from last year! It's obvious the team put some good effort in here (terrain is a never-ending project, I know). But those can towers shouldn't be confused with LOS-blocking terrain. Blackmoor demonstrated quite clearly that it was impossible to hide even a single Hive Guard from more than a 30-degree arc behind those cans. And given that "Table 1" relied primarily on can towers for middle-of-the-board terrain, the dominance Christian was able to obtain with a massed Hydra list is understandable. Not to diminish his victory - he's a damn good player - but when there is literally nowhere to hide from massed IG firepower, cover saves aren't going to be enough.

Organization: just one bit of constructive criticism here, directly related to that last thought. Please RANDOMIZE YOUR TABLE ASSIGNMENTS. Terrain was distributed in clumps, such that the top 14 tables or so all relied on can tower-themed terrain, then some snow tables, a cool volcano table, and some other neat things that I never got to see. Mix it up! Don't make Christian play on the same table over and over again. Make Blackmoor have to move his Strike Squad to get LoS once in a while. Give the poor DE player someplace to hide from a Hydra.

I liked the cans, and can understand the logistics of how and why so many tables had very similar terrain, but more variety would have been nice. The easiest fix I would see would be to ask some of the teams traveling in to volunteer to bring in some terrain and set up a few tables. The TO could maintain quality control by having the teams email him pictures ahead of time of the terrain fully set up on a gaming table. It would probably generate a lot of awesome themed tables. People would also need to be understanding if the TO said no to an emailed terrain set up that the TO thinks could cause a rules debate. Managing a 100 table event is very difficult task made a lot easier if there are no questions about terrain.

As far as players staying on the same tables randomizing tables would be an easy software fix, but would completely abandon the concept of the top tables being for the top players. IMO that concept should be abandoned. It serves no purpose in leveling the playing field (some might debate it give a minor advantage to be on the same table more than 1 time), and more importantly most players would think a greater variety in tables would be fun.

I also think traditional table arrangements is not the most efficient. Example below...

1 6 11
2 7 12
3 8 13
4 9 14
5 10 15

An alpha numeric system would make it a lot more efficient to find a table and get to it fast. Example below.

A1 B1 C1
A2 B2 C2
A3 B3 C3
A4 B4 C4
A5 B5 C5

Also if out of town teams help set up terrain and tables they could do blocks such as C1 to C4, and with random table generation people would get a greater variety in terrain.

What a BLAST! I had such a great time. Thanks so much Team Zero Comp for running this Event and I can't wait until next year.

It was great meeting up with everyone again and meeting some of you for the first time in person. I wish I had more time between games and after to meet more of the crowd but this was a busy and fast paced Event.

I hope Everyone enjoyed their TableWar Swag and Prizes. I look forward to sponsoring the next Team Zero Comp Event. I know next year will be even bigger after experiencing how awesome this Event was.

Congratulations again to the Winners of all the Events!

Cheers

Outside of one negative game, I got four very competitive good games of fantasy, playing the L2 guys, which was my goal in the first place. Seth ran a tight ship and kept people on time the whole weekend, plus the quality of the San Fran players made the entire trip worth it.

Couple notes on the Fantasy side, some things that did not affect me personally, but seemed to create issues for other people:
1) Blood and Glory- Don't use this scenario in its basic book form. Its not as bad as watchtower, but it dorks over some armies and people just all around loath it.

2) Scoring- It was hard to tell how pairings were being done, but it some of them seemed off, probably because of quirks in the software being used combained with a pure win loss structure. Either toss in some bonus points (preferably obtainable by someone losing) or use some form of degree of victory to stratify things a little more.

3) Slow Play- I am not accusing anyone of stalling, but in a straight win loss format certain armies are always going to win if the game never makes it past turn 4. Using degree of difficulty for scoring can make these guys play more agressively and faster, but that may not mesh with your philosophy. Something should be done to ensure that games play to completion more often, though. Its really a shame that the table one game that decided everything never made it past turn three and the two armies had barely fought to that point. I would have Seth talk to Hengle or some other TOs about brainstorming something that works and that everyone can agree to.

3) Administration- I know you guys are not made of money, but a seperate projector with the pairings in the back of the room would ease a lot of crowding in the room, perhaps even having two score tables, at least for registration. This is a minor critique, really, but it was the only bog down in what was an otherwise smooth running event.

4) Terrain- There needs to be a little more LOS blocking terrain on the fantasy tables and glancing at the 40k side, some of those looked a little like shooting galery places too. This is something that gets corrected when you add more terrain to your collection every year, but its worth noting.

5) Ringer Army- There needs to be one for each game and it needs to be there both days. No one should pay for a ticket (especially if they travelled a good ways) and end up sitting a game out. If a guy is still playing while in the losing end of the room, then thats a guy you want to keep so give him a game. I recommend Orcs for fantasy ringer and old fashioned vanilla marines for 40k.

Again, these are minor things that I picked up on from observing and talking to people. For being only the second year, you guys are doing a really amazing job and I hope to drag some of my crew up next time. As long as the L2 guys keep coming, so will I.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ps- I actually liked the hotel room, but I had a suite to myself all weekend and had no issues getting my room booked.

i had an excellent time with my Ogres for Fantesy.

5 great games against excellent opponents. 15th isn't bad for my first time.


I have some reccomendations for Fantesy though.


1) Either more games or increase the point limit. I finished my games at least 45 minutes early and as I drove down with a 40k player had to wait around a long time for things to wrap up.

I think 5 3k point games or 6 2.5k games would be quite doable. I understand having an even number of games can have issues with final scores so maybe just the point increase would be better.

2) More variety in the scenerios and use some of the different terrain in the book(like Mysterious Forests)

3) Bonus points for different scenerios. I find that Bonus objectives like these add some variety to the games and can make the game feel more fluffy while also being competitive. Things which encourage risky moves by players and such.

I'm pretty good at creating scenerios. i would be happy to help(although I'd still want to play in the tournament )

Sounds like fun was had by all. Anyone got any pictures of the event? I'd love to see what the armies looked like, etc.

@ Grimgob - and by Mirror you truelly mean mirror. You guys had the same model count and same Force Org down the list, with only a slight troop load out difference, correct? Not surprising 2 Great Ork Players with the same lists got a Draw off each other.

Btw Grimgob, i dont slide, I'm like Snikrot I Sneak. ;-)

Thanks for the nice words Dugg, ya sneaky git

So.... what were the top 5 lists. Goatboy posted his on his site and I thought it was very interesting especially his single drop pod and lack of long fangs. How about the others though?

~Casey

I can't disagree with the comments on the venue, but aside from the last games of the day it wasn't too terrible. Fortunately, my opponent round 4 was happy to take a smoke break mid-game, which made him almost tabling me a little more bearable. I'm particularly interested to see the army representation- it seemed like there were an inordinate number of Grey Knight players (go figure I suppose), but watching the top tables I saw Tyranids, Eldar, Space Wolves, Orks, and even my poor Thousand Sons vying for spots throughout the day. My suspicion is that the mission helped- my army, being entirely slow and purposeful, has NO chance of winning capture and control, but I can focus on winning kill points and contesting the other two, which gave me a chance versus some of the other, more competitive builds. On the plus side, my final record was 3 wins, 3 draws, and 1 loss... Not too bad for someone who entered the tournament with a purely fluff list expecting to be crushed at every turn.

I also hope that Reece (or someone else with the presence of mind to have taken them) can post some pictures of the candidates for best paint for 40k- there were some BEAUTIFUL armies out there, and in particular I wasn't able to examine the 2nd place army (I believe it was Dark Eldar?) nearly as much as it deserved. The top army was an incredible Forge World Ork masterpiece who I believe was local? with Squiggoths for trukks, gargantuan battlewagons, and the coolest Dreadknight conversion I've seen yet.

In any event, I hope all you out-of-state'ers enjoyed yourselves in our sunny state (the poor guy from Ohio I played comes to mind... how many inches of snow are awaiting your return?) and I look forward to seeing you all next year. Except Goatboy, that guy is a jerk. =P

Living Still wrote:So.... what were the top 5 lists. Goatboy posted his on his site and I thought it was very interesting especially his single drop pod and lack of long fangs. How about the others though?

~Casey

I didn't see any popular net lists on the top tables. Most of them would be scorned by the net community as soft lists, and many of them were shockingly different like Goatboy's.

Phazael wrote:Something should be done to ensure that games play to completion more often, though. Its really a shame that the table one game that decided everything never made it past turn three and the two armies had barely fought to that point. I would have Seth talk to Hengle or some other TOs about brainstorming something that works and that everyone can agree to.

Wasn't one of the comp criteria for a thumbs down (or the like) not getting to the 4th turn of a game? Or perhaps that was just on the 40k side. Seems like that would be decent motivation, given the consequences (up to the forfeiture of the game, I believe).

RE: Grey Knights. I joked with Reece when I checked in what my chances were of playing all 7 games vs. GK's and he said, "50/50." In the end I only played one and actually had a nice spread of opponents. In order I played: Daemons, Black Templars (Dave Fay), Orks (Dugg), Necrons, Space Marines, Orks, and finally Grey Knights. Overall, not too shabby!

Ozymandias wrote:RE: Grey Knights. I joked with Reece when I checked in what my chances were of playing all 7 games vs. GK's and he said, "50/50." In the end I only played one and actually had a nice spread of opponents. In order I played: Daemons, Black Templars (Dave Fay), Orks (Dugg), Necrons, Space Marines, Orks, and finally Grey Knights. Overall, not too shabby!

Man, the fact that I didn't have ONE Grey Knight opponent really messed with me!

Ozymandias wrote:RE: Grey Knights. I joked with Reece when I checked in what my chances were of playing all 7 games vs. GK's and he said, "50/50." In the end I only played one and actually had a nice spread of opponents. In order I played: Daemons, Black Templars (Dave Fay), Orks (Dugg), Necrons, Space Marines, Orks, and finally Grey Knights. Overall, not too shabby!

Yeah, I'm shocked I only went up vs 1 GK player as well. My game with James (GK), lasts years IG Winner, was much like our game except I was on the receiving end vs his rough GK list.

had 3 GK games , 1 DE, 1 BT, 1 BA, 1 IG

I had 1 ork 2 GK ,1 DE,1necron ,2 Nids the 2 GK i was expecting but the 2 nids i was not . I had 6 good games and one game against a douche which is pretty good for the amount of people that were there .

I luckily avoided the douche factor this year.