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Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Redbeard wrote:Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Yes. Two purifier spam in the top ten.

Since Orks did well, clearly the tournament was made up of incompetent players with sub-optimal lists.

Gotta love the cognitive dissonance of the ork Haters.

In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

olympia wrote:

Redbeard wrote:Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Yes. Two purifier spam in the top ten.

I think this is an error-- if I recall correctly, Allan (Blackmoor) was running Paladins, not Purifiers.

skrewpa wrote:In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

4 of my 7 games went to turn 7 and all of them were finished within the time frame with usually 45 minutes to spare.....

....did I mention I play Deathwing?

I think 1500 points would be fun as well, as it would allow for longer breaks and/or shorter day.

Fetterkey wrote:

olympia wrote:

Redbeard wrote:Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Yes. Two purifier spam in the top ten.

I think this is an error-- if I recall correctly, Allan (Blackmoor) was running Paladins, not Purifiers.

Blackmoor didn't have any purifiers. He was running a crazy paladin list with draigo.

My list(Josh Sellers) had three squads of purifiers. I don't know if that qualifies as spam... but i don't run this internet, so who knows.

Dok wrote:

Fetterkey wrote:

olympia wrote:

Redbeard wrote:Nice to see that orks took 3 of the top-ten, along with GK, in spite of how uncompetitive the internetz says they are.

Yes. Two purifier spam in the top ten.

I think this is an error-- if I recall correctly, Allan (Blackmoor) was running Paladins, not Purifiers.

Blackmoor didn't have any purifiers. He was running a crazy paladin list with draigo.

My list(Josh Sellers) had three squads of purifiers. I don't know if that qualifies as spam... but i don't run this internet, so who knows.

I made the list of armies, so I get to put whatever I want for mine!

Haha, true that.

Monster Rain wrote:Since Orks did well, clearly the tournament was made up of incompetent players with sub-optimal lists. Gotta love the cognitive dissonance of the ork Haters.

Space Orks did do well. My Sppedfreaks less well, with a 3-4-0 record. However, against two of those opponents, I can honestly say I defeated myself, by 1). foolishly breaking off from my synergistic plan by reserving my weak wing against another Ork player (Yakface himself, nice guy), and 2). after having nearly table a Salamander player (including cooking Vulcan's squad alive), allowing his foot-slogging terminators to pull the most massive multiassault in the world. Otherwise, they did well against leafblower, razerback Blood Angles, and Dark Eldar. Not well at all against Grey-Knight Grey Knights & Grey-Knight Inquisitorial Assassins. Those were tabling games. Fun though, in their way.

I saw the top Ork player post-game complaining that Orks had no chance against a 1000-pt deathstar Paladin unit, the army he was playing at table two, and I thought of only three words: Shokk Attack Gun!

skrewpa wrote:In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

Magilla Gurilla wrote:4 of my 7 games went to turn 7 and all of them were finished within the time frame with usually 45 minutes to spare.....

....did I mention I play Deathwing?

I think 1500 points would be fun as well, as it would allow for longer breaks and/or shorter day.

All my games were timely too, I think for two reasons: 1). All my opponents knew how to play fast, with a constant dialogue of what was happening, and 2). The extra 15 minutes went a long way to finish games out. I think if they want to down the point cost to 1500, it's for the reasons of codex balance, rather than time.

Great times were had.

This is my Army.

67. Chris Saraga: GKs (Inquisitor Henchmen heavy)

I prefer GK (Inquisitor Henchmen) (Pre Heresy Thousand Sons)

That way my months of painting and conversions are at least displayed since I had my teeth kicked in game-wise. Heck my 13 year old son did better.

I had a great time though. Watch out for me at The Grand Waaagh in Alameda. I am gunning for best painted and I really can only go up in game score!

That army was cool. Great concept.

I liked playing the 1850pts. I think the timing and the format worked well. I like 1850 because there's still a little room for character in the army. At 1500 the lists really start to look the same IMHO.

The only game that really came up against time was against Thunderingjove's Speedfreak orks, but we still squeezed in 4 full turns. I think we both moved along pretty fast there, just a lot of stuff happening on the board.

I see my IG army in one of the pics on the page before, about to lay some hurt on some poor assault marines.

Despite playing more games in the weekend than I've played in the last year and a half, I did decently, 4 wins, 3 losses (I alternated each game, up down, up down...) despite playing my Hydras as having one autocannon each all Day 1 instead of 2 twin linked. What an Idiot! Talk about handicapping yourself. Thanks to my IG opponent first game of Day 2 who pointed it out to me without laughing at me (At least not to my face).

Hey guys!


First of all, wanna thank Reece and his crew for running a fantastic event - I really had no complaints at all, had a great time and met some really awesome folks. I think 1850 worked fine - it was a long haul, but everything was run so tightly I didn't feel as though it dragged. I was in a position to make a run at it day 2, and the only 2 people I lost to were the champion and Blackmoor!

One question though - I see the 4-1-2 and 5-2 folks going back and forth on the standings... how were the final rankings determined? Usually in a Swiss system it's 3 points for a win, 0 for a loss and 1 for a tie which would put all the 5-2s ahead of the 4-1-2s by one point. Is it the bracket points? Just curious.

All in all I'm really happy I made the trip up and will definitely try and make it next year. Cheers!!!

Hey guys, we love to see all this feedback so please keep it coming.

Some more answers:

Bracekting. A win is 1, a tie 0.5, a loss 0. Bracket points were then the determinates for rankings.

Painting for the Renaissance man award went as follows: w/l/d record, then paint score. You couldn't win two awards so we dropped down to the third bracket of rankings and then judged the armies in that standing. Since christianA was the only army in that bracket painted beyond a three color standard, it was an easy choice.

What we're hearing so far on points is pretty close between 1500 and 1850 with most people leaning towards 1850. We want to give hoi guys what you want so we'll gather more data and make that decision soon. At this juncture, I'd say to expect 1750 as a nice compromise.

We will get the rankings with armies up soon. We love crunching that data, too. We will also submit this info to rankings HQ and post the top lists for further discussion.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and on non three color models, there were some armies with a few modles not up to three color standard. Logistically it is very difficult to check this before the event starts. What I think we will do next year is start players with a thumbs down on sports if they come with unpainted models. It is an easy solution with a strong consequence or those who choose to violate it.

Reecius wrote:
Oh and on non three color models, there were some armies with a few modles not up to three color standard. Logistically it is very difficult to check this before the event starts. What I think we will do next year is start players with a thumbs down on sports if they come with unpainted models. It is an easy solution with a strong consequence or those who choose to violate it.

One thumbs down is a strong consequence? What about disqualifying them? If the rule is, Every army must be painted to a three color minimum, no exceptions. Primer counts as a color, then what about actually enforcing the rule? One ding on a sportsmanship score? I mean, it's not even really a three-color standard, as you're counting primer as a color, so it requires all of painting two colors on a model. You tell people that they'll get one ding on their sports score if they come with an unpainted army, next thing you know, you'll get people who willingly give up that ding and play just for the generalship awards.

Which, if that's what you want, so be it, it's your event. But if you're going to have a minimum painting standard, actually enforce it, don't give the offenders the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.

I hear what your saying and I agree to an extent. The problem is logistical. We had a lot of people there and we can't realistically check every model in every army before the event on as tight of a schedule as we kept. It just isn't realistic. And, a thumb's down on sports is a big deal. Two and you can't win the event. It means their buffer is gone, one misstep and they're out of contention for the event. I'd like to hear what others have to say but I feel that it would be a pretty strong deterrant. Negative sports marks in our event carry a really strong consequence. Getting a negative mark isn't easy though, and the parameters for it are narrow and clearly defined.

Next year we'll be more specific on the painting requirement and how we'll enforce it. Now we know the reality of what we're facing and will be better equipped to handle it.

So renassance man was just 3rd best general with painting score as tie breaker? I thought it was for all around hobby person (battle scores with painting scores).

That is how we weighted it this year, yes. The system we used weighted your win/loss/draw record more heavily than hour hobbiest score. We are open to ideas of making the two scores more evenly matched though. What we did was take the total battle score and multiply it by ten, and added in the hobby score (up to 40 points) which meant a total of 110 points for Renaissance man. In effect though, since the tournament champion couldn't get it, it was really a range of 100 points.

We will play with the system and see if we can come up with a better one. Next year we also plan on having deeper prizes as a lot of our upfront costs have been covered and we can put more money towards prizes and give second and third best in hobbiest and Ren man awards.

Reecius wrote:
What we're hearing so far on points is pretty close between 1500 and 1850 with most people leaning towards 1850. We want to give hoi guys what you want so we'll gather more data and make that decision soon. At this juncture, I'd say to expect 1750 as a nice compromise.

We will get the rankings with armies up soon. We love crunching that data, too. We will also submit this info to rankings HQ and post the top lists for further discussion.

I know my position on this question is, if anything, over-stated at this point, but I do want to say that I think 1,750 pts with the same schedule as this year sounds like a great compromise.

One of the issues with this particular venue is that it isn't adjacent to a hotel and/or any food places/things to do, so people who do finish their rounds exceedingly early don't really have any options of things to do unlike many other tournaments. Therefore, I think my normal request for copious amounts of time vs. game point limits needs to be tempered until the day when/if the BAO moves on up to a venue with more adjacent attractions.

I like 1850 and I like 1500 but for some reason 1750 has always felt off to me. I thought thats why GW and FLGS stopped using it (and also why the nova invitational was using it). I say keep it at 1850 (or 1500 and shorten both days)and add time to the second day to complete your paint scoring with an extra long lunch or something (even doing half of it during lunch the first day).

skrewpa wrote:In the tourney packet and in this thread there was talk of making the event 1500 points instead of 1850. Out of curiosity, now that it's all over, what are people's thoughts on that?

Before the weekend started, 7 games at 1850 did sound exhausting. But looking back I think that it worked out very well. I think only one of my games wasn't able to go the distance due to time and we would have been going into turn 7 and my brain didn't feel like it was melting at any point.

It worked great. The time limit was generous; all my games made it all the way through.

I have added more pics to the album.

Here are some more in game shots.

14. Robert Pace- Vect w/ Dias Venom heavy DE
19. Paul Mckelvey- Tau( The guy your talking about Blackmoor)
38. Jack Lemly- DS Nids

Almost complete.

Would it be appropriate to count games where the player left (for whatever reason) early?

35. Casey Steele Herohammer BA

BDJV wrote:I have added more pics to the album.

Here are some more in game shots.

That is my Thousand Sons Army getting the crap kicked out of it by Mike B's Dark Eldar...

So much greenstuff in that picture!

Mike b dang near won the event, so I wouldn't feel bad. And, Dark Eldar are MEQ killers. They have a tough go of it with Missile Wolves, but otherwise are brutal.

I really like your Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons. They were one of the cooler armies there, IMO.

veritechc wrote:
That is my Thousand Sons Army getting the crap kicked out of it by Mike B's Dark Eldar...

As you can see by my avatar I have been working on some pre-heresy Thousand Sons myself. Did you use the chapterhouse studios shoulder pads?

Reecius wrote:I hear what your saying and I agree to an extent. The problem is logistical. We had a lot of people there and we can't realistically check every model in every army before the event on as tight of a schedule as we kept. It just isn't realistic. And, a thumb's down on sports is a big deal. Two and you can't win the event. It means their buffer is gone, one misstep and they're out of contention for the event. I'd like to hear what others have to say but I feel that it would be a pretty strong deterrant. Negative sports marks in our event carry a really strong consequence. Getting a negative mark isn't easy though, and the parameters for it are narrow and clearly defined.

Next year we'll be more specific on the painting requirement and how we'll enforce it. Now we know the reality of what we're facing and will be better equipped to handle it.

I think the easiest way to enforce it is to let the players play, but just count all unpainted models as casualties. They can't be on the table. Make an announcement reminding everyone before game one so that opponents don't feel pressure to let them play the units in question. This means someone who shows up still plays, but their unpainted stuff stays in the bag. This will make people resist the temptation of sneaking in a model they know they won't paint in time.