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The Everliving wrote:To echo frgsinwntr's post, can you please post the missions. Or at least confirm whether you'll be using _all_ of the missions from the book, a three tier approach like Adepticon (in which the tiers are based on the rulebook missions) or whether you'll be using homegrown missions (modified kps, table quarters, killing hqs etc).

This for me is the most important thing to know before committing to a tournament. If I'm going to travel 300 miles and stay in a hotel and pay a lot of money for a tournament I'd like to know in advance the type of missions. If I don't like the mission design then I can make the choice not to attend.

Thats been one of the great things about the indy tournaments recently. TOs have been posting missions in advance which means players can make the educated decision about attending or not based on whether they think they'll have a good time gaming.

Thanks in advance.

QFT

Well said Alex! congrats on the newcc finish!

I am in the same boat as others it seems. I'd like some transparency in the missions as well because it is a 9 hour drive for me to attend (I've already registered) and I'd really like to show up confident that I'm playing in a great and semi balanced tournament. I am not a fan of trying to drunkenly decipher a scenario round by round!

Emailing these scenarios to the attendees has worked brilliantly for folks like Mike from Showcase comics because it gets rid of the inherent tournament day complaints that come with every tournament....at least it gets rid of the complaints about scenarios : ) ! People then have the chance to ask important questions and it saves your butt as you get the chance to make revisions! I'm sure people who play in the TO's area already have a pretty good idea of what the scenarios are which is another reason to become transparent and give out the scenarios as to not grant unfair advantage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Additionally....for $120 + travel + food + hotel + gallons of beer I think we deserve this stuff to be posted!

Per our TO, we're not sharing all the missions in advance. Having said that, you can expect them to look mostly like rulebook missions -- nothing wacky, no deployments on short board edges instead of long ones, no "carry the football" missions, no all-game night fights, no random meteor strikes from the sky, etc.

The main difference is with scoring, as we use a points system. Last year, mission 1 was basically a Dawn of War Seize Ground with 5 objectives. But instead of just counting objectives at game's end, players scored a certain amount of points for each objective they held, and then scored some additional points for secondary stuff. You can expect a very similar approach this year.

Regarding locals knowing the missions...no. We don't run smaller events using our missions and don't share the missions otherwise. And our club policy is that we don't play in our event (beyond having the customary ringer in case of an odd number). We're a small club of vets not bent on world domination. And as I said earlier, everyone should recognize the deployments and basic mission concepts anyway.

@frgsinwntr -- I thought you definitely weren't coming.

Per our TO, we're not sharing all the missions in advance. Having said that, you can expect them to look mostly like rulebook missions -- nothing wacky, no deployments on short board edges instead of long ones, no "carry the football" missions, no all-game night fights, no random meteor strikes from the sky, etc.

I'm afraid that's too vague for me to commit to attend. For instance I don't know if there is a kill point or cap & control mission, dawn of war or spearhead setup and if there is what number of each type. You could have 5 missions based around 'seize ground' completely ignoring kill points and capture and control and you'd have a mission that looks mostly like a rulebook mission...

For the amount of money people are paying I would have hoped the missions would be posted so that players can plan to have the most fun time possible. GW UK make no attempt to hide their missions at the GTs and the fact that we all know in advance that we're playing 2 of each basic type doesn't make the event any less fun.

That said, its your tournament and you can set the rules however you want. If you change your minds and put up some transparency around the missions I'll likely make it down there (note, my request for mission transparency is all about the price: for this much money I like to know what I'm getting into).

You can look at the missions from last year to see how they break down. This year's missions will be very similar. There may have been a small question or two but there was not any major confusion with the missions only being seen at the beginning of each round last year.
http://www.themechanicon.com/1/wp-content/uploads/2009-GT-Pack-with-missions.pdf

There are different deployments, kill points (not modified), victory points, table quarters, protect unit types, destroy unit types, and more. Each mission will be different and you will most likely need a more balanced force to win the majority of your games.

The scenery covers almost everything in the rulebook except roads (gotta have something to add next year!). There is area terrain, impassable terrain, dangerous terrain, rivers, LOS blocking terrain, tons of scenery made for tournament play. Having similar terrain across the entire event can be just as important a factor in leveling the playing field as mission types.

Also, all the terrain is the same on every table. This does not mean every table has two hills, a wood, a bastion - instead this means that you will not be encountering some wacky tables that just don't match or a canyon table that only benefits flying troops.

There is a sideboard on every table for your army display/rulebooks/casualties and there is PLENTY of room between tables so that you are not sitting in your neighbor's lap and you can walk past another player with your army between rounds.

And finally, take a look at our pricing again please. Check out the other events, add the ticket and two hotel rooms and we are actually cheaper than many of them.

Tironum wrote:And finally, take a look at our pricing again please. Check out the other events, add the ticket and two hotel rooms and we are actually cheaper than many of them.

Two nights at group rate = $184 + $125=$309 (+taxes, fees)

The average ticket at most tournaments, even the 'GRAND' ones = $50 + $240 (Two nights somewhere east coast average) = $290 (+taxes, fees)


Hotel cost over two days does, indeed, make a difference in OVERALL cost of a gaming trip. I believe the cost issues people were bringing up were more to do with the ticket itself and their potential return on that investment and not whether or not the hotel is decently priced.

Well, to compare it to the recent Nova Open. The main tourney was a one-day event. $50. Mechanicon, 2-day event, $125. So only $25 more overall, not even counting the hotel rooms. IMO, it's worth it.

To be fair it's $12.50 a game at the Nova vs. $25 per game at Mechanicon. So Mechanicon is twice as expensive on a per game basis not including the people who played friday or sunday. No opinion on it other than this since I wouldn't be flying to the east coast for this one. I only got one-two of those trips in me a year and I used this ones for Nova

Seems pretty comparable to WargamesCon this year which was also $125 for the ticket. JMO though...

Cheers, Gary

Ahhh, but that ticket was for 7 games right? So it's still a better deal respectively. And did that $125 allow you to play in an event on friday night? Just curious.

Hulksmash wrote:Ahhh, but that ticket was for 7 games right? So it's still a better deal respectively. And did that $125 allow you to play in an event on friday night? Just curious.

Yes, it was 7 games. However, for the Friday events you had to purchase separate tickets.

Cheers, Gary

Price per game, guys?
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.
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Need I remind you that there's a bar in the main gaming hall? And a bar upstairs, in a hotel which also happens to be located in a college town?

Not hard to figure out our value proposition.

I'll have a bunch more updates to come very soon...

Have you been to Austin Gorgon? There might not have been a bar in the gaming hall at Wargamescon, i don't know as I wasn't there. But Austin and 6th St. will top almost any college town in the nation.

And yeah, price per game is a nice way of comparing costs for similar venues. Much more accurate than a daily rate really as it's what we're paying for, to play games. I played in a GT right next to Disneyland with a bar downstairs in SoCal for $60. Basically people can afford to hit 2 GT's or just yours which to me is a poor pricing plan. But to each their own. Just don't knock my way of establishing value for an event.

Not to be brought into it, but 1 day of formal games + 2 days of open gaming in a hotel with a nice bar offering specials for attendees at $50.

Next year we'll be at a 5-star resort style hotel with 53,000 square feet of gaming, 3 in-hotel bars, a rooftop restaurant, another restaurant, and metro access to DC, hopefully/probably without a major price hike.

Regardless, Mechanicon's price is undoubtedly built upon is budget, and these guys are using their free time and energy to put it on - would be cool to stop having the harping on price. Similarly, would be cool not to have contrasts with other events that offer similar propositions in similar establishments.

I've been to other events, but this year will be my first attendance at Mechanicon. I have heard good things about it so hopefully it will be worth the trip.

Cheers, Gary

don_mondo wrote:Well, to compare it to the recent Nova Open. The main tourney was a one-day event. $50. Mechanicon, 2-day event, $125. So only $25 more overall, not even counting the hotel rooms. IMO, it's worth it.

I sure flippin hope so! I'm scrambling to paint 2 squads and two HQs before it! Incidentally, I for one am happy with not blasting out scenarios before the tournament. I liked that they did in previous GTs I've been to, but that was the UK at 1500 points. 1850 is much easier to abuse if you know what you're playing for ahead of time. There's a lot more room for tweaking. I'd like to show up to a tournament where everyone has made all around nasty lists, well-painted armies, and are eager to have fun and test themselves against other people of like mind. Not to find out that my army is less -tweakable- than another list at a certain scenario.

I prefer bring list, play list, win or lose. I agree with the sentiment about WHACKY scenarios though and if there are any, I'm sure people will be upset. The scenarios for last year's Mechanicon weren't very 'out there' so I'm reserving quite a bit of judgment and giving the TO the benefit of the doubt. The only weird thing (to me) is the scoring system going up to thousands of points and meting out rewards for 5-6 different objective/accomplishments. I've never had that type of play before so it should be interesting.

@Zain60

Most people I know don't tweak there list based on the scenarios since they already built all comer lists which should be fine in almost any scenario. But getting there and finding out you have to outflank a unit (when this is something you don't like to do) or that all the missions are DoW or that there is an all Night Fight mission would piss some people off. And knowing about it ahead of time could have saved them money as they could have chosen not to attend.

Not saying that the Mechanicon guys are doing that at all. Seems like they'll be middle of the road missions. But you can already see how the non-clarity kept someone from attending (TheEverliving) simply because of the cost he wants to know what he's fully getting into before he pays up which I can understand.

Yea, I was more talking about people who want to make revisions based on scenarios. Obviously there are other more savory positions on why you should have them beforehand. I think if they say the scenarios haven't changed much, and that they gave last years' scenarios out, you can make a pretty decent extrapolation on what you're facing this year. I wish that was enough for everyone, but I understand TheEverliving's position. It's a lot of money and time to invest into an event if you've been burned before at tournaments with wacky missions.

NOW LESS THAN A WEEK AWAY!

Please note that MONDAY (Nov. 1) is the last day for internet ticket sales. After Monday, you'll have to buy them at the door.

We're crazy busy prepping for the con. Tables are coming together...

http://www.themechanicon.com/1/shots-of-tables-and-scenery/2010/10/wr2010_1013-012/

...and stuff has been rolling in. Here's a few recent additions:

All of our 40K GT attendees will receive this great patch!



TerranScapes has donated gift certificates for prizes!
http://www.terranscapes.com/index.php

Secret Weapon Miniatures has donated gift certificates for prizes, and 10% discount and free shipping coupons for the registration packs!
http://www.secretweaponminiatures.com/

Chris Dubuque/Jawaballs has donated some of his great resin bases for prizes!
http://www.jawaballsproductions.com/

And longtime hobbyist Jason Buyaki is donating painting services to our charity auction.
http://fortbuyaki.blogspot.com/

Gotta get back to work!

See you at The MechaniCon 2010!

And putting my money where my mouth is, I'm in. Looking forward to a good time, see you all there!

Mondo, Hope to see you there! I'm in a mad dash to get some type of display done. I've never done a tournament where a display garnered points (and is therefore a scored item). Not that details matter with 7-8 Eldar Gravtanks you can't even see the ground.

Gorgon: Is there open gaming this Friday while the 40k vet tournament is going on?

I'll have to check on that, but I tend to think we'll have open tables you can use.

Awesome. I may not make it in time for the Friday Night Fight but still want to scrounge a game.

Prep work continues and it is all going great!

There are tickets available for all events at the door. Please bring cash as we will not have a point of sale set up. We can take PayPal at the door if you are able to send payment through a smart-phone, but cash is the easiest.

There is a bit of road construction in the area near the hotel on Route 202, but it shouldn't have an effect on your trip.

There will be tables available for open gaming all weekend. Depending on the time and what events are currently running, there will tables in both the main halls.

And finally, the bar opens at noon Friday!

"Grot Battle Tanks - CHARGE!!"

Played last night in the Friday Night Fight, and had a blast. Nice way to turn a 5 game tournament into an 8 game weekend. (Or in my case, sneak in a tournament on a friday since I work 12 hours on Saturdays.) There were a dozen of us playing in the tournament starting at noon, and a few dozen more folks filtered in as the day went on for open gaming.

Tables were very high quality, nicely painted terrain, and very congenial atmosphere. Games were hard fought and the missions made you work very hard to score max points, quite enjoyable.

Having a bar in the room with games was a huge bonus!!

I went 3-0 with my Dreadmob list from IA8 and the stars of the show were a sqwardrun of 6 Grot Battle Tanks. They soaked up a load of fire and never got wiped totaly out. And ranked up an impressive total by the end of the tournament killing two wave serpents and some eldar infantry, a squad of scout bikers, marine captain, and a predator, and then tank shocking 40 imperial guardsmen off the board, then running behind another mob of 40 and flaming into them, causing a moral roll and another run off the table. I suspect that will be their glory days.) They probably die on turn one from now on.

Wishing now I could make it for the next 5 games

Grot Tanks- awesome! I don't even play 40k and I love those models

I'm surprised they did so well- and you're right, probably jinxed for first turn doom from now on

Congrats to Jawa for winning!

How'd the scoring break down?

Jawa won? Awesome.

mikhaila wrote:Jawa won? Awesome.

text message I got said Chris won... so yea? i think

BatReps

I brought a trimmed version of my NOVA list:
2 DP, Wings, Nurgle, Warptime
1 Greater Summoned Daemon
3 7 man PM squads, flamer, melta, PW Champ, Rhino
3 3 man Oblits

Round 1
Eldar - 3 fire prism's, bunch of wave serpants, farseer
nothing too exciting here except that my oblits knocked down all but one flyer.
Minor victory.

Round 2
IG - Paskquisher, wall-o-chimaeras, Vendettas
2 objectives, quarters. Grrrr.
I go first and the game basically consisted of my depositing one squad of PM's on my objective and hurling the army towards him. I wrecked the vendetta on turn 1 (yee-haw!), and made the long hike across. Blew up most of his stuff along the way, except Pask and 2 squads in Chimaeras. It's a draw on 5, draw on 6. Top of turn 7, My last three relevant PM's assault a vet squad near his objective and run them off. I'm contesting. He shoots...back two PM's die. He fires his last multilaser. One wound. One Save. I win.
Not-MVP of the game: Pask. He fired his big gun and lascannon 14 times. He caused a single unsaved wound. I think he hit 3 times total.
Major victory.

Round 3
Jawaballs, Razorspam BA, with assault termies in a LR
We set a Skyshield landing pad in the middle of the board and I hid my rhinos and princes behind it. Two squads of oblits on the left, one on the right. I pretty much shot the piss out of him the entire game. He had a single razorback left at the end of the game.
MVP of the game: Oblits that landed 3 plasma cannon hits in a single firing on his recently mobbed up termies. 17 wounds. 0 terminators left alive.
Jawaballs army was beautiful and he was a fantastic opponent.

Round 4
IG, borrowed army from friend (orks played as IG). 3 hydra, manticore, wall-o-chimaeras
And the road down begins.
This guy borrowed an apparently successful army from a friend of his. Orks were troops and he really know what was what. Dude also played with black dice with black pips.
He clustered in the corner, and I scooted up as close as possible on his side. I seized the initiative and he promptly started bitching about "that's crap, I guess player skill doesn't matter in this game,", etc. He also accused me of manipulating my dice after I made a 3-4 smoke cover saves. So I got him back by blowing off the manticore missile launcher on my first shot. That, however, was my last moment of glory as he shot my rides and then my kids as we approached. Oblits were on target but stopped doing damage for the rest of the game. I got both princes to his lines and did some clever tricks with Warptime (intentionally missing on my assault, then killing the squad on his turn), but volume of fire damn near tabled me. He was also pretty fast and loose with movement distances and tried go back and move models on three different occasions. I docked him as much as the sheet would allow on sportsmanship (don't want to play again, didn't move accurately).
He wound up winning....2nd best general, maybe?

Round 5
Alex Fennell, BA
2 land raider redeemers, 1 stock LR, 1 razor back, 2 assault squads, 2 assault termies, mephiston
Alex, of ETC championship fame, was a nice player during the game. He beat a baby seal the whole time, since my oblits f'ing refused to damage his land raiders, even with twin-linked meltas in magic range, and thumping on the outside of it.
I got tabled on the bottom of 6.
Grr.

General Comments
Venue
it was held at a Holiday Inn, (~92/night), and the gaming was in a ballroom in the same building, which was quite convenient.

Registration
$125. I say again.... $125
Held in another room (why??) on Friday and Saturday. Registration closed fairly early Friday considering most people were traveling to get there.
Swag bag consisted of a Mechanicon patch and an utterly useless multi-template. that's it.
The War Store was supposed to be there and provide more swag but their truck broke down en route.

Pairings
They ran the tournament with an outdated version of Tournament Overlord (newer version required a % the house take). First two rounds they advertised to avoid pairing people that arrived/play together. Fine.
On Saturday, they paired people based on Victory Points (0-4000 per game) rather than Battle Points (6-20 per game). The result was that many people who lost their first or second games (but did okay with VP's) played against people that kicked butt and won their previous games.
The real crap happened on Sunday. For some reason, the TO's decided to change the pairings to Battle Points. No explanation was ever provided. They also continued to avoid friends playing each other. On the FINAL round, they continued to avoid pairing people that played together. Friend and I should have played, and Alex and his friend should have played. This is important because if my friend or I did well, one of us could have come in second and received prizes and a NOVA Invitational invite, since players #1 & #2 drew their match. The four of us did in fact approach the TO's about the pairing issue before the final game and were told to play as we were assigned.
Every single round started late, due to them taking forever to generate pairings. The TO's had over an hour and a half to figure out the final pairings. Even with all that time, they still screwed up the my friend and I's pairings, AND they had to move another THREE times due to faulty pairings. The results took well over an hour to figure out, even though people were feeding them the results as they finished their games.

Terrain
Players rolled off and placed terrain before every game. Terrain was generally 15-20% of the board, with a wide variance in types of terrain. This allowed the player that won the terrain roll to place the SkyShield landing pads to suit their army, which was pretty much crap, as that drastically affected many games. Terrain should be placed by TO's. Period.
Tables did have little side board areas that were nice to have for staging your stuff.

Cost
$125 per person for 40k. Yeah, $125. There were 46 40k players present. The room cost $3600 for 3 days. That leaves $2400. The 8-ish TO's had $65 custom Fez hats on. The other room was huge, a complete waste of money and was barely used. I'm wondering where the other $2400 went.

Overall
I'd be pissed if I paid $10 for the level of organization that we saw at the tourny. Paying $125 for that...no thanks.
Without major changes, I'll never return.