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Made in us
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot






Texas

Got back from Dallas Open GT (my first Major Tourney experience). Overall had a great time. Plenty of LoS non Styrofoam blocking terrain. Good gaming matts from FLG. Had water, chairs, no long check ins. Event was run very smoothly. We had 72 players, and I think the TO said around $3k in prize support. Had a raffle for a well painted Titan. Some cool trophies (chainsword, Laspistols, Poweraxe). Plenty of restaurants nearby, and since it was at a Four Seasons, plenty of restaurants within the hotel as well. Only minor complaint was on day 1 a bit of delay after lunch of about an hour because apparently the Best Coast Pairings App wasn't working. It was doing random pairings instead of based on W/L and Battle points. Not really the TO's fault and they did get it fixed.

Good group of guys, some nice armies as well. Did have a painting judging but no competitions or anything. I got into the finals for Best Painted which made me happy. Age range about 20-40, youngest player was 12.
They "enforced" 3 color minimum by penalizing a -2 to first turn roll off to see who goes first. Seemed to work well.

All FAQ and Beta rules were enforced with the exception of Non-Assaultable units needing to fit. As long as they could actually reach the charged unit, they were eligible to charge and fight even if not a space to actually put the model.
Judges/TO's were very knowledgeable. I had a few questions come up over the course of my games and they were able to answer accurately all questions within about 5 seconds. No crazy shenanigans that I was aware of happened.

Meta was fairly consistent with what I have seen/read about since the Beta rules. About 8 Drukhari players (2 in top 3, 3 in top 10). Top table at end was Drukhari vs Orks (180 boyz list, 45 gretchin) it was crazy watching these guys, they were right next to me. Orks ended up in 6th.
Other popular armies (necrons 8, Nids/GSC about 8, Tau about 8, Chaos and Chaos soup about 10, AM about 7, I don't think there was any Bobby G that I saw. Custodes were out, Plaguebearers were out). If you follow the tourney scene, still much of the same.

Overall great event. Next year they will do it again (as will I), and they are aiming to hold it in April.



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Made in us
Slashing Veteran Sword Bretheren






Good Stuff, sounds like a great tournament.

If you made it to the finals for painting you should put up some pictures of the army.

Also do you happen to recall what the Final Drukhari list entailed?

DR:80+S++G++MB--IPw40k12#+D++++A++/fWD013R++T(T)DM+

"War is the greatest act of worship, and I perform it gladly for my Lord.... Praise Be"
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Made in us
Huge Hierodule





land of 10k taxes

Pictures?

was censored by the ministry of truth 
   
Made in us
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot






Texas

Yeah the final Drukhari list was the typical venom spam.

Black Heart battalion
2 Archons (husk blades and PGL)
25 Warriors
Lhamaean
9 Venoms
3 Ravagers (dis)

Red Grief battalion
2 Succubi (glaives)
15 Wyches (shardnets)

Harlequin Veiled Path outrider
Shadowseer
6 Skyweavers (zephyrglaives and haywire)





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here are a few pics.

I only have a wide shot of my army before. There are a couple on the official Dallas Open GT webpage.

https://imgur.com/a/HZDwpUA







Sorry they are kind of big.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/20 16:30:53


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Made in us
Storm Trooper with Maglight





Denver

A nice write up and a shame that I did not have a chance to face your beautiful Tyranids. My own reflections:

Positives:

The terrain was very functional at providing effective LoS blocking across the middle with some help for infantry. As they (presumably) continue the event in future years I would hope that they break up the spares no man's land outside of mid more. But a strong start especially for 36 tables and a good collection to build on for the future for those of us in the functionality > aesthetics camp.

The venue was a great choice even if it must have stressed the budget a bit. The large Pavilion structure was perfect for keeping the tournament contained in its own separate building. They also had good free coffee options in the morning in the lobby which is a huge plus.

Projecting a giant round clock easily visible throughout the Pavilion was great. I wish more events would do this on top of announcing 1 hour/30 minutes remaining.

With one exception my opponents were either focused on the game and fast/efficient play or friendly. I am perfectly happy matched up with those two table personas so that was fine although some friendly players do perhaps need to focus on moving the game along more during their own turns.

Minimum painting rules were great and the unpainted penalty seemed to do its work. There were a couple of unpainted armies although I think most of those players dropped after day 1 such as that almost all of day 2 was painted. Even a mediocre rush paintjob is a much better table/event experience than grey plastic or black primer.

I had two of my best recent games at the Dallas Open. Shout outs to John Cook (interesting Wraith/C'Tan spam army where we got a great 6 round game in with time for a nice conversation afterwards) and Richard Boyes (had a 1-point lost against him that was one of the best tactical games on the tabletop I played in some time). I have played variations of Dark Angels plasma death bubble 3 or 4 times this ITC season, every game was a 1 pt. margin or a draw and every winner was the player who got first turn. Nice to continue the tradition with Richard even in a city I had never played in before.

It did not really impact me as I do not do a lot of assaulting but the override of the GW you cannot assault FAQ ruling was a positive.

Not many rules disputes and none that required a judge. I did have to pull out a Codex or rulebook a couple of times and once or twice corrected an opponent on a nuance in one of their stratagems that they had to reference in their own book but nothing major or time consuming to resolve that I can remember.

The TO mentioned that Frontline Gaming helped a lot at getting them a collection of 6x4 mats either for free or at a very affordable price (it was mentioned at the very end of a long weekend so I apologize for not remembering the exact details). FLG does not really promote that they do this for the hobby (I am assuming that this event cannot be the only one they have done it for?) but since the TO mentioned it I think it is important to note what they are doing for the tournament community.

Negatives:

Lots of players seemed unaware of needing to post their lists in BCP during the event and were not prepared to do so. Besides causing some delays while it was verified that everyone had a list posted some of the lists posted, at least out of the opponents I played against, were illegible or poorly formatted to the point of making them useless. Since pre-event submission and approval of lists was a requirement for the event a reminder that you should have a PDF to load to BCP should be an easy future process improvement.

I ran into three slow play opponents. In two cases I can say that the slow play was a result of unfamiliarity with the game or faction being played but if you go to a tournament you have to be willing to play at a faster pace even if you make some mistakes as a result. I am perfectly happy teaching you the game or a faction if I also play it (I did get something quite like a mirror match) but that should be happening outside of a big event.

In the first round my opponent took around an hour to complete their turn. I called over the judges and they divided the remaining time between each player. That was still a huge disadvantage for me but my opponent then burned their entire remaining time allotment in the second turn so I just moved around units, shot some things and racked up points in my turns. That made it an "easy win" since I functionally could do whatever I needed to get the points for the win against an out of time opponent but not really a great game to play out.

In the third round my opponent struggled hard with playing quickly but their secondary choices were bad and I was confident in the win so I decided not to bother the judges/TO. We at least got 4 turns in but really it should have been more and severely limited my score for the round.

In the fourth round my opponent took 40 minutes for the top of turn 1. I got in touch with the judges and one promised they would take action. Unfortunately they never did and my opponent ended up taking around 90 minutes to get through their 4 turns, soaking most of the time to their advantage and stopping us from getting a full game in. Their ability to magically improve significantly from 40 minutes/turn (yes 50 minutes for the last three is still far better than 40 for the first 1) when the judges started coming by the table did nothing to dispel the idea that it was a deliberate stall.

As a personal opinion related to the above, trying to cite how complicated your low model count army is as a reason for needing lots and lots of time to play it goes over like a lead balloon. At least it was a different twist on people trying to blame me as someone with a bunch of models-part of why I started recording turn times.

It was kind of funny in a grim way how many people flat out could not believe the actual time taken for their turns when I asked them to improve their play speed to match mine in order to allow for a complete game.

If what I heard announced at the end and what is in BCP are accurate one of the best of faction awards went to a player who did not play that faction under ITC faction rules. I think that is unfortunate for the player who should have received the recognition and best of faction prize. In general there were several players whose posted lists in BCP did not match their selected player faction per ITC rules. I do not recall seeing a complete list of awards yet in writing so I am not sure but there may have been more than one example of this as a couple of players in the top 15 or so (and there were a lot of factions) had that discrepancy. I think TOs in general need to do more to remind people of the ITC faction rules before the event and during registration as it seems to be a growing issue for soup armies.

TLDR

Lots of positives but putting in the time/money to travel and then getting slow played most of the weekend with hit or miss help from the TO/judges is extremely frustrating. It certainly dimmed my interest in traveling outside of my local area going forward if an event does not have some rules/mechanics in place to encourage or better yet require time parity. Even in the games with slow play that I won (2/3) it still hurts in that limited turns are brutal on your per round points scores for standings especially when you need to go with progressive secondaries against denial lists. So lots of positives as listed above but some room to grow/improve in terms of building a marquee event that I would recommend to others if they need to travel.

Interested in gaming related original artwork?* You can view my collection of 40k, BattleTech, L5R and other miscellaneous pieces at https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=158415

*This means published works by professional artists, not me of course. 
   
Made in us
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot






Texas

Alpharius it might be better you didn't play me. I run movement trays and try to leave piles of dice and what not in groups of 10 or 20, but the fight phase and assault heavy army does take longer than an MEU or Gunline style list.

1 hour though that is crazy. Typically though T1 is exponentially the longest. You just have the most stuff to move/shoot/assault/etc....


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Made in us
Fate-Controlling Farseer





Fort Campbell

 Dynas wrote:
Alpharius it might be better you didn't play me. I run movement trays and try to leave piles of dice and what not in groups of 10 or 20, but the fight phase and assault heavy army does take longer than an MEU or Gunline style list.

1 hour though that is crazy. Typically though T1 is exponentially the longest. You just have the most stuff to move/shoot/assault/etc....



Still no damn excuse for it. Last tournament I played in, I was against orks at top table, he had more then 200 models, we got to turn 5 when I tabled him, and were the first people done. Turn 1 does take the longest, but there is zero excuse for a player round to last for 1 hour. That's pure and simple running the clock down.

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Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




Hour is really long, but at the same time the mindset that every opponent should play "as fast" as you may lead to you not enjoying yourself and probably also an annoyed opponent. You very well may of played 3 slow playing opponents but if you are calling the judge every game practically you are out of the norm and should at least reflect/consider if you have unrealistic expectations.

I support the chess clock approach, but also accept everyone in a tournament may not be able to play their army as rapidly. The expectation you will reach 6 turns in a tournament game just because the rules say that isn't realistic frankly.

And not that this is an excuse for slow playing, but if you don't strictly ration the time from an objective measure (such as a chess clock) one player will naturally take longer than the other in terms of play time 99% of the time.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/21 05:56:42


 
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






orkswubwub wrote:
The expectation you will reach 6 turns in a tournament game just because the rules say that isn't realistic frankly.


Then increase the round time or decrease the point limit until the overwhelming majority of games reach 6 turns. Problem solved.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in us
Charing Cold One Knight





Sticksville, Texas

 Peregrine wrote:
orkswubwub wrote:
The expectation you will reach 6 turns in a tournament game just because the rules say that isn't realistic frankly.


Then increase the round time or decrease the point limit until the overwhelming majority of games reach 6 turns. Problem solved.


Totally agree. The expectation in a tournament should ne full games, not, how much can I score in the limited number of turns we have to play.

One of our local Tau players and I tried a Chess Clock for a 2,000 point game of Tau v. Blood Angels. We played it from start to finish in less than an hour. No excuse for people taking an hour just for their first turn.
   
Made in us
Been Around the Block





I got my butt beat but I really enjoyed the venue, terrain and players. I flew down from Minneapolis and will hopefully attend next year. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the means to attend!
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




What missions were used?
   
Made in us
Nasty Nob on a Boar





Galveston County

This has traditionally been an issue. I build/play for 3 rounds as I know others I play will be slow. Hope this is not the case, but it happens a lot.

That being said, there should be plenty of dead things the first few rounds so the last few should go faster.

No madam, 40,000 is the year that this game is set in. Not how much it costs. Though you may have a point. - GW Fulchester
The Gatling Guns have flamethrowers on them because this is 40k - DOW III
 
   
Made in us
Lone Wolf Sentinel Pilot






Texas

karandrasss wrote:
What missions were used?


It was ITC format. Custom missions for the venue. ITC 2ndaries.

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3500+ IK Plus 1x Warhound, Reaver, Warlord Titans

DakkaSwap Successful Transactions: cormadepanda, pretre x3, LibertineIX, Lbcwanabe, privateer4hire, Cruentus (swap), Scatwick2 (swap), boneheadracer (swap), quickfuze (swap), Captain Brown (swap) x2, luftsb, Forgottonson, WillvonDoom, bocatt (swap)

*I'm on Bartertown as Dynas 
   
 
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