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Darkwynn wrote:
JY,

was nice to meet you. was hoping to play you but I settle for playing Mike Congrats on the win again

Thanks Nick.

And congrats to you as well for almost winning Best Eldar. I can't believe how unbelievably good they are. You got 170 out of a maximum 180 and you still didn't win Best Eldar!!! That's just nuts!

I wanted to play against you as well, but the team thought that I would match up better against Paul's army, especially since I've had success against another similar IG list earlier in the tournament. Oh well, should we meet again in the future, I will definitely request to play against you. Your accomplishments in the hobby is phenomenal and it would be an honor to play against one of the best in the game.

Now that I've finally made it home, let's gather up my thoughts on the event. I'm still exhausted (traveling home was...interesting last night), so please forgive any obvious lapses.

First and foremost: major respect is due to Shane & everyone involved in organizing the ATC. They did a fantastic job in putting this event together - thanks, guys!

Location: I didn't attend the ATC last year, though I understand from those that did that the Murfreesboro location is a significant improvement. That said, getting to/from Murfreesboro was the least attractive thing about the event for me. Nashville Int'l is a second tier airport (no direct-flight options from any of the 3 major airports in the SF Bay area, and relatively few routing options). And when the airport gets a little bit behind, as it did yesterday afternoon, the whole chain of connections starts breaking down (hence, interesting travel last night - ended up flying into SFO rather than OAK, where my car was parked, well after midnight).

It might be nice to change the month, too, so as not to overlap so closely with the Nova; I know several really great teams that didn't attend, simply because they couldn't fit 2 major events into a single month. I understand that ends up as a combination of venue availability & organizer schedules, but just tossing it out there.

Venue: Nicest example of the "county fair" type venue that I've ever seen (although I know it's not actually a county fair building). In spite of being in Tennessee in August in the middle of multiple downpours, it was never muggy inside the hall. $1 hot dogs are a winner, too. The only negative about the venue is the bare concrete floor, but that's unavoidable without a major (expensive) change - to get away from that, you have to move into real convention/ballroom space.

Organization: Definitely a well-run event. Saturday started off a bit behind, which honestly was expected (very, very few large events actually start on time). The TOs kept us running on schedule pretty cleanly after that, though. Three suggestions: first, given that most teams are traveling in the night before, you might be able to do a lot of the registration/check-in work at the hotel the night before; second, since you have the clock display anyway, a "time until next round starts" counter would be really handy; and third, while using sponsors names to identify the tables is neat, they either need a number tacked on, or a map included in the packet - it took us quite a while to find Grand Adventures at the start of round 5.

Terrain: On balance, terrain was good at this event, but there's room for some discussion. Here's a definite good thing: every set of 5 tables had 5 different types of terrain. On the one hand, it's great to have variety, because it puts real significance into the defender getting to choose the table to play on. On the other hand, some of those tables were very short on LOS-blocking terrain, for anything bigger than a marine. One easy change - on the ice tables, with the hexagonal hills (which were really cool) - move the flat area terrain out to the side, and put one of those hill clusters in the middle - it will make for a more interesting board.
And just for discussion - what about swapping steps 3 & 4 in the pairing system? So a captain puts forward a defender and a table, before the attacker is selected? I have no idea if it would improve anything, but it seems like an interesting change - "This is MY hill - who wants to try and knock me off it?"

Missions: These were fine. If you want to win big, you have to be able to do everything at once. At 2000 pts, with allies available, everyone should have enough options to make that work. Two comments:
1) Please put Hammer & Anvil into the rotation. I understand the potential logistical problems with that deployment type in tournaments, but I've played in a lot of events where it has worked just fine. It's not just about variety - Hammer & Anvil requires more mobility out of your army, as you may need to advance 4 feet to get to your opponent's Emperor's Will objective. It's a fairly significant change in play over Dawn of War.
2) Please have half the missions start with Night Fight. Could be as easy as "Rounds 1-3, Night Fight on turn 1; Rounds 4-6, no Night Fight on turn 1." Or you could just let each table roll, along with the other pre-game rolling we're doing.

Competition: Fierce! One interesting thing about the team format is that unlike in singles play, a mediocre round doesn't knock you out of contention. On the path to victory, the Fluffy Bunnies faced the teams that finished 30th, 10th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd (not quite in that order).

But the beauty of the event is in the game theory that underlies it. We took a collection of armies, some solid generalists (Space Wolves, or the ever-popular Taudar), and some with known bad match-ups (like Tyranids). In a singles event, if you run into a Venom-spam army or a Jaws-happy Long Fang-spamming army with the bugs, it's an uphill struggle at best. But because of the pairing process, and careful work by our team captain, Centurian99, I never had to face one of those hard counters. Instead, I got to devour armies that have a harder time with Tyranids, and it paid off for us.

Lovely event, and I'm very happy that we put the team together & trekked down there.

Lastly: Team Fluffy Bunny's "Purple Heart" award goes to Mike Mutscheller, our Space Wolf player. We threw him under every bus we could find, and at least a couple we had to invent, to keep my Tyranids & Centurian99's Daemons away from truly bad pairings. In spite of that, he managed to average 15.8 pts/round, and all without complaining. Without that, we don't win. Thanks, Mike!

Congrats to Team Fluffy Bunnies. A tip of the hat to Mike knowing that he only plays maybe once every few months (if that).

Location: Murfreesboro is better than Cleveland/Chattanooga TN, but not a lot better. Nashville is a better airport, but it still is not that large, and it was still a bit of a drive to get to the venue. Moving it to Nashville or even better Atlanta would be great.

Venue: The building was nice, but concrete floors are never welcome. I am also getting to the point where I want to be in a hotel. There were several games that ended an hour early and I just had to stand around that hall and a return to my room would have been a godsend. That might just me being a cranky old man at this point, but I was dying from jetlag.

Organization: This could have some work done. The rules pack, or in this case the paper that was handed out was often misplaced and there should be a stack of them on the judges table so you can get another one. Also the format of them was not very clear and concise. The missions and all of the special rules should be on there. A printed schedule should be there as well. I was meeting a friend from Murfreesboro on Sunday at lunch and no one could tell me when the lunch break was. Also I expect a late start on Saturday like always because of registering the teams, but on Sunday when we get into the hall you should have the pairings already up and ready to go so you know where to go to set up and get ready. That way you can avoid what happened on Sunday where we had already done pairings, and deployed and we were told to wait and then the pairings were redone. That was very bad, and could have easily been avoided.

Terrain: I know it is hard to make terrain for that many tables, but the terrain was almost all the same. Being able to pick the table was not much of a bonus for getting put forward first if there was not any variety. I was out first every round, and my poor Kroot never had a forest to hide in, and there were no multi-story ruins to hide under from barrage weapons.

Missions: There were just too many objectives. It works best when you have less. That way you can cover more ground and some armies are not at a disadvantage. Also you can change the rules back to where they should be and use the rule book spacing of them instead of having the possibility of having all of them packed together. A fundamental rule of warhammer 40K 6th edition is that units can only hold one objective. Everyone had a story of learning the hard way that units could hold more than one objective and that rule should be dropped. Another rule that caught a lot of people by surprise was the rule that objectives are infinitely high and anything above them can hold/contest. You should go back to the normal 3”. Also one game with Heavy Support or Fast Attack as scoring instead of 2 each would have been much better.

Wow you are way too critical. The move from Chattanooga to Murfreesboro was awesome as the Nashville airport is much more accessible and and rates are a lot cheaper. The hotel was close to the venue with a very nice discount. I think the cost for a rental car split between team mates was quite reasonable too.

Having multiple objectives is the most fair for all armies... not everyone plays Draigowing.

7 objective markers on the table at all times was a lot of objectives. I wouldn't mind seeing that change across missions, either - 3 & 4 are equally valid numbers of objectives for Crusade, after all.

I do agree with the "shouldn't hold both an Emperor's Will & a Crusade objective" comment - that felt like an unnecessary deviation from the 6e design philosophy.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Wow you are way too critical. The move from Chattanooga to Murfreesboro was awesome as the Nashville airport is much more accessible and and rates are a lot cheaper. The hotel was close to the venue with a very nice discount. I think the cost for a rental car split between team mates was quite reasonable too.

Having multiple objectives is the most fair for all armies... not everyone plays Draigowing.

It really helped those with a lot of fast moving troops or those with a lot of troops. Take Eldar and Necrons for an example who can cover the whole board and get to any undefended objective they want to at any time, or IG and Tyranids who can have a lot of scoring units. Then look at those armies that can't do that and it is an issue.

Then look at Chaos Space Marines or any Marines and how are they going to cover or hold that many objectives?

I personally would love the ATC to move to Atlanta, but it being Shane & Chris' baby, it probably won't happen as they are TN based



Would be lovely to hear some critiques of the Fantasy event

 Sergeant Horse wrote:
I personally would love the ATC to move to Atlanta, but it being Shane & Chris' baby, it probably won't happen as they are TN based



Would be lovely to hear some critiques of the Fantasy event

I thought that they were out of Chatannoga which I thought is close to ATL.

Chris is based in Murfreeboro & Shane is Cleveland

Overall I had a good time. It was nice to catch up with a bunch of folks and plan some skullduggery for Nova. I liked the format, there was clearly a lot of effort that went into organizing it - bravo to the organisers.

However:
My biggest problem with the event was the appalling FAQ that accompanied it and at times made me wonder if I was playing 40K anymore. By way of example, and this list is no means exhaustive:

Jet-bikes being allowed to Battle Focus. Seriously? (this was in the original faq and although it was later redacted there was very little publicity about it). Even though the faq eventually quietly changed the fact that it was in there to begin with beggars belief.

Rune Priests and wargear - this little alteration to the codex was announced at the beginning of the tournament and immediately almost every space wolf player found their list illegal in the tournament, despite it being totally legit in the codex (and EVERY OTHER TOURNAMENT)

Flyers contesting objectives horizontally - flying vehicles lost all vertical distance, that is when claiming objectives vehicles measured horizontally from their hull, regardless of how high above the table the model actually was.

Units claiming multiple objectives has already been mentioned as breaking from the rulebook.

You do realize that the space wolf issue was addressed in the GW FAQ. The reason folks had to change was because Army Builder didn't flag it.

It even says that each Rune Priest must have a unique war gear selection.

As always, thanks for the input and we have many areas to continue to improve upon. I think in the previous two years that if you guys asked, we listened and have done all we could within $ limits to make it happen.

With that said, all input is welcome and where we can respond to any negative feedback we will. But where things are pointed out as being negative that do not fairly apply, we feel the need to respectfully reply:

Organization:
There was a rules pack with 5 copies of the mission handed out to all captains before the event and the large black cart that you had to pass to turn results in every round had a stack of extra player. team and mission sheets along with a printed schedule for both days (which was also announced at least half a dozen times on Saturday) The schedules ran out once and I reprinted them when the last one was taken.

Also the pairings were posted Sunday at 8:30 (as per the schedule) but due to a couple of teams waiting until last minute to point out that there was an issue with their pairings we had to adjust the entire bottom 10 teams. Some of that admittedly being a programming/double check issue on our part.

Terrain:
While there were def more tables without forests than with, there was at least one table in each section with forests. Out of the 90 tables present there were 45 tables with multi level ruins on them. Sounds like you just didnt get to play on any of them due to the pairing process.

Missions:
Had been posted for 5 months. Don't know what to say there as far as people being caught off guard other than that they must have waited to the event to read the mission. And yes fliers have the ability to hover, zoom down low to the ground etc, so its not so much that the objectives were infinitely high as that the rule was there to represent a fliers ability to manouver in the previously stated ways.

Again, no disrespect or arguing meant here, just responding to some possibly mis-placed negative comments.

The criticism about objectives does not appear to be a complaint about the tournament itself, but more of a suggestion for future events. We did an ATC practice event at our venue for our FA15 team that went to the ATC and I also felt, after actually playing in the tournament that the 5 objectives plus 2 EW seemed to be a little much, and simply puts to much on the board for any army to reasonably try to cover or in some cases have any hope to contest in later turns as armies get whittled down. IMO, 3 Capture and Control objectives and two EW objectives are more than fair and competitive.

airmang, Thank you for pointing out that the Space Wolf issue was addressed by GW in their FAQ! - I mean we knew that, just nice that someone else knew it as well (wink wink)



Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Eldar Jetboke FAQ mispost was announced on this thread, the ATC forums, the ATC facebook page and I believe in an email to the team captains and was only on the website for about 2 hours...A list of Any other places would be appreciated so I can make sure that we are communicating as much as possible in the future. Thanks.

 THE SIEGE wrote:

Terrain:
While there were def more tables without forests than with, there was at least one table in each section with forests. Out of the 90 tables present there were 45 tables with multi level ruins on them. Sounds like you just didnt get to play on any of them due to the pairing process.

Did you guys intend that all area terrain was to be treated as a forest? If so, I didn't get that - if it didn't have trees on it, neither I nor my opponents said anything more than "area terrain."

You treated it correctly. If there wasnt a tree, it shouldnt have been a forest. there were some jungle trees, some dead trees, etc. Again, they were sparse in the overall picture.

Team Fluffy Bunnies (From left to right): Kevin (Janthkin), Brandon, Mike, Bill (Centurion99), Jim (Jy2)


Ok, here are my thoughts and comments.


Location: The location was good. Not too far from the airport and close to the hotel. The area is very convenient, with lots of food/restaurants within just a short drive. The hotel was good as well and located near the mall. That's a plus for those of you bringing family or spouses along who don't want to spend their entire day couped up in the venue.


Venue: Venue was good. It was quite spacious and had good air-conditioning. Food was provided onsite....you can't really beat $1 hot dogs. My only criticism here is that space was a little tight. There was really no place to put your army at all. Basically, each table began where the next table ended. It might be worth considering to space them out slightly. For example, use 8" table boards so that you have at least 2" of space to put things rather than 6" tables back-to-back. I realize this may be due to the overall size of the hall, but it's just something for the organizers to consider.


Organization: Everything ran pretty smoothly. Delays are to be expected and here, they weren't really too bad. I like the system of team captains. Rather than everyone having to go up to find out about who is what and when is where, having to deal with only the captains made everything run a little smoother and more efficiently. Overall, I felt it was very well run.

BTW, you should introduce yourself and the crew, especially the judges. There were a couple of occasions where I found myself with a rules question/issue but didn't know who the judges were.


Terrain: I liked the terrain. I also liked the fact that not all the terrain was equal. This added another element of tactics to the overall team concept. Basically, some terrain favored assault armies slightly more and others favored shooty ones. Now you have another tactical dimension of choosing the right terrain for your army against the right opponent. Shooty armies can try to pick out terrain where there is less places to hide, whereas assault armies would try to pick out terrain where there is more place to hide. If all the terrain was the same, then team strategy becomes a little less important. Now, not only do you have to consider what matchups you want or don't want to face, but you have to take into consideration the terrain you want to play in and how it could impact your teammates as well. It just adds more depth to the overall team concept and dynamics.


Missions: I really like the triple-scenario missions, in which you play all 3 scenarios - VP's, Crusade and Emperor's Will - at once. Now there is multiple paths to victory....it just makes the game more flexible for most armies. It also forces people to bring more balanced armies as well. The only thing I felt that you needn't do is to alter the objective-placement rules. Keep them at least 12" from each other rather than the modified 6" (and 3" for the Emperor's Will objective). I think the 6" placement of objectives tends to favor deathstar armies more (like my own Draigowing or IG blob squads), making it quite easy for such armies to spread out and contest multiple objectives quite easily. Otherwise, I quite enjoy these triple-tier missions.


Competition: Gotta agree with Janthkin. It was fierce! It was also really enjoyable as well. Nothing like a good challenge from some of the best players around. I must admit that it was the competition level (as well as trying something new) that got me to come to this tournament and I certainly wasn't disappointed. Like Janthkin said, we ended up playing the armies that ended up 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th overall. Whewwwww!

I also quite enjoy the team aspect of the game. It isn't just you against your opponent. It's your team against the opponent's team. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice yourself for the sake of your team. While I certainly have no problems with being the "sacrificial" army (or as we call it, the army that gets thrown under the bus), I gotta give props to our teammate, Mike, for taking some of the tougher matchups, namely against the Taus, the Eldars and the Taudars/Eldaus in order to give the team the better chance at winning.


Last but not least, I'd like to thank Shane and Chris for taking the time and organizing this tournament. You guys did a great job. Keep up the good work.

Shane, I thought you guys did a great job. Keep it up,these things are a lot of work.

Focus on the few that you can fix and go from there.

As for the objective part I wouldn't change it. It made the game challenging and let options open for other players.

It was my first ATC, and I loved it. It was a blast to meet and play against some really great players. Things like not running as quickly as scheduled is par for the course for big events. I will say that having easily identifiable judges would have been nice though.

All in all, great job to the event organizers. Hope to be there next year.

-JGrand (Quality Control)

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Wow you are way too critical. The move from Chattanooga to Murfreesboro was awesome as the Nashville airport is much more accessible and and rates are a lot cheaper. The hotel was close to the venue with a very nice discount. I think the cost for a rental car split between team mates was quite reasonable too.

I think you are in the South/Texas, so Nashville is easier to get to for you. It is still tough from the west coast so we might have different opinions of convenience. I did say that Murfreesboro was a lot better than Cleveland. For people who are flying in the closer you are to the airport the better and something that might be considered to grow their event.

Having multiple objectives is the most fair for all armies... not everyone plays Draigowing.

That is odd because what I am advocating for hurts Draigowing.

#1. Objectives being placed 12” apart.
#2. Only being able to hold only one objective.

Right now I can make a 6”x6”x6” triangle with objectives and put an Emperor’s Will objective in the middle and camp my paladins on it.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 THE SIEGE wrote:

Organization:
There was a rules pack with 5 copies of the mission handed out to all captains before the event and the large black cart that you had to pass to turn results in every round had a stack of extra player. team and mission sheets along with a printed schedule for both days (which was also announced at least half a dozen times on Saturday) The schedules ran out once and I reprinted them when the last one was taken.

I went to the judges table on Saturday night to ask when the lunch break was for Sunday and they had no idea when it was either. I also never heard any announcements.

Also the pairings were posted Sunday at 8:30 (as per the schedule) but due to a couple of teams waiting until last minute to point out that there was an issue with their pairings we had to adjust the entire bottom 10 teams. Some of that admittedly being a programming/double check issue on our part.

You asked for feedback and here it is: Most tournaments have the table assignments ready to go when you come in on Sunday morning so you can move your stuff and get ready, and get the games starting at 8:30am. This makes sure that everything runs on time since on Sunday you have everyone rushing to get to the airport and for their long drives home. It has the added benefit that you would have caught something like the pairing issue earlier. Just something to think about for next year.

Terrain:
While there were def more tables without forests than with, there was at least one table in each section with forests. Out of the 90 tables present there were 45 tables with multi level ruins on them. Sounds like you just didnt get to play on any of them due to the pairing process.

I know that terrain is one of the hardest things for a large event and forests are the hardest of the terrain types to make. I was playing in the 17-18 table range and there was one table out of the 5 tables had 2 very small forests on it, and another table set had none. I only started to look for them on day #2 so I can't comment on some of the other tables (and I always went out first so I got to select the first tables). You might have had more on others, but I know that the 2 table sets that I was on did not have much.

Missions:
Had been posted for 5 months. Don't know what to say there as far as people being caught off guard other than that they must have waited to the event to read the mission. And yes fliers have the ability to hover, zoom down low to the ground etc, so its not so much that the objectives were infinitely high as that the rule was there to represent a fliers ability to manouver in the previously stated ways.

Tournament rules deviate from the mainstream rules already because in the rulebook there are no time limits and the scenarios and scoring are always going to be created for the event, On the other hand you should deviate from the rule book as little as possible. The reason why that is there are core rules that everyone plays with and changing them causes a lot of confusion and hard feelings. For an example: a player on my team had a heldrake on a giant hill and was about 9" above the objective and when his opponent found out that he could hold/contest this objective with his flyer he was very upset. When you have people coming in from all across the country it is best (IMO) to change as few of the core 40k rules as possible so that everyone will be on the same page.

Again, no disrespect or arguing meant here, just responding to some possibly mis-placed negative comments.

I did not say all of the things that you did right and great (and there were a lot), but I was just giving feedback so going forward you might have some things that you might want to tweek to make your event better.

Those trophies have to be the coolest I've ever seen for an event!

Great job....

Only suggestion - all boards were pretty much wide open - little to no line of sight blocking terrain (which is a common problem we still have a lot of 4th edition based terrain).

Thanks for running this - glad to see how popular it's becoming!

Al

I am starting a 2014 thread, so this will be the last post here:


2014 DATE AND VENUE SET!

DATE
Saturday July 12th & Sunday July 13th 2014
Warhammer 40, Warhammer Fantasy and Warmachine/Hordes will be included this year!
The ATC Website has been updated and we are open for registration! www.whatc.org
Event Location Info
Camp Jordan Arena, East Ridge TN
(10 mins away from Chattanooga Airport)
Loads of food, drinks and entertainment within driving distance
Address: 323 Camp Jordan Pkwy, East Ridge, TN 37412
Phone: (423) 490-0078

The Camp Jordan Arena is a 4,000-seat, 25,000 square foot, multi-purpose arena in East Ridge, Tennessee (a suburb of Chattanooga) built in 1993.
Formerly home to the Tennessee River Sharks of the National Indoor Football League, starting in 2012 will be home to the Tennessee Rail Runners of the Ultimate Indoor Football League.

Hotel Accomodations
TBA