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Kdash's account is pretty accurate. I had a good time, played some really nice guys - but it was definitely the worst organised event I've been too, even as the scale was pretty impressive. The two are probably linked...

But yeah, it seems like poor planning. The choice of a venue with no car park/public transport outside of a 15 minute walk (with huge bags), bag checks, no outside food, escalators (seriously taking my models up and down those was pretty nerve racking), floor length windows in summer, and not enough space for a reasonable table layout (saw an eldar flyer get destroyed by someone squeezing through tables) was dubious at best. The terrain was functional and tbh not unreasonable for one of that size (if a little sparse, but that was advertised tbf) - the issue was more the unfinished nature of it. A quick spray and drybrush (and gluing it together) would have been much much better.

But yeah, I am holding off on re-attending until I have seen evidence that it has improved (i.e. not next year). There's plenty of well run events round there to take my money instead!

I can't say much about how things were run in other rooms, because I was just the TO running a couple of tables of Inquisitor off in a corner (to be clear, if you have anything other than the Inquisitor event to complain about, I am by no means responsible - I was only brought in to handle that, I was not included in the main organising), but I was around during set-up and tear-down to hear some notes that probably need to be inserted into this discussion:

This is the first time ever that the London Stadium has handled any kind of event like this (and that's from the mouth of one of the main Stadium staff involved). They normally do corporate events with boring businessmen doing presentations. When it comes to the issues with the food service, not enough bag checkers*, staff behaviour and such, a lot of that is down to the fact that the venue simply didn't know the challenges of this kind of event.

* Although speaking personally, I'd rather not have this at all for a gaming tournament where everyone has bags, cases, etc full of stuff that could be easily dropped and damaged during a check. (... and apparently were, from one story I heard from my players).

(And the other thing you should infer from that is that the first time that the LGT has gone to the London Stadium).

Benlisted wrote:
escalators (seriously taking my models up and down those was pretty nerve racking)

The venue also has lifts.

Holy hell that looks like a bad joke. And I wouldn't really care if it was the locations first time as the venue, the organizers completely dropped the ball on conveying what the requirements of the event were to be. There has not been one image or story that has come out of that event that would give me any faith the organizers could fix things in a year, or should be trusted to accomplish that.

In regards to terrain, I will say, it was setup exactly as advertised in the player pack and, it was pretty effective if you took it at face value and nothing more. The only issue really was every nudge of the table or passing breeze often resulted in one of the smaller pieces moving or falling over.

The walk to and from Stratford tube station was a bit of an inconvenience, I agree. Especially on the Sunday due to everyone that travelled down and checked out of hotels then had to carry all their extra baggage. Unavoidable I guess, but it was what it was. I didn’t get to see much of the other rooms, so I don’t know if other venues would have been just as suitable for the event. Could easily have fit the whole thing in one of the Excel centre halls though.

@MarcoSkoll I agree that it was a different challenge for the stadium staff and they probably weren’t fully aware of what they were getting themselves into – but, I can only then presume that it wasn’t properly talked over with them before the event in regards to planning.

It was an enjoyable event from the perspective of playing the games and talking to other players.

I don't think the venue can take any of the blame for this - I just don't think the organisers planned this properly at all.

Allegedly one of the main organisers was in Asia for a couple of months and only got back a couple of weeks before the event....

I organise events as part of my job (although not on this scale - the largest event i have managed was about 300 people) and can tell you this would have been months of planning and liaising with the venue.

One of the first things that would have been done would have been a needs assessment and a risk assessment.

I would say from experience that neither of these were conducted or both were ignored.

The needs assessment would have highlighted that with between 700-1,000 people attending the venue would need additional staffing.

The venue told the organisers this but they chose to ignore it (no doubt due to cost).

This would have sped up bag checks, would have allowed for more than one bar to be open and would have meant the food court could have been opened.

The risk assessment would have highlighted the venue wasn't large enough to accommodate the number of players planned.

From the photos I have seen Health and Safety and Fire regs were completely ignored. There was also no disability access, if there had been an accident / incident there was no access/egress and you wouldn't have had a hope in hell of a First Aider being able to respond in 3 minutes.

If I had been the organisers I would have either dropped some of the narrative / 30K tables or decreased the size of the tournament.

I also wouldn't have started sorting out the scenery 11 days before because the organiser was out of the country.

And you can build effective, LOS blocking scenery cheaply that still looks nice.

This just seems amateurish at best but really highlights the event organisers were well and truly out of their depth.

That doesn't mean they should necessarily be hauled over the coals or anything, and to be honest once you add up the cost of the venue hire etc I don't think this a big scam and they've run off with the money.

This is a classic example of somebody with a big dream running before they can walk.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:

Benlisted wrote:
escalators (seriously taking my models up and down those was pretty nerve racking)

The venue also has lifts.

I'll be honest, I didn't think of this. But equally, I needed to get upstairs round 3 in a really short break due to the day compressing, so I was rushing to get my stuff together, get it out of the maze of tables, and find my table in the section I'd never been to before (which is still as big as a normal event). I'd been using the escalators all day and didn't really have time to think, which I think is where a lot of people were at given how many people I saw doing the same. If everyone had tried to use the lifts there could also have been a huge bottle neck given how many people were trying to move in a short space of time.

StraightSilver wrote:

I also wouldn't have started sorting out the scenery 11 days before because the organiser was out of the country.

I don't know the organisers or how they had structured things but it seems to me like this was a case of one person with a strong personality getting things done and giving out instructions and everyone else just waiting to be told what to do by that guy. The reason I say this is because I know what it's like to be that one guy and I know that if you leave people of a certain disposition to their own devices they'll just shrug and think "I dunno what One Guy wants done so I'll just wait till he tells me." A pet hate of mine is people faffing about and not using their own initiative (possibly because I did the jobs of 3 people by myself for about 2 years) so I have a lot of sympathy for whoever One Guy is. Less so for anyone else.

I have no love for tournament players but they deserved better than this. People like to think (especially if they live near the location) that a tournament is just the cost of entry and a day off work/family but always forget that travel, accommodation and food costs money and all those small costs add up. The TOs should be ashamed of themselves and I hope this comes back to bite them next year.

Well that terrain provides los cover so that's good but apart from estethics of pieces my god that identical layout is boooring. I' m lucky local tournaments have much more nicer looking boards which aren't symmetricals and often themed.

It's nice when organizers focus on quality over quantity

So I'm finally back from my weekend at the GT and I thought I'd offer my thoughts. ~

Bag Checks - This was pretty ridicious. We turned up an hour before the start time on Saturday, having already pre-registered for the tournament and the event on Friday, [At which point nothing helpful about arriving early was mentioned] to find ourselves in a line. I counted, and there were roughly 350 people ahead of us in said line, which took about 1 and a half hours for us to get through. While some of the security staff were civil or even helpful,some where rude and models were damaged by 'Bag Checks'. To add insult to injury, while some peoples bags were searchedto the point of model damage, most people got off with such light searches to have been completely pointless. If I'd wanted to smuggle food or explosives into the building, I certainly could off. [For example I did in fact take unauthorized food into the building by accident on occasion.] If you're not going to do a job properly, why bother doing it at all? There was, for example a completely unsecured, open and unmonitored disabled side door I could of just stepped in through and bypassed security entirely.

Terrain - Yeah. I mean. Functional. Check. Equal across the tables? Sort of check. Many of the tables had hills that were higher on one side or another, and somewere missing the "Area Terrain" entirely,so it wasn't perfect. I know they were trying to keep things fair, but when someof the pieces are half spraypainted and others are flat out not done at all, it does cross the line from cheap and verging into disorganised and lazy. And this wasn't a cheap event either, so I was expecting a little more than this.


Organisation - Day one delayed by over an hour. Day two delayed by over half an hour for a considerable number of people. The awards ceromony [more on this later] which we were assured would start on time - Delayed by half an hour, this time without warning or explination.. Round times were occasionally, but not often announced. I couldn't actually find the speed painting competition at all, and the best painted competition almost slipped me by too. Thank heavens I wasn't entering it, but then like posters above, I'm not sure leaving unguarded minitures of considerable value lying around on tables for hours is my cup of tea. I couldn't find either of the GW FAQ's either.
The staff were a 33/33/33 mix of friendly,annoyed, or clueless.
I did run into a couple of the other TO's [I was playing in the 40k GT] and while they were all super nice, they were utterly clueless about everything outside their event. It would have been helpful if it'd been more of a team thing were most people at least new the basics, like where things were. Given that some people had helpful Tshirts, most people didn't have Tshirts, and of the T-shirted people there was no way to tell who was supposed to know what about anything, I was discouraged.

No idea who was judging or rules enforcing the 40k event either. Never got told who they were, where they were, how I'd go about finding them in an event that stretched up to three floors, during the middle of a time limited game or what the proceedure would be for solving disputes. In the endif anything came up we just resorted to asking the table next to us.

Fellow Gamers - A generally wonderful bunch. I met a lot of really nice people - The Harliquin player from Brazil was my favourite, but a shout out to my first Tyranid Opponent and the army of Carnifexs, the local Bristol Crew,and the guys from Tabletop Tactics.

The Awards Ceremony - So as mentioned this was delayed and I had to wait in a standing room only room full of people shouting for a good 30 minutes past the start time with no announcements or indictations if I was going to be waiting another hour or thirty seconds. When it eventually began, as well as hardly being able to hear anything I was treated to a list of awkward names, and who won them. The only qualifier was 'Most Dapper Gent', which was won because of someone wearing a suit, but I couldn't tell you what army any of them were playing. If you're going to announce the results for the largest tournament in all of Europe, it would have been nice to at least announce the faction played by the winner? Maybe alittle bit about his list? What was the best general for the Imperium playing? Where did they place? Anything?

As far as I know, the only way to view your rankings or anyone elses was by using an external app. Which is fine for most people, but not everyone. And ultimately if your main awards ceremony for a 2/3 day long event that's the second largest in the world is going to contain less information than looking in an app,delivered in a manner harder to understand, to which I had to wait over an hour after the conculsion of my last game for, and then the delay on top of it, then what's the point in having one?




I'm not even going to comment on the food and drink issues. [£5 for a large cranberry Juice, anyone? No outside water allowed in the building for the first two days?]

I had fun playing Warhammer. I had fun meeting my opponents.But as an event the LGT left me very dissapointed. A lot of potential, sadly wasted.

 gkos wrote:
interesting to see the opinions of those who have been to more than one of these, I just assumed this is how it was.

I’ve been to all three, so here’s my little ‘history of the LGT’.

The first year was around 100 people. The group came from nowhere announcing themselves as the biggest club in London despite none of the other clubs ever having heard of them, and refused any help. They offered 40k and Heresy tracks, and then at the last minute folded all the Heresy players into the 40k GT, pissing them off. The event was then run as perfunctorily and without-fun-or-ceremony as it could be. Small painting event, but only a few people entered so one guy won all the prizes. Really old fashioned scoring systems (like GTs 15 years ago) so best general tends to win best overall too. Announced they would play ITC on the Frontline podcast then switched to the competitive-lager-lads’ shitfest of ETC later, pissing off some attendees. Terrain was expensive mats with four identical unpainted wooden corners of MDF ruin, and the biggest complaint. My review was at https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/692504.page

The second year was around 350 people total. They got Greg from the Imperial Truth in to run the Heresy track, which I played in. That was fun and well organised, but the terrain was now the same identical MDF corner ruins but SPRAYED GREY (same terrain regardless of what the terrain mats had pictured, and terrain was the main feedback point from the year before). Again, local clubs offered to help with terrain for the Heresy event but were overruled by the organisers. The TOs for the smaller events couldn’t access the main LGT ticketing site so had a really hard time getting lists in or viewing changes. Big delays to entry because of queues and terrible registering system. All the prizes seemed to go to the same few people, hardcore tournament mates of the organisers. ‘Best Newcomer’ went to the guy who won Best General because, while a regular on the tournament scene, he didnt usually win them (!!). My review was at https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/726346.page

This year was around 600/700 people at the Olymic Stadium. Lots of breakout events run by separate non-LGT TOs. I signed up for Necromunda, but had to work on the Saturday night so ended up just going along and using my tournament pass on the Sunday, chatting with friends, and picking up some hobby bits. As far as I can tell by talking to friends who played in almost all the events, the issues were

- Massive queues to get in as only two security on the door. Organisers were offered more security ahead of time but declined. Every event was therefore delayed. Heresy had to ditch a lot of the campaign stuff because of this.
- Same problems with external TOs getting information. Necromunda weren’t made aware of people who cancelled. Heresy sold 96 tickets but we’re only given 40 tables. No space allocated for painting pods that they’d booked. No space or security on the painting comp.
- Only one of the four bars/restaurants were open, and totally unprepared for everyone (now delayed) to eat at the same time. Many people had no lunch.
- Terrain! So, they were so intent on having indentical, ETC style terrain that they refused to use either all the stuff they already had from previous years OR any of the stuff GW brought along to help! Thanks fully, the GW stuff went to Heresy and Narrative, and AoS and Necromunda brought their own, so external events were ok for terrain. However, the LGT organisers decided that ordering a truckload or white polystyrene a week before the event and live-blogging how they totally failed to make enough terrain over the course of the week was a better option. Even given that they didn’t manage to paint it, they STILL opted to use this instead of existing painted terrain to make the event as competitive as possible. So every table had the same identical corners of polystyrene regardless of beautiful game mat it was played on.
- Tables so close together that you were literally back to back with people trying to get around them.
- Some events given rooms made for half the number of people and with no air con.
- People preordered merch which either didn’t turn up OR was sold to regular customers because the merch staff hadn’t been told they were pre-orders!

I left before the awards but apparently that was a shitshow too.

Generally, while I think the TOs were probably originally well-intentioned, they are so intent on running the biggest, most COMPETITIVE tournament, and doing it all on their own narrow terms, that they seem completely unaware of what their attendees actually want. They seem to not give a gak about terrain, comfort, timing, organisation or any of the side events, seeing all of it as extra revenue so that the fifty ETC-style ‘competitive players’ attending (the only people the organisers give a gak about) get big prizes or the most competitive setup possible. It feels, sometimes, like a deliberate scam and that the organisers really couldn’t give a toss about the majority of people attending, or feel like they should all be greatful for being there.

I’ve attended plenty of tournaments and events, from GW events up to NOVA a few times and not only is this consistently the worst organised I’ve attended, it’s also the one with the worst aftertaste - instead of a big fun celebration of geeking, you just get the impression the organisers don’t really want you there for anything other than the ticket money, partly because everyone has something bi to gripe about.

I really shouldn’t have attended this year. I won’t be attending next year, and I know a good number of people feel the same way. In my ideal world, GW would pull support and the LGT would be forced to either massively scale down and work their way towards big events while re-learning who they’re making them for, or someone else will poach all the external TOs and run something better.

There’s a great amount of appetite for a big London event, but this isn’t it.




Edits for spelling

This event was poorly run and the excuses I got were embarrassing. I wish I never went, because while every player I met and played with was great.

The organising was just horrible and I told them that with specific feedback for improvement, but I will not go again.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:



I'm not even going to comment on the food and drink issues. [£5 for a large cranberry Juice, anyone? No outside water allowed in the building for the first two days?]

So, I can’t comment on the cost of juice, beer or other soft drinks, I found that the cost of the coffees were somewhat reasonable – despite the fact you had to essentially make it yourself.

In regards to water, thankfully this got sorted out pretty quickly, and jugs of free water and plastic cups where put out in several places and on a few of the bars. This WASN’T communicated though.

Day 2 however, had a full table of water jugs in front of you as you walked into the 40k main room, so at least it was more visible then.

Facebook site makes no apologies or even recognises issues, but does call out publicly one player for cheating on stream and bans him, then deletes his posts when he tries to respond. The GT that keeps on giving ...

They called someone out for cheating? Not seen anything on the facebook page about it, but I’d be shocked if they did.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
FYI, full results are found at -

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DIRs_CZsfrKfBDelZa_tVUrlkSgyk-Koevd-wQH1RrU/edit#gid=0

Currently, the vast majority of “list” scores are wrong, painting scores are apparently wrong or in question.

To be fair, I’m pretty much past caring about the final scores now, as the only thing I’m focused on is the 5 enjoyable games I played and the final result of which army and player won the tournament, not the event.

You mean calling out the man who is associated with a tool made out of glass?

The Machiavelli in me wants to think that its a deflection tactic by the LGT organisers but perhaps I am being too much of a tin-foil hat addict.

Apparently they posted some pictures on Facebook to announce how well it was going using images from another event to disguise how atrocious the scenery was!

I can only conclude this is a giant con. I can’t understand, however, as to why so many people signed up. You only have to look at pictures from a previous year to realise the organisers don’t give a hoot about the attendees.

https://www.facebook.com/LondonGrandTournament/posts/1884689458248487

I'm conflicted on it myself. On one hand the community should take a strong stance against cheating and trying to push the envelope of what you can get away with against a player happens a lot at tournament, but mistakes also do happen, especially after 12 hours of playing on the second day of competition.
What gets me is that when the finals continued the next morning (they had to pause cause the venue was closing) he still miss played FTGG on his Hammerheads. I would think someone who found out he had been playing something wrong would double check the rule. Apparently not.

Plus there were multiple people commenting that he is known for skirting the edges.. I don't know how much truth there is to that tho.

Eh, ok, so i saw the start of that post on facebook, but didn't read it as i thought it was just a "hype up the winner" annoucement post... My bad.

So, my problem with this is 2-fold.

1. This should never have been posted on facebook in the first place. If all those things were noticed, called out and correct then I fully support the ban. But how it has been reported is a bit, dangerous. I can fully understand -why- they have made the post though, but, it should have been somewhere other than facebook – i.e. their own website as a notice or something. If they didn’t make the post, then the public outcry would have been just as bad, about them “knowing about cheating but not doing anything about it”. It really is a catch-22 situation where they can never win.
2. If it was spotted in the first half of the final game, at the end of day 1, then they needed to call into question his day 1 GT results, which it doesn’t appear to have happened. He won all 3 day 1 games, and 1 day 2 game. The GT 100% means more than the invitational, so you have to question if it happened in a smaller, more visible event, did it also happen in a harder to spot, packed gaming hall. I’m NOT saying this happened, I did not play the guy, or see any of his games, just pointing out something that doesn’t seem to have been handled correctly.
HOWEVER, if this was reviewed after the event finished, the question must be asked as to “how” they identified/were alerted to the issue. You would have thought that they would have had a visible judge around the table watching – as it was a live streamed final, so, if it wasn’t caught then, it just highlights again how bad 40k judges are.
If they were told about the issues during the event, then, we need to ask the question as to why it wasn’t dealt with, while the event was on-going, due to its potential impact on the main 40k GT.

It also needs to be noted, that they’ve scored Alex a standard 15 points for sportsmanship during the GT event.

Unfortunately, this is another example of players ranking in the top 10 of an event being caught acting in an improper manner.

The LGT organisers have now posted on Facebook regarding the feedback on the terrain, organisation and venue:
https://www.facebook.com/LondonGrandTournament/posts/1885047368212696

(Some people might think this is a bit slow as a response goes, but speaking as one of the people who was there for tear-down until late in the evening*, I'm pretty sure that they were just as shattered as I was yesterday).

*Although, again, I was just the TO for the Inquisitor event and had no part in organising anything else other than helping pack it all up at the end.

 torgoch wrote:
Apparently they posted some pictures on Facebook to announce how well it was going using images from another event to disguise how atrocious the scenery was!

If you're talking about this post:
https://www.facebook.com/LondonGrandTournament/posts/1882266568490776

... I can assure you that it's all legitimately from the overall London GT (which included several sub-events - 40k, 30k, Narrative, AOS, Warmaster, Epic, Necromunda, Inquisitor, Blood Bowl, etc), and the gallery does actually include some tables from the WH40K event showing unpainted terrain, so it's not entirely disingenuous.

 MarcoSkoll wrote:

... I can assure you that it's all legitimately from the overall London GT (which included several sub-events - 40k, 30k, Narrative, AOS, Warmaster, Epic, Necromunda, Inquisitor, Blood Bowl, etc), and the gallery does actually include some tables from the WH40K event showing unpainted terrain, so it's not entirely disingenuous.

The other tables were much more like it. Still ridiculously thin on amount but that's more acceptable than styrofoam unpainted blanks.

Note to self: If ever I go to this event go to sub-events. They are more professional than the main one)

Those tables would have looked better if they'd turned the mats upside down and used the neoprene side. At leas that way there wouldn't have been as much of a contrast between the table surface and the "terrain".

Kdash wrote:
Eh, ok, so i saw the start of that post on facebook, but didn't read it as i thought it was just a "hype up the winner" annoucement post... My bad.

So, my problem with this is 2-fold.

1. This should never have been posted on facebook in the first place. If all those things were noticed, called out and correct then I fully support the ban. But how it has been reported is a bit, dangerous. I can fully understand -why- they have made the post though, but, it should have been somewhere other than facebook – i.e. their own website as a notice or something. If they didn’t make the post, then the public outcry would have been just as bad, about them “knowing about cheating but not doing anything about it”. It really is a catch-22 situation where they can never win.
2. If it was spotted in the first half of the final game, at the end of day 1, then they needed to call into question his day 1 GT results, which it doesn’t appear to have happened. He won all 3 day 1 games, and 1 day 2 game. The GT 100% means more than the invitational, so you have to question if it happened in a smaller, more visible event, did it also happen in a harder to spot, packed gaming hall. I’m NOT saying this happened, I did not play the guy, or see any of his games, just pointing out something that doesn’t seem to have been handled correctly.
HOWEVER, if this was reviewed after the event finished, the question must be asked as to “how” they identified/were alerted to the issue. You would have thought that they would have had a visible judge around the table watching – as it was a live streamed final, so, if it wasn’t caught then, it just highlights again how bad 40k judges are.
If they were told about the issues during the event, then, we need to ask the question as to why it wasn’t dealt with, while the event was on-going, due to its potential impact on the main 40k GT.

It also needs to be noted, that they’ve scored Alex a standard 15 points for sportsmanship during the GT event.

Unfortunately, this is another example of players ranking in the top 10 of an event being caught acting in an improper manner.

How would you expect them to deal with point 2?
Its not like they can go back to replay the tournament from round 1. You can change the results to 20-0's but then they played the wrong opponents in subsequent rounds and your whole swiss ranking is out of wack.

Are there any examples of sporting events - tournaments where there's something worth worrying about as a prize - where results or standings are retroactively massaged when someone's caught cheating? In the Olympics, for example, if you're caught cheating, you're kicked out and everyone below you moves up a place, that's all. There's no effort to try and figure out what might have happened in the previous rounds.

 Ordana wrote:

Kdash wrote:
Eh, ok, so i saw the start of that post on facebook, but didn't read it as i thought it was just a "hype up the winner" annoucement post... My bad.

So, my problem with this is 2-fold.

1. This should never have been posted on facebook in the first place. If all those things were noticed, called out and correct then I fully support the ban. But how it has been reported is a bit, dangerous. I can fully understand -why- they have made the post though, but, it should have been somewhere other than facebook – i.e. their own website as a notice or something. If they didn’t make the post, then the public outcry would have been just as bad, about them “knowing about cheating but not doing anything about it”. It really is a catch-22 situation where they can never win.
2. If it was spotted in the first half of the final game, at the end of day 1, then they needed to call into question his day 1 GT results, which it doesn’t appear to have happened. He won all 3 day 1 games, and 1 day 2 game. The GT 100% means more than the invitational, so you have to question if it happened in a smaller, more visible event, did it also happen in a harder to spot, packed gaming hall. I’m NOT saying this happened, I did not play the guy, or see any of his games, just pointing out something that doesn’t seem to have been handled correctly.
HOWEVER, if this was reviewed after the event finished, the question must be asked as to “how” they identified/were alerted to the issue. You would have thought that they would have had a visible judge around the table watching – as it was a live streamed final, so, if it wasn’t caught then, it just highlights again how bad 40k judges are.
If they were told about the issues during the event, then, we need to ask the question as to why it wasn’t dealt with, while the event was on-going, due to its potential impact on the main 40k GT.

It also needs to be noted, that they’ve scored Alex a standard 15 points for sportsmanship during the GT event.

Unfortunately, this is another example of players ranking in the top 10 of an event being caught acting in an improper manner.

How would you expect them to deal with point 2?
Its not like they can go back to replay the tournament from round 1. You can change the results to 20-0's but then they played the wrong opponents in subsequent rounds and your whole swiss ranking is out of wack.

Point 2, essentially revolves around games 4 and 5. I agree, you can't change games 1-3 but, if it was spotted and he was allowed to continue to play in the main event, that then has an impact on the final standings.

 Sim-Life wrote:

I don't know the organisers or how they had structured things but it seems to me like this was a case of one person with a strong personality getting things done and giving out instructions and everyone else just waiting to be told what to do by that guy. The reason I say this is because I know what it's like to be that one guy and I know that if you leave people of a certain disposition to their own devices they'll just shrug and think "I dunno what One Guy wants done so I'll just wait till he tells me." A pet hate of mine is people faffing about and not using their own initiative (possibly because I did the jobs of 3 people by myself for about 2 years) so I have a lot of sympathy for whoever One Guy is. Less so for anyone else.

I get the same impression but a different sympathy. I've known plenty of "One Guy" style leaders who wouldn't delegate a shred of responsibility and then get their knickers all in a twist when their team didn't show one shred of initiative. IMO that's on One Guy. If that's the way you want to run the show, you'd better be putting in sixteen hours a day every day of the week, because you've basically decided to do it all by yourself anyway. You sure as hell can't be out of the country then.

I should probably add that I don't know any of the people involved, don't have any stake in the LGT one way or another, and may well be talking out of my rear end This post is more a politely-intended response to Sim-Life's sympathies than to the actual LGT organization.

Alex Harrison being called out for cheating again
Who would have thought it.
Banned at last. Bout time. People joke about his play style continually but looks like things have caught up to him at last. Don't know the guy but his reputation proceeds him.

So.

Everyone got 15 points for sportsmanship bar _one_ person that got 20 points.
This seems more suggestive of a sportsmanship system which the players didn't understand or didn't use, rather than one person being amazingly sporting and everyone else being perfectly average.

I also notice my list scores are wrong. I did not/should not have scored the 15 points as I did, as my list was late, and not free of errors.
[It was, at least, correctly formatted.]

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
So.

Everyone got 15 points for sportsmanship bar _one_ person that got 20 points.
This seems more suggestive of a sportsmanship system which the players didn't understand or didn't use, rather than one person being amazingly sporting and everyone else being perfectly average.

I also notice my list scores are wrong. I did not/should not have scored the 15 points as I did, as my list was late, and not free of errors.
[It was, at least, correctly formatted.]

Sounds about par for the course with this event. Only thing that seems to be even across the board was the gakky terrain. One positive aspect out of this, there seems to be a new case study on how -not- to run a large event.

Scarecrow20 wrote:
Alex Harrison being called out for cheating again
Who would have thought it.
Banned at last. Bout time. People joke about his play style continually but looks like things have caught up to him at last. Don't know the guy but his reputation proceeds him.

Ad hominem attack - nice.

 Ordana wrote:
https://www.facebook.com/LondonGrandTournament/posts/1884689458248487

I'm conflicted on it myself. On one hand the community should take a strong stance against cheating and trying to push the envelope of what you can get away with against a player happens a lot at tournament, but mistakes also do happen, especially after 12 hours of playing on the second day of competition.
What gets me is that when the finals continued the next morning (they had to pause cause the venue was closing) he still miss played FTGG on his Hammerheads. I would think someone who found out he had been playing something wrong would double check the rule. Apparently not.

Plus there were multiple people commenting that he is known for skirting the edges.. I don't know how much truth there is to that tho.

Never heard of the guy before today, but where there is smoke...