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so who won?

 

WHFB:

Robert Felix w/ sylvania 1st place

Matt Lewondaski w/ nurgle 2nd place

Eliot... w/ slaneesh demons best general


I have no idea the score on WH40K side.

I went by the Cashman Center for about an hour Sunday afternoon and looked at all the players and their armies. I was really surprised by the variety of armies out there. There was no overwhelming number of marine players although MEQ type armies are definitely the dominate force out there. I saw quite a few IG, Nids, Eldar, and Dark Eldar players. There were also quite a bit of Necrons and Tau. Most of the Nid players seem to be using Nidzilla lists and DE and Tau players were mostly mechanized.
I only saw two Ork players. One was a guy I knew who used to manage a GW store locally and moved recently to Baltimore to manage the GW store there. He ran a Deathskull list. The other Ork player seemed to be running a KOS list.

And in typical GW 'almost good enough for government work' quality standards, they managed to give the wrong person the overall trophy on the fantasy side.

So for those keeping score:

Atlanta 40k games day tournament: complete fiasco

Vegas Fantasy GT: wrong guy handed the overall trophy.

Remind me why they fired Jeff Hall again?

Whoa, everything else I read about it said it was a good event, really dumb that they gave the wrong guy the overall trophy; what was the story there - they announced the winner and gave the trophy to the wrong guy?

How'd things end up going for you and the other guys?

And any info on the 40k side?

Here's some thoughts of someone else who attened:

"This dude is at the Las Vegas GT, but went for LOTR, not WH. Here's what he noticed:

Quote kay day one of the GT is finished. We've seen a good collection of Sacramento, Bay Area, Stockton area and some Hollywood types come up to play. I don't know how the 40K or Fantasy players have faired, but I can tell you that I am very glad I am not playing in the GT in either of those tournaments. The lack of any composition system has brought out the worst in players.

The most memorable army I saw (amongst playing field with many a disgusting but LEGAL list) was a two Steam Tank, three Great Cannon, all cavalry force (which mounted repeating handgunners). There is also a really unpleasant Tzeench Flying circus and the list goes on. I don't feel so dirty about my last couple of tough WHFB armies as they are soft and fluffy compared to some of those monster lists.



And so this is what we have to look forward to from GW sponsored GTs in the future. Awesome. "

I have to say that I didn't see the Atlanta 40K GT to be anything CLOSE to a fiasco...if anything, Spengler and his crew did a much better job overall than the crew the year before did, and made the tournament fun for everyone that *I* spoke to.

Posted By mauleed on 06/04/2007 4:55 PM

And in typical GW 'almost good enough for government work' quality standards, they managed to give the wrong person the overall trophy on the fantasy side.

So for those keeping score:

Atlanta 40k games day tournament: complete fiasco

Vegas Fantasy GT: wrong guy handed the overall trophy.

Remind me why they fired Jeff Hall again?

There was a fiasco at Atlanta ??? Thats news to me. I didn't see any posts on here except some complaints that people didn't read the packets on the tournament and showed up clueless.

Didn't they cancel a whole GT season under the previous administration?

Obviously if (and I say 'if' because I don't know the validity of this claim) they gave out the trophy to the wrong guy in Fantasy it is a serious mistake, but it wouldn't be the first time and it won't be the last time something like that happens.

However, overall the tournament was run very smoothly from my perspective. Personally, I didn't think they had enough terrain pieces on the board and the inclusion of two 40K missions from the 'back of the book' (3rd edition mission converts) was a big mistake. Despite these gripes I still had a great time overall and will gladly attend next year. Being able to gamble at night is a great bonus!


As for the notion that removing comp has somehow unhinged the Grand Tournament I have to call Shenanigans. While the tournament had its fair share of power armies, the vast majority of armies on the tables weren't 'tuned' in any major way.


Oh, and I did horrible personally. I went 1-3-1 and this was, by far, my worst grand tournament performance to date (I've never had more losses than wins before).

Posted By carmachu on 06/04/2007 6:42 PM
 I can tell you that I am very glad I am not playing in the GT in either of those tournaments. The lack of any composition system has brought out the worst in players.

The most memorable army I saw (amongst playing field with many a disgusting but LEGAL list) was a two Steam Tank, three Great Cannon, all cavalry force (which mounted repeating handgunners). There is also a really unpleasant Tzeench Flying circus and the list goes on. I don't feel so dirty about my last couple of tough WHFB armies as they are soft and fluffy compared to some of those monster lists.

I think you are way off here. Every GT has it's share of WAAC armies with or without comp.

There were a very few 9 oblit Iron Warriors, and 3 Falcon armies (I think only one of each),  but they were the exception not the rule.

I ended up going 4-0-1 with an average eldar army so you can win at a GT without going overboard (And I would have won if my army was not half painted).

Not to get off topic, but could you post your list over in the Army List section? I am looking at various ways to do Eldar. I'd like to see your list.

Hey Yak,

What army did you bring?

I thought you were going to be there but with so many people I don't think I recognized you.

He's not as tall as you'd expect

Posted By General Hobbs on 06/04/2007 9:37 PM
Not to get off topic, but could you post your list over in the Army List section? I am looking at various ways to do Eldar. I'd like to see your list.

http://dakkadakka.com/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/14/postid/168219/view/topic/Default.aspx

Done.

And on the whole I thought it was a very well run event.

They took a lot of the best ideas that Adepticon had, and incorporated them into the GT.

A few examples are that they gave you a comprehensive rules packet that had all 5 missions in it as well as all of the special rules.  Another thing that was new was that they projected a huge countdown clock onto the wall so you always knew how much time you have. I also liked that they gave us 2 1/2 hours for a 1750 point game, so even the horde armies should be able to finish.

Even Phil Kelly was great.

The downside was that they did have 2 missions that were bad. Patrol and Hold at all Costs (shiver) made for a couple of rough games.

Oh, I did have one other problem…In game 5 my opponent and I had a major rules dispute. I ended up with a bad ruling from one of the Kommandos (they were some of the staff/judges), that acted like he was the final judge. If it were not for it playing on table #2 in the final game, I would have let it slide, but I had to get Dave Taylor, who in turn got Phil Kelly to make the correct ruling. So it was all good.

Posted By inquisitor_bob on 06/04/2007 11:06 PM
Hey Yak,

What army did you bring?

I thought you were going to be there but with so many people I don't think I recognized you.

Valhallan Imperial Guard.

 

This was my 6th GT and very well run from years past. I must have left before the mixup bit. There were a few problems but Dave Taylor was up to listening and willing to make changes. In chats with staff I heard they are considering going back to the smaller hotel based GT's, they way they were in the begining. I truely hope that they follow threw on it.

wynnstudio

Sounds like it was interesting to say the least

Does anyone know who/what placed for 40k?

Mike Mutscheller won first place for 40k. Mostly undivided chaos list, with a khorne biker lord (tricked out to 275 or so points), khorne biker lieutenant (180-ish or so), 2 squads of 6 furies, 3 havoc squads, and 3-4 troops, all min sized. Good guy to play against, terrible army to have to fight against. There was a definate division between 'normal' armies and WAAC armies, the whole no-comp thing was taken to ridiculous limits by some people.

I dont know anything about someone being given the wrong award, but overall I thought the logistics side of things was pretty well done, with a well put together rules packet complete with terrain summary and mission run down, t shirt, tape measure that actually works, and a fancy water bottle that works good for mixed drinks too (viva las vegas!).

Posted By yakface on 06/04/2007 11:32 PM

Posted By inquisitor_bob on 06/04/2007 11:06 PM
Hey Yak,

What army did you bring?

I thought you were going to be there but with so many people I don't think I recognized you.

Valhallan Imperial Guard.

 

CONGRATS TO Mike. He is proving himself to be one of the best 40k players in the world.

I ended up getting two draws, got massively beaten once, and massacred twice.  I think there were five or six players that scored lower than me, but I'll bet only five or six had more fun.

On the fantasy side of the room, my team got a late start because two of our opponents were late, but Dave and the crew got us playing just fine.  Other than that, I thought the event went very well.  I would have liked the event to be in one of the hotels or the convention center closer to the strip, but the location wasn't as bad to me as some peeple make it sound.

I had some of the best games ever against four great opponents.  I didn't mind getting beat so bad because the games were very intense (to me anyway, I hope my opponents feel the same). 

Las Vegas is a great place for the tournament.  We drove over 700 miles to get to it, and I don't think I would drive that far if it hadn't been Las Vegas.  Play games all day, gamble all evening... It doesn't get much better than that!

I even got Phil to autograph my Eldar codex!  I only talked to him for a few minutes, but it was pretty cool to get to do that.

All told, I had a great time and thought the event went very well.  I'm already saving up for next year.

Posted By yakface on 06/04/2007 7:54 PM

Oh, and I did horrible personally. I went 1-3-1 and this was, by far, my worst grand tournament performance to date (I've never had more losses than wins before).

Wow. What happened? No need for a battle report, just curious.

I think the problem was on the fantasy side.

The scores were:

1)* Matt Lewandowski.......171
2) Robert Felix...............170
3) Johan Thulin..............167
4) Elliot Vigil..................164
5) Timothy Walker.........158
6) Brandon Gallegos.......156
7) Jordan Braun.............155
8) Todd Wiatt.................152
9) Gregory Swensrud......151
10) Janner Holliday...........143
11) Eric McKee.................143
12) James McCasey..........143
13) Steve Masuta..............142
14) Mike Paganini..............140
15) Touradj Mansouri.........136
16) Brent Ballie.................136
17) Maurcio Zuniga............134
18) Robert Morris..............134
19) Michael Garner............133
20) Paul Zagaris................133
21) Andrew Harward..........133
22) Ricky Fisher................133
23) Kevin Oligschlaeger.....132
24) Nathan Ott..................132
25) Kevin Murphy..............132

 

Robert Felix was the winner, and got the trophy (Which was a great trophy).

 

As a side note, they gave out a lot of swag to the winners. I believe in past GTs they did not have any prize support.  

As a 40K rules Kommando, I'd like to chime in a bit here....

#1 We were told something that really helped us "Make the customers happy, they are very important". If we made a good impression this year, then we'll have another Vegas GT. If we made a bad impression, then there won't be another Vegas GT, or maybe even GT's ever again. That's the situation this years GT crew were in, and yet Dave Taylor still put his neck on the line and fought for continuing GT's.

#2 As rules judges our job was to make the best rulings that we possibly could. If it wasn't a "how far does my space marine move in the movement phase" kind of question, we were told to get 3 of us together and come to a consensus, and if that didn't work, to ask Phil Kelly. This worked REALLY well IMO, and I had people calling me by first name that I never met because they knew we were there to help them and do our very best. We also stove to make sure the decisions were spread through all the judges so that we had some consistancy. While this did break down for one situation for one player, I feel we did a good job of that. I think I answered well over 200 rules questions over the course of the weekend, and I think that on the whole we did a great job communicating between the players, the judges and the game designer that we had on-hand. That's no mean feat.

#2 The wrong trophy thing was an alphabetizing computer problem from what I understand. They made it good as soon as they possibly could, and having to juggle 3 tournaments with 9-10 prizes each in a short period of time is *really* hard. Nobody is perfect and given that the crowd was almost chanting to get the results, I can see why someone would make a mistake under those circumstances.

#3 They went out of their way to clarify terrain with pretty pictures, and even printed out the scenarios. This was a good thing. OTOH, the text next to the pictures was a problem. Hills are decidedly WYSIWYG, and they called them size 2 and size 3 hills, which made them area terrain. <sigh></sigh>Also, when they typed up scenarios they left out some of the special rules that were supposed to be there. This was in response to a customer out-cry because they didn't bring their rulebooks and scenarios. Bummer on both sides if you ask me. OTOH, we addressed these issues very quickly, and they should be addressed properly for Baltmore.

#4 The lava tables are pretty widely hated, and if you lost all your games, you had a good chance at playing on the lava tables the whole tournament long. This was brought up, and we made arrangements to move people to the empty WFB tables and even added some terrain once we knew we had some extra on the second day. In the future, the tables are going to be spread out (and let me tell you, that's going to be a MAJOR hassle and a lot of back-breaking work) to make things better. They are working on refurbishing some of the older tables so that more varied stuff can be brought back.

#5 On the 40K side there were some army lists that I know I wouldn't enjoy playing against, and many of them were on the top 10 tables. Given that this was a no-comp event, I think it's interesting that they didn't win over-all even if with tons of battle points. This says to me that people are still knocking sportsmanship scores in lieu of comp scores. I get the impression that a huge section of the feedback sheets (yes, we asked for feedback, how cool is that?) asked for the return of comp scores. I also get the impression that the organizers aren't really interested in bringing comp scores back because previous methods were horribly abused. So, if you want comp scores to return, a viable method that can't be easily abused needs to be proposed, and THEN make your voices heard, in that order. Personally I'd love to see comp scores

#6 I got a LOT of positive feedback from players on both sides saying that this was a very well run event. Those that had issues had a method for detailing their problems, and hopefully they will be addressed in further GT's. So, if you had problem with GT, I hope that you had the courage to write it up in your feedback form, and have the patience to see if it gets addressed. It could make the difference between having another Vegas GT, or not.

#7 {Edit : removed in-accurate and unkind remark} I've got nothing but good to say about Dave Taylor and the guys he picked for running Vegas GT this year. I may be a bit biased, but I've got other GT's to compare to, and I think overall, there was more fun had at this one than most years previous. Certainly, if you didn't attend, it's pretty absurd to bad-mouth it, don't you think?

There is no intent at all to modify the scoring system at this time. I pretty much have this from the 'horses' mouth and that's troubling but the subject of another rant.

I will say that after looking over the paint scores it seemed like the judges were being pretty stingy with the points and I think that's a relatively good thing. I believe there was one 40, a handful of 35s and a decent number of 25s and 30s. So of the 48% of subjective scores it seems that people lost points across the board in a 'fair' way.

Of course if you show up with an average painted army and one opponent decides to ding your sportsmanship (because you crammed his army in the box by turn 3) then there's no way you are going to win the tournament even if you win all your games.

Here are some solutions:

Make the tournament primarily about winning games. The 52% non subjective vs the 48% subjective scoring system is just no way to judge the outcome of a tournament.

Have the ability to register to be eligible to win only certain categories (like best general, best painted, best sport, best over all). Then you have people in brackets playing for the same goal and limit the amount of chipmunking going on.

I'm fine with bringing back comp when GW is done nerfing all the lists. Right now all 'troops' are in no way considered equal but that seems to be sort of slowly changing. It's changing for the worse, but at least it's changing and when everything sucks the stuff that doesn't suck as much will seem cool again.


*Edit* I do want to point out that everyone running the tournament was pleasant and the games ran on time and smooth.  That's a big step in the right direction.  Also, I do like how the battle points earned were verified (by the players) several times during the tournament.

The team tournament on Friday was pretty neat too and there weren't a ton of people there for it but it at least seemed like no one went too far out of the way to cheese out their list for it.

I would like to say that in the team tournament all kinds of cheese was possible, but I did not see any armies exploit the 2 force org charts.

But the be downside was the fact that all three missions was cleanse gamma.

Overall running a GT is a thankless task, and my hat goes off to all that were part of running the GT. Dave Taylor is doing a lot of the right things to make sure that these tournaments are truly grand. Remember that this was his first one, and mistakes will happen. I expect that they will get better in the future.

Oh, and I did forget to comment on one other thing; If you don't like the attitude of a Kommando (even if it was me... ) definitely let the GW staff know it. It's important that we get feedback and know when we're doing stuff right and when we're doing stuff wrong. Nobody is perfect, and we all have areas where we can improve. I'd personally like to keep the Kommandoz reputation free from some of the bad impressions that some of the Outriders sometimes gave.

Sportsmanship awards don't really have a place in tournaments to my mind.
But I'm mostly a casual gamer, I run tourneys but rarely get to play in them. When I do, I'd like to win or lose based on my performance, not some guys (probably cynically self interested) opinion of how sporting I am. When I had sportsmanship awards, I saw really good players get gimped by people trying to game the system to screw them out of points.

In my case, I'm gonna be nice to my opponent because making new friends is a big part of what wargaming is about for me. I wanna be able to have a pint with my opponents afterwards with no hard feelings and no stress. I don't need some sort of behaviour police making sure I'm not a jerk. Jerks pay for their jerkyness in other ways.

Warning...long post.

To show my age, I go back to the first USGT in 1997. And as an increasingly grizzled veteran, I'm happy to see the GTs back and in the hands of people (previously Jeff and now Dave) with genuine interest in making them better and seeing them thrive.

However, the GTs aren't only in GW's hands...they're in ours. If we want the GTs to thrive again, veterans need to attend and set a good example in all aspects of the hobby...generalship, sportsmanship and painting. No matter how "grand" GW tries to make them, the GTs only shine when we make our best efforts. Anyone can play a jerk with a black-primered army at their local store...what makes for a "grand" experience is facing an opponent who really tests your ability, has a great-looking army and is someone you wouldn't mind having a beer with afterward. And I have no doubt vets will answer the call on this one. I think we all realize that this might be the last chance for the USGTs.

Regarding sportsmanship, it's an important part of the hobby and the GTs (right or wrong) are a marketing tool set up to reward all aspects of the hobby. Not that sportsmanship points aren't abused or that people aren't jerks anyway. They are. But if sportsmanship grading helps take an edge off some of the jagoffs we all know exist, it can help players (especially first-timers) have a better experience. And a good GT experience makes for a more enthusiastic hobbyist. Sportsmanship points may be evil, but in my mind they may be a necessary evil for what the GTs are trying to do. For an independent tourney not run by GW (and probably a lot less expensive), the need for sportsmanship grading probably isn't as compelling. Just my $0.02.

A final point -- although I'm sure the GTs still face some internal resistance at GWUS HQ, there's no doubt in my mind they drive sales. How many times have we heard from fellow hobbyists at the end of a GT that "next year, I'm bringing (army X)!" While those sales are almost impossible to quantify, I can only hope the business folks grow to understand that.

Barontuman wrote:
#7 The previous GT crew (that got canned) set up the Cashman hall, and it was SUPER expensive, and had to be reached by shuttle. It was badly planned from the beginning, and GW spent a lot of money renting a shuttle and making it work.

That is totally not true. As the person who picked the Cashman center, it was the only affordable option in Las Vegas to have the event at. It had free parking, and we always discussed having a shuttle from any hotel we made arrangements with.
So please don't speak for things you know nothing about. There was never a problem with having the GT at the hall it was held in.
Jeff

Posted By JHall on 06/06/2007 9:23 AM
Barontuman wrote:
#7 {edited to remove inaccurate and unkind remarks}

That is totally not true. As the person who picked the Cashman center, it was the only affordable option in Las Vegas to have the event at. It had free parking, and we always discussed having a shuttle from any hotel we made arrangements with.
So please don't speak for things you know nothing about. There was never a problem with having the GT at the hall it was held in.
Jeff

{removed irrelevant sentence}  That same week, I attended a hobby manufacturers convention at the Hilton.  I don't have any idea how much it cost to hold that event there, but it might bear looking into, as I don't imagine the hobby industry as a whole has enough money to hold conventions in very extravagant places.

I did end up having to pay for parking on Sunday (Friday and Saturday there wasn't anyone at the pay booth).  The guy that took my money was really kind of a jerk.  When I mentioned that I didn't have to pay Fri and Sat, he commented that I must have got there really early (I didn't).  Then he complained when all I had was a $20 bill.  After him being a jerk to me, I happily made him count out 17 singles to me.