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I'm having flashbacks. Is it 2010 again?

I just looked at the semi-final locations. (I guess I could have looked earlier, but it would have been presumptuous.) And there's one lonely store down in southern California hosting the semi-finals. Again.

I need to send GW a copy of the 2010 census, so they can see that California has the largest population in the country. Maybe a map, too, so they can see that it's the third-largest state. I don't begrudge Texas their 3 locations. I don't even begrudge New York their two. But Florida has three.

So, for the second year, I'll pass on attending the semi-final for Fantasy. It's not worth the drive for a one-day event; I'll go down for the SoCal Slaughter in Space the following weekend, instead.

Yeah last year the locations were messed up.. Store owners had to call and get themselves readded

Its very frustrating to be sure. Britain is not the same as the USA. We're a large country

Haha, California has the same amount of stores holding semis as Nebraska!!

Well my store Legions got removed so no semis within 6 hours.. I was told GW *Gave* it to someone else yet the list is smaller than last year

More like GW wanted to give away less armies. 30 locations for 50 states, thats cool.. and multiples in some

Free weekend for me I guess

No ME, NH, or VT this year. MA has one. RI has one! Crazy.

WI didn't have one until sometime last week, maybe it's not finalized yet.

Do you know of stores who have asked to host it but have been turned away? Because I know of some locations in the country that don't have one simply because the shop who previously ran the 'Ard Boyz semis got fed up with it for whatever reason, said they didn't want to host it anymore, and GW didn't bother finding a replacement so they just dropped that site.

The Game Castle here in NH, I believe. Big store; easily has space for 30 players, and pretty central in New England. Has also hosted AB semis in the past.

I've heard good things about The Whiz (which has it this year), too, but they're kind of in the South/Central MA, which is a bit close to RI in terms of driving. If the GC had it, that'd put a store a bit closer for the folks in Maine, Vermont, and NH, and the folks in Southern MA could still easily go to RI.

Did Canada get boned again on semis locations?

sigh, no semis being held anywhere in Atlanta, how does that even make sense for the South East. Now I have to drive to SAVANNAH!?!

Could always mass email them and complain.. Although I imagine that would hit their spam filter that filters out tournament player emails :p

Maybe they are working with outdated sales or participation data. Its not like GW has a handle on this whole fanbase thing.

...or a handle on the physical size of Canada.

Hi

Well Canada got one location... Sudbury, Ontario (a town of 150,000 in a Province with 13 million people)... 5 hours north of Toronto... 6.5 hours west of Ottawa...

It is closer for most Ontario players to head to Rochester New York (3 hours from Toronto... 4.5 hours from Ottawa)

I'll be the first to admit I liked when it was in Kitchener because travel was very short for me, but at least it was within an hour drive of Toronto.

Cheers,
Nate

'Ard boyz is a joke, billed as the best players, and then using seemingly random criteria.

1 LOC in CA, really?

I remember the one year I went to finals and I found out that many people qualified for regionals by just showing up to a store as everyone who did went vs other people were the best of hundreds.

Pretty much pointless.

Oh and as an added bonus the armies all look bad too! because there's no painting and the composition is the most egregious hash out there too! Perfect (to not attend)!

I don't think it's a good way to evaluate the best players, but it can be a lot of fun, and I've mostly had interesting, tactically-challenging games.

Not all the armies look bad. I've seen a decent percentage of good-looking armies. Many of the good players use an existing nicely-painted tournament army then augment it with a few units, either unpainted or (sometimes) also nicely painted.

I will say that the WHFB Ardboys was a bit less enjoyable than the 5th ed 40k AB, IMO. 8th edition warhammer has rather more broken army composition rules, particularly at the 3k points level. And its VP system tends to result in less fun games than 40k's objective system.

There are people who believe 'ard boyz is about best of the best? When most games dont finish, random scenarios limit the competitiveness and location restricts who can go? 40k 'ard boyz is vastly superior to WFB and a lot more fun. It really feels like the fantasy missions were written in 40k terms by someone whos never played fantasy then ignored 4 weeks of complaints about the final mission. What happened to the openness of year 3 when John edited them 3 times based on dakka suggestions

I've won my areas prelims and semis like 4 years in a row and Ive never once considered myself best of the best since its such a limited play pool. Ive went to the finals and the wacky missions, and other GW shenanigans put a real damper on it .

Its always been about promoting sales to buy 2500 pt armies (hence why its done by GW sales) and forcing down prize support to retain profits (You get vouchers for GW merchandise instead of GW just giving money to the store)

Its like if football ended in random quarters, changed the rules every game and some teams had their stadium closed and had to forfeit.. That would be very competitive indeed

To be honest if it wasnt for the 2nd round prizes it really wouldnt be that popular given the sheer # of well run GTs around the states

How many locations did CA have for the first round?

23 it would appear. I dont even think they cared that the single semi-finals store should theoretically need space for 69 players. Based on some calculations it would appear that each semi-final location is designed around a possibility of 32 players per location (338 stores x 3 players per store). That seems a bit much considering the overall turnout and store capacity in general

Id say a more realistic goal should be 24 people, which would yield 14 additional stores.. That is more or less the required distribution needed for the areas with a lot of players yet 1 location. That would cost them about an extra 2000 whole dollars of prize support (given youre getting it direct from them and it costs them very little) to accommodate their loyal players

Yea, its like that here too.

OK had 5 stores run qualifiers, meaning at max it would pull 15 people to a round 2.

The thing is we are pretty central, and a lot of states could pull to come here.

I'm with Kirasu on this, most of the lists are even useless as a metric because scenarios tend to be so wonky, some games end up a crapshoot (and you have to massacre all three to win).

I just think everyone should get a fair shake at the army prize, geographically. I am baffled why people travel to the finals for this tournament.

I had three good games at the 40k finals in both 2009 and 2010. And most of the prelim and Semi games were good too. I played pretty darn good and fun games against Monster Rain, Mike Twitchell, Clark Welch, Centurian99, Black Blow Fly, and a bunch of other guys who don't post on here and/or whose names I can't remember off the top of my head.

I could see having good games in 7th ed WH, too. But I'm not quite as sure about 8th ed. My first game ast the prelim was pretty good, but the 2nd and 3rd basically had a turn or so of movement and then mostly rolling dice.

Mannahnin wrote:I will say that the WHFB Ardboys was a bit less enjoyable than the 5th ed 40k AB, IMO. 8th edition warhammer has rather more broken army composition rules, particularly at the 3k points level. And its VP system tends to result in less fun games than 40k's objective system.

Mannahnin wrote:I could see having good games in 7th ed WH, too. But I'm not quite as sure about 8th ed. My first game ast the prelim was pretty good, but the 2nd and 3rd basically had a turn or so of movement and then mostly rolling dice.

*sigh* I know... how did it come to this?

I think the problem is mostly with the 3000 point level. Things just get crazy. Up to 4 units of flamers. Kairos. Units of bazillion. Double digit warmachines. 12 PD every turn and generating more throughout the phase.

Knock down the point level, you're only seeing 2 duplicate rares / 3 duplicate specials of those broken units. You're not seeing Kairos. Unfortunately, even at 2K there's Teclis. And below that, there's still a tooled up slann...

I don't know how to fix it. But I think a lower point level and a few special character restrictions / exclusions would go a long way...

I had a fun time with the tactics at 'Ard Boyz. But some of the over the top stuff makes the game kind of discouraging. Teclis in Banner of the World dragon unit. Kairos with flamers, huge bloodletter block, horrors. Egh...