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In the wake of the last couple of threads about games coming to their natural conclusion, and as my local group is in the midst of planning our sixth annual fall event for next year, I wanted to put this out there to gauge interest.

It seems like the response was to lower point values. We've run 1750-1850 in the past, and there has been talk of lowering that to 1500. So right off the bat, that's something I'm interested in hearing feedback on as I'm the one pushing for the 1500 point value, with others discussing 1750.

This year in a 10 player event we did 1850 with 2.5 hour rounds, plus a free 15 minutes of setup and games starting as soon as both players are set up. Next year we'll have space to do a full on 64 person event, and with that we're looking at 6 rounds. Part of the reason for me pushing for 1500 is that we should be able to cut our round times down to 2 hours, with the fifteen minutes of set up. This would allow us to run 2 games on Friday, and 4 on Saturday, or possibly 2 Friday, 3 Saturday, and the final round on Sunday morning. The 3 day thing is up in the air, because the convention we'll be running it at is iffy on continuing to run on Sunday next year but if we can, it would wrap by noon. Are 3 day events something people would be willing to do. We definitely want to make sure we have our undefeated Champion.

The normal things most GTs these days run would of course be present, an overall Champion (Sports+Painting+Battle), Best General (Undefeated), Best Painted, Players Choice/Best Sportsman (Voted by players), and we always do a Baby Seal prize for last place. A door prize raffle has been part of the event the last few years as well, with some nice items, for example this year we gave away 2 copies of the new Space Marine Codex and something else that I don't remember.

So here's details:

64 Players, 1500 Points, Six 2 hour rounds, with fifteen extra minutes per round for set up. Definite Friday/Saturday event, with the possibility of round six being played Sunday (will know well in advance of the event), either the 2nd or 3rd weekend of September 2014, in a suburb of Kansas City. Prizes for Undefeated, Best Overall, Best Painted, Player's Choice. Door prizes, and a baby seal prize for last place. Minimum painting required (3 colors), and a rubric will be provided for how painting will be judged. Sportsmanship scored by opponent with a clear rubric for them to go by. No funky luck based missions (we used standard rulebook based missions this year). No Forge World.

Is this the type of event people are saying they're now interested in attending? If not, please tell me what WOULD get you interested.

Sounds pretty darn solid. really the only difference is the point drop. Perhaps up the round time a bit; 250 points less and a 30 minute time drop. with the 250 points out I save the time of moving one land-raider, but 30 minutes of game time is gone.

 Largeblastmarker wrote:
Sounds pretty darn solid. really the only difference is the point drop. Perhaps up the round time a bit; 250 points less and a 30 minute time drop. with the 250 points out I save the time of moving one land-raider, but 30 minutes of game time is gone.

I get that, I really do, but the point/time drop isn't really targeted at Marine players. I think it's pretty safe to say that most of them can get 1500 point games in within the 2 hour time limit, it's more for the players that think 125+ models is an appropriate list for timed games. That 250 point Land Raider for a Marine player could (and probably would) be a lot of models for a Guard or Nid player, which is what seemed to have trouble finishing their games this past year. It's something we're still playing with.

For some extra variables, we're restricted by the convention hours, and it really is a case of there is only so many hours in a day. What we're looking at is being able to at the earliest start setting up tables is 5pm on Friday. So we would be looking at a 6:00-6:30 before we can start round 1. If we can get still get the third day (and it's something people will actually attend), then time of course becomes a lot more flexible and open for longer rounds, but for right now we have to plan for only 2 days, and really only 1.5 since we can't start til the evening of day 1.

I don't know if it was your intention, but as an Ork player I'm a bit insulted by the "think 125 models is appropriate" comment.

Some armies are horde armies, and if your going to discriminate against them, then no, this is not an event I'd be interested in attending.

 Dakkamite wrote:
I don't know if it was your intention, but as an Ork player I'm a bit insulted by the "think 125 models is appropriate" comment.

Some armies are horde armies, and if your going to discriminate against them, then no, this is not an event I'd be interested in attending.

Where was the discrimination in my post? If it is the part where games have time limits then all tournaments are discriminatory. My personal opinion is that armies with 125+ models are too large to be played in 2 hours and therefor inappropriate for a 2 hour timed game, it isn't meant as an insult. The original context was that while 250 points is a land raider to a marine player and therefor not a big impact on their overall turn time that same 250 can be a large number of models in another army and can/will impact how long turns take. The horde armies topic has been done to death though and I would rather not rehash a long discussion on it here. There is no discrimination against any army type, horde or otherwise except that like all events we only have X numbers of hours to get a set number of games in and some army builds simply can't take games to their natural conclusion within that alloted time.

The reason for those threads was that 2.5 hour games at 1850 weren't finishing.

If you drop the points but give the same round time, this should be solved.

If you drop the points by a sixth, but cut round time by a fifth you'll just be back where you started.

It's not really cutting it by 1/5 though. The events advertising 1850 at this point are doing 2.5 hour rounds, with no set up time. We're considering 1500 with basically 2.25 hour rounds when you factor in the extra 15 minutes.

I do get what you're saying though, it's something I've brought up myself. We're by no means locked into what were at currently. It's all still under discussion, part of my motivation for this thread is to see what kinds of pushback there is, i.e. the 1750/1850 point level is something people really won't go under, etc.

Positive, negative, I appreciate all feedback.

It sounds to me like you don't really have enough time to run the event with the number of rounds you want.

IMO 2 hours is not enough time to play 1500 points. You say 15 min of set up time. Does this include deployment? or just things like pregame rolling?

I never really understand the 15 min set up time anyway, why not just make rounds 15 min longer?

That said, I don't think trying to run 2 games friday is realistic if you don't start until 6:30 Pm, that has you finishing at 11:30 PM or so. with no breaks. I Fyou leave 30 min between round you are at Midnight.

You don't know if you have sunday available...in general I think this makes large events tough.

My question is why the jump from 10 players (seemingly) to 64?

Why not try for 32?

I'd be interested in attending this event (not that I could, being in the UK, but that's irrelevant). It seems to me the only potential issue you have is the drop to 1500pts, everything else seems to be great. Personally, I have no issue with 1500 at tournaments/events, but I know there are those who do. You'd do well to find out exactly how many people are dissuaded by the points drop.

Breng77 wrote:
My question is why the jump from 10 players (seemingly) to 64?

Why not try for 32?

We've done it larger in the past, we kind of took this year easy, didn't advertise months in advance, and generally we just didn't go all out on the event because our real lives got busy so we ran it more for the local core of players, and to keep up with doing it annually. We've got more people stepping up to volunteer time and to help out so we're able to put a lot more into the event next year and want to make it something big.

And the round time basically is 2:15, the set up time is rolls, deployment, and game start. I'm not sure exactly why we're classifying it separately, since I wasn't privy to that discussion, but that's what it got called this year, and I've been carrying on with it's usage. Two of the other organizers are on the main board for the con, so they're pushing for that Sunday to stay, not just for us, but because the large Warmachine Weekend qualifier tournament also does it's finals on Sunday each year. We're looking at September of 2014 so it's not like we won't have plenty of notice on whether we will have it and can make changes.

I would just drop the "set-up" time then, unless it is supposed to be the only time alloted for deployment. It really seems to me that some match-ups will need all that time, others will not, and some will be over.

Personally I don't ever like rounds to be under 2:30. the whole point of lowering points seems to be to make sure games finish, and play at a reasonable place, lowering the time limit eliminates this advantage.

That said if 2:15 is all you can fit, then you make it work as best you can.