Bah!
I had planned on writing about the finished Temple Guard tonight. But I took about 30 pictures and only 3 turned out good, and those three weren’t a complete set of angles. So I’m going to wait until tomorrow to take some more.
Then I was going to write about some more photography stuff, but I can’t really write anything useful without referring to the pictures of the Temple Guard…which…I don’t want to post until I can post all of them.
So instead I’ll write about the tournament I went to this weekend.
This will probably be long, so if you care, hit the cut and keep on reading.
The Pre-Beginning
I first heard about ConquestBC GT from Duke. He wrote a bunch of us an e-mail saying “Hey, here’s another tournament I heard about if you can’t make Astronomi-con!” There wasn’t a lot of commitment from people, so that e-mail fell away.
A few months later I decided that I wanted to make a greater showing at the local tournaments this year. Some really awesome people came to the one that Duke and I organized in January, and it would be inappropriate to not reciprocate. So I signed up for ConquestBC, WCP and Astro-Van for this summer.
2 weeks before the tournament they had listed 14 people signed up for the tournament (that’s 14…split between Fantasy and 40k). I mentioned it just about every time I went to Park Royal GW, but I couldn’t build any interest in it. A week before they had listed 18 people. I expected a cancellation note, honestly. During this week they sent out an e-mail to participants that they would give some money back to anyone who got a friend to sign-up. I tried again, but not very hard. I made a comment on Facebook that I regretted after the fact – one of the organizers is on my Facebook and called me on it! Apparently the Las Vegas version of this tournament had 4 people sign up for the Fantasy tournament! 4! I cowed and prayed that it would be ok…(if you read my blog Doc, I’m sorry! This event was awesome! :))
Also, somewhere in there I found a list to the ConquestBC website (not the GT one). What sort of event is this? I’ve been to Conflicts and a Games Day where GW puts on some events and such, but this isn’t GW…
The Beginning
So with really no idea what to expect, I Skytrained out to Surrey Saturday morning. Compass Point Inn was half a block away from King George Station – the very last station. I’m walking across the parking lot when a mini-van drives in front of me and a friend from inside comments “They’ll let anyone into Surrey won’t they!” This was someone whom I’ve known for probably around 12-13 years, but I don’t think we’ve ever really had a conversation of any length. Still, a good sign that I’ll know at least one other person at the event :).
I walk inside, talk to an organizer at the front desk and grab a tournament package. The event was being held in a conference room in a hotel. I don’t have a good idea of how much square footage, but there was room for about 20-30 playing tables. I sit down to look over the package, since I have about a half hour before the event starts. I’m reading over the thing and someone I’ve never met comes and stands over me and asks if he can interrupt me and ask me about the game I play. I put the package down and we start talking. I spoke with him several times over the Saturday. Apparently him and 5 other people were playing this WW2 recreation game, with two separate boards that spanned over the size of two kitchen tables. One of the guys started explaining about how the game was supposed to let people play out WW2, and how history had already decided that the Germans couldn’t have won it, but that they had some objectives that they could win “the game”, but not “the war” and such like this.
Now…I can’t stand history. I think it’s pretty boring, mostly because it’s real and real is lame :P. But this game was incredible. I spent some more time over the day watching people play other games. One game had two people sitting across from each other with laptops, and I asked (jokingly) “do you need the laptops to play?” haha…guy answers back “no, you can play with pen and paper, but it’s a lot quicker with the laptop”. Slightly stunned, I ask what they’re playing. It’s a Star Trek game with a manual that filled a 3″ binder! Guy says that you only need about 10 pages per fleet or something, but still! Another 2 are playing a game that requires tweezers to move the little square cardboard/paper pieces of the game. Another group is playing 4th Ed D&D, another Munchkin, another Agricola, and so on. This place was incredible! The things I learned this weekend, about the types of games people play!
The tournament
Ok, so…6 people for Fantasy. I’ve never played in a tournament so small before, but I’ll tell you this – it’s pretty wicked. I wouldn’t want to do it every day, since I really like meeting and playing with new people. But there is something about having a small group of people who don’t know each other at all, and thrusting them into this situation. Since you had 5 games, you played every person. Which means at the end of the weekend, you knew every person who had entered the tournament. You knew that guy had a cheesy army, and that guy was wicked awesome, and that other guy was from the island and had just moved here recently and was looking for people to play against, and so on. I liked the atmosphere it created – we were the Fantasy players.
My games
Probably the most boring part of my blog post :P. First game Saturday was against a fellow who’d just moved to Vancouver. He had Skaven, they weren’t incredibly well painted, but he was a nice guy and we had a good game. My second game was against Vampire Counts. This guy irritated me part way through by playing what I consider a cheese-ball maneuver with two charges and some clipping. We called the judge over and the judge made a ruling that I also disagreed with. We continued playing, and oddly the game got more fun from there. I think I just accepted that he was going to clean my clock, and do it in a way that was annoying, so I just let it pass. I gave him an average sportsman score – he worked his way back up from “Poor” sufficiently.
My third game…I went to my grandmothers birthday party. Scheduling conflict, but I let one of the tournament organizers borrow my army for the game so they could keep playing. Apparently he won :P. Fourth game in the morning against the guy who won best overall. I tell you, this guy deserved it. Probably amongst the best games of Fantasy I’ve ever had. He had a really tactical/positional way of playing, and he did it openly and I really got into it. It was a slow, slow game (he apologized a few times!), but it was a terrific game of gambit, counter-gambit, forced moves, etc. Really fun guy as well. Fifth and last game was against a guy’s wife. He apparently got ill Saturday night and sent his wife to play his Bretonnians in his place! She was a lot of fun to play against.
The tournament structure
A few things I noticed about how this was organized that I liked/didn’t like:
- They used the “plus minus points” idea that Astro uses as well. But no minus’, only pluses. And they were all pretty much identical from scenario to scenario. “Who has the most banners”, “is your general alive”, “is his general dead”? Ok, they are good starts, but needs more filling out.
- Different scenarios, but they were fixed so that each round was the same scenario.
- The painting checklist was more detailed than Astro, but I didn’t get to keep the sheet so I can’t tell you what was on it.
- They gave out multiple awards when someone won them. This is another sore spot, but I felt that our mini-Astro suffered a little from giving away 7 awards with 10 participants, and trying to ensure that no one won two. This tournament had 5 awards, 6 people, but they gave multiples to people if they earned them.
- I really liked the sportsmanship scoring. I think everyone should use what they did. Here it is:
1 point if your opponent showed up prepared – templates, dice, rule book, army, on time, etc.
1 point if your opponent played consistently through out the game – re-rolled the same dice, measured properly, etc.
1 point if your opponent…did something. I can’t remember >.<. I think it was if your opponent was a good sportsman.
1 point if your opponent was fun to play against. How simple is that? Did you have fun? Yes, or no?
And then a 0-6 scale of “0, this was awful”, “4, average”, “6, outstanding”. The important thing here is to mark the average line – if you don’t, everyone will just mark a 6 thinking that they should give a decent game the highest mark – the person didn’t do anything wrong after all, so why would you penalize them? Problem with that logic is that you need to be able to go up! If you give your first game a 6 and then have a better game, you can’t give them a 7!
This sportsman scoring gives clear objectives to a person – 4 points are determined with very easy questions. 6 points are then determined as a subjective scale with a clear middle mark. Beautiful. Clean. I would be interested in seeing what sorts of scores it produced over a larger sample size than 6 :).
The End
I ended up with the Players Choice – Best Army and Players Choice – Best Opponent prizes. I’m pretty happy about that, as those are the two things that I’m playing for :). Some interesting logic can be played with the results sheet that makes it even better:
Craig Fleming: 4 Best Opponent Votes
Person X: 1 Best Opponent Vote
Person Y: 1 Best Opponent Vote
Ok, so it’s a spread, whatever. But then you note that I had to vote for someone…Person X. And THEN you note that I missed a game, which means it’s highly unlikely that the person whom I missed would have voted for me – he probably voted for Person Y. Which means that it’s very probable that every person I played voted for me for Best Opponent. That makes me really happy :).
I also came 3rd overall. Which is odd, since I’ve never placed so well in any tournament ever….except one with 6 people in it :P. 1st and 2nd got an invitation to the 2011 Las Vegas GW GT blahedy blah. Both of them came to me at one point and said that I should prepare to go…one because he wasn’t certain he could make it, and the other because he hoped to win a 40k spot at another tournament! So maybe that could happen…could be neat. We’ll see :).
Right now
It’s time to sleep, and I’m about done my recounting of this weekend. Despite the small size, I heartily recommend this tournament to anyone reading this (no really, can some of you people reading post a comment so I know I’m not just talking to myself? :P)
Later!
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