'Ard Boyz: A Tale of Epic Fail

Despite the title of the post, I did not perform badly at the semi-finals of 'Ard Boyz this year. No, in fact I was not even able to play this weekend. My region has quite the active 40k community with 10-12 gaming groups within a 2-hour drive. Add in another hour or two and you can see that the Tennessee Valley has an amazing group of active players.

The problem I'm having here is that GW only gave two venues even remotely close to the area a semi-final location. The one I was planning to attend was only able to hold 24 people, and since I found out I was eligible with less than a week to go, the spots were already filled. That means 8 preliminary groups within 3 hours of the store could be supported there. I can almost guarantee you there were more, forcing people to drive ludicrously long distances or be left out.

When I discovered I was unable to attend the event (which I would already be driving about 2-hours one way to attend), I took some time to debate visiting the other venue. With a 4-hour drive one way, that would put me on the road for far too long to also be playing in any sort of event. I also felt that paying for hotel accommodations for this event would not have been worthwhile, so in the end I opted for the next-best thing: going out to the movies.

I am a bit upset with the situation, but not terribly. I mean, I didn't earn the spot to begin with, so why should I have a problem missing out? But my problem doesn't come from the inconvenience I received. It's the fact that even the people who earned these positions would not all be able to play, even if they all traveled 4 hours (one way) to get to them. It is very poor form to host a tournament environment with an invitational and then not have enough space for all those invitations. Someone at GW needs to take a look at this situation and have a solution for next year.

In fact, addressing this issue could be part of a greater tournament organization overhaul. The interwebs have been chattering away the last few months with a want for a more competitive environment. I would love to see an organized play system set up to make everyone happy. A league set aside for fluff bunnies with tons of painting and sportsmanship stuff about and a series of tournaments where the only thing that truly matters is how well you play (and winning all your games is more important than tabling two opponents and losing to a third). Sure, painted armies should be a must, but it shouldn't affect your score. Also, being a prick should get you knocked out of the event. And for crying out loud, USE THE STANDARD MISSIONS!

I feel better now. no more ranting for me, I just really needed to speak that out a bit. I need to go finish off painting my third land raider for next week's event. I finished up the highlighting and basic metalics last night. Tonight I need to get all the rivets and then wash the beastie to bring out some more depth. I do like the look of black and silver running (driving) across the table :)

Tournament Madness Ensues

I had planned on giving everyone an overview of the two tournaments I have coming up this month. On June 19, I will be attending a local event here in Huntsville, set up by one of the members of the local gaming group. It looks like we will have about 20 players including Raptor1313 of Spite for the Dice Gods. I haven't played against Rob in a while, so I'm hoping for the head-to-head there. He's always a blast to play against.

This event is done in the typical RT fashion, most likely using custom missions I have talked with the organizer about scoring and the system has been modified from his original vision to be a bit more competitive, but still relies a large part on soft scores. It will likely take a large amount of effort for my local community to move away from soft scores, but I'm being fairly vocal while also being civilized. Maybe it'll bear fruit soon.

[Edit]An update from the organizer made just moments after this post states that the missions for this event will be taken directly from the rulebook. Most awesome tournament mission set ever, as all players will be familiar with the rules. Apparently each of the objective types will be used once, so two different objective missions and a single kill point mission. Each mission will also have a separate deployment type. My 2000 point army is built around these missions in particular, so this should give me quite a strong showing here.[/Edit]

On June 26 I am playing in another event at Dicehead. The event page can be found here. You may remember that I placed 4th in the 'Ard Boyz event held at that store. They are a great group of people, and this event is set up to be quite large. They posted the missions last week, and I was a bit disappointed in how they were set up. Some discussion with the organizer has fixed some glaring flaws, and he has mentioned he will be updating the second mission to use killpoints instead of victory points as well as some other tweaks to make things more balanced. This particular mission has units respawning after death, and I was explaining to him the interaction of tervigons with both that rule and victory points.

In the course of our discussion, the organizer mentioned to me that one of the top 3 finishers from our 'Ard Boyz event was not going to be able to attend, and thus the spot opened up for me to go this weekend. It's a bit short notice, so I'm looking heavily at using the army that earned me 4th place, but also converting the venerable dread to another fire support dread. 3 land raiders, 3 dreads, and 4 terminator squads with the old smoke and apothecary fit into exactly what I've been mentioning about DA so far. I figure it's always good to put your money where your mouth is.

So there you have it. The next 3 weeks will have me competing in 3 separate tournaments. In the past I've always managed a single loss in tournaments. Perhaps one of these three will be the place I pull out an undefeated showing?

'Ard Boyz: Missed it by one point

I'm sitting down to eat dinner after a full day of awesome gaming. Short story is I missed third place by a single point. I'll have details up at some point tomorrow. Maybe someone will decide they can't make it and I'll get to make the semi-finals.

Edit:

Colds suck. I've put up a brief explanation of each of my games over at Bolter and Chainsword. The post link is here. Biggest lesson learned: 4+ tervigons is hard to deal with.  Short version: Problems with mission 1 as expected. Wrecked face in missions 2 and 3.

'Ard Boyz: Updating the list

Having had a chance to go over the new missions being used in the 'Ard Boyz event this coming weekend, I have made some changes to the list I was going to run. I am still going in with my Dark Angels; I don't have the wysiwyg models to run a viable BA or SW list, and I'm way underpracticed with Eldar.

My list for 'Ard Boyz

'Ard Boyz 2010 is just around the corner, and after some lengthy discussion with some folks over at Bolter and Chainsword I have come up with the following list. I feel it has a proper mix of what is needed to succeed, and that by choosing the appropriate deployment or use of reserves for each matchup it will fair well.

I have chosen to use my Dark Angels successor chapter which I have been using for over two years now. I have developed my skills in the game with this army, and it is the one I am most comfortable with. I will point out that I am using Codex: Dark Angels and bringing in Daemonhunters as allies for psychic protection and some added oomph rather than spinning off into the Space Marines or Space Wolves codices.