Event at Castle House Games

Castle House Games will be hosting its first Warhammer 40K event on Saturday, October 17th.

Please pm me or email me at chris@castlehousegames.com with your lists. It will be a 1500 point constructed army using AB3.

Terrain will be provided, of course.

Scenarios will be determined and posted no later than Friday this week.

I hope to see as many people as possible so we can make our first tournament a blast!

MORE DAKKA-DAKKA, LESS "WAAAARGH!"!

Paint, sports, or comp part of this? What about named characters?

Paint might be a special prize with players doing the voting most likely; sports will most likely be addressed as well. Comp most likely be ignored for this first event.

I didn't mention that there will be prizes. Probably $40 1st place, $25 second and $15 third.

There is a $10 entry fee that I will most likely make at the door. I will possible make it prepaid.

Named characters out of the codexes are welcome as long as they are part of the GW published army lists. I would like to keep things straight by the book for our first event.

Please excuse the randomness at this time; I will solidify things this week.

Will painting have comparable prize support? My wolves come out 2 weeks before that, and I doubt I can get thunderwolf cavalry painted in time.

How many games?

Paint will get a prize; I need to determine that though.

As I said, I'll make sure things are solidified by this Friday.

Please keep the questions coming so I can get them thought out.

I say monkey can't enter the paint comp j/k..... Your the best painter i have seen. So i'll be cheering for you on the painting comp. Seeing how i wills be playing the ringer army. And not really playing.

Looked all over for a phone number to Castlehouse this weekend. Anyone have it?

479-444-0707

So, since this is going to be Castle House's first tournament, I thought this might be an opportunity for the local gaming community to voice its thoughts on how to best run tournaments.
Here's my suggestions:

1. Have multiple categories in which people can win prizes.
a. Best overall (Includes scores for battle, sportsmanship, and paint)
b. Battle (purely based upon points from games)
c. Sportsmanship (10 point checklist)
d. Paint (I like the idea of player's choice)

2. Battle and paint should receive comparable prizes with sportsmanship getting something just below this. Best overall should get something slightly better.

3. Scenarios should be based upon the basic ones in the rulebook, but there should be some added battle points for random things. Even if someone gets destroyed, he should be able to get a few points.

4. Initial match-ups should be completely random except that you should try to keep friends from playing each other in the first round.

5. Make certain everyone remembers that it's a game in which you push around tiny plastic men.

6. I like 1,850 to 2,000 points. You get to throw in some bells and whistles.

7. Try to pay attention to what people have played, and if it is possible to avoid it, don't have someone play marines 3 times, or nids, Eldar, etc.

That's it for now.

Later,

Monkey

I like most of you ideas monkey.....i think the reason we brought up 1500 is there is a lot of guys that up here having trouble getting 1000 points. so 1500 points would be a push for them. but it is something to think about. i guess its really up to what Chris wants to do.

1500 points is optimal for a venues first tournament. It is small enough for most to collect to that point, and it keeps games moving a bit faster especially for those not used to a tournament pace. Start at 1500 and then on your third or sixth tournament move it up to 1750 or 1850. It keeps customers buying more items and changes the strategy of games played.

For 1500 points set a time limit of 2 hours to 2 hours and 15 minutes for each game and stick to it. When the whistle blows - the game is over.

I think a 10 point sportsmanship is ideal for each game. Each opponent just marks off their thoughts on how the game went.

Your battle points should be between 20 and 25 points for each battle. Most tournaments use a 20 point scale, and they may make a few 'bonus' points available for accomplishing extra things during a game. This is important for a 3 game tournament to cause some stratification in the scores so you can tell who won.

Download Overlord online for free. Play with this and get used to the way it works to track tournaments. It is great for using the swiss system for player matching.

I also recommend using a victory points totaling at the end of each game for all players. You keep a running tally of VP. Then if there are any ties on regular points at the end of the games - its easy to declare a winner.

You definitely want 3 scenarios written up in advance. For tournaments you never just roll out of the book for what to play. Everyone should be playing the same game in round 1, a new one in round 2 and a final one in round 3. These need to be printed and handed out to each player at the beginning of the game. For examples you can see these I wrote up for Hobby Towns more advanced tournament.

https://thehogsofwar.forumotion.com/scenarios-f11/scenarios-for-hobby-town-tournament-t11.htm

I dont recommend those for a first tournament though. Instead I would print out and use GW's ready made tournament pack and scenarios for your first time. They can be found on the GW site - I will post the location tonight, as I can't access the GW site from where I teach at.

Finally - painting. I recommend a player's choice award initially. After a couple of tournament goes, why not make a simle checklist including things like assembly, priming, painting, basing - etc. Things everyone can do if they get the notion. But keep the painting awards for something entirely different - players choice.

My thoughts.

I really like the 16/8/4 w/t/l system with a 4pt objective bonus.

Sportsmanship really is binary. If you have a 10 point system most people will either give 1s or 10s, nothing in between, unless you use something like GW's checklist format.

Wasteland Wars had 3 boxes:
_ : I want to play this guy again.
_ : I would play this guy again.
_ : I would rather not play this guy again.

If this is your first tournament and the first tournament for many of your players, I would suggest having someone who knows the rules backwards and forwards there to arbitrate disputes. Newer players often have misconceptions about the rules, and many experienced players miss certain peculiarities about them. You should always have a judge, but it is particularly important with new players.

My GW rep suggested using the RTT rules; it seems like a lot of folks here have varying thoughts on how to run our first tournament. I will also look at Adepticon (which my rep highly recommended) to see how they do things.

I want our first tournament to be enjoyable for all and I really do like Monkey's idea of having a knowledgeable person oficiating as overall Judge. We should have just one person as a final arbiter but I plan on being a Walking Judge myself, with my ever present cane available for persons exhibiting disruptive behaviour.

Just kidding about the cane. I will be there for general questions and just general help as needed. All rule questions will be directed to the main Judge.

I planned on using as much of the RTT as I could, since it is written "in stone". How much of those rules need to be amended or ignored completely? I'd like to get as much agreement on that as I could this week so that there will be no surpises for anyone.

Is there a knowledgeable person that would volunteer to officiate? My vote is on Monkey, Wild, or Big D. I believe Big D might be busy with a snotling around the time of the tournament though.

1500 points is pretty much my target number, with a 2 hour time limit and three games. Do we want an hour between games or 30 minutes with a larger break between game one and two for a lunch break.

What is an ideal start time? Should we do 9:30 arrival and a 10:00 game one start time? I was at first thinking of an 11:00 arrival with a 12:00 start to give our staff extra time to make sure everybody is ready to go. At least for our first tournament.

Prizes will be available from GW, just not sure at the moment how to deal those out. The original prizes stand, to be given out in gift certificates.

Player matchups will be attended to as best as possible so that there will be no repeats.

I hope everyone that decides to play will be patient with us since I am sure we will make some mistakes this time around. As long as everyone has fun I'll be doing well.

Thanks all for the input. My only request is that for any suggestions please put it in plain english as I am a total newb as far as 40K or even WHFB goes. I really didn't catch the first sentence of Brent's post.

Brent was referring to a scoring break down for battle points in a tournament he played in.

Here is the linky for the GW scenarios and tournament pack. I highly recommend using this for your first tournament.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=&categoryId=5200003&section=community&aId=14700014

As far as the tourney goes - I am looking forward to playing in it! have a very hard time setting down the dice to judge, though I am planning on organizing a doubles tourney in late spring.

Perhaps a panel for questions might be an alternate possibility? If a rules question came up you get simply ask input from veteran players discretely. Hobby Town has done this for the past few tourneys and the organizer has had the final ruling.

Monkey will be chomping at the bit to play his new wolves as well so I guess he would feel the same way.

RTT rules are pretty solid.

For a tournament you really want a spread of points to break up wins. You see this in 8-man M:tG drafts most easily, because the winner went 3-0. When you introduce ties, you need some variation.

The 16/8/4 system awards 16 points for a win, 8 for a tie, 4 for a loss. Usually there is either 1 secondary objective worth 4 points, or a handful of secondary objectives (all very minor) worth 1 point per. This lets you see the difference between someone who won (16) and someone who won while holding the objective and securing all board quarters (20). This lets people who played the scenario or game better pull ahead of those who just barely won.

I recommend printing out GW FAQs and having them on hand. I also recommend using the Adepticon/ IANAT FAQ as, while not entirely "official", received GW's blessing for Ard Boyz and is very thorough.

Noon start, 2 hour time limit, 30 min break and 1 hour lunch has you finishing at 7:30pm and finalizing awards by 8pm.

If you don't use Overlord (which is a solid tournament running software program, albeit with a bit of a learning curve), I recommend going to the old standby of index cards with each person's name at the top, and a line for each opponent. Keep a running tally of points on the right and then just sort from highest to lowest; if there's a duplicate matchup, you go to the next highest person. Boogie's familiar with this process also (we used to use it for M:tG tournaments probably 6 years ago).

I wouldn't worry about custom scenarios. You can go for something really simple for 3 games (more elaborate scenarios are often used to further stratify bands for larger tournaments). For instance, capture and control, 3 objectives. 16 points if you win, +4 points if you control an objective in your opponent's deployment zone (theoretically, both sides COULD get this).

Also, if you use objectives, make sure you have the same number for every table, and you have them on hand. Poker chips are PHENOMENAL for this.

As an aside, if you get enough tables the Hogs are more than willing to bring in our terrain. We can fill up about 4-5 tables at this point.

At the moment we can fill six tables; that's how many we've had playing at one time. The guys at CHG are pretty used to playing with a LOT of terrain; I imagine we can split the terrain up a little more evenly as we need to. I plan on making some more templates for trees; at the moment I am flocking bases for buildings and as soon as they are dry we plan on painting the flocking and the buildings. I might throw on some static grass after we are done painting the buildings; just love that stuff now that I tried it for the first time!

Thanks, Brent for the points explanation.

It looks like we might have around four or so of the guys that normally play at CHG that are chomping at the bit to play in a tournament so hopefully we can get around four or five more.

I downloaded all the info I could find for RTT events (even the LOTR info) and will download Overlord to use at the shop for the tourney.

Keep the info and ideas coming,

Thanks

Hrm, it appears to have eaten my reply.

5e assumes 25% terrain. If possible, please stick to that. HobbyTown's last tournament, the table I was on had 5 very small houses and 3 small hills (maybe 15%?). Cover was almost negligible.

That shouldn't be to hard to have happen. like gamewizard was saying people at CHG tend to use like 40% terrain so we should be able to scale back some and be all right. i'll do an inventory of it today and see where we stand.

Building bases are now flocked, I will begin painting buildings probably tomorrow.

There will be 3 games for the day, I just need some input on how much time you guys want between games. We can go 30 minutes between a couple of games and an hour and a half between another or an hour between each game or however else could be suggested.

Scenarios will be done for each game and will be the same for each table. There will be a special snow board table that will have various different terrain challenges on it but nothing worse than will be on the other tables.

Objectives will be uniform to each table and will be marked in such a way as to be clearly visible to all players.

We'll get a flier up asap so we can post in around the shop and maybe other places as well.

I will get the scenarios written up and posted either here or on CHG
website asap. I am not sure how much more discussion about the event
will be allowed here; I don't want it to seem like CHG is taking over
the website.

Our website is castlehousegames.com

It looks real bad at the moment but it does have a forum that we can
post on. Please sign up at that website if you haven't already so I can
pass information on to folks who are interested in playing in the
tournament. That way I don't cram Wildeye's and Big D's website up with
my information.

Feel free to use this site as much as possible. It is open to everyone and this certainly is for the good of the growing community. I welcome anyone and everyone to post here as much as they like.

I would recommend playing a game from 9 - 11, breaking for lunch from 11-12:30, gaming from 12:30-2:30, breaking for 30 mins and then playing 3-5 for your last game. Pick a schedule and stick to it. For 1500 points, 2 hours is plenty for games.

Wouldn't a 9-11 game require everybody to sign up starting at 8:30? Most of the guys at CHG are just getting to bed at 8:30 am.

What about a sign up time of 10 am with a game start time around 10:30 to 12:30 with an hour or so break for lunch and then round 2 starting at 2pm or so and going until 4 with a 30 minute break and then round 3 starting at 5 and finishing up at 7? Then have the awards handed out at 8 after all the debate, screaming and whining with a day wrap up no later than 9pm?

Or is the late start an issue with some? I believe an 8:30 am sign up will be an issue with a lot of guys at CHG.

Let me know.

Well its really up to you Gamewizard i think that for a one day event the staff could Handel getting up "early" for the event but i guess it would depend on what everyone one involved is thinking.