Armies at Blog Wars 4 - Interesting shift for 6th & PRIZES!!

First things first. Does anyone know Mal Junor or Ewan Smith? They're coming to Blog Wars together as far as I know but they've yet to submit an army list. I've tried emailing but there's no response. If someone knows them, please get them to confirm to me that they're still coming. If they are, they need to get their army list to me ASAP.

Army Distribution
There's an interesting mix of armies at this year's event. Before I get to that though, I took at look at the spread of armies at the previous three events. Since I'm a sad individual I've produced a graph to show the sort of armies people were taking in 5th edition (click on it to make it legible):

As you can see there are a lot of Imperial Guard players and there's been a hefty following of SW, BA and GK who make up 28% of the armies that have come along. If we fast forward to Blog Wars 4 the picture is a little different (again click to embiggen):

Bear in mind this only represents the Primary Detachment so I've ignored the allies to make it. Sadly there are neither any Orks nor Black Templars this time around. One thing we aren't going to be short of are Necrons! There a 5 people bringing Necrons out of the current 28! Granted if the two mentioned at the start don't come we'll be down one but still it seems that people agree with me that Necrons are pretty strong in 6th! Now obviously this isn't the most accurate statistical analysis in the world but I still think it's pretty interesting. What's most surprising is the number of tyranid players! Now, Blog Wars veteran Chris Benstead from Weemen has been pretty consistent with his support of them but some of the other guys are coming to them from other races. Daemons are also making a pretty strong showing and the ever present Grey Knights don't seem to have dipped in popularity. On the contrary Space Wolves certainly have with only one person taking them.

The interesting thing will be how the armies fair across the tournament. Obviously winning Blog Wars 4 is hardly proof of one codex's dominance but part of me thinks it'd be funny if Necrons don't win!! At least I'm representing for the Tau Empire (even if they're joined by some space puppies)!

Sisters of Battle remain the only race to have never been represented at Blog Wars!

Special Characters

Thanks to the allies system there are actually lots of armies (about a quarter) which feature more than one special character. I'm pretty pleased to see it as you should all know by now that I'm a fan! The clear winner of the special character popularity contest is Inquisitor Coteaz from the Grey Knights book. It's pretty easy to see why as he opens up a host of options in the troops section and is pretty good himself! There are tons of characters who appear more than once and there are only actually 21 different characters in attendance. Not that significant until you consider the number of armies with more than one!

What's also nice to see again is armies that are truly themed around a special character. Special mention (no pun intended) has to go to Dimitris Kiourtsoglou with his Nurgle themed army with converted Epidemius. As ever I can't wait to see all the armies on the table-top.

Prizes
This is the bit I'm sure you're all interested in. The main prize breakdown is as follows:


1st Place: £25
2nd Place: £15
3rd Place: £10
Last Place: £5 & Wooden Spoon
Best Painted Army: £15
Best Painted Special Character: £10

Now, in previous Blog Wars tournaments the prizes have all been in the form of Maelstrom vouchers. Obviously, since they don't technically exist anymore, I won't be able to do that again. The new name for the venue is Eye of the Storm but unfortunately they no longer stock GW products. Therefore what I propose is to let the winners of the prizes decide for themselves what they'd like their prize in the form of (and no I won't do that for money). Think what you like about the Maelstrom saga but I've always liked the venue and I think it would be a shame for it to vanish so I'd like to support them. However, I totally understand if people would rather have an alternative. Therefore I'm prepared to issue Games Workshop vouchers as an alternative. For those of you who don't want to get their stuff from GW at full price I've spoken to my FLGS (Wargames Emporium) in Sheffield and they've agreed to accept vouchers for their store at 20% off which will mean the prizes are a bit more valuable. As I said I'll leave it up to people on the day.

Alternatively, if people prefer, I could pop into my FLGS and buy some suitable prizes to the same values as those above but I'd personally be against this as it will probably mean getting something you don't really want/need.

So I mentioned on Wednesday that'd there'd be some spot prizes and a raffle on the day so here's what you can win there:

The prizes shown in the picture will be split between the raffle and spot prizes. There'll be a spot prize for each game for achieving something I'll announce on the day but you can win:

Game 1: Gale Force Nine Counter Set
Game 2: GW Dice Cube
Game 3: Gale Force Nice Counter Set

At the end of the day, just after the awards ceremony I'll draw the raffle. Everyone who's coming will automatically get one entry to the draw. The prizes are as follows:

1. New Chaos Space Marine Codex and set of Psychic Cards
2. The Imperial Infantryman's Handbook
3. "Battlescape" scenery piece
4. Munitorum Vehicle Dice
5. 2 Servo Skull tape measures

I hope you agree it's worth sticking around to the end to see if you win something from that little lot! Basically I'll draw names out of a hat and let people pick which single prize they want. I hope people prefer this prize structure to that of previous events. The plan was to make the tournament prizes smaller to discourage people from bringing cheesy lists whilst also freeing up some cash for more bonus prizes!

Finally
In case I forget to mention it on the day or don't get chance to post again before the event I'd like to say a big  thanks to everyone who continues to support this event. There are several people who've been to all (or most) of the four events and I hope you'll all be at Blog Wars 5 and 6 in 2013 as well!