Blog Wars 6 - The Aftermath

The sixth (can you believe it?) Blog Wars happened at the NWGC in Stockport yesterday and there was plenty of drama! Before I get to that I want to talk about the good things. First off, a big thanks to the staff at NWGC for keeping us fed and watered. I know the venue was cold but next time it will be June and Darran from the venue has promised that for the next winter one he'll have a heating system.

Secondly, thanks to everyone who came. I don't know about the rest of you but I think there's a great atmosphere about the event and generally everyone seems to be playing in the spirit of the thing. There are now just 3 players left who are veterans of all six Blog Wars and they are Matt Greenwood, Graham Sanders and Chris Benstead. A special thanks to those guys for their unerring support of the event.

Around two thirds of the players there were veterans of previous Blog Wars which I hope shows how enjoyable the day can be. There are plenty of tournaments out there that get more players but I hope people think the Blog Wars atmosphere is worth coming back for and I still can't think of a tournament that offers more in prizes for such a relatively small player count.

Anyway, let's get the embarrassment out of the way right now. Here's the results of Blog Wars 6 which have also been added to the Blog Wars Results Archive.

As you may have spotted I unwittingly won my own tournament. I know that's a ridiculous situation but I'll explain more about it when I cover my Battle Reports. Suffice to say, announcing myself as the winner wasn't the only time during the day that I wanted the ground to swallow me up but before I get to that I'll talk about a couple of other things with the results. First off you'll notice Franco's absence but I'll get to that in another post.

The other thing to note is that of the five Tyranid players three of them finished in the top 5. We know the codex is stronger thanks to Biomancy but it goes to show you can find life in the older books even with the ever-changing meta. The Eldar lists are pretty well spaced through the list but I should point out they weren't the standard competitive lists you might expect. Finally, congratulations to Ross Mason and Aaron Shrive for taking 2nd and 3rd place respectively at their first Blog Wars event.

The Scoring System
Here's a reminder of how the results are sorted:

1. Total VPs scored (Primary plus Secondary)
2. Goal Difference (total VPs scored minus total conceded)
3. Total Primary VPs scored
4. Total Secondary VPs scored
5. Total VPs given away

The theory behind this was that I should always be able to separate two players on something as it was very unlikely that people would score the exact same points in all categories. Of course that ended up breaking in the first round with Matt Greenwood and Daniel Lane scoring identical points across the board. For the first time in Blog Wars history I made a massive error on the scoring in the first round too. I'd had two players drop out, one to illness and one absent without any explanation. Luckily I was able to call in a couple of standbys to fill in the gaps. I assigned them the numbers of the missing players but then entered them on the spreadsheet the wrong way round. This meant the scores for their games were entered wrong causing the whole kerfuffle.

Anyway, this gave me an opportunity to realise that the scoring wasn't in fact broken and I could split Matt and Dan up by the number of VPs they'd conceded (old school VPs that is) when their maximum 2000pts and equal secondaries wouldn't help. Problem solved.

The idea of this scoring system, coupled with the tweaked scenarios, would result in each game being worth a maximum of 25pts. This would give plenty of scope for separating scores and would reward people for winning more convincingly. Obviously as a winner you don't care how decisive the victory is but if you lose the game it matters that you get recognition for making it a very close game. I understand the argument that a win is a win but that's fine for the competitive events. Blog Wars is different by design.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the scoring, I know it has issues (which again will be discussed in more detail in another post) but to me it works how I want it to. Right, sorry this post was a bit later going up than usual but I was too knackered to post last night and have been out all day today.

Over the next few posts I'll discuss the big drama of the day, cover the painting competition, report on my battles and generally cover the action from the weekend. Once I've run through all of that I'll do the same as last time and take a look at what worked and what didn't in order to make Blog Wars 7 better for it. Hopefully you all enjoyed it and some of you are reading this hoping to come along next time.

Blog Wars 5 Painting Competition (pic heavy)

Alongside the tournament itself I always run a two part painting competition. The first part is the obligatory Best Painted Army whereas the second is part of Blog Wars' focus on Special Characters namely Best Painted Special Character. As ever there were some excellent entries, there were a few armies we've seen before alongside some excellent new entries.

Best Painted Army
The winner in this category was Hendrik Müller-Joswig who is Blog Wars' first ever international player having travelled from Germany for the event! Whilst he may have placed 28th in the tournament his army is a worthy winner with 8 votes.

Another notable mention goes to Chris Benstead's Chaos Space Marine force. Chris has previously had painting Errr .... it's as I'm looking through my photos that I realise I haven't actually got any shots of Chris' army so if he (or anyone else) could forward me a couple of shots that'd be great! competition success with his Tyranids so it was great to see him scoop 7 votes (to place second in the painting voting) with his new army along with achieving 2nd place in the tournament itself. Chris writes for the Weemen blog. Head to Weemen to find pictures of his army that I failed to take!

In 3rd place with 4 votes was my good friend Jamie Jackson who's First Founding Space Marines force was a fantastic display of different colour schemes (more details and pictures can be found on his blog, Index Astartes).

Here's a few shots of the rest of the armies on display too.

Best Painted Special Character
There were three stand-out entries in this category and all three took a chunk of the votes. Sharing second place were Chris Benstead's Abaddon and Jamie Jackson's Lysander. Whilst I may be biased because he's a friend of mine, I thought the NMM work on Lysander was particularly good, especially when you consider Jamie hasn't used the technique before. And again I don't seem to have pictures of Abaddon (I have a lot to do on the day, sorry Chris!).

Stolen from Weemen - probably a better shot anyway

Anyway, the overall winner was Nathaniel Gibbs with his Coteaz. Nathaniel's Custodes (Grey Knights) army came close to winning the painting competition at a previous Blog Wars so it's great to see him taking an award this time around.

Here's a couple of other great entries too.

The painting competition always inspires me to try and get one of my many armies painted up to a high standard. I really enjoyed playing with my Tau (more on them in the battle reports) so maybe they'll get some attention before BW6. Only problem with that is that I don't allow myself entry to the painting competition.....

Blog Wars 5 - The Aftermath (and 200 followers!)

Before I go any further I wanted to point out that at the start of the year one of my resolutions was to push for 200 followers. Well we're about half way through 2013 and I'm up to 200 today!! I'll have to look through my other resolutions and see how I'm getting on with them! Anyway, a big thanks to everyone who reads, the followers thing means more to me than pageviews so I really appreciate it.

Blog Wars 5 was held at the North West Gaming Centre in Stockport today. We had new record of 30 players all competing for the crown which had been previously controlled by Andy Humphris. I knew we'd be having a new winner today and, without any further beating about the bush, I'm pleased to announce that winner as Franco Marrufo with his dirty, dirty broadside spam Tau and Eldar list. He never really looked in danger of not winning throughout the day but it would've been interesting to see him play Andy for it. Maybe next time eh?

Chris Benstead took second with a Chaos Space Marines army that he hadn't used before the day. Respect to Chris for that but it doesn't say much about the rest of us! In third place was Rob McDougall who beat his good mate Frank Marsh by a single point.

I placed a respectable 6th with my Tau army. I'm pretty pleased with that performance considering I didn't really play the ideal armies for my list. More on my games over the next few days (might be longer since I'm very busy this week). I'll also be posting details of the painting competition shortly it was a close run thing in both the army and special character competitions. For now here's the full rundown of the results which have also been added to the results archive which can be accessed via the tab at the top of the page.

I've had some great feedback from people (thanks for filling in the forms guys) that I'll go into more detail about in a later post (probably when talking about the plans for Blog Wars 6) but for now I want to briefly talk about the scoring system.

I was determined to simplify the scoring system for Blog Wars 5 as previous events have been overcomplicated. As much as I like the 5th edition style VPs (i.e. score based on how many physical points of your enemy army you've destroyed) it doesn't really encourage people to play the mission. Therefore I opted to employ the 6th edition version of VPs and separate people based on how many points they'd given away. I wanted an emphasis on the primary mission so that people would actually focus on it rather than worrying about how much of their opponent's army they'd destroyed.

I'm fairly pleased with how the scoring system worked today. As the tournament organiser it was very simple to enter into the spreadsheet and it seemed like most people scored their games correctly. Not having to add up the old style VPs (I wish they'd call them something different in 6th) meant the results came in a lot quicker. Hopefully everyone playing today found it simple too.

That being said it isn't without it's flaws. We did play Purge The Alien today and if you come up against an army with few points on offer then you're limited in how much you can score even if you table them. Also, as a couple of players found you can win all of your games narrowly and not place very high. I have to say I don't like the idea of you winning all your games but being down the bottom end of the table. Obviously these games were close run things but winning should be rewarded better. It's something I'll think about between now and BW6 and hopefully come up with a solution.

I think some people found it difficult to work out how the placings had been figured out. To clarify it goes:

1. Total VPs scored (Primary plus Secondary)
2. Goal Difference (total VPs scored minus total conceded)
3. Total Primary VPs scored
4. Total Secondary VPs scored
5. Total VPs given away

The idea is that it rewards people who push for maximum points from their games whilst trying to prevent their opponent from scoring many. Basically that's the whole idea of the game for me. If that doesn't separate peopel then primary VPs come into effect so that it rewards people who played the mission. Clearly closely fought games don't score highly though and the person winning should be rewarded better. I'll hopefully address this for next time.

The only other issue with the scoring system was that we randomly ended up with The Emperor's Will as the final mission. This is crap as there really aren't many points available and it's easy for the primary points to be 3s or 0s for both sides meaning secondaries determine the winner. One solution that was suggested was to make the objectives worth a lot more points e.g. your home objective is worth 5 pts whilst your opponents objective is worth 10pts if you manage to steal it. This means there's 18 potential points available (3 from secondary) which brings it in line with Crusade with 5 objectives. The other alternative is to fix the missions but I'm not necessarily a fan of that. It needs some thought and any feedback or suggestions are gratefully received.

Right, I'm shattered so that'll do for today. Once again a big thanks to the staff at the NWGC for helping make it such an enjoyable day again. Hopefully see you all again later in the year for BW6!

Blog Wars 3 Painting Competition

As ever, alongside the dice rolling was the hobby side of things. This time around there were three prizes on offer: Best Painted Army, Best Painted Special Character and Best Army Theme. The first two would be voted for by all of the competitors but the army theme award was decided by yours truly. Before I get to the results I wanted to say that unlike the first two Blog Wars there was a disappointing number of votes cast with only just over half of people voting. This is probably partly down to people not knowing where the voting slips were (though I did say!).

Anyway, here's a selection of the armies on display. Apologies to their owners for the crappy pictures but it was a case of rushing round with the camera in between other things I had to do! If anyone else has better pictures feel free to post them up and then link them in the comments.

The winner of the Best Painted Army was my good friend Jamie (I'd like to point out I'm not eligible to vote). His army was a beautiful Iron Hands force with Cassius and a Master of the Forge. There were some well executed conversions including an attack bike, full track land raider amongst others. Overall it was a very cohesive force and I think the precise line highlighting and details were what made it stand out despite it being black! More pictures of the conversions are over on his blog.

The Best Painted Special Character award went to Chris Benstead (WeeMen) with his Swarmlord. He won the best painted army at Blog Wars 2 and that's where this image comes from since I didn't have chance to get a shot myself.

Finally, a new addition this time around the Best Army Theme went to Ian Connolly (Need More Tanks) for his Star Wars themed Imperial Guard. You can find more pictures of it over on his blog. The reason I chose thise for the best theme was the sheer attention to detail that went into it. It would be simple to make an army full of white stormtroopers and call it a Star Wars army but to create AT-STs, an AT-AT, C3PO/R2D2, Han Solo frozen in carbonite and pretty much every major character from the series really sets this arm apart. A well deserved prize.

There were some excellent ideas for army theme. I'd like to give special mention to a few of the runners up. The simean Grey Knights army from James Lamb with everyone represented as a monkey, the catachan force from John Holland and the Rebel Alliance/sci-fi list with massive x-wing vendettas from Luke Fogg.

Congratulations to all of the winners. As I've alluded to in the results post things will be a bit different for Blog Wars 4 so keep an eye on the blog for details of that.

Blog Wars 3 Results - Webways work!

The third Blog Wars tournament took place yesterday at Maelstrom Games in Mansfield. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Blog Wars is a twice-annual, friendly, 1,750pt 40K tournament with a slight comp in that all armies must contain a Special Character. The missions are all centred around this theme giving the special character more significance in each battle.
Without further ado here's this years results:

So the most obvious thing to notice is that as a group we all failed miserably to stop Andy Humphris from retaining his title. Fair play to Andy, he only dropped 3 points out of a possible 75 over the three games. Suffice to say he got plenty of stick from everyone involved. I'm sure Andy will be posting a typically humble account of how he secured victory. Andy played Daniel Lane's horde Orks in the first round, Gary Hoptroff's Grey Knights featuring Mordrak and finally James Winsor's Relictors.

Congratulations to Steve Henderson (Andy's mate) for his 3rd place. Steve and I approach tournaments in the same way. If we go in with confidence we'll perform badly but if we think we've got no chance then we'll exceed our expectations.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed that embarassingly (for me and everyone else involved!) I managed to achieve 2nd place overall and also scored more VPs than anyone else! This is surprising for several reasons. Firstly in all the practice games my Dark Eldar dual-webway list was utter crap but also because I'm frankly not that good a player! I was as surprised as anyone that I managed to pull it off but suffice to say I was pretty lucky with the armies I faced. There were some lists out there that I simply couldn't have dealt with no matter how good my dice rolls were! I'm planning on writing a whole post about the amount of luck involved in tournament success at a later date.

Over the rest of the week I'll be posting up battle reports from my three games to try and explain how I managed to pull off such an unlikely result! I'll also have a brief look at the painting competition (I didn't get chance to take many photos!) and finally talk about what's going to change for Blog Wars 4.

Once again there was a nice mix of veterans and new players (both in terms of Blog Wars and tournaments in general). It's a shame that some of the usual suspects couldn't make it this time around but there's always BW4!

Finally, once again, I'd like to thank everyone that attended this time around. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and there were some fantastic games. Sadly all of my games took a while to play so I didn't get much chance to wander around. I hope I'll see everyone again at Blog Wars 4. The next tournament for me is the GW 40K Doubles with Matt at WHW at the end of the month. We're hoping to squeeze in a doubles practice game against the lads from Sons so stay tuned for a report of that.

Blog Wars 2 Results - Ven does it again!

See what I did with that little rhyme there? So Blog Wars 2 was at the weekend and I those of you who didn't make it are probably thinking "are you finally going to stop going on about it then?" and yes, I am, but not until I've given you a run down of the results, the painting comp, what was good and bad and of course my battle reports. Oh and a little bit about something I'm imaginatively titling "Blog Wars 3"! 

Well, as you might've guessed, Venerable Brother from Sons of Sanguinius successfully defended his crown and did so with the "new" codex again. I did point out that next time this might mean he needs to bring Tau though! Here's a full listing of the results:

So it was a pretty close run thing for first and second with only a single tournament point in it! I think I was as surprised as Matt that he came in third. Even so he only won by 700+ VPs which over three games isn't that significant! I'm pretty pleased with placing in the top 10, especially since last time I was in the bottom third of the table. I'll be writing in more details about how I got on in a later post but at least I won one! 

 

Andy was obviously pretty pleased with himself so we really need to wipe the smile off his face at Blog Wars 3! Please check out the blogs of those who attended as I'm sure they'll be posting battle reports and pictures from the event soon.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with how the event ran. Yet again I've got a list of things I can do better (which I'll talk about in another post) but in general it went well even with me making it complicated with custom missions!

Don't worry he got back up!

There was a nice mix of new people and those who'd come to the original Blog Wars event. I was pleased to see some real effort had gone into planning the armies and there were some very interesting list which made for some close battles. My personal highlight was that in the final game Andy Lane's Orks met up with David Clark's Imperial Guard which meant there was a clash between Ghazghkull and Yarrick!!

I'll save everything else for other posts but I'll end this by saying a big thank you to everyone who came on Saturday and made the event a success again. I hope you'll all be able to make it next time around too.