So I drove for 3 hours up into the middle of nowhere (Kendallville, IN) for the 'Ard Boyz Semi-Finals. The venue was Sinclair Games and Comics, which was a surprisingly large game store for such a small town. Evidently they draw players from the city of Fort Wayne and other nearby towns.
The Store
Sinclair had a big front room and a couple of smaller rooms in back, all which were filled with tables for the day. We had around 36 players in all.
There were about 14 tables in the front room. Terrain was mixed.
Most of the tables were good, but some did favor Mech or Foot lists over others.
My 2nd and 3rd games were on the left-most table in this pic.
The Back Room. Yep, it's definitely rural Indiana. :)
The Armies
Hey look! A Guard Army!
Dual Monolith 'Crons? Nobody better tell Stelek!
Two Ork players getting ready to fight. The one on the right belongs to Evil Ted from the South Store, who I played in round 3.
This IG player had 2 other guys helping him put together 4 Chimeras, 2 Valks, and 50 infantry in the hour before the tourney started. Um, why dude?
Bluemoon saw the light and reduced his Land Raider to Guard ratio for his Daemonhunters. :)
There really weren't as many bug players as I expected.
Blood Angels, I think. There weren't very many of them either.
And this is the only Space Wolves player I saw.
There were more Chaos Marines than I expected to see.
So much money, so little care.
Theses were the early-birds, but most of the players didn't show until about 10 minutes before we started. So I was too busy getting set up to take their pics.
I'll discuss my games in part II.
the box full of IG being smashed together makes me want to cry. and the guy finishing his army at the venue is just plane inexcusable...
ReplyDeleteI wish GW could put on a competitive event that didn't reinforce all the worse mini-gamer behavior.
ReplyDelete@Dethtron
ReplyDeleteFiguring it up, the guy must have spent around $300.00 on those kits. Only to slap them together messily at the last minute. I honestly don't know if he was allowed to play or not. I do know that none of his infantry had arms 10 minutes before the start of the tourney.
Sinclair Books pulls people from Northeast Indiana and some guys from Southwest Michigan. Hite has a tourney every month which is more than any other shop in the area. The shop in Ft. Wayne runs a lot of leagues, but rarely one day tournies.
ReplyDeletePutting together an army an hour before the tourney is an...interesting choice.
ReplyDeleteIs ANYONE shocked that mech dominates Ard Boyz? NO terrain, NO cover, NO difficult terrain, NO where for troops to go. It would be suicide to play foot slogging on any of these tables. That is seriously the worst terrain collection (not in looks but amount per table) that I've ever seen. 15% maybe? the MINIMUM is 25% and should go much higher.
ReplyDelete18 Tables is a lot of tables for a small shop to stock with plentiful terrain. Stores sometime end up what seems like the middle of no where but is actually in the middle between several things but still have cheap rent.
ReplyDelete2 years ago, I based an army on the train to the event - and finished them there at the venue. lol
ReplyDeleteWasn't BUILDING them though. (They were painted - or rather, 3 Colours)
As regards the terrain - The closest one in the second board pic (river) is the closest to the level at which my Eldar took 2nd at FoB last year. Nowhere to hide from Lootas in the first game made me very happy for DoW - and for being simply better than my opponent.
Yea, I'm like the king. I've painted armies the night before an event and based the hours before, but putting them together?
ReplyDeleteWhat was so important he couldn't just use another army?
Ah well - I look forward to Part II
@Wallshammer
ReplyDeleteActually, the armies were much more diverse than what I encountered at Pet Shop Comics in Louisville last year, where 19 of the 22 armies were mech. The terrain was also much better:
http://theback40k.blogspot.com/2009/08/ard-boyz-report-part-i.html
Two of the three armies I played were all-foot forces.
I have to agree on the previous terrain comment. I don't think I've EVER seen such bare tables at our store, even on "fun night". There's usually 50% or higher cover. I can see why no one would play a foot army with terrain like that.
ReplyDeleteThoose aren't Vostroyans!
ReplyDeleteThey're just red Cadians as far as I can see...
Am I the only one that does them for real now-a-days? :(
And I think the terrain looks decent. If thoose woods block LOS they will at least give places to hide. But I do agree on the lack of cover, not that much except for hunkering in woods and such :/
Looking forward to the reports!
i will say that this store had a great setup, but it seemed that very few people actually ended the day having had a fun day of gaming. maybe this is typical of 'ard boyz, but it pretty much soured me on that tourney series.
ReplyDeleteall that said, there were a handful of fun players there. i just wish i'd had a chance to play more than one of them.
Having the 150 to 200 pieces of terrain it would take to make 18 adequate tournament tables is hard to do. G2D4 has a lot of terrain, but can only manage about ten good tables for 40k. Then again, they could of hit Hobby Lobby and bought $20 bucks worth of felt to beef up the terrain just enough.
ReplyDelete@Sandwyrm: I bet there where a lot more foot armies due to mission 3 of the qualifiers.
I'm interested in hearing the results. Did any Indy locals win? Any Dramaz?
@Steve
ReplyDeleteYep, I agree. I was much more disappointed in the players than the store or the TO. Around 25-30% of the players left after the 2nd round results were submitted. Which to me is a sign of poor sportsmanship.
We also had one shouting match erupt in round 2 at the table next to mine where one guy threw a hissy-fit over someone else's supposed cheating. His opponent finally had to walk away from the game in disgust.
unfortunately, this type of behavior is what gets associated with Competitive play, and gives competitive a bad name.
ReplyDeleteenter the soft scores...
I was very disappointed that my ride told me that we were leaving. I wanted to stay for the third round. I had two great games and was looking forward to a third when my ride told me he was leaving.
ReplyDeleteNext time I will insist on driving.
@Jollyboy Your buddy/ride was a Blue Falcon. Drive next time and leave his quitting butt at the house.
ReplyDelete@SandWyrm I did not see/hear the shouting match, I must have been concentrating on my game too much. Of course I was on the other side of the room. What was the supposed behavior causing the disagreement?
ReplyDeleteIt had something to do with how far a model moved/assaulted. I didn't pay enough attention to know exactly what happened or who was at fault, as I was dealing with my own opponent annoyances. I saw the TO intervening, but it didn't seem to help matters.
ReplyDeleteI just know the accused kept asking the accuser to calm down, and even went outside for a bit to let him cool off. When he came back and the accuser was still having his hissy fit, the accused quit rather than have it go on any longer.
So I assume the double lith list took 1st place? Followed closely by Chaos and Footdar? Did you see Blackmoor too? ;)
ReplyDelete@Stelek I know the double lith list took a minor loss and a major loss in the first 2 rounds.
ReplyDeleteEveryone in the area of his second match was amused he had not been phased out either round.
Scott from G2D4 took first CaulynDarr. His landraider list held up very well and he didn't play any melta armies. He played Eldar in turn 1, orks in turn 2, and nids in turn 3.
ReplyDelete@jollyboy49
ReplyDeleteThe player that played the 3x10 man terminator squad with TH/SS, Shrike, and Lysander, and 4x10 man tac squads with his list written in pencil on a scrap piece of paper was the issue. I know we all make errors in gaming, but after two turns on him adding an inch or two to his movement I politely asked him to measure correctly when moving his footslogging models. He didn't like the idea of me correcting him and started getting annoyed. I reminded him of how the assault phase worked with moving all models into base first and then moving on the assaults once. The straw where I finally had enough is when I bent over to put a model into my carrier because we were playing on a high table when I happened to turn and from bending down and see him flip over a dice as he said I am running shrike. I stood up and it was of course a 6. He forgot to move Lysander and Shike into base contact before starting his assaults on turn 4 again. At this point I explained he couldn't assualt with them. He blew up and started accusing me of cheating him and trying to slow play and he only got a minor victory from the last game because he only got to turn 4. I went to the TO to look for assistance since he was being as ass. The TO ruled on my side but the guy kept on pushing anyways so I just said whatever and went with it. I could have been a real dick and said we couldn't finish the last turn giving me a minor victory but that wouldn't have been right in my eyes.
After thinking about the game, and analyzing what happened I will ask a question. I have never liked people that use casino dice anyways, but why would someone hold two casino dice in their hands, shake them, and only drop 1?
Anyways I had a fun game in round 1 and 3.
@Spaguatyrine
ReplyDeleteAh, now it makes sense.
As for the casino dice thing, perhapes he was holding one still at the result that he wanted, rattling the other against it, and then dropping the die he was holding still?
That's why I bring a cup. :)
Yeah, Scott took first with green Land Raiders. I haven't seen that list before, and I didn't get a pic since he ran in at the last minute, but when I told Farmpunk I saw green Raiders, he thought that it was probably a version of Scott's Salamander list that he's been running lately.
I don't know who took 2nd or third, though Bluemoon said one of his friends from Brownsburg qualified for Chicago. Which would give us 2 players from the greater Indy area.
@Spaguatyrine Sorry to hear about your opponent second round. I am glad your other games were fun though.
ReplyDeleteI do not know why you would hold more dice in your hand than you plan on rolling. It just seems dodgy, and unfortunately the perception of impropriety is often enough to add suspicion and make the game bad.
I use small dice and I found that I did not have enough room to really give as good of a roll as I would have liked at some points in my matches, I cannot imagine how you would try to roll Casino dice on a table with that many points.
my third round was against the same guy aaron played in round two, and i didn't have any trouble with him at all. in fact, that was probably the best game for me all day even though it was my worst performance on the table. he was the nicest of most easy-going of all my opponents that day, and any looseness on the tabletop wasn't really a problem for me.
ReplyDeleteall of that said, there were several other cases that i saw first hand, or heard about from a friend of mine that was wandering around all day, of people getting into heated arguments or outright cheating. it used to be that this was something i'd see once every year or two at the old grand tournaments, and certainly not something that would happen multiple times in a day.
all of this goes to why i think 'ard boyz specifically, and win-at-all-cost oriented tournaments in general, are killing the hobby that i grew up with. maybe this change is what people want, but almost everyone i play with or around on a regular basis plays the game to have fun, and fun isn't always defined as winning.
People get more cranky when there's a free 2500 pt. army on the line. I think that's the only reason many of the players there showed up.
ReplyDelete'ard boys has a bad mix of a low level of entry and large reward.
ReplyDeletePainting and Sportsmanship tends to muddle up competitive scoring. Make and honest correction to someone on the rules and suddenly you drop from 1st to 5th. 'ard Boys takes the wrong approach to fixing this. Instead of requiring painting and sportsmanship, it eliminates them. So instead of fostering competition between people who enjoy the hobby as a whole, we allow any maladjusted gamer to throw down a pile of gray plastic and act like a jerk.
Don't score sportsmanship and painting, just make them mandatory. Privateer Press did this with their Hardcore Format, and it was extreamly succesfull and popular.
The "Blood Angels" (really Iron Hands counts as) and "Red Cadians" are played by two really good guys from my local group over in Muncie, IN. Hope everyone had a good time at the semis, just wanted to give some recognition to my friends.
ReplyDelete@steve,
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see he settled down. Maybe it had something to do with his friend telling him to chill during the break and me telling him he was an ass! And that it is only a game. I forgot to tell everyone that he actually said;
"I wish the wrath of God upon you!" "I hope bad things happen to you." "You know Karma, you just screwed him and you are going to get it." This is the point where I told him if he didn't settle down I would be more than happy to calm him down outside.