Monday, January 23, 2012

Tournaments and their lack of inertia in Cape Town

So this weekend past (21 / 22 January 2012) was the Western Cape Regionals for Warhammer 40K.
See the first post here:
http://www.warhammergenerals.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7361

Some points of interest to note from this post: Nationals rules pack.
A handy link to it:
http://www.warhammergenerals.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6606&hilit=nationals+40

NOTE: I’m the first to admit I made a mistake in my army list in that I didn’t pay for Halberds for my Grey Knight Strike squad (would have changed my army list slightly in that they would have been Initiative 4, not 6), or I would have played with 30 points less bling somewhere else.

I also played my Callidus Assasin wrong in second game: she can’t assault from when she arrives any more. In that game, she took out a unit of Tank Hunting Terminators. I don’t think they would have changed the game much, considering I have no tanks / rides in my list. At the end of it, I had 1 objective in his half, and he was contesting the one in my half. The tank hunting terminators were in middle of the field, foot slogging towards me, about 30 to 40 inches from my objective. Would they have gotten there? Who knows. After the game opponent spoke to a mate, we checked the book, we went to organiser and spoke it over. I suggested we make it a draw, opponent was happy with that.

I have issues with what happened this weekend, and what is in the rules pack.
Starting from the beginning of the PDF rules pack:
Page 2, then on page 4 – Scoring for Appearance points.
There was no scoring for Appearance points. Some people were not only playing unpainted armies, but even unassembled. “Legs on a base” type unassembled. I spent WEEKS getting my figures just perfect. I even changed my army list due to the fact that I didn’t have a figure with a Psycannon. Oh how silly I was. Heaven forbid someone might actually want to see the ACTUAL figure have the ACTUAL guns it’s got.

Page 4 – Game conduct. Nothing of the sort. No scoring for it.

Page 6 – missions were decided there and then. Didn’t follow these set out scenarios at all.
Organiser used a piece of paper and a dice. Then he left halfway through the third game cause he was tired. Apparently been up for about 30-odd hours.

Page 7 – Schedule. Registration took place at 9:00. Huh? That’s all of a few minutes late, no? Supposed to be from 8:15 onwards. (see sentence above).

To my mind, there is a certain responsibility with playing in a Regionals. There is a dedication required. If you can’t deliver a good service to people paying R100 for an entry fee, where’s the value for money in that?

If I or any of my gaming buddies raise the questions around having unpainted figures etc etc, we get the same answer: it’s to stop people from being penalised and to allow them to help the hobby grow. Ok, so how come the same people have the same partially assembled figures from the same (no, less) players then when I last played in the 40K tournament in March 2011???
Answer me that, oh organisers of 40K stuff in Cape Town.

Oh well. So much for 40K tournaments. Will try again in another 10 months time. Maybe. Ok, probably not.

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