This weekend saw the gaming clubs second tournament, I set off Saturday morning to help out. The lads who were attending started to arrive all keen and eager to set up and get on, I, on the other hand, was not at all prepared, since I wouldn’t be playing I didn’t bother to take along any models, this also meant that I didn’t have any templates, dice I had aplenty, but with out templates certain things would be a bit hard to work out. Oh well we just had to get on. The rules for the tourney were fairly simple, for day one each player would play two games using an army of 500 points. the games would be annihilation and the winner would be the player with models remaining on the table there would be no turn limit and play would continue until one clear winner was determined. this all went rather well until two players had a minor falling out when one claimed the other had been cheating. It was decided between the moderators that a third game would be played and that it would follow exactly the same rules but this time it would be supervised from the onset and the the moderators decision would be final. eventually a clear win resulted and the lad who initially claimed his opponent, and brother, had been cheating won the game. The other lad was given a good sportsman award for taking the whole thing really well. personally I don’t think that there had been any cheating, it was more a case of the lads not playing exactly to the rules and interpreting them how they saw fit and when it all went wrong for the other chap he got a bit upset. the thought of losing to his big brother irked him somewhat and he wasn’t happy, so there was probably a bit of sibling rivalry involved as well.
Sunday was the 1000 points event and the games were seize the objective with a minimum of 5 turns, these games went without a hitch and a clear winner and runner up were awarded, the winner was in fact the lad who received the good sportsman award an Saturday, and his win was well earned and deserved. the only upset from today was one of the lads who had two clear losses and claimed that it was unfair because both of his opponents were fielding metal models. I explained to the chap that I failed to see how the other players having metal models had an effect on his gaming, maybe the magnetic resonance of the metal had an influence on the dice! he argument was that metal models are heavier, again I saw no relevance on that and had to fight back the urge to tell him he was being ridiculous.
On the whole the lads taking part behaved brilliantly and I cannot fault the way they were with each other, aside from the two brothers and annoying whiney boy, they had fun and there was no malice toward any of the lads from each other. That’s one of the things I like about the hobby, the way that it generates a strong sense of camaraderie with the players, we share advice on painting and modelling and most of time we will point out if our opponent has missed something out or forgotten something tactical, I say most of the time as I tend to lose a lot and if I’m playing against a horde army like Tyranids I don’t tell my adversary that he’s forgotten to roll for reserves, especially when he’s just taken out half my army in two turns. you know who you are!
I’ve been told that I need to learn how Warhammer Fantasy Battles, I also need to paint the models, and that will be done by mid 2012 at the current rate I’m painting models. so over the next few weeks I need to have a major push on getting the Tau finished. Oh dear, this may be about to turn in to another moan about how much painting I’m not doing, so before it falls in to that pit of tedious monotony I’m going to close. In closing I would like to say well done to the lads that won in there categories and also to all the lads for their brilliant behaviour, as a club we could ask for a better group of members. you are all brilliant. most importantly, I would like to thank Sue, every week she hands over half of her shop floor space to a bunch of noisy lads who probably scare off customers and make a mess, but without Sue there wouldn’t be a Saturday gaming group or the monthly grown up day, so the biggest thank you is for that wonderful and fantastic person.
