I have known about a mysterious game store in Elk Grove for a while now. At the first Bay Area Open I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in a while and she had mentioned that she was playing Warmachine at this. Elk Grove is a bit of a drive for me (about 45 minutes), and it just hadn’t been worth the drive to just take a peek. A month or so ago they posted on one of the Facebook groups I watch that they were going to be hosting their first Warhammer RTT. As this was a good excuse to go down and take a look, I called and purchased my ticket (10 bucks ahead, 15 at the door).
Day of and I arrived way too early. I was disappointed to see that the immediate food was only a Papa Johns and a Taco Bell. There was also an adjacent doughnut shop, though I’m not a big sweets in the morning fan. When lunch did finally come around I went down the block where there was plenty of food, and was able to get back and eat over half in the 30 minute break we had (we were provided with more but my friend’s game went long).
The event turned out 8 people, 6 of the ‘locals,’ myself and my friend Chris. We joked that we would see each other at the bottom table round 3. Knowing I had brought a hard list at 1500, I was glad to see that no one there had taken a soft list. I saw an abomination/warp-lightening skaven list, 40 halberdiers empire, and a full lore/extra die/ no 6’s Life Slann. There was also an all orc army with some fairly large blocks and a wood elf army. Lastly, there was a daemon player as ringer, though it was only his third fantasy game and he was making is list as round one was starting. The players didn’t seem to be that tournament experienced.
While an event of 8 seems small, I think it was the perfect number for a first event. 8 people and 3 rounds allows for a true winner, meaning no need for complicated tie breakers. For scoring the event was based on earned mission points only, so theoretically I supposed someone who won all three games wouldn’t have gotten first (but he may have been using W/L with points as tie breakers, as the true winner won I couldn’t tell). For paint prize each player picked one character, one monster and one unit to display for a player’s choice vote. I think this was the perfect way to do it for a first event. Besides my friend and myself there were only 2 other fully painted armies, but with this breakdown it allowed everyone to compete equally – a great way to encourage paint but still allow for a growing community.
I think I defiantly came in an inappropriate attitude. The Contest of Champions have a fairly high level of competition, even with composition scores, but walking away from this event I think it was a much more ‘friends playing for money’ feel. That’s not the attitude I went in with, and I left feeling somewhat of an intruder. This feeling came in part due to a judge ruling (not on my table), that what a player was attempting to do wasn’t ‘in the spirit of the game, even if within the rules’ and therefore wasn’t allowing the desired result. This may have been in part due to the TO not actually knowing the rules, but I hesitate to fix myself there. It may just be he believes in the ‘spirit’ of the game as the driving force. Not an opinion I disagree with, just not one I see often at tournaments.
The shop had posted the missions a day or so ahead of time. I’ll wait to go into the missions during the round write up since there wasn’t time to go over them in their own post. My initial thoughts though were that they seemed very 40k influenced.
For Terrain, there was a good amount. Most of it was unfinished (remember, first fantasy event) and that included Styrofoam hills and unpainted GW buildings. There were a lot of buildings. Also, all terrain, forests and buildings were mysterious.
I’m still working on getting the right pictures, but I do have some for each game.
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