Been busy....

Meant to update everything and got sidetracked...at least I have been productive...
The sad part is that I am only about halfway done.

500 Point Tournaments Rock!!

After setting the rules for Escalation league I decided to run a series of tournaments as well. The first fantasy one just happened March 8th.

First off I live a 2 hour drive from the local store I was hosting the event at. They are the only game store I found on the Island when we first moved here that would actually talk to me (more and new stores have sprung up in the last few years) so I do tend to favor them for when I need stuff but more the point is that their store is pretty much the halfway point on the island so you get a good mix of people showing up.

Secondly: the weekend before I was hosting the 500 point event was GottaCon (three day convention on the
Island).

And last: my kids were coming with us (the oldest played his very first tournament, the youngest helped me run the event).

I didn't know what to expect honestly.

It was GREAT!

We had 14 say they were coming and 4 maybes. Of all the names on the list I knew half. Of that half i did know three had only played two or three games of Fantasy. Of the half I didn't know I soon discovered another three had only played a couple games.

When I announced the event the rules I set were simple:

• Out of the box Warhammer, if it is legal according the way Games Workshop wrote the rules and FAQs, it was legal to bring, including Forgeworld/WarhammerForge
• it was supposed to be painted

We mixed everyone up, played 5 rounds and came up with a great experience for everyone.

My son that played had a great time learning to play. He was thrilled with how accepting everyone was that
he knew so little and needed so much help and patience as he kept forgetting things. He was playing Skaven (painted them all himself) and we had only played about 6 games with him the week leading up to the tournament so we were glad to hear him come away at the end of the day having lost every game but still having a giant smile on his face.

I was happy to see a mix of armies, we had 2 Skaven players, 2 dwarf players, 2 Warriors of Chaos, 1 Empire, 1 Dark Elf, 1 High Elf, 1 Wood Elf, 1 Ogre & 1 Tomb King. Those that were duplicates were a huge variation of armies too which was good to see.

In the end we awarded prizes of store credit to the top three players overall having only scored wins and losses and voted for a players' choice favorite opponent.

Our Top 3 were:

1. James Downie (Ogres)
2. Scott James (Dwarves)
3. Cody Jensen (Tomb Kings)

Favorite Opponent was Josh Stewart

The end result was that they were all quite happy with the 500 point event and asked for more stating that it was a fabulous way to learn what different units could do and a great way to learn how to play the units.

I look forward to running the next one in May!

Inconsistent Blogger Alert!

I have been terribly inconsistent when it comes to writing for my own personal blog.

Over the next few days I will get everything updated with pictures from the Escalation tournament, Escalation status updates, pictures of my Empire models and the other armies I have pictures of for Escalation, upcoming tournament plans....and I will try to make myself a schedule to make sure that I keep the personal blog going better.

I drafted 6 articles in the next series of articles I write for Bell of Lost Souls today so I am a bit exhausted from all the writing and picture finding tonight or I would make more effort to do it now.

I will leave you with a picture of my latest dice bag next to my Bretonnian bag. I made it to go along with my Marienburg army...now I just need yellow dice!

GottaCon

I didn't get to go this year to GottaCon. The event grew and in the expansion they had to change the date to this weekend. Unfortunately for me that meant I missed it for the first time in three years.

My fellow gamers seem to have thought I was joking that I couldn't be there and I laughed as I had to retell them over and over this week.

It made me realize something though. As a parent and a gamer sometimes you have to make these decisions that are hard but I think I made the right one to stay home with my kids, celebrate their birthdays, attend concerts and generally just be with them. They were sure happy about it and it has allowed us to plan for the 500 point tournament we are going to as a family next weekend, where my oldest child will play in the event for the first time.

So never look at missing an event as a bad thing, its an opportunity.