Gaming with Rhuell: Bay Area Open 2013: Overview

It's time for the Bay Area Open 2013 tournament breakdown. This tournament can easily be described in a single word: unorganized! The tournament was late, had lots of reporting problems (including messed up scores), and a host of other problems. It was nothing like the Bay Area Open I remember from last year. I can tell you right now that without an assurance that next year's tournament will be run more efficiently and with less issues I will not be returning and I know many of the other tournament's players agree.

Travel and Accommodations:
On Friday night after work, a teammate and I drove to Antioch, California. It was a nice little 3 and 1/2 hour drive with no problems. We were able to check in to the tournament hotel, the Days Inn Antioch, and then head over to the game store where a lot of others were playing half a block further down the road. There, we were met by a large group of fellow players that were spending their Friday night in the middle of a strip mall parking lot drinking and talking Warhammer. So of course we joined in!

The Days Inn is much like other small motel/hotel chains and provided a comfortable bed to sleep on after a long day of playing games. The motel is nothing special, but is a good deal for its comfort and the location. This is the second time I have stayed at this place and if I go back to the BAO next year I will stay here again.

Tournament Venue:
The tournament venue was at the Contra Costa Fairgrounds in one of their larger back buildings. The building was large, but not quite large enough to really run a 200 person tournament (it included around 150 40K players). The building felt really cramped and there was very little space to put necessary gaming items and display boards while you were playing a game. If this tournament keeps growing year after year, they are going to need an additional building or play space.

The fairgrounds are close to a decent shopping center in Antioch that has both fast food and sit-down restaurants, but there was no food available at the tournament other than what the organizers brought in for sale each day (Costco Pizza and some sodas and beer). However, we were allowed to bring in coolers for our own drinks and food and could eat whatever we wanted if we had time to run and pick it up over the lunch hour. I would place the fairground as an average tournament venue. Nothing special, but not horrible either.

Gaming Tables and Terrain:
The BAO needs to get its gaming tables and terrain in order. There were some wooden tables with really nice pieces of terrain at the back end of the venue, but by the time the tables and terrain made it to Tables 150-175 where we were playing Fantasy, the tables became rectangles of cloth taped over long rental tables and terrain pieces that were combinations of cut cardboard and cut felt pieces. The tables gave an impression that the tournament was just too large for the guys to handle as they were rushing to make tables rather than focusing on adding to their terrain collection.

Terrain placement was already set by the tournament organizers and I don't think I need to repeat how horrible of a process this is in a tournament, especially when each game was a scenario straight out of the book.

Scoring:
The scoring rules for this tournament I have already discussed in an earlier post, but here are my post tournament thoughts. First, there is no point in setting up such a huge difference in battle points (there is a 25 point difference between each bracket i.e., loss to draw, draw to win, win to major win). It could just as easily be accomplished by giving a 0-3 point ranking. Second, army composition really had no effect on the tournament outcome and had no effect in who you played at the tournament. If its not going to be used, don't have a comp score. It really is that simple. Third, if you have a check off list for paint, use it! I only got 70 out of the 75 paint points because, as I was told, my army did not have advanced techniques because I didn't have any conversions in my army. But that wasn't part of the identified advanced techniques like line highlighting blending, and freehand work (all of which my army has including tattoos on the Glade Rider horses). Don't allow subjective judging when you are using an objective check off list.

Finally, provide a Sportsmanship award. This is a war game and Sportsmanship is an important part of our gaming culture. The new wave of thumbs-up, thumbs-down scoring (especially when there are no favorite opponent votes) doesn't reward people who go above and beyond and give their opponents amazing games. Rather it rewards mediocre and bad players who are less likely to get bad Sportsmanship votes because their opponents feel bad about giving a full thumbs-down.

Complete scores for the tournament are available here, but my score breakdown was as follows: In total, I got 720 points out of the possible 950 points: 70 paint points, 75 comp points, 50 sportsmanship points (which really meant nothing); and 525 battle points.

Comparative Army Lists:
Now that the new Warriors of Chaos book is out, the bandwagon WoC players, as well as veteran WoC players are out in force. This was easily the most played army, followed by Ogres and, surprisingly Wood Elves. Many of the lists were over the top (heavy scream vampire lists, 'gut star with two iron blasters lists, crazy daemon prince builds, etc.) but there were also some extremely fluffy lists (as I said, there were at least 5 Wood Elf armies out there).

Overall Experience:
Overall, my experience at the tournament was middling. Day 1 got off to a horrible start. I know it is already out on other forums, but registration was to start at 9:00 a.m. for 40K and 9:30 a.m. for Fantasy with out first games to begin at 10:00 a.m. Registration didn't finish until almost noon with the first game kicking off around 12:30 p.m. for Fantasy (40K got started a little earlier). This is not a great start to the tournament!

Moreover, the Fantasy TO had no idea what was going on at all. In my first game of the day time was called on us and one of the TOs walked over to my table and had us put dice down and turn in our results when the first 40K round ended! Fantasy still had over a hour left, but we were still told to stop and it was about 15 minutes until we figured out what happened. But by that point it was too late to do anything about it. This really pissed me off because not only do I think it cost me that game, but it shows how unorganized the tournament was. As I stated above, if they can't get their stuff together for next year, I will not be going back.

Random Pictures:
Despite everything about the tournament, there were some really nice armies about. So here are some of the better pictures I took over the weekend:

Mike Scalleti's Slaneshi Daemon Princess model. Very sick!

With close ups!

I can just see this model singing "I'm so pretty!"

Also, Mike's Hellcannon made from various sculpting materials and Tyranid parts.

Warboss on Wyvern; and awesome stand out piece in a great looking Orc and Goblin army owned by Michael Hengl.

Orc Shaman channeling the lightning.

Quentin Bohn from Club Capri (left) playing Ed Phillips and his Skaven army (right).

Ed's Screaming Bell after some guy walked by in the middle of a game and knocked it onto the floor. He handled this much better than I would have. Luckily he spent Saturday night putting it all back together again but it needs a few paint touch-ups.