Gaming with Rhuell: West Coast GT 2013: Post-Tournament Wrap-up

As the work week drags on I have found a little time for the West Coast GT 2013 tournament breakdown. For its inaugural year this tournament was amazing! It ran on time, had great prizes, was located in a nice venue, and had a decent number of high-level Warhammer Fantasy players. If the West Coast Hammertime guys were worried about their tournament, they shouldn't have been. It was a resounding success. And I have heard from many other players that they thought the same thing and are looking forward to next year's tournament. As am I!!!

Travel and Accommodations:
As usual, I decided to fly to this tournament. Although the tournament was only in southern California, I didn't really feel up to a 10 hour drive (especially all by my lonesome). Luckily, I was on a split flight that landed in Oakland before continuing on to John Wayne airport. At Oakland, a group of the Leadership 2 players - Mike Hengl, Mike Scaletti, and Derek Wiswell - joined me in my travels and the weekend shenanigans began.

Upon reaching Orange County, our little group was met at the airport by John Bailey (who runs the Alamo GT). We were picked up by Fred Whitney, the tournament host, and proceeded to lunch at a nice little Italian place that served draft beer in pitchers. Shenanigans now began to reach heightened proportions.

We were all staying at the tournament recommended hotel, The Hills Hotel, which was a fantastic little hotel close to the tournament venue (although a 20+ minute drive from the airport).

This is a classy place with what I was told were reasonable rates for the area. The rooms were spacious, clean, and had great beds. So good in fact that I rarely wanted to leave each morning for the tournament (though booze may have played a part in that decision).

The front lobby of the hotel.

This was a very nice place to stay all weekend and assuming the venue stays the same for the tournament next year, I will be staying here again. I had no complaints about the hotel.

Tournament Venue:
The tournament venue was in one of the Elks' lodges in the area, Elks Lodge #2444. This was a great venue for a tournament. They had a bar that served alcohol all weekend (even though we were not allowed in they had a waitress on staff to take our drink orders) and a kitchen that cooked on Saturday and had a breakfast on Sunday. The venue is also really close to several shopping areas that had small food joints.

There was also a giant elk outside!

And an elk inside!

The room were were playing in easily accommodated the roughly 40 players that were there without feeling confining. The tables were well spaced so that everyone could move around and there was a place to put display boards and gaming tools next to the play boards.

This venue might be too small if the tournament gets larger than 50 or 60 participants, but there was definitely room to grow from the 40 person tournament. All in all, it was a good space that allowed for a laid back tournament atmosphere.

This was the room towards the end of Sunday after most of the tables had been packed up. Lots of space for everyone who was there.

Gaming Tables and Terrain (and Prizes):
The gaming tables and terrain were borrowed from another group that runs tournaments in Southern California and their terrain is always amazing. There were at least five, and in most cases, six pieces of terrain on each board The tables were 4' by 8' with a 2' section marked off to place dice, bags, books etc.

The best part of the terrain was that is was completely movable before each round which meant that my opponent and I had the opportunity to place the terrain in ways that it actually mattered in our games. This meant that there were times where buildings blocked units from charging earlier in the game, skirmished units actually became Steadfast, and hills and obstacles blocked cannons from killing certain large creatures on the first turn of the game. This tournament was a perfect example of playing 8th Edition with proper 8th Edition terrain rules. Now lets just see some more tournaments follow this system.

Boxes and boxes of nice terrain getting ready to be placed on the tables.

Buildings galore!!!

Scoring:
Scoring for the tournament was pretty straightforward. There were a set number of points that could be garnered in each category, and all of those categories added together provided your overall score which determined the overall winner. The total maximum number of points that could have been earned was 180 points broken down as follows: 100 Battle Points (20 from each round); 25 Sportmanship Points (5 from each round); 5 Favorite Opponent Points (1 from each opponent); 25 Composition Points (5 from each round); 30 Paint Points.

I ended up getting 10th overall at the tournament with a total score of 141 points broken down as follows: 78 battle points (going 3-1-1 at the tournament and not getting all of the bonus objective points); 23 sportsmanship points; 1 favorite opponent vote; 21 composition points; and 18 paint points.

The overall tournament winner, Quentin Bohn, finished with an overall score of 155.5 points. The full results can be found here.

There was also some great prize support that included trophies and miniature prizes.

Prizes, prizes, and more prizes!!!

Team trophy! This year's winner was Team Leadership 2 from northern California.

Overall Thoughts:
This was a fantastic tournament (especially for its inaugural year) and is an event I am already looking forward to next year. The were a lot of new players I hadn't seen around the normal West Coast tournament scene and I look forward to seeing the level of competition next year.

Random Pictures:
And as usual, here are a bunch of random pictures I took throughout the tournament: