Assault Results
Gather round my children, for a tale of focussed fury and furious focus, of beasts and machines of war...
At the risk of sounding knowledgeable about Warmachine and Hordes and not the least bit creepy I’m going to stop with that prologue.
Firstly, a few thanks are in order. Will, Hey Steve! and Chris played a blinder helping me to organise and orchestrate what proved to be a highly successful event; The Gaming Crypt for agreeing to host the event and extending the opening hours to accommodate everyone and of not least the gamers, who without would not have made such an event possible.
The Dice Not Included events team enjoy a brew round.
But enough of all that! What people want to read about is the event! So without further ado let’s get on with it!
Set Up and Round 1
The appetite for a Warmachine event was quite evident in that the Assault quickly sold out after it was advertised, so much so that some of our more lethargic club members ended up not having a place. In the end, we took the hard decision after much bribery with tea and biscuits to add a ninth table.
Gamers started arriving just before 10:00 and as is customary were greeted by the sweatiest of donuts. Yes, that is sweatiest, not sweetest. A quick brew round was made and as the first round had already been drawn players were directed to their tables to the sound of Han Zimmer’s awesome score from the motion picture Gladiator; winner of no less than five Academy Awards. The first round had been engineered to make sure that club members didn’t play each other and same faction games were avoided.
The first round started a little after 10:30 due to a latecomer (there’s always someone isn’t there?) and the gamers made it their business to show that they did indeed ‘have a pair’ . The first scenario was enthusiastically titled ‘Mosh Pit’. I didn’t see much moshing or an awful lot of headbanging but it did appear that models were congregating in a circle in the centre of the board and bashing into each other. Turns out the objective of the scenario was to be as close to the centre board as possible. After a slight overrun on the schedule games were mostly wrapped up by 12.45. As the gamers took a break for lunch the table stood like so:
Entrant Result Points
1 Tony Moore 3 26
2 Jamie Perkins 3 25
3 Neal Barton 3 20
4 James Johnson 3 18
5 Tom Kinsey 3 15
6 David Holliday 3 12
7 Craig Macinnes 3 10
8 Adam Brown 3 8
9 Nathan Hoole 3 3
10 Jason Denton 0 17
11 Dan Melia 0 14
12 Tom Whittaker 0 10
13 Ben Josling 0 8
14 Chris Webb 0 6
15 Adam Dennett 0 4
16 Steve Bowden 0 3
17 Glenn Lloyd 0 3
18 Alex Smith 0 3
The tournament in full-swing, with young Mr. Dare giving the thumbs up.
Many gamers took full advantage of the KFC vouchers set aside for them and the fact KFC was opposite the Gaming Crypt to tuck into chicken fried the Kentucky way. The Colonel would have been proud.
Round 2
Once everyone had had their fill, they returned to discover their next opponent. Pairings were made using the Swiss pairing system to be as neutral as that nation that makes clocks and chocolate and knives.
The scenario was Break the Line and the players quickly got cracking, this time to the Medieval II: Total War score, some cracking tunes on there and the game is even better – though not as good as their new Empire game.
]More slaughter occurred and lines were broken and as the second round came to an end the standings were as follows:
Entrant Result Points
1 Craig Macinnes 6 38
2 Tom Kinsey 6 34
3 Tony Moore 6 30
4 James Johnson 4 36
5 Neal Barton 4 23
6 Nathan Hoole 4 12
7 Jamie Perkins 3 28
8 Ben Josling 3 22
9 Adam Dennett 3 17
10 David Holliday 3 16
11 Dan Melia 3 16
12 Adam Brown 3 13
13 Alex Smith 3 7
14 Jason Denton 1 24
15 Steve Bowden 0 13
16 Tom Whittaker 0 12
17 Chris Webb 0 6
18 Glenn Lloyd 0 4
Round 3
With 3 people duking it out for maximum points and 4 others for wooden spoon the scene was set for the final round which was (adopt deep and booming voice) Process of Elimination!
Hey Steve!’s rather large and pointy horn was blown to announce the start of the final round and the players engaged with each other ferociously.
The results began to trickle in and the tension mounted as everyone became eager to establish who the victor was.
The Result
The players gathered around as our resident Dwarf player sounded his horn once more – drum roll please.....
The final result was incredibly close. So close in fact that the winner had to be decided on the total number of victory points conceded. Craig had conceded 9 victory points whereas Tony had conceded 27. Craig was declared the winner of the first ever Altrincham Assault!
Prizes were awarded for those that had finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd so congratulations to Craig, Tony and Nathan who all thoroughly deserved the praise and adulation of their fellow competitors.
Reflections
It was brilliant to see such so many turn out and I think it’s a strength of Warmachine that there was a healthy mix of factures and no one faction dominated either the list of entrants or the top quartile.
Looking to the future I’d really enjoy running another event and feedback suggested that everyone really enjoyed themselves. It was hard work and little brain melting and that was just trying to get the lookup formulae to work on Hey Steve!’s fake excel open office spreadsheet!
Stay tuned for the next Altrincham Assault!
Regards,
Matt
Full gallery here.
