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Gen Con 2014 Wyrd Tournaments


DeusInnomen

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Yeah... I challange Icemyn to an Avatar rematch at Adepticon. I'm not salty about taking 2nd but I think we both agree that a rematch is needed, there were...circumstances at this gencon that I don't think would have sat well with either of us, given the situation we had.

 

ADEPTICON 2015! GENCON REMATCH LEVI vs. THE DREAMER!!!

SHHHOOOOWWW DOWWWWNN!!!

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The issue on the final game as I am aware is they wanted to have the game at the demo booth in the showroom. One board had a huge culverts with no ladders and giant buildings and such that completely would have hosed the levi player since the dreamer just ignores all of it. The other board was a cool raised train platform, but everything on the main level was basically open terrain, which hosed the dreamer player. They attempted to use the second board and add some terrain to it. but it was not considered enough.

 

Most people I talked to said the terrain in the actual tournament hall was pretty spot on. not sure about pictures.

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For most of the convention the terrain was fairly sparse. A Guild players dream to be sure. I would say that the average table had >25% terrain on it. Usually 3-4 Dense (forests) and a 2-3 Blocking Buildings with a few train cars on tracks scattered about.  While we were playing the Quarterfinals Victoria went around and gathered terrain from many tables and made "real" tables for the quarterfinals. I'm sure if you look you can find pictures of the "Demo" Tables at the Wyrd Booth. These tables were extremely pretty, but not good for playing games on at all. 

As Dolomyte mentioned the first table was a gothic ruin clocktower building menagerie, there were many rooms without doors several 4" or higher elevation changes (in the middle of the board) without ladders etc. The other table was a mining quarry with crisscrossing Train Tracks running above it in the sky. It had most all of its terrain in the 4 corners and a Huge Worm beast unburrowing in the middle of the ground floor. Outside of the Worm thing there was no terrain in the bottom center of the board. We grabbed as much terrain as could be found in the booth (Spoiler Alert:Not much), but it was basically a shooting gallery. 

If we played on the Gothic Board I would have very likely lost so we agreed the Quarry board was more balanced with the added terrain. It was not more balanced. 

In the future I would suggest that wyrd not only brings a set of models painted to table quality for demos, but also functional demo tables. I know that I personally saw many players setting up a demo game and being frustrated by the convoluted nature of these pretty boards. 

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Most people I talked to said the terrain in the actual tournament hall was pretty spot on. not sure about pictures.

 

I want to be blunt here, and this is not at ALL a slight at everyone who ran the event, they worked with what they had. Which was absolutely nothing. The terrain at Gencon was the worst terrain setups I have ever seen in the game. I kid you not a comment was made to me as to "why do the Warmachine/Hordes tables have more terrain than the Malifaux tables".

 

Sure it sucks playing on these tables from a balance issue, but as a veteran player I can 'accept' it. However, from a representation of how the game is suppose to be played to everyone who came to see the games, it was a disgrace. A few terra clips thrown around the table, some which didn't even go together completely. A few 'trees/forests' and that was it. It made for a very un-fun gaming experience. Maybe we are little bit spoiled here in the New England area because we have such great tables, but even taking into account some of the stellar terrain we have and the fact that people go above and beyond around in our area, at Gencon it was the exact opposite. There just was not enough terrain <period>.

 

It made for some incredibly big swings in games that typically would not be possible. For example, my second there was a good 8''-12'' open space that spanned the length of the table with absolutely nothing to block any LoS or movement. It was just terrible.

 

Now that I hear the premiere 'finals' event forced players to play on those display tables at the booth, it worries me even more as to how inaccurate of a representation we are giving people who want to play this game competitively. All I can hope and wish for is that Wyrd takes a more serious look at supporting tournament play and puts their staff (not just Henchman who can only work with what they have at a con as large as Gencon) to work on making sure terrain is to the standards. 

 

For example, look at the NOVA Open they even reached out to Wyrd about what is 'official' terrain and then built terrain to meet those requirement. Then Wyrd shows up to Gencon with terrain that doesn't meet their own standards. I dunno, it just frustrates me because I want Wyrd (and Malifaux) to be accurately representing the game that we all know, love, and play.

 

So how do we help Wyrd make next year's Gencon better from a terrain perspective? Who is local to Indy that can help get terrain there and really make it a premiere event. I know that if the terrain is going to be the same as it was this year, I will not play in the events as it just isn't fun. 

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Yes you should build crews with the terrain in mind and certainly just play to what you have, but that doesn't mean that certain crews or masters aren't going to be disadvantaged/unplayable given the terrain setup. Telling a new Viks player that they are screwed by virtue of having the audacity to show up isn't exactly reasonable. 

I like Peregrine Falcon would hope that for future events Wyrd will coordinate terrain with Attendees. 

That being said I do not think the GenCon terrain was absolutely miserable, but it was very near the minimum and extremely redundant. Nearly every table looked the exact same. 

 

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Not to defend it, but shouldn't people's crews have been built with the terrain in mind too?

If I see a lot of open space, I'm going to take high defense, fast movers, ranged, and ranged resistant models.

 

Yup I agree, which is why I state that as a veteran player it was fine because I can mix my crew up, but even with that the tables were terribly unbalanced. Furthermore, it was not forgiving to anyone who was new and wanted to play. The terrain also just looked bad, as in did not show-off how great the game is.

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The problem is a matter of priorities.  Terrain, especially good terrain, takes a lot of time and money to put together.  When planning Malifaux Adepticon, we would routinely start terrain building in June or July for the con(which occurs in April).   We also reached out to several other Henchman and had them do the same thing and put boards together.  I am sure Nova does the same thing.

 

I got the impression last year that Wyrd started building there terrain in July for an August Gencon.  Its just not enough time to do job the well especially considering they are probably doing a million other things.  

 

To step for next year Wyrd either needs to reach out to Henchman and put together a terrain brigade to build the tables or hire some people to do the work, but more importantly they can't wait till the last minute to do it.    

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from waht I gather, the Wyrd staff were aware of the deficiencies in the terrain, and are already planning on much improved terrain from next year. I dont know what they intend or how much they intend to outlay for it, but my impression was on the order of lots and quite a bit.

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Saying the terrain was worse than the Warmahordes design tables is a big stretch - the Malifaux boards were generally about 25% covered, which went up to 50% for the Avatar. The PP boards were lucky to have three pieces of terrain each. On the other hand, the Infinity boards looked phenomenal, and I'm not saying the Malifaux boards were visually appealing, just that I had no trouble getting out of LoS on any board I played.

Trying to play on either of the scenic boards in the booth would have been a nightmare, though.

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Well, the enthusiasm and offer to help are greatly appreciated. GenCon works because of volunteers, and we love having such a supportive community. That said, I wouldn't mind taking a bit of time away from GenCon and planning a bit later than this ;) But we'll start figuring something out soon enough!

 

I'm sure that we'll do another call out for volunteers, and we'd be happy to have your help then.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I'm really sorry, guys. This has been a failure on my part due to an unexpectedly crazy busy and stressful September. I got back late yesterday from a seriously needed vacation with the wife for her 40th birthday, so my brain is someone unwound now.

 

Let me get through the work day without stabbing any of my coworkers, and I'll post the results when I get home tonight.

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Nope, the UK started it, but the rankings are international. One can drill down a player base by country/region, so there is a North America section, for instance.

 

PeregrineFalcon is the North American admin for the site.

 

While I appreciate the support, technically I'm just an advocate for the US to be more involved in MalifauxRankings.com as I (and Joe) see a lot of value in it. Not just from "who is the best", but more because we are interested in the analytics of what factions are winning in the US on a regular basis.

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It can be a helpful tool in seeing how and what on the larger and smaller averages tends to be being played, and tends to be placing in events. The fact we also get an idea of who is best in a local area, and if enough larger travel events occur with consistent faces we get an idea of who travels and performs well. But the primary interesting bits are the faction information which we in the US don't have nearly the tracking due to lack of awareness that the UK does. They have a nice years worth of data that has been a lot of fun 2 look at and I hate for the US to miss out on adding to the data.

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