UK Nationals 2016 - 12-13 November

[balgor]

Hi Mike, not sure if your aware but im Nathan Chenary's +1 and really looking forward to this even, though not the stupid time I have to set off tomorrow morning

[Joel]

Aaron is in the country - the Wyrd has landed!

 

Now - I wonder if he'll be claiming political asylum??

[Jam_Sandwich]

Photos, looooots of photos please  

[ttsgosadow]

The Dutch delegation has landed as well! See you tomorrow guys

[OldManMyke]

Heading into day 2 we have 6 players undefeated.  Will one of them win of will they falter and be swallowed up by the pack.  3 more games to decide it

[OldManMyke]

Thank you all and huge congrats to Mark on his win and the second step to be coming the first ever triple crown winner

[Clousseau]

Well what a great, if tiring, weekend.

Firstly many, many thanks to Rich for helping set up my terrain. Without you I'd have still been there at midnight. At 28 tables I'm glad work could lend me a van (which also provided taxi duties over the weekend). Tables were appreciated by most, but its a pity that people still decide to move pieces round and spoil carefully arrange fire lane blockers and other details.

It was great to meet Aaron, and I'd like t thank Wyrd for sending him over. Had a good chat with him on Friday but didn't see much of him after that as he must have talked to nearly everyone at one point or another.

Organisation was smooth as ever from Mike, Lee and Jen. Was late getting to the venue (thanks to a late train delaying some of the London contingent who I was collecting) and so still haven't looked at the fate deck and poker chips! What I saw of other players' ones looked great.

My playing has either improved since last year, or Arcanists are a crutch over Ressers. I think it must be the former as I played 5/7 games against Ressers (4 of these being Reva) (and the other2 against Guild), and all games were close. So 3 wins, a draw and 3 losses overall, and I think a positive VP diff.

Many thanks to my opponents for 7 great games, I'd play anyone of you again - Matt Lewin, Kevin, Hadyn, Luca (my new Italien friend), Adam, Bonk and Huw. Must mention Adam who suffered 3 flipped RJ damage flips in the first 3 rounds, which combine with a self inflicted RJ meant a decimated crew early on. Sorry bud.

Thanks to those who helped me pack everything away and get it all out & into the van at the end of the day. Much appreciated guys (and gals).

Venue worked well despite the large number of players, though I understand it was rather warm up on the top tables! Food was fine, loos coped well and there was sufficient space overall.

Finally enormous thanks to Mike for running a great event, and to his elves Lee, Matt and Jen.

See you all next year.

[Twistedrich]

Glad to have helped ?? 

[trikk]

Awesome weekend! Thanks to all my international opponents! Also a cry dor help from Bonk:

 

[UK NATIONALS]

Guyz, apparently I have left my jacket in the shop. If someone finds it (black, with mp3 player, gloves, hat in the pocket) could you please leave a message here so we can organise shipping?

Thanks.

 

 

 

See you at ITC and UK GT 2017!

[Clousseau]

3 minutes ago, trikk said:

Awesome weekend! Thanks to all my international opponents! Also a cry dor help from Bonk:

 

[UK NATIONALS]

Guyz, apparently I have left my jacket in the shop. If someone finds it (black, with mp3 player, gloves, hat in the pocket) could you please leave a message here so we can organise shipping?

Thanks.

 

 

 

See you at ITC and UK GT 2017!

I've let Jack at the store know. I'll contact you if its found on Monday.

[geordevic]

Really enjoyed to play here!

We wanna results!

Reeesults!reeeesults!reeesults!

 

Geordevic

[M_Ruckuss]

Great event as always Mike. A big shout out to Dave/closseau for the loan of his amazing terrain collection, without which it would be much harder to run these bigger events. 

7 great opponents- many thanks to all of them for great games!

 

[Von Woozle]

Super event Mike, Lee and Jen. well done and thanks

Thanks to David for the lift, I was wondering where all the Ressers went to, I didn't see one!  If only the trains ran as smoothly as the tourney, I can tells ya.  

Found out why Silurids are worth 7ss,  played 7 people I hadn't played before and made some new friends,  The Spar and Hotel down the road was a really nice place to stay and not too expensive I'd recommend it to others and Battlefield Hobbies were fantastic thanks to all their staff. 

Great idea of Aaron to bring over Guilder models as sending them by post does end up quite costly.

Thanks to everyone you are great

Oh yeah well done to the new World Champion!

 

[OldManMyke]

Right, as is traditional its time for the post event well that could have gone better debrief.

Overall I was pretty happy with how the event ran, especially in a new venue, but there are always things that could go better.

Main complaint I heard over the weekend was related to the upper level and noise (couple of people thought it was a bit warm but not sure what you can do about that).  To that end I've asked Battlefield to put some fabric up over the metal beams which should bring the noice level down as it will no longer be bouncing off the ceiling.

The lack of wi fi was annoying as it meant that all my streaming plans went out the window.  They are hampered by infrastructure on the estate but it does have excellent 4G coverage so I will be looking into a couple of dongles for next year.  This also meant that updates for the outside world were sporadic at best.  It was also one of the main reasons I didn't use Kai and Jamies spanking new live rankings update thing.  Maybe next time.

Food seemed to work well and now i know thats how it is going to be handled I will be better placed next year to deal with any specific dietary requirements, this was a failing on my part this year, with two gluten free people in my own household you would have thought I would know better.

I underestimated the time for initial checkin and that had a knock on effect of making rounds run long, already have a plan for solving that next year but I thought round turn around went pretty well, results flowed in quickly and I only made one mistake that I know of, which was quickly rectified once it was brought to my attention.

Communicating the next draws was problematic but once I went to my fallback plan of printouts it worked

Swag went down well, saw lots of folks using the deck and chips together with the little Bendyboards giveaway

I loved the quiz

@Aaron was a star.  Thanks for coming over and hope fully we will see you again in the near future.

Think thats about it.  Once I find my laptop I will post the final results so you can all see where you finished and will send the results into rankings.

If there is anything at all you think went poorly, could be improved for next year etc. please please let me know, event only gets better if you tell me what didn't work this year.

See you in a years time

[iamsssk]

I'd agree with most of that Mike. I didn't find noise upstairs too bad, but I can see why it could've been a problem. To counter your "check-in time" problem, I think your on the fly adaptation/flexibility was fantastic. Sure things overran a little, but not massively, and I never heard a single complaint about it, and I really don't think it affected anything.

My only additional comment was that human space was a bit limited on some tables (bumping into the person behind me or next to me), particularly upstairs, making it tricky to get stuff into/out of boxes for instance. My only possible suggestion would be to make more use of that middle room (the bottom tables/painting comp space), but then I guess if we'd had the full 128 people, that would've been full too, so realistically I think it can't be helped. Also I'd rather we got tons of people with less space, than reducing the number of participants with more elbow room.

My only other complaint was that the quiz didn't have any Razorspine Rattler based questions.

So in summary (as I told you a few times over the weekend), an excellent event, well run, 10/10, very little room for improvement, feel proud of yourself and make a well deserved cup of tea.

 

[daniello_s]

Is there any place I can check final results? Thanks.

[ProximoCoal]

Honestly I think plan A for table distribution had potential problems because the text on the screens was tiny. However I am going to sound like broken record when I say I think you did a fantastic job and ran an incredibly successful event.

[SurreyLee]

Aside from Noise levels (my ears are still ringing a bit) I can't fault the event outside of things already mentioned. 7 great games and nearly beating the eventual winner were my highlights. 

Thanks Mike, team and to every attendee for making this a really well run event and hopefully i'll get a ticket next year. 

[Psientologist]

I will start by saying what many have already said, thanks to my 7 opponents for great, fun and memorable games. I'll skip being too specific here, that's more for social media I feel.

Big shout out to Battlefield Hobbies, the venue was great, clean, spacious, good parking, good store front etc. and the staff were really friendly, welcoming and just a good laugh.

Main feedback for @OldManMyke now though.
A lot of this will probably just be an echo of what others including yourself have said but...
First off, timings were great, I appreciate we did start a little late on Saturday and as you said maybe you underestimated that but I think it's a problem you can afford to have on a two dayer usually, overrunning day 1 isn't screwing much up for anyone.
Round times were good, I'm not sure I got 5 turns in most of the time but I think that's a combination of still getting used to Sandeep and also some of the comfort issues.

While I'm there, upstairs the mezzanine, got quite uncomfortable. Science is against as it were as heat and the noise all rose to the top making it a bit too warm and a bit too loud.
The covers sound like a great fix, heat wise I know there's lots of people and I'm a big lad but like @iamsssk said it also felt there was little space up there, especially in the middle of the rows.
I don't want to be a sourpuss as I really enjoyed the event but a third game upstairs in a row started to make me feel not well and that obviously does make the experience worse.

My two games downstairs in the main hall were great, enough space (I mean I'd always want more but that's unrealistic), less hot and less loud.
I don't want to give problems without solutions but I'm not sure the answer, I would say moving some tables from upstairs to down but I don't know if that just shifts the problem.

PA was a good call though as I said after round 1, I can't blame Mike having fun with it but I would appreciate during the rounds it was just calls and not jokes. Again, not trying to be a sourpuss but I imagine it added to Saturday's headache and also is a little intrusive and therefor taking some time away from the games.

The score sheets worked and the queueing wasn't too bad (though I guess added to the mezzanine issues), the table number sheets being handed out worked well as a fix too as I never found it an issue to know where to go once that was used.
It's a shame however @NoMoreMrNiceKai and Jamie's (forum name?) system didn't get used. It's no secret I love those guys so it may come across bias but the two events I was at when it were used, the "admin" side of things was incredibly smooth. For a quick elaboration at 'In the Hunt' Mark's brother who is not a TO not even a wargamer did all the input with zero problems.
That and they have added even more useful things which would save on a lot of issues and time.

Lunches worked well, was surprised no drink with them, Saturday that was the main reason I even wanted lunch. Definitely made BFH a few quid there!

For the moment though, this is all I can think to say, like most of us who were there I am still quite fried.
Really bar some comfort issues upstairs I would change basically nothing and Mike did as good a job as we all know he'll do. Telling us he thought he may not do next year, bloody drama queen 

Thanks to Jen and Lee also for adding to such a smoothly ran event.

And finally thanks to Wyrd for sending @Aaron over. It was great to get to chat in person. Still really hold my chat/interview with him June(?) of last year, top bloke, really just gets it (which probably need elaborating but see: fried) and as I've thought for a while a good pair of hands for Malifaux to be in.

[Keith Robinson]

Great tournament and absolutely loved it.  Think I was the second last ticket to get on from the reserve list - so very happy about that.

Comments...

Noise: I played 3 games upstairs and 4 downstairs and I found the noise much worse downstairs than up, so go figure.  The fabric sheet sounds like a good idea, but otherwise I'm not sure there's much that can be done.

Location: excellent.  Can't really fault it.  Space was tight, but I thought ok on the whole.  Parking and accessibility was easy and the guys at Battlefield Hobbies were excellent.

Loot: loved the decks and poker chips, and the freeby from bendy boards.  Maybe a 2 guilder chip instead of a one would have been nice, since it's such a significant event - or maybe that's just me being greedy!

Lunch: Like @Psientologist I was surprised at no drink, but otherwise I was very happy.  The guys behind the counter went out of their way to keep everyone happy where they could.

Room for improvement...

Only two thoughts, really:

1) Painting Competition: it was in a really tight space and people were still putting their minis down as people were already judging, and at the end were taking them away (to use in their next game) while people were still judging.  Maybe a slightly bigger space for display purposes with a clear start and cut off point would help?

2) Results.  After 2 long days and 7 hard games, it would have been nice for everyone to know where they finished at the end of the event itself.  Even a print out, or just @OldManMyke running through the list on the mike at the end.

That's it.  It was a fantastic event, really well organised and run and I'm delighted to have gotten a last minute ticket and made the event.

Thanks to @OldManMyke and everyone else for a great weekend!

[wobbly_goggy]

Well, after going in to work (knackered) only to find my request to have it off had been approved after all (yay!), I would like to jump on the thank you bandwagon!
I'm not much of a tournament gamer (40/40 at Bitefaux too is testament to that!), but I had a thoroughly lovely time. My brief foray upstairs confirmed what people have said about noise and heat....would fans have made a difference? As the final prizes etc were announced from downstairs corner, would that have been a better location throughout? 
All things considered, the event was fantastically well run from a lowly peon point of view - so thank you Mike and all the other organisers!

And a huge shout out to Callum, Graeme, Luca, Sander, Peter, Jimmy (sorry for the roosters!) and Martin from Sweden (Zipp vs Zoraida was so much fun!) for 7 great games of Malifaux..

What I really loved was that in all my games, when the luck went horribly in favour of my opponent or myself, we both had a good laugh about it.

Awesome!

When can we buy tickets for next year?

(I'm andres btw)

[AdrianMills]

Can i polity ask that you give @OldManMyke chance to post the results. It was just as stressful if not more so and warrants a bit of time to unwind with family before posting them.

It will be posted just give him chance

 

 

[OldManMyke]

Final placings can be found in a lovely PDF - https://www.dropbox.com/s/fh8vl46qskg7t0m/finalplacings.pdf?dl=0

[Twg]

Thanks to Mike and his team of helpers for making this a really successful and smooth event. I echo the above statement....give Mike a break, about 18 hours wasn't too long to wait.

The noise was loud in the hall, and in my opinion no louder in the mezzanine than the main hall, but it was hot. Fans may cause more issues than they solve, due to the lack of space and counters and paperwork flying away! 

Overall a great event with a lot of great people.

[Joel]

love that Claire is down as Bunty