Bellingham GT Tournament Report - Pic Heavy

[JMGraham]

OK, this right up was a long time coming. Apologies for the delay!

Thanks to all who came out to attend the Walpurgis Eve tournament in Bellingham, and thanks to those who helped finance the tournament by buying swag! This was the Warhamster’s first shot at running a largish-tournament, and our first outing was a success – we’ll definitely be trying this again next year!

The tournament filled up with 20 players, and consisted of 6 games over 2 days. Participants had a pool of 50 ss of models that they drew from, with games ranging from 25 to 45 ss. The weekend was full of fun, laughter, gorgeous models, and improbable flips. Thanks again to everyone for making this tournament so successful, particularly Sarah VonVikee, whose inestimable book-keeping and opponent-matching skills made running the tournament a breeze!

The Scenarios and Rules

The main goal with this tournament (beyond having a weekend of fun with friends playing Malifaux) was to create a set of narrative scenarios that created an interesting story, but still allowed for somewhat competitive tournament play. That is, we wanted an interesting story, but didn’t want to sacrifice balance and gameplay for the story. The resulting scenarios were largely just variations on regular strategies, though in some cases we got a bit more creative. Many scenarios also gave players the opportunity to gain some sort of small bonus (or avoid a small penalty) for the following game.

Rather than repeat the scenarios and specific tournament rules, you can find the player pack below. To make a the player pack a bit more of a keepsake, it was bound up in booklet form with a simple pamphlet stitch.

The cover of the booklet is here

The interior of the booklet is here

The Giveaways

To go along with the story, I also wanted to create lots of swag. I like swag. A lot. Because the cost of the swag and prizes ended up exceeding the entry fee of the tournament, I came up with the idea of trying “Exploding Swag” – several of the pieces of swag were offered for sale in advance of the tournament, and the proceeds were used to fund the production of yet more give-aways and prizes. Ultimately, it boiled down to running a small business for a couple of months prior to the tournament. For my own sanity, I’m not certain I’ll do it THAT big again, but it certainly was fun.

The swag available for all participants is shown here:

The contents included (all of which, of course, were provided unpainted):

- Wooden counters for strategies, corpses, and what-not. These turned out to be very popular (and useful in helping to finance the rest of the tournament). If folks are interested in obtaining something similar to these, I heartily recommend Southpaw Art & Design’s Victorian Horror Counters. Ravyn, the proprietor of Southpaw is a local here in Bellingham, and her counters are amazing.

- The barrels and boxes on the 50mm bases served as Wreckage Markers for “The Remains of the Camp” scenario. I cast a bunch of goodies from a HirstArts mold and put them on 50 mm washers.

- The shoggoth-soup looking terrain piece served as the minor breach terrain feature in the “Into the Breach” scenario. I made it out of random hobby materials, made a mold of it, and cast it in dental plaster. It’s a 3” x 3” feature that could also work well as a host of the other 3x3 open terrain special features.

- The 30mm machine and 50mm shoggoth-looking thing served as the Tillinghast Resonator and Tillinghast Beast for the climax of the tournament, “The Secret of the Resonator”. Both were sculpted by me, and cast by me in resin (though some of the resonators were cast in dental plaster). This was my first attempt at sculpting and casting my own minis, and it was great fun. The Tillinghast Beast is likely going to be produced and made available for sale by a miniature company - I’ll post more details when it goes through. Some folks got their swag early to get a lick of paint on them (and a slight in-game bonus):

Android even got a hold of his Tillinghast Beast early so he could get it painted up for the event.

A wash will do the trick!

A huge scrum in the middle of the board, along with a blood-soaked Tillinghast Beast.

- Finally, my favorite give-away, was a custom set of Malifaux cards. I designed the cards using Inkscape. The art was either by me (all but 1 of the Voodoo dolls), Ravyn from Southpaw Art and Design (the Jokers and the hamster skull and crossbones on the card backs), or a mish-mash of modified publically available clip art. I had the cards produced by Custom Playing Cards. They did an absolutely amazing job with the order, and I’d highly, highly recommend them to anyone looking to have a run of custom cards produced.

The cards:

The Tables

For me, the visual spectacle is very important for a good miniature wargame. My clubmates have been known to place visually incongruous terrain pieces on the table when we play (a cactus in the middle of a snowy mountain, for instance), just because they know I’ll be bothered by it. In addition to the terrain we have at our club, Koyote was generous to send up some of his gorgeous terrain for us to use. His terrain is a steady feature at the Seattle Wargaming Center.

Each table had a card on it, with the table number on one side, and the special feature of the table on the other side. That way, we had some nicely themed tables with special features that were interesting, but hopefully not overpowering. We had a total of 10 tables.

Here are some of Koyote’s tables:

A small settlement on the outskirts of the badlands:

Some ruins in the the Quarrantine Zone:

A mining camp out in the badlands:

The following are tables of terrain from our local club.

Here’s a Badlands board I made specifically for the tournament:

Here’s a snowy mountain board of terrain I had made previously:

Nathan, one of the Warhamsters, did this neat forest board (he also spent the days before the tournament painting several of the boards pictured above):

We had a variety of other boards – a couple more QZ boards, a bayou board, a pioneer town board, etc. If you’d like to see more pictures, check out the photos starting on page 3 of my gallery on Ordo Fanatics:

MORE PICTURES HERE

The Crews

The crew sizes for each scenario were variable – ranging from 25 to 45 ss. To even the playing field, each player had to pick one master and a pool of 50ss of models from which they could select their crew each scenario. Painting requirements were enforced, and I was happy to see some truly stunning crews at the event. I made an attempt to photograph every crew, and got most of them (save for a few locals who I had planned on getting later, but haven’t since gotten around to). Some examples of the great crews in attendance You can see photos of many of the other crews starting on page 4 of my gallery here:

MORE PICTURES HERE

Veskit’s Kirai Crew:

Mach5’s Nicodem Crew:

Tony’s Raspuitina Crew:

Malsqueek’s Pandora Crew:

Nathan’s proxy-filled Viktoria crew won “Best Looking”, with an amazing diorama replete with Taylor leading a mechanical-ape Killjoy through a breach in the fence surrounding the Quarrantine Zone

Stark’s Sonnia crew:

Android’s Perdita crew.

The Weekend

As usual, the people themselves are who makes weekends like this so much fun. In addition to the usual crew of Bellingham locals, we had folks roll into town from as far North as Vancouver, BC, as far south as Portland, OR, and lots of places in between (namely, Seattle, WA). It was great to see old friends, make new friends, trade stories over donuts, beer, and dinner. I have some more pictures to dig through and will update them on the Ordo gallery when I do. Thanks, everyone, for making this such a fun tournament, and I hope to see you all back again next year!

“Best Looking” winner Nathan (standing, blue) squares off against “Best Gunslinger” winner Ryan (perching, grey), while Android battles Veskit’s son in the foreground.

Goblyn13’s (green) Rasputina crew attempts to put the chill on Stark (grey)

Yarbicus (right) and Kogre (left) duke it out in the QZ

Mach5 (red) and Requiemforthewolf (black) ended up playing their game twice after some improbable flips the first game:

Koyote’s Terrain + Stark’s Guild = BEAUTIFUL!

The Neverborn Hunters corner their prey, BUT IT REFUSES TO DIE!

Day 2, and folks are still standing!

The Results

We had separate awards for gameplay (Best Gunslinger), painting (voted on by the players; Best Looking), and sportsmanship (players voted for their favorite opponent to play that weekend; Best Storyteller). Winners got a nifty little trophy of a hand holding a hand of cards (which I forgot to photograph). Goblyn13 walked away with the coveted Wooden Spoon, which I personally decorated with a Sharpie prior to the tournament.

Everyone got a draw from the prize table (which I again forgot to photograph). Prizes were generously sponsored by Seattle Wargaming Center, by Eagles games, and by the folks who were kind enough to buy some swag before the tournament. Goblyn13 even brought along a special edition mini or two to add to the table! A few lucky folks walked away with boxed sets, and everyone got at least a blister.

The final rankings by VP are below. Congrats to all the winners, and thanks to all for a successful tournament!

Name  Nickname          Master     VP  TP  DIFF Paint Sports

Ryan G Onayr            Sonnia     31  13   19    0     6

Evan   Stark1261        Sonnia     26  13   16   25     5

Corey  VonVilkee        Zoraida    25  13   10    1     6

Kacy   Smashthedean     McMourning 24   7    1    0     4

Daren  Distaff          Collette   23  12    2    0    10

Chris  brothersir       Perdita    20   7   -4    1     6

Dan    Veskit           Kirai      19   9    5   12     5

Ray    Rage             Leveticus  19   9    1    0    12

Jay    Jay              Perdita    19   9   -4    6     1

Josh   Kogre            Ramos      18  11   11    0     4

Mark   Mach5            Nicodem    18  11    8    6    12

Andy   Android          Perdita    18  11    1   28     2

Tony   tpenska          Rasputina  18   9    2   19    12

Lenny  requiemofthewolf Sonnia     17  10   -1    0     1

Nathan nathonicus       Viktorias  15   7   -7   40    10

Ryan B Ryan Budd        Lucius     14   4   -6    0     7

Adam   Malsqueek        Pandora    14   4  -13    2    18

Riley                   Ramos      12   5   -4    0     1

Steve  Yarbicus         Sonnia     10   1  -20    0     7

Matt   Goblyn13         Rasputina   9   4  -17    0    12

Best Storyteller: Adam (Malsqueek)

Best Gunslinger: Ryan (Onayr)

Best Looking: Nathan (Nathonicus)

Best of Faction:

Guild: Ryan G. (Onayr)

Resser: Kacy (smashthedean)

Arcanist: Darren (distaff)

Neverborn: Corey (VonVilkee)

Outcast: Ray (Rage)

Edited July 13, 2011 by JMGraham

[FoeRender]

cool , looked like a great event .

[Clousseau]

Phew. Many applauds for the amount of effort put into organising this tournament. I'm sure it was appreciated by everyone who entered. And the swag looks cools, especially the custom cards - I hope everyone used them for the tournament.

[Dark Alleycat]

for the tournament and every game since then

[tadaka]

Wow just wow. Would love to see an event of that quality at my local stores. The denver convention does not even have malifaux all let alone 20 players and that leval of swag

[osoi]

Very nice! I'm trying to shoot pretty high for the standard of the tourney I am running in a few weeks time but now I know what I need to try and beat

I think that the effort you went to really shows

[notmikehill]

Very nice turnout you have in your area, Graham. I'm a little jealous haha.

[Angor]

Im impressed pandora scored so high on sportsmanship.

Great looking tourny, kind of wish there were some bigger pictures of the crews though.

[Acefisher1]

By far some of the nicest terrain for Malifaux i've seen. The Badlands board is actually what I'm trying to create for my home table, along with some buildings to add a small town to the board. I really love the structures as well. Really nicely made and perfect scale.

Thanks for posting this!

[JMGraham]

Thanks for the kind words, all! It was a lot of work to run, but an absolute blast. My club will be doing something similar (and hopefully larger) next year. This past year, the major limiting factor was the space - it was free (which is great for a 1st year tournament), but we really filled it with 20.

for the tournament and every game since then

I hope the jokers have been kinder to you since the tournament! Seemed like there was an alarmingly high number of black jokers bopping around that weekend.

@Angor - I'm not surprised at all at how Pandora did! Sports was based purely on having folks rank their 3 favorite opponents (in order) at the end of the weekend. Adam's one of the most friendly, laid back, enjoyable people to play that I've met. He regularly sweeps sports scores, irrespective of the system he plays.

I'll see what I can do about getting some larger shots of the crew - Ordo Fanaticus (a regional board up here in the Pacific NW) has a size limit for images, so it was aimed at them.

[cerealkiller195]

Awesome.. everything actually! great work, very lucky to have 20 players in your group. NJ/NYC area is starting to really grow in numbers

[Xango]

Fantastic tables and great painted crews, congratulations!

[JMGraham]

very lucky to have 20 players in your group. NJ/NYC area is starting to really grow in numbers

We don't necessarily have 20 Malifaux players in our local group (at least, not 20 regular players), but the Pacific NW has a pretty connected miniature wargaming community. For bigger events, most folks are willing to drive a bit.