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Count Domar
08-01-2010, 04:08 PM
Just wanted to pass on my feedback in the hopes of making next years convention even better.

Here are a few of my comments:

1. The greenstuff/painting/centerpiece seminar was great but I think you should have one subject per class and each class about 4 hours. This will give the person enough time on each subject to go into a little bit more detail or to spend more time with the participants to help them out.

2. I was a little disappointed with the whole "Badge" and sign in process. When I signed up for the seminar I was told that I should sign in to receive my badge, a "Swag Bag" and then be directed to the area I would need to go for whatever I had signed up for.
A. I found that there was no centralized sign-in table (The only table I found was one for signing in for the tournaments) so I never received any kind of badge.
B. There was no centralized control so anybody could come and go at the convention so what was the point of telling people they needed to have badges to attend the convention? If you don't care about others checking out the convention (Those not signed up for any events) then don't force those who are attending events to buy a badge as part of coming to the convention either (If it were to cover some of the costs of the convention then raise the event participation cost).
C. The Swag Bag: My disappointment was that there was none. When I first arrived at the convention and went to sign in (See item A and B above) I found out that the item that GW was sending had not arrived yet so there was no Swag Bags. I am not sure if "all" of the items in the swag bag was being provided by GW or just the bag to put the items in. If they were only providing a bag to be used to place the items in why not just place the items in a generic bag in order to pass them out. If GW was providing all of the items then it appears that the coordination on these items were a little on the late side. Coordinating earlier with GW or the other vendors providing items as part of the swag bag should be done early enough to ensure they will arrive prior to the beginning of the event.

3. Vendors at the convention: Was there any? As there was not central sign-in table I did not know who to ask if there were any and if so where they were located. It was my understanding that last years convention had vendors present so I would assume that there would have been some this year, however, there may not have been.

4. T-Shirts. Once again, was there any? If so I did not know where to purchase one. I would have loved to have had a momento of the convention as this was the first one of this type that I had attended.

Sorry to rant as I did but hopefully it will be taken as constructive feedback to help with next years convention. It did look as if the handling of the ongoing tournaments was being done in a very professional manner.

Jim

Epheus
08-01-2010, 07:16 PM
Ill give a sandwhich here, good/bad/good.

Good = Lots of people, even many faces I had never seen before, and the tournament was organized and ran well for FOW.

Good = Lots of tables and room to play, was nice to be able to move and play and not worry about running others over.

Good = Judges and JWolf were readily available, was good for support when needed.

Bad = Terrain, it was horrible. I dont know what it is about so many local and even some national tournaments, but in WWII people really did fight in forests and have lots of terrain to deal with. TINY patches of trees does not constitute a forest or even woods, its barely big enough in most cases as 2 or 3 stands. This is not 40k. These tables were poorly laid out, poorly imagined, the terrain was AWFUL (cant move trees, dont stick to hills, etc...) to manuever around and not nearly enough. CERTAINLY not good enough for a nationals tournament, please speak with those that played at QoB on Saturday, MUCH MUCH better terrain.

Bad = Swag, I have to admit I was terribly disapointed, as was everyone I spoke with. Sure did seem like alot was either promised or hinted at. Also, prize support was no where near what was implied, and/or people were under the perception it was going to be, in fact people flew/drove in from other states/cities to play and spent more on gas then what the awards were.

Bad = Was a total mess for communication. The FOW tournament rules were posted as one thing, ended up being something totally different, which does affect play style and lists to some degree. Times were not clearly posted, on one page the Fow tournament started at 9, another 10, bit confusing and really hard to track if your not a blogger. Still not entirely sure its a national qualifier, but if nationals is going to be ran here next year, and with 18 people and 25.00 bucks to play, I dearly hope so.

Good/bad = Very cool having a new mission, and good that rules for that mission were provided. Was a bit unfortunate that we had 2 out of 3 of the missions be FFA which had a few grumbling, but I enjoyed the Night fighting, very different from the norm.

Good = Timing, tournament started at a great time and was not rushed, food was available and didnt have to go anywhere, kudos!

Good = Awards, very cool, something to remember the tournament by. Gift certificates is cool too, does not force me into something I dont want, and money to do something I like is always appreciated! (not to contradict the misperception it would be more, just as I said, Money to play is great, just be sure expectations are not overly pushed). Maybe next time actually state what they will be?

Newly adapted " pretend Battlefront" tournament point system: did anyone ever decide how to handle platoon count when platoons are removed from the table that do not count towards Morale (Fighting Withdrawal, Lone survivor, etc...). Also, according to BattleFront, the "new" scoring system is NOT official at all and was just a suggestion from a employee of Battlefront, hence probably not thought through entirely and at this point?

In fighting withdrawal, you could be taken down to 1 or 2 platoons quite easily without actually losing one. Starting at 6 lets say, does that mean you started with the 1 or 2 on the table, or did you start with 4 and are now at 50%, or do only count with what you end and therefore losing 1 platoon (even if you started with 10) coudl feasibly be 50 percent of your force? ALL of these are broken, and may strongly favor the attacker or the defender in different situations.

Ok, that is my wall of text, enjoy.


All in All, I was very glad I attended, I had quite a bit of fun and played against some excellent players. Winning did not hurt either, hehe.

Jwolf
08-02-2010, 09:40 AM
Thanks for your feedback.

I'll answer some of these items.

First, Count Domar:

1. I'll give Dave your feedback.
2. A. The Badge option allows several bits of flexibility for the organizers, and simplies our recordkeeping. First, it allows us to easily provide a set discount for certain other criteria (we discounted the badge fee for people who attended the other Austin IGT and for participants in another local tournament for FoW, to help support other events). Second, it allows us to better recoup the cost of the space without ending up overcharging people who are coming for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday events. We had discussed having simple badges as we did last year, but determined that there was no real value to either the participants or the convention in doing so. We already have plans to have a badge worth keeping for next year.
B. Yes, people could come and go. No one could participate in events without being know, as there was a hard count for the Workshop and the tournaments have a registered list. I'm willing to accept the loss of people that do not want to pay for a floor pass and are willing to "sneak" in to open game or look around. Badges do not solve that issue, as the percentage or people that do not wear or lose their badges is significant enough that we would require a full-time staffer acting as the badge police, which I am unwilling to do. If a person is so desperate to attend and either too broke to pay $30 for a floor pass or thinks that sneaking in is awesome, then I'm willing to accept that.
C. Completely my responsibility. We had a miscommunication and failed delivery of the bags for the swag, so bags were not made until Saturday and distrubuted on Sunday. Feel free to email me and I'll send you something to replace the swag bag.

3. Vendors were not in attendence this year, not did we particularly have space to put them. Our overall schedule for last year did not allow for a lot of vendor browsing, so we did not push for vendors this year. If space allows, we will include a vendor room next year.

4. We did not make Tee-Shirts. Perhaps we'll do that next year, and perhaps not.

Thanks for your feedback, and we definitely experienced some growing pains, going from a "simple" set of tournaments to a larger multi-faceted event.

Epheus:

Thanks for the Goods. I'll discuss the bads.

Bad = Terrain. This is one of the most seriously debated issues for FoW, and being an infantry player myself, one I tend to agree with you on (I love playing FJ in the woods). We will have a significantly more varied terrain set for next year.

Bad = Swag. Mia culpa. I did make sure that everyone at the QoB got a set of books, which I hope helped somewhat. I will not have this problem again.

Bad = Communication. I apologize for the change of rules, but I felt that trying what seems likely to be the ruleset for the next nationals was worth doing. At least more feedback can be given on the proposed scoring as it relates to various missions, which is a good thing. This is a qualifier, and the results will be posted and given to battlefront.

Thanks for your feedback.

chapterhousestudios
08-02-2010, 10:47 AM
Hi there Wolf,

As you know I came to last years convention as well. I was pretty impressed with everything last year and was looking forward to this year for the last few months.

I have to say I enjoyed all my opponents as well as the painting was fantastic.

I think my friend and I had the same feelings at the end though, we were a bit let down compared to last year, let me emphasize that I know some of the issues were out of your hands.

#1 Point Spread - I think the point system for the missions was beyond complex and the spread was huge. Having a mission worth 0-40+ points makes it near impossible for someone who won or tied a few games to even get close to those who get lucky draws and wipe out opponents a couple of times.
I had 6 possible troop choices and the multiple objects (3-5 in the missions) was ok, until you had to hold 3 many times to get the points..

#2 Organization - Last year you guys were on the ball, the badges were all made up, for the most part everything started on time (or close) and we all left Sunday at reasonable times... This year.. many people had to leave since flights had to be made etc etc.
Considering that last year was the first attempt, I am surprised at how the organization level was seemingly lower then the previous con.

Hope some of this helps to make next year better.

Nick

Galadren
08-02-2010, 11:18 AM
I can agree with alot of the complaints here, and I also understand the difficulties that caused them, as far as the prizes and swag.

All in all, though, I have to say that as a 40k player I had alot of fun. The missions were pretty rough and I often found myself getting a secondary and tertiary while being unable to snag a primary. I have to agree with chapterhouse in saying they were a bit overly complex and the points spread was difficult to beat. But overall I met some great people and had some really close games that literally came down to the last turn.

My only real complaints have to do with the hotel itself, though. It just wasn't that great of a place for the money that was being paid, and often times I found the service sucked. Especially in the cafe. There was very little else that was quick to get to in the time alotted for the lunch breaks, so me and my friends would just hit the cafe. Problem with the cafe was that it was taking them 10-15 minutes to show up to take our orders and then another 30+ minutes to actually get the food. When you're on a one hour window to eat and get back to the table that was cutting it pretty close. My other major problems were the prices to use the internet and the fact that the hotel seems to sit in a cellular dead zone. I honestly will not be staying there again next year.

But overall I will say I had alot of fun over the weekend and I look forward to attending again next year.

Beamo
08-02-2010, 11:52 AM
I had a blast, myself, and I intend to come back next year with painted armies to play with, and not just stuff to put in the painting competition. :)

My only criticism isn't really a bad, so much as something to consider next time around:

I loved Dave's workshop a lot, and would probably not pass up the opportunity to attend it again, assuming it's not identical to this year's, as that would be kind of... silly. My issue is that it ran alongside the team tournament, so you didn't have to choose so much what game you played, but whether you even played at all that day.

My proposed solution is next time, think about breaking the classes up over the three days, and maybe doing them in the morning and letting the tournaments start slightly later than they did this year. That way people might be able to fit more into their experience.

Just a thought.

Brandon Griffith

evilamericorp
08-02-2010, 02:55 PM
I heartily agree with having a later start time for events. Unless the hotel has some sort of time restrictions, I think pushing the start time back a couple of hours would give people time to sleep in a bit more, while not really cutting into night life shenanigans for those that partake in them.

Flummer
08-03-2010, 06:18 AM
First off, I want to say as my first con, the four of us from Missouri had a blast. We plan to make it down next year, but it would be nice to see a few changes.

1. Receive your missions the evening before the event. I only played in the team 40k tournament myself, but I really just did not have the time to figure out a plan until the very last minute.

2. What happen to WYSIWYG? I know me personally and my 3 teammates all put in vast hours converting (and painting) to make sure we were in the rules. Then to find out that non-winged Nurgle Deamon Princes where winged Slaanesh ones. Come on, Really? Now let me just say, the gaming group I come from plays a lot of proxies, and I am okay with that. But, in this setting, I feel like this needs to be a lot more strict.

3. Painted models. Almost the same rant above. Seeing the guy with 6 juggers, 3 all metal and 3 plastic, not even primed, made me a little ticked.

4. Spaced out tournaments. None of the 4 of us that came down played in anything after Friday. A 7 round tournament just isn't our cup of tea, but 3 round team tournaments, Warmachine/Hordes, and even singles tournaments that may be like 1250 point style are right up my alley.

5. Seminars on more days. I really really wanted to attend the one, but it was only offered for Friday.

6. The last thing I have to say is just kinda a preference thing but, I felt like that in the team tournaments it should be in the rules that the 2 teams come from different codex's. Thats what makes the tournament unique and fun. If I want to see a 2k all SW list I could stay at home. SW and something else, now we are getting interesting.

I really want to say the issue with the Swag a bummer but I realize that for the most part it was out of your hands and that GW really dropped the ball on you. But, I do appreciate what we did get and appreciate your help JWolf.

Jwolf
08-03-2010, 07:39 AM
Addressing from the last post since my last reply:

Nick V:

#1 Point Spread - Point spread was the same as last year. Overall it worked, but I agree that some luck in early round pairings may have been magnified due to the spread. I am already considering a simplified scoring system, largely because this will influence your experience of #2. Do remember that a large point spread also allows a larger comeback if you do well and the guys at the top stumble, so the knife cuts both ways.

#2 Organization - I can appreciate your experience of things seeming disorganized. We definitely had some growing pains, and I made a stupid call about assembling the swag bags that I won't make again. From the tournament inside direction, every round was actually calculated faster once all the results were in than last year, and we had a lot fewer internal problems getting the rounds in. That said, we had 2 rounds where we did not have all the results until less than 2 minutes before we were supposed to start the next round, and almost every round we had several results out with 10 minutes until the next round was supposed to start. It's simply not possible to verify anything for 200 players in a couple of minutes, so we had a lot of late starts. Not priniting badges this year was simply a matter of functional use of time. Last year we printed an average of 2 badges per person, and ate a lot of time doing so. Next year we already have a plan for badges that people will want to keep and we'll have those ready when you check in.
I'll agree that we had organizational issues, mostly related to the swag bags and the difference between two single event(s) and multi-day multi-event issues. We've learned, and next year will be significantly smoother.

Galadren:

See above regarding points.

The hotel cafe will be better prepared for you next time. This feedback is important, as I meet with the hotel later this week. I ate from the concessions cart all weekend, which had good food, but I would like the cafe to be quick enough that people can eat there as well.

Brandon G:

We're already considering multiple hobby seminars on multiple days next time. It is not a simple thing to have seminars that do not conflict with other events, though. Dave's seminars were all on day 1 so that he could play in the Narrative games on Saturday and Sunday, for example.

Ogre Nick:

Later start times mean later end times. Not sure I'm going for that. One of the things I like is ending before 10PM... I'll include your thoughts in the postgame email to participants, though.

Flummer:

1) We can do that.

2) Call it to the attention of the judges. I am happy to intervene, but it's hard for me to know what is WYSWIG and what isn't without an army list in my hand.

3) I feel the same way, and discussed this with several players who had unpainted models. It is a problem that all TOs wrestle with, and I'd love to have a good solution. I think at least primed is possible for almost every player in almost every situation, and adding a couple strokes of color to get to 3 colors takes another hour or so for an entire horde army. I'm open to feedback and definitely looking for ways to ensure at least minimal painting occurs.

4) I'll consider some smaller tournaments, and 3 days of Steamroller events is definitely on the plan for next year.

5) More seminars will be the subject of a lot of public discussion for next time. I'll be looking for more feedback on what people want and how to get it to them.

6) Not a bad rule, I like it. I might go with a variation of that, because I do like things like different Marine chapters working together, different craftworlds, different IG, etc. And I agree that some variation on the two forces is a good thing.

The swag bag problems are my fault. I had the goods in my hands, but not the bags I wanted to use. I should have just put the goods in shopping bags on Thursday and been done with it. A bad call on my part which will not happen again.

silashand
08-03-2010, 09:26 AM
6) Not a bad rule, I like it. I might go with a variation of that, because I do like things like different Marine chapters working together, different craftworlds, different IG, etc. And I agree that some variation on the two forces is a good thing.

I think his suggestion might help to eliminate the problem where some people show up with their girlfriend/wife/whoever as their "teammate", but the only thing they do is roll an occasional die and the one person basically plays both armies as one. If it's supposed to be a "team" tournament, then it needs to be a "team" and not one guy abusing the system so he can play more solo games.

Cheers, Gary

Rogue428
08-03-2010, 10:04 AM
Just wanted to throw some feedback your way.

Had a blast! War Games Con is now on my perma-schedule with Adepticon. I'll be back next year.

Overall, for the second year, I'd say you guys did an excellent job running everything. Sure there were hiccups...but no game-breakers.

Some slight negative feedback, I know a lot of folks didn't appreciate the missions that penalized people for not having specific force orgs. If you're going to do stuff like that to promote balance, maybe put out some primer missions so we have a heads up on what's headed our way.

On the website, before the con, I could not find the guidelines for anything. Finding out we needed to have a story when the judge asked for it caught us by surprise. Not a huge big deal. But just feedback.

1 more thing, you might want to include a small map with the con package of the local restaurants / stores within walking distance for us non-locals. We found stuff eventually anyway, but it would have helped.

Overall though, I'd say the con was full of win. The other stuff, vendors, etc.... will come as you grow.

See you next year!

Blessed Bolt Thrower
08-03-2010, 10:34 AM
Hey guys,

a- I finally was able to kinda find things on the forum and I'm not used to these things so I am sorry if this winds up in totally the wrong area.

b- Thank you. This is my first tournament. I held of on them for so long because from most tournaments all I hear about is the negative attitude of players. You guys all did a fantastic job of making people feel welcome and providing a great atmosphere for people coming to enjoy their hobby.

Dave's one seminar was really productive. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with all of us.

I know there were hiccups and whatnot. We all learn as we go and some things are unavoidable. Oh well. :)

2 things that would be nice for next year: I think having the missions ahead of time would be rather helpful, or some semblance of knowing that hey, you'll want core troops with standards in them, or have a BSB (as a brief example) because there's quite a few people who got giged hard for not having those things in their list at all and couldn't meet the criteria.

All in all the missions were FUN (Mind you I only got to play in the wfb singles, but ours I found fun and challenging).

So thank you for hosting a fun event, and thanks to all the other folks out there whom I got to meet and learn from, and have a good time with. Thank you all for changing my negative outlook on tournaments. :)

- Arica
The other, other, OTHER girl

Jwolf
08-03-2010, 11:13 AM
We'll do a couple of primer missions for next time, 40K and Fantasy. I think Standards in missions will be less of an issue for 8th, as you auto-lose some scenarios if your standard count is too low.

I'll also probably do a core philosophy statement at some point, which may understand the hows and whys of things. Basically we don't mind you taking really slanted lists, but lists that are more balanced will generally have an easier time with mission objectives.

Blessed Bolt Thrower
08-03-2010, 12:04 PM
Yeah, JWolf. That sounds totally fair and reasonable :) I look forward to it already!

- Arica
The other, other, OTHER girl

blaze7386
08-03-2010, 01:11 PM
Well the feed back from myself and 3 others was the following. Good/Bad/Good/ Suggestions for improvement.

Good.
We all had a great time. Excellent opponents and everyone was very much there to have fun.

Some amazingly painted and converted armies. Personal favorite was the Avatar Wood Elf army excellent by all means.

Terrain was great for 40k different tables had different themes.

BAD.
Lack of sticking to the times on schedule but understand with 200 people it becomes a little harder.

Failure to check who paid for what. I know of at least 3 people that got away with not just not paying for a badge but for the entire tournament. So while some paid $80 others got away playing for free.

failure to maintain WYSIWYG. Apparently there were people using fantasy models with the square bases in the 40k tournament as well as some using completely different armies saying they were something else. example one player was using a chaos space marine army saying they were Blood Angels.

Painting score. Apparently it was told to a few people that you only needed half of your models painted to get the painting score.

NO STINKING BADGES! :(

Allowance of Sleeve-less Shirts

Question 16 on the test. I dont think even an ork player could answer that one.

Finally as many have already said " The Swag Bags". We all felt the swag bags we sub par to say the least. They really didnt live up to the hype they were given.



GOOD

The Hotel was good and the room that the convention was held in was more than enough room.

I felt all the main judges were great and were more than helpful and had fun personalities.

"YOU'RE GONNA DIE HONKY!!!"

Painting competition was great. there were so many talented painters that entered.


Suggestions.

Addition of Vendors. I know myself and a few others would have loved to buy things either be it a BattleFoam Bag or even a T shirt.

Theme army competition either be it in painting or a separate tournament or an internal competition.

Do Not Allow Sleeve-less Shirts

Drinking / Most hungover Competition

Rankings for sportsmanship so that at the end people aren't just like why did that person win sportsmanship award.

Different types of mission instead of a majority being objective based.

Possibly a projector to show the amount of time left in a round or when the next round begins.

More Females. They make the room smell so much better.


All in All i felt the tournament was great and the people were laid back enough to roll with the speed bumps. I plan to go next year and bring more people with me. Just remember nothing is perfect and everything can be improved on. With the limited resource you did an amazing job and i want to see this convention become on par if not bigger than Gencon or Gamesday.

Warmaster
08-03-2010, 01:12 PM
Overall I had a great time and had a lot of fun in all of my games. I liked all the missions and I actually liked the spread on the points however I would say that I dislike giving the massacre the full points, I think you still have to be able to accomoplish the objectives to get the points for them. I also think that it was a mistake to not have kill points as a primary at all in the entire tournament.

1. As already has been discussed some primer missions would have been nice.

2. In my 2nd round my opponent was 15-20 minutes late. I never heard a start round called out for that round (I went up afterwards and talked to goatboy about it afterwards). But my comment is to just put something in the rules packet about what to do if they don't show. I didn't want to leave the table because they might show up. But since it was start of round there weren't any judges out walking yet. I finally had started to head to the judges table when I saw the guy walking up and promptly just turned around and went back to the table to try and get started as soon as possible.

3. What happened to cause the delays on Sunday? I had a 7:00 flight that I had to make and missed the awards and everything so I wasn't able to see my final score or to see who won what, after 7 games you are kind of vested in seeing the fall out from everything.

4. On the sportsmanship scores I would like a description. I marked an opponent as good and he got frustrated with me, telling me that he marks everyone as great unless it's a bad game. I told him that where I play great means that you want to go up and give the guy a hug after the game. I felt a little pressured to change the score because the guy was nice and it was a good game without any issues.

5. I had a lot of average scores in my rounds 2-4 which put me on tables 14, 15, 16 respectively. I basically played on the same table type of terrain for over half of the tournament. I've been in several tournaments where they flop the table placements which helps to give people varied terrain. For example round 1 everyone goes random. Round 2 you do table 1 = first place and so on, but then for round two, start on table 199 and put first place there and work your way backwards. This will help to give people a little more variety in the boards.

Who do I contact to find out what my scores were?

Duke
08-03-2010, 01:59 PM
Thought I might add some notes.

All in all a great tournament, thank you for all the hard work!

1. Painting scores and wysiwyg.
- I had an opponent who had naked plastic models and said he got a "20" on his score. A friend I came with had an average level space wolves army that was 100% painted with some spray-freehand and he got a "20" as well. Even with freehand on 100% of my vehicles and scroll work on every model with custom bases and dynamic odes with conversions I only got a 23. The scores didn't resemble the effort (not that painting should make the difference in overall score... Just more of a discrepancy)

2. Avaliablity of info.
- when I'm at a large tournament I know that the judges and especially guys like you, John, are very busy. I don't want to bother you or Thomas just to ask when we should be back from lunch, etc. I believe someone suggested a projector that could be used to broadcast general information like this.

3. Checking in
- when we arrived Friday afternoon it was very unclear where we checked in, we eventually found it in the main room.

4. Misc.
- I agree with the vendor thing, I didn't buy things I needed because I was told it would be there.
- agreed on being able to play in tournament and somehow be able to attend. Some classes
- where was Romeos bagman? (
- how can we find out final standings/ points?

As I said, thank you and I

Rogue428
08-03-2010, 02:01 PM
oh yeah, just remembered a couple of more suggestions...

Project-o-clock like at Adepticon so we can see how much time is left in the round. Sure I had a watch and you guys made regular announcements, but the clock is sooooo nice.


Also, in regards to sportsmanship. Why not have people rank their opponents, from 1 - 7. It ensures that people need to learn the names of the folks they are playing and it adds for more separation than everyone just getting "Great".

Something to think about.

Galadren
08-03-2010, 02:11 PM
I think his suggestion might help to eliminate the problem where some people show up with their girlfriend/wife/whoever as their "teammate", but the only thing they do is roll an occasional die and the one person basically plays both armies as one. If it's supposed to be a "team" tournament, then it needs to be a "team" and not one guy abusing the system so he can play more solo games.

You mean the guy who won the team tournament?

Cruor Vault
08-03-2010, 02:27 PM
I drove down with a few other guys from Colorado.

Pros:

Hotel was awesome! The frozen Tundra level AC was really nice. I'm not a guy who can tolerate heat well. It was HOT in Austin, and from a few friends who are locals I was led to believe that it was in fact quite cool over the weekend.

The emergency support. I discovered that I had left a tray with my Razorbacks and all the Magnetized weapons options for my Typhoons and Predators at home. Luckily I was able to talk to a friend who was part of the crew running the narrative campaign and he was able to hook me up with some of Goatboy's Razorbacks for the weekend. Without them I would have traveled all that way and not been able to play!

Missions! I loved all the GT missions except 3 and 7. I thought 3 was way too easy for many armies to win (my own included). and Mission 7 seemed like it was nearly impossible to really get a good solid win on. The only change I would have liked to see was the addition of Kill-points as a Primary objective. Every single mission had Objectives as Primary.

Cons:

Timing: 7 rounds in 2 days was really tough to do. Both days were running behind, forcing almost the entire Colorado crew to leave before the awards ceremony to make sure they made their flights back. Saturday ran over by nearly an hour if I recall correctly.

Grab Bags: Going into the event I was under the impression that the Grab Bags were going to be full of cool goodies. Mine had almost nothing worth looking at. A copy of a book I already owned, a couple of adds. and a set of sprues for a game I will never play. Not to mention that when I compared mine with about 5-6 other guys it seemed that they varied wildly in content. Some of us got multiple books, others got a few discount cards to online retailers like Chapter house and Battle foam. Others got literally nothing but Warmachine Quick-start rules and ads. A few of us got some bits from Chapter house and about half of us got some of the aforementioned sprues.

Paint Judging: I went down with my good Buddy Duke, he and I put a ton of effort into our armies and he especially was expecting to get a really great score for his freehand work.

I was told I got a 21 or 22 of 25, Duke also got a 22. we initially thought this was just fine, neither of us had any super awesome conversions and I was missing some stuff. on Day 2 Duke was speaking with one of his opponents and found out that armies with models that were not finished, were unprimed even, were getting scores equal to mine or just a point or two south. While I realize that paint Judging is a really subjective idea, I think that was a pretty silly spread of painting scores. I really doubt anyone at the event got less than a 20/25. And like any event, there were a few armies that deserved to get low scores, not many mind you, but a few.

Count Domar
08-03-2010, 04:35 PM
4. We did not make Tee-Shirts. Perhaps we'll do that next year, and perhaps not.


How about this. Have an option on the registration page for those interested to select that they would like a T-Shirt and list what size. This way you will get a count on how many T-shirts to order and they will already be paid for so it is not money coming out of your pockets with the hopes that people will buy them.

Ferro
08-03-2010, 05:09 PM
Bad:
Results page layout. Don't put a space for table # at the head of a column of numbers you're supposed to add up. Several times I added my table number in with the primary, secondary, and tertiary...
Yes, I was buzzed most of the day. And yes, I would have been much less likely to have made this mistake if my table number was huge, like 120. But I bet you guys saw this happen a bunch from tables 5-25. Right?

I wasn't the only one, right? Oh geez.


I agree with most of the sentiments posted so far; some things seemed to have struggled or stalled, but on the whole it was an excellent event, and I had a tremendously good time. Thank you.

EmeraldKnight
08-03-2010, 07:08 PM
I am sure that this has become much like a broken record, but here is my 2 imperial credits...

Overall the con was fantastic! My buddy and I drove in from Houston Thursday evening and did not get home till late Sunday and felt like the whole weekend was worth the recovery time. That being said...

Friday Pairs Tourney

1. I would definitlely echo the "different" armies sentiment. My first game was an all IG leafblower. I don't know what story was used if any but I would assume it was something along the lines of "we work together because we are part of the same regiment." They were painted identical and their lists were nearly identical. Seems to miss the whole concept.

2. WYSIWYG - I put this here beacuase this is where I first ran into it. If you play army X but are using army Y for models you are not getting the point of the rule. I play Space Marines and would expect issues if I used Eldar for the models. One or two stand ins are no problem. When every single infantry model is the wrong race it is not a stand in.:confused: I did not mind so much on Friday but I would have had serious issues if I had ended up playng that player on Saturday or Sunday.

40K Tournament Saturday and Sunday

1. Missions were awesome! I have tried to write missions before and can understand the difficulty in doing something balanced. I would like to see some warning ahead of time about org types for the missions. I had all of em in my army but some armies are still balanced but do not have say Fast Attack or Elites. Perhaps have a succesion protocol of org types (no FA? then Elites, Hvy Sup etc..).

2. I like the Idea of flipping the table numbers in between rounds. Maybe it would be easier to alternate terrain themes (EDIT) in the same row(EDIT)? I understand it would be more work on the set-up and tear down though. Perhaps a few players can help? I would be glad to help set up or tear down schedule permitting.

3. Sportsmanship: I played all good sports in the games I played. Hopefully they felt the same. However I would like to echo the desire for a more diverse option when scoring this. A 1-7 point list seems better than a generic Great vs Good.I had a range of sportsman that I played (none bad thankfully) and I felt constrained by the lack of choice. I would have scored at least a 4 for every player I faced but only 2 games did I play someone who earned a Max score from me.

4. Judging This is NOT a complaint. I just want to hand out mad props to the judges. Fair, Impartial, EXTREMELY knowledgeable. On 2 occasions they were able to point out where I had missed or mis-interpreted the rules in under 30 seconds. I have been to other tournaments where the judging left you with a slightly cheesed feeling from being told the way it is with no education involved and then the judge runs away cackling. Not so here. Kudos to the con team on this!

That is my 2 cents...WARcon is on my must attend list now. If someone who reads this could point my blind self to the results page my experience would be complete.

Jwolf
08-03-2010, 07:25 PM
I wonder how people know paint scores when I don't even have that data yet. I seriously doubt that anyone with bare plastic got a 20 on their paint score, because Goatboy did all the judging and I would expect that it was consistent.

Rounds falling behind on Saturday was almost 100% due to a late start, as we had people showing up to check in at after 9am and we could not catch up again.
Sunday we had some trouble getting rounds processed quickly, but our turn around times once all results were in were reduced from last year; we just had a lot more late results. We have an improved software solution in development and I am already planning on a more staff on hand to facilitate faster results travel to the scorekeeper. There are a number of structural changes that will additionally help improve the adherence to the schedule.

Disappointment at the grab bags is understandable. I will do better next year.

WYSIWYG issues are impossible for the judges to address without input from the players. We addressed every single issue of this brought to our attention, and cannot do anything about WYSIWYG issues after the event is over. Judging every list for accuracy before any games are played would require several hours delay before the tournament starts, and even then there are likely to be mistakes.

Unpainted models are not as fun to play against, I agree. As a player, I hate unpainted models on the table, and I like them less as a TO. I spoke to several people with unpainted models about their armies and unpainted models.

Unpaid players: I think this is highly unlikely, but I will doublecheck the final data against paid registrants. If by some chance a person managed to play without paying, I wll give them the opportunity to pay or ban them from future events and forward their name to the list of tournament organizers as a thief.

Thanks for all your feedback. I'll send an email out to participants soliciting feedback in the next couple of weeks, so please respond there as well.

silashand
08-03-2010, 07:37 PM
You mean the guy who won the team tournament?

Not sure, I don't know who won best overall. I know best general for the team event was actually two players. I just know that situation has happened at other events as well and IMO it's entirely inappropriate for a "team" event.

Cheers, Gary

Galadren
08-03-2010, 09:13 PM
Not sure, I don't know who won best overall. I know best general for the team event was actually two players. I just know that situation has happened at other events as well and IMO it's entirely inappropriate for a "team" event.

Cheers, Gary

Taken to PM. Don't want to totally derail the thread.

tzeentchling
08-03-2010, 09:26 PM
I have to agree with many of the posters above in feedback - the tournament was fun and the missions were mostly well thought out, but like most I would have liked to see at least one mission (but not more than two!) with KP as Primary. Judges were pretty solid and useful, and Goatboy was a fun ringer opponent. Great opponents overall, actually. I found the 40K terrain to be pretty good and liked that there were solid rules for all pieces ahead of time, but would have personally liked more that blocked LOS.

Minor quibbles:
1) Time/lateness of rounds is understandable, but 7 games is a lot, especially when playing 4 games in one day. Saturday we didn't finish until 8:30, which is really late! Could similar results/ a clear winner been established after 6? Dropping to 6 games would also allow for slightly longer games, 2.5 hrs perhaps instead of 2 hrs, which would help with players finishing turns and against slow-play.

2) General organization. Perhaps you guys got caught off guard by the sheer number of people, but it seemed like there wasn't a lot of direction. Clearly marked signs for registration, posted standings (at least after the first day), and a clearly set time for people to show up for a round would have been nice. I remember asking on Saturday night what time to be there the next morning and heard times ranging from 7 to 8:30 AM from at least 4 different con officials.

3) "Honky" dude. I'm sure you're having great fun and pumping yourself up by yelling every 15 minutes, but seriously. Not only were his actions rude to fellow gamers (heck, it was hard enough to talk at reasonable levels to your opponent), I really took offense at his usage of a racial slur. Call me thin skinned, but that kind of behavior doesn't belong at an official tournament, especially one which was fairly family-friendly.

4) Lack of a vendor. I know, things were in the works and fell apart, I don't blame you, but god would I have loved to replace my dice at some point during that weekend.

5) How was painting judged? I have no idea about the scores, but it seems like if you're going to judge something as subjective as painting, it might be a good idea in the future to make a checklist for people to follow - 3 colors is a point, basing is a point, conversions are points, etc. If there was some sort of standard for the judging beyond simply what Goatboy thought, I have no idea what it is.

I honestly didn't mind the grab bag issue, I was just happy to get free stuff. Having no expectations is a blessing sometimes! Was great to put names to faces in general, though if all the staff (especially BOLS personalities) could wear nametags with the username (much like BigRed did), that would have been great - as it was, I figured it mostly out but it took a while.

Quick question about the consolation tournament. Scores were wiped out from day 1 to day 2, so how were players paired? How was the winner determined - surely after only three games with that many boards, there were quite a few people who got massacres I'd imagine.

After all this, I still have to say thanks for putting on the tournament! It was a great, if draining, experience. Looking forward to when the final results are posted!

Edit: Also, much thanks to Gentle Ben for running the Warmachine SR2010 tournament on Friday! It was a lot of fun, and getting in all 5 games mostly on time was amazing. Plus, he made the crosstables and tiebreaker grids by hand, which is respectable!

NeilBrimelow
08-04-2010, 01:56 AM
I do have to commend the staff of War Games Con 2010 on a well run con; it wasn't pretty at times, but all of the important things worked as well as possible. I've run and worked for many a sci-fi convention in the past so here's my two cents. None of which are complaints, but observations as I've done the con thing and worked for several hotels in the past twenty plus years. Yeah, I know others have already said the same thing, but here goes:


Hotel CONS

I simultaneously like the hotel and didn't like it. I liked the layout and the placement in the business district for relative easy access to restaurants and shopping.

I didn't like the cleanliness of the hotel. The exterior walkways had puke and other spilled liquids encrusted on them; everywhere. The whole hotel needed a good scrub down.

My room didn't get turned over Friday, despite us being gone the entire day. And no, we didn't have a DND sign up either.

The beds sucked big time! I truthfully would have been better off on the floor. My back is still protesting almost a week later. Granted, I'm a very big guy, but the (twin) bed was at the end of it's useful life and offered no support. My teammate's King bed (in his room) appeared to be much better quality and appeared to be new. A guess the moral of the story is if you're a big guy, make sure you get the King room.

The breakfast buffet was poor. $15+ for a buffet that consisted of standard items, nothing worth the price.

No free internet in rooms. On that note, the $9.95 internet was on an UNSECURED NETWORK. You could get on the WPA network only if you registered for it separately.

Cell Phone dead zone. My bars with ATT were one, maybe two. My friend's T-Mobile phone (which pulls off of the same towers) had no signal. What's even odder is that the hotel is right across the street from a pretty big ATT building.

CONS OF THE CON

No banners. No signs. No Big Statue of a 40k/Warhammer/FOW character. No Nuttin! :eek:

You guys gotta have at least a banner saying "Welcome to War Games Con!!!" It was slightly disorientating Friday morning. Everyone had no idea where to go, where to sign up, or where we had to go to get our con badges. A banner keeps other people from wandering into the area and accidentally knocking stuff over.

No Badges.
You guys gotta have stinkin' badgers! :D I understand the argument that since the con is primarily a gaming con AND that mostly everyone had already pre-registered, that badges were not necessary. The reason why you have to have badges is that the badge itself let's everyone feel like they are/were part of something; an organized event. Plus the badges at least give a memento to the attendees.

Plus, if it gets out that nobody at your con wears, nor checks for badges, uninvited people will show up and cause problems. It has happened at EVERY con I've worked, or was part of over the past twenty years.

No "Dealer Room"

You guys need to put a lot of effort into building a good dealer room. I understand that the BOLS "host store" in Austin is quite awesome, and that there's the internet, but people that have the money to travel to these (specific) gaming cons generally have enough money to buy stuff at the con (and they want to buy cool stuff at the con).

BETTER PROMOTION OF THE CON ITSELF

This is the most critical and important point. Last year there was a dearth of any info after the conclusion of the first BOLS con. To this date I've never seen any official pictures aside from the smattering of posts on the BOLS site, with mostly all the pictures provided by the attendees. As an example, only one of the entries into the painting contest was ever pictured, and that was a tweet. None of the other entries, nor the winners were ever posted on the BOLS site, or it's sub-BOLS blog. There were no pictures of the winners either.

This year I made it a point to take as many pictures as I could of the convention. There was a guy going around with a fancy Canon on a tripod that I assume was with the con, but I didn't see him really take many pictures at all.

You guys need to take and POST a lot of pictures. You especially need to at least take a picture of all of the winners individually, and then all together.

You also need to take pictures of the entrants to the painting competitions, as well as the winners of those contests.

Put simply, every con I have ever worked for, or organized has had a dedicated photographer. With everything being digital and simplified, there really is no reason why not to have someone dedicated to taking photos of the con.

You need to post ALL of the winners on the website in an organized fashion, with everything grouped together. On that note, you definitely need a DEDICATED WEBSITE for the con. Something that people can peruse and get a good feel of what the con is like.

No Swag Bag Didn't get one. I heard the one last year was great, and that this year's blowed chunks, but I didn't see anyone on Friday, or Saturday with one, so I guess we just missed out somehow.

MISSIONS

I only participated in the team doubles, so I didn't see the (seven?) missions for the main balls to the walls 40k tournament. However, after participating in endless 40k tournaments over the years, I can only suggest to keep the missions simple. The missions we had in the doubles tournament had too many secondary and tertiary objectives and the points spread was MASSIVE. I heard one guy got FORTY SEVEN points on one mission, making it impossible for most people to catch up.

I suggest making each mission relatively straightforward and cut back on the missions that favor specific army builds.

TEAM DOUBLES

It was my assumption that the team doubles was SUPPOSED to be CHEESE FEST 98®; it wasn't supposed to be "I'M GOING TO MELT YOUR MINIS, THEN FOLLOW YOU HOME AND TOILET PAPER YOUR HOUSE! - tournament!" :D

It seems that the Laissez-faire attitude went to the wayside when game day came to pass and the team doubles turned into a normal tournament.

My suggest is for next year to take the team doubles to NEXT LEVEL and make the team doubles tournament actually CENTERED around composing the cheesiest and beadiest team army possible (within reason). That, and make the missions actually FUN and SIMPLE. Mostly everyone that played Friday, also played on Saturday and Sunday in the main tournaments. My suggestion is to use Friday's team doubles as a warm up and FUN tournament as those playing on Sat/Sun are going to have to play at least SIX games.

TERRAIN

The terrain was good, but was generic/cookie cutter. I would suggest take the next year and put to use that fantastic group of people you guys have in Austin and build some FANTASTIC terrain for use in the tournaments.

CON-clusion :)

You guys have to stop thinking locally and start thinking bigger. You've got the website, and the store, and a great group of people, just start thinking bigger. Take any profit you make with this year's con and roll it over into next years con. I'd suggest doing this for at least five years.

Don't get attached to the current hotel; shop around, as sooner or later you will outgrow that hotel.

We all had a great time and will be returning for year three and beyond.

Epheus
08-05-2010, 09:02 PM
One last good, Where in the world did you get all the very attractive ladies, I was impressed, I was expecting just BUNCHES of geeky guys. Many of the guys had to give you kudos on this, I am guessing this was RIGGED somehow!


Mark