War Games Con feedback

[Count Domar]

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]

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]

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. 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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!

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! 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!"

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]

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