Hello everybody!
First I'd like to thank everybody for making it all the way down to Beppu. Pictures of the tournament can now be found on the RingTail homepage, in the
event section. If you have any objections or want your face to be "trolled" just send me an e-mail or PM.
In general, I though the event was great fun, and we're already planning next years tournament. Being the first event we organized however, I'd like to use the chance to reflect on some of the good points, as well as the things that need improvment.
First the good ones.
Tables and terrain
Thanks to David from KitaQ Gamers and the RingTail store, we had plenty of terrain and tables.
Venue
Seemed big enough, even if we had all 8 gaming tables out. Being close to Beppu station made it also easy to access and of course, having the tournament in the "hot spring capital of the world" makes it easier to persuade wives and girlfriends to join you on the trip.
Atmosphere
I though that the games had a relaxed and easy-going atmosphere most of the time, in part probably due to the small numbers. Having a drink after the game was a lot of fun as well.
Scoring system
First time using a variation of the Australian system, I thought scoring worked well. Composition would have probably shown more of it's merit had there been more players.
And the things that need improvement:
Proxy Army
This was probably the biggest mistake on my part. As a proxy army was needed to cover for the players who suddenly canceled, picking an VC army strong in ethereals was just the wrong decision. Next year the proxy army will be included in the Appendix of the Player's Pack before the tournament so everyone can prepare. Also, the composition score modification of the proxy army will be +-0 (if we have composition in 8th ed.).
Player's Cancelling on short notice
The tournament was at eight players until a few days before the event, and then suddenly three people dropped out, two of them two days before the tournament. Also, as a local Kyushu player, I'm a bit ashamed to say that only one of the five participants was a local player, everybody else coming over from Nagoya, Okayama or Okinawa.
In order to improve this, we are thinking of making players pay the registration fee at least 2 weeks upfront. As payment options we were thinking of Credit Card/PayPal from the RingTail store homepage, or bank transfer. People who back out will probably always be a problem, but at least this way there might be some incentive to not to do so 2 days before the event.
Table Setup
We got some input that it would be good if the (more or less) exact table terrain setup would be explained in the Player's Pack, as the terrain greatly affects the effectiveness of some units (Spider Riders, White Lions etc.).
As this is probably going to remain a max. 16 players-8 table tournament, we believe it is possible to put an Appendix in the Player's Pack with simple schematics of the 8 tournament tables. We hope that makes roster building easier for those armies with special units.
I enjoyed the tournament a lot and hope to see you more people coming down to Beppu next year!
