Here are the final, official results for the Origins Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader Tournament for 2010:
|
Name - Army
|
Battle |
Sports |
Painting |
Total |
| Patrick Smith - Imperial Guard |
57 |
15 |
16 |
88 |
| Michael Hernandez - Tyranids |
53 |
13 |
14 |
80 |
| Joe Miksa - Space Marines |
38 |
15 |
12 |
65 |
| David Talbott - Necrons |
34 |
14 |
15 |
64 |
| Allen Blunt - Imperial Guard |
30 |
14 |
14 |
59 |
| Michael St. Clair - Daemonhunters |
33 |
15 |
9 |
57 |
| Ken Boone - Orks |
24 |
15 |
17 |
56 |
| Stuart Moll - Orks |
32 |
14 |
9 |
56 |
| Craig Collins - Dark Angels |
27 |
13 |
14 |
54 |
| Steven Olk - Imperial Guard |
30 |
12 |
12 |
54 |
| Joshua Shivak - Imperial Guard |
31 |
15 |
7 |
53 |
| Tom McFarland - Tau |
30 |
14 |
8 |
52 |
| Hyde Anderson - Nids |
20 |
15 |
15 |
51 |
| Michael Brown - Tyranids |
31 |
14 |
4 |
50 |
| Steven Beasley - Eldar |
29 |
14 |
4 |
47 |
| Nick Soika - Tau |
18 |
12 |
11 |
41 |
| Chris Kruso - Space Marines |
22 |
15 |
4 |
41 |
| Brian Vorhees - Orks |
WD |
| CS Barnhaus - Space Marines |
WD |
Some notes on how the scoring was done --
-
Each player received a score of 0-5 in sportsmanship from each of his opponents giving a possible range of total sportsman results from 0-15
-
Battle scores are the sum total of the scenario points from all three games. The basic range was from 0-20 per game, but some extra bonus points could raise results over 20.
-
Five judges went through and graded painting individually from 0-20. Their totals were then averaged to get the final result. Anyone who did not put out their army to be judged received an automatic 4.
-
No one could win more than a single award
-
Eight people tied for Best Sportsman so the award went to the person with the worst OVERALL* score -- it's harder to be fun to play with when you are losing. (* EDIT - We intended for it to be lowest overall, to put the trophy within reach of someone new to the hobby, unlike all the other awards. It was not lowest battle score, we apologise for the typo.)
-
Ken Boone had the best painting score, but was disqualified from the Best Painter award because he did not personally paint his army. Likewise, as Patrick won Grand Champion he could not also claim Best Painter. The resulting tie between David and Hyde was decided in the former's favor after all the judges went back and reexamined the armies once again.
Our thanks to all who participated! We look forward to doing this again next year!
As a new week starts I just wanted to give everyone a preview of what they can expect this week here at 40KOrigins.com:
1) Complete, detailed results for the Origins RTT -- Right now I am going through the data to make sure it is all correct
2) First Impressions of the New Warhammer -- Just got my copy on Friday and have been reading through when I can. Definietely some interesting effects for my Empire army -- spears are better, greatswords are worse. More details to come.
3) The English Civil War Does Empire -- Being a trained historian I've always wanted to do an ECW army and for similar reasons a Fantasy Empire army. Well, it's occurred to me that as either force is based on much the same technology and the same dress style I can do both at the same time! So, this will be the first installment of a new ongoing series as I put together and paint up some Warlord figures to produce both an English Civil War historical force and Warhammer Empire force at the same time.
A few months back, I acquired a can of Quickshade (product link here). The store owner was raving about how good a product it was and how much better it was than poly stain for dipping miniatures. I'd done a dipped army before and was comfortable with it's use, so I dropped 30 bucks on a can and decided to give it a try.
A squad of my marines volunteered. I had painted these guys up in 1999 for the Chicago GT, and they were an all-drybrush job, so they seemed like good candidates to try a varnish wash treatment on. Here they are before the treatment.
Using the medium strength color, I brushed the entire miniature and dabbed off the excess. I let the varnish dry for 36 hours and then sprayed the minis with dullcoat to remove the gloss effect of the varnish. The result was a noticable yet subtle shade-and-ink of the miniatures. It doesn't subtract from the look of the miniatures and darkens the colors only slightly, but it does fill in the joints nicely, giving them the depth they were missing in my haste to get them done for the GT years ago.
The Quickshade product is indeed superior to poly stain varnishes. It is quite brushable (unlike the poly stain), does not bubble, flows like an ink, and is thick enough to stick in all the places it needs to go in a single coat.
Unlike an ink, however, the quickshade requires a dullcoat afterward if any additional work is to be done to the miniature. that breaks up the paint surface and makes blending look funny. the quickshade also sticks to flat surfaces unlike inks, resulting in certain surfaces having a pool of darkness that really needs to be retouched. (only because of the dullcoat requirement, that's kind of difficult) The 30 dollar price tag is a bit of a bummer too.
In summation, Quickshade is a great product to do an entire army quickly and have a force that looks great from 3 feet away. It's up close you'll notice the shortcomings of the shortcut, so you won't be winning any painting awards by relying on this product. For that, stick to regular inks.
Games Workshop just put up some new (mostly plastic) Daemons on Advanced Order. You can see some pictures of them below (clicking on the image takes you to the appropriate GW order page):
Daemon Prince
Pink Horrors
Seekers
The Changling
Saturday was the time for the big Rogue Trader Tournament -- and the big prizes which you can see in the picture below.
Click This and Any Picture to See Larger Version
We had a larger turn out than last year, but one still not quite as big as it should have been as Origins messed up the tournament listing in its Convention Book, giving it the description for our "By Kids for Kids" Ork Pile game rather than the correct one. This in turn caused at least a handful people that we know about to think the RTT was for teenagers and not attend (although when they stopped by the game later and found out the truth they were sorely disappointed). Nevertheless, it was almost a full house.
Here are a few pictures of the tournament in the midst of the action:
There were a number of nicely painted armies, so I made sure to get copies of the ones that impressed me the most. However, first a few notes on how the judging was done.
There were five painting judges that all individually went around to judge each army while the players were off at lunch. We didn't join together to discuss armies this time around, instead just giving a score from 0-20 with 0 being bare metal and 20 a Grand Daemon level army. Once we had finished the total scores were added up and then averaged out. In the end there were two armies tied for first so we asked the players to put out their armies once again, this time for a group judging session. The winner here ended up getting the top prize.
Speaking of which, first up are Dave Talbot's purple Necrons which went on to win Best Painting:
Dave's army had a nice unity of theme and the highlighting was quite crisp and tidy. Likewise, his "lightning" effects on some of his Necron's weapons worked very effectively, better certainly than just leaving the regular green plastic untouched.
The main weakness of his army was that he just didn't give it enough time. If you pick up the models and look at their bottom sides you see usually just basic, at times messy, coloring or in the case of the Scarabs only primer black. Still, kudos for Dave at being clever at how he "hid" these defects so that from a view from above (the typical perspective) these shortcuts can't be seen.
Second place painting went to Hyde and his yellow Tyranid force.
Again, this was another painting job with a good overall theme that certainly fit what you might expect from a bunch of killer bugs. The shading and highlighting technique was also nicely done.
However, in the end Mike's force suffered from the same basic issue as Dave's (not surprising as I believe they both did their armies together in a short period of time) -- the overall level of finish was mediocre. This is more of an issue with Tyranids as they have a lot more pits and corners where the lack of time to finish well becomes all too noticeable. There were as a result a lot of bare white primer in the recesses of the models despite the fact that everything else was done well. This was the reason why the Necrons beat out the bugs -- too much unfinished detail work.
Still, first and second place look quite good overall, especially from the classic "five foot" distance. Seeing what Dave and Hyde can do with just a few weeks worth of (a lot of) effort makes me eager to see what they could produce if they gave themselves, say, a few months!
Next up are Ken Boone's orks. Really a nice paint job, so much so that they would have won Best Painting if Ken had been the one who painted them -- using an army that someone else painted automatically disqualifies you from winning Best Painting (although you get regular painting scores that are put toward winning overall).
One conversion and paint job I really liked was these Tervigons:
I hadn't seen this design before, but I really like it. Definitely Tyranid, yet unique -- a sort of mix between Screamer Killer and monstrous crab.
And now for the winners of the 2010 Origins Rogue Trader Tournament
Best Sportsman -- Chris Kruso
Best Painting -- Dave Talbot
Best General -- Mike Hernandez
And, for the second year in a row...
Grand Champion -- Patrick Smith
Thanks to all who participated and especially Armourygames in Pickerington for supplying the prize support.
More to come...
In running this year's Origins events, we had a number of interesting rulings come up, as you might expect. Most of them we ruled correctly on, a few we got wrong, and one in particular I WISH I had gotten wrong, but didn't.
I'm talking about dedicated transports. The problem is, the main 40k rulebook just doesn't have much to say about them. They're a squad option now, other units can use them but not start the game mounted up in them, and (thanks to the GW FAQ) we know they count as separate units for purposes of shooting.
But what about victory points or kill points? Or unit cohesion? Well apparently, they leave that up in the air. The rulebook just doesn't address it. Some of the newer army books do (the ones written since 5th Ed), but the older ones (and their online errata/FAQ's) do not.
So here's the problem, an actual case study from the Origins RTT... Daemonhunters army, an Inquisitor and Retinue (150 points) picked a Land Raider (250 points) as their dedicated transport. At the end of the game, the character and retinue died to a man, but the Land Raider was unharmed. And the game was decided on Victory Points.
Now Codex Daemonhunters (print or online PDF), being a 4th Ed army book, does not say anything extra about dedicated transports, so we go to the 5th Ed Rulebook to figure this out. The transport isn't listed as a separate unit, so it counts as an option purchased for the squad. So the opponant who killed the inquisitor and retinue but not the Land Raider has inflicted 50% or more casualties on the squad, but has not wiped it out. So according to page 300 of the rulebook, he gets 50% the total value of the squad, which is 200 points. (Half of the character and retinue, and half of the undamaged land raider, because it is a purchased squad option.)
But any 5th Ed Army book will say in the description of the dedicated transport that it doesn't take up a force org slot BUT OTHERWISE COUNTS AS A SEPARATE UNIT. So not only is unit cohesion crystal clear on that one (thanks guys!), but Victory Points are back to the classic way of doing it. The 150 point squad with a 250 point dedicated land raider in the above scenario is worth 150 victory points.
But the real problem... is that we are counting victory points differently depending on which Codex the army is from. Same body count, Codex Daemonhunters gives up 200 VP while Codex Space Marines gives up 150 VP. (Codex Tau Empire, for example, is in the same boat as Daemonhunters, so don't assume it's just the PDF-only army books that are subject to this.)
The solution... would be for GW to insert one sentence on page 67 of the rulebook, either in an errata or an FAQ, the same sentence they're putting in every new army book. "These vehicle choices do not use up any force org selections but otherwise count as separate units."
And if GW hasn't done this by next year's Origins RTT, expect a house rule to that effect. Victory points should never be calculated differently depending on the army being used. That way madness lies.
The big event on Friday was the (we hope) World's Largest Apocalypse Game. I had planned on having video of the event, but my video camera died (apparently sitting on a shelf for a few months was too taxing). So, instead I came up with another way of letting you see the entire board.
Just click on the individual parts of the above pseudo-mosaic to see the entire Apocalypse board going from left to right. We had around 110,000 points of units on the tables and most of them are there, all save those that would later enter from reserves.
Also, we ran 40K Space Hulk that day and every day.
Notice our 40KOrigins.com black and Red dice at the bottom of the image. Everyone who attended one of our events received one (or more).
More to come...
While we're waiting on Ranillon to get the pics and results from all our events sorted out, let's talk missions.
This is what we got the most negative feedback on this year, particularly the missions for the Rogue Trader tournament. They were a little too "Fourth Edition" for some people, and did not properly allow or account for current edition deployment or rules options. They were also not available online ahead of time, as has become custom with other RTT's around the country.
To this we say... you're absolutely right.
Like everything our crew does, the missions were delegated to one of us, and that person had real life hit him hard recently. The result was missions that were delivered to us literally AFTER game 1 of the RTT was underway. Jim and I listened to the feedback you were giving us, but decided that rewriting the missions for games 2 and 3 while game 1 was underway was not wise. So it was missions as written and make improvements for next year.
So let's talk next year.
We are running again in 2011 with as many or more events and as much or greater prize support and trophies. But this time we're getting all our ducks in a row well in advance. Missions will be posted on this blog well ahead of time. We're designing 6 missions in total and getting feedback from you, the community. Then our staff will pick two missions for the 3 round RTT and put up a poll for the 3rd mission. So all of you will be voting on mission number three.
Thanks to the 40K Basement folks for summing all this up and letting us know what major points need improvement. If they, or any of you, have any other feedback on how Origins games were run this year (positive OR negative) please leave comments on this post or send us email. We are listening.