Wargames Con Warmachine Review

left to right: Lyle Lowery, me and Will Hungerford.

Looking back at how the WM/H games at Wargames Con were run and managed I have to say it's the best WM/H event I attended so far, although I have some issues that I am not totally happy about.

For the readers not familiar with Wargames Con I guess I should clarify a couple things first (or at least that's the way I understood them to be):

• The Bell of Lost Souls crew was responsible for the overall event, e.g. registration.
• The WM/H tournaments inside Wargames Con were run by the Texas Renegades. They were responsinble for the judging, timing of the games, and giving away the prizes.
• The people from Privateer Press (Lyle and Will) were responsible for the demo games with great support from the local Press Gangers.

Angel getting a demo game from Steven.

Those demo tables were really nifty and fun to play on.

Now with that being said, here is the list of things I really liked:

1. Registration was painless and the judges carefully checked all lists.
2. The judges did an excellent job supporting the players whenever a question concerning the rules or the scenarios arose. In the important tournaments/games that were about qualifications and winning the prizes they also actively patrolled the tables just to watch how everything's going.
3. Everything was calm, speedy, and efficient, which can basically be sourced back to the quality of the WM/H rulebook and the Steamroller rule set. The publication of the rules in the WWW and the use of chess clocks (we were allowed to use Privateer Press' very own) made a very smooth tournament. In the WM/H community we basically shook our heads when we observed how the 40K judges had to work their butts off and frenetically call the time and Dice Down over the microphone in order to manage the 40K events.
4. It was great to have representatives of Privateer Press on site, although this meant they had to work on the weekend. It's just great to talk to them directly and hear their views on things and is a sign of how well rooted in the community Privateer Press is. It's greatly appreciated.
5. As you could guess from my pictures above, the demo games were truckloads of fun - and everyone was even happier when they got to take home a free starterbox. I got myself the Trollbloods starterbox to start building a new Trollbloods army next to my Cygnar army. That way I have pretty much the entire Privateer Press universe covered and its initial boost with the free starterbox is greatly appreciated.

There is one issue where I see room for improvement, though, and I guess that's mostly based on the decisions by the Texas Renegades: the time table. Now I understand that running a tournament isn't easy and I am not saying that I could do it better. I also understand that the time tables published on the Wargames Con website in the WM/H rule packs may be subject to change. However, there were still incidents that I was not entirely happy with:

1. As I wrote earlier, I missed my third game during the Classic Hardcore because I thought it was lunch break. The judges basically canceled lunch break because they wanted to move on with the tournament as fewer players than expected showed up and only one more game may have been needed to determine a winner. This tournament was announced as a six rounds event, but effectively played were only four.
2. On the second day/Saturday I had only 20min for a lunch break as the schedule was sped up again.  This tournament was announced as a four rounds event, but effectively played were only three.
3. On the third day/Sunday, the Flanks For Everything tournament didn't start until 10:30 a.m. although the published times on the Wargames Con website said it starts at 09:00 a.m. However, once again only three out of four games were played again.

Now I know this is complaining at a very high level. I also know that players who choose to drop out after they have lost one or two games in the Swiss system are an issue. I also understand this may be an issue of cultural differences because locally the focus is on determining qualifiers and winners and not necessarily play out the entire time/game schedule. However, I have to say this still left a somewhat unhappy taste in my mouth and the reactions from some of my fellow players showed me that they had similar feelings, too. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe for most people the motivation to attend a tournament is to get in games and if they can get a prize on top of that, then even the better. However, they are basically there to play games. Cutting the games schedule definitely has its advantages and I have to admit, too, that I was glad when we could end a tournament early and relax. However, if I could pick the options I would still rather have a tournament with more breaks and all games played simply because I want to do the whole thing - after all that's what we're here for, right?