What a great event! We’re tired as heck but it went smoothly and was a lot of fun.
The SoCal Open is over and done, and what a great first year. The event ran nice and smooth with a few minor hiccups. The stream didn’t get going until round two unfortunately due to a technical issue, but once up and running went great! They have a surprisingly awesome internet connection at the venue, which was unexpected. But, Mariana did a great job running the stream essentially solo. The venue was massively spacious, too and in a beautiful location as the pictures above shows! Every table was 8′ in length, and had 12′ in both directions to the next table! Tons of space, and we can grow quite a bit and keep that spacing, so this event has tremendous potential.
The event was beautiful, too. Not only because we were by the beach in beautiful Del Mar, California but also because the tables and armies looked great! We rolled out our new paint requirement for the SoCal open and it was well received. Every army was painted apart from two, unfortunately, whom we had to have remove models from the table due to not meeting the minimum requirement. That was a bummer but both players took it in stride and recognized the fact that they should have read the rule pack better coming in, and got the models in question painted for the next day. So, that was good and the end result was a very good looking tournament which makes it more enjoyable for everyone. Thanks to all of the attendees that worked so hard getting their armies looking great!
We worked extremely hard on the terrain, too. It came out looking great! Huge thanks to all the volunteers and to Andy T. and his crew for their hard work in getting it all up to snuff. I am pretty beat as I was putting in 14-16 hour days keeping it all going, but the effort was well worth it as the tables looked seriously amazing! Again, huge thanks to the team and the volunteers for their hard work and dedication.
The Age of Sigmar event went well with only the minor hiccup here and there which always happens at big events. Huge shout out to Joe Krier who came out from Minnesota won the event with his Change Host. You can see the full results, here. Vlad Nica came in second holding his spot in the ITC rankings but Joe managed to rise up to take the top spot! Well done to him. There was a great variety of armies in attendance and this GT level event saw many skilled players duking it out along side some new AoS players going to their first tournament! We will be getting a more lengthy report here in time, but in all the event was a lot of fun.
On the 40k side, the local favorite to win did indeed take it all. Brandon Grant won another one and is quickly rising up the rankings as a very serious competitive player to watch. He’s also a gentleman and a great representative of the hobby. You can see the overall results, here. The finals game was unfortunately cut short when it came to light that one of the competitors’ list was over on points by a few due to a math error on his list. Bummer. These things happen though, and it was an honest mistake. We all felt bad for him as he is such a good guy and a great representative of the hobby as he is a skilled player, painter and a top notch sportsman. This could have been his first major win and had he lost on the top table, he had Renaissance Person locked down. But, even though the mistake was relatively minor, we had to DQ him which stinks.
This illustrates the need for really scrutinizing your list before an event, and double checking everything. Ultimately, the responsibility for bringing a legal list is on the player, and it stinks when mistakes are made as the consequences are harsh. Now that folks are largely using the BCP app and getting in the habit of uploading their lists with few glitches (which took quite a bit of time and effort to get to this point), we think the time has come to implement a requirement to upload your list to the app prior to the event. Mistakes will still happen of course, but with lots of eyes going over lists in advance, the odds of catching them goes massively up. And, with lots of eyes going over especially winning lists as the event goes on, it is pretty much a certainty that mistakes will get caught (although when it happens during the event, that is not fun for anyone).
Some folks in our community feel that event organizers should be responsible for checking lists but we have always felt this was an ineffective strategy for a number of reasons. For one, as stated above, the player is responsible for bringing a legal, accurate list. Period. For two, at a large scale event checking hundreds of lists accurately (actually looking up the points of each unit and wargear item) would take days of work and is simply not a scalable solution without having a dedicated team of individuals to do it as with the ETC which allocate weeks to the task. beyond being an unreasonable expectation for event organizers (who are already overwhelmed) they also make mistakes. Now, who is responsible for a list with errors if it has been TO approved? We had a friend who recently went to a Major with a list that was TO checked and approved and ended up being 10pts over due to a simple mistake and it wasn’t caught. Had he won the event, what do you do? Let him win as the TO approved it? The opponents still got a raw deal and the TO gets all the blame. Even if you only have a 1-2% error rate in list checking, at an event like the LVO you are letting 5-10 list mistakes through that are now officially sanctioned. It simply isn’t effective. Again, the player is ultimately responsible for their own actions.
Lastly, and most importantly, events like the SoCal Open are not intended to be an event like the ETC, which is an awesome event, but a very different animal. The SoCal Open is a total hobby weekend that appeals to all gamers. Many of the attendees there were at their first tournament–which is always music to my ears!–and all of the nuances of tournament play were new to them. We had folks playing from overseas who wanted to take in the USA organized play scene and were having a vacation in California. While the internet focuses on lists and top placing players (which is fair and fun to do) the average person coming to these events is looking to have a good weekend of gaming and is not overly concerned with everything being laser-beam accurate but more with having enjoyable games. They’re there to have fun. Now, that said, does that mean we should be lax? No, not at all and when we find list errors we come down on them pretty dang hard, as unfun as that is to do. Those players coming with a focus on competition absolutely do want fair and accurate games, which is their right to expect and obligation to live up to.
So, at any rate I just wanted to say a few words on this topic as folks have been discussing it. Again, these things happen and until we have a standardized method of uploading lists that are automatically checked, mistakes will continue to occur. While we accept this as an unfortunate truth and take appropriate action when it occurs, it isn’t the end of the world, nor is it intentional in 99% of cases. More than anything, I feel bad for the individual who made the error as he’s a great guy and feels really crappy about it. Those few extra points were highly unlikely to have made the difference in him winning any of his games in all honesty, but, the rules are the rules and we had to take appropriate action as it simply wasn’t fair to his opponents. But, life goes on. We will use this opportunity to begin taking the next step of having players be required to upload their lists to the BCP app for our events as this will really help to avoid errors before they occur. Having thousands of people looking at lists dramatically increases the odds of catching errors, which is one of the main benefits of getting them uploaded and it allows players to have fun predicting which lists will rise to the top! We feel that the app is widely enough used now to make this possible whereas even at LVO we didn’t feel it was prevalent enough to take that step. Implementing these things takes time. And as always, let us know how you all feel about it in the comments section.
Speaking of which, the BCP app was incredible. With players acclimating to its use and the BCP team continuing to fine tune it, hardly any players came to the judges to score their games, and simply did it all from their phones. This combined with 8th ed being pretty simple to understand, means that we could have realistically run a 140 person tournament with 1-2 judges instead of the 3 we had. I constantly roamed the hall and ended up chatting with players and taking pictures more than actually answering any rules questions! If you are not using the app, you should be. It makes being a TO just dramatically easier. And if you are a gamer using the app, please consider supporting them with a subscription which gets you access to loads of other awesome benefits.
The new ITC Champion’s Missions were a hit, too! That was music to our ears as we’ve been working really hard on them. And a million thanks to all of you who helped with critical feedback and that continue to do so. We are continuing to fine tune them and seeing them in action at the SoCal Open was very beneficial. Players were very positive on them with some critiques. We are strongly considering dropping the rounds to 5 form 6 as a number of players did not get that far into the games. For those of you who have played them, what do you think? We’re getting reports coming in with mixed results. Once players acclimate to them, many events reported most games getting to turn 6, while others reported no. We would like some more feedback on that one as we are leaning towards a 5 turn limit after SoCal.
However, the requirement to finish games to max your score was a benefit as those players that did finish their games were scoring more points (by design intent). And yes, players that finish their games should do better than those that do not as this is a direct incentive to counter slow-play and it worked! Players were hustling to finish games and I think with practice and familiarity, we will see more and more games finishing as now there is a motivator to do so. You cannot simply play 3 turns habitually and get max points. It is time to adapt, which is positive and fair to both players and all army types. And hey, if the event winner who played with a Conscript Horde Am army could get through at least 5 turns every game, then anyone can =)
Most players commented that they very much enjoyed the turn by turn scoring and picking their missions. A few noted that some missions may be better not to overlap with others (such as King Slayer and Big Game Hunter), or that others may be too easy to get (the Reaper against an army that has multiple units of 20+ models) and that is all great feedback that we will take in to consideration to fine tune them. Ultimately though, there is room for fine tuning and improvement but this is a really positive start and again, thanks to everyone that helps with feedback and inspiration.
Overall the event was a ton of fun and had a great, mellow vibe to it. We had many guests from all around the USA and from the UK and the Netherlands, too! Such a treat to host players form all over in our beautiful city. I see tremendous opportunity for this event to grow and think it will rapidly become a big-time tournament and hobby event (although, it already was in year one!). So, one last time, massive thanks to the team who worked so hard, the volunteers and to everyone that came! We can’t wait to see you all next year.
Here are some pics from the 40k winners! We will have more AoS and other event coverage in future posts. If you came to the SoCal Open let us know how you felt about it! The official feedback form will be going out shortly to those who came.
We told ya AM was gonna win it, Reece 😉
On a side note, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to find peoples lists on BCP’s site.
You can’t on the website, only via the App.
Well that’s dumb, and discriminatory against people without smart phones.
And the reason why we haven’t made it mandatory so far.
Hey, i cant find the Event anymore in my BCP app.
Where can i find it?
As an Ork Player im Interessted in the Lists of Jacob Ballards Enemies 🙂
You have to sub to their paid service to view lists after the event =)
It is very reasonable, like $4-5 per month depending on the length of your subscription.
Such a great event! Watched you online and definitely will come next year.
Glad you enjoyed it! We look forward to hosting you next year.
Just to reiterate Reece’s point, Ryan was a super nice guy and a great opponent when we played round 5. That points error would have made no difference in our game – he smashed me fair and square
Laurence! Great to have you, buddy. And thanks for the post, I am sure Ryan would appreciate it.
Congrats on running such a great event… kudos to you and your super team.
Thank you, sir! It was a ton of fun.
Any tips for newer players to play faster without disastrous results? Aside from the obvious (practice).
I’m certainly not a veteran tournament player, but one small thing that was helping me was to pretty much always be piling my dice into groups of five. Every time I was asked to roll 12 saves, that saved me a lot of time in counting dice.
This!
I’ve been playing 40k for many years now and have only recently started organising my dice tin. I now have 20 black dice, 10 white dice and 10 red dice (plus a few other random colours in small numbe for wound counters, etc). This saves so much time in not counting out dice every time I want to shoot. If I need 24 shots, I simply take all the black dice and four of another colour. It doesn’t sound like much, but it speeds things up considerably.
Another useful thing I have found is to have a printed “cheat sheet” of the units in your army, with the stats and some uncommon special rules you want to highlight. Makes it much easier to find info rather than having to flick through the codex/index so often.
Organizing your dice does help loads and if you roll tons of dice, you can use the dice rolling app from GW, too.
List of biggest ITC tournaments:
BAO
NOVA
SoCal Open
List of winning factions:
Astra Militarum (not saying the players who played them aren’t great. They are. Also – called it :D)
@angry_AM_players But you guys… they totally didn’t deserve the FAQ nerf(really happy about that BTW)
Other notes:
The top chaos list had no brimstones, Malefic Lords, Mortarion, Magnus. Well how about that.
On the other hand, pretty much every top imperium had some Astra Militarum.
I’m honestly shocked how well Ynnari did.
0 non-soup Imperium and Chaos armies in top 16 (correct me if I’m wrong here)
@people_who_said_DG_would_win Nice jokes mates. Not even 1 in top 16
Literally 0 actual Chaos Daemon armies. Shocking no one.
AdMech sure splashed the meta game, Reece :p No pure AdMech lists in top 50. Not a single AdMech unit in top 20 (salty). Sad InControl couldn’t play.
PS: guess what my 2 armies are 😉 At least I have the “Wait for the codex” for Chaos Daemons… Save me, Chapter Aproved!!!
What did Derek Page run? Also, the Ryan Mead incident proves that uploading to BCP should be mandatory. Also, just check the list you make on BScribe. It takes 2 minutes max. Yes it can be sometimes wrong. But it is better than doing nothing. :/
Also where are all the people who said that finishing games fast was easy? There was a silly amount of games unfinished in the event(more than half? correct me if I’m wrong)
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but James Camona’s list was ALSO ILLEGAL. You can only take 2 snipers in the marauder squads. He took 3. And he used 3 of those units.
“The top chaos list had no brimstones, Malefic Lords, Mortarion, Magnus. Well how about that.”
That’s more than a bit disingenuous when the DQ’d runner up was actually Magnus, Mortarion, a Knight and Brimstones (and a couple of Plagueburst IIRC)/
I mean, 2 of the 3 top chaos lists were illegal. Why would I count the illegal ones? The best LEGAL Chaos list had none of those units.
Oh come on, lol. You cannot say the guys with the lists that were off didn’t actually play well. The points they were off were negligible. You could take the same lists corrected and they’d be virtually identical and perform the same. Writing them off on a technicality on an analytical basis is silly.
Well. I more wanted to say that people don’t need to spam the problem units to be sucessful
True, I agree with you there.
It’s really funny noting the difference between places like this website and facebook when it comes to WH40k comments. It’s been clear to anyone on here and anyone that attends tournaments or just looks at the results and top lists that Astra Militarium have been incredibly strong. In particular, giant squads of Conscripts with a commissar make for insanely strong board control that’s almost single-handedly winning a lot of tournaments.
Yet the facebook comments on the new AM errata/FAQ make it sound like GW just completely killed the faction by nerfing commissars and they claim they were only “borderline” useful before and now no one will take them.
It’s quite simple:
People here: “My army was doing too well in the competitive scene and got nerfed
People elsewhere: “My army —– got nerfed”
Just lack of information
Yeah, the internet is all or nothing, total hyperbole. Take it with a grain of salt.
Well, the same guy and list won BAO and SoCal, haha, so you have to account for the player, too.
And you guys did call it, AM won but prior to us finding out that the chaos list wasn’t OK, he looked to be in a great position to win it all, which Brandon also talked about after the game was over. It very closely could have been the Chaos win I predicted, but, it was not.
Derek Page ran ynarri
Yvarne
Autarch on foot
Autarch on bike
warlock on bike
Solitaire
4 units of 3 shining spears
3 units of 4 shining spears
3 units of 5 Dark Repears
nicely painted army, nice guy
Also. That Night Sky Magnus look siiiiick
“that others may be too easy to get (the Reaper against an army that has multiple units of 20+ models)”
… That’s the entire point of the damn objective! To punish the horde meta. I’m confused 🙁
That was painted by the FLG Paint Studio =)
And yes, but we found that people were getting all 4 points in one round of shooting, it was a bit too easy to do. We are considering going back to just 10+ model units.
As a player firmly in the mid-tier, I had an absolute blast. Every one of my opponents was an absolute gentleman and a pleasure to play against.
I put a ton of work into this event and it was most definitely worth it. Can’t wait until next year.
P.S. The real solution to this points business is an official app from GW. I love BattleScribe, but it is a hot mess on the iPhone right now. Heck, maybe GW could just co-opt BattleScribe and give them funds and license to make their app work. Regardless, if everyone built their list with an official app, then this would be far less of an issue.
P.P.S. Seriously, great event!
The AoS app is amazing. We need the same thing for 40K. Warscroll builder though has had its far share of errors.
Very happy to hear you had fun! Thanks for coming out.
this is awesome to hear!
I really wish GW had just made that one web-based 40K Army Builder official instead of hitting him with a C&D. That was the best one I’ve ever seen.
Where do we see who won the best in faction awards?
You can just look it up on the app, buddy.
Hi Reece,
As a TO I’m interested in how this “finishing your game to get max points” goes – I’ve put it to our local TO group, and the main concern is that you get punished for your opponent being a slow bastard – as a TO, how do you address that and stop a reasonable player getting punished for something that ain’t his or her fault? Other than a deduction in sports scores?
Both players have an incentive to speed up, so we found it wasn’t uncommon unless both players played slowly in which case they both screwed themselves out of points.
We told our players to keep an eye on the clock and politely remind their opponent to play quickly if things were lagging. If that didn’t work, to call a judge.
If players are writing down when their turns ended (which takes all of 5 seconds) and they have us look at the time log and one player was playing slowly, you can enforce time limits on their turns.
It was not really an issue though, when players went slowly, it was because both players were going slowly.
Congrats on what seems like an awesome event guys!
Just out of curiousity, are you finding list errors to be more common in 8th edition, or just about the same as previous editions?
Thanks! It was a blast. And no, not really, List errors have always been a problem. It is just more public now due to things like BCP.
If half the people are not finishing their games. Maybe it’s time to reduce the point limit, to say 1750, or 1500? I wonder how much that would increase the number of games finished.
If there’s more of a buffer in terms of game time, then it makes slow play a lot more obvious.
Or half of those people should hurry up.
I don’t see where he said half didn’t finish. He said “some” but didn’t delve into any specifics. Plus, like he said, if the winner of the entire thing was playing a Conscript horde army and obviously was finishing all of his games – I don’t see any reason why other people couldn’t also finish.
Just comes down to practicing with your army and getting familiar with it so things don’t take you as long. Even if you’re more of a casual tournament person who just likes to have fun rather than trying to win it all, it’s a good idea to get a few practice games under your belt with your exact list so you’re comfortable with it.
Just go watch the stream VOD. Pablo says that most games aren’t getting past turn 3
Well, that is just Pablo making a comment, we don’t have hard data to support that statement.
From my observations, round 1 we had a lot of folks only go to turn 3-4, but that was largely due to players not knowing the missions. After that most games were going to turn 4+.
We will gather more data, though, can’t make decisions based on just a few casual statements, obviously.
That matches my experience, the first game was rough , we didn’t finish and scored it incorrectly. We figured out the right winner but the scores were probably too low. After getting the hang of the missions it worked out; and I was finishing games.
I am definitely no pro and only play casually, but wouldnt a requirement of uploading lists in advance open the door for people to create “meta breaking” lists? IE if i know who is favored to make top 8 hypothetically couldn’t i look at their lists and create an army that is favored in those matchups?
We’d lock lists down at that point, only allowing changes if they were to fix mistakes.
The only issue there, is what do you do when inevitably someone forgets to submit their list?
Remove them from the pairings shuffle until a list is submitted. If everyone is expected to do it, and lets be honest there is no reason to have NOT submitted your list unless you intend to gain benefit from it. I imagine the BCP app can simply say “unable to pair – player x – missing list” rather easily.
Yeah, we can require it at sign-in at the latest.
And 995 of the time the reason people don’t upload their list is because they forgot, don’t know how, or are having technical issues. It is so very rarely malicious.
Was sad to miss this! Amazing run by Mr Grant again. Excited to see what the Nids codex brings.. cya at LVO!
You were missed, bro. And yes, Nids are coming next! Can’t wait, been assembling some gribblies, myself =)
Had an amazing time! Your efforts in getting terrain up to speed for 8ed was noticable and appreciated. The changes in appearance requirements made a difference as far as I could tell. New missions were great, probably contributed to a lot of low round games but I personally prefered that over playing the 7ed missions ever again.
This was the perfect event for me as San Diego is much more family friendly and easier sell for wife and kid, while also providing some awesome places to eat and drink. I hope to come back next year while the fam heads to Disneyland I can try and improve on my 2-2-2 record!
Only mild critique I think more focus on coverage and pics of the awesome armies and painting is needed going forward. I know that’s not your guys main wheel house but I think its time to celebrate more of the other part of the hobby rather than just the guy who wins all his games. Not that you don’t reward the painters (you do! – having 1st/2nd/3rd for paint and ren was surprising) but some vids and pic spreads of the amazing armies that were there is only going to help hype the event even more and get people painted and improving. 10 years ago that was a big part of the GTs and its kinda been lost since 5ed.
I’d also go as far as saying it may be time for a ren-person award that is faction based or imp/xeno/chaos at least, to get even more participation in hobby side. But already tons of awards so I can see where that likely won’t happen.
Awesome though despite that, will be back for sure.
Good recap! Glad to hear that everything went well! I was just wandering with the conscript and horde meta being so prevalent how do you counter them? I run space marines and Im thinking of having about 5 assault cannon razorbacks, a stormraven and scout bikers all to take that stuff out. Would it be good enough? And how do you think pure space marines will sit in the meta?
That would totally do it.
Marines need a few things to win in the current meta but luckily it is easy to acquire: they need to counter smite as it punished them hard (Culexus), to create space to keep infiltrators and deep strikers at bay (Scouts) and the ability to mow through chaff, which they have loads of options for.
Man I wish you all would put some terrain example pics in the FAQ as a suggestion. The amount if terrain mine area uses is crazy when compared to the tables you all have set up.
You ever post the paint scores?
Great event as expected Reece!
From an AoS side, the event went well. Some tension on some games, and 4 or so dropped after day 1, but Scott was our fearless leader who kept us on track. Great terrain, missions were awesome(!!!), and the armies were STUNNING(except mine haha). Tons of space and room to grow, parking was crazy convenient, and there were SOOOOO many bathrooms.
Only mild critique would be to see about getting food trucks or something. Unsure of DMFG policy on it, but having a single line open for food and drink that were comically priced was a bit of a bummer.To be expected at a fairground, but still, $13 for a cup of Coor’s Light? haha
But yes, the event was A++ and I’m already planning on going next year and inviting others. Just the food thing 🙂
Great write up. The coverage was great on the game play. I see a few comments about either better painting reqs, paint scores or coverage, and I like to throw my Nickle’s worth in there.
I think by including better coverage of painting, and encouraging it with coverage it would be an incentive for folks to step up their paint game if they want to be featured in blog coverage and the like.
Great work as always. Keep growing the hobby!
Great suggestion! We’ve actually been working on an ITC Hobby Track for quite some time and hope to roll that out in 2018 to accomplish the exact goal you noted =)
The whole, “its on the player to provide a legal list” just screams being lazy and not wanting to do it.
Does it suck? Yes Will it take a lot of time? Yes. But as the game gets more and more players you’re going to see more and more “mistakes”
Lol, trust me man, we are many things, some of which are not positive, but we are not lazy. We work our asses off to put on great events. It’s not that we are not willing to do difficult things, it is that we cannot guarantee that it will be done without error. In fact, I can assure you, we WILL make some errors. Then if a person wins or does well with an “approved” list that is wrong, the problem is even worse.
So no, we are not lazy and quite frankly that is a pretty shitty thing to say and not appreciated in the slightest, it is simply acknowledging reality. And yes, lol, in what universe is the player not responsible for bringing an accurate list? Haha, please explain that one to me, sir.
Have you ever done it? It takes more time, and resources, than you can possibly imagine if you haven’t. We used to do it for a yearly tournament that we ran of 24 players, and all of the checking, adding, cross-referencing, etc., took weeks.
Add in the FAQ changes, the Chapter Approved, etc., and it becomes a nightmare. Hell, if GW can’t get it completely right, how the fuck do you expect a third party to do so?
Think of it like your taxes. If you fuck it up and get audited later, it’s not the fault of the IRS for not checking it before they entered it. It’s yours.
Your comment reeks of someone who’s never actually put a large-scale tournament together.
The biggest one I’ve ever done is…40 players? At not quite twice that 24-player one, I can assure you that the progression of work required to even put one on isn’t linear with the increase in number of players, it’s far beyond that. And you’re bitching at a group of guys who ran two tournaments for what….300 players total?
How many players attend the LVO and all of its various tournaments? I suppose they could check all of the lists for 2019 if they started about five years ago. Other than that, it ain’t gonna happen.
In any other competitive venue, people are responsible for their own behavior. In baseball, you better not bring a corked bat. In football, don’t deflate those. In racing, there are rules as well.
Does that mean no one cheats? Hell no. Does it mean that they always get caught? Hell no as well. But if they break the rules, knowingly or not, there are penalties.
And if someone in a 40k game brings an illegal list, he was either cheating, or made a mistake. If cheating, then he should be DQ’d. If he made a mistake, then he should be DQ’d, because it’s not fair to his (or her) opponents.
The player has exactly one fucking list to watch out for. The judges would have dozens, or possibly (as in the case of the LVO) hundreds. If a player can’t get his one damned list of 2000 points right, then he doesn’t deserve to win a prize.