Hey everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to once again knock you out with my tree of knowledge.
By the time you read this, the London Grand Tournament will be well on it’s way. There will be hundreds of games being played at one of the largest 40K singles tournament in the world. About two weeks ago we had drukari win not one, but two grand tournaments. At the time, I made the comment that it was hard to day how good the codex is because it was a local GT and not pone of the majors. This brought up how I look at the current crop of grand tournaments in 40K. They are all basically like college bowl games.
Now hear me out. Not all GTs are created equal. The one held by my local store, Hammer of Wrath GT, does not have the same weight as the Las Vegas Open (LVO). As such, I tend to view GTs more along the lines of college bowls. There sure are a lot of them, and some of them come and go, but they really don’t have the same significance. Here are a few examples.
The first tier, so to speak, are the major bowls. These are the ones that really show you the best of what the sport has to offer. College football examples would be the ones they use for their playoff series. The Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Peach Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Sugar Bowl all fit this category. In the GT world I would equate this to Adepticon, Las Vegas Open, NoVA, and probably the London GT. These have a large audience and relevance to the competitive scene as they draw a lot of international attention.
The next level are those that are just under the top level. This would be similar to some of the more established bowl games that have been around a while but just don’t seem to get the same amount of attention. These GTs still hold a more local feel to them but I could easily see them expanding quickly and making a bigger splash if they were to attract more out of towners or expand the number of players. They just need that extra something that would make it a “must go to” event. Examples of this are GTs like Warzone:Atlanta, Bay Area Open, SoCal Open, Battle at Salvation, Iron Halo, and Renegade Open. This section actually has a wider variance for me in terms of quality, size and influence. It would take many more articles and discussions for me to really stratify this section.
This last tier are mainly the newer bowl games, ones that have only been around a couple years with very little history. The same can be said for GTs. With the rapid growth of the game it has become relatively easier to get the minimum amount of player (28) to qualify as a GT. Newer and much more locally focused GTs, at least to me, include Hammer of Wrath, Boise Cup (although they are taking a slow growth approach), Midwest Conquest, Flying Monkeys, the Alamo GT, just to name a few of the dozens of grand tournaments that are being run with more being created every year, it seems.
Even with all I have said, I look forward to seeing the results of the different grand tournaments and seeing how the different codexes do in the various metas. I plan to go to more GTs in the coming years so I hope to see you all there.
That’s all for this week, I hope you enjoyed the read. Let me know how you would rank some of the bigger and more well known GTs in the comments section. Don’t forget to visit our Facebook, Twitch, and Patreon pages to stay up to date on what we’re up to and when episodes drop!
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