Hey everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to talk about how Games Workshop used to run their Grand Tournaments.
Recently Games Workshop announced their dates and locations for their events for this year. Luckily for me one of the locations is in San Diego so I will be able to attend this year. I still have fond memories of the grand tournaments that I had attended when Games Workshop was running them here in the U.S. In fact, my first tournament experience was attending the first Los Angeles Grand Tournament back in the early aughts. Back then Games Workshop did things a little different than they do now so think week I’ll be talking about some of the ways they conducted their tournaments back in the day.
A Night at the Hotel was Included
In today’s scene you have the added cost of having to book a room at a hotel or finding and Air BnB, if you don’t live close to the event. It is an added cost that can be argued is the most expensive part of the event, after actually buying your army of course. Back in the day there were a couple of years where the ticket cost for the grand tournament actually included a night at the hotel. For most people, however, just 1 night wasn’t enough so you still had to get another night and this just added to the cost. Luckily, at the time, a friend and I was able to swap days with the hotel and we were able to cover the weekend at no extra cost. We just had to switch rooms each day, lol.
They Once had You Break Your Models
Today’s missions seem pretty straight forward, although it now seems like Games Workshop is starting to veer into making each mission much more unique. They still have a long way to go before they go back to the type of missions they ran back in those early days. One year they had a unique mission that had caused a bit of a stir in the community. Games Workshop required each players to have three objectives. The kicker was that each objective had to be a destroyed vehicle. Now this was back when there were very few, if any, third party sellers that might have a destroyed vehicle model as a product, so we had to but 3, but usually 2, vehicles and model 3 destroyed vehicles in order to use at this one tournament and most likely no where else outside of just using it as terrain. Just like today, a lot of people complained but more than 100 players, on the 40K side, did it.
The Los Angeles Grand Tournament wasn’t in Los Angeles
I’m not sure if it was the same with other cities at the time but in the later years the Los Angeles Grand Tournament was not held in the city of Los Angeles, but in the near by city of Ontario. I assume after the first couple of grand tournaments Games workshop found it cheaper to have the event, as well as the Games Days when they were a thing, in a surrounding city. Ontario was fine as it had it own airport, convention center and hotels and is part of Los Angeles County, so I guess it is still technically the Los Angeles area. It was fine by me as it was quicker to get to because of very little traffic as it wasn’t as busy as going to the Los Angeles airport area, and everything in Los Angeles is measured by time rather than distance. I still had a good time and am looking forward to this year’s event.
That’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know what you think, and what you remember from those early days, in the comments section below. 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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