Dec 7, 2011
Let us do some Tourney catch up for the month of November.
November saw events packed in the weeks just before Thanksgiving, one of these events was MechaniCon which continues to come close to taking the title for most expensive GT in the country with tickets going for (I believe) $125 a pop. Even with the high cost MechaniCon garnered 44 players and great looking tables.
As for the winner of the over GT well that is sorta shrouded in mystery. It was easy to find the name of the winner Simon Leen, but what exactly was in his list is any ones guess. What I do know is Simon won with Blood Angels which is a change from the army he is known for Sisters of Battle. So I guess it ended up being no surprise when he used his SoB models to “counts as” Blood Angels. What little could be gleaned about his list came from a short battle report where it said he used a combination of Jump and Mech. What is impressive is that this is one of the few GTs to have a Blood Angel winner. So I am curious what was in his list.
SO If anyone has any idea what was in his list please comment!
MechaniCon had a bit of coverage and here is links to all the important stuff.
If you are looking for pictures head on over to MechaniCon Facebook page.
If you are looking for results then look here…
http://www.themechanicon.com/1/mechanicon-2011-warhammer-40000-grand-tournament-results/2011/11/
If you want Battle Reports then look here…
http://eternal-legion.blogspot.com/2011/11/mechanicon-part-2-of-2-part-recap.html
And if you want to see who participated and what armies they played take a look here…
http://www.rankingshq.com/public/tournamentprofile.aspx?TournamentId=2642
pathtyphon
TastyTaste
Frank Austin
fluger
Brent
Dethtron
newsun
AbusePuppy
nyhil
That Teri Girl
reecerobbins
badtaste
Used BA rules for SOB models? I am all for creative counts as armies, but that’s just frustrating for opponents. No reason to allow that, if he wanted to play BA play BA.
Using SOB rules these days is frustrating for SOB players. The Blood Angels rules fit their fluff/character better than the White Dwarf codex does.
I don’t think being frustrated in your rules gives you a pass on using models form one dex for another. Also, I don’t understand how the “fluff” fits one better then other. Even if that were true, that’s not a reason to not play your army as intended. If you don’t like the SOB rules (which is nuts, I have a buddy who plays them and they are fine) then don’t play SOB.
Because he wanted to play a seraphim based army and not a Battle Sister one or one that uses space marine models?
Some proxy armies are hard to follow but I can’t see how this one would be difficult at all.
spireland: I second that notion.
Does anyone know _why_ this tournament is so expensive? Neither Tables nor Location are sufficiently impressive to warrant that cost… Oo
Philadelphia has very high costs for event space. I’ve spent 20 years looking at every available space that is willing to host events for comic book shows and gaming events. If you aren’t catering the event, or guaranteeing that you’ll sell them 100 hotel rooms, the prices are at a premium rate.
That said, Mechanicon is much cheaper than most people realize.
I’m always surprised that in a hobby where people can discuss minute details and interactions of the 40k metagame, many people fail to do any research, or simple addition.
-Parking is free. Not so for all tournaments.
-Food is plentiful and cheap. Beer is cheap. Food and Beer are 10 steps away in the same room as the tournament. On Friday night we were buying rounds of drinks and eating great pork sandwhiches continuously. I’ve been at hotels that charged 4 bucks for a hotdog and 6 bucks a beer, and you stood in line to get it. Much more enjoyable to finish turn 2 and ask your opponent if he’s ready for another beer, and walk back in less than a minute for 3.00 a beer. Scooter and I worked our way through all their varieties of hard lemonaid, and settled on Black Cherry as the best.
-Rooms were cheap, I think I heard 75.00? It’s only 30 minutes from my house so I wasn’t staying over, so not sure.
So while the tournament fee was higher than average, the associated costs were far, far less. Taking the costs for two nights stay at mechanicon + 125 is actually a lot less than the cost for the same thing at many other tournaments, even before you add parking, jacked up food costs, and other fees you end up paying at some venues.
The people that go every year obviously feel it’s a good value. All systems taken together, there were a lot of people there. I saw BFG, Bloodbowl, Warmahordes, kill teams, even a huge chunk of guys for heroscape. Just wished I’d have had more of the weekend off to hit more gaming.
Its a old event and the small number of players that do attend have being going for years. Its more of get together than a tournament honestly.
I’m wondering how many misplays there were as people were trying to figure out which unit was which counts-as…
Celestians as honor guard? Which ones? They all look like women with bolters.
Ugh.
Simons in my club, his BA list is a DoA list….so a typical DOA blooad angels list with VV’s and Assault squads all made from those jump infantry sister models, pretty sweet army
Simon’s army is sweet, and it’s not at all difficult to tell what’s what. Played him in Round 4 of BFS this past year.
I’ve wound up squaring off against Simon in Round 4 at two BFS’s in a row. The first time he had a “proper” SOB army … old Immo spam + exorcists and a couple of allied autocannon chimera guard squads w/ HKM. Freehand on the immos … his DOA army is much prettier, a hard thing to say, and great to see on a tabletop.
He was using 2k at BFS, so I don’t know what he trims, but basically it’s missile devastators and jumpers with infernus/fist/meltas as appropriate, and priests.
We had a blast this year. Many side events were added and Warmachine had a featured event as well. We also filled up event space well in advance with 10 different clubs organizing events.
We will have more coverage in the next couple months. We had a lot of video shot and it may be a month or two before we get our hands on it. Keep an eye on the Facebook page and the website for all the latest info.
As far as the price goes, you still are not looking at the whole picture. Once you add up the cost for the weekend we are still close to the same price or even much cheaper than other 3 day events.
Hotel rooms – $89/night with code or as cheap as $58/night through Days Inn website paying in advance.
Food – Hot sandwiches in the room were $2.50, beer started at $3
Coffee, Water, Tea – Free
Parking – Free
Wide aisles for accessibility – Included
Add it all up and we were up to $250 cheaper than other large events including two nights and onsite food and beverage.
On to Simon’s army… I did not see his army but heard about it. Simon converted his models to fit with the BA codex. It was not “counts as” but a “conversion”.
The final point I would like to share is that MechaniCon’s 40K Grand Tournament is based off of the original GT’s. Some now call this “hobby style”. Out of the 100 players that were at the first US GT in Baltimore 1997, we had almost 20 of those players attend this year!!! While this is very different to the majority of events out there, each event that TO’s organize benefits the gaming community. The diversity of events offered allows there to be something for every type of hobbyist and gamer.
Tony
Sucks to play against that guy. He knows the game really well but loves to use dice drops and other shenanigans.