Many of the winners of the current season of the Independent GT circuit have received information packets for the Throne of Skulls tournament coming this June hosted by Games Workshop. It was only today that the general public can see on the Games Workshop website. What does it say? First off, isn’t much different from the new Throne of Skulls format in the Britain. The most important part for the rabid 40k Internet competitive community is the scoring system. The Jervis system has not changed one bit– expect threats and calls for his head to follow. The is system is really pretty dumb. At least everyone is forced to play at 1500.
What if you take a closer look?
You can see Jervis’s greater intend and why folks shouldn’t have ever expected a hard-core event in the first place. Jervis’s position on how Games Workshop games should be perceived cannot be any clearer than with this passage.
Because of this we always try to make sure that there are
additional activities to take part in at our Throne of Skulls
tournaments. A regular fixture is the ‘Best-Painted Army’
competition, where all of the players get a chance to see the best
painted armies at the tournament. There will be other activities to
take part in too, such as our Team Gaming, Conversion Contests,
Pub Quiz, Painting Competition and more, all of which will be
explained in greater detail later in this document.
Finally, it’s worth underlining that our games are intended to be
played in a spirit of friendly competition, where winning is less
important than making sure that everyone has a great time.
Throne of Skulls reflects this, which makes it rather different to
many other tournaments. You can help maintain this friendly
spirit by not striving for success at the expense of an
opponent’s enjoyment. After all, we all know that a really great
game is one where all the participants have fun – regardless of
whether we find ourselves on the winning or losing side. Just
keep this in mind and you’ll find that a Throne of Skulls Grand
Tournament is a fantastic way to celebrate all aspects of the
Games Workshop hobby.
Besides Jervis’s looking down on the most competitive among us, he wants to reinforce something very important that is lost of a quite a few competitive gamers– this is a hobby. Yes, yes most competitive player love the fluff and painting like the next guy you just don’t like it the most. What Jervis might be hinting at is that players should consider all aspects of the game equal– no one aspect above the rest. This is not only reflected in his words this is also reflected in the event. There is about 5 other events/contests that players can participate (not just beating face) and for that reason people who got free tickets shouldn’t boycott this event. If it was just a tournament then by all means avoid it like the plague.
This is the best chance to air criticisms to the face of GW, but you can only do that if you go and let them know, otherwise GW might give up on the whole idea of tournaments all together. Come on, it is in Las Vegas of all places– at the very least you can go get drunk and get a lap dance.
Another thing that stands out from the UK version of this event is a little picture for North American players to see what type of terrain they can expect. In the picture is buildings and mostly area terrain. So get ready for some LOS blocking and bunker goodness coming your way.
So here are the pdfs of the North American packet along with the UK packet just for comparison.