Valhallagate – A Warhammer Scandal

Originally I was going to write about the new White Dwarf which is out Saturday and how great it looks, but lots of people started doing that. Then I was going to write about the new Chaos Space Marine stuff which is up for Pre-Order Saturday and how great that looks, but again lots of people have started doing that. But something has come to my attention which I'm a bit saddened by, but feel it's worth discussing and making people aware about.

The following is a tale of how not to run a tournament and upset a lot of people in your gaming community. Please read the following if you ever want to run an event as this will show you what not to do!

Last year, Andy Spiers ran a Warhammer tournament with Nick Pym called Valhalla. It was supposed to be an event to help cater for the lack of large Warhammer events in the south of the UK and on paper it sounded good. I think a week or two before the event though, there was issues with the Venue, but Andy was able to change that and then during the event, there was reports of it not being run very well. For most people that was the end of it but how little did we know.

Fast forwards to about a month ago where Nick Pym very publicly comes out with that Andy owed him money for helping to run the event and that no money had gone to the Charity Help the Heros, which was surprising as about £300 was raised. Nick had been asking Andy privately about this but got no answer so made it all public. Andy denies all of this and states that the event didn't make any money (general costs and due to some damage caused to the venue) but he did send the money off to Help the Heros. Nick then says he did some checking and no money was sent and he would like to see receipts off Andy just to double check everything. Part of the community side with Nick and call Andy a thief whilst other players, side with Andy and call this a witchhunt. Andy then spends a couple of days promising to send them but eventually they are sent and things seem to go back to normal.

Fast forward some more to now and Nick comes out with a statement about the episode. We essentially find out that Andy was lying and doctored receipts, kept money raised for the Charity to cover the damages caused, plus the event made some money which Andy also kept. Andy also admits in a email chain in the statement that he did do some wrong doing and he is to pay back the missing money to the various parties owed.

The statement can be found here - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/106941867/Valhallagate%20Final%20Post.pdf

I would recommend that if you ever want to run an event, please remember this saga. Personally I'm in shock that Andy would defraud a charity and lie about the whole thing. He is very lucky that Nick is giving him a chance to make things even as I think a lot of people would have gone to the police.

What do you think?