Yesterday, I played in a 2500pt "hobby" tournament. Sadly, the hobby aspect of it was missed by quite a few. There were several there that brought their normal tournament lists with stuff added. Yep, that's a nice change. It was just another heavy tournament in disguise. What kind of "hobby" tournament discards the appearance scores that are already in place for the "heavy" tournament.Maybe I'm confused here but, how does that add to the "hobby" aspect of the game? It was just an exercise in clubbing baby seals and nerfed lists. To be honest it was not much fun.
My first game WAS fun, we had a challenging fun game that came down to me losing by 1 objective due to a re rolled moral check. You can't ask for better than that. My second game my opponent shot the bejeezus out of me as I ran across the board on difficult terrain. The whole board was difficult terrain. I was playing a foot/cavalry SW list and he was playing Las/Plas spam w/ Calgar. He shot me up for 4 turns. I finally reached his lines with a much diminished army and he conceded after one round of combat....I got full points but didn't get a full game. The last game was an exercise in rolling dice and arguing. I'm not sure how it was scored because I packed up and left during the final argument. Again, not the way I wanted to spend my day.
Later, I met some of the guys at the chicken store for a meal and we discussed the tournament AKA had a bitch and beer session. We all agreed a better tournament could be ran but differed on opinions on how to enforce the rules on the "Hobby" crowd. I favored just turning them away/giving their opponent full points if their lists were abusive. The other more popular way was special missions that hurt certain builds. The problem with that is that system can be "gamed". Is hobby dead?...Maybe.
Go Roll Some Dice
CRP