There's a lot that's worthwhile to say about Origins, but the starter for me is to talk about how dead tournaments are, at least for me. You know it’s bad when you don't like most of the games you won, and the most fun you had was spending no money and playing pick up games. Now that's not universally true - there were 2 of the 5 Warmachine Wednesday games I liked, and one Confrontation game, but it generally holds true and Origins pretty much crushed my thought that things would be different at a major con.
The Wednesday WM 500 pointer was as good an example of this as any for me, sometimes you have to check, because if you lose, and are unhappy, it can be difficult to admit that losing is what is really bothering you. After the 500 pointer however, I'm clear that's not the case here.
I played 4-1, and came in overall second, winning the Khador medal. My first win was against the best newb playing a Gorten Grundback army I'd ever seen. If it was a pickup game, I'd have felt a lot less like shit for winning, but with my Sorscha list and the Steam Roller format (King of the Hill), this poor guy had no chance. He even used his feat as perfectly as he could, and it didn't matter. Hated the experience of wiping him off the face of the map, and later found out he dropped after round or 3, my game only contributed to that. In fact, there were 5 Merc players and none of them played through the whole tournament, so when the Merc medal was announced, you could hear the crickets.
Second game was against a Deneghra army, and an alright player. The scenario was Killing Fields, mediocre in entertainment, this guy was also wiped out and I was thoroughly bored.
Third game was one of the ones I won and enjoyed, partially because the scenario was Pendulum (which is not bad at all) and partially because I played against Ironic Lich, who was a good player and made me laugh. He wasn't too happy about losing, but he didn't take it out on me. Closest game I'd played so far.
Fourth game was a surprise in that I thought I would have enjoyed it, here's a player, who is a decent guy but completely pulls a bullshit maneuver in Possession. He plays the Old Witch with no jacks other than the scrapjack, pulls the whole Murder of Crows, teleport to the center of the board crap (had a forest in his deployment zone which he set up in), and on top of it, the goddamn package is on a hill, so now he is defense 19, armor 17 or some crap like that. Oh, by the way, he went first so I have to just sit there and watch this shit. Now, the one thing he does that makes him lose is he forgets to pop her feat, so come my turn I am burning for the center of the board, popping Sorscha's feat, doing everything I can to keep him from moving, and in the end, it turns out to be a close game, tooth and nail, and I finally win by killing the witch and picking up the package.
So I should be glad, right? After all he did the shitty trick, I stuffed him, it was a close, tough game, and I won, so shouldn't I feel the power of pwnage rising inside of me?
No.
Because in the end, the scenario sucked, he did the right thing, and I basically won because he forgot to use his feat the turn he got to the center of the board. Fecking lame.
So there I am in my 5th game, against a Deneghra 'stalker' army, which has no chance really against me and its the final, I'm about to go down with my first big con win and I get to the point where I've Fecked up his army, and because Deneghra held her focus, I should back Sorscha off (she just popped her icy gaze last turn), and send the rest of my army to grind it all up. I look at the board for two seconds, realize that I could charge Deneghra and could take my 1/3 chance of boosting an attack and freezing her with my first shot, realize that it would be dumb to put my win into a ballsy, chancy move, and do it anyway. Because I can't bear to back off like a goddamn power-gamer and push comes to shove, I don't give two shits about winning Origins, this is what is fun to do. I do it, do some damage, don't kill Deneghra, and she kills me. I lose and am completely fine with it.
So what the Feck? Why is it that I like about one game I win, one I lose, and the rest is Fecking shit? Shouldn't I be happy I had a shot at first and got best Khador? Well, to continue with the story, Basicbob and I sit down on Friday night and bust out the figures. He's been working the booth all day and this may be his one game he gets to play, I'm liking the idea of not playing Midnight Madness and getting up in the morning for Confrontation, fresh and ready. Basicbob uses a Haley list and I say screw it and use an Irusk list, complete with Reinholdt, no Eiryss, and Greylords. We have a down to the wire, close game, with about 4-5 figures left on the board on each side, when he finally puts Irusk out of his misery. A 2 hour game (took some breaks) that was more fun than any of my tourney games, win or lose.
In the end, Origins proved that tournaments suck to me. Not because they couldn't potentially be a lot of fun, bringing out the best army lists and toughest players, but because they don't, and never will. The desire to win and the fun in it is not at tournaments, the enjoyment of winning is completely separate of tournaments. In fact, tournaments suck the joy of winning right out of the whole thing, because too often, the prize goes to the biggest bitch screamer, like the guy who won midnight madness, instead of the guy who is the best. Or first place goes to the guy who actually doesn't “play like he has a pair” and then every excuse is made up in the world as to why he did have a pair when he hid behind a pillar the entire time. People like Ranz, Capt.LMBB or Dacarnix are not there, and I don't really feel like I'm playing against the best anyway. Instead, I find it a lot more funny to give it to 'Stalker' list guy (and by the way, this guy was a decent guy, unlike Disco Ball asshole).
The Hordes Tournament, which was also a Steamroller, went pretty much the same way except this time my opening game was a loss against the Circle with a Thagrosh list. Everything was going right and I was attritioning a Kaya list when lo and behold, there's a near dead Shredder next to Kaya. I use Thagrosh's spell, teleport next to Kaya and fail to kill her with not enough fury. Shouldn't have done it as next turn she pops her feat and with two fury-filled melee attacks, kills Thagrosh. In essence, I helped caster kill myself but I wasn't going to do anything different because backing off and attritioning, while forwarding my win, just was about as retarded as you could be in my book. The next round was a tie (namely because I played too slowly) against a Hoarluk army, and I wrapped it up with two wins. The wins were against another two Hoarluk armies, one was the same I tied (with two spear trolls, a Dire Troll and a Totem Hunter) and the other was Hoarluk, an Axer and two Dire Troll Maulers. Of the 4 games I played, my 2nd and 3rd were entertaining, and the first and fourth sucked.
The first game, I think, it was mostly out of aggravation, knowing that I now was absolutely throwing the game away by teleporting Thagrosh the whole game was a rolling my eyes to the ceiling experience. The fourth game was jank because again, while I'm winning because my opponent used two Dire Troll Maulers he never had a chance. Further, because I took my first loss, I knew I could not catch the winning Everblight players in the tournament. By the way, the guy who won it was none other than Heat Death, and of course, he played for first against another Everblight player. Mostly a lame experience that convinced me not to get too involved with Hordes, and yet more proof that tournaments suck ass.
Aside from Whordes that friday, I won the first round in a 4-man speed painting competition sponsored by Rackham (Rackham ran 3 rounds a day, Thurs, Friday and Sat) and it got me into the finals which were on Sunday. Pretty much took me by surprise since the other competitors were serious painters and I wasn't sure that I should win, but the judges pointed out that I was the only one blending my colors and creating depth. Speed painting is a good time and I recommend it to anyone going to GenCon.
Finally, the height of my bitching. The Confrontation Tournament, I figured I'd post my hatred of tourneys concerning the WM tourney first, since that's primarily what people here play, and it has plenty of examples that prove they suck whether you are winning or losing.
This whole thing starts off as THE reason I want to go to Origins, I paint my crap, put together the best list I can field with my painted figures, and roll out there to see what it’s all like. Now I am already aware that the game can be broken beyond recognition, and fully expect to see some sick lists there, but off I go anyway, hoping that at least I'll get in some decent games.
Turns out, that they are giving away unbelievable prizes, the winner not only gets an all expenses paid trip to Paris, but the $250 resin Dragon that won't come out until November, and a year's worth of new releases. The second place prize gets 6 months worth of new releases and the 3rd place person gets 3 months worth. However, there are only 10 people playing, even with the unbelievable prize support. Rackham decide they are sticking with the prize support regardless of turnout. While I'm pretty excited on one hand, I know the kind of fervor that is going to drive in the games.
One guy shotguns a trip from Cincinatti (hurrah, a 2 hour trip compared to our nine, and some people's flights), he has to buy his Red Oaks Wolfen army from Rackham the morning of, and he glued together his army before the tournament. Of course, that means they weren't painted in the slightest, and of course they let him play anyway. By the way, Red Oaks Wolfen are borken and anyone could have done the same thing this guy did if they knew, like he did, a few hours before the event that they were going to let unpainted figures in. More realistically, we all could have added better figures to our list (one guy specifically mentioned that to me).
Of course, guy with the pewter army wins.
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OMG Pewter Red Oaks Pwning face. |
Now, I tell people this story and they flip out about all sorts of things. For me, its very simple. 1) the guy is wrong for even asking to play with the army. As nice as he was ( I played him), he should have had the balls to sit quietly and take his shot at Gen Con. 2) It is plain wrong to let a guy like this play, even if you are strung out on a rope for players. It’s not like you are going to really impact your cost for running the event and having only 10 people show up but it is like you are going to piss every single person off for changing the rules for your tournament when the guy breaking the rules wins. 3) Forget the pewter and pretend the army was painted, Confrontation is so potentially broken that when you tempt people with unbelievable prizes what do you think they are going to do?
Miniature games don't make good sports. There's enough fighting over rules in sports without any die rolling or use of rulers. In other words, its a hobby that demands some small amount of decency on the players parts and a good amount of enforcement from the organizers part, nice as you are, you are still a dick for not enforcing or following the rules. Angry as I am over it, it is really hard to imagine doing more damage to the company than they did to themselves. Don't expect to see any trips to Paris after Gen Con, in fact, I am going to call the rep from Rackham I met and recommend they not give away so much in prizes next time around.
I've already sworn to do everything in my power to stop 'tournaments' in the style of Rackham in this area, now that doesn't mean that I'm interested in preventing competitive play, events where you play to win and get something for doing so. But damn if campaigns and straight up grudge matches don't bring in more money to a venue for Rackham than anything else. The funny thing is Confrontation is really strong at the grass roots level, and top down prizes obviously haven't changed that. If you want people to play, you've got to give them a reason, part of the reason is having a good format despite the rules of your crazy game (even if those rules make casual play great fun), and part of the reason is actually following those rules. I wanted to grab that pewter army and throw it across the room, and the tournament made me not want to ever go to a Rackham event again, I am, because I already paid for my GenCon entrance fee, but I expect it to suck, because I am not putting together a Red Fecking Oaks Wolfen list and painting it in one month, I am playing my shitty army and Feck anyone who is going to force the pewter issue.
It would be simple if you could just blame Rackham but I blame the whole shitty industry, from every game company who sells out without thinking about the consequences, and every shit-headed player who is willing to ruin the hobby so they can get some phat lewt that a company is too generously offering.
Let Kel know what you think of this Here.
