Adepticon 2011 WFB Team Tourney

After a big night out in the hotel bar with a great group of Warhammer players Saturday night, my Teammate Jeff and I got up really early Sunday for the WFB Team Tournament. Team Tourneys are the staple of Adepticon, and its traditionally been the building block of the whole convention. Now personally, outside the rabid popularity of the 40K TT, I think the Fantasy TT, in its spirit and intent. (a fun team event in which people build there teams, in design and look and fluff) has apexed recently and with the advent of 8th edition, tradition has left the building. I saw very few "built for the event armies" and it seemed to have boiled down to two guys putting the hardest stuff they could on table from two different armies, with the caveat of no Lords. Knowing how the 8th edition meta game was, we followed suit throwing the most bang for the buck we could into Two 1000 points armies of Empire and Bretonnians. We ran the same thing last year, I think 7th edition was definitely more our element we lost the first game on a fluke, and won the next two readily. This year, we both had a black cloud over our heads from both our personal let downs in the Championship.


First round we played Dark Elves and Orcs and Goblins, a tough match. after taking a big lead. Things went sideways on us when Jeff's BSB failed his save from a killing blow, he lost a rank and a big unit of goblins became steadfast. This put us on a crash course for numerous stuff to go wrong, and we ended up losing. This was a great game no doubt.


Round 2 m we took on Empire and Warriors of Chaos, in a desperate alliance, very difficult to run a desperate alliance because of the way the magic works. Again we started out big but again, one of those combats you take for granted, is were things went horribly wrong and we ended up upside down. By turn 4 the Empire side of our army was totally wiped out, except for my wizard., Jeff had just his General and some Peg Knights remaining. a strong turn 6 got us back in it by finish off a unit of Chaos Warriors MoZ, that were plaguing us all game. In the end its was Draw almost to the point.

Our third match was against Lizardmen and High Elves..a fun game, I kept waiting for something to go wrong but it didn't. we had control of the whole game, and our opponents had some pretty bad luck and made a couple decisions, they probably shouldnt have, they were pretty tabled, and we didnt even take our last turn.
So there you go, it took me 7 games of Warhammer to finally win one this year. pretty brutal. I need to say once again we had awesome opponents in all three of team games and I'd go as far to say as my group of combined opponents this year, was the best I've had ever!. So while I might whine about my bad luck, its not really that bad, because I did get to play and meet some great people so cheers to them and at 1 win, 1 loss, and 1 draw we wrapped the 2011 Team tourney.

Where the Team Tourney falls behind for me is in the scoring, at a whopping 71 teams, there were more bodies than already mention Championships that were the largest to date I'm not quite sure how to properly sort out 71 teams with only 3 games and find a fair winner given the context of the what event is "supposed to be" and what it really "is". Scoring wise- points were awarded to the whole package, so despite no comp scoring you got big points for your fluff and display, so really need to win all three games, and have the big soft scores to win. However I didnt really see people meeting the challenge, Even we didnt bother to present any fluff and got tagged 15 points on our soft score (putting us at 23rd overall despite a respectable battlepoint score and max sports and 24 out of 25 for paint).


I had a really hard time finding that one team or display that put the stand alone work into their army and display and make this event their focus this year. The army one that won, "Players Choice", was the one, I and I am sure many others voted for and they did a great job, however it would not have even made the radar if you go back a couple years.



My point being is I see confusion here in what this event is supposed to be and whats it become. Events need to change along with game, and just like Adepticon has grown and changed so do these events. is the team tourney going to be a beer and pretzels sunday good time based on the hobby with tons of folk working on unique displays for the glory of Warhamer? or is going to be a standard competitive event?..I don't think you can it both ways...or at least it didnt play out that way. I'm not sure there is that even huge an audience there any more for the former.
Overall thou had a good time this day, hanging out with a friend and throwing some dice with some fun people, but as I look back on it I just kind of find myself ambivalent about the whole thing, "lackluster" is the word that keeps coming to mind as I try to describe the WFB TT. Me thinks Its time for a reboot.