Well, another excellent event even if I say so myself. Once again we played at The Tudor Arms in Slimbridge this year and by all accounts the food was much improved. Odd really as when I passed on the compliment I was informed that it was the same cook. We can all improve I suppose, just look at Seb's results !!
Berkeley build up gets quite intense in our house, much to my wife's eternal joy... so this year I subcontracted the commemorative gift to Sebastian Rogers who did a great job sculpting a figure of the Hero off the front cover of the HOTT rulebook. Eat your heart out DBA players, ours are numbered limited editions...unless of course they sell well on ebay in which case I still have the moulds. The main task this year was to find a replacement Swiss Chess pairing program to sort the rounds out and after numerous downloads I finally settled on a Norwegian one. Needless to say it was in Norwegian but cleverly written so that the GUI screens could be switched to English and the printouts were built using some form of XML tags so that you could define your own reports and rename the headers as you wanted. It worked a treat and was ideal for my HOTT scoring system as it only allowed win, draw or loss; more importantly it did not crash in the final rounds ! After time was called for round 7 I went to my Seat of Power to feed in the score to generate round 8, whilst doing this Seb dropped by to chat. Then Roger wandered over, then Graham and Ken popped up. When James arrived I worked out what they were up to; vultures circling, waiting, hoping, all in expectation of a program crash. Well it didn't happen. Yahoo ! There was a heart stopping moment when the screen went blank as Andy Unwin stood on the cable and pulled it out the back.
I still maintained a tie-break score in a separate spreadsheet and it was needed in the end. I think we might refine the tie-break for next year, surgical strikes on a General or Stronghold are not rewarded enough. I'm not convinced about Strongholds still as the defender has no chance for the points, unless you get point for defending it if it's not captured. In my 8 games I defended 7 times. I certainly need to revise the instructions on scoring; on round 6 I was still correcting scores from regulars.
Last year I had new armies but they were really just Romans from my new DBM army, this year I decided I'd not bother at all and make it easier on myself. So of course the 3 weeks preceding the event sees me at the workbench furiously painting armies and making matching terrain. I opted for a futuristic version of my 15mm Napoleonic Grand Armee - Le Grand Armee 40k, a mixture of 5 Shooters including the general, 2 airboats, aerial hero and 2 water lurkers. The matching terrain was a mix of rivers and marshes. I'll have to go make a matching army now otherwise the terrain will hardly get used. My second army was very topical, the England Cricket team. Having worked out the last test would be over the same weekend I'd thought it could be fun. After the first test I wasn't so sure. Once the second test was sorted it became viable so I picked up a kids cricket game on ebay, stripped the figures off their bases and put them on 25mm HOTT scale bases. They did not need painting so I merely flocked the bases and then found a model railway building as a suitable pavilion for a Stronghold. Vaughan as Mage general, Flintoff Hero, Simon Jones Hero, Straus & Trescothick Blades, Peterson and Geraint Jones Blades, Giles & Hoggard Shooters, Harmison & Bell Shooters (Bell's no batsman), 2 Lurkers – LBW and Bowled, and finally a Flyer – A Six !.
We had 38 players this year with a number of dropouts and even one unfortunate one on Friday evening. This meant we did not need the poolroom although we did expand in to it during the lunch hour anyway. The TV area bar was also popular with those hoping to snatch a glimpse of play in the Ashes deciding fifth test match. Saturday morning was an early start to get down and set up shop as the pub had had skittles the night before and we could not get into the room. A steady stream of arrivals meant there were plenty of people to help set up which was most welcome. We swapped the layout round this year to have the pool army table in the centre with more open space around it to prevent crowding. Both traders were by the door to catch the unwary and we also had the outdoor table although rain did stop play and we had to bring it in.
For details of my games clink on the link.
After Round 8 it was time for the Reckoning. With all the scores and votes in we had a result so I set about the final speech and prize ceremony. Prizes this year were a motley array of books, figures, strongholds and even some fully painted armies. Ebay was a good source a few of the prizes and others very kindly donated items as raffle prizes or to sponsor a particular prize category. The Raffle went well with the local Gloucester boys doing embarrassingly well – thanks everyone :-) With the closing ceremony over we trooped out for the usual gang photo and every packed up for home.
My apologies to any one whom I may have snapped at as my stress levels rose in the 2 days, I know I did throw some people out of my alcove at various times, I thought it better to do that sooner than belt them with my cricket bat later. Once again my thanks to all those that helped me with their donations, physical labour, moral support, alcoholic libations, pleasant conversation, witty comments, cutting barbs and downright hurtful comments about wetware failing more often than the software and hardware – James.
Also thanks to our Sponsors
TTM and Tony Horobin
Behind the Lines and Graham Harrison
RT Games and Richard Tyson
And
Theo Sharrock and Richard Crawley for the name tags
Jane Williams for use of the fridge for the cheese
The event made £150 for Cancer Research,
the favoured charity of the
Tudor Arms, well done to all.
That's it for this year, I have all the scores and results if people need to know. If you are interested for 2006 just drop me an email Steve Price