Blog Wars 2011 Army Pictures + Review

So this weekend gone was the first ever blog wars tournament held at Maestrom games in Mansfield, hosted by Alex from fromthefang.  Though I didn’t enter it was clearly a very well run tournament, one which being in a minority of only a few spectators (coule of lads plus some WAG's) I was able to enjoy many of the games without the stress of playing myself!

The location was very nice, it has 2 massive gaming rooms, the tournament itself just about filling the smallest of the two.   Downstairs they have a nice big shop (that was offering people in the tournament 15% off) and a pub (what more can you need!) sadly I was driving so abusing its facilities was not an option, still it was nice to have.  For lunch they did the lads who entered a sort of buffet which to me didn’t look too impressive but I hear eventually they are doing proper food in there.

So onto the tournament then and as I said before the jump, it was a really well run event.  Missions were the same each game for everyone and picked at random, matchups after the first round went on a sort of seeding, with the winners playing the winners, losers playing the losers etc.  This did cause some problems later on with people set to play each other twice but it was quickly and easily sorted out with some shuffling. 

Each game gave points for a win or a draw and a victory points total which seemed to be used as a kind of tiebreaker for people on the same points, bit like goals scored in football.  It would have been nice to see this weighed more heavily but that’s a minor gripe for another otherwise fantastic tournament.  The event itself was a character battle, meaning of course that unless your book was ancient and you had no viable characters, you had to field one, this added a nice angle to the games as there always tended to be some monster character jumping in to change the tide of the battle.

At lunch they had a best painted competition and I’m glad to say the one I wanted to win did, it was an impressive job for sure (though I didn’t get a vote with not being in the tournament).  I did take pics however though and here they are, I think I got most of the armies, baring the deldar one that won the main tournament of course, as his was only basically painted and he didn’t enter the best painted contest.

In the end the competition was fairly dominated by the guys from sons of sanguinius, though ironically I don’t think any of them played Blood Angels, I may be wrong though!

To wrap up and before the pictures, I just want to say that I am looking forward to going to the next event, hopefully playing this time, as long as it’s not too soon and I get chance to paint my army up which is still mostly not even built! Also that I think a double tournament would have been quite cool as well.

 Above and below, the best painted winners