Observations From the Tournament Floor
Hi guys, whew, the BoLS crew is playing, talking, and have a great time up here, but most of all we are taking it all in, and looking for the big trends in the individual games and the wargaming environment as a whole. Here in no particular order are a few things you may want to know as conversation starters:
About 1/3 of the the Warhammer 40k entries are Imperial Guard players!
At last count over 60+ Leafblowers are on the floor. Many people are having to slug the way up the rankings by facing down, row upon row of IG squads holed up in vehicles refusing to get out.
After IG, there are MANY Space Wolves lists out on the floor. Chaos Marines are pretty well represented as well.
Recent codices like the Nids are not as common as would be thought, and many of the older armies like Necrons and Tau are fesw and far between. Even Orks and straight Space Marines seemed a little rarer than you would think.
Overall, there seems to be a big trend these days of players of all stripes just hunkering down and sitting inside vehicles, blazing away, only getting out to claim on last turn, or if they get blown out of their safe transports. Many games almost seem to be tank battles until you stop to notice the dozens of sideboarded models within.
Warmachine has a dangerous chess game on the razor’s edge feel where the decisions and combos can turn a game from utter victory to crushing defeat with a single move. There is little ability to anticipate the outcome by a quick positional glanceover of a table as you can in GW products. From a drama and excitement level this makes the Warmachine competitions very dynamic and exciting from a player standings point of view with common upsets and unexpected wins.
Fantasy seems to always draw strong opinions on the need and implementation of comp systems to make up for the supposed wide disparity in Army Book power levels. There is talk about whether 40k is headed in that direction as well.
Flames of War is great fun, and fast moving, but more than other systems requires both players to decide to have a fun time, and keep the flow of the game moving forward. Its also has a spectacular company level scale and the ease of putting together stunning tables that you can’t easily match in the larger 28mm games. Its difficult to keep on walking past an awesome looking FoW game.
~More on all of these themes coming soon, and consider this an open thread on each of these observations. Have at it everybody.
