Tournament Review: The Conflict GT, Nanuet NY
Hey Folks, Jawaballs here!
I wanted to share another GT review with you all. This past weekend I had the pleasure of playing in The Conflict GT held at The Palisades Mall near Nanuet NY.
For you non East Coasters, The Conflict GT, run by Aaron Fishkow, is a 5 game grand tournament and part of the official GW Indy circuit. It was the first GT to hand out a golden ticket to Vegas last year, one of which was won by yours truly, and is one of the bigger events in the East. They run Fantasy and 40k GTs simultaniously, and got about 140 players this year playing in both systems. There were 60 or so playing in 40k. The tournament promotes sportsmanship, painting and generalship evenly. Not to the degree of The Mechanicon where soft scores can easily tip the scales in one players favor. See my write up on The Mechanicon HERE. But to enough of a degree that players were on their best behavior, and many beautiful armies were patrolling the tables.
A big facet of the event is The Conflict Cup. Any four players may organize themselves into a team, spanning 40k or Fantasy. At the end of the tournament, you total up the four players scores and they win the conflict cup. So, if a member of your team won the 40k GT, and another won the Fantasy, you are sitting pretty. I did not actually make it onto a team roster this year, but the cup adds another element of bragging rights that makes these sort of things fun.
The Conflict GT was not without controversy in the past. In it’s first two years, inconsistent paint judging, rules judging, and comp scoring left a bad taste in many a mouth. Mine included. But Aaron listened to the players input, as any good organizer should. He included comp with the players well being in mind. The intention was to force guys like me, who play min/max armies designed to win tournaments, to play more fair lists to give every one a chance to win. Sadly, that did not work out, as guys like me were showing up with our lists, taking the comp hit, and still beating face and winning the events. All the comp scoring did was add malcontent.
Any way, Aaron promised a better event this time. And back up that promise he sure did. He eliminated comp and randomized pairings for the first two games. Then went to straight battle points from that point on. But also, he provided a simple and efficient sportsmanship rubric. I personally don’t see much of a need for that either. I mean, how many guys did not get max? I’m sure there were a couple because the worst of the guys will refuse to ease up on their D-baggery even with a gun to their heads. I think sportsman scores should be whittled down to something absolutely simple. A yes or no system. Was your opponent a D-bag? For every game that you get that question answered NO, you get two points. A possible maximum of 10 added into your score. No need for this “Did your opponent arrive on time…” sort of stuff. But that is not a Conflict specific thing. This is pretty standard at all tournaments.
Lets talk about the venue for a minute. The previous two years it was held at a store called Toywiz, in Nanuet NY. But the problem was that the playing area was cramped and uncomfortable. This year, Aaron fixed that gripe by springing for a convention space at a massive mall. There was space a plenty for us to set up our armies, sit and relax and be comfortable. Also, being in a massive mall allowed us access to the massive food court. My tummy is still burning from all those Crunchy Chip Burrito thingies from Taco Bell. You know what the best part of the mall was? Having access to a nice big bathroom. The bathroom was removed from the playing area and had lots of toilets that were maintained by the mall and spik and span. The previous years, it was a small 4×4 room attached directly to the main gaming area with a single leaky can. You could smell every time a dude dropped the kids off at the pool, and it had a tendency to clog and run out of toilet paper. Am I focusing too much on the facilities? Maybe so, but a good bathroom makes a difference in the general well being of the participants. That cannot be denied!
The gaming tables were well, hit or miss. This is a huge area that Aaron needs to invest in for next year, but I think he will be the first to admit that. He got a huge boost from some of the guys from a club based near Philly I think, but over all, a lot of players were unhappy with terrain. I rather liked it, as it suited my army perfectly, but a lot of others did not! For example, my third game had me against another BA player using mostly foot units and devastators. After terrain deployment, (we scattered every piece every game) he ended up with nothing but a tiny hill to put his units in. They were sitting ducks to my guns.
Not every table was bad. Some of the tables had great terrain, ruined cities etc. But the one grumble I heard the most over the weekend was “I got screwed by terrain”. Meh…
The missions? Well, I won’t get too much into them. He posted them up on the website before the event got started to give every one a chance to practice with them. Some of them sorta left the game up to luck, or heavily favored certain armies, but at least we knew about them before hand. Any one that really complains about them should understand that they had a chance to read them before paying for their tickets, and made the decision to attend any way.
Every thing was run on time and well. Aaron took a very micro managerial approach this year, and did all the paint judging himself, as well as all the rules calls. That way he was sure who to blame if some one did not have a good time. Himself. I like that he took complete ownership, however, that will age a man quick. He needs to find 2 or 3 reliable men and hand off some of that responsibility.
SO how did I do you ask? Well, on day one I won all three of my games setting myself up for the big win. However, I fumbled the two games on Sunday and fizzled, losing both.
Game One:
3 objectives, table corners
I forgot my camera so have no pics of the games to show. I want to get away from doing too much of that any way at tournaments as some guys are too polite to say that they find it rude. So sorry, these are not detailed batreps.
I played an Eldar player I met in Scranton PA at a small tournament I went to. I got a win against him in Hard Boys then and knew that I was in for a scrum. This mission heavily favored the guy who won the roll to place two objectives, as it was possible to get them both right on top of each other because they scattered after you dropped them. He won the roll of course, and his two ended up a mere 8 inches away from each other, all the way across the table in the other corner. Crap. He started the game by ramming two Serpents down my throat full of Fire Dragons. I ignored them in shooting, and focused on his troops Serpents in the back instead, especially since he fortuned the serps and they had rerolled cover saves. This sorta surprised my opponent, especially when I killed one of his serps and stunned the other, then assaulted his Dragon serps with my death squad and killed one and heavily damaged the other. Litanies of Hate baby!
Of course the Dragons who survived vaporized my Land Raider and a Predator before they died, but both units did their jobs. My termies were delivered into the fray and the pred did some long range damage. Now my death star would have to march through 3 feet of Eldar fire power, and survived no less than 60 shots without taking a single loss. My opponent shook his head to that.
At the end, I managed to get into his midst and contest and claim one of his objectives while holding one of my own.
This victory was marred though. At the start of my turn on the bottom of turn five, my opponent looked at his watch and said “looks like this will be the last turn, we are running out of time.” That meant that with no fear of another round, I was able to make decisions free of consequence, and position myself for scoring bonus points rather than playing defensive. We played my turn, actually scoring me a bonus point on Kill Points and ended the game and filled out the score cards. As we were discussing our tactics and putting away models, the TO announced that there was actually 50 minutes left to play. Crap. My opponent had the wrong end time for the round. He of course wanted to play another turn. But that put me in an akward position. Not only had we finished the game and totaled the points and started picking up dice and models, but I made decisions in my last turn that I would not have made had there been a chance the game would go on. This was forcing me to have to allow the game to go on in such a way putting me at a disdvantage, or replay my turn. I explained such, and he in a very respectful and well composed way pressed the issue. I have to hand it to him, he was a good sport about it. So first we rolled to see if the game would have ended naturally on turn 5. Of course it did not. Seeing the dejected look on his face, I offered a dice off. 4,5,6 in my favor, 1,2,3 in his. In his favor we would play another turn with turn 5 having been played as is. (Which of course he confused as well, thinking that 456 was in his favor.) The roll of the die was a 5. So I shake his hand, and he happily begins measuring for turn 6. Argh!
Any way, after another short discussion, we ended the game as was written out on the score cards. What a crappy way to get a win. What do you guys think? Should I have just agreed to a turn 6? Should I have dug in and said Hells No! Do you think a chance to dice off the decision was fair? To help make him feel better, we did measure out the possible movements for his units to try to get a chance to contest my objective, and he was short. No matter what, had we played turn 6 the game would have been mine it turned out. I think that made him feel a little better as he was a little less pained in the expression, but he was a great sport about it. What would you guys have done?
Game Two:
I ended up against good friend and great guy Bob Sinnot, Tournament Organizer of The Battle for Salvation, and a club member. He was packing some serious shooty heat with ultramarines. Rifleman dreads, dakka preds, speeders, razorbacks etc. This game we had to get our troops into the opposite half of the table. He with the most troops over there wins. I won the turn to go first and immediately pressed the advantage. He divided his forces, trying to force me to choose which way to go. He put 3 of his scoring units on one side, and two on the other. So, I chose the side with three. I used my Land Raider to protect my razorbacks from his Auto Cannons on the other side, and charged.
This game would turn out to be probably the single most enjoyable game I have every played. Bobby is a true professional. No BS. No rules wrangling. No quibbling over cover saves. The way 40k should be played. I quickly realized that I had to attack both fronts or I was not going to take out all of his troops and he was going to slip some past. SO, I disembarked my death star from the Raider, and put a troops squad inside for safe keeping. The Raider went after the left side where he had his two troops on foot and the rest of my stuff went after the right, led by the termis on foot. What an awesome fight! After 5 rounds it came down to Bob having to make two armor saves. He had a single marine left on either side of the table and they were taking fire. All of my troops were dead except for the squad in the Raider. If one of these marines lives, it will be a draw. If both live, he wins. If both die, I win. Sanguinius smiled upon me. And the marines died leaving me with the only squad left on the table that could score a side, and I won. The only question was, was my Land Raider far enough into his zone to score, and it was by about an inch. Awesome!
The Land Raider was boss in this game. I quickly eliminated his Las Cannons, and he had little on the table as far as Melta goes. Once I realized that my Raider could go over to his left side unmolested for the most part, the game took a turn for the worse for Bob. Marines in cover against a Land Raider Crusader are no match, plus my dakka Predators could reach to provide the needed support to finish them off from afar.
Game Three:
I found myself facing Blood Angels. He had a bunch of Devastators with missile, las and plasma cannons, and a bunch of tactical marines with missile and las. He had a las dread, a tech marine, 4 Rhinos and some bikes. Sadly for him, he had almost no terrain. I intentionally kept every piece I placed all the way back on a table edge. The only terrain this game would be the burning hulks of tanks. Just the way I like it. I wont say too much here. My opponent was an old school player recently returned to the game and did not have a full grasp of 5th ed. He moved up all four of his rhinos and his bikes into my assault range. A turn later, they were all dead along with their riders. This was a kill point mission and he realized quickly that I was going to use my advantage by killing exposed combat squads from range, keeping it so that only the target I was trying to kill could reach me. I quickly eliminated his dread and a tac squad. So he charged his vehicles and bikes. My opponent, though frustrated, was understanding and well mannered. He managed to get two wins in the first two games as I did. Had he had buildings to hide in, and had the deployment not been table corners, the game would have been very different I’m sure.
Game Four:
One of the missions that heavily gave an advantage to specific armies. This mission was 4th ed table quarters, with two rounds of night fighting to start the game. My opponent? Brother Captain James and his big bug Nids. Of all the possible luck. He was beaming from ear to ear when he walked up to the table! He knew he had a heavy advantage and he would need it against my guns. Not quite knowing what to do, I reserved my army. I didnt want him dropping in Doom and/or assaulting me with stealers while his bugs were charging across the table. And charge they did. When my stuff arrived, I was up to my arm pits in big things. It did not go well. James was happy. I will say though that I think he underestimated the speed of the Blood Angels. I managed to slip a couple of Razorbacks past him, and actually claim one of the table quarters by the end of turn 5. The game did not end though, had it ended I would have won! So it went on to turn 6 and at the end I had yet another chance at victory. The dice would not shine on me though. The game went onto turn seven. I was out of units. Game over, Jawa loses. I have to say that two chances to win the game was more than I could ask for against this army. If I had gotten him on that table I played on turn 3 it would have been a turkey shoot, or bug hunt if you will. Oh well. We win some and we lose some.
Game Five:
I ended up against a guy I have wanted to play for a while, Sean Nayden. He had a generic marine list with Vulkan and 6 dreads or so. I wanted to see how my guns would do against them. I made the decision to reserve them all to keep me away from his drop pods. I should have castled up instead. The worst he could have done was kill three of my tanks while my melta guns and remaining las cannons punished him next turn. Instead he killed me as I came onto the table. It really was not a fight at all. I had a chance to make a game out of it but he stunned and immobilized my two Razorbacks making a rush for his objective, and he managed to get the one “Space Junk” objective that fell down mid game and scattered by chasing it with a Rhino. The guy had two scoring units, and managed to hold his two objectives and deny mine. Well played. I made a mistake, and he made me eat it. We exchanged numbers as I did not realize that he lives 15 minutes away from me. We will definitely get in a rematch soon. You’re mine sucka!
Closing Thoughts
So that wraps it up, plus my fingers are numb. Aaron certainly did back up his promise by running a vastly improved event over the previous two years. It had gotten some bad press in the past and something like that can be hard to recover from. But people came and the gaming was good. One last note, Aaron gave Fritz and Myself a small token of recognition for being leaders in the community. A little plaque that said thanks. It was a nice gesture and most appreciated. We had both given him private advice via email, and promoted our involvement in his event which did help to flush out the numbers. But that was just us talking about our hobbies and having fun. Somewhere in there we stopped being a couple goofy dudes writing nonsense on blogs and became role models over the last couple years, something completely unexpected by me when I started painting little plastic dudes red in 2007. So I want to take the opportunity to say thanks to all of you. Love me or hate me, I appreciate you taking the time to read the words I write and share your opinions.
Cant wait for the next Conflict!
Coming next is Templecon! This event has grown every year it has run and they are holding an ETC type team event featuring some of the most hard core players on the East Coast. My club was invited to join, but failed to organize a team, so I won’t be playing in the team event unless one of the other clubs loses a player and needs a replacement. But I will be going out to play in the 40k singles tournament and bringing my friend and new player Jim. He has never even played a real game of 40k but has a knack for gaming and some good painting ability. I figure I will have him ship shape and ready to wreck when Templecon rolls around and I am unleashing him upon the tournament scene. Be looking for more on that soon!
Jawaballs out
