Today saw the second edition of Spears and Swords, the annual Spearhead tournament I've been running at the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp.
But I must say, I was a bit disspirited the morning of the event, as I had no less then 11 cancellations and 2 no-shows on the day, the last one cancelling barely half an hour before the event started. This really hurt my budget I had made for buying the price support.
To that end, going forward for all the events I run, prepayment will be required, and from the amount in the pot one month before the event the support will be bought. And no refunds for cancellations in the final two weeks before the event.
But never the less, I could present a nice pile of prices, with a Nighthaunt Spearhead on the line for the winner, a Commerative model for Best Painted, and a Celestar Ballista for the Lucky Participant, a raffle I run amongst all joining to give everyone a chance to take away a price from my events.
The free breakfast was also picked up, and the attendance gift in the form of a red dice this year for the joinees, and we where ready to go with 12 players for 4 rounds of Spearhead!
Round one was marked by one particular game: Andy and Philip fought it out in a "sauna match". Their table consisted of sweaty, semi-naked and overweight men duking it out to have the greatest... A lot of bellowing laughters came from that side I must say...
In the second round, we of course got that draw that always makes pairings harder in future rounds, thanks to the father and son derby between Patrick and Ignace. A small lead was being formed by some players though, and it looked like it would all be fought over for.
As we entered the lunchbrake, it was time for the painting votes. I used a "Eurovision" style voting process, with every participant able to cast a single vote of 5,3 and 1 point. In addition, two non-playing judges, being myself and Mike who helped ran the bar, had a vote that counted for 3 times it's value, meaning 66% would come of the players and 33% of the judges, and the max score to be obtained would be 90 points. But I'll come back to these results at the end of the post, with a picture of every army and any score they might have gotten.
In round 3, the field kept fairly level, and no-one really could break away even after three rounds. As we prepared for the fourth and final game, we had 1 player on 9 points (you got 3 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss), and no less then 4 players scoring 6 points, meaning there where still 5 candidates for the victory. Though it must be said, of those some would need to win very big, while the player with 9 would have to loose heavily then, as glory differential was the agreed on first tie-breaker.
But it wouldn't be, as the top player drew his game with 8 to 8 in a battle between 2 Skaven armies, and the victory was his. Though that result did shuffle up the places right below quite a lot, as the player in second was piggybacked by two other players due to that.
So, this gave the following end result for the tournament, in case where you see players with the same amount of points, it was the tie-breaker that decided the placings.
The winner of this edition, scoring 10 points, was Wesley Deckx and his Skaven army, congratulations!
In second place came Wesley De Vos with Seraphon, scoring 9 points
Third place belonged to Peter Haagdorens and his Sylvaneth, also scoring 9 points
The fourth place was for Eduardo Villamor, fielding Skaven, with 7 points... and he will come more to the club to play in the Escalation League I've started for Age of Sigmar.
Fifth place was for Jelle Rombouts and his Gloomspite Gitz, managing 6 points
In sixth place, and also scoring 6 points, was Philip with his Sons of Behemat. He also won the raffle for the Lucky Participant.
More 6 points results in seventh place, as the second Sons of Behemat force by Andy de Bodt came in.
In eight place, and also with 6 points, Tom Steylaerts with his Helsmiths of Hashut
Ignace Lefevre with his Orruk Warclans took the ninth place with 4 points.
The Nighthaunt of Sven Roelants ended in tenth place, managing 3 points.
Beaten by his son, Patrick Lefevre and his Soulblight Gravelords came in eleventh and got 2 points.
And in final place, and winning the price of the left over "worstenbroden", was Dennis Wilms, whose Skaven only managed a single draw for 1 point.
And those where the results of the tournament, so what about the painting competition then? Well, as I said, 90 points was the maximum to be obtained, and out of 12 armies present no less then 6 of them where candidates to win it. What followed was a heap of votes where almost every time those armies where noted on the slips. Considering in the end that the winner had 40 points, you can see how many points they all picked away from each other.
The painting competition was eventually won by Jelle, who scored 40 points. This included 2 high scores from the players and one high score from the jury.
Second place, with 31 points, was taken by Peter, who had 5 high scores from the players.
Third place was for Philip with 29 points, who managed 2 high scores from the players and one high score from the jury.
Fourth was Sven with 21 points, including one player high score.
In fifth place came Patrick, who had 20 points and 2 high scores by the players.
Sixth place was for Tom, totalling 19 points.
In joined seventh place, Wesley De Vos and Ignace each had a single point to their name.
Unfortunatly, the other armies didn't get any points, in part due to the very high standard of the six that vied for the victory in this category.
And that's it, the tournament has gone by and now it's time to turn the attention to the league first, as well as to the full 2000 points Age of Sigmar Tom Steylaerts will be organising near the end of the year, and one where I will actually be playing in for once...
And next year around the end of february / beginning of march, we will be back for the third edition!
