Spears and Shields I tournament report

 And thus it came to happen last weekend that I ran my first tournament for Spearhead, under the necessary peer-pressure and such to organise hehehe.

 

The idea having formed after the planned battleday for Age of Sigmar last november not taking off, so I decided to try and take it a different route.

 

 

As such, on the 23rd of March, players clashed at the Tin Soldiers of Antwerp clubhouse for this small forces format of Age of Sigmar!

I had put myself and my Idoneth on the board for the reserve player status in case we ended with an odd number of participants, but luckily I wasn't required to take to the field of battle.  For reasons below...

 

I had arranged for price support, containing of a Kruleboyz Spearhead for the winner, a Larissa Shadowstalker for the Best Painted, and a Stormcoven to be randomly given away amongst all the participants (bar the winner and best painted) as I am no follower of the rewarding of being a good sport.  You just always have to bring your best behaviour is my idea...  And I had dice made especially for the events I run at our club this year, featuring our logo and the year, 2025, as well as some trophies for the first three placed participants.

 

 

Of course, you can't run an event without something going wrong at the last minute and cause stress.  For me this time, the wednesday night before the event my pairing software updated... causing the Android version on the tablet being out of date and unusable anymore, which of course I discovered saturday night late when doing the preparations check-up.  So a quick chess app has been installed on the cellphone and let's go from that.  Which then turned out to only be able to handle 8 players in the free version, and we had ultimately 12 participants...

 

 

I had foreseen contemplary breakfast for everyone, a bit of a thing I tend to do with tournaments, especially those that I run myself.  

 

 

And so the games began, 12 players battling it out over 4 rounds of Spearhead.  I was quite happy with the turnout, having 2 clubmembers, but also 2 ex-clubmembers present, and one of those is already coming back to play this friday.  Furthermore, there where 3 more clubs / store groups represented, which is always good for some networking and get togethers.

 

 

Only a single "3 points" score was noted, something in the rules pack if you won with double the points of your opponent AND went over the 20 points mark yourself, so I think most games where pretty balanced. We didn't have any big difference games, not even a ratio of 1 per round, usually games having a margin within 6 points of each other.

 

 

Most games also comfortably finished in the 1.30 hr mark + 15 minutes of "time" before a hard stop.  The first round there was some struggling on this as people had to get used to the time limit, but from round 2 it went pretty smooth on that part, so I guess that is a good time schedule to follow for the next year's edition as well.

 

 

During the event, three judges went more or less anonymously around the tables to have a look for the painting points (I'm not a believer of letting players vote, this often ends up with people picking people they know / belong to the same group, I saw this happen a few times already at tournaments)... and with 9 votes cast, somehow I still ended up with a tie-breaker.  So an innocent player, who came along just to watch as he didn't have the whole day to actually participate, as well as being new and as such knew nobody present was drafted.  He was send out to pick between the two top rated armies, a force of Skaven and a force of Kharadron, and break the tie.

 

 

After the hotdog half hour, aka the lunch break between rounds 2 and 3, players settled back to the tables for more games.  

 

 

A funny thing I noticed, as I didn't number the tables (space enough, people could go sit where they liked), is that some players "claimed" a particular seat and kept inviting opponents over, while others seemingly went to go from table to table hehehe.

 

 

By the start of the fourth and final round, unless something went spectacularly wrong, the winner was already known to me, but underneath it was all to play for still.  Some up and down pairing was required, because people suddenly decided to start handing in draws in round 3, and that is always "fun" to have pairings in a lower tier and higher tier bracket as it all suddenly melded into a big blob.

 

 

But there was no suprise result happening in the fourth round, and after 4 games of Spearhead, a clear winner emerged.  Max with his Blades of Khorne had scored a flawless series, taking 9 points and the victory of the tournament.

 

 

The top 3 was rounded out with Mathias in second with his Sylvaneth, while Andy brought his Maggotkin in at the third spot.  Andy also won the "participation raffle"  as the dice came up with his assigned number.

 

For the full standings, I happily point you to the T3 page of the event. 

For painting, it was the Skaven army of David that eventually took the price, being tied in initial votes with the Kharadron Overlords of Nico.  To add insult to injury, they also decided to make this TO's life a bit a misery by ending with the same points AND identical glory points in the end.

 

 

And there we have it, the first Spearhead event at my local club, and it seemed people had some good fun.  I'll definitly be running one again next year, but for now it's two months of no tournaments, before June looks to be a busy one again.  

 

 

Fortunatly, only as a player and not as a TO...