Gencon UK 2000 Results

All,

the result of the FT tournaments at Gencon UK 2000 are now posted on my
website. Follow the results link.

http://www.innotts.co.uk/~paulradford/ft/ft.html

Thank you to all that participated. It was good to meet some fellow list

> On Tue, 05 September 2000, "Paul Radford" wrote:

> the result of the FT tournaments at Gencon UK 2000 are now posted on

Paul, good results page!

I had a question about the Circle of Death tournament. It sounds like it
didn't go all that smoothly. Any comments on that?

We actually turned two people away from our FT tournament because they had
never played before. With only 2 judges and 15 players, we didn't have enough
time to teach them the rules. It also wouldn't be fair to other players to
have someone go up against a novice in a double elimination tournament. Did
you find many novices asking to get into the tournaments?

I noticed that the KV fleet didn't do that well in the tournament. Any
comments on that?

> Allan Goodall wrote:

> I noticed that the KV fleet didn't do that well in the tournament. Any

Sure <g> Can't speak for the other KV player (IIRC he was fairly new to the
game and got knocked out early), but I had three problems:

- The playing areas in two of my battles were rather cramped (IIRC
50x70 mu) and the starting speeds were low (3xThrust). I'm not particularly
used to having to worry about flying off the table, nor to
flying in syrup ;-) I didn't have time to reach proper maneuvering
speeds before I needed to maneuver...

- The time limit meant that I pretty much had to attack every turn in
order to inflict any real casualties

These two together meant that I couldn't withdraw outside enemy weapon range
to set up the next attack run; I had to turn around inside B2
range of the enemy - not necessarily a good idea when fighting NSL
fleets :-/

- Measuring in inches is visually quite different from measuring in cm.
When I remembered to measure the distance to the enemy before writing orders I
usually ended up just where I wanted; when I didn't... I
usually got rather surprised :-7

The third battle was lost mainly because I screwed up and my opponent
didn't (nearly as much, at least <g>) - I misread a P4 turn for a P3,
which meant that a damaged Markgraf of his ended movement outside the (F) arc
of my Lo'Vok instead of right in front of it, which in turn saved that
cruiser's life and allowed it to destroy my Si'Tek. Unfortunately I didn't
notice the mistake until after too late <sigh> Those two cruisers together
were 549 victory points...

'Course, I can always blame the dice - the sixes were appearently
strictly reserved for my enemies' PDSs and my own threshold checks <G> Losing
5 heavy fighters to a single PDS die kinda hurt... considering how badly my
fighters fared in each of my battles (ie., losing 5 fighters to the first ship
they attacked in each of the battles) I
probably should've gone with the battlecruiser fleet instead :-)

Later,

> From: agoodall@canada.com

> Paul, good results page!

Thank you:)

> I had a question about the Circle of Death tournament. It sounds like

Certainly. It could have been a bit of a disaster but it was recovered with
dice rolls.. Firstly, you get a target card for your ship (A) and can only
shoot at that ship (B) as well as the ship (C) that is shooting at you. Kill
the target (B), get their target card and so on. Now what happens if you kill
the ship (C) which is shooting at you before you kill you're target (B)? That
ship (C) is someone elses target (ship D). Does the target card from C move to
D? Thats a bit confusing but i hope you get the idea.

Secondly, two players drew each other as targets. Target cards were kept face
down until firing was announced in order to add tension to the game. This
seemed to be a good idea. Nobody knew who was coming for them. A drew B as a
target. B drew A as a target. They can only shoot at each other as they are
both each others target and the ship that is attacking them. When one is
destroyed, the other has no target to fire at because the passing on of target
card means they have to shoot at themself!

It has been suggested that a GM allocates the target and the hunter of each
ship. That would solve the problem.

> We actually turned two people away from our FT tournament because they

We had a mixed bag really and it was a little unusual. Of the ten players who
entered, 3 of them had not played before (The Andy's, Dave??, and John
Ballard), and one had played for the first time during the Deathmatch game the
previous day (Richard May). The rest had various experience. I would say
myself, Oerjan, Paul Grogan and Bryan Ash were the most experience based on
what i knew about the players. We didn't turn them away as we wanted numbers
to make a better tournament. Nobody seemed to mind that they were novices and
that some of us could get an easy ride so to speak. It was necessary for
Charles only to really keep an eye on any games where both sides were novices.
That only happened once (during round 2). Everyone was in high spirits and
willing to help out their opponents if they were a novice, giving them truely
helpful hints and tips up to a point to be fair. I would truely say that
everyone who had to face a novice player didn't really take advantage of them.
Everyone was more interested in having a good game. Its an interesting point
that all the novice's got through the first round.

On the way to winning the Fleet Action, i certainly didn't have an easy path.
Round 1 Oerjan, Round 2 Paul Grogan, Round 3 The Andy's (novice's) and finally
Bryan Ash in the final!

On the miniatures front, only 5 people Charles (2 fleets), Oerjan (2 fleets),
Paul (3 fleets), Bryan (1 fleet) and myself (2 fleets) had miniatures. Thus,
unless anymore players came along with miniatures, we were literally
restricted to 10 fleets.

> I noticed that the KV fleet didn't do that well in the tournament. Any

Best to see Oerjan's comments on this.

Cheers,

In message <00cc01c01835$f7d468c0$037ba8c0@paulradford.innotts.co.uk>
> "Paul Radford" <paulradford@innotts.co.uk> wrote:

> >From: agoodall@canada.com
[snip COD problem]
> It has been suggested that a GM allocates the target and the hunter of

I got the same suggestion from Adam - I think a problem may just still
happen occassionally.

Adam suggested an assortment of balanced ships in COD - but no
expandable munitions (SMLs, SMPs, Scatterguns, etc.).
> >We actually turned two people away from our FT tournament because
Its
> an interesting point that all the novice's got through the first

Note that John Balard actually got the highest score in round one, and the
Andy's made it to round three!
> On the way to winning the Fleet Action, i certainly didn't have an

Err.. make that "a pile of assorted blobby things that could make 2-3
fleets" - I should have more (and better ships) by next year, I managed
to find a pile of old CMD "Future Wars" figures on one of the trade
stands - including a lot that would make KV cruisers (how long ago _was_
CMD?) - plus a handful of SFB and B5W ships.

Now for shameless plug

<Plug> Battlemasters 2001

April 21-22

Loughborough University

There _will_ be some sort of Full Thrust tormanent there!

See www.eurolog.org for details (eventually).

</plug>

> >I noticed that the KV fleet didn't do that well in the tournament.
Any
> comments on that?

[snip]>>
> On the miniatures front, only 5 people Charles (2 fleets), Oerjan (2

We (GZG) bought up the whole CMD line in 1996, when the proprietor had to give
up due to failing health. Many of the CMD 6mm models are back in production
from us, but a lot are
still awaiting re-release (to come at SOME point in the future when I
get the time!!).

On Wed, 6 Sep 2000 20:08:22 +0100, "Paul Radford"
<paulradford@innotts.co.uk> wrote:

> Does the target card

I think the problem is the random target selection. I suggest the following.
Write down the names of the players on cards (or use their GenCon tickets)
much as I assume you did. Draw the names one at a time at random and write
them on a piece of paper. The first player on the list is the target of the
second. The second is the target of the third, the third of the fourth, etc.
The last person on the list is target of the first. Then, hand out the
appropriate target cards. This guarantees that two players won't be their own
target until only the two of them are left.

If a target is destroyed, whatever ship was targeting the destroyed ship gets
its target card.

> It has been suggested that a GM allocates the target and the hunter of

In my example it's still random.

> We had a mixed bag really and it was a little unusual.

It sounds good, actually. Our first year I think we had 12 players. This year,
at 15, we had the most of any year, and we could have had 17. The trouble is
that with a double elimination game, playing a complete novice can be a major
advantage.

As I posted in my own comments about GenCon in Milwaukee, evening things up in
a double elimination tournament is difficult. I think I'm favouring a
"championship" and a "consolation" style of play, either with the consolation
players playing for third place, or with 3 "championship" players advancing to
the quarter finals and one "consolation" player. It makes that first game
important, but doesn't eliminate a player simply due to a poor first round.

> On the way to winning the Fleet Action, i certainly didn't have an easy

Ouch! Could you have picked a more difficult path? *G*

> On the miniatures front, only 5 people Charles (2 fleets), Oerjan (2

I feared this at our tournament, but it turned out we had more than enough
ships.

This is what I did 2 almost 2 years ago at the GZGECC. I provided each player
a numbered "flag". Player 2 targeted player 1, player 3 targeted player 2,...
player 1 targeted the last player.

It seemed to work fairly well, but took longer than expected.

The advantage is that it cannot fall into a furball. The disadvantage is that
everyone has to wait on everyone else for the turn phase to end (write orders,
fighter movement, etc.).

At the upcomming GZGECC I think that I will limit the number of people to a
power of 2 (2, 4, 8, or 16). This allows me to pair them off without any
player geting a "buy" or "pass". This also allows individual battles to
proceed at different speeds (and rewards fast play).

However, if the CanAm battle is held (a Bring Your Own Fleet type of game), I
may run a set scenario instead.

> Paul Radford wrote:

> >I had a question about the Circle of Death tournament. It

Yup, D gets C's card, thus when a ship is destroyed the ship that was
targeting it gets its target card and still has a target.

> Secondly, two players drew each other as targets. Target cards were

Easy enough. Player one is player two's target, player two is player three's
target etc. At beginning of the game (after setup) each player draws a chit
with their player number on. No possibility of drawing each other and it's
still random.

---

> Charles Stanley Taylor wrote:

> On the way to winning the Fleet Action, i certainly didn't have an

And Paul lost the battle against me by a grand 7 points... fortunately for him
that was in the qualification round where only two people were
knocked out ;-)

> On the miniatures front, only 5 people Charles (2 fleets), Oerjan (2

A combination of Space Fleet Tyranids and ICE Hatchlings IIRC - not
sure if the Phalons were painted? The ones that went onto the table
looked OK to me, anyway :-) And, of course, we could've "forced" people
to use Phalon or KV fleets to save up on models... for example, I had enough
KV models for two KV tournament fleets (as long as at least one of them was
the BDN one), and that's not counting the Kimbere
(blue/white) fleet.

> I should have more (and better ships) by next year, I managed

The KV ground vehicles, yes... I bought ten blisters of those as well
for use in my KV bitz box :-)

Later,

In message <200009071817.UAA01905@d1o902.telia.com>
> "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

> Charles Stanley Taylor wrote:
[snip]
> >
people
> to use Phalon or KV fleets to save up on models... for example, I had

All of the figures I brough with me were painted - the phalon and night
brood ships were borrowed from a friend - and were painted purple
(which, coincidentally, matched my tayranid squid-thingy).
> >I should have more (and better ships) by next year, I managed

So _thats_ where the rest of them went to...
One thing I noticed - the turrets on some of them look like they are the
same mouldings as the third gun on a Ko'Tek. (Has anyone noticed that
the Ko'Tek appears to be carrying a Lu'Dak on top of it? - probably -
some of the KV 'tanks' have what looks like KV fighters on top of them
as well - methinks a 'dark secret' of CMD figure construction comes
to light :-).
> Later,

> Charles Stanley Taylor wrote:

> A combination of Space Fleet Tyranids and ICE Hatchlings IIRC - not

Should've been "...if all of the Phalons were..." :-/

> I should have more (and better ships) by next year, I managed

Not all of them, no. I left at least ten blisters of the small grav APCs <g>

> One thing I noticed - the turrets on some of them look like they are

It doesn't "look like"; it is the same piece (just like the side guns
on the 2- and 3-gun tanks are the same bits as the K3/K4 guns on the
spaceships, except that the ground vehicle guns are stuck on the main hull).
The "AA gun" on the ADV is a Ka'Tak corvette with a spherical "gun mount"
added on the underside, etc.

Later,