My name is Vlad and I'm one of the organizers of the Sengoku Tenka WHFB tournament. I've been playingWHFB in northern Kyushu for a few years now, and before that I used to play in Germany. Today I would like to tell you about the tournament we have planned in Beppu.
First, some people might come and ask "A WHFB tournament in BEPPU?!", and they are probably right to ask! However, in this tournament we want the players to enjoy both WHFB and the popular Beppu hot springs. Also, Beppu is easy to access from most of Kyushu, Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, and there are cheap options from Kansai via ferry as well.
For more information about the tournament and registration, please look at Beppu's Ring Tail store home page (http://www.ring-tail.com/events.php). The player pack is available both in English and Japanese, and contains all the information you will need to participate at SENGOKU TENKA.
Although this is a event in Kyushu, we welcome players from all over Japan. Although all players are required to provide their own transportation and lodging, we will gladly help and advise you about the options available. If you have any questions, concerning both travel or tournament rules etc., feel free to ask me or Ring Tail's owner Miyao-san directly.
The tournament is planned for a maximum number of 16 players, so we encourage you to register as fast as possible.
There have been some question about the tournament, and we think that others may be interested in the answers as well, so I’ll post them here.
Q1.
It says that it is a tournament, does that mean that it will use a cup system (winner goes to next round, loser exits the tournament)? I though the Players Pack said you would play 4 battles.
A1.
The tournament will use the Swiss pairing system (check Wikipedia), therefore each player will certainly play 4 battles.
Q2.
It seems like you will be using quite a few tables, are you sure you will manage to find enough terrain? There might be many players who will build their rosters based on the assumption that there will be forests and hills available.
A2.
At the moment we are looking into the terrain available to us, and believe that we will be able to provide enough terrain for all 8 tables. However, there might be tables without woods/hills – we will try to have at least one hill on each table if possible. As other terrain pieces can fulfill the same purpose as woods (any other difficult terrain more or less), we are not going to insist on putting a wood on every table, but as woods are the easiest piece of terrain to find, you can expect a wood on at least 4 tables.
Also, the TOs will place the terrain for the tournament. No player will play on the same table more than twice, and the more players there are the smaller the chance of playing on the same table more than once. The tables are calculated per pairing software. The software has an option to designate certain players to a certain table, but as we cannot answer to all players’ wishes, we will kept the table rotation random.
Q3.
Are all battles played with the same roster? A “Dispel Scroll” is pretty useless against Dwarves, and in a sense you might say that Dwarves have quite the advantage.
A3.
All battles are played with the same roster. An average army will have 2 Dispel Scrolls, which makes for 50 points of an advantage for the Dwarf player – however we consider this to be quite a small advantage. Also, at 2250 points other armies might also use minimal magic or no magic at all (Daemons and Dark Elves in particular can make very strong builds without magic users). In these cases the dwarven runes with the effects of Dispel Scrolls would also be useless. In general, we recommend that you anticipate the tournament field and build your roster on what you expect to give you the most headaches (this would be the so-called meta-game).
The prohibition of the use of special characters came as somewhat of a shock, but on the other side you allow the use of Chaos Dwarves and Dogs of War that do not have official support. In the Japanese language environment it is hard to understand the capabilities of these armies as there is no army book / PDF released, so I am worried about the prospect of facing these armies.
A4.
We sincerely apologize for the rules concerning special characters, but we believe that many of them would seriously disrupt the balance of the game and therefore we chose to ban their use in this tournament.
We also must admit our mistake that we completely forgot that there are no PDFs for Chaos Dwarves and Dogs of War in Japanese. The official GW stance is the “they shall do something” about the Chaos Dwarves, and that they will “probably not develop” any more Dogs of War. However, as armies which have valid 6th Edition rule books are allowed to use them in the 7th edition (Brettonia, Wood Elves etc.), we chose to allow Chaos Dwarves and Dogs of War in the tournament as well. The chance of facing these armies is small, and should you face such an army, the opponent is required to explain you the properties and capabilities of each unit and so on. Should this not be possible due to the language barrier, than the TOs will explain instead of the player. Both armies do no count as overpowered or even particularly strong, so we advise you to ignore them when making your roster and thinking about the meta-game.
If you have any other question, feel free to ask anytime.
First I'd like to thank everybody for making it all the way down to Beppu. Pictures of the tournament can now be found on the RingTail homepage, in the event section (http://www.ring-tail.com/events.php) section. If you have any objections or want your face to be "trolled" just send me an e-mail or PM.
In general, I though the event went well and was fun. Being the first event I organized however, I'd like to use the chance to reflect on some of the good points, as well as the things that need improvment.
First the good ones.
Tables and terrain
Thanks to David from KitaQ Gamers and the RingTail store, we had plenty of terrain and tables.
Venue
Seemed big enough, even if we had all 8 gaming tables out. Being close to Beppu station made it also easy to access and of course, having the tournament in the "hot spring capital of the world" makes it easier to persuade wives and girlfriends to join you on the trip.
Atmosphere
I though that the games had a relaxed and easy-going atmosphere most of the time, in part probably due to the small numbers. Having a drink after the game was a lot of fun as well.
Scoring system
First time using a variation of the Australian system, I thought scoring worked well. Composition would have probably shown more of it's merit had there been more players.
And the things that need improvement:
Proxy Army
This was probably the biggest mistake on my part. As a proxy army was needed to cover for the players who suddenly canceled, picking an VC army strong in ethereals was just the wrong decision. Next year the proxy army will be included in the Appendix of the Player's Pack before the tournament so everyone can prepare. Also, the composition score modification of the proxy army will be +-0 (if we have composition in 8th ed.).
Player's Cancelling on short notice
The tournament was at eight players until a few days before the event, and then suddenly three people dropped out, two of them two days before the tournament. Also, as a local Kyushu player, I'm a bit ashamed to say that only one of the five participants was a local player, everybody else coming over from Nagoya, Okayama or Okinawa.
In order to improve this, we are thinking of making players pay the registration fee at least 2 weeks upfront. As payment options we were thinking of Credit Card/PayPal from the RingTail store homepage, or bank transfer. People who back out will probably always be a problem, but at least this way there might be some incentive to not to do so 2 days before the event.
Table Setup
We got some input that it would be good if the (more or less) exact table terrain setup would be explained in the Player's Pack, as the terrain greatly affects the effectiveness of some units (Spider Riders, White Lions etc.).
As this is probably going to remain a max. 16 players-8 table tournament, we believe it is possible to put an Appendix in the Player's Pack with simple schematics of the 8 tournament tables. We hope that makes roster building easier for those armies with special units.
Game Time
Seeing as many players didn't finish their games on time (me included...), we are thinking of making in three hours per game next time. Respect to the mighty Primarch for finishing all of his games in good time!
I enjoyed the tournament a lot and hope to see you more people coming down to Beppu next year!