We've got a great Battle Report Community going right now on the privateerpress forums. In the last six months, it went from a mostly dead forum to thirty, forty people actively posting solid advice. In the midst of that, Vassal became rather popular because of the distances between most of guys wanting to play somebody else we met on the forum. Vassal has it's problems, but it has it's merits, and we organized a tournament through it about two weeks ago. BatRep Community Tournament. Real fancy name, right?
Sixteen people entered. The lists, entries, factions, standings are all available here. Google Drive is great, ain't it?
At a glance, I can tell you we've got great representation. Obviously, a lot of us aren't just posting our home address, but of the sixteen of us, I know several are stateside, from all across the board. We have two or three from Canada, nice guys. One from Norway. I think there's a German in there somewhere. Couple of guys from the UK too. On top of that, factionwise, I think we have them all, including Convergence, Mercs and Minions. In fact, we have two Minion players, one for each pact/contract/zoo.
So we've got a widespread community, with plenty of age groups, casually enjoying about a game a week to every two weeks in a mildly competitive atmosphere and it's been a blast. As of Round One, we're sitting here:
| Standings: | W/L | CP | APD | Rankings | ||
| Marx | 1 | 5 | 37 | 1 | ||
| TerTer | 1 | 5 | 18 | 2 | ||
| Razcalking | 1 | 5 | 18 | 3 | ||
| Teal | 1 | 5 | 17 | 4 | ||
| Seraph | 1 | 5 | 12 | 5 | ||
| Glasskin | 1 | 2 | 40 | 6 | ||
| Jedianakinsolo | 1 | 0 | 29 | 7 | ||
| Xeurian | 1 | 0 | 23 | 8 | ||
| Ozzie347 | 0 | 3 | 27 | 9 | ||
| SevenSins | 0 | 3 | 12 | 10 | ||
| Lich Lord | 0 | 2 | 18 | 11 | ||
| Westley | 0 | 2 | 15 | 12 | ||
| Wolf9416 | 0 | 2 | 8 | 13 | ||
| Seikishi | 0 | 1 | 21 | 14 | ||
| Lead Legion | 0 | 0 | 17 | 15 | ||
| Sanctjud | 0 | 0 | 0 | 16 | ||
Round Two will have each odd numbered player against the guy below him, and we'll progress from there. Should be a good fight. There's been some great games, good stories and it's only getting better. One of the aspects of the competition is Best Narrative, so we're seeing some cool fiction come out of this as well. I'm excited, and I've already got guys excited to get into the next round.
On that note, I'm wanting to develop this tournament style a bit more. We've had a lot of support from the BatRep community for this tournament, and I'd like to take it to the next level for the next one. This may, or may not happen, it depends on feedback and the support I can find. My idea involves running the tournament through an online gamestore though. With the amount of Online Warmachine Retailers like The War Store, Art's Gamestore, PFCgames and Sepco Entertainment, or even MiniatureMarket, I'm curious to see if they'd be interested in hosting the next Online Vassal tournament. This would get us prize support, for starters. I looked into ordering the Steamroller prize package, but that can only be done by a store representative. An online retailer could do that. On top of that, in-store credit would be cool too, and would encourage sales with them, I would think. This would, of course, require an entry fee, so there is that downside. Five dollars (Or pounds, quid, rocks, beads, whatever), would be something I'd be willing to pay for that kind of thing, but I don't know if that goes for everyone.
That's kind of the brainstorming I've got going on. I think a supported online tournament is something completely new, and I'm not sure it's something Privateer Press would get behind seeing how we don't technically need their models to play. At the same time though, it allows players who aren't normally able to make the tournament scene to get into it a little bit and enjoy some of the competition. So yeah, I'm not sure, but this is the direction I want to take the next tournament here in about two months, at the rate this tournament is going. We'll see how it goes.
Thoughts, comments, questions, advice, insults, leave a comment, angry emoticons, it's up to you.
I think it's a geat idea. Pretty ground-breaking in fact. I'd consider emailing the guys at organized play to see if they can make an exception regarding the Steamroller pack. I believe Press Gangers and TO's can order it too, and you certainly qualify as a TO. After all, it's not as though it's not on the level. All the PP guys have to do is visit the forums to see it's legit.
ReplyDelete(By the way, this is Lead Legion commenting using the non-work blogger account)