Post by wstevens on Mar 8, 2015 0:12:29 GMT
Well another Rushden Rumble over and what a fantastic turn out of really nice folks!
First a foremost I really want to say a special thanks to Pete Melvin for the hard work he put in crunching the data and taking photos all day. Not only did he come in the Friday night and slave away prepping the room with Craig and myself, he also stayed and packed away with Julie and I after the event. What a star! Consider the favour returned for the Bolt Action tournament on the 30th May!.
I would also like to thank Michael and Danny Roden for helping us all pack away - lugging tables upstairs and stacking chairs with us as well as the other players who offered their help to tidy away. Thank you all.
A special thanks goes out to Timeline Miniatures and RJ Smith and son for sponsoring the event. Timeline miniatures sponsored some nice building prizes and you lot should really go and look at their stuff www.timelineminiatures.co.uk/ Also if you are ever in need of trophies - RJ Smith and Son really supplied some cracking ones so go and check them out too. www.rjsmith-son.co.uk/. They do locks, keycutting and shoe repairs also.
Also props to Justin Easby and the guys at NCC for lending some quite stunning fantasy buildings.
So the event, it seemed that everything worked like clockwork. The advantage of setting up the night before really paid off as we could concentrate on the social side of welcoming everyone in the morning and not having to stress. For once all entrants showed up which was great. At this Rumble I just felt relaxed and chilled as a T.O. All timings and shout outs were done effectively and none can say they couldn't hear me...I'm a bit loud.
I felt the terrain was a good improvement on last year's but I believe we can still get better. The recent purchase of the Timeline miniatures buildings really helped out. There was enough variety to make the tables more interesting than other years.
The scenarios - OK, yes a bit out there on a few - but that is what you expect from the Rushden Rumble. Its not a full out "gotta win it" tournament but a fun relaxing tourney with ample time to game. Although it does help to read the Scenario pack before coming as I had the distinct impression that quite a number of people didn't. The pack had been out for quite a number of months and updated regularly. Some errata was posted in all the known forums. As people know what they getting into then and what possible hazards could befall them then there really shouldn't be anyone stating that it wasn't quite what I expected. Knowing that you have a negative shooting and flying (in the last scenario) helps to formulate a good army list. Some scenarios suited some army combinations and some really didn't, but then that's how it always goes. We can't have everybody winning and there will be losers. As long as the losers walk away saying - "you know I thoroughly enjoyed that" then we must be doing something right.
The first scenario went well but we did have a few people question the Giant's random movements but I was on hand to quickly help people out. Something that I couldn't do if I was playing. Not playing is a must for any T.O. - I have learned my lesson well on that front. Always having non-playing assistance is a must for number crunching as without Pete the Rumble would have been a data mining disaster.
The second scenario seemed to go well however some felt that the Giant using the wizarding hat was made redundant as most spells he cast were automatically dispelled in most cases. However this works quite nicely if you have other spells you want to cast. Favourite spell by far was the avalanche spell. I had played this scenario a few times and found that the giant could in fact get too powerful if left at any stage to caste magic. So I put this at the start of the magic phase to act just like the VC cursed book. This worked well but I found myself moaning when I lost 3 casting dice from my pool but very happy when only one was lost.
Then there are the luck of the draws. Round one is easy and straight forward but you have to be careful with rounds 2 and 3 that people do not play each other again. This happened once today and was efficiently rectified. I would have to apologise to some individuals who had their personalised results leaflets a little skew wiff. For some reason when I transferred them to another computer for printing those with longer names shunted the tables onwards a bit - probably due to a updated programme being used.
As you well know we had a sporting vote which gave a potential total of 18 TPs for the whole tournament and all figures were between 12 and 18pts. This worked to iron out any silly nonsense. Although some people did mark some players down quite badly. Some didn't bother marking anything and I gladly chased people around. I'm still undecided if this is still the way to go.
With the painting competition I felt this was better left in the hands of everyone else but some felt that they need a guide to what they were actually looking for. Perhaps something to look at in the future - but I felt for the moment the current method works well without any more superfluous details to consider.
Still if we have any improvements that could be made then yes some feedback on this would be good.
So what about the results? As you know its a doubles tournament with a singles finish but we stick the best players in equal first and so on..
Well here we go
1) Geoff Moxon - HE - 82 pts
1) Ed Herzig - Dwarfs -79pts
2) Andrew Cochrane Beastmen -77pts
2) Adam Cochrane - O&G 76pts
3) Michael Roden - Dark Elves 75pts
3) Shaun Tokens - Wood elves -75pts
See the full results table on the download below.
Bloodthirster awards - Chris Smith amassing a grand total of 9961 Vps for and against.
Rene Hawes for a grand total of 9940 vps for and against.
Best painted forces - Will Stacey for his fantastic Chaos Dwarf army with a Wizard of Oz theme.
Ian Norris for his wonderfully painted Warriors of Chaos.
of note and worthy of a complimentary prize was Adam Cochrane who would have won but gave points
to the two above to edge himself out.
Best Painted Giant - Hugh Dartington for his siege / chaos giant which looked fabulous. A really nice set of purple tones.
Best surviving Giant - Ian Davies (Skaven) 18pts who received this award which included a detachable giant which could be used in his
future games
Rene Hawes (WoC) 18pts - the prize was given to Ian but a small complimentary prize was given to Rene as he had
won a bloodthirster award - good to share out prizes so another goes away with something.
Worst Surviving Giant - Colin Robinson 6pts which was the same as Ryan Smith. However Colin scored less TPs overall to clinch it.
Best Sports - Alex Jarosz - the only person to score a perfect 18pts - what a nice guy!
The tragedy awards go to (and not for the first time) - Dale Needham (O&G)
Chris Smith (Empire)- that poor steam tank!
Here are the full resultsRushden Rumble 2015 results.doc (153 KB)
Hopefully see people next year - let's see what 9th Ed has to offer.