Gaming Forums
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.

need help to improve my tournaments

4 posters

Go down

need help to improve my tournaments Empty need help to improve my tournaments

Post  Magee Thu Mar 24 2011, 00:22

Hey Guys im sure you have seen me post up about Encore tournaments on this forum before.

Well where not really doing that well in getting people interested and we only usually get from around 6 to 8 people for the tournament.

I would like for this change as:

we are planning to have an encore tournament in late April (no official date) and i would like to get it sorted so we have a decent amount of people to come for a 40k Tournament. I am part of the committee that runs the Event, the rest of the committee are game console nerds and know little about warhammer so im pretty much left to my own devices so would be great to get some advice from guys like yous. I am free pretty much every Saturday so am able to go to Arkham, planning to go there soon as my and my friend having been dying to go for a while lol. I have linked a Published Rule Pack of our last 40k tournament which was at the start of December if you want can you please look at it and give me general advice on how to make it better and have a more successful tournament.

Thanks in advance

Encore December tournament.
Magee
Magee

Join date : 2010-07-06
Posts : 10
Age : 33

Back to top Go down

need help to improve my tournaments Empty Re: need help to improve my tournaments

Post  kwi Thu Mar 24 2011, 01:28

Check out wargaming Ireland, there are lots of rules packs accesable from there.
http://www.w-ired.org/forum/
For a tournament to be succesful you need the following;
Good tables with decent terrain, as a rule of thumb your terrain should cover about 1/3 of the table surface, with LOS blocking terrain making up about a third of that, it doesn't have to be pretty (Though that helps.)
A decent score system, 3-1-0 and 3-2-1 just doesn't work, the current 15-10-5 with bonus/malus system is a firm favourite now.
A rigid timetable with neither a too early start or too late a finish.
Value for money, big prizes arn't neccesarily important.
And Shane Porters favourite, refreshments available, even as basic as just tea and coffee.
Also consider making the event ranking, posting the results in both Ireland and UK, people are willing to travel further to score points.
And publicise your event, the W-ired forum is a good place as a lot of tournament players can be found there.

Hopefully J65 will be along shortly to point out anything I've missed.

Edit; Forgot to point out the obvious, attend a tournament, and shamelessly rip off anything you like.


Last edited by kwi on Thu Mar 24 2011, 06:18; edited 1 time in total
kwi
kwi

Join date : 2010-03-28
Posts : 1429
Age : 50
Location : Cushendall

Back to top Go down

need help to improve my tournaments Empty Re: need help to improve my tournaments

Post  chub Thu Mar 24 2011, 06:10

My tuppence worth, like Kwi said look at rulespacks already existing in the Irish scene. You will learn alot about what gamers want, food is almost essential and alcohol really helps :) .Your breaks are too long, alot of the tourneys I go to attract a lot of our replubic freinds and leaving it to run until 8 will almost mean an overnight stay for a one day tournament. I hate to big it up ( Idont really) look at the northernwasters tournaments, too me they epitomise tournament perfection. As far as your scoring goes it seems a little complicated I agree with Kwi when he says use the ETC style 15-5 system and I also feel a set painting score like which dominion day hda is the better option.

But oince again J65 may happen upon here and give you his god like wisdom

Also Depending on the date and rulespack I may come up in april

Chub
chub
chub

Join date : 2010-11-06
Posts : 101
Age : 41

Back to top Go down

need help to improve my tournaments Empty Re: need help to improve my tournaments

Post  Guest Thu Mar 24 2011, 06:21

Respect to you for seeking help to make your tournament better Wink

I'm sure everyone here will give you good constructive advice Big Grin
Anonymous
Guest
Guest


Back to top Go down

need help to improve my tournaments Empty Re: need help to improve my tournaments

Post  J65 Tue Mar 29 2011, 02:00

Hey Magee, I'm not actually an Arkhamite (yet), but I've probably attended and organised more tournaments than anyone else on the island. I had hoped to get up to one of your previous events but couldn't get the free time to attend.

Asking for advice is a good way to start. When I wanted to get back into running events, I polled every club I could find about what they wanted from our tournaments. The results showed that what players found most important were a sound rulespack, slick organisation, and knowledgable referees. For 40K events, having enough of the right type of scenery was also a big deal. Having everything about the event done fairly, and with complete transparency, is something that players really go for, and if you really want to win the hearts and minds, free tea, coffee and doughnuts can't be beat Big Grin .

Fortunately, most of the important things that go to making a great tournament don't actually cost much to provide. The organisational side just needs the right people with enough time, and you can put on tea and coffe etc for very little cost. The big expense is the boards and scenery, but I came up with a nifty solution to that. Players are invited to enter a table into the Best Battlefield contest. They then supply all the scenery for that table and set it up however they like (within reason). Then the other players vote for which battlefield they think is best, based on how pretty it looks and how much fun it would be to play on. So if 1/4 of the players enter the BB contest, that means that the organisers only need to supply scenery for half the boards. All it costs to do it is one more prize. As for prizes, these needn't cost a lot of money, a nice certificate and a small trophy is all you need.

We (the Northern Wasters) have also struggled to get local players to attend our events in Ballymena, and it's normal to see more Dubliners than Nordies at our events. We are working to address this at the minute and, like you, we've been asking here and on other forums why people won't come and play with us. It seems that there are just fewer hard-core competitive gamers here, than there are down south. There are more players who would be interesting in attending tournaments, but they are unlikely to travel far to do so.

I checked out the rulespack you linked to and I can see part of the reason you're stuggling to get players. It contains changes to the basic 40K rules, subjective scoring from your opponents, weird unbalanced (and I'd guess untested) scenarios, and only 2 hours for a 1750 point game. None of these things are essentially bad, but they are all considered to be negatives to a competitive player (too much randomness, not enough skill). Competitive players generally still enjoy those type of games, but they are unlikely to travel any great distance to attend such an event. Many of us are a bit fixated on ranking points and tables, and qualification for the ETC teams, and can only afford the time and money to attend so many events each year. If it's a toss-up between a ranking event and a fun event, most will be off to the ranking event. The 'hobby' players don't care so much about the rulespack (they'll just complain afterwards about how their army got screwed by the 'stupid scenarios'), but not many will want to travel to far to attend an event. As Magee is right up in the top left corner of the country, there isn't a great catchment area for casual gamers.

If you want to attract the hardcore gamers you'd probably need to run a well-organised 2-day event, with enough capacity for a decent number of players (20+). Our group has been to Cork, Galway and Dublin for tournies this year, and we'll be going to Limerick, Nottingham, Switzerland, back to Cork and Dublin, and who knows where else before the year's out. By comparison, Magee is just up the road. It's not much further from Dublin either, so if you put on the right event you could get the Dubs too. If you prefer to go with the more fun type games, then you're probably best hunting for players in the Londonderry/Derry area. I'm not sure what the gaming scene is like in that part of the world, but there's bound to be some players.
J65
J65

Join date : 2010-05-07
Posts : 63
Age : 52

Back to top Go down

need help to improve my tournaments Empty Re: need help to improve my tournaments

Post  Sponsored content


Sponsored content


Back to top Go down

Back to top

- Similar topics

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum