Overview

On Sunday 28 th September 2003 , the SAD Wargamers held their first 40K tournament.
The tournament comprised of three 1500pt games in one day, the winner would be decided by points awarded for a number of categories.

• Generalship, awarded out of a maximum of 69 points, this was for gameplay alone. Broken down into the following.

• Massacre 20/0
• Decisive 17/3
• Marginal 13/7
• Draw 10/10 Kill enemy general +2 Pts
• Destroy most expensive unit/vehicle +1 Pt

This gave a maximum of 23 points per game to the winner, but even if you lost you could still get some tournament points.

• Painting/composition, awarded out of 50 points, this is the category where the painters who had made a real effort would pick up points, and those beardy/cheesey armies would score low. Part of this was where the players would also pick their favourite army and this made up part of the maximum score.
• Sportsmanship, each player ranked each of their opponents for fairness and enjoyment of the game, maximum 9 points total.

This made for a possible maximum total of 128 points.

Missions
There were 3 missions designed to test the full ability of the armies, specifically so that one type would not dominate the tournament, they were designed so that a balanced army would do better overall than a beardy army designed to fulfil one type of mission only.

• Cleanse mission, practically out of the 40K rule book.
• Modified Rescue mission, where each of the 6 counters were worth a number of extra victory points, from 50-250.
• Modified take and hold, where the object was again worth extra victory points, 500.

These missions had the variable victories as I did not believe that an army down to its last squad, against an opposition that had lost only a small part of theirs, should be able to snatch victory and grab 20 tournament points, chances are they might force a marginal loss or draw.

Painting and army composition
The tournament judge/bookkeeper/dogsbody/rules overfeind (Sean [me]), awarded a number of points (out of 45) for standard of painting, basing, banners etc and composition.

The other 5 points were awarded by the players themselves as they voted on which army they thought was best, the one with the most votes got the extra points, as it turned out this was a 2 way tie, between 2 beautifully painted armies.

Sportsmanship
Here each player ranked each of their opponents from 1-3 (3 being best) and these points were added to the players overall score.

Results

• Tournament winner Tony Francis Death Guard 89pts
• Second place Steve Drew Daemonhunters 82pts
• Best General Tony Francis 48pts
• Best army Paul Sheehan World Eaters
• Ben Palfreyman Alaitoc Eldar
• Most Sporting Paul Sheehan 9 pts

This time the tournament only comprised of 8 players, so I couldn’t take the mighty Dark Eldar out to play, just as well, everyone would have shouted FIX as I would surely have got the maximum 128pts.

All in all everyone enjoyed a really close set of battles and as a result we will be holding another in the spring, so any extra takers out there? Please contact SAD Wargamers.