*Stupid Poll mechanism! Note TWO Saturdays are available; the forum re-arranged my options!

POLL

Roll up roll up gentlemen! I've got us a nice little venue smack bang in the centre of Bristol 10 mins walk from Temple Meads train station and with parking on site: a sea scout hut just across the harbour with centre of town only 5 mins walk :-) The question now is WHEN can the majority of people make the event or would PREFER it to be? Please only choose from the options above as i've already slotted this one into the UK Epic Tourney Calendar and moving it to any other month would make little sense.

DETAILS

Timing
What's more I've even better news for you! Firstly hall hire is only £100-120 for the entire day from 9am till 11pm, as such we'll move terrain in and get set up at 9 and in order to save people really early morning drives/train journeys the event will start at 10am. Trains from london typically take less than 2hrs, i can't speak for anywhere else; Cardiff is just across the water.

Places
Although I'd like to do more the size of the venue and the fact that this is the first time I've run an event means i'm being realistic from the start; the event is limited to 16 places, probably on a first come first served basis. At least 12 people have already expressed a certain interest and Bristolians have recently been poking their nose into our epic games at the club so interest is rising! A member of Bristol Vanguard will be on hand to fill the gap if we have odd numbers.

Scoring
For the sake of simplicity and completeness we will be using the swiss scoring system already in use at the majority of Epic UK events. The accolades up for grabs are 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place, Most Sporting, Painting Awards, Dice of Dave/Consolation Prize! It would be nice to get some small trophy's made.

Format
3 3000pt games, 2 and a quarter hours to play each one; small break in between each. tea, coffee and biscuits provided; a fridge and microwave on hand for people to heat food and chill beer (you are free to bring your own :-) ) It's ambitious but gaming should be done by 6/6.30 and awards etc finished by 7. Please see below for something 'special' that will happen if people would like to stay on :-)

Gaming
Chroma is currently developing his Epic Scenarios Supplement; being a friendly tournament whereby players are going to be able to
1: use a larger variety of lists than normal (i.e. Tau, Tyranids, Necrons) in order to try them out in a a competition like environment
and
2: Use more than one army during the day (if they so wish; army's allocated to game 1,2 and 3 BEFORE the event begins)
i see this as a real opportunity to make the event leading into the years true competition a special one; as such (this can be discussed later) my current plan is that each of the 3 games will be a scenario as opposed to the standard Grand Tournament; my hope is that this will encourage different type of lists and a riskier air to the event  

Something Special!
  AKA: Hanging Out
Yes, yes; i know that the event will be running till at least 7pm but we've got the hall till 11! As such if anyone would like to stay late/overnight (cheap backpackers just round the corner) then several options unfold:
-Curry and booze after gaming; either home cooked at the hut or a restaurant.
-Visit pub
-sit around and play more games till late
-Do something and then meet at my place next day for even more friendly gaming.
If anyone would be interested in any of the above then let me know and we can discuss.

Cost
This event will require hall hire, a small amount of petrol to be used, nibbles and prizes. Additionally the Vanguard are investing in several sets of Epic Terrain (hand built in house :-)) of which a SMALL amount of the money raised will be offset. As can be expected this is a not for profit tournament, however with smaller numbers price goes up a little bit: expect to pay around £15 for a day (or more) of gaming.

All feedback welcome below.
Yrs,
Ryan

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I'm definitely there and chose not to vote for any of the options, since I can come any of the days and it make no difference to me.

I voted arbitratily but can make either Saturday.

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Well, I am definitely interested. While I cn probably make either Saturday, I would prefer the 30th.

However, while I like the idea of scenarios as an alternative to the usual tournament, I think we will have to put more thought into how this will work in practice.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

Any of those dates should be good for me Ryan

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Well; this is looking promising then :-) I may just arbitrarily pick one in that case! Anyone know what time of month FSA is planned for?

We can discuss how using different scenarios in a bit if people like? What are your initial thoughts on problems that may be encountered Gavin?
YRs,
R>

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Traditionally its the last weekend in Feb. So 27th/28th in 2010.

Well, I think the main issues will be trying to include potentially unbalanced lists and scenarios into a tournament setting.

Bridge tournaments overcome these imbalances by playing "Duplicate" games where the same hand is played by many people who are organised into NS and EW teams. There are two scoring systems here

• The 'best' score is calculated for a given game, and players get +ive or -ive points by comparing their actual result with the estimated score.
  
• Pairs are teamed up to play one side of each hand, and their scores are added up. For example, using an ambush scenario, one player would play a competitor as the target while the other would play another competitor as the "ambusher". Both scores would be added together to provide the 'team' score.

Unfortunately while either approach goes some way to allowing 'unbalanced' games to be played, there are still a number of issues to resolve

• We do not have an accurate way of establishing the 'best' score for any given game, which tends to rule out the first option. So we will probably have to adopt the second approach and work in 'pairs'. But this will double the trophies increasing costs etc.
  
• Teaming people up could be problematic - everyone would want to be paired with Dave Thomas, while few would risk being partnered with me and my infamous dice
  But here at least, we could use the previous season's championship scores as a guide, pairing the highest with the lowest - or perhaps pairing 'ranked' with 'unranked'.
  
• Given the limited number of games (3) in a day, we would ideally need 3x different scenarios for each pair of players, so we would need multiples of 6x competitors (either 12x, 18x or 24x competitors) to ensure that each pair played on opposite sides of each table.
  
• IMHO it is quite possible that one side of any given scenario will be easier to play than the other, or that certain races will favour particular sides in given scenarios. However, I am less sure just how big an impact these aspects would have over the competition as a whole (where the stronger / weaker player played the 'easier' side)
  
• Ensuring that the scenery is consistent across each set of tables for a given scenario could be awkward, but may not have a huge impact.
  
• Also I am unsure how the various races would work here - would the Mossinians Vs Dark Eldar produce the equivalent result as Eldar Vs Siegmasters (or plain IG)? So can we allow all races (Tyranids and Tau etc) or should the competiton be restricted to known races - or even particular races for each game?

All in all these points are not insurmountable, and it could provide an intruiging alternative to the usual approach, but they will need consideration. It would certainly increase the amount of planning and organisation required.

Out of interest, would this kind of approach appeal to people? What other things should be considered, included or prohibited?

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

For simplicities sake can we not all just play the same scenario per round? (randomising who will be attacker or defender before the game if appropriate)

That seems perfectly reasonable and the best way to do it to me. Also the lists and scenarios shouldn’t be thought of as being unbalanced, they might not be perfect but they should hopefully be close to being balanced.

Not all the "EPIC: Total War" scenarios are "attacker/defender" opposed victory conditions, some are mirrored conditions, just like the Tournament scenario.

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Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Both good points. On the scenarios, changing the scenery between rounds is both time consuming and somewhat of a logistical nightmare. It never happens in 'normal' tournaments for that very reason. Indeed, going down the "scenario" route actually gives the organiser the chance to generate purpose built terrain rather than having to rely on 'generic' stuff.

I have not deeply read into the scenarios, but even if there are mirrored or opposed conditions, that does not necessarily mean the scenario is 'balanced', that each side has the same chance of winning. Hence the proposal for teams of two players to play both sides of each scenario against other competitors which should actually provide the balance.

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

I'll pick up on this is the morning (currently 1am...) but balance, although important, is not so much an issue seeing as we're looking at a fairly imformal form of competition.   HOwever; i do agree that we cannot just arbitraily assign scenery and scenarios.  Instead this should be viewed as 3 friendly games between opponents both of who are playing to score top points within a tournament; both under tha understanding that one side may have a slight advantage. I beleive that in the end the best players will still come out top :-)
R>

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Excellent :-) Seeing as interest is there and the date seems fairly aribtrary THIS EVENT WILL BE RUNNING ON SATURDAY 23rd OF JANUARY 2010.  I'll confirm this with the venue today. I've made this decision so as there is longer between the Winter Warmer and FSA, thus going a little more lightly on peoples pockets ;-)

We can now continue to discuss the use of scenarios (possibly testing the idea out a the london event.
Is anybody interested in doing something after the tourney or shall we leave that as an informal arrangement?

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