The Battle Barn

The Winter season is here and what better way to celebrate everyone huddling indoors than to host a tournament!

Saturday December 10th The Battle Barn will host our first tournament in over a year. We took a long time off from running events, but those days are past and we look forward to hosting regular tournaments and events over the upcoming months.

Here's the rules for our upcoming tournament:

Location: Sacred Heart Club, 935 Park Street SW, Grand Rapids, MI 49504

Registration starts at 10am. First round begins at 11am. Probably 2 hours 15 minutes per round.

2000 points standard Force Organizational Chart
All models must be fully assembled and WYSIWYG and on their appropriate sized base.
There is no painting requirement.
No ForgeWorld units are allowed. Forgeworld models may be used to represent units and models found in the players regular codex.
The INAT will be used to rule on any disputes that arrise during the game. You can view this at http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/up/INATFAQv5.0.1.pdf
You must bring 5 copies of your army list. One for the judge, one for yourself and one for each of your opponents. Army Builder layout is preferred, but any typewritten list will work. Please try not to submit lists in pen or pencil

Event cost will be $15 for the tournament. 20 slots will be available to play. I can not guarantee spots will be open to those who don't pre-register, so please do! You can register via the following ways:

Send me a PM on the forum with your full name and contact number
Email me at bhuttenga (at) gmail (dot) com with your full name and contact number

There will be prizes for 1st and 2nd place. I will also be providing a price for Best Painted. While there is no painting requirement, I urge everyone to show up with a painted army to be judged for this prize. Also depending on the turnout, I will attempt to offer some random prizes throughout the day as well. All prizes will awarded in the form of gift certificates to a popular online store.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask away. I'll do my best to answer them in a timely fashion.

Confirmed Signups
Dale Mortensen
Eric Thomasma
Nate Schafer
Kenneth Pant
Jared Pant
Robert Pant
Teddy Doele

Please for the love of the hobby as a whole, at least put in MINIMUM painting requirements... I really hate seeing entirely plain plastic armies at these things. If people would put half as much effort into painting as they do into nitpicky min-maxing and honing in on the perfect army list, they would have a halfway decent paint job.

I will have a tournament with enforced painting later, but I figured this first one I wouldn't require anything. Turnout is almost always higher when no painting is required, and right now I'm more interested in getting people used to seeing tournaments than worrying about painting. Probably in January/February we may do a team tournament style tournament and that will probably enforce it, considering it's only 1000 points each.

Just a reminder about our tournament coming up in a few weeks. We've still got plenty of room yet, so sign up and come out to play!

I'll be working on the official rules and tournament missions this weekend and will have them all posted up as soon as possible.

With only 7 confirmed and 1 possible, I'm about ready to cancel this event. I need a minimum of 12 people to cover the hall rental and prize support.

I'm going to give people until the end of the weekend to sign up before making a final decision. Please, if you have an interest in playing let me know. Spread the word to people who don't always read the forums as well. The more people we can get the better the event will be, and the more prizes I can give out.

It may be too late, but I think at least 2-3 people I know would be happy to come. One definetly is coming but has not yet confirmed.

Added a post on Dakka Dakka advertising this tournament! I will be willing to pay for 2 or 3 people if it comes down to that to keep this event up!

Two more confirmed, emails should arrive soon.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel this. I do appreciate you trying to grab more people Teddy, but it's not looking like I may not even be able to run the event on that day. Even with the people you're bringing in, I think we'll still be fairly low on participation.

I'll try and plan something again for late January, and hopefully with the holidays done that will get a bit more of a response out of people. I'm sorry I am unable to to go through with the tournament this month, but I'm hoping the escalation league this winter and another tournament in January and probably March will bring out some good crowds.

You suck for canceling. Just saying. And how many times have we had people just show up before? Plenty. Like every tourney I have seen us run.

I'm getting a promotion at work and will probably have to work that weekend now.

Jeff is out of town that weekend which means there's no way for anyone to get into the Barn to load up all the tables/terrain and bring them to the hall and set it all up.

People need to not be lazy and just sign up. It's not hard. Do it here. Over the phone. By email. It doesn't matter. These events aren't free and I don't want to spend my own money to rent an area and provide prize support and then not have enough participants show up to cover those costs. Yes there's been events where people have just shown up. There is no guarantee of that happening though.

Once the holidays are done I'll see about doing something. Supposedly Grandiosity in Muskegon let's people host tournaments for free, so perhaps that would be a good location to check out.

Grandiosity has lots of space and I imagine they would not have a problem with a bunch of money, I mean people, from out of town coming in for a tournament (with notice, of course).

The issue I have had with Grandiosity is that they tend to be rather "free form" with their rules. Like not enforcing Games Workshop rules for Games Workshop tournaments, such as WYSIWYG or painting (or even fully assembled models). I have actually heard of them changing the outcome of games after they have been fought by changing victory conditions. So it would be best to make sure all of that is spelled out, up front, for any players from their normal community who might be coming in.

My brother goes in there very regularly, so I could ask him to check on setting up a tournament. My guess would be that he would prefer someone else actually run the tournament.

My brother talked to Grandiosity and they said that was fine with them. They might even dig up some scenery for the tables if they are bored.

Please let me know if we want to put something together. My son and I are in for it.

So with the tournament cancelled will the barn still be closed that Friday night?

I'm looking into that now. I'll know by tomorrow whether I have the night off or not.

Oi, I could bring 3-4 if you still wanted to rumble?

Is anyone interested in a tournament at Grandiosity? I checked with them and they are more than willing. In fact, if we give them a head count, they will even set the tables up with scenery.

For those who have not been there, they have a pretty good setup in their front room for playing. For those who have not been there recently, I hear they have expanded the gaming area.

If they build it I will come... errr play that is.

Me too

If someone wants to run something go ahead. The 10th is out for me.