Tournament Review - UK Nationals, 12 / 13 November 2016

Venue: Battlefield Hobbies, Daventry, Northamptonshire UK

Tournament Organiser: Mike Marshall, aided and abetted by Lee Battrick and Jen Truby, and sometimes helped sometimes hindered by Benjamin 'Joffrey' Crowe and Oz Capewell.

So where do you even start? This was, at 124 players, comfortably the biggest Malifaux tournament ever. As well as copious amounts of prize support Wyrd Games sent over Malifaux's lead designer Aaron Darland to take in the sights (Connor Truby in a frighteningly good Changeling costume...) and sounds (mostly Mike over the PA system). And enough glassware and wood and trophies were given away, it took as long to set them all up for the prize giving as it did for us players to pack away the terrain from 62 tables. 

I'm going to go ahead and say this - I have never had as much fun in a weekend's gaming in 18-odd years of attending events. Meeting up with so many awesome people and being able to hang out and chat was just amazing. There were so many people I didn't even get to catch up with everyone I wanted to! The atmosphere was great, even at the sharp end of the event when things were getting tense. 

Considering your average gamer is as easy to organise as a herd of cats, Mike and his team of dedicated helpers did a miraculous job of corralling us into each round and making it so simple. The technology failed meaning they had to read out the entire draw and print out sheets - handled without a problem. The packs had all the paperwork we needed and between the five staff, the results sheets were distributed quickly enough that we all had the scheme pools promptly at the start of every round. 

A special mention for the packs. Every single attendee received a set of 7 UK Nationals poker chips to use as Soulstones, along with a custom fate deck with some lovely art by the multi-talented Mr Truby. These will be in use for some time and are a lovely reminder of the weekend. 

The venue was great. Battlefield Hobbies deserves to be mentioned amongst the top venues in the country. The facilities were excellent, there was enough space for everyone even with so many people present, and the guys there kept us going all weekend. It's only problem is Daventry being in the arse end of nowhere, but that's not their fault! 

If I'm being picky, the packed lunches were actually a bit rubbish and Sunday's turned up two hours late. There was lots of swapping going on so everyone could get fed with something, but there was enough there that the less discerning wouldn't be going hungry. 

But this shouldn't detract from what was a monumentally awesome tournament. Absolutely fantastic. And you better believe I'll be there next year, if I have to pit fight for tickets. 

Mr Marshall, you and your little helpers (and Mr Crowe) did you and the UK proud. Thank you all. 

Runners and Riders

(Deep breath...)

Best Cosplay: Cy Dudley (alt Barbaros)

Best Table: Mick Green (Dreamer's Bedroom - he even put a 'tour guide' there so you found all the little touches and knew what to treat the terrain as!)

Best Display Board (Wanker): Mick Green

Best Painted (Judges Choice);

3rd Mick Green

2nd Johan Hoflin

1st Alessandro Meschieri 

Best Painted (Players Choice);

3rd Bonk, the Polish legend

2nd Haydn Smith 

1st Alessandro Meschieri

Best Sports: Stuart 'Snezzley' Snares. No, I don't know how either. He got 5 votes and was out on his own... The beer must have been strong. 

Oar of Shame: Nick Pratt (last place)

Spoon of 'So Crap They Couldn't Even Win the Oar': Gordon Barlow (next to last place)

Best Fixed List: Adam Hutchinson (Kaeris)

Best Trinity: Josh Fletcher (Ramos / Von Schill / Lilith)

Best Fixed Master: Ant Hoult (Rasputina)

Best Arcanists: George Hollingdale

Best Gremlin: Ricardo Nieri 

Best Guild: Matt Lewin 

Best Neverborn: Mark Elwood

Best Outcast: Graham Bursnell

Best Resurrectionist: Martin Jones

Best 10 Thunders: Joe Jackson 

3rd Place: Joel Henry (Zipp)

2nd Place: Ricardo Nieri (Gremlins)

1st Place: Mark Elwood (Neverborn)

Preview - Malifaux Nationals

So as I write this, at 0200 in the grip of insomnia, the greatest Malifaux tournament ever will start in a little over 6 hours. Bringing nearly 130 players together under the scrutiny of Mike Marshall, in my view the best tournament organiser out there and the only one who would be able to pull this off, it promises to be something truly special. Every year Mike manages to outdo himself and I have every confidence that he'll do it again. 

Through absolutely no fault of anyone else, my record with these events is unfortunately not good at all. I'm quite open about it - I suffer from bipolar disorder. Normally it's medicated and managed, but it does make me very susceptible to cracking under sustained pressure, and I always seem to get hit right in the personal life around Nationals time. I wasn't able to finish the first such event I attended, the M2GT in York, having had a complete breakdown at the start of day 2. And thanks to a really tough time at work, I didn't even make it up for the Nationals in 2015, something that still rankles even now. 

 

So how do things look heading into 2016? 

On paper, it's not exactly encouraging. I've just come out of one of the most stressful and traumatic times of my life. My medication had to be revised, I was and still am in therapy, and am consequently unemployed. Hell, I'm writing this at 2 in the morning because I can't sleep. 

My aim is just to finish the event. Hand in 7 sets of scores and get a final placing. With everything that's going on, and my history with the event, I'll be so chuffed if I can manage that. It sounds so simple but trust me, it won't be! 

Luckily I have reasons to be hopeful. The Nationals are in Daventry Northamptonshire this year, and I live a little under an hour away in the same county. So I can sleep in my own bed, which is a massive help. And I have one of my closest friends Claire, aka Eless and the Little Lass, staying with me and organising me. 

At this point I could go on about gaming aims. If everything was right, I was in a good frame of mind and things were settled at home, I reckon I could aim high. Without any false modesty, on my day I'm a match for anybody. Made the Masters last year, have held best in faction badges on the rankings site, and revel in my 7 tournament wins. I fought even the mighty Maria to a draw last time we played, and I used a Hoffman construct crew against an Outcast crew featuring Relic Hammers everywhere. The race for Best Guild at Nationals would be a 3-way shootout with Matt Lewin, Jamie Phillips and me. 

I've had to accept that it won't go like that. Best Guild is a 2-way shootout that I'm not in. I'll give it my best shot but I really don't care about my result. I just want to enjoy what will be a fantastic event and to do that I can't let the pressure to perform well build up. I'd love to do well, and sneak a top 20 finish that might just be enough to get me into the Masters for a second year. But it isn't going to happen. I'm making mistakes and at the moment don't have the concentration necessary to play at the cutting edge. So I'm going to play my normal hyper-aggressive game and just see where it takes me. Pressure off, and just play the game. That's easier said than done but this is something I've had to train myself to do over the last few months. 

 

On the table, I'll be running my beloved Guild. I've played all 8 Masters extensively but have settled on a core of 5. Guild McMourning and Perdita just haven't clicked with me for some reason. I don't know what it is or why, but I can't get on with them. And Lucius, whilst being thematically and fluff-wise one of the coolest Masters and a brilliant model, is just horribly underpowered. There is seemingly always a better option, which is heartbreaking, but I'm just not that keen to spend games pushing sh*t uphill! 

So that leaves me with a core of Lady Justice (face-ripper extraordinaire), Sonnia (the queen of the flaming Blast), Nellie Cochrane (latest tool in the box, and an amazing option), Hoffman (all the stompy robots) and Rollins Black (alt McCabe, the only Master in Guild capable of corralling enough models for table quarter strategies). I know each of these inside and out, I know what models I like to run with them and I know what they can achieve. 

Best of all, there's enough variety there that it keeps my opponent guessing. If they go elite, they risk running into Lady Justice and 4 Henchmen and struggling. Taking hundreds of models is good for activation control, but when Sonnia hits the table they could well wind up so much scattered ash. And Nellie now allows the Guild to play a control and denial game. 

The event is a fully painted event, which means models just sitting there primed or half finished can't be used. This has meant a lot of brush time for me - I actually don't enjoy painting at all, so I don't do much of it. There are models that I'd like to have available that aren't painted, so they have to stay on the shelf. No Mounted Guard, or Rail Golem for Hoffman, or Brutal Emissary, amongst others. But I still think that I've got enough ready to go and my core models are ready. 

Plans wise, there aren't many that can be made. At Nationals, strategies, schemes and deployments aren't released until just before the game, so you can't look at the pool and have something ready to go in advance. A key skill for Malifaux is being able to prepare on the fly and this event will certainly test that! 

Anyway. I'm going to try again for this wonderful 'sleep' thing that everyone else raves about. I'm really excited about playing tomorrow with so many awesome people present. It's going to be a blast. 

I'll try and post some updates as the day rolls on.