Considering that i’m running the club competition I’ve been rather slack with posting any updates on my own blog. In fairness this is mainly because i’ve been using other avenues to report on it in order to reach the actual participants.
That aside the Group stages have now finished so it seemed an apt time to post an update with a few stats.
Due to some drop outs after the start we ended up with 15 competitors and they played 20 games between them to find out who would progress to the Quarter Finals.
11 different warhammer armies were represented (out of a possible 16) with only Tomb Kings, Wood Elves, Daemons and Ogres not present. High Elves were the most popular army with 3 players taking them and Dark Elves and Warriors of Chaos following behind with 2 players taking both of them (interestingly I rate these 3 as some of the higher tier armies*).
There were definitely two groups that I would consider to have been the harder groups (B & C), if only due to the players who were in them. In Group B, Antonio is the club 2016/17 WHFB champion, Chris was the runner up that year and Steve was the 2015/16 runner up. In Group C, Neil is a persistent Semi-finalist and Luke also reached them in 2016/17. It is probably not a coincidence that 2 of the lower tier armies* that qualified, Beastmen and Bretonnians, were in the other groups. (I’ll add that the only reason I qualified with the Beastmen is that Alistair dropped the ball on his final game, mainly due to animosity messing up his plans!).
* When I say higher or lower tier, I rank them by the number of options or limitations on their builds and play styles. Warhammer is still very much a game of skill and good generals, who know their armies and the game rules inside and out, will normally win against less experienced opponents no matter what army they use.
So now the groups are done we have the knockouts to play. In a difference this year and to try and encourage players to work on that side of the hobby, armies that aren’t fully painted, only get half tournament points in the knockouts.
This immediately puts the following players at a disadvantage:
Quarter Final 1 – Luke (though he knows his army inside out so still stands a great chance of going though, especially as his opponent is using Bretonnians and had never used them before this competition).
Quarter Final 2 – Antonio (he has a grudge match with Neil, who lost against Antonio in last year in the Semi’s but beat him in the Kings of War final. Antonio is a great player though, so could possibly go through but Neil is also very good so this will be a great match).
Quarter Final 3 – Steve (he is using my High Elves and they are only half painted which immediately puts him at the disadvantage. Luke, although has only been playing 8th for a few years, has rapidly become a good player and knows and has played with his army far more that Steve with his, so has to be the odds on favourite. Steve’s normal army is also Warriors of Chaos, so perhaps he can use the knowledge of the army to his advantage).
So players have until the end of March to play their Quarter Finals. Let the (knockout) games begin!
backtothehammer 