The Big Game - L.A. Location wrap -up

Well, the Big Game was certainly an amazing event.  We had a smaller turnout for last year, and while I haven't even had the time to total points, we were around 450,000.  But what the game lacked in quantity, it certainly made up for in quality.  Here are some thoughts on the L.A. Battle Bunker game in The Big Game II.

WHAT WENT WELL

1)  The table set up was awesome.  Playing across the 8' width, rather than 4' works perfectly if you offset the tables as we did.  

2)  We had 4 different Battlezones, with a different Xenos race in each one.  So Zone 1 (4 tables) was all Orks.  Zone 2 (3 tables) was Chaos, and Zone 3 (4 tables) was Eldar.  We had a 4th zone that was a single table that was Tau and Necrons.  Everyone liked playing with similar forces. And it gave the game a lot of flavor.

3)  We capped points at 20,000 per person.  And actually, most of us agree even THAT is too many for one person in a timed game.  I know I felt I had too much stuff.

4)  Timed turns are a must and push people along.

5)  I had two helpers who handled registration, pizza, snacks and soda.  That took a lot of stress off of me and made registration go smoothly.

6)  We had prizes for Best Army, Best Scratchbuild, Best Warmachine, Best Titan and Best Unit.  Tom McBride donated prizes and everyone loved it.  

WHERE WE NEED TO IMPROVE

1)  We need to develop a story line for each game.

2)  We need to vary the tables and scenarios.  We have these great bridges and we need to use them to help create interesting table set ups.

3)  Keep focused on the quality of the game, not beating the records.

4)  We need to work on the GLOBAL game.  More locations, more coordination.

One question is why the much lower turnout in L.A. this year?  Well, a few reasons.

First, we didn't allow unpainted models this year and that was about 130,000 points last year.  We felt that if we are going to be the best event of its kind, we needed people to be serious about bringing painted armies.

Second, we had a couple players last year who brought 50-100,000 point armies.  And this year they each brought 20,000 points.

Finally, we didn't have a great turnout from the LA area GW stores, where last year they really pushed the game.

That being said, it was an amazing event, and we had Romeo and Kyle from 40K Radio out and they were awesome and did one of their podcasts at the game.

So, here are some photos (more to follow).


Table 1 (4 - 4x8 tables)  Orks vs. Imperium

Table 2 (3 - 4x8 tables)  Chaos vs. Imperium 

Table 3 (4 - 4x8 tables) Eldar vs. the Imperium   The Clash of Titans

Table 4 (4 - 4x8 tables) Tau/Necrons vs. the Imperium 

I am counting up the results tomorrow, but it was a huge win for Xenos in L.A.!

And we got on Games Workshop's main site:

More to come!

Alec