Bay Area Open Highlights & Results

 

Frontline Gaming, a San Francisco bay area game store located in Martinez, CA puts on the Bay Area Open, which the claim is the biggest West Coast gaming event. I dropped by this past Saturday and here are some highlights and results.

The event itself is held at the Contra Costa County Fairgrounds, about an hour from the San Francisco airport.  So this isn't some nice, Adepticon-style hotel event.  It is held in a facility meant for state fairs, but was entirely adequate. 

Inside all gaming was there under one roof.

There was a long table where 10 gamers who weren't in the 40K tournament were taking part in the narrative game of Apocalypse.  They were having a blast, which is the whole point of those games!

The team that puts the Bay Area Open on.  Frankie, Reece and Will.  They run Frontline Gaming which you can find here.

They are gamers and run the tournament for gamers.  There is one organizer who plays each game system, running that tournament, so they have someone who really understands the game they are running.

Here were how many attendees there were by event:

40K  92
Fantasy  32
Warmachine  16
FoW  9

To see photos from the event go here.

There were 40K, Fantasy, Flames of War and Warmachine/Hordes tournaments.  Complete results are here.  But here are the top 10 40K finishers.

The event used a lot of terrain from Keebler Studios.  It is very good looking terrain, that is made using soda cans, much like the armorcast versions.  But it is crazy expensive in my book.  Terrain pieces are die-cut MDF/Fiberboard and priced from $ 20 - $ 57.50.  I just think they are pricing themselves out of the market.  Better to get these made in China and cut the price in half.  I will be reviewing these shortly.

My favorite Marine army:

A great Tau army (Farsun Enclave) with an awesome battle board by Israel Sanchez.

Overall, the best army I saw was the Godzilla Orks, and I will be posting on them tomorrow.



Fantasy Results:

1	Josh Rosenstien		Skaven		5_0_0
2	Justin Rusk		Wood Elves		4_1_0
3	Michael Hengl		WoC		4_1_0

Just glad the guy with the loaded dice didn't win the event!  (I am not joking)

Gamers......


I congratulate the guys from Frontline for putting on a nice event.

Loken