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So I call up Somnicide and Shep and schedule a couple of games on the Westside of LA. I want to thank them for playing me with such short notice, because I have not played since the Wild West Shootout, I needed the practice. Also I saw from his batreps that Shep was starting Tyranids, and I wanted to take the new 'Nids out for a test drive. After getting in a couple of games against them, it is on to the Bash. Looking back on it, I will play 7 games over the weekend, so I am getting my money's worth out of this trip!
Somnicide vs. Blackmoor batrep
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/280382.page
I played in the Broadside Bash last year and I hated it, and I swore that I would not be coming back, but with the introduction of Vegas qualifying, and it is in my home town, I thought I would try them again.
It did go much smoother this time around. The hotel still did not have a parking lot, and I had to pay $11 a day on parking, but a lot of other things that made it a bad tournament were changed around. Last year they were doing construction on in the penthouse, and we were squished in a small room downstairs, but this time the penthouse was opened up and we had a great view of the Airport and the ocean, plus we had some room to breathe. Also the rounds were listed as 2 ½ hours, and last year it seemed like they shorted us some time, but this time it seemed like we had a full round.
Here are a few of this year's complaints:
Scoring system
What I did not like is the scoring system. I know the Pacific Marauders, and I know that they are very much into the painting and modeling aspect of the hobby, but I did not know that the scoring system was going to be that much dependant of soft scores. Battle points were only 39% of the score!!! It might be less than that because Massacres were 18 points; Major wins were 15 Minor wins were 13 with ties being 12 points and losses at 8. So no matter how bad you get crushed,
you still get 8 points, and there is almost no difference between a tie and a minor win. Dave Fay who came in 3rd place and won nothing had a good post below where he said that he ended up with 2 Massacres, 1 Major and 2 Minors for a total of 77, Brad who won Best General ended up with 3 Massacres and 2 draws for 78 points. Dave did much better that Brad did, but because of the crazy battle point system that rewards a draw almost as much as a minor win (and minor wins where not easy to get) Brad beat Dave by 1 point.
Terrain
They had thematic tables with always looks nice, but it made for uneven game play. They had jungle tables with no LOS blocking terrain, and city tables where there was no way to draw LOS.
Missions
I complained about these before the event, and they were able to change them a little. First off they did not have any Kill Point missions. Love them, or hate them, they are part of the game, and besides, just how many objective missions do you want to play? I lobbied them and Reesus helped out to get them to create one KP/Victory Point mission. The other thing was no Dawn of War deployments. This does not sound that bad, but know that your army always starts on the board, and you can exploit that. I could start with a wall of canifexes with scything talons, and I know I can just run them at you knowing that the would not be held in reserve.
Tables
The tables where at knee height and I am 6'5" and bending over for 5 games is not a whole lot of fun. I do not know if this can be helped, because the hotel uses stage parts for them, and I do not know if this can be changed.
So overall not too bad, hopefully they can fix what the problems they had this year, and make it better for next year. The big part of what they need to change is the scoring. All of the subjective soft scores are bad. Not only that, but Warhammer 40k is mostly a game, and to have the game aspect of it to be such a non-factor of who wins is not very good.
My initial reaction when I read the scoring was that I should work on my pre-heresy Thousand Sons. They would score high on Painting/Theme and that would go a long way to help me win. I will work on them over the summer, so next year I will be in great shape for the Broadside Bash. (Although I always perform poorly when my opponents score me on sports/comp). I must be quite a jerk to play!!!). The mistake I make though was not to play my chaos. It comps better because it is a MEQ army, and it is painted much better.
