The Spoils of War…gaming!

After my summer of 40k, I will show you what you can hope to win at the larger GTs that I played in.

Now this is just what I won, and of course the higher up you place the more loot you get. Now remember that these tournaments are huge, so they have upwards of 50, to 100, to even 200+ players, so the odds of anybody winning anything are quite low. Most tournaments pay out only a few players with them having awards for the Overall Winner (normally the biggest prize), the Best General, Best Sportsman, and Best Painting right behind them. So you can do very well, and stomp over 5-8 opponents and the odds are very good hat someone did even better than you. I remember the Las Vegas GT in 2007 when I managed to get up to table #2 on the last game and ended up winning my game thinking that I had a very good chance at finishing in the money, (the person who won on table #1 had several 0s for sportsmanship so they might win General, but little else), but the paint scores propelled several people ahead of me so that I came in 7^th.

So out of those large fields the odds of winning are not good even if you are a good player who is using a good army that is well painted. It is like the world series of poker, the best players rarely make it to the final table. The reason why that is is because there is a certain amount of luck that goes into poker as well as it does in 40k. You can be up against almost anything from bad dice rolls, a bad match-up, to things like the amount of terrain on the tables, and sometimes some things out of your control and unexpected might happen to you like playing against a super-slow player so you get only 3 turns in. At lot of major tournaments where you need to have nearly all massacres to win sometimes two of the best players will end up playing against each other and it will be a close game and they will end up in a draw or a minor win/loss knocking both of them out. So the bad news is that the odds are that you not win anything at a major tournament.

Now I do not want to discourage anyone from going to major GTs, but you have to be realistic of your chance of winning. I fly to events, and I pay for a hotel room, and even if I win every event that I play in, I will not come close to breaking even. So why do I do it? Well I like the competition, big tournament bring out the best players and I like the chance to play against them and test myself. I also like the atmosphere at these events where you have a lot of friends that you have met along the way at different tournaments and you meet up with them and hang out. So a large portion of the tournament experience is the social aspect of it.

So on to the prizes! Let me also tell you why I am doing it…it is just to show people what the prizes are like at tournaments and to give them an idea of what they are playing for. Most tournaments don’t really advertise what you have a chance at winning, and if they do they give you a vague number like $2000 to $3000 in prizes! 

Well, let’s go into details and here are the prizes that I won!

Wargames Con July 11^th and 12^th in Austin TX

Wargames Con was 4 games on Saturday where you were playing to see what bracket you were in day #2 broken down to winners bracket and losers bracket. Well, after a horrible game of rolling against Tyranids, and my first outing against Grey Knights, I found myself in the loser’s bracket.  I was joking with everyone on Saturday night that I am the "best bad player there", and true to form on day #2 I had 3 perfect games and massacred all 3 of my opponents to win the Best General of the RTT (losers bracket). Looking back at the results Xaereth (You can click on the link to see the picture of what he won at the bottom of his report) and I had the same record with a perfect battle score but I had 2 more sportsmanship points, and he had 2 more paint points for a tie. Most of the time Sports is the tie breaker, but I guess not at Wargames Con and he ended up with the RTT Overall winner, and I was Best General.

This is what I won:

A Hive Tyrant, a box of Gants and a Zoanthrope for a retail value=$111.50

Bay Area Open July 30^th-31^st San Francisco, CA.

So after 7 hard fought rounds I found myself at 5-0-2 and that was good enough for a 3^rd place finish. I was lucky that this event paid out for a “podium finish” at 3^rd place because most events do not pay that off. They did not have a sportsmanship award so perhaps they made up for it with rewarding the 3^rd place finisher.

Here is what I won:

The 3^rd place finisher got to pick something for $45 (not including tax) and so the Razorwing kit had just come out so that was just the right amount of money. Retail Value=$41.25

Nova Open August 27-28^th Arlington VA.

As most people know (or at least everyone on this blog should) that I finished second at the Nova Open. Now they have a structure where they break down the day one results into a lot of brackets for day #2 and the winners of those brackets each win a prize. Now I did not win my bracket (it being the bracket where everyone was 4-0 in day one), but I did get second place. So out of 200+ players I won the prize that they labeled “Second to One” 

Here is what I received:

A box of Grey Knights

A $50 Gift certificate from Game Workshop

An invitation to next year’s Nova Invitational

Retail Value=$85

Not Shown:I received a nice metal for being a tournament ace (those that went 4-0), and an invitation to GW's Throne of Skulls for next year.

Empire Games GT Sept. 10^th-11^th Mesa, AZ

So this is my local game stores 3^rd anniversary GT. They sold out pretty quick to all of the locals and they had 40+ people show up. After 5 hard fought games (I ended up playing the guys that finished in 2^nd to 5^th place and I was their only loss so I played the best players that were there) and I finished 5-0 and was the Overall winner.

Here is what I won:

In each round they had a prize for being the first to achieve a different goals, and I won the assassination prize for being the first to kill an HQ with your HQ when Draigo hacked down a librarian

 I won a $20 gift card and I took the direct-only techmarine.

Then for overall:

2 Warrior Boxes x$29.00

2 Wytch Boxes x$29.00

4 Raider Boxes x$33.00

2 Hellion Boxes x$25.00

3 Reaver Jetbike Boxes x$34.75

2 Ravager Boxes x$49.50

For a total of $501.25

So I find it funny that the event that I spent the least to enter and to go, to I won the biggest prize.

So there it is a glimpse into what you can win if you do well at GTs. Again, remember that all of the prizes do not come close to paying for what I ended up spending to travel to all of these events, but I don’t do it for the prizes, I do it for the women! (Per Dawson of the IVC)