Organisation issues at this year's Blood Bowl

Indigo · Post by **Indigo** » Tue May 25, 2004 8:47 am

I've read quite a few comments from people complaining that the organisation of the Blood Bowl was rubbish compared to last year's event and tbh I curious why people think that!

I thought it was great, and much better organised than last year. The only way it'll get better though is by collecting feedback, so post any GENUINE issues here and then we can send them en masse to GW for next year. Simply saying "GW can f**K off, I'm not going back" is only spiting yourself and accomplishes nothing

I'll try to amend this post to list the common issues, and hopefully an admin can trim it down to keep it on topic

By the way, post any GOOD points you liked here too so we can tell them what they did right.

traveller · Post by **traveller** » Tue May 25, 2004 9:50 am

I posted this at the BB forum before:

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Well, this was my first BB tournament at GWHQ. So i was quite excited to see this place.

First, what i like :
- Meeting a lot of different people i normal get in contact just by email or post.
- Great idea using this TBB shirt with nickname ! Thanks again to Paul for organising this !
- Playing with coachs, which liked the fun of playing, too !

- (edit) yes, giving out water was very kind ! Good idea !

now the not so good things:
- bad organisation of Friday night event. These different departments of GW should learn to communicate a bit... at last the Manager of Warhammer World explained his problem this way.
- Lack of room between game table. Damm narrow space to move or just to sit. Quite uncomfortable ! And dangerous for my minis, too !!
- All those announcements made by speaker in the middle of a game. Shorting the playtime even more. I dont want to knew, if someone lost his pullover... right at the beginning of my game, just in the time i start talking to my opponent coach. Hardly to understand anyway... but thats maybe my fault as being a German

- hm, the missing BB coins .... quite awkward for GW !
- the prices are poor. Sorry, but if someone could win a " limited " gutterrunner doing a Pubquiz and the awards of the Tournament were mostly "just" a piece of paper ?! ( Ok, the collector inside me is speaking here

). But this seems a " normal " thing at GW events like the Gamesdays. We spent a lot of time and money for painting the minis, then pay entrance to show our well paid stuff (free Advertisment for GW!) and finaly get maybe a piece of paper. Ok, some of the winner gets the Demons

. But, IMO , it would be ok to get a gift coupon for GW products ... like it was at the ancient GD times.

Recommendations for next BB:
- I would had expected a special sell stand for BB stuff and minis like at the DungeonBowl. Especial here at the GW HQ !! Or the possibility to buy some or one of new BB minis before they are released ? Maybe as a special event for BB tournament participants ?
- A printed certificate with name and entry number on it would be nice to remember this event, too.

Please dont mistunderstand, i´m not complaining about the whole event. Just there are some single parts i didnt like ! All together I had a lot of fun.

Traveller

Post by **DoubleSkulls** » Tue May 25, 2004 9:59 am

1) Friday night - when 50 guys all turn up to and want to chat/catch up/play a little BB and are forced to leave Bugmans. Not good.

2) No BB display of the latest minis and not enough stock available for the new stuff. 200 BBers and how many of the new minis were available?

3) Tables & space are an issue. I didn't mind all the kids wandering around.

4) GW gives out worse prizes than every other tournament I've been to. As one of the lucky quiz winners I was delighted with the Res GR, but how about one of the new teams for each of the winners? Or an early version of one of the new minis. Even giving all the winners a Troll/Varag/Griff would have been nice.

5) No coin. Shoddy organisation. Jake was talking about producing limited edition minis again - so maybe this will improve.

6) 2 weeks and still no results published.

7) Swiss systems - why can't GW use something that avoids people being draw against each other?

Sportsmanship made too much of a difference to overall rankings. Other than that I think the scoring system was okay. There is room for improvement, but I can live with it.

IMO much better than last year, and I was encouraged by Brian being available to listen to suggestions as to how to improve the tournament.

Emberbreeze · Post by **Emberbreeze** » Tue May 25, 2004 10:03 am

The only thing I thought was the games were a bit rushed.

We didn't really get the 5 minutes pre-game time aloted for meeting your opponent and that was all eating into game time. I had 1 game go to a draw where 5 more min would have seen an almost certain win.

Also how games which overrun were ended was a bit variable. some people kept playing until the offical came and made them stop, others just downed dice and refused to continue. So I guess I would like some offical clarification in the rules pack about how to finish a game which is over runnning.

In the one game I had which overrun we decided to stop straight away as we would have had to play 1 short turn each for me to score, so although it hurt, it was fair to stop. But I heard of one example where an action wasn't alowed to be finished for a chance to score.

I think it should be the current turn is allowed to be finished quickly with a hard cut off 5 min later to stop those people who are incapable of playing fast.

edit - also in the shop, a large BB display with large amounts of stock for all the teams. how hard is it to bring some stock up from warhammer world for the weekend , rather than everyone having to place a mail order. just a minor hassle

one last thing, a few points I was really happy with on my first trip to Nottingham (just to balance things)

I thought the food was good and lots of it
Bugmans is a great pub, wish it was my local (200 miles is a bit far a pint, even if it is cheaper than my current local )
The tournament was great on the whole, and any minor niggles didn't effect the enjoyment of the weekend
The sportmanship (not something GW can control anyway) was very high, I enjoyed every game (apart from when Lupus called IP on me )

McDeth · Post by **McDeth** » Tue May 25, 2004 10:48 am

1: 200 + people with money spend, and nothing to spend it on.
Poor stock meant virtually no varag's / Griff and trolls to spend it on.

2: Fanatic didn't take advantage by introducing a new figutre for sale also

3: Not enough space, got sick of the times people trying to get past and bumping into my back with their damn cases.

4: No damn coin, some pathtic casting excuse which still hasn't been rectified

5: Results not done properly

6: Poor rules administration meant that even though there was an attempt to clarify filling in the forms still losads didn't understand and didn't even fill them in correctly

Good points:

1: Great food

2: Great setting.

cant really count meeting tons of new guys and playing new people, renewing old aquaintances etc as thats a given with all tourneys

Conclusion: I'm debating whether to go again next year as i was more dissapointed than pleased with the organisation than last year, and last year it wasn't great either.

Princelucianus · Post by **Princelucianus** » Tue May 25, 2004 10:58 am

I still think official GW tourneys would benefit from a helping hand from other tourney organisors.
The Dungeonbowl would have had less problems (pre-organisational stuff) and some problems mentioned here would have been seen in advance by TO's. Germany and England both have several TO's who would love to help out,,,, I assume.

Lucy

Hangus · Post by **Hangus** » Tue May 25, 2004 11:23 am

i loved the even just minor problems ie comedy night and lack of space did not tarnish it for me.

A few things that did where the things after the event, i felt guttind when i saw the results sheet as i though i did well enought to finish well within the top hundred at the very least and then due to sportsmanship and finding out people forgot to mark painting and fluff boxes i was 109th. I think maybe people got confused with marking quality rather than keeping within the guidelines of yes it was painted with more than three colour and yes it was based and yes it had backgrounf fluff, i mean my background was on a A4 bit of paper with my name and team name and 300 words and was looking quite tattered by the end of it compared to the burnt round the edges, with photos and lamenated. Should that person get the seven points and me get nothing But fluff is fluff and i think that scoring system confuse a lot of people.

No coin was annoying i mean they had since febuary (even though the date was set well before that).

All in all i loved it and would go back, the oragnisers where friendly (although that ginger judge was a bit dodgy), handing out water was a nice gesture, dropping the quiz from final scores was a relief and the food was great.

Indigo · Post by **Indigo** » Tue May 25, 2004 12:52 pm

Hangus wrote:(although that ginger judge was a bit dodgy

And you wonder why you finished so low...

dantitan76 · Post by **dantitan76** » Tue May 25, 2004 2:41 pm

I Agree in all your points, but I couldnt understand a Word of the anouncement....
And the quality of the TV at the final.... well no comments.... (Apart of seeing more that Ginger guy watching the game...

)

Hangus · Post by **Hangus** » Tue May 25, 2004 2:48 pm

dantitan76 wrote:I Agree in all your points, but I couldnt understand a Word of the anouncement....
And the quality of the TV at the final.... well no comments.... (Apart of seeing more that Ginger guy watching the game...)

what the ginger guy who was picking his nose half way through and forgot he was being shown live in bugmans that ginger guy?

Indigo · Post by **Indigo** » Tue May 25, 2004 4:35 pm

I knew everyone was watching, it was my best ever goblin impression.

TiMuN · Post by **TiMuN** » Tue May 25, 2004 4:46 pm

Indigo wrote:I knew everyone was watching, it was my best ever goblin impression.

ok, like you needed to fake one ... ha!

Grumbledook · Post by **Grumbledook** » Tue May 25, 2004 5:06 pm

i'm wondering where mcdeth got his food from, the meals i was subjected too were so bad a halfling wouldn't eat them

Post by **Dave** » Tue May 25, 2004 5:47 pm

so how can you judge when you didn't eat them grumb ?? ...

Post by **Thadrin** » Tue May 25, 2004 6:04 pm

Oh come on Grum...that Peppered steak on the saturday evening was corking.

I thought the food was as good as ever.

BUT:

Those tables should be raised a good three inches. We need space for cases etc too.

GET RID OF THE DAMN KIDS. "Sorry - there's a tournament today." should surely be allowed? Too much space given over to WFB/40K/LotR tables and not enough for us.

Friday night. Simply bad organisation.

We still don't know where we finished...but I counted thirty or so people ahead of me in the rankings sheet we got who got fewer game points than me.

The coin? who cares? it was crap last year, it'll be crap this year. Surely an "advance preview" fig is the way to go (last year it should have been pro elves all round...this year...well, thats trickier, but they only need to release a team a year for that to work.)

I'll probably be back next year....and if they make the Ogres official in the Rules review I'll be bringing the Cannons with me.