NAFC 2023 feedback

[lunchmoney]

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[fire olli]

Great weekend even though my results were not the best. Everything was organised very well and it's a lovely venue.

My one big hatred was the pitches! Please change them! Especially as the game has evolved to have larger models with bigger bases.

[king_ghidra]

Great weekend even though my results were not the best. Everything was organised very well and it's a lovely venue.

My one big hatred was the pitches! Please change them! Especially as the game has evolved to have larger models with bigger bases.

Perfectly summed up. The GW Lizards are hard work even on the new size GW boards; on the ones at nafc it was really impractical.

Oh I also loved the website for draws and submitting results, super easy.

[deeferdan]

Hopefully not jumping on this too early - but more info on the pitches “hatred” would be helpful. What is the main issue around their impractical nature? The material? The size? Orientation? Legibility?

Harking back to previous editions of the event you may remember the tables were double width. This isn’t sustainable for with people’s backs or for an event of this size - so we had these pitches sized as large as possible to make them fit and allow us to still play long ways.
Would people be willing to play sideways?

All ideas greatly received. Believe me it really helps.

[fire olli]

The size of the Squares was the main issue for me, it became incredibly hard to work out what square some of the players were in due to base size. The material was ok but did ruffle up a bit when there was a lot of movement.

I cannot comment on previous years as this was my first year at the NAF championship. I do prefer to play long ways if I'm honest but would play sideways if it ment bigger boards.

[besters]

I have to say I think the pitches for the last 2 years, whilst not perfect, were a lot better than the double tables in previous years. I play with relatively small models, 3rd edition or equivalent, so that helps. appreciate not all can do that.

if the venue doesn't have slightly larger tables, I don't have a solution to the issue. I would prefer not to change the orientation of the pitches.

[gr4n0t4]

The problem with the pitches is the size, not a lot of solutions if you can fit as more people as possible, I chose my team because their size of the base. I recommend all the new coaches the same

[howlinggriffon]

I was using 3rd ed. minis on 25mm bases but for me the issue wasn't the pitch, it was the loose tablecloth underneath that rucked up and made the models unstable. If the tablecloth was removed, it wouldn't look as clean but the pitches wouldn't move around as much. I'd far rather struggle with the small sizes of the cloth pitch squares than having back issues from reaching across the large tables as we did before.

Apart from that niggle, I have no complaints at all. The event was very well run and prize support was fantastic. Having all the vendors there was really good.

[Stig]

Such a great event and the highlight of the BB year for us! Thanks for organising once again. The whole community is so welcoming to the young ones and there's so much generosity. we all loved it.

Just a thought - how about a simple evening meal option in the hotel for the guests staying over? One of the highlights for many is hanging out with everyone in the Orchard Hotel on Saturday evening, but everyone needs to order pizza or something. A sit-down meal in the restaurant is too boring, slow, and expensive. If we had an option of an extra £X to the booking for the restaurant to put on curry+rice or something simple, might people be interested? It seems odd that there are plenty of hungry hotel guests for the NAFC in the Orchard but an empty restaurant. I think there's a mismatch between the type of food on offer, and the type of food the guests want. That way, we could grab a plate around 7.30, fill up with curry/chilli etc, then get back to playing more games soon after.

[stewbacca]

Hopefully not jumping on this too early - but more info on the pitches “hatred” would be helpful. What is the main issue around their impractical nature? The material? The size? Orientation? Legibility?

Harking back to previous editions of the event you may remember the tables were double width. This isn’t sustainable for with people’s backs or for an event of this size - so we had these pitches sized as large as possible to make them fit and allow us to still play long ways.
Would people be willing to play sideways?

All ideas greatly received. Believe me it really helps.

I would be very willing to play sizeways if that allows for larger pitches, assuming it doesn't then mean reduced capacity for any reason.

[Stig]

I have to say I think the pitches for the last 2 years, whilst not perfect, were a lot better than the double tables in previous years. I play with relatively small models, 3rd edition or equivalent, so that helps. appreciate not all can do that.

if the venue doesn't have slightly larger tables, I don't have a solution to the issue. I would prefer not to change the orientation of the pitches.

I completely agree

[lunchmoney]

I would be very willing to play sizeways if that allows for larger pitches, assuming it doesn't then mean reduced capacity for any reason.

10 matches on each row of tables, if the pitches were turned sidewise ( ) it would mean fewer matches on each row.

[king_ghidra]

Hopefully not jumping on this too early - but more info on the pitches “hatred” would be helpful. What is the main issue around their impractical nature? The material? The size? Orientation? Legibility?

yeah just the small size of the pitch squares. just particularly bad with the 32mm bases and GW models tending to have bits sticking out/big guys

i was one of the back achers from previous years, so glad you fixed that in general the space between tables and pitches was perfect.

[Wotfudboy]

Feedback from me:
Awesome event. Awesome organisers & refs.
Sponsors: Great to have sponsor stands to browse in between rounds. I hope they all benefitted from the sponsorship. Perhaps even more will come next time?

Boards: I was one of the ones that complained about back ache due to big boards on very deep tables. For me, with my models smugly on 25mm bases I was perfectly happy not so suffer back ache, but I get that in the age of 32mm it's a pain for others... but it was like it last year so perhaps more warning to attendees not to choose the teams/races with massive miniatures if they can help it.

Timing: The only grumble I had (aside from the sandwiches which has been well covered) was the round timings and breaks in between. There were rounds were I saw people (even on the top table) still rolling dice when the timer had stopped... I even pointed this out to a ref and it was just shrugged off. Then there were hard deadline rounds like (as you would expect) round 6. The breaks in between rounds needed to be longer to allow stats and round processing/checking... I get that... but it felt a little too spread out. Breaks are good to have but I felt there was a lot of waiting around and there's only so many verbal match reports people are willing to listen to

Painted Teams: I didn't spot a single unpainted team this year... Good stuff!

Rosters: - Perhaps the NAF can sanction/partner with an online roster builder so that we all use the same tool and it can be easily checked?

[torquemada]

As a first time attendee, I thought the event was very well run, especially considering the sheer amount of people! Everything ran super smoothly, software was great, refs were great, just all around awesome. Only two minor points that could have been improved from me:

1. Pitches: square size was an issue but this has been mentioned before, and I understand the reason behind it. The other issue was the tablecloths beneath them that crumpled up a little which sometimes made minis move around a bit, which made the small square problem a bit worse. Some way of fixing the cloths or just using bare tables would have been enough I think.

2. Missing opponents: On day 1, my first opponent never turned up. This is obviously not the organisers' fault, and the refs immediately set about resolving the problem the second they were aware of it, but it did mean that first round we were a bit rushed and couldn't finish the game in time (and I know there was at least another table who had the same thing). Perhaps some form of on-the-day check-in or registration could prevent this? I assume there is a good reason behind not having an on-site registration but even just a check-in on the website or something would help.

All in all though, it was an amazing event! Thank you very much to the organisers and refs!