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Recapping our Age of Sigmar: Fall Brawl Tournament
I sat down with Ben Wiley, a prominent member of the Denver Age of Sigmar community and the tournament organizer responsible for putting together all of our biggest and best Age of Sigmar tournaments at the store. We talked about running miniatures events, recap the results of the Fall Brawl tournament, and explore his upcoming plans for the Winter Slaughter, which will be his greatest undertaking yet! What goes into putting everything together for a big Age of Sigmar tournament like the Fall Brawl? When running a single-day event (referred to as an RTT, or Rogue Trader Tournament) There’s a lot to consider. How many players can I fit reasonably? Do I have enough mats? Enough terrain? How long should each round be to ensure enough time to play, but also make sure we aren’t here until midnight? The logistics can stack together, but taking it once piece at a time makes it easy enough--I enjoy putting these events on, so I’m up to the challenge! For someone new to Age of Sigmar tournaments, could you walk us through how the tournament plays out? What are the rounds/matches like, and how does scoring work? Absolutely! Each round is played over the course of 2 hours and forty-five minutes. We start early, so we can finish reasonably early, and there’s always a break for lunch. Pairings are random at first; round two you’ll play against someone with the same record as you; round three, you’ll play against someone with the same record, and usually someone close in score with you. We use the current handbook, and I’ll predetermine 3 scenarios--you’ll know those in advance, in case you want to read up or practice! Each scenario has it’s own scoring mechanics based on objective control, and a twist to make the game a bit more interesting if you’re playing from behind--pay close attention to these while playing! *Special note here: Attending your first tournament can be daunting, but I promise it shouldn’t be. Personally, I like to think of it less as a tournament, and more as an opportunity to play 3 full games, against armies you may not have seen before, in a welcoming and new-player friendly environment. Folks are there to compete, make no mistake, but not in a mean or rude way. We’re all here to have fun, and we want to make sure you do too! What were the highlights of the tournament? Cliché of course, but my number one highlight is always seeing new faces. We had a few players who were playing their first event, and they said they had a blast, which is always exactly what I’m hoping for. Secondarily, hearing “Ride of the Valkyries” play while a player charged in with 6 undead dragons was just an absolute delight! Who won the event, and what prizes did you give away to the top players? Our winner was Thomas Burgett, playing a Seraphon army featuring a wave of Raptadon Chargers (lizards riding lizards! Cats and dogs living together! Mass hysteria!). Prizes given away were a large-scale model to each player, along with a healthy amount of store credit to bolster their forces, all to the top 3 players. *Special Note: We gave away door prizes after every round, and a large door prize after the final round! How did the painting competition go? Who won, and how was the competition scored? The painting competition this year was very close in both categories. Events that I run are scored one of two ways--either I have each player cast a vote and the most votes win, or by panel. This year, I had a panel of 3 judges that viewed best painted army and best painted single model (players could only enter one or the other). Best painted army was won by Jacob Williams, with Kruelboyz Honorable mention to Steaphen Isaac, with Idoneth Deepkin Best painted model was won by Rowan Harper’s Droggz Da Sunchompa Honorable mention to Wyatt Moran’s Terrorgheist Both players received paint supplies for their victorious armies! *Special note: I do not require painting for my RTT events. Just come on out and play! It sounds like you’re planning to make this a yearly event. What do you have in mind for next year? Ideally, I’ll run three of these events each year: a Spring, Summer, and Fall Brawl! We want to keep the community engaged, and these events are a great opportunity to come out, meet new people, and play some great Age of Sigmar. What's the most fulfilling part of running an event like this for you? The community really makes these events special. Walking around through the tables, I get to see all kinds of cool moments: Critical die rolls Unexpected and Uncanny events New players grasping their army elements Seasoned players making strategic decisions that shape the tide of the game In some ways, I get to be part of every match, every round. It feels great. Tell me about the Winter Slaughter tournament you'll be running this winter! If Fall Brawl sounded like fun, boy oh boy are we in for it with Winter Slaughter! Winter Slaughter is a GT (Grand Tournament), held offsite to support a much larger crowd. More matches (5 rounds over 2 days) More prizes Swag-Bag door prizes for every entrant Best score? How about Best Overall General as well? Best in Grand Alliance An additional Painting Category (Splitting Single model into best infantry and best monster) More, More, More! We’ve got some awesome sponsors, a beautiful venue, and a fantastic community chomping to play, both competitive and casual. Come on out! *Special Note: As this is a larger event, we would like to see as many fully painted armies as possible- But if you can’t get painted, or need help, please please PLEASE reach out to me before you abandon all hope! All is not lost! We want to see you there! Painting Competition Entries I've included all the remaining miniatures and armies submitted to the competition because they're all too darn cool not to share! The remaining two armies submitted for best-painted army The remaining entries for best-painted miniature
Learn moreMagic: Final Fantasy Prerelease Primer
Edit: we had a fun and successful Final Fantasy prerelease weekend! Thank you to everyone who stopped by, whether to pick up pre-orders or play in our events. Other edits are in italics throughout the post. It's almost here! Magic the Gathering: Final Fantasy prerelease weekend starts on June 6th, just under a week away. If you haven't seen the card spoilers already, you can check them out on Scryfall here. There are some incredible cards in both the regular set and the commander set, and considering the regular set will be legal in 60-card formats like Standard and Modern, it's going to be interesting to see which cards get played in competitive formats. Because this is already the best-selling Magic set of all time, and because we're seeing incredible demand for this release, we wanted to go over what to expect this week, what's the same, what's different, and how to best navigate the Final Fantasy prerelease weekend. Pre-Orders Pre-orders for Final Fantasy have been closed since early May. We had Play Booster boxes available in our online shop but our remaining stock is reserved for in-store customers until Wizards of the Coast completes a reprint of the set. If you did pre-order, then you'll receive an email on Monday, June 2 with details for how to pick up your order. We'll have two lines going on Friday morning, one for customers who prepaid to swing by and pick up their items, and the regular line at the counter for anyone looking to shop. If you did not pre-order, then you'll have to stop by on Friday morning or throughout the weekend to pick up the items you're looking for. We'll have plenty of singles and Play Boosters, but are going to run out of Commander Decks, Collector Boosters, and Bundles pretty quickly so please plan your trip accordingly. In the future, for highly in-demand releases like these, we typically offer pre-orders ahead of time through our Discord server of nearly 2,000 members. All you need to do to enjoy these perks is to join our community here! Item Availability Because Final Fantasy is so popular, and because just about every store in the country got allocated down from our original order requests, some items are going to disappear fast this weekend. We tried really hard to get as much of this release as possible, but because allocations were so tight it's important to recognize the real constraints facing the following items: Collector Boosters - we're not selling full boxes on release. Instead, we're limiting sales to 6 packs per person. We got less than half of what we ordered and are expecting to be sold out before the end of Friday. Collector Commander Decks - two of the decks are available: Counter Blitz (FF X) and Scions & Spellcraft (FF XIV). The other two decks already sold out through pre-orders. Commander Decks - we'll be low on Limit Break and Scions & Spellcraft, but have a decent supply of the other two. These were the most pre-ordered items overall and will be limited on release. The good news, though, is commander decks aren't a single-print-run item so we will be restocking them in the future. Bundles - we got very few of these from our distributor, so they'll go fast. On the other hand, we have plenty of Play Booster Boxes to go around, and are opening a ton of singles from the main Final Fantasy set so you can get all the goodies you need to upgrade your decks, build new ones, and fill out your collection. Prerelease Events Unlike normal prerelease weekends, you must have a ticket ahead of time to attend our events. Eventlink doesn't enforce a player cap, but we only have 66 chairs, so we're selling tickets ahead of time to guarantee your admission to each event. If you buy a ticket, you have a spot in that event. Please be aware that tickets are nonrefundable. Buying a ticket is a commitment to attend an event that stops someone else from being able to play, so we want to make sure everyone who has a ticket will be attending the event. That said, if something comes up, please let us know and we'll do our best to work with you. You can purchase a ticket for the Friday night event, Saturday morning and evening events, and our Sunday Two-Headed Giant event right here from our website by clicking on the products below. Please note that both you and your partner must separately purchase a ticket for Two-Headed Giant so we can register both of your names. Our Sunday night event at 6p is walk-in registration only to end the weekend on a more casual note. Event tickets removed since they're in the past.In the future, visit our shop tab to preregister for our events. If we have spots leftover for any of our events, we'll open up registration to in-store customers about an hour ahead of the start time. For sold out events, we'll have a waiting list where you can put your name ahead of the event in case anyone no-shows or we end up with extra space. Promos We'll be giving out the crystal d10 dice to each person who attends our events this weekend while supplies last. It'll be given to you when you check in for the event, and you'll also receive a special token of Tim! One of our good friends made custom tokens and we chose to turn Tim into his very own 8-bit Final Fantasy persona. When you attend your 2nd prerelease of the weekend, we'll also be giving out commemorative Final Fantasy dice bags. These are extremely limited and will also go out on a first-come basis based on when you check in for your 2nd event, so please plan accordingly. Miscellaneous Events If you are not a Magic player and are looking to use our gaming space this weekend, please understand we expect to be absolutely packed and may not have room to accommodate you. Call the store ahead of your visit (303-482-1829) so we can let you know if there's room. Closing Thoughts It's going to be an incredible weekend! Please be courteous to one another and to our team, and have fun playing in the most highly-anticipated Magic the Gathering prerelease of all time! We're so excited to have you come game and shop with us, and will do our best to make sure it's a fun and successful weekend for all of us. PS, look at Vivi. Look at this cute art. This set is amazing!
Learn moreRecapping the Age of Sigmar: Winter Slaughter 2024
As some of you may know, we ran a two-day Age of Sigmar tournament on November 9th and 10th. It was an absolute blast of an event, and our first major offsite event, even in spite of an unfortunate snowstorm that blocked our Southern players from attending. Today I sat down with Ben, the Tournament Organizer of the event, to recap the weekend and look ahead to what he'll be running next time. Ben is a good friend of mine and previous employee of the store. He worked alongside our event manager to create a fun-filled 2 day Age of Sigmar event, designed to welcome both competitive and casual players alike. Running a big tournament like the Winter Slaughter is a ton of work. How did you get everything together? A lot of work, for sure! It actually started last year, when we ran our first winter 2-Day event. Folks had a lot of fun, but I felt like there was potential to do more, for a wider audience. That's really when the Winter Slaughter idea was born. First and foremost, I have to thank TEG for the continued support—there's no way this would have come together otherwise! The key was to help build a strong community—show up weekly, host bi-monthly events, really get folks excited. Eliminate as many barriers to entry as possible, and really make folks feel welcome. From a logistics standpoint, there was a lot to consider. What weekend is best? How many players do we want to support? What kind of venue do we need? A lot of action happens in the background to make these events successful, and you have to stay on task and organized to have a great event. Walk me through the event. How was it structured? What was the gameplay like? This was a 5-round event (3 on Saturday, 2 on Sunday), using Swiss pairings so that every player plays every round. Players had a set amount of time each round to setup and play their match, on a predetermined mission. Players were initially paired randomly, but afterwards, pairings are set by record, changing each round. You never play against the same opponent twice, and we had a healthy spread of different factions and playstyles. It was great to watch. What were your favorite moments from the event? I wouldn't really even know where to begin! As the organizer, I don't usually get to play (although I always have an army handy in case we have uneven rounds!). As such, I get to see a ton of gameplay—players rolling piles of dice at once, players making miraculous and critical plays, and getting to see folks who have never met before get to play and have fun. My favorite moment is when the community really comes together and focuses on playing the best game they can—it creates moments that you really can't see anywhere else. Who won, and what kind of prizes did you have? Prizes Prizes Prizes! Everyone loves prizes, and I like to hand out a wide spread of prizes to give everyone a chance to walk away with something cool and feel like they achieved something. We gave away: A door prize just for attending—custom dice and a 3 inch measuring widget. Prizes of various sizes between each round—models, gaming supplies, even a game mat. Prizes for best painted single model and best painted full army: This was really important to me—painting can be a huge barrier to entry, so we did not require painting for the event. However, I still wanted players who enjoy painting to be rewarded for their work. We had two beautifully painted full armies, and 6 entries for best painted single model. I had two community judges with the difficult task of choosing a winner for each category! The winner for best painted army was Chad Graham, with Daughters of Khaine. The winner for best painted single model was Jos Chang, who painted Katakros from his Ossiarch Bonereapers Army. And of course, prizes by record. We awarded prizes to first, second, and third place. Our top finishers as well as our painting winners also received a custom cup, engraved with the date of the event and the place they finished or award they won. Our First place winner was Thomas Burgett, playing Nighthaunt. Our Second place finish went to Wyatt Moran, playing Cities of Sigmar. Our Third place finish went to Matt Eimers, playing Lumineth Realmlords. For anyone who didn't win a raffle or one of the major prizes, we still had enough prizes to ensure every player (of 20) walked away with a token of our gratitude from the event. I like to give out a lot of prizes, and I have even more fun prizes in mind for next year including: Best in Faction for each Faction Best Sportsman Most Unique List It sounds like you’re planning to make this a yearly event. What do you have in mind for next year? I've got a lot I want to accomplish for this event—each year will be better than the last! Next year I want to increase the player cap, allow for more opportunities to play, and possibly expand to offer more games to play on Friday. With the community behind us, the sky is the limit for how great the event can be. Thanks so much for taking the time to cover the event! I had a great time running it, I love the community building we were able to do up to the event, and I hope to only see it grow in the coming year. Cheers! We had a ton of fun running this event, and can't wait to see the Age of Sigmar community continue to grow. We'll have more details to share about the events we're running alongside Ben next year, so stay tuned! If you can't get enough Age of Sigmar in your life, we also host open play every Wednesday night starting at 4p. Read more
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