Last Saturday (4th November) we ran our first 22 person 40K event, this was a great achievement for the store as our previous events had been capped at 12 people.
The larger event meant more players and the potential for things to go wrong, but we’re happy to say the event was a great success and we’re keen to run more in the future!
The guys at Black Crow Gaming did a YouTube review of the event, we think it went really well and are overall were really happy with the day.
So, what was the main feedback from the event?
Battle Ready Painting Requirement – previously we’d not had any painting requirement on our events, but as part of our plan to ‘level up’ events we’d brought in a Battle Ready requirement. This decision was formalised until after the tickets for the larger event were live so it did result in some players having to pull out as they couldn’t meet the requirement. We also had cases on the day that some of the armies were not battle ready, but as it was possible that people had not been aware of the requirement it was dealt with on the day.
Going forward we’ll ensure that it is very clear that Battle Ready is a requirement and we’ll also make sure that everyone is able to understand what battle ready is and who to contact if you’re not sure. If an army does appear on the day that doesn’t meet the requirement, we’ll let them take part (to avoid a bye round) but they will be excluded from prizing.
Terrain – terrain makes the game as the saying goes. We have a large terrain collection here at Langden Games but not all of it conforms to the classic “L’s” that are a stalwart of things such as ITC events.
Personally, I think that some of the soul of 40K has been lost with the expectation that all boards will conform to this (yes, I’m old, I miss the days of polystyrene cactus plants and such), hills and forests etc exist in the 41st millennium, however boards rarely show this… So, our intention will be to provide boards that are balanced and allow for a good game to be played, however they may not be the classic here’s some ruins that people expect. What we will do is make it very clear what terrain is and what’s its effect is in game.
Cost – The only other feedback was that the event was underpriced for the prize support, not something we were actually expecting to hear, but it’s something we’ll look at. Our philosophy is to keep entry costs for events as low as possible and to provide good prizing while using anything left to improve the terrain collection. If we do adjust the cost of events this would be used to invest into the stores terrain collection.
Looking Forward…
Our plan is to run more events, probably on a monthly basis (based on demand) we’re also keen to run some full weekend events and if there is the demand, we’ll look at running something bigger in the future!
Roll on 2024 we’re looking forward to running so really good events!
