25-09-2011 Independent club tournament, part one.

Usually shops run tournaments and events, the reason is quite obvious, a shop who sells warhammer and miniature wargames usually makes sure that it will have some tables and sometimes quite a lot of tables for the players who get to the shop to be able to play the games they buy from the shop, its a very understandable and successful method to satisfy the players need for gaming space and also promote the hobby.

What was different with this tournament is that it was held from independent clubs and not from a shop, while it isn't so rare for an independent club to run a miniature wargames tournament it isn't the most common thing, what is really an important thing here is that player clubs as Espairos (ΕΣΠΑΙΡΟΣ) and Battle bunker - the two clubs that organized the event are motivated completely by their love for the games, this the players know and they are attracted from it - hence the latest tournament attracted no less than 36 players and many people who just came to see the games making it one of the biggest ever tournaments to take place in Greece.

Espairos, one of the two hosting clubs for the tournament is an official gaming club for role playing games, boardgames and miniature wargames, they have their own gaming hall with multiple rooms ready for gaming. Espairos is the one of the oldest gaming clubs in Greece and in ten years of activity has housed more than three hundred souls that share the same passion for gaming. You can find their forum and community in the following website.

http://www.espairos.gr/portal/

The other gaming club is Battle bunker, a much more closed group of dedicated Warhammer 40k players, as far as we know they play only warhammer 40k (yes - they like it that much!) and their players participate regularly in tournaments in England and generally on tournaments abroad, this together with their dedication to 40k makes them also very good players.

I knew about the tournament some weeks ago and i even bought the new equipment i was planning to get for the blog a bit sooner so that i could use it on this tournament, yet while we all knew the tournament was going to happen on Sunday we were on the tournament from Saturday and so we saw a bit from the preparations from the organizers. You will just have to excuse me for the Video quality, i used to work on video once but my skills got rusty and they are in need of oil.

 Some amazing terrain was readied for the tournament, they even had an imperial... airport where if you missed your flight a salvage vehicle would quickly collect the wreck of your aircraft!

When a Necron Monolith gets its deep strike too deep this happens.

 John Kromidas, more commonly known as Crom places another terrain tile, easier to move around the terrain tiles also come textured for you (and Crom) to paint.

A very big box is the easiest way to carry the large amount of terrain pieces required for a tournament with 18 tables. Damage to the terrain pieces from getting them all together in a box like that would just give them more of a "rough" look and character.

The next day i think i got there last, not so much a good hint for a good reporter who usually gets in time in an event but nonetheless i got there, players were already taking their place in front of their tables and opposite their opponents and everyone was in a good mood, a great day of gaming was about to start.

Four players fielded Blood Angels, only one player fielded Space Wolves, no one came with Necrons (still waiting for their new codex, then the tournament will fill with the legions) one player came with Tau and one with Eldar while their dark and twisted brothers (the Dark Eldar) were selected by only two players - i expected more Dark Eldar, the same with Grey knights where only three players wore the grey shining armor - i guess all hunting down the one two Chaos Daemon Players who managed to escape their clutches in the first round pairs... 

Lets see some highlight photos from the first round games. 

Players Stefanos Kapetanakis (Blood Guzzler) and Leonidas Fragkos (Moskitokiller) share in a different way their enthusiasm about the tournament!.

I told you already Hive tyrant! - Bugs are to STAY in table number six! we don't care if you put out your tongue and try to have fun at us, you still going to stay in table number six!.

By the way, that's the first tournament that i have been where the tables actually had numbers on them for the players to find out quickly where they play. Shouldn't this be incorporated in other tournaments too?
+1 point for the organizers!

The Battlewagon to the right is named "Tombstone", the Battlewagon to the left is driven by far more optimistic orks (that is another kind of ork still not included in a codex) and instead of terrifying words use a deffrolla.
 

With this big hill in front of my vehicles what can i do?

Chronomancer (left) dodges a shot by making a slight move to his right and uses the remote control on his hand to command his Tyranids.

John's control wiring starts from his pocket and goes all the way up behind his head, like a Tech priest he is totally wired to his interior.

One of the space marines (in the center) is so pissed off that he had to step into the blue sticky goo inside the terrain piece that he has drawn his bolt pistol and threatens one of his battle brothers (possibly the one who told him to step into the goo)

Descent of angels comes in many forms, in this version a thematic army list that was surely interesting included three Stormraven Gunships, three units of Sanguinary guard and commander Dante.
 

This imperial Hurricane-class-Fan wasn't needed since the Hotel has quite good air condition, so we didn't turned it on and it was used only as a terrain piece.

Red Skull - Anestis Potouridis takes photos from the battlefield.

"And this my friend (the model that i point) is the Tau that will conquer the Galaxy"!

Aris "Elnis" and Yiannis "Crom"chose to display the bond they have in public.

Argiris Paltzoglou, a Tau player in the making came as a spectator in the tournament, the publicity this tournament got led many players to just come for a look.

Whatever his T-Shirt says...

This terrain piece is already big and tall, especially tall, with the extra base it got even taller, so much the worse for the small Tyranids below who search for a way to climb all the way up.

I'm telling you, my vehicle is just scenery!, ignore me (and my vehicle) and please... continue fighting.

Arion studies the battlefield against his Eldar opponent, he later commented that the 8 Grav tank list of his Eldar opponent was a difficult one, plus the fire dragons was a danger to his Land raider and he had to be careful to keep it away from their threat range, his answer to the fire dragon danger was good shooting priority so that he could eliminate the fire dragons quickly and from that point on he control the battlefield. 

Leuteris Gavalas, the Antipope returned to the call of the Waaagh after some time playing with Blood Angels and before them the Imperial guard. You can see more about his exploits in his blog:
http://cadia122.blogspot.com/

With the tournament's first round raging on i found time to ask Tasos Grigoriadis, Judge in the tournament and also organizer and representative of the Espairos gaming club some questions about the event.

I have to note here that Tasos has been extremely patient since he had to say the same things twice since the recording machine for the interview choose to do some dirty tricks and didn't recorded anything the first time Tasos made his comments, anyway lets see what Tasos had to say about the tournament.

Tasos Grigoriadis: The last two years i helped in running some tournaments - games fair for the Kaissa chain of stores, those tournaments brought twenty four players, in those tournaments we tried to bring as many players as we could, even if they had unpainted armies.

Giannis Kromidas and Aris Silogidis - the other two guys that participate as organizers in this tournament thought that we had to support the hobby because its future is not that bright, shops are closing, even the games fair's are getting fewer and we don't know how many tournaments are going to happen in the future, so we decided to held a tournament in the level of tournaments abroad, this meant that models should at least had three colors on them, modeled and painted bases and the well known "what you see is what you get" - things that were alien to Greek players. 

At the start we decided to have space for 32 players but participation forced us to increase the number to 40 players and finally 36 players attended the tournament with some last hour cancellations from some players, this participation is above what we expected when we started planning the event.

Invulnerable: About the future of the event?

Tasos Grigoriadis: We have already arranged for the next tournament to be held in 8th of January in this place with the goal to reach 48 players, we already have terrain and tables for 40 players (20 tables) and our ultimate goal is for 64 players - a number easily found in Europe, with the same quality in the terrain pieces or even better and with even more participation from the player community that should start to feel that the tournament is theirs too. It is my hope my one day we will be able to invite one of the big Europe's tournaments here in Athens. 

Invulnerable: How do you see the participation's gaming level?

Tasos Grigoriadis: It is quite strange today, we have some players that have european championship experience who are obviously two steps above the other players, it is expected when you play abroad with players there of a very good level that you will get some experience that you cant get here, they are for sure - i cant say "better" but they can manage their battles and the game strategy better and we even have players who are just playing their first tournament ever. 

Invulnerable: You also have several players from Battle Bunker, who play regularly in tournaments in Europe.

Tasos Grigoriadis: Yes, when you play in tournaments abroad with a hundred other players and you see events in such sizes the game itself change, it would be great to see something like this in Greece too. I hope what we are creating here to start traveling to other cities in Greece, like Patra and Salonika and wherever there is a gaming community we should try to go and support it with the materials we have here and with what they have themselves - and all this create a community that should be ready to accept the European challenge.

Last but not least a series of video footage from the tournament.

Arion and John (PapaJohn commenting their first game), Arion comments on his first battle are given above also and they are generally the same, Arion was troubled by the too many fire dragon units in the too many Papajohn's grav tanks.

Tasos Grigoriadis commenting the first round of the tournament. Tasos says that there aren't any grumbling from the players who are enjoying their game so far and they have the first results who are not surprising to Tasos - the ones who were supposed to win - are winning.

Leonidas Moskitokiller comments his first game against Hras Yiorgos Chaos Space Marines.
Generally Leonidas comments that it was a very interesting battle and that he saw from the beginning that his opponent would go from the start to take his objective point and for that he played a gun-line formation. Leonidas won by 1-0 but as he says if the game continued the result could be different.

Kostas Papahimonas and Anestis Potouridis comment their first game between Dark Eldar and Space wolves, generally the two players have enjoyed their game, the dice they say has been fair to both of them, Kostas thought in the first round that he would lose but as he says Anestis got a very bad first round and the game turned into a match. Anestis also comments that it was a very difficult game for him and also Kostas noted that due to Anestis multiple transports he could get a lot of pain tokens.

and finally the results for the first round are...

It really doesn't make any sense yet of who would get the tournament - all of the players who participated in the ETC team Greece have made victories, plus the two players from Battle bunker who commented that have european tournament experience: Arion Spiridis and Dimitris Maniatis have also made victories, actually players from battle bunker lost only one game and that was against Leuteris Galavas Orks.

The three players from Hoplon (the gaming guild from the city of Patra) have also made two victories, and the Imperial seals have also made two victories and one draw, none of the seals tasted defeat in their first round while the Games Corps gamers made only two draws in the start of the tournament, Hatzopoulos Yiannis made the first victory for the Espairos gaming club.  

Hope you enjoyed the first part of the Report.

See you soon with the next posts about this tournament.

For the Invulnerable.

Panayiotis.