League Night: We're Talkin' 'bout Playoffs

Iron Warriors

Abstract:  Summarizing the last five weeks of time I've been too lazy to post about the league and using it as an excuse to run pictures of the "Best Painted" entries, finished off by my thoughts of the last nine weeks.

An absence from the game store became prolonged due to a hurricane.  I came back to find that the league had kind of taken care of itself.  Mostly. 

...and Champion

I knew I had a vacation coming up, so I made arrangements to have scores posted on the store's forums.  That turned out to be a great move, because the scoresheet gnomes wandered off with them in the meantime.  Between those results and what I pieced together from the few recorded games I found for the extra third week, I deduced that the final standings for the top two tables looked something like this:

Group A
*Necrons
*Blood Angels

Kustom Dakkajet

Eldar
Chaos Space Marines

Group B
*Tau
*Imperial Guard
Tyranids
Grey Knights

The lower two tables did not exactly keep up with their games, which doesn't really surprise me as it was pretty common knowledge that they were out of the running for the league title (which is something I think I'll talk about in the next league post).  Moving on from that point, in an effort to keep folks interested and coming until the next start up, we began running increasingly narrative driven games for anyone not in the playoffs.  These were a big hit and led to cries for more.

My Word Bearers

The initial random draw produced groups that saw a few surprise contenders advance.  In particular, the 'Nids player sought me out and mentioned that after three straight games of getting roflstomped, he was ready to return to the kiddy table for a while.  The real contenders really separated themselves at this stage, and while some folks came up with surprise L's, they were mostly after the dust had settled and the cream of the crop had secured advancement to the next stage.  That stage, being the single elimination playoffs type of deal, had fixtures that looked a little something like this:

Necrons vs. Imperial Guard
Tau vs. Blood Angels

Red Orks Biker

At this point, scenarios became random again, and ended up having a hand in who would eventually advance.  The heavily static Guard played Crusade against the hyper resilient Necrons.  In a game with three objectives, the 'Crons got two of them, and made no mistakes.  He refused a flank, got into the lines fast enough, and swept away his competition.  Meanwhile, the Blood Angels and Tau played Purge the Alien.  All those rail rifles led to easy light vehicle punches and the BA player got held off just long enough to secure an 13-7 victory for the Tau.  Between the Drop Pods and the Razorbacks there were just too many easy targets for that much strength 10.

Interestingly, this set up the first rematch of the league, as the Tau and Necron player both came out of the same initial group.  I think that speaks to how strong the group was, as even the bottom two players were pretty solid.  After way too many jokes about how nervous they were about playing for all the hyperbolic marbles, they rolled up the straightforward "Emperor's Will" scenario.  The Tau successfully shot everything to death except the Wraiths.  The Wraiths then ate all the Tau.    Thus ended the first league.

Frankly, I'm kind of glad.  I know I initially wrote about how excited I was.  In retrospect, I really think I got the format wrong.  Like, REALLY, wrong.  As much as it appeals to me, as much as it works cleanly and efficiently, as much as it is a strong system, it is just plain wrong for this store.  Other stores may have the culture to do it and enjoy it, but the guys here want the freedom to play whomever they darn well please.  If there is a structured way to determine who won the whole thing, that's great, as long as it is very simple and doesn't get in the way of pitching the dice.  So that creates the challenge.  Can I get creative and be versatile in creating a whole new format that appeals to this kind of player?  I've got two weeks to figure that out.