Gencon Clash of Kings 2016 - double down

Holding tournaments at generic gaming conventions are a challenge.  They benefit from people traveling who might not come to a separate tournament, and they get a LOT of drive-by interest as people see the games being played.  However the cost can be significant ($60 for a 1-day badge to Gencon plus $10 for the tournament event ticket) - and there is so much else going on at the same time that many people find it difficult to dedicate an entire day to playing a single game.  Some other games generally don't have big tournaments outside of conventions, but since the really big miniature tournaments are either separate or combined with other tournaments (i.e. Adepticon), these struggle.

Case in point - the first Kings of War tournament at Gencon 2013 managed a whopping 2 players. They ended up doing a "general's challenge" - they played their normal armies, then for the second game they switched armies.  For the third they each drafted two of my demo armies and again played.

Because of the low turnout, I did not run one in 2014. But I gave it a chance again last year and we had 8 players.  This year we more than doubled that with 18 players, and all had a great time.  We even had a player coming all the way from New Zealand!

Gencon 2016 Clash of Kings Tournament Players

There was a minor hitch - I realized just a couple of weeks before the tournament that Gencon had only given us six tables and not the twelve we asked for.  So Pat from Mantic had to get them to get us more tables.  They did, but while the first six were all together off the main "corridor" in the gaming hall, the other two were five rows further back - which split up the tournament and kept it from feeling quite as cohesive as it should have.

This year the tournament was sponsored by Mantic and the Ohio War Kings - you can check out the prizes and awards below

Prizes and awards

I was a bit rushed to get everything ready due to a family emergency leaving me less than a day between getting home and leaving for Gencon, so there were some minor mistakes in the scenarios (missing the "Kill &" in the Kill & Pillage scenario name.  Having the margin of victory table in the packet but not in the scenario score sheets, etc.  But it came out ok in the end.

Round 1 is on!

Robert Roggs vs Sue Foreman

Todd Warren vs Thomas Ziegler

David Baker vs. Philip Schneider

Bill Foreman vs Ben Jankowski

Grant Fetter vs Chris Jankowski 

David Grieg vs Amy Stamper

Sam Punzel vs Kara Brown

Erich Trowbridge vs Andrew Summers

Ron Johnston vs Jon Carter

Of course, there were some pretty amazing armies on display.  The final scoring for Best Appearance had six people with only 1 point difference, and had to go to battle points to break the tie for the winner.

Kara Brown's Abyssal Dwarfs

Amy Stamper's Dwarfs

Bill Foreman's Empire of Dust

Todd Warren's Undead

Sue Foreman's Dwarfs

Robert Boggs''Elves

David Grieg's Ogres

Sam Punzel's Forces of the Abyss

Erich Trowbridge's Orcs

Ron Johnston's Elves

Andrew Summers' Brotherhood

Jon Carter's Forces of Nature

Grant Fetter's Abyssal Dwarfs

Chris Jankowski's Empire of Dust

Ben Jankowski's Twilight Kin

Thomas Ziegler's Ogres

David Baker's Ogres

Philip Schneider's Elves

Second round started and ended on time with no hitches.

The first row of tables

The second row

The third row in the back.

Andrew Summers vs Ron Johnston

Chris Jankowski vs Philip Schneider

Thomas Ziegler vs Sam Punzel

David Grieg vs Jon Carter

Dave Baker vs Todd Warren

Robert Boggs vs Bill Foreman

Erich Trowbridge vs Sue Foreman

Kara Brown vs Grant Fetter

Ben Jankowski vs Amy Stamper

The third round went very well.  We had one table with a bit of a hiccup.  They had a question and so paused their chess clock - but then took 20  minutes to find the answer when they should have called me over to settle it.  They were both inexperienced players, and on the back tables.  Other than that everything went very smoothly.

Philip Schneider vs Sam Punzel

Chris Jankowski vs Robert Boggs

Andrew Summers vs Ben Jankowski

Ron Johnston vs Sue Foreman

Thomas Ziegler vs Bill Foreman

Grant Fetter vs David Grieg (battle of the best painted armies)

Todd Warren (who likes to go on the other side of the table) vs Jon Carter

Erich Trowbridge vs Amy Stamper

David Baker vs Kara Brown on the top table (with the Origins Champion Roger Connor looking on)

After three hard fought rounds, we had our winners.

Grant Fetter - Best Appearance

Bill Foreman - Best Sportsman

Erich Trowbridge - Best General

Kara Brown - Overall Champion

You can see the final results on warscore.net.

A big thank you to all our players and we hope to grow it even bigger next year!

Because it is all fun and games.