I’ve been running tournaments for about three years but last weekend I felt like I was doing my first event all over again. It’s been a bit of a journey to launch the Field of Kings so finally getting people onto the tables and playing felt amazing. Although I was not without a twinge of nervousness that at least one person wouldn’t have read the pack (super important for this event – you read it, and the army lists, here).
I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to play, as I wanted to see how people reacted to the scenarios and spend my time looking at what people had brought along to demonstrate the theme in their armies. Interestingly, of the eight players who attended half of the armies were human and three were drawn from the former order of the Brotherhood. I think the theme, in and of itself, might have nudged one or two people in a particular direction when it came to choosing factions.
The Kingdoms of Men army that attended was composed of undead, which I thought played with the theme nicely and made me think of those scenes from the Pirates of the Caribbean that cut between the pirates being human and skeletons as the moon reveals their cursed forms. It was an interpretation that landed Andy Marshall in second place overall, not to mention his beautiful king model and some lovely banner work, along side some strong gaming skills.
Andy was pipped to the post by Simon T’s Order of the Green Lady army, that he had pulled together for the event. Some busy bases framed the army marching to war over the corpses of fallen warriors and a well developed back story put Simon over the edge and into first place. What made my day was that Simon and Andy weren’t the only ones who had leant into the theme in some way or another. Both the Brothermark armies had great King and Bodyguard combos that showed clear connections to one another, and the ogres had been scavenging Basilean battlefields to craft a nice-looking Bodyguard. All in all, I was really impressed with the engagement on the hobby front.
The homebrew scenarios seemed to be well received. I’m please with that because I wanted to build scenarios that both rewarded playing out the story but also didn’t break the natural balance of Kings of War. I like to think I achieved that balance in the second themed scenario (confusingly the third game of the day) but not quite so much in the first themed scenario. There was still balance, but one of the key thematic objectives, capturing the enemy standard, was too easy to avoid doing, so only one person did it! With the benefit of hindsight I probably should have realised this might happen and find a way to disincentivise it – a future me issue.
What was really interesting was that most of the players were experienced players, I had thought this event would appeal to less experienced players which is why I set the points level quite low. The unusual points limit of 1,600 turned out to be an interesting challenge in itself. Combining that with the scenarios made the whole package feel a bit different and brought a new challenge, which I felt was reflected in players’ choices in their army lists.
I decided to take my Halflings for the spare list and give an engineer a try. Trying out a new model and some new synergies in my army was really enjoyable, and although the games might not have gone my way with a loss and two draws, I certainly had a lot of fun, which I believe was shared by other attendees.
So far, I’ve had some really positive feedback, and there’s definitely some lessons to be learned. I can’t thank the players enough for engaging with the spirit of the day and providing some constructive thoughts on how the event could be improved. Those comments have mainly been around the hobby scoring. On the day, as I feverishly tried to judge the relatively small number of entries for that component, I knew that having only a few more players would have made that part a much bigger ask. So, there is definitely something I need to have more of a think around.
I’ve already decided I will be running another one of these events next year, but the edition change means I’m going to take a bit of time before announcing times as the pack will need some work. That being said, a theme is already starting to call to me like demon screaming in a fiery fridge, and I can’t help but ask myself who am I gonna’ call.
That’s all for now. Have a great week.
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