Maelstrom IX Disjunction... the TO's report

Maelstrom IX 'Disjunction' was held over the weekend 11/12 June.

32 players from both Wellington and all the way from the deepest darkest Palmerston North (or thereabouts, Levin is just a suburb of Palmy, amiright??) descended like a horde of... umm... wargamers to the local primary school hall to battle it out over 5 rounds.

The players pack, if you have not read it, is located here.

The armies that participated can be found also here.

Breakdown of armies attending
Imperial Knights: 2
Adepta Sororitas: 1
Astra Militarum: 2
SM: Grey Knights: 1
SM: Space Wolves: 1
SM: Blood Angel/BA successor: 2
SM: Dark Angel Ravenwing: 1
SM: Iron Hands: 2
SM: Imperial/Crimson Fists: 2
SM: White Scars: 2
Chaos Daemons: 2
Chaos Space Marines: 2
Khorne Daemonkin: 1
Necrons: 1
Dark Eldar: 1
Craft(y)world Eldar: 3
Tau: 2
Tyranid: 2
Orks: 2

So a 50/50 spread between the Holy Defenders of the Imperium and <insert Chaos/Xenos> scum.

Here are some photos from the event

Day 1 Round 1

Fantastic Ork-themed table

WTF are these old fishing line weights? JUST KIDDING... 

Monsty Tyranids Flying Circus

Imperial Knights getting confused about who is the enemy (tip: Not Imperial Space Marines!)

Non-crafty Eldar... lovely paint job!

A great table that was brought along

Aquila winner Sam Whitt's crazy Death Co

John Murrie's BLOODTHIRSTER

That's a nice looking Guard army if I do say so myself

2nd Place army... doing sneaky Xenos 'stuff'

Somethingorother is about to Get Real

Mighty Ape Hobbies supplied me with a copy of Imperial Knight: Renegade, which was raffled off with all money raised from this being donated to the Wellington City Mission.

The lucky, lucky ba,,,, winner - Brendan Dee

All I can say is...

The final results

And here is a picture of the prize winners

What went well

• Getting 32 40k players to a tournament in Wellington was a good result I think. Great support from the community, especially the core cadre of people that make the trip down from Palmerston North/Levin/Kapiti. Great stuff
• Getting some of the old warhorses of the local 40k community out and playing again - the comp aspect appeared to appeal, and they all seemed to have a good time
• Everyone attending appeared to embrace the 'just take one army' ethos, at least I didn't hear anyone complain they couldn't take their White Scar/Raven Guard/Tau/Eldar combo.
• Missions were good... the scoring appeared much more variable.
• After getting my head around the fact that 30 minutes to turn around the scores/next round matchups was different with 32 people as opposed to 20-odd, things got easier for me (second game started 15mins later than scheduled...)
• No dramas, minimal questions... and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

What will I change

• The scoresheet. Round 1 is always a challenge with the multiple VP's but I could actually make it easier for the players... so I will. Next time. 
• Comp scoring - in hindsight I think the penalty for the 3x Detachment/Formation might be too harsh. Nobody took 4 Detachments/Formations so.. maybe... ditch it?

Big thanks goes to Peter Dunn who supplied all the tables, plus cloths, and three tables worth of terrain. And for being the independent person that drew the raffle winner. Thanks too to all those that helped set up. who brought terrain, and helped pack up. These are probably the least fun aspects of a tournament weekend but having people able and willing help out really means a lot.

Call to Arms, run by the Wellington Warlords, is next in the Wellington calendar. The next tournament I will be running is Warpstorm IX on 29/30 October at the same location as Maelstrom (players pack, points etc. TBA).