First, the best and coolest news, my buddy Chappy brought home Second Best Painted for his army.
That is a great accomplishment under any circumstances, no doubt. But later when we talk about this particular army in more depth it will become clear just how incredible that really is. He is very proud of his accomplishment and rightfully so.
The final scores were on a small printed sheet and there were like 60 people all passing it around, so I am not 100% on this stuff but I am going to follow up with the TO directly to get the full results including as much information about lists and placings as possible.
From what I saw it looked like I came in either 6th or 7th in battle points, and came in 23rd overall (out of I believe 60 players). My sportsmanship scores were the third lowest in the tournament, and my paint score was not 'great' either.
So I have somewhat mixed feelings. On the whole I had a great time and had some great games against some very skilled players. My biggest "fear" - that I was really not that great a player and when I got thrown into a bigger pond I would get eaten - did not come to pass. The only game that I lost was to the Best Overall winner who won all five of his games handily, earning I believe 93 Battle Points out of a hundred.
My draw occurred in round 4 against a very well built and played Dark Eldar opponent in a pretty whacky table-quarters mission. It came down to one failed save preventing me from grabbing the third quarter and the win. That was a good game. And definitely convinced me of the value of Flicker Fields. Yeah.
My fifth game was, to be honest, not great. And I'm pretty confident that it almost entirely accounts for my low sportsmanship score. I won the game but it was a frustrating experience. I need to reflect on that game for a bit before I write too much more.
At the end of the day, I realized that I have a ways to go on my painting, and while I'm not sure one can "work on" their sportsmanship, I have room for growth in remaining positive when things get tough or when things aren't "right" from my perspective.
I don't know if my experience at a first GT is "typical" or not, but boy was it an eye opener. For the record, I am more convinced than ever that Win/Loss tournament formats and missions with "simple" structure but "strategic depth" (such as the the NOVA's missions) are the way to, but I am glad that I got an experience in this environment so I could see how it worked first hand.
I have a lot of respect for the tournament organizer, especially for essentially putting together an entire tournament in about 4 days. But man some of those missions were not balanced.
I will provide further details and batreps on my games at some point soon, and post up pics. For the moment, I need to crash out so I can be semi-conscious for work tomorrow at six, lol.
