T9A OFCC 2018

[TheBeninator]

2018 The Ninth Age OFCC

Hello fellow wargamers. I am happy to announce to you the 2018 OFCC T9A event  in Vancouver Washington on August 25th and 26th!

This event will contain massive monsters, hordes of minions, hardened generals, and epic battles. Here are some links that you may find useful:

Tickets: http://www.ordofanaticus.com/store/product/46-2018-ofcc-9th-age-event-sat-and-sun/

Tournament Packet: (OFCC 2018 in my signature)

T9A Rules: https://www.the-ninth-age.com/filebase/index.php?file/478/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/245271142649834/

 

Never played T9A before?

The Ninth Age (T9A) is a rank & file fantasy wargame inspired by the world of Warhammer Fantasy. The rules play very similar to WHFB 8th edition, and all armies are still compatible with T9A. The game has various rules changes to help clarify rules, speed up game play, and balance out some of the uber powerful units of old. Additionally, T9A has brought in new ideas, concepts, unit designs, and special rules to help spice up the experience. The best part about T9A is that you have freedom to use whatever models from whichever company you wish. Finally, all the rules are, and will remain, free! 

Event Structure:

This event is a singles event utilising Swiss style match-ups. Initial matchups will be determined randomly. Every round will have a new deployment type, a new secondary objective, and a new special rule. Scoring will be based on official T9A scoring from the rulebook. We will do our best to make sure you get to play people you have never played before to make this an event to remember!

Event Rules:

At OFCC we want to provide you with a great wargaming experience. In order to ensure this, we ask of our players to bring a good attitude, to have good sportsmanship, and to relax and have a good time! Being a premiere event, we require all armies to have a minimum of 3-colours for all models, and at least some form of basing (no black plastic please). If you are crunched for time and are worried you will not be ready in time please let me know ASAP, life happens :D. We will be using the 0.204.2 BETA rulebook and all associated armybooks and paths of magic associated. If you are interested in bringing a home-brew army from one of the various home-brew projects in The Ninth Age, let me know and we will figure something out.

Awards:

Outside of the obvious award of having a great time in an awesome event, we will be competing for 3 main trophies.

Best General: This will be determined by the highest cumulative BP scoring player through the 5 game series

Best Painted: This will be determined by your peers, with a scoring system of it's own

Best Sportsmanship: Quite literally THE BEST prize of all. Best Sportsmanship will be determined through a combination of individual match scores (you score your opponent) and favourite opponent badges (an extra badge for making someones day). This is probably the hardest prize to achieve as it requires you to not only play a good match for your opponent, but to take bad rolls and losses well, and to also be humble about good rolls and crushing victories.

A special prize goes to the winner of our Haiku contest, see tournament packet for details.

Lists:

This tournament is a 4500 point tournament following the list building guidelines for each army-book. You are expected to bring a printed list for yourself and for each of your opponents (6 in total). 

 

For other details, check out the packet or join us on the thread. Hope to see you there!

 

 

[Andrewgeddon]

Hooray for 9th Age announcement!

What's the threshold for this to be eligible for a doubles tournament? I love the idea personally, but I can't help but worry that it might limit participation, especially if someone is unable to secure a partner?

[Fixxer]

For the record, I would not  be interested in a doubles tourney as I find doubles in tabletop games, not designed for doubles, to be wonky as heck. Also, being a new game system, we could encounter some rule interactions when there are 4 different factions on the table that could slow the game down or create situations that arent easily resolved except by a TO judgement.

I find the 9th age already cumbersome as it is... 

Just my opinion... :) 

 

[Obsidiananubis]

I agree with Fixxer, with the new Beta 2.0 rule system I would prefer standard one on one matches.

 

Best,

Anubis

[TheBeninator]

Hey guys, great feedback. I guess by doubles I mean having two people who forum a single scoring group, then each player from that group pairs up against a single player on another group (so basically, all the matches are 1v1). There was a considerable amount of interest in having teams again, much like the old WHFB days of 4 man teams, at the end of the last OFCC.

With just 2 person teams, I personally do not know what advantage that brings. For instance, in ETC style matching, you have team captains meet and hash out who plays who. Sort of a give and take, where you compromise on certain matchups to attain other match-ups. In a 2v2, there is no compromise. If team A and B are up against each other, each having players 1 and 2. Then the pairings will either be A1 vs B1 or A1 vs B2. This leaves you with a binary choice.

The benefit I see to playing as a group of two is having that comradery with your teammate, or sort of give and take relationship in battle-point accumulations. It also still does allow for planning on which of your teammates is going to play really risky, and which is going to try and conserve points, or what have you. Honestly, that is probably less to the point of the tournament, which is to have a good time, so perhaps introducing a mechanism where you are dissuaded from playing how you want to play is not a good thing.

Unpaired folks can always find a pairing mate, and I will always be the odd man out (even man in). This may or may not be a problem for personality confliction reasons, but I feel like the group of people we had last year all had amazing sportsmanship and were able to take big wins and big losses with a light heart and make the best of it.

Overall, teams of two is totally just a spitball idea right now, it may be that we really need to have teams of 3 to attempt teams at all. We can run any size tournament with singles, but I wanna see happen makes you all happy.

What we will not have this year is scenarios out of the home brew section. I am happy to say however, that the creator of that home brew section made revisions to all of the scenarios we played in 2017, based on your feedback. So good job!!

[splinx]

I would love a doubles tourney purely for the fact i would have 3 other folks to drink with at the table and the merriment would increase! :) I might have to bring two/three bottles of scotch this time if thats the case! :)

[Andrewgeddon]

What about a proper "doubles" event for Friday? Hell, even if we can get some casual games of "Triumph and Treachery" style 9th Age going on Friday, I think that would be fun (plus, they just released some "multiplayer" rules ala T&T on the last 9th Scroll).

My opinion (just my opinion) is that if Saturday / Sunday is a team event, we do the team aspect like 40K did last year: teams can form and earn extra points by doing "team stuff," like matching shirts, banners, stuff like that, but all games are handled strictly as a 1v1 tournament. Would allow people to get into the "team spirit" without any penalties to someone who doesn't have a team. I personally am very much against the idea of getting paired up with someone randomly if I'm unable to secure a teammate.

Also... any opinions about allowing "Grudge Matches" on day 1?

[TheBeninator]

Ahh! I like these ideas of team spirit! I have the impression that is closer to what people were wanting (I’ll have to wait to be corrected). I agree to keep games strictly 1v1, and with only teams of two, it would not really be any different than “team spirit”.

A fridays 2v2 prequel sounds rad, last year we set up pretty fast and just hung out for quite some time, I’d be down to get a couple games in.

What were you imagining for grudge matches? Something like you pick your opponent round 1? Those who don’t pick get out into the grinder “ie I pair them”

[splinx]

7 minutes ago, Andrewgeddon said:

What about a proper "doubles" event for Friday? Hell, even if we can get some casual games of "Triumph and Treachery" style 9th Age going on Friday, I think that would be fun (plus, they just released some "multiplayer" rules ala T&T on the last 9th Scroll).

My opinion (just my opinion) is that if Saturday / Sunday is a team event, we do the team aspect like 40K did last year: teams can form and earn extra points by doing "team stuff," like matching shirts, banners, stuff like that, but all games are handled strictly as a 1v1 tournament. Would allow people to get into the "team spirit" without any penalties to someone who doesn't have a team. I personally am very much against the idea of getting paired up with someone randomly if I'm unable to secure a teammate.

Also... any opinions about allowing "Grudge Matches" on day 1?

LOL looking at the folks who played last year most of us could find another teammate pretty easy i think. I don't think you would need to worry about being paired up with someone random Andrew! :)

 I would totally support 1 game of 2v2 grudge match over the weekend and then 1v1 games similar to the 40k team event where teams would choose who goes up against who etc. It would allow for some awesomely fun games and allow folks to either push themselves against a harder list or take a breather and have a more relaxing game against a deemed softer / more fluffy list. It would also allow teams to have a theme with their armies and challenge opponents in a grudge match (Of which i love the idea)! 

[Andrewgeddon]

11 minutes ago, TheBeninator said:

What were you imagining for grudge matches? Something like you pick your opponent round 1? Those who don’t pick get out into the grinder “ie I pair them”

Yep, exactly that!

 

9 minutes ago, splinx said:

LOL looking at the folks who played last year most of us could find another teammate pretty easy i think. I don't think you would need to worry about being paired up with someone random Andrew! :)

I think the problem is that requiring teams is some form of a restriction, and I'm against any kind of restriction on people coming and playing 9th Age, aside from requiring stuff be painted. We simply don't have the same numbers that WHFB used to bring. Hell, 40K is exponentially larger than 9th Age, and they have done await with the required teams. 

I don't think I would have a problem getting a team mate if we had to do teams. I think most people wouldn't. But someone might, which could mean a bad experience for someone at 9th Age OFCC, which I'm against. If Billy and Timmy show up for 9th Age without a team and are told they need to pair up because it's a team event and they are the only 2 people without teams, that could leave a bad taste in someone's mouth.

[splinx]

35 minutes ago, Andrewgeddon said:

Yep, exactly that!

 

I think the problem is that requiring teams is some form of a restriction, and I'm against any kind of restriction on people coming and playing 9th Age, aside from requiring stuff be painted. We simply don't have the same numbers that WHFB used to bring. Hell, 40K is exponentially larger than 9th Age, and they have done await with the required teams. 

I don't think I would have a problem getting a team mate if we had to do teams. I think most people wouldn't. But someone might, which could mean a bad experience for someone at 9th Age OFCC, which I'm against. If Billy and Timmy show up for 9th Age without a team and are told they need to pair up because it's a team event and they are the only 2 people without teams, that could leave a bad taste in someone's mouth.

But with everyone as good natured as they were last year i personally wouldn't have a problem pairing up with anyone who went? I totally agree about inclusiveness of the event but with us planning this so far in advance surely we can find a parter before then to enter the tournament? Or at least start asking around to start forming pairs? 

[TheBeninator]

So I think there are a couple ideas floating out here regarding teams. Just to be sure we are all on the same page:

1) The tournament is entered with Teams of two. These teams are encouraged to be thematic, include a banner, and generally talk collective trash to all other teams (in a good way). The teams will be paired up against other teams at each of the 5 matches. The two opposing teams will then decide (either via consensus, or a coin flip) who of that team will face who. At that point, the individual members of the team match up 1v1 vs their designated opponent. After the match, BPs from each of the team member's individual games are added to the team's total BP count. This then places that team in the overall team ranking for the next round of pairing.

2) The tournament is entered as individuals, with the option of having a "spirit team". This team is encouraged to be thematic, include a banner, and generally talk collective trash to all other teams and singles (in a good way). The members of each team act completely as individuals in a singles tournament setting (like last year), and your teammate's BP count has no bearing on how you are placed in the ranking. The teams are strictly for enjoyment purposes, and to earn sportsmanship gravitas which will give them an edge to win the most coveted award, the sportsmanship award.

I personally like option 2, as it can be easily accommodated regardless of total turnout, which we may not really know until a week before the event. It is also more of a half-step towards a true "team tournament", which is perhaps a better choice, as it keeps the tournament more about playing T9A, than everything else. Ultimately, I would love for it to evolve into an option 1. But this might be a good year to test the waters without committing completely.

[splinx]

I would vote 1! ;)

[Andrewgeddon]

27 minutes ago, splinx said:

But with everyone as good natured as they were last year i personally wouldn't have a problem pairing up with anyone who went? I totally agree about inclusiveness of the event but with us planning this so far in advance surely we can find a parter before then to enter the tournament? Or at least start asking around to start forming pairs? 

I’m just trying to give a different perspective on things. Let me stress that I have LOVED 9th Age at OFCC these past 2 years. I think we have an amazing community, and I think both Kacey and Ben put on great events, and that I’m absolutely exited for OFCC 2018.

You’re probably right, it’s probably all a non-issue. I think I’ve said my opinion and reasons behind them, so I’ll leave it at that.

Can’t wait for July!

16 minutes ago, TheBeninator said:

So I think there are a couple ideas floating out here regarding teams. Just to be sure we are all on the same page:

1) The tournament is entered with Teams of two. These teams are encouraged to be thematic, include a banner, and generally talk collective trash to all other teams (in a good way). The teams will be paired up against other teams at each of the 5 matches. The two opposing teams will then decide (either via consensus, or a coin flip) who of that team will face who. At that point, the individual members of the team match up 1v1 vs their designated opponent. After the match, BPs from each of the team member's individual games are added to the team's total BP count. This then places that team in the overall team ranking for the next round of pairing.

2) The tournament is entered as individuals, with the option of having a "spirit team". This team is encouraged to be thematic, include a banner, and generally talk collective trash to all other teams and singles (in a good way). The members of each team act completely as individuals in a singles tournament setting (like last year), and your teammate's BP count has no bearing on how you are placed in the ranking. The teams are strictly for enjoyment purposes, and to earn sportsmanship gravitas which will give them an edge to win the most coveted award, the sportsmanship award.

I personally like option 2, as it can be easily accommodated regardless of total turnout, which we may not really know until a week before the event. It is also more of a half-step towards a true "team tournament", which is perhaps a better choice, as it keeps the tournament more about playing T9A, than everything else. Ultimately, I would love for it to evolve into an option 1. But this might be a good year to test the waters without committing completely.

I would vote 2

 

[smashthedean]

There is also Option 3, which would be a modified Option 2, but the Teams could actually affect matchups to a degree. I believe you did matchups by hand last year, but if you use matchup software (or get me to do so), you can tell it to not match people up against teammates except as a last resort. This would make for a less competitive tournament as matchups would sometimes be a little messy if multiple teammates were close in rankings, but it would save folks coming from out of town *cough cough* from having to fight the folks they play on a regular basis and encourage a bit more of a mixup in matchups in that regard. You could probably also do this by hand, but it would be a little trickier maybe (or maybe not).

[TheBeninator]

That is an interesting idea. That certainly crept up as an issue last year through the matchmaking. I am totally down for utilizing some matchup software. Do you know of anything that allows you to use a matchmaking weight beyond the BP score, that takes into account something like whether or not folks are from the same area?

Could I seed the tournament with a bunch of "matches" that never actually occurred, but would essentially blacklist those players from playing each other? So for instance, when starting R1, the tournament bracket will already know that you have "already played" against the other folks from Bellingham?

I had downloaded and tried out the software you recommended last year, but the laptop I had brought was basically just a brick, so I made the rash decision to switch platforms from computerized to manual. I should have something more reliable this year.

[Sherbert]

On 1/15/2018 at 3:03 PM, TheBeninator said:

 

This years tournament will be held a bit later in the year than usual Aug 25th to 26th,

 

FUUUUUUUUUCK!

I will be out the country late august. I had been banking that OFCC would be in July so I thought everything would be good. god dammit.

[TheBeninator]

To all prospective attendees of OFCC, a fellow member, @Zeev brought up the idea of using Auxiliary lists for OFCC, which are essentially fan created content. @smashthedean had the idea of having auxiliary lists be compatible, so long as they pass a "balance test". I personally like these ideas, but this is your event, so if you wish to weigh in on the matter, please do!

The Aux book in reference seems like an under-performing book, which is a common opinion among the official T9A forums, combine that with a powerlevel filter, and I think we can eliminate the notion of "bringing broken stuff" from the equation, or so I hope.

 

[Andrewgeddon]

I think auxiliary armies sound great for OFCC! I know the WHFB side used to allow Dogs of War in years of old, despite it not being "official," and this feels like the same vein. 

[Andrewgeddon]

So who's going to be unlucky enough to be my team member, no matter which way we go? My "Best Sportsmanship" award last year might be debatable, but my "rock-paper-scissors" skills are unmatched! UNMATCHED I SAY!!!

[valourunbound]

I do like getting winning the coin toss. Hmmmmmmm

Did we actually decide on teams? I seem to have missed that.

[Andrewgeddon]

10 minutes ago, valourunbound said:

Did we actually decide on teams? I seem to have missed that.

No, but I like making assumptions. It's like the old saying goes:

"Making assumptions is a cool thing to do and never has any negative repercussions." - Thomas Jefferson (probably)

[TheBeninator]

It may make most sense to make the team aspect a "team spirit" setting for the following reasons:

1) It's for fun. Since teams of two really don't offer much "strategic advantage" due to the pairing conundrum, they are more symbolic than anything.

2) It could be separate from other awards. I think it would be great to add the team spirit award as a separate category, judged on how all-out you wish to go with your team! This will not have bearing on your scoring for best general, best painted, or best sport.

3) It is pretty consistent with OFCC culture/tradition. Teams, banners, warcries, highfives, drinking buddies, ect are pretty common tropes which are associated with the OFCC experience.

4) We are small, and teams have not been done in 2 years (and never in T9A). This would be a good stepping block to test the waters for the potential for an actual team event. We can learn from this year if it is a popular idea, or if we still just want to stick with the traditional setup.

5) The collective effort is typically greater than the sum of individual effort. To this I mean an individual may not bring a banner to OFCC, since its a ton of work. But having two people spread the cost/time in creating a banner may make that a reality. This may inspire some old time WHFB players to dust off their armies and come out the the field of battle, when they see that the T9A group can provide them with the things they use to love.

So in short, I want to support the concept of teams, in a purely opt-in environment.

 

[Andrewgeddon]

On ‎2‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 5:20 PM, TheBeninator said:

It may make most sense to make the team aspect a "team spirit" setting for the following reasons:

1) It's for fun. Since teams of two really don't offer much "strategic advantage" due to the pairing conundrum, they are more symbolic than anything.

2) It could be separate from other awards. I think it would be great to add the team spirit award as a separate category, judged on how all-out you wish to go with your team! This will not have bearing on your scoring for best general, best painted, or best sport.

3) It is pretty consistent with OFCC culture/tradition. Teams, banners, warcries, highfives, drinking buddies, ect are pretty common tropes which are associated with the OFCC experience.

4) We are small, and teams have not been done in 2 years (and never in T9A). This would be a good stepping block to test the waters for the potential for an actual team event. We can learn from this year if it is a popular idea, or if we still just want to stick with the traditional setup.

5) The collective effort is typically greater than the sum of individual effort. To this I mean an individual may not bring a banner to OFCC, since its a ton of work. But having two people spread the cost/time in creating a banner may make that a reality. This may inspire some old time WHFB players to dust off their armies and come out the the field of battle, when they see that the T9A group can provide them with the things they use to love.

So in short, I want to support the concept of teams, in a purely opt-in environment.

 

TL:DR - Ben fully supports us showing up to OFCC dressed as our favorite WWF tag team for extra points. Read you loud and clear dude.

[Andrewgeddon]

Since we're 2 months out of OFCC, any new info on the event?