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May 12th and May 13th Ambassadorial Grand Tournament in Lakewood, WA


Lord Hanaur

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The time of reckoning has arrived, worthy Ambassadors.  Registration began March 3rd.  We  gave advance notice to give everyone a fair chance to get their Ambassadorship of choice.

Our website is updated for the 7th Annual Ambassadorial Grand Tournament:   https://www.40kambassadors.com/.

Where to vote for things related to the tournament:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/668851529902030/

The Website is where you will find all the mission updates, tournament rules, list building guidelines, previous winning lists and even the archive of our previous winners; plus a lot more.

While it is an ITC event, it is unlike others of its kind in many ways.  It also has tradition and a history.  Enjoy it.  Be a part of it.

It is critical that Ambassadors register early.  Why?  Because when you register, you choose the three Codex's you would most wish to be the Ambassador for, and then an Ambassador is selected to represent each Codex.  Only one Ambassador is worthy to represent their faction in their respective brackets, so make certain to select all of those you are able to represent and register as quickly as you physically can!  Once na Ambasadorship is gone, it is gone.  In this way, no Ambassador will negotiate with the same enemy force twice.  This encourages a more all comers approach.

This event does not spare any expense.  The Ambassadors we choose will all be given gifts for attending.  Snacks and drinks will be provided to the Ambassadors, at no cost, more than they can possibly consume.  Oh fortunate few.  We will be feeding your lordships an appetizing, full meal that befits your station for lunch during the first day of the tournament, so no cheap buffet.

We stream some of the games so that interested people can watch the negotiations among our Ambassadors.

We provided a masseuse at last years tournament, and we may do so again!

Beyond the many amenities that the Ambassadors will receive, the missions of the Ambassadorial GT are designed such that it encourages the full use of your Codex.  The intentional idea here is to see as much of the codex's as is possible on display.  You will find that the list construction rules support this important goal to create a more fun matchup and will offer some Ambassadors new opportunities.

Aside from the winners of the Grand Tournament, we raffle prizes to ensure that all Ambassadors who stay to the bitter end may yet receive their just rewards for bravery and commitment to the event.  More importantly, you need not win to be rewarded.  Paint and Sportsmanship will have a direct bearing on your chances to win so do your very best!

The end result will be battles between highly representative forces of their respective Codex, and the focus on good play among the Ambassadors.  Who has the advantage?  Well i think we'll leave that up to you, Ambassador...  

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Alrighty, just a reminder to those i haven't already text'd or who are not already on our Facebook page etc...  

Registration will start tonight (technically tomorrow) at 12:00.  Ambassadors are encouraged to select 2-3 forces they are able to be an Ambassador for, to ensure your place at this great event.  

 

https://www.40kambassadors.com/registration/

 

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We have about an hour left of day one Registration, but it looks like we have 16 who signed up the first day. Not too bad. That is a new record. Last record was 14. So yahoo. Thanks to everyone who registered thus far. Spread the word. One of the most interesting (and potentially exciting) things is that even though half the slots are filled, only 4 Factions are completely full which means we're seeing much more variety early. That's a testament somewhat to 8th Edition and how many more forces are totally playable. People aren't just excited about one or two. Anywho, just wanted to thank everyone for their great support and I hope this year is a blast for all of you.

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Just a fun heads up on whose going thus far:  

EDIT: updated!

https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/eventlanding/yvk3ma9l

 

Check the Website for real time updated information on which factions have been taken (on the right) and those that can still be taken (on the "First Choice" drop down)

https://www.40kambassadors.com/registration/

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  • 2 weeks later...

The genesis story (with shout outs) and our history.  It's long.  Read it when/if you want to, nothing tournament relevant here.  Just thought I'd share.

Our Grand Tournament was the result of people noticing that they were playing 3 (or 5) variations on the same army at tournaments.  The lack of variety was an issue for us (and is, if you look to the field at some larger tournaments).  It was often said back then that 70% of your opponents would be Codex: Space Marines, and they weren't wrong. The superiority of their basic troops was used as the standard against which all other armies sort of compared themselves.  Terms like MEQ (Marine Equivalent) spawned into our parlance, as we identified this as the point from which the deviations in the game should be evaluated.  Long and copious numbers of internet threads dealt with the math of 40K and they all recognized MEQ conventions.  It "made no sense" not to take X, because you would be facing an overwhelming amount of Y.  The question became:  If you knew you would not be facing three similar armies, how would your choices be different?  You'd have seen more variability in the weapon loadouts.  Unit compositions would have changed as well.  Yet because it was almost a certainty that 2/3 of your opponents wouldn't be that different, that counter-variety never expressed itself and "cool units" sat on shelves for mellinia.  What to do in order to increase the scope and variety of armies people played?  What to do in order to see more of the Codex's expressed?  What to do if you just wanted to play with more of your toys, but weren't allowed to in the practical sense by simple mathematical necessity?

There were additional frustrations than just the sameness of the opponent pool over time.  That wasn't the whole issue obviously but it got the ball rolling.  We've seen reasons for a different type of tournament in every edition.  We progressed into 5th Edition, and the bandwagon effect was ruining the experience for some people NOT on the bandwagon.  Codex creep was a word bandied about quite often and it culminated in the Blood Angels debacle (and to a lesser extent the Grey Knights, although to be fair, that Codex was really written with 6E in mind which was right around the corner). 

Many folks really wanted more representative armies and less spamming, starting a very long time ago.  One fun example was that variable turn limits were not a thing in 4th edition.  Eldar Wave Serpent spam became overwhelmingly effective in 4th Edition, and almost an auto win if they could go second, as an example.  In 5th/6th, the actual Serpent itself was just too good not to spam at competitive events even with variable game length.   I recall the strict rules of the OFCC, this very body, when I first attended one of their events in 4E:  33% troops requirement,  no named characters, and pretty much no spamming or your list would be sent back to you for correction.  No system is perfect, but it was the OFCC that highlighted the need for more representative armies to many of us.  That message has been muted over time but it was a great message.

We began the Ambassadorial Grand Tournament with just one basic goal:  To see the entire 40K universe in one place, in a representative way, using your codex.  There were plenty of tournaments you could go to for the same old same old, but we wanted it to be about the whole shebang.  Missions were written and tested and changed and tested again (and they have been many times since, including today, thanks to input).  Encouraging variety was job one.  We also had to make tough choices.  Our first couple tournaments included the requirement to fill all the slots in the force organization chart.  This had never been done anywhere I've been.  Later as the rules changed, it became about Formations and we realized that to maintain the variety we would have to alter things to make sure the armies would be representative of their parent.

Our first tournament was word of mouth.  No internet groups or anything, it was just door to door sales.  I literally had a sheet of paper I carried with me and i just asked people if they wanted to do this crazy thing, and if they did I took their number down and told them "look if we get enough people to pull it off, I'll collect the money from you then".  I wrote the missions which were not the same as they were later, and we had wacky terrain rules (which are now part of the game and have been since 6E dropped) to accommodate my lack of terrain.  we made it work.  I got a local game store to allow me to take the prize pool to them and they agreed to give me 20% more than I paid them, so we could expand the prize pool.  This was a big coup because I could offer more prizes than everyone paid!  Well as you can imagine, a couple people couldn't show up last minute and I turned my house into a tournament hall.  Well we ended up with 12 of the 16 codex's at the time.  I learned the pain of bracketology.  No nice apps to help me.  Justin Orion won it all with his Altaioc and the stage was set for future events.

The next tournament was a little more organized.  This time people had experienced it and kind of knew how fun it was.  I spent a fair amount of my tournament winnings on terrain to improve things but it was still me going around with a piece of paper and asking people what armies they had and going back to them and saying "okay here's who we have so far and can you switch to this or that one if we do this...  Again, kind of an exhausting process but everyone was now "into it" and cooperative.  Though the player pool had changed, some of the same players helped me recruit and we got it done.  THIS time players actually brought terrain.  The thought hadn't occurred to me to ask, but they just did it and I thought "well shoot why didn't I think of that!?".  We again got to 12 players, and for us when 8 was a normal turnout this was again a coup.  Again we used no internet really to advertise it since it was just a local thing we were doing.  Our second winner was Dan Biringer and his Tyranids.

It was after this tournament that I started to think bigger.  People were big fans of it now, and I thought it might enjoy broader appeal if i was to give it a more thorough go.  I distinctly recall the moment.  I was at Olympic Cards and Comics when I had an unlikely meeting with Westryder.  He overheard me talking about the OFCC and of course being a member he engaged me and introduced himself.  We talked about this tournament I was planning.  It was to be the 3rd one we did (and this was ironically to happen...May 12th, the same date this year will be!).  He got really excited about the concept of the tournament and became immediately helpful in encouraging it.  I partnered with Chris Ewick at the Game Matrix at this point and started to get sponsors to actually help us make this a much bigger deal (and not at my house).  This was the first year we provided the Ambassadors with their own dice, and thanks to a friend who believed in it (he now owns Jive Consulting) we were able to create the webpage that you all now know.  This would make it FAR easier to register people anywhere and this would alleviate my poor piece of paper from its duties, which had become ragged.  We didn't get things done in enough time to REALLY promote it "out there" as we have since BUT it was the big turning point for me and the stage was set.  Loren Tinsley attended and liked it so much, that he donated his $80 (raffled prize) back to the tournament so that we could use it for the next year!  he told me then that the tournament seemed like a major event to him!  I was ecstatic at the feedback.  I recall that as the moment when I said "okay, with enough time and prep, this could REALLY be the marquis event for our Olympia/Tacoma area".  Matthew Stephens won it with his Astra Militarum.

Word got around about the amount of the prize support we gave.  We had given away $1500 in some form or another with just 12 participants ($45 entry so...).  The sponsor support for such a small event was tremendous.  We now had the website and I went to the interwebz with the news of the next one early and often.  It was a full 17 months later before the 4th Ambassadorial Tournament happened however.  October 25th 2014.  We managed to fill all of the Codex's, and only had one no show.  In fact interest was so high and we filled up so fast that we had to actually reprogram the website (again thanks Jive Consulting) to accommodate a second bracket.  We weren't sure that we could actually fill the second one though so we offered people the chance to register for $5 for the second bracket and then if we got enough people, we would give them 48 hours to pay the rest and if not, we would refund the $5.  This worked well but in the end we did not get enough people for the second bracket.  There were 7 who had responded, so the idea that we could be a Grand tournament started to emerge...  More Codex's were beginning to appear and so it was also the first time we had to decide on what codex's to allow and Facebook took on a bigger role for me as it seemed the only good way to communicate with the players as quickly as I needed to.  Everyone was into it though so we had to start addressing this.  For the 4th Ambassadorial Grand Tournament we spent even more money on food, on snacks, on drinks and Fat Mats were given away as well!  It was pretty great.  Our winner was Chancey Rickey and his Tyranids.  Second time we've seen that army win!

October 10th 2015 we decided to make this the 5th Ambassadorial GRAND Tournament.  We took the plunge on cost and shot for the stars.  Registrations this time was even faster with 14 registered in the first couple of minutes.  We had 32 register at the end of the say.  We made it!  Our little local thing was now a bigger thing.  We had people from Seattle to Eastern Washington attending and the prizes got bigger with it.   This was the one that took the most out of me because there really was no ITC application that you could run it with, and I had to do it all.  I realized I was going to need some help if I was going to do it in the future, but one thing I was really proud of was that people who normally did not attend ANY tournaments, and had made a big deal out of letting me know that over the course of time, came to this one.  The number one comment was from Andrew Thorogood, who painted my Riptides (and the picture of those graces our Facebook Group).  He told me it was the only tournament he would attend.  That was pretty darn cool.  While it was one persons opinion of course, it felt great.  Sean Morgan's Eldar won it all and took home the Championship dice we give to all tournament champions.

It was about 15 months later before I threw the 6th Ambassadorial Grand Tournament.  This time I brought in a little help and this time i brought in a masseuse, and absolutely spoiled attendees.  The sponsors I secured were big time supporters of the idea, and the attendees benefit'd of course!  The ITC Application was used for the first time and it went off without a hitch.  Another first was the seeding round,  and that we didn't use the brackets per se.  This was also the very first tournament win for Nathan Billings who had not won a tournament before.  It was very cool to see our tournament be his first win, and he has gone on to become a formidable player.  Sean Morgan won his bracket and both walked away with their Championship dice..

Here we are, poised for another run at it,.  This time with an entirely updated and revised website.  It has made this year the simplest and easiest for me that it has ever been.  We have been able to be agile and responsive to input from the players.  It is a far cry from that ragged piece of paper i used to carry in my wallet all the time!

We began the Ambassadorial Grand Tournament with just one basic goal:  To see the entire 40K universe in one place, in a representative way, using your codex.  That goal is a constant and is true today.

I want to thank the countless (and it really is countless) numbers of people over the years who have helped with this because it is sort of a project that we all own.  While I am the organizer, many people have been very involved in helping advise me on the missions, on how we register people, what we do about army swaps, the website, bracketology, providing terrain and generally being supportive of the concept.  The collective efforts to make sure 40K tournaments don't all have to be the same have been what drives me to do this even though it has been a serious amount of work!

We won't solve cancer but we will have a ton o fun and give out massive prize support the likes of which you really never see.  Those are some goals worth fighting for!  Thanks for letting me reminisce.  I cannot wait to see who wins the next one and adds to the history of the event.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I arrived in Seattle and made it back home safely. I will take some time to read over the new FAQ. The Beta Rules for sure will not be implemented (Specifically "Battle Brothers" and also "Beta Tactical Reserves"). I will look at the rest tomorrow but as far as those two, they will not be adopted for this event specifically THIS year. Beta means beta. GW can guinea pig someone else's event. =)

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7 hours ago, Lord Hanaur said:

I arrived in Seattle and made it back home safely. I will take some time to read over the new FAQ. The Beta Rules for sure will not be implemented (Specifically "Battle Brothers" and also "Beta Tactical Reserves").

Wouldn't Battle Brothers not affect this event anyways?

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