Well, NH2018 is over and I've had a couple of days to recover from it.
First of all, thanks to everyone who attended. I hope that you all enjoyed yourselves and the games you played. It was great to see everyone, catch up with you and chat about your adventures on the tabletop. Turnout on day 1 was good, though with day 2 being Mother's Day, I can understand why it was a bit quieter.
I'd especially like to thank ToD and Kojibear. Without these two fine gentlemen going out of their way to drag my stuff to and from the venue we wouldn't have had half as much terrain to play on. Thank you!
I only got to play one game this year, mainly due to my own curmudgeonly behaviour and refusing to play 40K. Pikey led the charge in trying to get me to play, but he wasn't all that convincing. Several times he told me, "You really should play 8th edition." Though he always followed that with, "...but I'd rather be playing Bolt Action."
In the week leading up to the event I didn't get much sleep, so playing games would probably have finished me off anyway. It was great to see all your armies on the table though. There were a few WIP forces which are coming along nicely, some old classics and some I hadn't seen before. In my humble opinion, Pikey's army of Raven Guard deserves a special mention. It is an absolute thing of beauty. Hopefully we'll get to see even more painted models next year.
Terrain was a small issue, though again, thanks to the efforts of my chauffeurs, we seemed to have enough variety for playing on. I did panic a little when half of the tables vanished as the players only attending day 1 packed up though. I'll always do what I can to provide terrain at events I run, but I do appreciate people bringing along what they can. Thank you to those of you who brought things both big and small.
So that's it for NH2018, now I have to start planning for NH2019. I hope to see you there.
The only thing I might suggest is that 3 full games of 40K is maybe a bit ambitious? I only had one of my three games go to its actual rule-dictated finish, and while I don't think it would necessarily have helped me much, the way objectives work in some scenarios, finishing early is more beneficial for some armies than others - plus a full game is just more satisfying. It's still a ways in the future and people may get a better handle on the rules by then*, but maybe one 750-point game and two 1500-point games might work better? Or an escalation-type thing of 750 -> 1000 -> 1500? Or something along those lines, anyway.
But streamlining! No? Is that not really a thing?
Yeah, the length of games was an issue. On the second day, M_i_J and Jus spent about 5 hours getting in 3 turns. Familiarity with the rules is one point, so hopefully 8th ed will be here to stay for a few years and everyone will be able to get a feel for things. Even in previous editions, the 2 hours, 45 minute time limit was tough, but not impossible if you tried. 6th and 7th eds were slower and it appears that 8th hasn't changed things that much.
Turn length was an issue for me too (duh, I brought almost 100 troops.) It seems to me that while turns have gotten quicker in 8th edition, the new alternating deployment takes much longer.
Well, I dunno, I haven't really played since 5th edition. The biggest thing is that there's still a lot of unfamiliarity, I think. Not many of us had ever used the matched play missions before, and I saw a lot of rulebook and datasheet checking during games, lots of "Wait, how does this work? Wait a minute," all of which will (knock on wood) speed up as people get to know their own armies and rules better.
Most tournaments seem to get by with 2 or 2 and a half hour turns, and while there are sometimes issues with horde armies, that seems to work when both players know their army and the game inside and out - which is exactly why it may be ambitious for us, as even the people in our meta who play as often as possible might struggle to get in 15 or 20 games in a whole year.
But it's still 40K after all, too, yeah.
I only could swing by Day 1 to check out the action. Looked fun. Great armies.
Day 2 me and the Madmiral played Necro17....allllllllllllllllllllllllllllll daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! I really enjoyed getting back in to the hive, but there was quite a lot of uphill while walking through the rules. Quite a bit of that was it was Rob's first game and my maybe 3rd. The new rules all in all, seem simpler, but it's still Necro. Still very fiddly, lots of dice for lots of little effects and checks. That and the single model activation format really slows (well me anyways) down. Analysis Paralysis was the term that came up. Love the new minis, not sold that the game itself is an improvement. The NCE rules are a gem as far as I'm concerned.
Gave me the crazy idea of making a Frostgrave/Inquisitor mash up. Just add a few weapons and change the names of the spells and magic items and you'd be good to go. I should google that. I bet I'm not the first.
Fair point. Even at previous events a lot of players timed out rather than finish the full number of turns. Which means either reducing games or reducing points. Definitely something to consider for next year. From the point of view of NagoyaHammer as an event for socialising I think more games is preferable to less.
Konrad wrote: I only could swing by Day 1 to check out the action. Looked fun. Great armies.
You guys did seem to spend an awful lot of time on that one game.
I do like alternating activations, I think it helps to keep both players focussed on the game and introduces an element of risk management that I-go-U-go doesn't have.
From my standpoint as a pretty slow player, I think the timing issue will resolve itself as people get more familiar with the game. You mentioned the game where Jus and I took 5 hours or so to get through 3 turns, but we didn't even get started on the first turn till well after eleven o'clock. That's not a rules problem - that's just me and him faffing about. I suspect that the game probably plays more quickly than previous editions once you're up to speed with the rules. I know I ended up spreading out my books/army list over two tables and spent an unfortunate amount of time checking simple stuff like stats and very basic rules. In contrast, I used to be able to mathhammer the results of any given eldar squad shooting at any given marine squad in my head. Once that returns for 8th things will be a lot faster.