Dave Grant (C) - Ogres
Mal Patel - Lizards
John Matthews - VC
Dave Meachen - Daemons
Thomas van Roekel - Dwarfs
Dan Butler - Skaven
Chris Wilcox - Wood Elves
Rowan Keating - Empire
Mark Skilton (Coach)
Five out of eight of the team have been to the event previously - Dave G, John and Chris being a part of all the NZ teams to date.
Here are the results:
This year's result is a marked improvement from 2011 but still down on the 10/11th Place they finished in 2010. I suspect the highlight for the New Zealand team was beating the Australians 85-75 on Saturday.
From the reports I've heard it sounds like the ETC lived up to its normal reputation as being the "World Cup" of Fantasy gaming.
The coverage this year coming out of the event was dire. In 2011, RankingsHQ provided fantastic coverage of the event with up to the minute results and interviews. they certainly overcame any problems they had had in 2010 when I suspect the two principals found it hard to compete and report. I'm not sure why they weren't retained this year because the coverage was awful. In the end it fell on the Bad Dice Podcast team to step into a very big gap. I don't know whether it is internet coverage or what but it would be great to see a reporting strategy as part of any future organizer's toolkit.
Would have to agree withg you whole heartedly about the coverage Pete, Google translation of the polish was a hoot. For the 3rd time I ran a post covering the ETC on wargamerau. It was tough even finding where to look for info this year.
ReplyDeleteIt was nice to see the Aussies finish at 17th spot, dead middle ground. Apparently WE with 3 treemen isn't to bad a list.
In the end it was fairly close with the spread, NZ from (474) 20th to 8th Sweden (514) being 40pts, when you consider that winning just two more games 20-0 out of 48 would put you NZ, comfortably in the top 10.
Anyway well done to the NZ lads.
This year's event was, once again, fantastic to take part in. I think your estimation of 10-15 was a little high, but I think our final placing should make NZ proud. We were competitive in all our matches (maybe with the exception of England) and I think the team is building something that could be quite competitive over the next few years. It really takes a lot of preparation to get everything right and we should be able to take away a lot from what the top teams are doing that we are not.
ReplyDeleteOne thing to remember for the NZ team is that we are not able to practice against each other like most of the other nations. The team is spread across the globe in different tournament scenes and we don't know how each other plays, which makes the match up process difficult and can mean that some of the lists we use may not be as hard as other teams end up producing or that one person uses differently than our matchup makers might envisage.
While I wasn't that happy with my own results (with Dark Elves, Pete, John played Daemons), I think the team did well and look forward to being involved in any way I can in the future and would absolutely recommend the experience to anyone who enjoys big tournaments and meeting gamers from all over the world.
I hope the NZ Team tournament is a big success because it will be a perfect taster of what the ETC is really like.