7th Annual NZ Masters This Weekend

This weekend sees the 7th Annual NZ Masters being run in Khandallah, Wellington. There are three separate events - Flames of War, Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy.

A big thanks to Russell Briant and Hagen Kerr for helping to organise and umpire the FOW and 40k events respectively.

I am umpiring the Fantasy event for 2014, having passed on my invite to participate in the event. The Fantasy field is made up of ten competitors, all of whom were ranked in the Top 16 in the Fields of Blood NZ Rankings.

This year I decided to limit the competitors to 2000 point armies. There were a few reasons for this but they tend to boil down to a view I hold that 2000 points offer some real challenges to competitors. There is very little redundancy when you look to build a 2000 point army. Therefore you have to make hard choices on what you take and what you don't take. This rewards those people who think about their list, who they are likely to play and how they are going to play it. Building on that there is a certain fragility given the lower points from the 2400 point norm. This is especially so with characters, where you find you just can't afford all the kit you want.

I think this has tested the competitors - well, if you believe their tweets. It hasn't been as simple as searching the net for current 2400 point killer list.

So what's been the upshot?

Well I can honestly say that this is the most even field we've seen in the seven Masters so far. I can see any one of 7-8 of the ten players taking out the event (and no I'm not going to name them!). This is a consequence of current ranking, army choice and list choice.

We are seeing 5 Elves, 2 Dwarfs, 2 Warriors and a Bret taking the field. I think we are in for very tight battles and would be very surprised if we see a winning score exceeding 80 out of 120. That means I think the winner will average 13 points per game or less.

I'll be taking pictures over the course of the weekend and you can expect a full report on Fields of Blood this coming Monday.

Good luck to all the competitors in all three events.

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