While I am not a fan of Age of Sigmar (either from a fluff or game mechanics point of view), I can certainly appreciate a success when I see one.
Over the weekend the South Coast GT in Portsmouth, England attracted 124 participants to the two day event. From my understanding this is the clearly the largest AoS tournament/event ever and probably twice as big as the next largest (held in Cardiff).
The amount of work that the organisers did to ensure they had an attractive tournament proposition really reflects well. They will be extremely heartened by the response.
The UK seems to be the AoS heartland where it appears to be at the forefront of tournament events. It will be interesting to see how The Ninth Age competes when the full rules are released. There seems to be less take-up of Kings of War in the UK. Certainly at least one of the AoS podcasts was extremely negative towards Mantic when I lasted listened.
Across the rest of the world the pick-up for events seems to be "patchy" to say the least. I understand the Midwest in the USA seems to play it (though I'm not sure how many it attracted to Adepticon) but I've seen little events advertised for Europe, the rest of the USA, Australia or New Zealand.
What is encouraging for those in those locales interested in AoS, is that the SCGT organisers now have a tried and tested tournament system. It will be interesting to see if it is maintained as a living document so others can benefit from their efforts.
So well done to the SCGT organisers, I'm glad your efforts were rewarded.
Our club held an open pre-SCGT warm up 1 day event using their comp pack. It was my 1st foray into AOS (thought it was a good way to start...). Have to say the pack worked really well and was very enjoyable. You are correct that the UK seems to have embraced AOS on the comp level but there are a few 9th age and kow comps around. Thankfully my club still loves 8th ed and we have the annual league going as I think I would be hard pressed to find a steady Kow group and it is massed ranks not skirmish which interests me
ReplyDeleteI think the most important thing is that the Fantasy wargaming scene doesn't die. GW have embraced skirmish games but there are the massed rank alternatives.
DeleteFunny even our local GW still has their Fantasy figs on squares