The Northwoods Grand Tournament was wonderful! The venue was perfect, we had awesome support from our sponsor (Three Mountain Games), and we all had a great time. Thank you to everyone who helped staff the event, and thank you to everyone who attended. We couldn't have asked for a better group of players. The sportsmanship was outstanding. We had players from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.
Reedsburg is a lovely community, and I'd like to thank them for so graciously hosting our event. This was the second tournament I have run there, and I hope we can do this again in the future.
We arrived on Friday afternoon to set up the tables and terrain ahead of time. Once everything was in place, we locked up the gymnasium for the night and went out for dinner. On Saturday morning the players all arrived on time and checked in. They were assigned their tables and their opponents for game one. We had Pizza and Fried Chicken from Pizza Ranch for lunch. The players played games two and three. Once all the scores had been entered we went to dinner. After dinner a few us returned to the venue to play a demo of a sci-fi skirmish game called "Deadzone". Sunday morning was a cold one! It was -16 degrees Farenheit. It was so cold that the power steering didn't work on my car until it had been running for a minute or so! All the players arrived on time to the venue for the last two games. Unfortunately, we had one player who was forced to drop out due to a family emergency. This meant that in addition to running the tournament, I was going to have to step in and actually PLAY as the "ringer" or spare player. I had brought my Bretonmark Knights along just in case this happened. I didn't bring my Rats because that's my tournament army. It wouldn't feel right running them in my own tournament that I was administering. Also, my Bretonmark army is smaller and more elite, and therefore faster to play than the Rats. My lovely wife took over the tournament laptop and I took my place on table eight.
Game four of the tournament pitted me against Kenny Lull from Madison. It was a very close game, and literally down to the last turn, but Kenny's Abyssal Dwarves managed a win with just four seconds left on his chess clock!
Game five saw my Brets against Tyler Schiltgen's Northern Alliance army. His army is basically a whole bunch of troops of Dwarves and three Giants! I got greedy and reckless in the early game and went for the game objectives way before I should have. It cost me the game. My entire army was routed by turn five! At least my cannons managed to kill one of the giants...
I should probably mention that Tyler is only 13 years old.
After every game was done we calculated the scores in the Mantic Tournament Companion App, and quickly tore down the tables. The little league soccer kids needed to practice in the gymnasium due to the extreme cold weather! We moved off to the side to be out of the way of the soccer players and handed out awards and prizes to all of our participants.
Midwestern goodbyes were mercifully short due to the extreme cold, and our players were soon on their way. My wife and I had dinner at J's Pub and Grill. They were kind enough to seat us next to their fireplace, and the food was incredible! After dinner, we went back to the hotel and hit the hot tub.
I didn't make any money off of this event. In fact, I actually spent quite a bit of my own money on it. That's ok, though. I love this community, I love this hobby, and I love my friends. It was a wonderful weekend.
If you want to read about one player's experience at the tournament, my friend Brian Arey wrote battle reports for all five of his games at Northwoods! Here's the link to his blog:
Regnum Aeternum: Kings of War 3rd Edition: #110 Undead vs Empire of Dust in Loot
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