The intro…
Welcome to this week’s blog!
Before I get started I want to just say that this is just a short post this week for a couple of reasons.
First, I’m actually away with my family and spending time blog writing while on holiday is generally frowned upon.
Second, the last 10 days or so has been pretty hectic (bit of an understatement and also felt like it was escalating towards the end!) for many reasons and I’ve not had a huge amount of time to put to writing.
Third (and finally), I played in a tournament on Saturday and while I will be talking about it today, I will NOT be reviewing my games. More on that shortly.
Alrighty then, let’s get to it!
The tournament…
See, I told you I’d be writing about it! That was pretty quick, right?
The background…
Unless this is the very first time (or the first time in the last 6 weeks or so anyway) that you’re reading my blog, you are probably aware that we at Firestorm Games in Newport were hosting a tournament this past weekend.
Why is this a big deal? Well, our long standing TO and general all round nice guy Mr Paul Fallon stepped back from TO duties early this year as a change in job has affected his available time to dedicate to playing the game. With big changes on the way he thought it best to hand over the reins to someone else.
Having previously organised a couple of our more unusual events (which have included huge ships, rows of boards, portals and weird rules!), Mark Hall stepped in to take this up and asked if I would be willing to help. Of course I agreed since building our local community and links to other communities is something I think is very important and to my mind tournaments are a significant part of that. This tournament is our first shot at hosting as a TO team and it happens to coincide with an updated version of the game.
And so, with 2.5 being released on the world, we worked with Firestorm to develop a schedule that works for both us and them. With plenty of other events happening in and around South Wales and the south West we decided that every other month was often enough.
We then looked at prizing options because, while it is, of course, fun to play the game, having things like art arts and tokens and trophies to play for is very appealing and we wanted to make sure that players would be rewarded for making the effort to come.
We have worked hard and spent lots of time (and money!) to ensure this event is the best that it can possibly be and to reward players for making the effort to come and join in. Has that work paid off? You’ll have to ask the players I suppose!
The day…
After a few of us met for a hearty breakfast to set us up for the day, we arrived at Firestorm and began setting up.
After a couple of drops (both late and early) we ended up a nice even 20 players and despite a couple of slightly late arrivals (I’m calling you out Liam Baker!!) we managed to start relatively on time.
We kept a decent pace up and managed to get all done and dusted before Firestorm closed thankfully!
As well as our placement prizes (which there were plenty of!) we also had some bounties up for grabs for things like first ship kill per round and rolling 4 (or more!) natural evades. Unfortunately for someone (Liam Burnett I think?!) there wasn’t one for rolling all natural crits since that came up at one point!
There were some really tight games (and the odd steamroller but not too many!) and from what I heard through the day, much fun and a great time was had by all which was our main aim!
Congratulations to Liam Burnett who, having come all the way from Cornwall, managed to go 4 – 0 and walk away with the top prize! Great job!
My games…?
Ok, look, like I said in the intro, time has been short. If you really want to know the results and standings you could look it up on TTT (no, I’m not going to give you the link this week! If you’re curious enough you’ll dig it up from somewhere!) but why not just wait a week and I’ll break down each of my games? See, that’s much better!
The credits…
First and foremost I want to say thanks to Firestorm Games in Newport. Our play space is… unusual but it works for us, we love it and I feel that it gives us a bit of personality as a venue. Thanks to the management and staff for supporting our play group and we look forward to more events!
Next I want to thank the players who came and attended. Thanks for coming with the goal of having fun and for making it a fun day of gaming with friends. A special thank you goes out to those who travelled some big distances for the day. I’m still blown away by the efforts made (and costs incurred!) to visit our little old store.
I want to thank the amazing Louis Leong for his incredible prize kit and also Dan Eicher for designing the Exile Squadron alt arts that we supplemented it with.
Lastly and most importantly I want to say a HUGE thank you to our TO Mark. The effort put in to all aspects from sorting extra prizes to negotiating with Firestorm is just amazing. The heart you have for developing and growing this community with fun and rewarding events is just amazing. I look forward to many more!
Speaking of which…
Ooooooh yes! Our next event will be on Saturday the 30th of July and the tickets are on sale now!
As I’ve already announced (but I’m hyped so I’ll mention it again!), we are being joined by the Firecast Focus team who will be live streaming the event!
We’ll be going big on prizes once again so it’ll be one not to miss!
The conclusion…
There’s really not much to say here since I’m not reviewing games except perhaps to big up my local community.
There are some game system communities which didn’t make it through the pandemic. I know that in some places, X-Wing is one of them. I am so, so thankful that, while we at Firestorm in Newport may not quite be back where we were in terms of regular player numbers, we’re still here, we still like hanging out and rolling dice together and we’re still passionate enough about the game to spend our time and our money on it.
Long may it continue.
Remember to pop back next week to see how well/badly/averagely I did (spoiler, it isn’t the first of those!).
The outro…
Thank you so much for visiting my blog, I hope you’ve enjoyed it! If you’d like to support me in continuing my X-Wing blogging adventure there are a few ways you can do that.
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