Battle For Salvation

This Columbus day weekend, I had the opportunity to travel up to New York to attend the the Battle for Salvation 40k GT and play in their first painting invitational tournament. This is the first time I have heard of such a thing, but the idea is great. Play in a GT, but make the painting score count for more. I love this spin on tournaments.

I think if you play 40k, and live within a 5 hour radius of BFS you should attend. The tournament is that good. The guys that run it are top notch, and each year they put me down as a club member even though I live 4 1/2 hours away.

BFS got me thinking about army sizes, game lengths, and tournaments in general. One of the things that I regret at a tournament is that I don't have enough time to mingle. There are so many people I want to meet, and so many friends from all over, that we end up never seeing each other at the tournament but instead end up staying out all night trying to catch up. Wouldn't it be great if game time at tournaments was reduced? Eight games at NOVA was too much for me, even though it was an incredibly fun narrative event.  Six games at BFS better. I think 5 games with a lower points value would be best. Let's got back to 1500 or 1200 points.

How about this for different spin. Let's play x8 1000 point games. Game time would decrease dramatically, but we'd still meet new people. It would also cut out a lot of the cheesy units

You should book your hotel now for the next event. Don't get Nynack Motor Lodged! (The good hotels fill up quickly)

The competition this year for painting was really tight. Chris Dubuque showed up with his Lamenters and took away best painted miniature for his dreadnought. I was lucky enough to win Paint Master for the painting invitational.

I am really proud of my Sons of Horus, that allows me to post photos of my latest creations. (hint--not so proud about them!) After the BFS paining award, I thought, "hey, maybe I'm a good painter after all" and tried to paint 16 WW2 US Army troops for Bolt Action in under 5 hours. This is why I don't paint IG. While the painting was fun, and the speed at which it happened was phenomenal, the minis are more like gestural pieces rather than art, but they are for a game I really want to try, and at least now I have some troops and a tank. 20 bucks for around 34 minis was not too shabby either. Ok, maybe I'll paint that other batch.

The moral here is simple. Don't get cocky. I did, and my desk is now covered in mud.

So there you go. A week in review. Go to BFS. You'll be happy you did.