DreadMill I – DreadBall Tournament

I organised a DreadBall tournament that took place last weekend.  With the aid of couple of other enthusiasts who managed the scoreboard, adjudication and facilities, DreadMill I took place last Saturday and went off pretty much without a hitch.  The venue was a renovated mill (now a hostel) where the local gaming club operates from, hence “DreadMill”.

Nine of the ten competitors. “Athlete” number ten is behind the camera.

The event had an uneven number of entrants (nine) which was ideal as it meant that I could play in the tournament too, rather than assume bystander/ref-bot duties for the day.  I would have been happy enough to sit things out if required, but its always more fun to actually take part.

The venue has plenty of room and we have access to a number of DreadBall sets, so a large number of players can be accommodated if necessary (the local club run 40k competitions with ~50 entrants on the site which should give you an idea of how much space we have access to if required).  I wasnt sure how many entrants we would have for DreadMill, but being able to have five simultaneous games running was great.

The ten competing teams (no unpainted teams allowed).

A fully painted team was a prerequisite for taking part and some nice teams hit the table.  All four of the currently available “Season 1” teams were represented, with a preference shown for forgefathers (4) followed by veer-myn (3), corporation/human (2) and marauders (1).

Forgefathers vs forgefathers (top) and Marauders vs Veer-myn (bottom).

Part of the appeal of DreadBall is the relatively short game time.  I have played numerous full DreadBall games within sixty minutes, but its pretty intense.  Its good fun playing like that with regular gaming buddies, but it could easily make for needless hassle with strangers.

With that in mind and because it was likely that a few of the players would only have previous experience of a couple of games anyway, we allowed 75mins per round.  The goal was for a pleasantly competitive environment that stopped short of being cutthroat.

Veer-myn vs Corporation (top) and Forgefathers vs Veer-myn (bottom).

Registration was at 10am with the first game starting at 10.30.  Lunch was scheduled after the second game, with short breaks between each of the four rounds.  A number of the players said that they would have been happy to play a fifth round after the fourth and final games finished, but I figure that its always better to finish a day like this with players still enthusiastic rather than burnt out.   So we stuck to the four rounds as planned.

The day was good fun and the feedback received was great, with enthusiasm for another similar event at a later date.  We had some prize support as sent to us by Mantic Games, which was cool.

After paying for the costs of the premises etc the balance of the (nominal) entry fee left over will be put into prizes for future events, so the next DreadMill will be even more lucrative for the participants.