Joined: Feb 16, 2005
Posts: 165
Status: Offline
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Ian and myself have been organizing Eucalyptus Bowl since April this year. We thought that with competition from other systems removed, and with a nice venue, we could probably get a successful Blood Bowl tournament running. Our initial calculations meant that we aimed for what seems now to be a fairly conservative 20 people, but that still would have been the biggest tourney in NSW this year.
Ian and myself are both experienced tournament players of various games, so we basically picked out the best things from all the tourneys we???ve been to that we thought we could pull off. The venue was excellent, and I???d been to a WHFB tourney there previously. Speaking to the organizers of that event it became clear the place had a bargain price as well ??? genuine 1970???s prices! Ian brought a lot of knowledge of the type of Blood Bowl systems used in Europe, where they have massive tournaments, a plethora of website mojo, and the ability to rein in my more crazy ideas My main task was to contact as many people as I could and try and promote the event and get as many people as I could to come along. I also had to organize the trophies.
My first port of call for promoting the event was online. There are a lot of forums and websites out there where Blood Bowl players of past, present and future lurk, and this format allowed me to contact as many as possible. I did my best to use Tourney Reports from other events to get a general awareness of Blood Bowl out there a bit more. After that, I switch tacks somewhat. I made a lot of contact with individual people, basically nagging at them to come along PMs on various forums, email, IRC on fumbbl, encouraging people from my league, you name it I tried it. We also went along to Conflict Sydney and run some Blood Bowl demonstration games, to try and encourage players to take up the game, and give plugs out to players who already played.
These tactics were very successful, and it became clear fairly early on that we were easily going to meet our target. We then had to start thinking about prizes for the event, while maintaining our efforts in promotion. Fortunately the worldwide Blood Bowl community is one of astounding generosity. We were able to pickup prizes from lots of different sources. Jervis Johnson, the creator of Blood Bowl himself sent us some Posters and Fanatic Mags that he???d signed. Torpor from the NAF forums (and probably elsewhere as well) generously donated 4 Blood bowl novels! The NAF of course provided their usual excellent support ??? there is a purpose to joining guys ??? the more NAF members that show up to our tournament, the more prizes they can send us. Considering Blood Bowl stuff isn???t available in this country, it really one of the key components to the prizes. Normally I???m more in favour of trophies and such than product based prizes, but in Blood Bowls case with their being no product available in Australia, it really does help to promote the game. With all this lovely stuff already available, we still wanted to make some really nice trophies. I had a crazy idea that I thought would be perfect for a Blood bowl tournament, and I hoped it would work. I decided the prize for Eucalyptus Bowl really should involve a custom Eucalyptus Ball! I was hoping we would be able to get a football etched with the Eucalyptus Bowl logo and the Eucalyptus Bowl 2005 Champion blurb, but it turned out to be cost prohibitive (in hindsight we probably could have done this). So I set to and decided to try and get it done myself. I the ball black, then cutout a template of the logo and blurb. I then attached the template to the ball and spray painted white through the template. Urk! This didn???t work quite as well as I was hoping as there was a lot of blurring and smudging. I decided to fix it all by hand, hoping it would still look neat enough to be used. This turned out to be the case, though I was still a little concerned it would look a bit amateurish, but the feedback seemed to indicate it was OK.
We then got a little ball stand and case, which with the ball inside ended up looking a real treat, and very appropriate I thought. I tried to maintain this appropriate feeling throughout the prizes. The Best Sport got a Tankard, Most Brutal got a guy being tackled, Most TDs a guy running the ball, and Stunty got a smaller, goblinised version of the main prize ball. Hopefully everyone anjoys their prizes, I did my best to make them special.
Moving on towards the weekend itself, we got a scare on the afternoon before when I called the venue to make sure everything was OK, and was told they didn???t know anything about us. After having 57 simultaneous heart attacks, after about an hour of back and forth it was sorted out.
So we rocked up on Saturday morning, with quite a lot of eager early gamers already there and waiting. We got into the venue, and with the players help got everything pretty hastily setup. We were still running a little bit late unfortunately (sorry about that guys), but soon got underway. We hadn???t known exactly how many players were going to turn up, as we were allowing players to turn up and pay on the day. We did tier our payment structure to encourage people to pay early though, as paying early means we have more money for prizes, venue, and whatever crazy ideas we can come up with that we think will make the tourney better ??? so a quick note for next year folks, the more people who pay early, the more things we can do to try and make EucBowl run better.
In general, the games seemed to run pretty much on time, and in general everything went pretty smoothly. Thanks to Ian for volunteering to be the non-playing organizer, and thanks to his lovely wife Renee for helping out with the scoring, which allowed Ian to act as the Bye Buster. This allowed me to do what I do best ??? swan around, drink lots of beer and trash talk while playing Blood Bowl ??? top stuff!
We had a bit of a worry with food at the venue on Sunday, but the Bistro people really bent over backwards in order to help us out, which was excellent.
Overall, I thought the event was a resounding success by any definition. At 39 entrants and 40 players, we had become the biggest Blood Bowl tournament ever held in the Southern Hemisphere at our first attempt! I think there still a number of areas we can improve on for next year though:
??? Better co-ordination with the venue - there were a few problems in this area, and next year we will have to communicate a bit better to make sure everyone is on the same page. Talking with some of the Bistro staff at the end of the event, there are some options to get your own food setups in the hall itself, which may be a very good option.
??? Set the venue up in advance ??? this year, setting up in the morning (we could only get in at 8:45) meant we ran a little late at the start. It also meant the table weren???t setup in the best configuration, and there was a lot of unused spaced which the more amply built of us could have used. Next year we???ll try and organize things so that we can setup on the Friday night to make sure everything is ready.
??? Tweaking the rules ??? there were a few pretty common thoughts people had about the rules we were using that I reckon we???ll need to take into account. Some provision for skills on doubles needs to be made I think, and I think the casualties award should be straight up casualties caused by any method to avoid confusion.
??? Organised Saturday night event ??? I think with us having laid the groundwork for the event, organisation should be easier to a certain extent next year. There was a good vibe with a number of people sticking around to play various games afterward, and this is an area I???d like to expand on next year. Some possible ideas are a Trivia Night, a gaming challenge where a bunch of different games are played, a State of Origin Blood Bowl series, and I???m sure you guys have plenty more. I think some trophies geared towards this sort of thing would be cool as well.
??? Not clash with Fathers Day ??? unfortunately we had some scheduling difficulties this year, and didn???t even realize we were clashing with Fathers Day till it was too late. Next year we???ll try and get a better date, possibly a bit further removed from MOAB and Komplete Fanatik as well. I think June would be a good time, but I???m pretty sure we won???t try for a long weekend 3 day event. We may run on the June long weekend, but will likely only run on two of those days.
Hopefully once Ian gets back from the UK, we will be able to have a look at all the feedback given to us by the players and work out where to go from there. If anyone has anymore feedback they???d like to make, or comments on what I???ve said here, please feel free to do so ??? we want to continually improve Eucalyptus Bowl and make it the best Blood Bowl tournament in the world! |
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Come to Eucalyptus Bowl!
http://eucalyptus-bowl.doubleskulls.net/
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