The R0ot of All Evil Vol. 10 (Retcon/Vatiretcon)

* Shed a tear folks as this is the last R0ot of All Evil written for the foreseeable future *




I better suit up for this event, since we are in the D Even numbers for the weekend. I don't know if they'll let my culchie kind in here to be honest. I managed to pass the posh check and I'm in the venue .... before anyone else. So we are waiting for the venue to open and get ready to go. Since the organizer is chilling in bed it's up to me to provide the refreshments here. Tea and coffee from me yo!

Jesus lads you know the whole thing about best foot forward? Start the way you plan to do the whole damn event, quite a later start than planned which is going to come back to haunt you (it will you know, see later at 6). Awesome first game I get raped so bad I think I might apply for counselling.

Awesome now I get to see where I am and how everyone else did.... oh wait no I don't. Where the feck are the scores lads? It's all well and good telling me what table I'm on and playing next but how am I going to know my score and my opponents scores are correct and the match is correct? Telepathy? Tarot cards? No.... a fecking list of everybody's scores! Right maybe it's just a hiccup, let us move on.

So our third game comes round and I'm setting up to play my old friend Ulick the Slayer* (please read the sarcasm here) when suddenly we are told to wait and not continue just yet, scores might be entered wrong (see earlier NO ROUND SCORES DISPLAYED gripe), 10 minutes later and we are now quite late into the day, don't worry I'm getting somewhere with this. So we are almost finished our game and over the intercom comes a voice saying along the lines of 'Place closing at 6 (20 mins away) get the feck out' ... well isn't that fantastic we are late into 2 games and now we are getting pushed to finish 2 hours into game time.

Day 2 ah hopefully all the issues are ironed out and oh yes they finally have the standings listed on the big screen hurrah but no that's not light at the end of the tunnel... it's.... another .... delay and on top of this just wait.... the tables are assigned wrong but not wait there's more the tables were wrong TWICE?! Okay okay it's fine now 3rd times a charm, yes you can play yay!

As the 5th game ends, 4 of which were objective games.... yes I said 4 games of objectives. 4 objective games (pre-determined) in a 5 round tournament is a just a tad bit frustrating lads so either randomize the mission choices or have 2 KP games because otherwise I'm brining horde orcs k thanks bye!

Oh before I forget, TERRAIN more of it please, I played on some tables that I think the wrecks of my vehicles created more line of site blocking terrain that was on the table!



Right I am leaving the scores until last as I have a whole load to say after that bile I've spilled above.

So I'll start with a big thank you to Tristram, Trget, Baz, Brian, Padraic (I can't spell your name man) anyone I am forgetting that helped set up and run this tournament as it was top class and I had an awesome time!

Right so I stood up and provided the Tea, coffee and milk (you're welcome Eoin!) for this event and thank you to John for the hot water dispensers saves the kettle usage. From what I saw the water ran out at the end of Day 2, so sorry for whoever didn't get that last cup of tea/coffee as I was busy lucking out with my hero rhino against some thunder wolf cavalry.

Day 1 has a few hiccups there and Trget while I have a massive amount of respect and appreciation for you and your patience/work at Retcon please use the ETC scoring program and not your own until it works without any other assistance necessary. Yes it's fantastic and does things like table display great but there was just too many issues that came up and while I understand it wasn't the programs fault in this case the ETC one wouldn't have ran into these issues. So the R0ot seal of approval shall not be awarded to the program used at Retcon, in fact I would have preferred excel.

The score sheets were nice (hopefully you have some mention of Johnny somewhere as they were quite similar, read as the same minus the picture at the front) and it's a good move that I'd recommend to all tournaments in the future as I've mentioned before because not only do you have a reliable hard copy of the scores but you have a nice bit of memories for each gamer to retain (I still have my DDII one).

Oh man, the prizes! Well done here lads the trophies were stunning + a box set (thank you to Gamers World's Martin and the Arkham crew for these, correct me if I am wrong here) and of course the spot prizes although I didn't see any for game 5 and I'm pretty sure game 4 didn't have any either. It's nice to note similarities that are good popping up in other tournaments around the country as it's moving as all to an almost Standard format!

A huge Thank You to all my opponents over the course of the weekend, Phil, Eoin, Ulick, Peter and Phil (again) you were all great fun to play and win/lose against and very few rules issues came up. (REMEMBER THE POWERS ULICK!)

Right the rules pack.... It was good, the painting scores while I don't like them were properly enforced so fair play there. Personally again the 4 objective games out of 5 seemed a bit much but at the end of the day it was all still very fun and good to at least try something new. The terrain and tables were of very high quality as well as the venue so congrats there just try and get all the tables to the same degree of excellence as there were 1-2 that could be absolute death traps to whoever went second in games i.e. no area terrain around.

Last but not least the price was just magic, fantastically low and the local shops/café's were decent quality for a good price so you get a gold star for all this even though some of it is out of your control. To the retcon organizers I thank you from the bottom of my hear (and wallet) for the price that was the same for everything, no discrimination of wargamers here!

Once again this was a fantastic event and while the score is lower than others I'll say you did well and if you take anything from this review on board remember this, transparency is key. Display the scores being input, display the scores for each round, display the standings and remember there is a no fuss no mess program available for this just a click away.

Congrats to John Stowe for winning Retcon with Space Wolves!

Opponents 5/5
Venue 5/5
Food 3/5
Rules Pack 5*/5
Terrain/Tables 4*/5
Organization 3*/5
Prizes 5/5
Value for Money 5/5

Overall 17/20

A score of 52/60 which should ultimately been higher but repeat delays/redo's caused a fair bit of frustration but overall it was a great event.

Next Up: There will be no more R0ot of All Evil's written by myself apart from my summary of all events coming soon™ but we will hopefully have a special guest review for the Irish masters in under 2 weeks time!

Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to read the last 10 reviews of mine and I hope you enjoyed reading them as I enjoyed attending the events and writing about them.

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