MOAB 2016 Hordes of the Things

The 12th MOAB HoTT tournament is now finished. This year it was run in 15mm, using 36AP rather than the usual 24AP, over 4 rounds. To accommodate the extra troops, table size was slightly increased from 60cm x 60cm to 80cm x 60cm. Unlike last year, we had quite a few draws this time, probably as a result of the larger army size and the preponderance of slower moving foot armies. There seemed to be some confusion as to whether army breakpoint was at 16AP or 18AP (which is 50%). Given the number of draws and the 16AP confusion thing, it did make me think that the army breakpoint should be lowered from 50% in 36AP games (maybe back to 12AP?) to speed games up a bit.

Being part of the GBnU tournament, it had a history theme, which ensured that there were lots of knights and foot heavy armies. However not all were in theme as there were elves, and a Cthulhu force, and some of the historical armies were quite fantasy heavy....

I used a scoring system detailed here for the tournament. The final results were;

1. Geoffrey Stewart: 7 chits, influence 1 (10) (Generic Medieval army)
2. Alan Saunders: 5 chits, influence 3 (7) (Cthulhlu army)
3. Martin Stewart: 5 chits, influence 4 (6) (Egyptian army)
4. Peter Paddon: 4 chits, influence 2 (6) (Greek army)
5. Victor Jarmusz: 4 chits, influence 5 (6) (Carthaginian army)
6. Robert Grierson: 3 chits, influence 8 (4) (Elvish army)
7. Caesar Anderson: 2 chits, influence 6 (3) (Medieval army with lots and lots of beasts)
8. John Thompson: 2 chits, influence 7 (3) (Celtic army with lots of trees)

A great win by Geoff, who was undefeated. The influence is used as a tie break, the lower the better, and chits represent the score. The number in italicised brackets is what scores would have been using the Berkeley method (3 points for a win, 1 for a draw), as a comparison to see whether the system used produced the same results, which it did overall - albeit tiebreaker conditions might be different.

There was a bit of extra free excitement at MOAB this year, where, in the distance, some competitor from a game (Warhammer 40K I think) seemed to quite loudly and animatedly object to something. This drew some humorous and raucous cheers from people around the main hall.

Anyway, onto some real action;

This photo is my Carthaginians against Geoff's medievals. My only claim to fame is that Hannibal (behemoth general with the red howdah), destroyed the blade to the front, and destroyed the knight general behind. However, the Carthaginians ended up losing everywhere else...

The next photo is Caesar's medieval band with lots of beasts (large dogs) vs the Celts (I think a lot of the Celts were loaners from Peter and Alan) with lots of trees. Quite strangely, the dogs were quite attracted to the trees.

This is Peter's Greeks vs the dread Elves of Robert (a loaner army from Alan's collection). Not sure of the exact details, but it ended up with a Greek victory. Quite strangely, there is a tree; trees seem to be in vogue.

Here are Martin's Egyptians against Caesar's medieval force, which ended in a win for Martin.

This was a climactic round 3 battle between Alan's Cthulhu and Geoff's medievals. At this point, both were undefeated and ultimately, Geoff won the battle and eventually the tournament.

Finally, a photo taken during round three of some of the games in action. A fun day was had by all!