40k Doubles Event Recap, Clubhouse Updates, and More!
Spring events are officially in the rear view mirror (post Memorial Day) and we gaze unto the bright (and HOT HOT HOT) summer of events in the Bolters at Dawn clubhouse. Before we release the 2024 schedule for the second half, we are going to recap our wild 40k Long War Doubles event in detail. So much to cover and all our participants are chomping at the bit to revel in their glories. Then we will touch on some Clubhouse News around Bolters at Dawn and wrap with some quick hits.
And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free
I won’t spend long on Memorial Day commentary because there isn’t anything my words can add. Between your grilling and chilling, take a moment to appreciate those men and women in uniform who gave it all for this great nation.
40k Long War Doubles Event
We are very happy to have held a Long War 40k Doubles event in the clubhouse as a stand-alone event! The last time we ran it was back at BOLTERCON 2022. When planning BOLTERCON 2023, we just didn’t have the space for it along with all the other hyped up events, so we moved it to the spring to see if it could stand on its own. And boy howdy, stand on its own it sure done did.
We had nine (9!) excellent teams show up prepared and hungry for an all day doubles showdown on May 4th, 2024. The clubhouse was packed and ready for the onslaught (more on that later).
Scoring was heavily favored towards hobby and sportsmanship! Battle points were worth a total of 300 points (100 points each round) and we made the Hobby Points and Sportsmanship Points worth a total of 1500 (750 each). We took the 2019 Long War Doubles scoresheets from Adepticon and adapted it into forms for our players and judges to use. You can review the packet for more details and information.
First up, the Hobby Points rubric that was used by the Deacon of Official Rules and Keywords and yours truly to judge each team for hobby and theme. We took time to observe games, inspect armies, and speak with the players. Like a job interview but fun! We learned a lot about both the strengths and the weaknesses of the rubric as is, so look for many changes before the next doubles event.
Second, we have a form to each team to use each round to score their opponents. Again, this was cribbed basically exactly from our esteemed colleagues over at The Long War. The final score is the average of the three rounds of ratings since I was too dumb to do that math before and make each round worth a third of the total. While we are happy that people had the best game of their lives and played against the best players ever all day, we also need to give some more granular scoring guidance. Rest assured, many updates are afoot to hone in our scoring next time.
Without further ado, the final placings!
| Team Name | Total | Hobby | Sportsmanship | Battle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gathalomor Prime Daemonic Interdiction Strike Force | 974 | 380 | 450 | 144 |
| Kabal of the Talon Cyriix and friends | 883 | 368 | 350 | 165 |
| Defense of Damnos | 830 | 380 | 233 | 217 |
| Cadia’s Last Hope | 770 | 316 | 300 | 154 |
| Ravenwing Knights | 757 | 286 | 233 | 238 |
| Fated Intervention | 746 | 216 | 308 | 222 |
| Pitties & Titties | 713. | 226 | 350 | 137 |
| Black Crusade | 578 | 192 | 267 | 119 |
| Armageddon | 200 | 0 | 175 | 25 |
The “oops almost all terminators” team of the First War of Armageddon bowed out after the first round. This was partly due to conflict of interest since we were the judges but also holy moly did the judging take up a bunch of time! We kept the placings simple with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd all getting fabulous prizes:
The striking thing that stands out to my highly trained eyeballs is that there appears to be a direct correlation between team name character length and placement. Coincidence? You decide and do what you will with that alternative fact. What I will say is that there is a direct correlation with hobby & narrative excellence and placement. The winners from the Gathalomor Prime Daemonic Interdiction Strike Force were men of letters and brought an Inquisitorial note to school. Other teams had writeups and had intros for all their opponents.
The thematic duo of Kabal of the Talon Cyriix and friends also came from lore of note and their army composition was exsquisitely designed (also very high sportsmanship scores from opponents in only two games!). To round out the top three, the Defense of Damnos brought along an incredible display board to round out their dominant hobby performance at the event.
All of our club members play to an exceptionally high level of sportsmanship, so all the scores were pretty tight. We’ll need more scoring boxes in the future because you, the people of Bolters at Dawn, are so dope to be around and play against!
Doubles is a blast and my personal favorite way to play 40k, especially using inspiration from The Long War. Emphasizing hobby & theme gets amazing armies to the table. Great people who are engaged with their stories make it all come together. Many thanks to our Deacon of Official Rules and Keywords for ushering and judging this event and to all the participants who went above and beyond to make it special! But here’s a thought: what if we went bigger and more hype-er? Hype-er-est?
Discussion for another day: what other systems need this hype injection? A little birdie (not so little and not a birdie) has mentioned that Age of Sigmar has an interesting doubles format…
Clubhouse News
If you haven’t been by our little slice of heaven in Fairfield recently, you’ll have missed the introduction of yet another improvement by the Bolters at Dawn staff: refreshments. We’ve been given the all clear by Swine City to offer our own selection of non-alcoholic beverages to the people, the Bolters at Dawn community members who are parched from tabletop glories without number.
While still a big WIP, here’s a shot of the wall being updated:
There are two ways to pay on your own – a self-serve Square terminal and direct Square payment links. When the clubhouse is jamming, please pay on your own. If you’d prefer, grab a Bolters at Dawn staff member and we can check you out as well.
We’re also doing more to make the place ergonomic – quality of life improvements for storage, movement, and rules reading. While some things change, what stays the same is our commitment to always be pushing the clubhouse to be your go-to destination for tabletop gaming & expanding our fledgling store to be your one-stop shop for hobby excellence. That being said, we love to hear your ideas for the future, so drop us a line in Discord or come on by and tell us to our faces (over a game or two, preferably).
Our 2024 update with the second half is underway but not yet fully cooked. There has been Bolters at Dawn club member interest in a 40k Crusade league, a Kill Team league, and other longer-format ways to play other than the RTTs and events in the calendar. Nothing is set down on those fronts yet, so keep those eyes and ears peeled for more.
More and more game systems are coming to life and finding play in our hallowed halls. We’ve got Battletech enjoyers, Black Powder (I think? or is it Bolt Action? Both???) afficionados, and Dropfleet / Dropzone evangelists growing their ranks and having a hoot in the clubhouse. Looking for something in particular? You know my next sentence is going to have a Discord link.
Discord is our command and control center, and ahead of the official 2024 H2 roadmap you will see events popping into the Discord events space. On mobile, this is now a tiny calendar icon up by the Bolters at Dawn server name, which is a baffling UI decision and many people have missed it. On desktop it retains the visibility we expect, so please give it a look (and update your personal calendar)!
Quick Hits
I will not be hitting the 2000 word mark on this post, so we are getting high speed and low drag:
Assault on King Ook’s Palace
What started as a fever dream one-off event has morphed into a full-on AoS league. Our esteemed Czar of Occasional Corrections and Knowledgable Stances has completely lost it (in a dope way) and given the people a long-form AoS throw down they desire. Check out the packet and dive on into the assault on the intimidating monkey kingdom of King Ook.
Ghurish Goodbye RTT
We have an AoS RTT coming up fast! Our Chief Hierophant of Degenerate Extremists is running the Ghurish Goodbye RTT to welcome the new AoS edition by sending the current one off with a bang. Grab those tix, send those lists, and prepare to rage.
BOLTERCON 2024 Vendors
Do you have a desire to have a booth to sell your wares and/or run an event for your favorite game system? Fill out our BOLTERCON 2024 interest form and let us know. We are rapidly approaching full on panic mode for our annual November event, so get in here and let’s get busy.
Wrapping Up
There is nothing left – or at least I am not going to type anything else today into this blog (probably). Enjoy the holiday and we’ll see you out there!