Over the years we have seen a constant evolution of how we have run Grand Tournaments. An evolution driven by many different factors, all designed to improve upon the previous offering in some way. Well, 2008 is no different. We have listened to your feedback and constructive criticism, we have tried to find solutions for any problems we have found, and we have also taken a look back at the original reason we started running Grand Tournaments back in the late 1990’s.

The original intent for our Grand Tournaments was both to provide a reason to gather gamers together for a nerd weekend and to reward the “champions of the hobby”. The Overall award went to the person that was best able to demonstrate all facets of the hobby; gaming, painting/converting, and sportsmanship, based on the criteria we provided.

We have taken a long, hard look at how we approached this in 2007 and we believe our 2008 approach will hit closer to the ideals of our early events. While your gaming results are a major part of the Overall scoring, we also value good sportsmanship and effort in the artistic side of things. It could be said that our Grand Tournaments are really Grand Pageants too.

In addition, you will notice that our events are all scheduled in a pretty tight timeframe. This was done for two reasons. The first is that it takes a particular mind set to consistently put on a really good event of the scale of a Grand Tournament. We feel the Community Development Team will be able to really put more effort into making the Grand Tournament experience that much better, without the somewhat weighty distractions that Games Days can provide. The second reason is that we think that we will see a few more people head to an independently run event instead. We really like the events that are part of our GW Tournament Circuit, and there are a bunch of other great events out there too. If you can’t make it to all of our GTs, perhaps you can make it to one of them.

In order to recapture some of the “intimacy” we had in our earlier events, we have decided to trim back the number of slots at each event, and start the move back into hotel ballrooms and the like. With the events taking place under one roof, we expect to improve the immersive feel of a weekend of “geeking out” with your nerd buddies.

Take a look through the information on this site, prepare your forces, and get ready for some great nerd weekends!

Cheers
The Community Development Team