33 and a 3rd Year old Tournament Virgin. It wasn't as painful as I thought...

Ok, Its done, My skin remains unflayed, my embarrassment gene unfiddled and my chest is all swellful with pride. I took part in my first tournament and didnt fail, didnt suck, didnt make a pass at a card player and generally succeeded in every way possible. Apart from winning...but I came closer than I would have dreamed possible.

The big thing to take away from the day was that there are as many playstyles as there are people, and hobby via internet often makes you forget this.  I met a great bunch of people, they hosted a great day and no one went away feeling robbed.  This is the opposite of what you would expect if you had only read about these things via the filters of teenage machismo.

Don't get me wrong, we were WAAC and cut-throat like fuck, but had fun doing it.  I learned more in one morning of playing than I have in a year, and the variety of lists , the variety and quality of paint jobs and the fantastic failure of this blogger to charge his phone and take pictures really made my October.  Now, bear in mind I had been mentally punching my nose over this for weeks, procrastinating like an unsure agnostic at a 3 for 2 offer in Gamestation,

 Instead of my dreamed of, honed to perfection lists, painted to a reasonable standard with at least neat and presentable paint jobs, I fielded undercoated, patchy and scrappy white with ugly gold smeared across them like butter on a hot knife.  Fugly!

Surprisingly though...they were not the worst paint job there, and there was a shocking amount of bare metal on the table.  Now here's where the blogeritis kicks in...the top 3 slots were all fully painted, and well painted, armies, with a cohesive fluff and rules theme, and they consistently performed well.  The wooden spoon winner( Matt) was also a fantastically well painted army, fielded by a fantastically nice guy.

So, from a science perspective we can state that unpainted, or badly painted armies are the stuff that no one remembers.

Everyone will remember Jim's Orobororororos, Michael's sea of bane thralls (seriously, horrible, 24 bane thralls...ugh) and Adams absolutely lovely everblight, and they were the top three, they will also remember Matt's non-standard Cygnar, who stood resplendent in Grey and White , and helped him gain last place.  This is helped by the fact that Jim is current UK champion, and Michael was hung over and still in half-drag from the night before, everyone expected Jim to romp home, and the real battle to be who would take second.

I'll post up some brief battle reports and lessons learned, especially for my fellow menites in the next few days.