By Michael OvsenikA few weekends back, on October 1-2, gamers got together at the Michigan GT in Lansing, MI to play a ton of Bolt Action. We held two events – the Bolt Action Back to the Front! singles tournament and the Bolt Action Best Job I Ever Had! Tank War tournament.
Everything went great. All the players had fun, there were no blow-ups or rules arguments, and everyone was pretty casual and friendly. We had 20 guys for Back to the Front and 12 for Tank War. This is a definite improvement from last year, where we had 16 guys for Back to the Front (this was our first year for Tank War). Shout out to our Chicago contingent that showed up and represented well.
From a Tournament Organizer perspective, everything ran smoothly. The GT expanded to 350+ folks this year across Bolt Action, Warmachine, 9th Age, Age of Sigmar, Malifaux, Dropzone Commander, X-Wing, and of course Warhammer. We rented a room this year and it was nice. The hotel itself is a bit dated looking on the outside but nice inside.
The GT was run well by the organizers with registration being easy and tables having enough space to play. The 40k announcements got old for most players but they’re looking at solutions for next year. I am very proud of the main organizer folks – this event has gone from just a 40k tournament to a mini-con that can definitely grow to be something really special. I would advise all who can attend next year to make time to do so.
Running the tournaments was relatively painless for Paul and I. He did most of the heavy lifting for the BTTF tournament and I did most of it for the Tank War tournament. We ended up having to do V1 as many players’ rulebooks had not yet arrived, so most people were pretty well versed in the rules. I was very happy with that!
Germans were very popular over the weekend, with six out of the ten Axis on Saturday playing Germans, and six out of six Axis on Sunday playing Germans. Here are the final standings:
Some of the notes we received on the feedback – try not to use an attacker / defender mission, use second edition next year, and people really liked the Kittyhawk Down mission. On day one we played Maximum Attrition, Kittyhawk Down, and Point Defense. On day two we played a few more casual missions – one where you have to hold five objective markers on the board, one where the defender holds the center point of the board with two units before the game starts and the winner holds the objective at the end of the game, and an attrition based mission with some special rules – dust storm, minefield, and all infantry had anti-tank grenades. These were all created by using the Tank War book.
Huge thanks to all of our amazing sponsors:
Warlord Games
Army Group North
Company B
Empress Miniatures
NWS-Online
Gamersgrass
Crescent Root Studio
Any Scale Models
Blitzkrieg Miniatures
Offensive Miniatures
Gaddis Gaming
Rubicon Models
Erik Sims painting
I can’t really say much more about the events, I’m beat. We had a lot of fun, tons of Bolt Action happened, including a kitty hawk crashing into two buildings and blowing one up. I’ve uploaded a ton of images to Imgur – check them out!
