And it's on! We'll celebrate a great first year of Conquest on Saturday the 28th of November at the Hiveworld in Cologne. Under the name "First "Bring your own Noob" Possessed Beatdown", we won't just fight for a Summerkit with the usual content, but also a pile of other prices - at least if we get enough players together. But more on that later.

Location: Hiveworld, Mauritiussteinweg 96, 50676 Cologne, Germany

Date: Saturday, 28/11/2015

Start: 12:00am

Check-In from: 11:00am

Format: Swiss, 8 players: 3 rounds, 9-16 players: 4 rounds and Top4 Cut, 17+ players: 5 rounds und Top8 Cut

Cardpool: all cards available through Heidelberger Spieleverlag in both English and German at the time of the tournament

Languages: German, English

Tourney Rules: Standard FFG (55 minutes per round)

Entry Fee: 5,- Euro

Prizes: ein aktuelles Gamenight Kit und Zusatzpreise (mehr dazu im Anschluss)

Participants: max. 60

Tournament Organization (TO): Dan "deazra" Jung

Registration : Either here, with an e-mail to deazra-at-gmail.com or (and preferably) on the facebook event site .

FAQ

All right. Sounds good. But what was that about additional prizes?

Yep. Additional prizes. First and foremost the Possessed Promo we, through some luck, managed to get our hands on. The Promo card was given out at the Conquest World Championship in 2014 and is therefore quite rare. Thanks to a very friendly community member, one of these Possessed managed to find their way to Cologne. And that's the one we gonna raffle off - through our "Bring your own Noob" promotion.

Bring your what? And raffle? Does that mean I'm not even guaranteed to win it through exceptional play?

Noob. Bring your own Noob. What's that and why? Well that's easy: We've been through our first year of Conquest by now and it's time to bring fresh blood (and skulls) into the community. The thought behind wrapping the special prizes into a BYON tournament is to both attract a big number of new(er) players and to introduce them to tournaments, as well as reward the players that bring them. Another thing a bigger number of new players means is a higher chance of them not only having to play against "the elite" - which might also be a lot more fun for them. We have a friendly, awesome community and I'm sure if we get new players in, we'll be able to keep them.

Get to the point

Every player participating in the tournament gets a ticket. For every Noob you bring up to a maximum of 4 Noobs, you get another ticket. Noobs won't participate in the drawing for the Possessed, but will have the chance to get their hands on a number of other stuff. Every Noob can only be brought by one player (no polynoobism, sorry).

Ok. And it's irrelevant how I play?

Nope. To not make the individual performance irrelevant to get the cooles prize, the Possessed Promo will be raffled off between the players that make it into the cut (Top2 players after Swiss for less than 8 players). This also means: The more players come, the higher the chance for someone with only a solid performance to actually get the Possessed - especially if that someone brought a full gang of Noobs.

Hmm. But why again are we doing that?

To grow the community, to get the community together one more time before the and of the year and to show that we are able to gather more than 5 people outside of Regionals and Nationals. Because even though the game might be far from dying, it's important to show store owners, that there are other supportworthy communities besides Magic, Netrunner or X-Wing.

You mentioned other prizes?

Oh yeah. Aside from a small (no Copyrights violating) trophy, some stuff has been piling up in my living room and I plan to throw them into the prize kit, if participation is decent. Things like:

Fire Warrior Elite (in addition to the ones from the Gamenight Kit - to push the Noobs participation cards to a full playset as long as stock permits)

Alt Art Zarathur (also in addition to the ones from the Gamenight Kit. Will find his way into the pool at 9 and more players and will be awarded to the best Noob)

12 Acryl Damage Token (Regional Prize 2015, hits the pool at 17 players)

4 Alt Art Nazdreg's Flashgitz (Regional Promo 2015, hits the pool at 9 players, and will go to the player with the highest placement - without a Possessed)

extra Chaos Cardbox, 2 Colliseum Fighters, 2 Leman Russ Battletanks (at 9 or players, from last Noob down until they're gone)





So that's it?

Almost. I'll be participating in some GNK stuff and the Dutch Nationals, so I might be able to grab a few extra goodies, that might find their way into the prizekit if participation is decent. But seeing as I don't have them yet, I can hardly promise them to anyone.

Do you really think people from outside of Germany or even the Cologne area will come?

Nope. But wouldn't it be cool?

And it's done.

With less than one and a half weeks until our ""Bring your own Noob" Possessed Beatdown" we've cracked 18 signups on facebook. Assuming we don't have 12 people canceling last minute, that means we're looking at 5 rounds of swiss and a cut to Top8. But not only that! The majority of prizes has arrived by now and regular participants as well as Noobs can look forward to a gigantic amount of stuff.

As already mentioned we'll raffle off


1x Possessed Alt Art Promo (Worlds 2014)

between all players that make it into the cut, taking into account the amount of new players they brought to the tournament. After swiss, starting with the worst player and as long as our stock permits, everyone will get

1x Playset Alt Art Fire Warrior Elite (Summer Kit 2015)
1x Deckbox Eldar or Chaos (Storechampionships 2015, Summer Kit 2015)

Right now we're looking at around 10 deckboxes and an almost unlimited Supply of Fire Warriors, so everyone that doesn't have them yet, should be able to get one.

The tournament winner, in addition to the hopefully soon finished trophy, will have his first pick from the following prizes - with everyone else getting a shot at the pool afterwards, until everything's gone.

1x Alt Art Morkai Rune Priest (Worlds 2015)
1x Playset Alt Art Fireblade Kais’vre (Nationals 2015)
4x Alt Art Warlord Zarathur, High Sorcerer (Summer Kit 2015)
1x Alt Art Warlord Eldorath Starbane (Spring Kit 2015)
3x 15 Acryl Damage Token (Regionals 2015)
1x Cybork Body Playmat (Regionals 2015)
1x Eldar vs. Chaos Playmat (Store Championships 2015)
1x Craftworld Gate Playmat (Summer Kit 2015)
2x Playset Alt Art Nazdregs Posaz (Regionals 2015)
1x Playset Alt Art Leman Russ Kampfpanzer (Store Championships 2015)
1x Playset Alt Art Coliseum Fighters (Spring Kit 2015)

I've added a few photos of the stuff and there's also a few more FAQs answered right here:

Will everything be given out, no matter how many people show up?

Yep.

And what'll happen if only 8 people show up?

Doesn't matter.

Won't you just give out like half of the prizes then?

Nope.

What's up with the boxes and playsets for the worst players? Doesn't that mean that some noobs will potentially grab more swag than someone that just did relatively well?

Yep. There've been so many Fire Warrior Elites flying around the last couple of months, that no non-noob should want one anyways. If that's not the case: Just let me know. I'm sure I can find a few. In regards to the boxes I'm sure that by now every regular player has a decent amount of them in his collection and I thought it'd be a nice idea to supply our new players with a stylish container for their cards. In case anyone on top craves a box I'm sure they'll be able to find someone to swap with.

Where's that trophy we haven't seen anything from yet coming from anyways?

I paid for it.

And we have to pay for it with our tournament registration?

Nah. The tournament costs as much as every regular GNK tournament at the Hiveworld does. I paid for the trophy stuff out of my own pocket, cause I thought it'd be a cool idea. If at the end some random amount of Euros from the participants finds its way towards me, I won't be disappointed of course.

All right. So that's where we at. Anything else that needs to be sorted before the 28th? Did I miss something? If anything comes to mind, just drop me a line.

And our price pool is slowly approaching extended ridiculousness with an extra goody, courtesy of our German publisher "Heidelberger Spieleverlag". Both the first and last placing player will receive one copy of an exclusive alternate art Bloodletter. The third copy will be raffled off between the participating noobs. Just have a look at these beauties!

And with great pride I present the (badly photographed and not yet fully assembled trophy of the "First "Bring your own Noob" Possessed Beatdown"

All right.

After almost two whole days of rest, a small post-mortem from my side:

Wow! What a tournament! With 22 participants (9 of them noobs), we managed to organize the - apart from German Nationals - biggest Conquest tournament in Germany this year . The store was (also thanks to the Netrunner and Magic players that were around) filled to the brim and the atmosphere was awesome. The 5 rounds of Swiss and 2 rounds after the cut went by without any hitch and we only had one call for a judge during the entire day.

A breadth of warlords was represented, although the top tier's faces were of course more common than the rest. Feedback so far has been positive throughout and it sounds like we can look forward to a really exciting tournament season 2016.

The Possessed alt art promo we raffled off between the Top8 players went - especially thanks to the 3 extra tickets based on the 3 noobs I brought - to me. One alt art Vicious Bloodletters went to Thomas, who had a really bad day with Nazdreg and took last place. The second one was raffled off between our noobs and went to Fabian, and the last one of course went home with the winner of the tournament: Ben! In an exciting final between "Yeah... why not also play Conquest" Ben and "Cologne isn't even that far away from Berlin" Kevin, Kith (Ben) managed to successfully survive against Shadowsun (Kevin).

After about 15 years, this was the first time I've organized an event like this - but will more than likely not be the last. Aside from my general thanks going to each and every one of the participants, which managed to convince through both their extreme fairness especially towards our noobs, I want to (spontaneously - so please don't be pissed, if I forgot someone):

- Nathan Gardner, for starting the Possessed promo promotion in the first place and with that kicking the whole thing off

- the Hiveworld in Cologne for its amazing prize support, helping out with their tournament organizing expertise, providing a roof over our heads and turning two blind eyes, when the tournament went a little longer than their usual opening hours

- the German Publisher Heidelberger Spieleverlag in general and Michelle and Ralf in particular for their absolutely fantastic extra prize support for the tournament

- Phantasos Studio, for doing a terrific job with the figurine for our trophy

- FFG for, although I couldn't afford the flight to Worlds in the end, letting a buddy of mine pick of my swag

- Peter, who actually picked up these goodies and enabled me to put a runepriest into the prize pool

- every one that put something out of their own collection into the pool

- Henrik, who helped me enter the results

- Jasper, who lend me his netbook

- Dave, who made Jasper lend me his netbook

- Lea, Sarah Jane, Caro, Robert, Rene, Ben, Martin, Jasper and Fabian for taking the plunge into the deep end

- Robert, Stefan and Kevin who made the journey from Berlin and Nuremberg, just to enter the tournament

- Nico, for being just as bad as me during the tournament

- Thomas, for not just throwing the towel and sticking it out when the whole tournament seemed to be against him

- Thorsten, for providing me with a win, when I felt pretty down on my luck

- Thotho... for just making me laugh real hard with his deck decision

- Marc, for successfully explaining to me (again), what exactly Dark Millenium is or rather was

- Ben, who made my life a lot easier by not forcing me to also give him a ticket to the random noob Bloodletter raffle

- Dirk, with his heart-warming reaction to my giving him 2 random promo cards from CoC/GoT Worlds

- Ben and Stefan for shoving a few bucks my way in the end. That lessened the blow my wallet took from gettin' that trophy set up.

I'm sure there'll be another thousand things I'm thankful for coming to me once the post is out, but I think this is enough for now. Here a few pictures for everyone who wasn't able to make it: