Another Aftermath

Well, Axemaster is done and dusted for 2011. It's the last full-blown (2-day, 2000pt or more) tournament in Melbourne for the year, which means it presents the last chance for players to grab serious rankings points before the "tournament season" winds down.

The tournament in full swing

Axemaster is hosted each year by our club (Hampton Games Club) at our usual venue at the community centre. This means it was a weekend of setting up and packing up after the event, as well as playing. In the end we had 35 players, which is slightly down from last year, but still a decent field, and probably at least as strong as Book of Grudges, which boasted closer to 50.

The hall from the other end

Drew McLean was running the tournament this year, and managed to keep things ticking smoothly. We tend to rotate TO responsibilities, and Drew is one of the club stalwarts and has run a number of events in the past. In the end, the results were as follows:

Axemaster 2011 Results

I had a great tournament (as did everyone, I believe), and was very pleased with my final position just outside the top 3. I seem to be making a habit of that this year - it's my second 4th place and I've come 5th once as well. So consistently solid results without actually taking home any silverware.

In keeping with this, I apparently had the second-most popular army when it came to the Players' Choice voting. I wouldn't normally know this (there is only a prize for the most popular army), however we somehow ended up with an extra trophy for the event (somehow "Best Army" and "Best Painted" were not the same thing in the eyes of the man sent to order trophies - he was unable to explain to me what he thought "Best Army" represented when prodded). Drew decided this should become a second-place painting trophy, so I wound up with it...

The trophy you get when you're not getting a trophy.

Obviously I am pretty happy with the trophy, especially after I was spending until around midnight for several nights last week trying to get that last unit of knights ready. Below is a shot of how the army came together. I had to put it all out on Monday night for the shot because I didn't think about it at the tournament. One day I'll learn.

My Axemaster 2011 Empire cavalry army

Tomorrow I will put together a report of how my games went, and some better shots of the "finished" product of those Leopard knights...