Berks Spring Assault Results. Better Late than Never!

Good lord..... computer problems and forgetfulness and delays and procrastination.  

However, the results from Berks Spring Assault 4! are here, available at this link:    BSA4 Results.

We had an incredible event, 74 players, over 20 sponsors, and with staff, guests, spectators, well over 100 people.    As with all Berks Events, Sportsmanship was a key element, and of course energy levels were high as expected.

We finished 4 games of Warhammer 40K at 1000 points with a modified force-organization chart.  Our intent at Tournament Organizers was to provide a controlled environment that would be both friendly to newer players as well as challenging enough to veteran gamers.  

The Berks-PA Gaming Club is also known for our raffle prizes and we had those continue through our event, even giving away 2 variants of Warhound style Titans, (one chaos, and one Imperial).    Our sponsors were amazingly generous and we can't thank them enough.    Lee from 1-Up Collectibles in West Reading was of course our main supporter.    He was also on hand to vend and sell items as was Tony Spino from the Gaming Garage LLC, who runs the Mechanicon Grand Tournament series along with The Warstore.   We had some of our own swag as well as support from Miniature Market who provided every attendee with a pluck-foam tray for miniature storage.    We also had new sponsors this year, like Green Leaf Terrain, who donated an amazing set of war game terrain and also created a set for our club to purchase for use in future events.

We are growing and this is 2 years in a row now that we have had over 100 people attend Berks Spring Assault.   We are looking to grow and expand to a new venue that will allow even more room and space as well as continue to offer us a great atmosphere for us to continue to run our events.    We will also be looking to expand our event to add additional events and possibly partnering up with another organization since we have been having much success with helping charities out with fund raising.    More details on this to come.

For now we would like to again thank everyone who made our event great.   Our top finishers were:

1st Place Overall:  Jonathan Richards (Tyranids), Berks-PA Gaming Club
2nd Place:  Rob Morris (Orks), Lancaster War Gaming
3rd Place:  Matt Cerino (Space Wolves):  Stomping Grounds
4th Place:  Todd Roy (Grey Knights): Lancaster War Gaming

Army Domination Awards:  By representing the Best score by your Codex:
* Blood Angels: Bill Wagner, Turn-8 Podcast
* Chaos Daemons:  Wilson Badillo Jr, Beltway Gamers
* Chaos Space Marines:  Jared Kunz, Lancaster War Gamers
* Dark Angels:  Jarid Neimon, Basement War Gamers
* Dark Eldar:  Kevin McNally, Stomping Grounds
* Eldar: Quin Staley: Secrets of the Black Library
* Grey Knights:  Todd Roy, Lancaster War Gaming
* Imperial Guard:  James McGrath III, Stomping Grounds
* Necrons:  Colin Keilick, P.A.G.E
* Orks:  Rob Morris, Lancaster War Gamers
* Space Marines:  John Sullenberger, Lancaster War Gamers
* Space Wolves:  Matt Cerino, Stomping Grounds
* Tau:  Paul Parke, Berks-PA Gaming Club

* Tyranids:  Jonathan Richards, Berks-PA Gaming Club

Berks Spring Assault 4!

Berks Spring Assault 4!   

Wow!   Here we are nearly 1 week away from April 13, 2013, for the largest, most fun Warhammer 40K event in the area!    Berks Spring Assault 4!   

Our goal this year was to try and duplicate last year's success while trying to minimize the mistakes with lessons learned from running these types of events.    BSA3 saw 77 players show up with over $3000 in total prizes and raffles to give away.     

This year we have more swag, more prizes, and are hoping to pull in more players in what we like to advertise as a "Warhammer 40K Party" with a tournament thrown into the mix.     Sure there is competition and prizes and trophies.    But our biggest reasons for success is that we are a club about sportsmanship and fun and fair play.   We do not run this event to make a profit.   In fact, any money left over is recycled back into our club to build terrain, tables and such so we can continue to fund events of this scale and nature.

As it is, we have this event that has come about as our club trying to run a mini-Grand Tournament in 1 day.   So we cut the points in half to 1000 points.   We run 4 games, 90 minutes each with breaks.    We have the event catered for lunch.   All of this is wrapped up into the price of admission.    We are charging $50 at the door and there is a $10 discount for pre-registration by April 8th, 2013 at midnight.       In addition to lunch being catered, one of our sponsors, Jebbie Cakes, is also making us a cake and we will have ice cream served with it between games 3 and 4.

Our event has constantly drawn people from afar.   Great players and sportsmen like groups from Snake Eyes Gaming club in Pittsburgh, PA and the Beltway Gamers down near Washington DC in Maryland, veteran gamers from P.A.G.E., and new friends such as the crew coming in from Stomping Grounds in Warminster, PA.   

They all come for the fun, the food, the games, and the prizes....the Raffle Prizes!    Our biggest feature by far is our basket-raffles.    Players and staff may purchase tickets on site for raffle prizes, $1 each or six for $5, or 15 for $10, 35 for $20.      The players may then place the tickets into the basket or bag labeled for the appropriate prizes.     We will draw some early during the game 3 break, but the rest will be drawn as our judges tally up the final scores.

We also feature a main prize table for the top winners, and we recognize 1st, 2nd, 3rd (and 4th) best overall.   We have our top 3 for Best Sportsmanship and top 3 winners for Appearance, as voted by your peers.   We also feature prizes for the Best Youngblood overall (14 and under) and Best Youngblood Sportsman.     for appearance we host our "Armies on Parade".   During the lunch break, players are asked to display their armies.  We will put a  cup by each army and each player will be given 3 tickets to cast their votes and place these in the cups of the armies they like the best.   The top 3 will win our appearance awards.   For those looking for the rules, here is an additional link:   Berks Spring Assault 4 Rules Packet.

Yet one more feature we have at Berks Spring Assault is the Golden Grot painting competition.    This year for our Players only, we have 3 categories:  Single 40K model,  Squad/vehicle/creature, and Open category.      We will have a panel of judges vote on the models from our staff.   This is totally separate from our regular tournament and gives those who are into the hobby more a chance to showcase their skills.

Again this year we have invited our friends from Dream Pod 9 to perform demonstrations of Heavy Gear, a game that many of us in the Berks Gaming Club have gotten into.      This gives our guests something to do between games and for each person who demos the game, they will earn 2 bonus raffle tickets.

We are very excited this year for everything that has come to be.   We picked up some new sponsors and retained many of our original sponsors.    Our local gaming store, 1-Up Collectibles has outdone themselves again and delivered an impressive lot of prizes as well as assisting our club in purchasing some more prizes to fill out our "wish list".   We will feature 2 of every flyer model in the Warhammer 40K line from GW.   One will be on the main prize table and the other for raffles.     We also have 2 Titans to offer and an Ork Stompa  ( the Stompa is also courtesy of 1-Up Collectibles).     Another one of our supporters this year is Green Leaf Terrain, who made some amazing stuff for us and posted a video of his handiwork.    To clarify on his video, the items that our club paid for will be staying on as club-owned property to help fill out our terrain.    We also have blue-back foam miniature trays donated from Miniature Market, a huge online market place who generously donated over 100 trays for us to have as swag to hand out to all of our guests.     Of course other continued sponsors such as the War Store.com and Linglestown Paintball, Haze Knight.com, and the Adventurer's Guild have also continued to pledge their support and we are thankful for each and every one of them.

The rules to the event are available here with a link for download.     For more information on our club and event please listen to interviews of our club president, Michael Biancone featured on both Turn-8 Podcast, episode: 34  and Noobhammer podcast, episode 32.

Our featured sponsors for this event are listed on our page, but here is the list of current sponsors to date for Berks Spring Assault 4!:

* 1-Up Collectibles, 514 West Penn Ave, West Reading, PA
* RAR Studios
* Showcase Comics & Games, Media PA & Bryn Mawr PA
* Adventurer's Guild, Harrisburg, PA
* Stomping Grounds games: Warminster, PA
* Noobhammer.com podcast
* Turn-8 podcast
* Euro Bitz
* Spikey Bitz
* Linglestown Paintball
* Ironhalo.net
* The Warstore.com
* Green Leaf Terrain
* Haze Knight.com
* Secret Weapon Miniatures
* Terran Scapes.net
* Iron Halo.net
* Miniature Market
* The Dice Shield

* Jebbie Cakes

Berks Winter Blast Cancer Fund Raiser a HUGE Success!

Well, we had closed out our first of what will become an Annual event for Berks, the Four Diamonds Winter Blast, a team-tournament of Warhammer 40,000 with the intention to raise money to help fight Pediatric Cancer.

Check out the great coverage and in-depth battle report on Turn-8 Podcast, Episode 30!

This cause is near and dear to the hearts of many folks in our club and in fact as the author of this article, my own daughter Natalie, was diagnosed with Leukemia at the tender age of 15 months old, back in 2007.   Thanks to Hershey Medical Center in Hershey Pennsylvania, the Four Diamonds Foundation, and THON...the Penn State Dance Marathon, they came to our aid as a family.    They managed to help my daughter beat cancer, provided financial support and covered all medical costs outside of insurance, and other financial support.    They also provided social workers, counselors, specialists for the children, and other help that one would not normally think of.

The local students of Penn State Berks Campus also adopted our family into their fold and invested their time into ours, interacting with both of my children and helping our family in many ways.   This tournament was a chance for us to give back to those who helped not  just us, but so many others.

So with all of that out of the way.....  What the heck happened?    Well, we pooled our resources and used the Multi-Purpose Room at Penn State Berks and threw a Warhammer 40K Team-Tournment and raised money for THON!  (www.thon.org).  

We had room for 10 tables, so we set up to have up to 40 players.  We ended up with that...as we had 19 teams and fielded our own "ringer" team for the event.     We played 3 rounds, each team consisted of 1000 points per player with a modified force organization chart.   

We did something very different this time around as well.  First of all, each mission was fun, and had a winter theme to it.  There was some quirk about each mission that was tied in with winter, snow or storms.     We also had no main prize table.     Instead each player on each team won raffle tickets.    Each prize we  had donated or purchased was put up for a basket-style raffle.     Players could purchase more tickets between games, but would win 20 tickets per player for a win, 10 for a loss, and 5 tickets each in a loss.

So, with every prize as a raffle, we had a modified force organization chart, some fun twists to missions, the pressure in winning everything at the tournament was lessened a great deal.    Players were able to focus on fun and  not about high competition.    We had food catered at the event, cake, and just a great time overall.

Players got to play 3 games, against other teams.   We also allowed and encouraged challenges...so one team could issue a challenge and it was up to the other team to accept it or not.   This happened at least ten times during the event.   

When it was all said and done, some of our key prizes, like the Horus Heresy Book 1 (Betrayal) from Forge World, and a Contemptor pattern dreadnought, and a full box set of Dark Vengeance for warhammer 40K were available.

It was a wonderful time.    For me it was my 12th ever tournament/event that I hosted.    It was wonderful.    Everyone asked us to make this an annual event...so I think that we will.     The students at Penn State Berks were thrilled because we set out a goal to hit $1000 and we did....we raised a grand total of $1008.00 for THON!   FTK  For The Kids!   FTK!  For The Kids!

Final results were determined by Battle Points first, and then by sportsmanship as a tie breaker.   If we needed to, then we would have gone to head-to-head record if available.   But it was not needed.

TEAM                                                                                    Battle points                      Sportsmanship

1.  Brian Zhu/Myke Moll                                                            38                                           15

2.  Jared Neiman/Sean Feather                                                 33                                           16

3.  Jeff Ziegler/Tucker Stienmetz                                               32                                           16

4.  Jon Kissinger/Johnathan Richards                                       32                                           15

5.  Dave Setzman/Kevin Troust                                                 31                                           15

6.  Adam Johnston/Steve Smith                                                27                                           15

7.  Bill Wagner/Chris Opdyke                                                    24                                           18

8-A.  Darryl Hartman/Forest Dougan                                       23                                           17

8-B.  Andy Miller/Isaac Chiang                                                 23                                           17

10. Jesse Dixon/Joseph Alati                                                    23                                           16

11. Ringers (Berks Gaming Club)                                              23                                           15

12.  Daniel Collison/Josiah Huss                                              23                                           13

13. Rob Dugid/Sam Dugid                                                         20                                           15

14-A. Erik Shirk/Ross Famous                                                   19                                           15

14-B. Alex Schleicher/Ethan Biancone                                     19                                           15

14-C. Ari Peck/Natahaniel Davis                                               19                                           15

17. Angel Crespo/Edgar Blum                                                   18                                           15

18. John Tinney/Tom Lazarek                                                   17                                           15

19. Eric Bates/Paul Bates                                                           15                                           16

20.  Andrew DiRodio/Micah Allen                                             11                                           16

I wanted to share this email I got from Bill Wagner from Turn-8 Podcast.   
"Mike I wanted to tell you that I absolutely loved the point limit thing.  I really feel that it made the games fun and forced a little balance.  Would love to see more of that for next time.

The time you spent explaining each mission was also sweet.  At no time did I feel confused or have a WTF are we doing moment.  Keep that up.

Breaking the drawing's into 2 was a good idea.  It kept things moving.  Also get more contempter dreds for me to win.  ;)

Thanks again for the great time and I'll see you at spring assault.  With my super secret project #2.  :D "

Now.....we plan for our next BIG event....Berks Spring Assault 4!.....April 13, 2013.