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