The big american convention for miniature games Adepticon is over for this year. Here are some of what we take away from what looks to have been an absolutely awesome weekend of Guild Ball.
It’s been so fun to follow Adepticon through discord and social media this weekend. It looks like Guild Ball is finally starting to make it back into the greater halls of bigger events.
There have been discussions that it should’ve brought an even bigger crowd, but the fact that the open spots sold out immediately is just awesome. It also may have affected the attendance in the end, even though more spaces were added later on.
Attendees report that many people still didn’t know that Guild Ball was back, and was happy to see the ballers! Others said they were hoping to play GB but went for other games when the open slots were filled.
But having said that, it’s awesome that the estimated attendance wasn’t enough and more spots had to be added! Compared to Nova that for some reason didn’t get enough registrations to even hold the Guild Ball event, this is looking up!
Steamforge always said they intend Guild Ball to be a slower, backburner sort of growth, through a farther future. Even though me and all of us in here will always want more and faster, I think SFG is delivering very well on their communicated intentions. This bodes well for the next GB event with confirmed international attendance, the Warmanchester that Jamie Perkins is hosting together with Element Games in august!
Discussions on discord coined “The Hammer Effect” since Masons with the 4.7 new Hammer was very prevalent among the registered players. Apart from that it was fairly good spread of guilds in attendance, and both Fishermen and Alchemists managed to beat the taskmaster into the ground.
Important PSA: Great strikers like Bonesaw will still miss easy goalkicks once in a while, even on conventions when the hype is high. The fans were not amused, but fortunately he was redeemed later on before they could turn into an angry mob and storm the pitch 😉
Also, we determined that no one plays Blacksmiths except online. The challenge by The Inspiring Hat to get to the top of the smiths leaderboard has peaked the interest in them, but still they were nowhere to be seen at the convention. The rumor that their whole guild is a ruse by the Morticians is denied and proven wrong though 😉
There was a point where New Shark was feared to be broken, having won a few too many matches in a row. Mike the Dog called it “The Sharkening” which feels fitting. But the fearsome sea creature didn’t actually win, being beaten by the Alchemists who despite the recent nerfs to Soma and Kami are obviously still very powerful guild.
Statistically we can of course draw absolutely no conclusions about model/guild strength of course, from just the handful of games at one convention. But it’s still fun to speculate!
Several known faces from both SFG and the GBCP in the mix!
Mike the Dog wrote on discord today a big heartfelt thanks for all the awesomeness over the weekend, and other active discorders like GlassWalker80 and CaptKaty joined in – if you’re on discord read it here.
Also look at that purple widget – Michal “Mr Happy Knife” had brought tons of nice stuff to hand out to the ballers he met at the con.
Such an awesome nice thing to do!
He even had some Full Tilt tokens for that purpose as well.
Who is he, you ask? He’s been called “one of the best pundits that this game has to offer” and he was even spotlighted in this interview that Heroic Play reccorded with him last year!
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAVsbUgSado
Last but not least, Michal celebrated with this insane Bloody Mary, and what better way to do it. I think both Butchers, Brewers, Hunters and Farmers (and all of them really) would’ve approved.
Thanks to everyone who posted about the con, let’s keep GB growing in size at events like these!
Personally I’m looking forward SO MUCH to my first irl Guild Ball tournament since pre covid, when I go to Finland in april, to fight for Sweden at Steam & Fury.
International attendance event!
Not quite the same size as Adepticon or Warmanchester, but it can’t be denied, there will be players from different countries playing. 😉
Sign up and come fight me!
Speaking of events and in regards to covering them here, I generally don’t post about all tournaments since most are local that most people won’t be able to attend and so on. Longshanks is the perfect place for finding and hosting local events, so go have a look at https://guildball.longshanks.org/events/ and sign up as a LS member if you haven’t already! 😀
BUT!
The Bench will always want to spread the hype and ingame happiness of our favorite game – so do send photos of ingame awesomeness and cheering event winners, and even battle reports if you want.
I’ll happily post about it here!
Even though promotion for small local events wont be interesting for most people here, all kinds of Guild Ball sweetness and seeing people enjoy the game irl is always in the interest of the game and all of us players. Also, bigger events like the monsters mentioned above absolutely have a place on The Bench, since it wil interest so many people regardless of where you are in the world.
All in all, if you send me stuff you’d like to see posted here, chances are that I’ll post it 😉
Stay safe out there people. See you on the pitch!
