Ep.42 Tabletop Dispatches - WTC Interviews | Tabletop Tommies Bolt Action Podcast - Tabletop Tommies

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.

(00:08):
Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Jonny and I'm Phil and in today's episode we're
going to be talking about the World Team Championship or WTC for short.
We've got a couple of special guests coming on to tell us about their experiences at WTC.
An old hand if you will without offending him awfully and a newer player who's
only been playing for a very short time.

(00:30):
But before we get to hear from Jon and Liam we'll just give you a bit of a summary
of our experience at the WTC, what we found over the weekend, who we played and so on.
So we went as part of England B, which was the two of us, Alan Wells and Michael Smith.
So Michael had been to WTC before, the previous year with England.
Alan had also been the previous year for the Netherlands, for Holland.

(00:52):
Myself, Alan and Johnny were also the England team at World Open War in Southend last year.
Yeah, just to give a bit of clarity there, Alan was subbing in when he wasn't playing for England.
So he's an english player and he was just
filling the spot because of a last minute dropout last year
it's not that he's dual national no nor is
he you know playing the passport game and jumping from one country to another

(01:14):
exactly yeah oh just like yeah exactly looking for the best
opportunity to place before we go into our games
what did you take phil so i took brits i was playing with
the my list was fairly much what
you'd expect to the average british player i
wasn't the average British player because I didn't take Brengen
ears I know Russell looked at this with Bowen and

(01:35):
one of one of those videos where Russell basically works out
there the average British list and it was similar so yeah
for Gurkha power squads note no Brengen ears
like I said to Stewart's I took to land mattresses bit of
a novelty factor almost a bit of a I could so
I did yeah arguably if I you
know did it again I might take a 25 pound and the land mattress I

(01:56):
took the ppa jeep which obviously we in our group we
you know in the team group we were talking about back and forth
beforehand and there was an argument for taking the jeep and the flamethrower
combo so yeah you get an extra dice but then the way i was using the ppa jeep
was is that not quite last line of defense but it was i need to flame something
and if it's in reserve for example it's testing on a nine because it's veteran

(02:19):
um it's only one dice i need to be able to pull in.
Jeep on the board and flame rather than if it's a
you know flame for in a jeep combo you're looking at
those two dice in succession so yeah it was 14 dice
it was it was fairly standard i was quite happy with with how
it did and quite happy with with the list that i put
together very nice and yourself yeah i

(02:40):
took the classic us build so i actually
dialed your your classic us build not necessarily what
we saw over the weekend to be that's true actually it is i
don't see many people running us the way i run them but
it is very much a barbecue list but i had actually turned the
grill down a little bit because i decided
i was going to do single platoon because i don't like to waste the 35

(03:02):
or 42 points on a second officer and so single platoon i took a stewart because
i thought why not yeah the main reason was just because i i didn't want to get
into a situation where i felt like i needed that offensive capability it's a
great way to hold people back so So I'd thrown a steward in,
which is why I actually took, instead of taking five engineer squads,

(03:23):
I took three engineer squads and one of the U.S.
Army engineer squads that fit in your flamethrower team.
So basically I've got four squads of engineers in four Dodge carriers.
And then I knew that there was going to be objectives in place,
so I wanted plenty of infantry.
And so I took two ranger squads as well. And then alongside that,
I basically had the inexperienced officer with a buddy, inexperienced rocket launcher officer.

(03:48):
Recce jeep and it tractor you obviously
brought your tractor yeah you gotta bring the tractor that heavy
machine gun every now and then generally it's not great
but every now and then that little heavy machine gun will knock something out
like a truck with engineers in where the machine gun wouldn't have rolled the
six and yeah i don't leave home without it generally i think i also had a heavy

(04:11):
mortar was the other thing so 16 dice in total which which is fewer than I usually
play with my US, to be honest.
And I did feel it at times, but I was quite happy with the list on the whole.
But I think next, I probably won't bring it out exactly the same again if I
do bring it out, which I will. Of course you will.

(04:31):
But going into the games, do you want to go through your summary then,
Phil? What was the first game we played?
Yeah, so it was six games over the two days. So game one was key positions.
We were playing the Welsh. so the round one draw had
been done in advance so we knew that we were up against wales we weren't
obviously sure what four lists of the five that they were taking
so my game i played paul wickins and that

(04:52):
finished in a draw it was it was a great game always is when paul
and i play really enjoyed that that was a well-thought draw
on both both sides and yourself johnny i was
playing gary morgan who i know quite well
from the tournament scene in the uk's at most of
the the big tournaments i decided to risk
it sort of risk big win big and stack

(05:15):
the table with all the objectives on one side and then of course lost the
roll off so it was i thought i
was going to lose the game from the very beginning and then there was
one point where actually i was winning and then
he got a lucky hit with his multi-launcher took out two squads in
a single hit well in a
a single fire order and then took the

(05:36):
victory again so i went it was a bit of an emotional roller coaster it
went from certain defeat to potential
victory back to certain defeat over the course of six turns so as much as it
was disappointing not to win it was a really fun game to have that big swing
both ways so we unfortunately lost that round as a team which meant that we

(05:58):
We ended up playing Spain three in round two, which was sectors.
I played Fernando who had a British, British Gurkha list. I played Paul against
the British list. So my first two games were, were against the British Gurkhas.
I was playing British Gurkhas. So it was a familiar territory.
I beat Fernando in that game. Again, really enjoyable game.
Yeah. That was a nice, you know, sort of start to the day, a draw and a win for me.

(06:21):
Yeah. And that was one of the interesting things with this year being a random
draw rather than a pairing system.
System it was just complete luck of the draw who you placed played against and
in game one I'd I think I forgot to mention that but Gary was also playing USA
so it was blue on blue and in the second game I got to play Christophan of,
spain three he was running japanese which would have been

(06:43):
the matchup that i probably would have avoided with my flamethrower list
so he sectors it
was good game managed to pull out a win in the end but it was by no means a
certain victory for me it was very much sort of a hard fought battle that one
but good opponent fun game with an intimidating spigot motor was the key feature

(07:05):
i think cool as And as a team, we won that round.
So we were on one loss, one win from the first two rounds. So we played Denmark
one in round three, the final game of day one.
I played Michael F. This was timely objectives.
I lost that one. I went ahead early on. The first three rounds, I was ahead.
And then round four, we were drawing on victory points.

(07:25):
And then Michael managed to see it home to get the win at the end of the six
turns. But again, really enjoyable game.
Really nice opponent and played in a really good spirit. really
hard challenging but because you know good game of spirit and
yourself johnny yeah the denmark one they're a
very good team i was playing david from that team and we
played he was also playing us so again

(07:47):
it was the second mirror match of the day but very
different build so whereas i'd gone very sort of flamethrower heavy
and with a steward he'd actually included a
105 sherman and he also had a weasel as
well which is the a recce armored carrier which is
a fun little unit but it was was timely objectives
and i had rangers so i just rushed the rangers on rushed

(08:08):
engineers up to the third objective and then
basically sat on the objectives for the whole game
while we had we had a good tussle across the rest of the
table but because i'd got to the objective first and
could go down with veterans on it it really was on the back foot and so i managed
to get a win out of that one quite convincingly on the victory points but as
i say there was a good tussle going on for the sort of the kills and stuff i

(08:31):
mean as 105 was being incredibly incredibly intimidating but i managed to pull
out the win on that one so it's a great game.
So despite johnny winning that round that game unfortunately
we did lose that round as a team so we finished the day
on two losses and one win so going into
into the second game of second day and round four we
were up against usa too i played george against

(08:53):
a us list great game real back
and forth all the way through wasn't wasn't exactly sure where
it was going to go until we counted it up it was a draw we
needed to the winner needs to win by three points i was two
points ahead so i was one point away from from that
draw being a win but really nice game in that that was in penetrating strike
which is basically like double envelopment but you don't leave the board you

(09:15):
just need to stay in your your opponent's deployment zone to get the boat the
extra points at the end and yourself johnny yeah i was playing christian who
was running a french list which is a really really fun list, lots of cavalry,
engineers and trucks. And...
The mistake I made was that I basically, we'd both decided to do the same thing,

(09:37):
which was just to rush into the opponent's zone, but he had more dice than me.
And so he had three howitzers to stop my advance, which were a bit intimidating,
but actually weren't the key factor.
The key factor was he was as fast as I am in my trucks, but had more dice.
And so ultimately I was on the back foot. What I should have probably done was
played a defensive game.

(09:57):
No one he was going to come at me with his horses rather than outflanking
i probably should have reserved and just counted his attack but
it was a fun enough game i had ultimately i
had fun so i can't really complain too much but unfortunately
it was a loss for me because of my tactical error there yeah
you were playing on the table next to me and i remember looking over on
about turn three to see all of his cavalry in your back line i was

(10:20):
like what's going on there that's not meant to happen i wasn't
too worried about it as well because what he did because he had so
many units units there I had the multi-launcher looking down
that back line and this is what Gary had done to me in the first
game he'd got that lucky multi-launcher hit and took
out two units and I thought well I'm gonna be rolling five dice here because
he's got five units and I didn't get a single six and so I think the entire

(10:42):
game I probably rolled about 20 dice with the multi-launcher and didn't get
a single six and so really I was in for a hiding because I had as I said I had less units.
So we also lost that round as a team.
So we then played USA three in round five. This was heartbreak Ridge.
I was playing major who had a, a us Marine list and,

(11:06):
yeah stuart and marines and bars and lamb what the multi-launcher as you'd expect
so i won that game again lovely guy i'd been chatting with major throughout
the weekend we met up with him on the friday and whenever we were saw him in
between games in the evenings we were chatting away so it was really nice to
play him really lovely guy really enjoyable game brilliant yeah in my game,

(11:26):
what game we on four five five yeah in my game five i was playing mike the captain
of usa two two, three, Mike, the captain of USA three.
It was a really interesting list he brought. He brought very high order dice count Soviets.
So everything was inexperienced. He brought inexperienced infantry.
He brought an inexperienced steward, an inexperienced armored car. I think it was the BA10.

(11:51):
And then he had a howitzer and a heavy motor.
And so it was a really interesting list. And he basically just rushed it all
forward in Bren carriers as well, inexperienced Bren carriers.
Um and we just fought over the middle objective effectively.
And i ended up coming out with a win on that one just
basically there was a few failed order tests i.

(12:11):
Killed a few units here and there and ultimately just.
Came down to i had more stuff in the middle as well
as sort of killing a few extra dice but it was
by no means a one-sided game and it was
an interesting table that one because it was one of the ones where you've got the high walls and
so it's not just like hard hardcover it's if you get
into into the wrong position or if someone rushes around the side you

(12:32):
lose line of sight of them which makes it just a little bit more interesting
it was the italian village table wasn't it so
if people have looked on facebook and seen the tables it was it
was the italian village one yeah that was that was i enjoyed that table and yeah
it was nice nice table to play on the only issue i had with it which
was we'd blocked the road in the
middle of the road and it was run daggly but that

(12:52):
was also the exact center of the table so yeah the table
than the mission combined to mean that
the central objective was on this big pile of rubble which
the captains had agreed was impassable which made
it just a little bit more interesting in terms of being able
to surround it to stop your opponent getting onto it yeah so
as a team we won that round so we were going into the final round

(13:14):
with two wins and three losses we played
sweden two which was meeting engagement it was a quite
nice actually to finish you know the other six game on meeting
engagement where you don't have to think as much as as maybe some of the other
missions i played stefan who had a german list a lovely guy that ended in a
draw i was feeling fairly comfortable sort of turn four turn five and then i

(13:36):
maybe got a little bit complacent and and he managed to you know sneak a few
dice to get the draw but again lovely game lovely guy.
So I finished overall on two wins, three draws, and one loss.
So the loss was against Denmark 1. So I was really happy, you know,
with that as an overall performance over the six rounds.
Pretty good performance there, Phil. Well done. Cheers.

(13:56):
Yeah, my last game was against Andreas from Team Sweden 2 as well,
obviously because we're on the same team, playing the same team.
And he was running Brits.
So this was the first Brits I think I faced the whole weekend,
which was really nice after World Open where I'd faced nothing but Brits it
was really nice to go to a competitive tournament and not play Brits for most

(14:18):
of the games but it did mean obviously now I'm facing the Landmatt wrestlers
that were allowed and the.
Sort of the Paragurkers and also a couple of Brengineers, everyone's favourite it was probably,
I mean up to this point I'd had five really enjoyable games but
I think this was actually one of my favourite games of the weekend just
because he was a very good opponent he played very cleanly he

(14:41):
did a lot of things that sort of you would recommend new
players do things like sort of declaring exactly
what you're going to do the way he was measuring things were very very
clean and crisp so i knew no doubt he's moved
he's moved that brent carry exactly nine inches and i
think that's probably why i enjoyed that game so much because it meant i could
just sort of relax trusting that actually i trust that this guy's actually measured

(15:03):
that right i trust that he knows the rules well and i wasn't sort of paying
attention to his army rules as much i basically i did the classic thing where
i just sort of castled up in one corner and he went wide which meant that i
could sort of focus my force.
Against a small part of his force there was
sort of luck bad luck both ways for both of

(15:24):
us good luck both ways for both of us which ultimately led
to a draw in that round so as a team we
won that round so we finished as a team overall on on
three wins and three losses johnny what was your personal record
over the weekend yeah so i finished with three wins
and one draw and two losses which is slightly
above 50 50 so it's slightly

(15:47):
better than the average bear i would would imagine yeah but
equally not six wins so i've got something to work towards
sure but a good set of results and yeah well done as well
on that one thank you very much sir so as a team we finished 10th
which we were i think it was fair to say we're a bit disappointed.
With you know we had three wins and three losses as a
team we were hoping to be you know somewhere around six six

(16:07):
or seven five i think realistically so a little bit lower than
we expected that said you know for two of us it
was our first time at the wtc not the
first time playing you know at an international event obviously we
were both at wow but the first time in the wtc but yeah
something to some moments to be pleased with
and and you know overall performance something to aim for
in the future absolutely yeah but most importantly phil did

(16:30):
you enjoy the weekend yeah absolutely i really enjoyed it i
think the sort of the three key factors for me was getting
to play international players who i wouldn't
normally get to play getting to play a good competitive level over six games
and i said something similar to that after wow when we when we did that episode
episode and going overseas as well was great you know just going abroad to play

(16:52):
an event was really good so it ticked the boxes in in terms of all those three
yeah so i really enjoyed it yeah in yourself.
Yeah, I really enjoyed it. So I thought it was smoothly run.
So well done to everyone involved in that.
The whole TO team and, of course, the overall organizers for the WTC because
there's all the different systems.

(17:12):
So Dave Nolan overall organized the thing.
And then we had Dan, Pete and Spurley running the bolt action part.
And Craig as well. And Craig, sorry. Don't forget Craig. But yeah,
the overall, it was a really well-run tournament.
I really enjoyed playing all the players that I played. i thought
it was really nice to meet all the international players as well and
i thought the venue was quite good sort of having everything in

(17:35):
the one place is really nice for a tournament where you sort
of the commute from the hotel room to the
gaming hall is less than five minutes walk yeah yeah and
i enjoyed it so much that i actually went home and started writing
the qualifier pack for world open war because i
was just i'm really looking forward to the next international event so for
those of you who don't know so world open war is an international event that's

(17:57):
held in october in the uk and south end johnny is
the england rep so he's responsible for liaising with
russell wright who's the event organizer and also responsible
for selecting the england team so you've
come back you've written the pack for the wow qualifier so
what can we expect to see for that wow qualifier johnny
yeah so we're looking at a date of the

(18:18):
end of may we're going going to be doing it at south.
End at the sswg club so russell's
kindly offered to both referee and give
use of the club which obviously is going to be a really nice advantage
for the english players because it means we're going to be playing on
the actual tables we'll be playing on at world open war
alongside having the actual referee so

(18:39):
the rules should be ruled the same
for both the qualifiers and the actual tournament so
that that should hopefully give us that little edge we need need this year and
effectively it's going to be so bring your filth full competitive exactly same
restrictions as world open most will be 1100 points single platoon generic only

(19:00):
and it'll be a five game event so that should hopefully nicely split the pack
and then effectively the top three players.
Are going to be asked to form the team for World Open War.
Although you have put in a little clause with regards to the nations to be played, haven't you?
Yeah, exactly. So one of the things coming off the back of WTC and also just

(19:23):
sort of from World Open War last year, one of the things I realised is because
you have to have three different nations, your best players might not be the best at those nations.
If you just took four people who are always coming in the top four places,
but all running Brits, that might not give you the best possible team.
And so the idea is that effectively if our top
four placings let's say are brits brits u.s japanese

(19:45):
then your first player who's playing british
your u.s player who's third and your japanese player who's fourth would
form the team to give us a nice basically so
that the players can play to their strengths rather than someone having
to learn a brand new army which also just
from a tournament perspective i think it'll make the qualifiers quite fun because i imagine
we'll see some of the players that we don't

(20:06):
often see might be trying new nations because it
might improve their chances of qualifying that's really
interesting cool and when can we expect to
hear about it and see the pack and so on so i've
actually been able to get that live between our interviews and
recording this segment so if you head over to facebook you'll
be able to find it on there either through the tommy's page or by

(20:27):
searching for team england qualifiers if you're not on facebook and you are
interested in attending you can always email us at tabletoptommies at gmail.com
and i'll send over the pack direct to you as i say russell's going to to so
that means i can also compete for my place in there quite right yeah exactly
yeah and again i'm if i'm on the team the captain.

(20:48):
Is something that i have to decide but it
won't necessarily be me whether i'm on the team or not
as as the rep it's not the same thing as saying you're the rep and
the captain exactly yeah the rep is purely responsible for forming the team
and sort of liaising between the team and the to once that captain's in place
the captain's job is sort of to liaise on the rules side etc so any rules queries

(21:09):
or selection queries they always do it a captain's chat the same as There's WTC,
there's a cabinet chat, so we can have these sort of FAQs and a living FAQ document.
But I'm really looking forward to it this year. I think it'll be a lot of fun,
because last year was a lot of fun, wasn't it?
Yeah, I absolutely loved it. I really enjoyed it. And yeah, so if you haven't
listened to our episode when we did the debrief back in October,

(21:32):
yeah, go and have a listen.
But yeah, it was great. And it was different to the WTC as well.
You know, they both have their own different subtleties and quirks and nuances
and all that sort of stuff.
So yeah. Yeah, I think it's really good for the community to have two international
tournaments that are just slightly different.
And we see that they're different because if we look at WTC,

(21:52):
the Spanish team have won for the last four years, I think.
Whereas at World Open War, the Danes won that one.
And I imagine next year at World Open War, there'll be a different winner again.
Because it is, as you say, it's a slightly different tournament to WTC.
But shall we move on to our interviews? Yeah, that's enough prattle from us.
So, like we said at the start, we've got a more experienced old hand or older

(22:16):
hand, John Ross, captain of USA1.
And we also have Liam, who was part of the England C team this year.
So, without further ado, we'll hand over to the next section.
Fantastic. Over to our roving reporter. Which I think was me.
Music.

(22:45):
We're delighted to welcome John Ross, who's captain of this year's USA1 team
and previous years as well, John?
That's correct. So how many years have you been at the WTC for now?
This was the third year, so I did it starting in court.
Okay, fantastic. And how was WTC 2024 Granada for you?

(23:07):
I think it was the best yet. It's a great venue, as you know,
and Granada in Spain is amazing, right? So the food's great,
and it's so cheap, and the weather was particularly mild this year,
even though we were earlier, and the venue's nice, and the hotel's fine.
So all the heavy lifting parts of a tournament, all I thought, went really smoothly.

(23:28):
But a big change this year is the amount of people focused on the tournament.
So you had Dan and some of the juggernauts, Pete and Spurly,
and Craig, obviously. And so you had more people focused on the tournament,
both before and during, than we've had in years past.
And you get any people in a room all at one time, and you need a pretty big

(23:49):
cast in order to make sure everything is moving smoothly. I thought they did brilliantly.
Yeah, obviously we haven't been before, but it was very obvious this year that
you had the team that were organizing the overall event for the weekend.
And then also the guys, Dan Spurley and Pete, very much running the bolt action
event on the weekend, but also all the prep work beforehand in terms of the

(24:11):
pack, the list checking, the captain's chat, answering all the questions and so on.
So it was, yeah, from our perspective, it was very, very well run logistically,
both before and during the event as well.
Have you guys seen my tournament players' Bill of Rights?
I have come across that actually i think the
snafu team have talked about it on their
podcast before because i think they brought it

(24:34):
up as like this is a really good starting point if you're looking at running
a tournament it's a really nice place to start in terms of a mindset to have
yeah so so we so we wrote that after years of going to tournaments where you
leave home and you travel and you've got costs and travel expenses and you know
the expense of dealing dealing with your spouse because you're not home.
You're home stuck with the kids.

(24:55):
And in all of it, there's a lot of prep goes in, all the effort.
And then you go there and the venue is too hot or it's too cold or everyone's
shoved right on top of each other so you can't move. It starts late.
People come back late from lunch. The pack's confusing. I mean,
you guys are nodding because you've been through this, right?
Yeah, 100%. So after years of complaining,

(25:16):
there's a stronger word there, that's complaining, one night after a particularly
bad one of these events where, but you get to the end and they can't figure
out the score and then they announce the winner and it's totally not the winner
because they got it wrong and all the disasters take place, right?
So we wrote this thing, which was, you know, what should a tournament player expect?
And so it began kind of like, to the extent that the players put all this time

(25:38):
and energy and capital and all the things that they do in order to come.
We should be equally prepared. And it's sort of this fair, equitable relationship
between the tournament organizer and the folks.
You look at WCG, I mean, there were 18 teams of four for Volt Action,
plus probably equivalent for Middle Earth and for Star Wars Legion.

(25:59):
All that terrain, all the player packs, all the FAQs, all the prep.
You just think about the thousands of hours that went into making sure that
when we showed up there and you walked in, And all you really had to focus on
was your matchups and trying to play well. And I think that's a great tournament.
Yeah, I agree. And I think the size of the team is a huge factor there.

(26:20):
Because as you say, if it's 1,000 hours of work, one person can't do it. Two people, it's 500.
The extra just spreading the load makes such a difference. And I think it does
show that there's a lot of people there.
And also, it's the people that you've seen in a lot of tournaments.
Like, these are experienced hands.
Well, that's a great point. because sometimes you go to a
store or something where the people are organizing but they're not players you

(26:42):
don't know how to ferret out an error or something
confusion confusing in a tournament pack or they don't know how to make a rules
call right yeah judge standing over there with the rule book you're probably
in trouble so bringing experienced you know high-end tournament players people
who play a lot to an event to both run it and be judges boy that is usually
the sign it's going to be a great event because they know exactly what calls

(27:03):
to make both before and after.
Absolutely i mean from my perspective the the few times i did
ask for you know a referee's decision it was it
was there it was on the spot it was quick very decisive there
wasn't a back and forth it was what's the situation what's the
decision we need decision was made buff
off you go and and you know certainly been
at other events in the uk where like you say maybe it's

(27:26):
at a game store and the people running it aren't regular bolt action
players or it might be someone who's starting out
which is fantastic to see but then their their decisiveness
in making that call maybe isn't isn't there whereas you know because of the
guys who were refereeing and their experience as players you got that decision
quickly you were able to move on with the game both both players were happy

(27:46):
maybe didn't go you know wouldn't have gone in both persons direction what one
person's gonna be more happy than the other but it was like decision made off we go so,
And that's what you want, right? You don't want a bunch of agonizing emotion.
You know, let's make a call. Let's roll. Let's keep, let's keep moving.
I don't know how many times I called a judge during all six games,
maybe three, four times total. Yeah. And in every instance, it was mostly a language issue.

(28:09):
Confusion of how, which is a WTC thing. And you really do have to put that into
perspective because whatever problems you're going to have at a local event
where everyone speaks the same language, now you got people that are speaking
six or seven or eight different languages.
I don't know how many different languages you guys got in the UK.
I can't understand half of the UK folks.
Officially one. Well, yeah, officially one.

(28:34):
I won't make a pun of any particular part of the UK. I love you all. You're all great.
But it was a little tricky. But anyway, you understand my point, right?
It's like you try a conversation, and the judge can come over and make that
call and speed it up in a way that might have been very difficult or confusing
trying to do it on your own.
So I thought that was great. Hey, I got a question for you guys.
What did you think of the tables?

(28:54):
So again, yeah, we haven't been before. We'd certainly seen the pictures from
previous years and the criticism, which seemed to be fair in previous years,
that they were a little bit sparse and weren't particularly imaginative.
This year, possibly the opposite. There was actually quite a lot of terrain
and there was quite a lot of terrain on the table in terms of mass.

(29:19):
In terms of actually playing it, no major issues at all for me.
I think there was one table we played two games on where there was only one
terrain type. It was basically the winter table where you only had woods.
That said, what you need to factor in is that all of this terrain's been made.
You've got four identical tables times nine, and it's a huge undertaking to

(29:43):
prep all of that terrain, get it over from Ireland to Spain and get it set up. So.
I certainly didn't walk away thinking, oh, yeah, no, those tables weren't brilliant.
And I think since the event, you know, we're a week out now from the actual event.
There really hasn't been much noise or chatter on Facebook in the way that in

(30:04):
previous years, witnessing from the outside, the terrain conversations be going
on and on both over the weekend when the photos were taken and people put them
on Facebook and then after the event.
Yeah, I think it was actually the opposite. So I think any of the photos that
got posted, the feedback on the tables was generally quite positive.
Now, obviously they weren't playing on them, but as somebody who played on them,

(30:25):
I thought they were generally fine.
And my only complaint was the same as yours, Phil, where that one table that
only had woods, it's a nice change to do it, to try playing on a table with just woods.
But the second game on it, I thought, well, this is just a little bit dull now.
And that was my only, funnily my

(30:45):
complaint with the tables wasn't the tables themselves it was that actually the
pairings led to teams playing on the same table lots
of times like the swedes i think played three games on the same table which
i thought was a bit of a shame but to be fair it was an all right table so it
could have been worse so so i i agree with you guys i thought the tables were
some of them were brilliant a couple of different tables and one of the italian

(31:07):
village tables was really they They were beautiful, they were really thematic, right?
Everything's well matched and the angles made you think.
You know, it wasn't, you couldn't use a, you know, right angles in order to
kind of guess where things were on the table when it shifted a little 45 degrees
to an angle that kind of, it, it, it, it prevents some pre-measuring effects. Yeah.

(31:29):
You know, I think that, that if you've ever hosted your own tournament,
whether it's your first or your fifth terrain is always a journey.
Yeah. You're never done. Yeah. You're always building for the next event.
Right. So you think about what he did. So Dave Nolan cast and painted all of
that. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.
Star Wars and middle earth and those Star Wars table. Beautiful.

(31:51):
Right. And you think about the, again, how many hours it took to get that.
So yeah, the tables had been light in the years past and they got better last year.
And I thought they were great this year. And, you know, maybe one of them might've
been a little too much, but they were, they were all playable.
They were all really pretty. And my guess is that winter table have more stuff
on it than just trees next year.
Yeah. I have. Well, it's funny because when people complain about too much stuff,

(32:15):
I imagine you probably could have just siphoned a little bit over to the woods
table and just thrown on a ruin or something just to give people a little bit of variety.
And picking up on your earlier point, John, about what was noticeable at the
WTC was the TOs were very experienced players.
When it came to the tables, the tables were set up on the Friday by a range
of players from different countries setting up the first of each of the four tables.

(32:39):
And then Dan, the head T.O., came over, gave it a proper thorough look,
moved things around, made sure he was happy with it and then it was obviously
copy and paste for the others.
But my point there being that it was experienced players who were having that
first stab at, you know, what table do I want to play on that's going to be
balanced and fair if I was on either side?
And then you had that experienced perspective from Dan as the head T.O.,

(33:02):
making sure he was happy with it, giving it the thumbs up and then we moved
on and made sure that we replicated that that across the next three down the line.
So in the Warhammer 40k world, are you guys 40k players? No, not anymore.
Not anymore. I mean, I played many editions. I have thousands of dollars worth
of toys sitting, you know.
In the current edition, you go look over a 40k table, right?

(33:26):
They have regimented this thing down for competitive players.
So everything's perfectly equal.
There's only one basic train type you ever see. The objectives are these huge
circles, right? The whole table, the mat doesn't matter anymore.
You know, building stuff in the middle of the street. they don't care right it's become abstract
okay and i find that so strange because
we play with these highly detailed realistic looking miniatures you

(33:49):
know to the extent that a space orc is realistic but i
mean you know they're true to scale they look like they belong they look
like they fit in a universe and then you go play at a table that looks i
mean hell it could just be markers just that almost doesn't matter and yet
like we play in a world war ii game in a highly competitive game
players a lot of players came there to win right and you
play on tables that we're not symmetrical and the

(34:12):
one thing that i haven't heard over the years and i'm so glad is
people griping that their loss was as a
consequence that they got the wrong side of the table yeah i've
i have had that a couple of times but
it's usually when it's paired with a terrible mission so i
have heard that happen where i remember one year
at one of the tournaments there was like they chose to

(34:33):
play envelopment where only one side's trying to get across and
the defender had trenches and then a big no
man's land of no terrain in front of them and that was
just carnage i mean i think it was an open event
so i think it was a lot of fun still but i do remember that
one players sort of nudging the to and.
Saying i'm not sure this mission matches this table well

(34:54):
so it's not i mean if you look at the tables like all the roads there
were lots of pot marks across the road
and there was a lot of thought that went into the way out to those i
thought they were i thought they were uh almost universally
great yeah and i think that's the experience isn't
it the the experience showed at this one where
because when we're i really like that setting up period where we're setting

(35:15):
up and the captains could go to the to and say i don't this terrain bit here
doesn't make sense and then and then dan could come over and say yeah you're
right we'll just nudge that to the side and i thought that was a really nice
way that sort of like it also is probably quite good for the to because it means
they're not going to get out those grapes after the tournament,
because the captains had their opportunity to grow beforehand.

(35:35):
And so I think it led to some really nice layouts. But the little captains meeting in advance is great.
So in years past, there was this little mini meadow where you match the lists,
you know, one down, you put one down, right.
I mean, you kind of find it like trying to fake out getting your strongest.
List against their weakest combo right we didn't do that
this year it was totally random but what

(35:57):
that allowed us to do is be more relaxed and focus on
the table because there's not a rule for everything you know how do you want
to play this hill how do we want to play this wreck that's sitting in the middle
of the uh of the of the the pop market in the road or whatever and that took
a lot of stress off as a captain i thought and uh i thought yeah i was going
to ask about that because Because obviously in previous years,

(36:19):
you have had that match-up system where you've been able to put your list down.
The opposing captain then puts what they want to play.
This year, it was very much, well, it was, you know, face down and random.
It's interesting from your perspective that that made it easier and took the stress away.
Having been to WOW in World Open War in Southend in October,
one of the things I think Johnny and I both enjoyed was that element of you

(36:42):
put your list down and then you wait and see what your opponent is going to present to you to play.
And obviously, when Johnny was captain, when we were talking it through beforehand,
it was like, well, Phil, I'm going to throw you under the bus to see what you get.
Because I've got another list here that I really don't want to play against
their Japanese list, for example.
So we'll shove you down first and we'll see what happens next. So I can see it both ways.

(37:04):
So I agree with you. I mean, the little mini matchups were fine.
And of course, leading up to the event, you have endless conversations about
what's your goal, what's an all comers fix, what's your hammer, what's your amble.
Right i'll give you i'll give you an insight so last
year we went and we got i miraculously
or because i was just amazing at the tap delimiting the game tax

(37:26):
but i got every matchup i asked exactly the way
i want and we didn't hit a podium so i don't know that it
mattered that much and then this year which is funny
is we had i had a player who's supposed to come from the united states
stuff you know we've been talking up and then
he went silent on me a couple days before he just didn't show up so
we had to go into the singles and recruit somebody beg him

(37:48):
to stay and play and that and felix is is a german but he'd lived years in the
u.s and so he had a lot of so we adopted him as a the member of usat1 but because
no one had seen his list beforehand when we went into our matches that didn't
seem fair so i would play his up.
Okay a match to it and he won

(38:10):
four of six games so brilliant yeah okay so
usa captain of team one this year what was your involvement in in the other
two usa teams because there were three that went this year so so dave does this
thing where he where he volunteers you to be the team recruiter for your country
and so a couple years ago he asked me to recruit teams to be on usa teams for For the US,

(38:33):
I host a both action page and, you know, I send things out.
I go to events and I get out little flyers for people to join.
And with the idea of recruiting as many teams as possible. So my official role,
I guess, is like a, what do they call it?
When people like this girl and this boy would be great together. Let's get them married.

(38:53):
Like a matchmaker. Matchmaker, right? So that's what I'm doing.
All these people say, hey, I want to go, right? And then I'm looking at them
and I'm trying to put people, you know, onto teams. And the issue with the U.S.
Is, you know, it's a lot of people, but we are geographically spread really wide.
We do not have the tournament frequency that you have in a lot of countries in Europe.

(39:14):
So some of the people who played on teams had never met before they showed up
in Granada. Okay, that's fun.
And I would say that, you know, maybe there's a couple of guys in Texas or a few in Spain.
No one who played on my team lived in the same city. So the Americans aren't
going to have the same sort of ramp up to the event that a lot of the Europeans

(39:38):
can because they can play as a group, the same club,
they practice all the time, they go to the same tournaments,
they sort of know it in your body.
And that makes it tricky. And then the other thing I have to do is I have to
go through this criteria to make the team.
Criteria, all right. Number one, do you have a valid passport?
Yeah. I don't care how good you are. All right. Number two, can you afford to go?

(40:01):
I thought it's going to be $2,000. It's probably not, but it's going to be $2,000.
If you don't have that, don't, you can't go. Number three is,
will your boss and or wife and or boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, will they let you go?
And then finally, the last question is, hey, do you actually know how to play this game?
And so the U.S. teams end up being, that funnel ends up narrowing you down for

(40:25):
a lot of people who are super interested, but the people who can actually go.
So it's not always a match for people, either in the same clubs or the same
community or even the same skill set. So it makes it makes it tricky for us.
That's that's a rather lame vacation. Wow.
We'll edit this bit. So it's seamless. I thought you were going to come in with

(40:47):
a question there, Phil. I almost wasn't. And then it went, to be honest.
I mean, there was a thing that you were talking about over the weekend,
which was you asking the players how many games they'd played in a year.
I thought that was really interesting. That really got me thinking.
I've decided that this year I'm going to tally up how many games I actually
play, because I estimated about 100 last year, but that's purely an estimate.

(41:07):
So, I mean, what was the thinking behind that question?
Well so we had nine american players
get to get to spend we had eight show up had to
beg one to play but that to me is miraculous
because in years past you know that funnel separated
down and i get down to the very end and then i was calling other
team captains saying hey do you have an extra guy from the uk

(41:29):
or extra italian or french or whatever to play
with us because it was so difficult to get
had a full team to go so i'm super happy that we had had
three full teams but if you
look at our players and i would ask that question of our players my guess
number would be 30 average and
if i were to ask that question of the juggernauts

(41:50):
or maybe bow and his team or maybe you know
some spain one number might be 100 200 150 you know and so it it is it's a function
of the u.s meta and the way everything is so spread out i'll give you a great
example so we've got adepticon coming up which is a big tournament up in chicago
right right the cost to go to adepticon,

(42:12):
to fly up there because it's not close you know what you know 80 of the country
cannot drive there right so you're talking probably a thousand bucks in order
to begin that tournament what's it cost to drive over and go to the juggernauts
you know tournament for someone in the uk.
100 pounds i don't know so yeah it
becomes a real barrier to to frequent

(42:32):
competitive play and i think it's showing up in a lot of our guys scores yeah
and and i guess on that basis then absolute credit
to usa too for how they performed over the
weekend and their placing because you know given what you just said if
if the usa individuals are not playing as
much as maybe the european individuals are then you've
got teams being put together who aren't necessarily geographically close

(42:53):
to each other from the same club usa too did did
very well all things considered in their final placings over
the weekend well so they are the exception to this they're all
from maine okay which is one of the smallest states in
the united why why maine got all these bolt action players i have no
idea that matt and his
crew they did a really good job and uh yeah i'll

(43:14):
credit i'll credit to them you know going into
the final round we played denmark for what i thought was third place okay
so i you know had we done well against
denmark one i thought we could have had a chance at a podium
and i was very very proud of our team for all the reasons
that we discussed yeah turned out to be not the case they they they spanked

(43:34):
us and sent us back down to the middle where we belonged i guess but um but
you know for i for america the american teams that's actually a lot of progress
from where we're a couple years ago and i'm i'm super proud of that Yeah,
we played both USA 2 and 3 and great games and USA 2 won the round against us, England B.

(43:55):
We came out on top of USA 3, but
great games and great players and hard competitive, but it wasn't niggly.
There's flash points and so on that you maybe get in other situations where
you're both going at it and it's a bit contentious.
Certainly for me, those two rounds were really, really enjoyable.

(44:16):
So there's a particular tournament player type.
I'm sure you've bumped into them over the years. The player type who is,
they're really good, they're very competitive, and they push all the edges.
So they'll move, and they'll move very loose in a way that looks like it's giving
them a competitive advantage.
Or they'll challenge someone on a rule that they know is right.

(44:38):
But if it's an inexperienced player, maybe they'll second-guess themselves.
Themselves and so they use kind of a bully approach bullied their
way through a game which is and is it it's borderline cheating it's
just pushing the edge pushing the edge you know i've got
a tank and i'm gonna move it i just take my tape measure and i
just pick it up and move it over there and i don't do it precisely like all
the kinds of things you will see some very very top performing

(45:01):
players do you guys bumped
into this yeah i don't i don't think we had any of those on
any of the teams this year they do exist in the u.s but just
yeah there was no bendy tape
measures when you meant to be moving in a straight line or or your tank
that drifts you know an inch to the right or the left when it's
again moving in a straight line yeah yeah i i

(45:22):
you know i i have played some folks at competitive games
you know 40k or warhammer when it was still the new.
World or whatever it is now right and uh and all
these games and occasionally on a top table in a
very competitive tournament you'll bump into a player like that and
everybody knows them and everyone hates playing them and
yet they do tend to do well because they can use those

(45:44):
tricks to kind of push the envelope in their
favor you know i have no tolerance for that and
i hope i i hope that all the folks that played against usa whether
we won or lost felt like all three teams were we're
good gentlemen we're playing the way it's supposed to be
yeah i think so i think it is
such such a shame when you have players like that

(46:05):
who are pushing the bounds with their elastic tape measures Etc it's just such
a shame because what happens is someone who's quite new plays against them has
a bad experience and then the entire competitive community gets tarred with
that brush and it's just such a shame because actually the best players are
playing incredibly cleanly.

(46:26):
And this is what from my perspective i'd rather lose a
clean game than win a game where sort of
realistically you've basically cheated oh yeah
absolutely like i mean like there's nothing on the line here right there's a
trophy and driving lights that lasts about a day or two yeah maybe and then
then it's over right there's literally nothing on the line no one's life is

(46:47):
going to change dramatically as
a consequence of any of this and yeah what can i i'm there with you i uh.
It's the mid-tier players who are the worst when you have a mid-tier player like that who's,
fighting over seventh place versus eighth place and
they're pulling out all the tricks and it's like
you're not even we're not even playing for a trophy over here yeah there's

(47:09):
been some times when i said last year we played played the
very last team we played they were they were
not going to podium but they were just going for it and it was like man just
can we just stop and go have a beer yeah nothing's good
but last year two of my players we
got deathly ill food poisoning i think it
was it was in day coming

(47:31):
into day two i think we were in fourth or fifth place and we were so excited
the night before and night he and i were throwing up and it was horrific it
was horrific and and i went to dave that morning dave nolan said we can't play
we're gonna have to withdraw okay he's like and do that to me because i got
nobody else so we ended up playing all three three games on that Sunday.
And, and one of my players was like running out and throwing up and running

(47:54):
back in and picking a dice and then money back out. And it was just horrible.
It was the worst day ever.
We, we, we, we survived without any foodborne illnesses this year. So that's a victory.
Yeah. Choke that one up as a success. Yeah. But now there's no excuses.
That's the problem. Yeah.

(48:15):
One of the things I really liked about this year's captain's
pack was the the clarity of the missions they were very
clear they were simple and easy to understand there was
some creativity in them which made you think the secondary objectives
were were pretty fine how did you this is being your first time how did you
feel about the missions i mean the missions themselves other than penetrating

(48:35):
strike we played them all before we know we we used to the missions and so on
penetration strike i enjoyed that one it's it's double envelopment without running
off the the end of the board effectively in terms of the secondaries.
Don't think it changed how i was playing the game you know
in terms of you know trying to neutralize you know the enemy vehicles
and or trying to take a cheap dice in

(48:56):
terms of the enemy hq but in terms of the mission
pack yeah it was nice and clear we've just been at an
event this weekend and we used heartbreak ridge in
in that event and we used a description that was from the wtc
pack because it's nice and clear straightforward and you know
those of us who played it before it was easy for us to talk to our
opponents if they hadn't played it and gone on this is how you play it this is the
gist of it off you go so yeah the the missions

(49:18):
seem like they should be so so easy and you read
them in the book they make total sense and then you then you go to try and
play a book mission and immediately chaos ensues i don't deploy do do this do
the spotters and snipers do they set up first or not is that going to be allowed
right is outplanking allowed or not and so many of the things that you need
in order to be well informed for how to play a mission.

(49:42):
Very confusingly done in those book missions. And unfortunately,
the game publisher came out with a return of a pack a few years ago that actually made it worse.
I don't know if you remember it, but it didn't even say maybe can I put my 100%
on my army and reserve? I mean, it didn't have a lot of the key rules that you need.
Getting the mission clean and really simple is deceptively difficult.

(50:03):
But when it is, it makes it such a pleasure because then you're focused on how
do I beat this guy as opposed to.
Do my spotters go out up for us or not i don't know yeah that
pre-game admin phase was just very nicely quick because they
published the missions in advance you were able to look at your list have
a think about okay i've got to reserve you know up to 50 for example
what yeah what is my base kind of

(50:24):
50 going to be and might change depending on my
opponent and the table but i've roughly got an idea of what i'm going to put
in reserve what i'm going to put in first wave all that kind of stuff so i always
like it with events when you know the missions in advance after the lists have
been submitted because it does give you that opportunity in that period between
list submission and the event to do a bit of thinking and planning for yourself.

(50:45):
And I could imagine for both Johnny and yourself, John, as captains,
either at WTC or WOW, it makes it easier for you as captains because you're
able to look after yourself and also look after the team.
So when you get to the table or you get to the weekend, it's a job that's already
been done to a certain extent.
That's exactly right. I mean, it de-risks all of the decisions that you're trying

(51:07):
to make because you are – the team captain's your play.
There's no such thing as a separate captain standing behind and giving advice.
In fact, they specifically won't allow that.
So the minute everyone agrees on terrain, you're playing your own game,
and you have to focus on your own game.
So yeah, clearly the mission pack was really critical.
Now, they made some interesting decisions. So there were very few missions that

(51:29):
allowed for deployment. point yes very few so if you had an army that relied
on forward deployment as your trick,
you might have walked away from this event feeling like you didn't
really get the full power of your army how did you feel about i guess
on the flip side though because we knew the missions before we submitted
our lists if you'd read the missions and then

(51:51):
you built a list which was you know soviet scout
hunters so soviet scouts and tank hunters or
you know let's say you took the australians and you had
a bunch of pap ones and then went oh hang on a minute i can only
forward deploying two out of six missions you've kind of shook yourself in
the foot so all right so yeah no no no sympathy
it's the short answer and it was quite

(52:12):
one of the things we've seen at other tournaments in the
uk is people sort of comping sort
of ruling that you can only have a certain number of forward deployers.
To stop people sort of abusing these specialist
squads and so actually what was what's quite interesting
is if you just make the missions in a way that sort
of hinders them it's sort of like a soft comp

(52:33):
on them where people are naturally not going to take as
many and i think that's quite a nice way because you're not saying you can't have
them you're just saying it's not going to be that useful on this
occasion unfortunately i think there are
certainly some you know non-standard army lists
that you can do and i surprise that
support employment and there are some book missions that will massively

(52:54):
reward you for that and so if you're a three-game
local tournament and you build for one of those missions
and you can just stop somebody who doesn't see it coming i was
i was glad to see it then i you know i
don't play an army that has that as a benefit so maybe maybe others felt differently
i played michael christiansen from denmark wow last year with a soviet list

(53:15):
and he built his you know forward deploying soviet list and i played him in
sectors and and i think russell had slightly tweaked the wording of the deployment rules in in sectors,
Michael didn't deploy a single unit in his sector.
All of his units that he deployed were in the neutral zone forward deploying 12 inches away from me.
And I was like, well, okay, here we go. You know, and it was fantastic.

(53:37):
It was exactly the right build for the mission and also the table,
you know, re really worked.
I hadn't come across that sort of you know army and mission before was
like okay this you know where
do we go from here sort of thing so yeah i had a similar thing actually at
wtc with the i'd included rangers for the
first time in a competitive army just because i

(53:58):
needed some extra infantry to just for sitting on objectives and then timely
objectives came up and i realized i could lead the way onto the objective which
then meant i could go down in turn one which made them very hard to shift and
i realized that i'd unintentionally built a really good army for playing timely
objectives and you just announced it on your show you could have gone the other way.

(54:19):
Well no because i quite like so this is the thing i quite like when
someone uses those tricks against me as well i really
like when someone catches me off guard it's one
of the reasons why so if we play these human v human
games because when you play a computer if you
played it enough times it gets very predictable what what
its reaction will be whereas when you play a human there's
times they'll do things where you're just like i did not expect or

(54:42):
i couldn't have predicted that if you'd given me 10 years of sort
of calculations i never would have thought you'd do this thing and it's
completely thrown me off the psychological meta of
bolt action is actually a really fun part of the game
and you know people don't talk enough about because there's units that you can
bring that create psychological confusion and various and there's tactics that

(55:04):
you can do that will really put your opponent you know destroy their momentum
win a game that way Definitely. Yeah.
Of all the lists, you guys think that you brought strong enough lists for the event?
I mean mine was the most obvious british list you could go it so obviously beau and russell.

(55:27):
On their video russell had gone through and and worked
out the average british list which was i think three
three squads of gurkhas an engineer in a
brand two ducker stewarts one land mattress blah
blah blah i had four gurkhas and no engineers but
i had a flamethrower in a jeep i had two land mattresses so
i basically you know michael our captain said

(55:48):
phil you like you like playing the the brits you're strong with the brits take
a list that you you know you can do well with and it was the most obvious
you know british list and as much as it pains me
to say that it was basically oh look here's phil's
british list it's just like 14 15 of the
other you know 18 british lists so in that sense it
was it was as strong as i could could have made it within

(56:10):
the narrow-minded framework i was working
in which was gherka stewart's and let's have
a lamb mattress or two I was disappointed I didn't bring
more flamethrowers I think I mean I
don't think it would have made the list stronger but because I also
think that flamethrowers aren't the best thing
at the minute because there's so much stubborn so much fanatic going

(56:30):
around that at a competitive tournament flamethrowers
aren't where it's at but I'll always lean that way
just because it's it's why I love I love getting in
close and then flamethrowing and then I really like
the high stakes high risk high reward element of it
and so i think if i'd
been building it far more competitively i would have went another way probably.

(56:52):
Sort of a lot more bars maybe he's taken two stewards
instead of just one but really i only put the steward in just because i felt
i needed some long-range anti-tank and something just to hold people back but
in hindsight i think i wish i'd taken six flamethrowers i think there are people
in america that would hear you say that And then they would roll in the floor going,

(57:12):
Oh my God, six blend throwers. That would be very unusual to see here.
So for my, I took British, I had four units of Gurkha paratroopers because why not when in Rome?
And I had a 25-pounder, which was not a bad choice.
Very good. I had two Crusaders, the Crusader AA tanks with the double autocannons,

(57:34):
and I had two Flame Jeeps.
And when I played them properly, they were really, really fun.
The two Crusaders move up like piranhas, and they're moving up and edging around,
and the steward can't turn.
Turn and eventually you get a side shot and you can kill it
and killing a stewart with a with the crusaders

(57:55):
was a lot of fun i i don't think my list was
as optimized as others but it was different enough to
pause and think about it and that that
that's kind of part of the psychological battle right there yeah that
sounds like a fun list and also the the auto
cannons are very much in vogue at the moment with
there being so many stewarts and armorates around the thing

(58:17):
that you didn't have which the british very
much leaned into was they'd added land mattresses as
a generic choice even though it's not in the
game so if anyone listening it's not a generic choice but they'd
added it especially for this tournament and so of course as the as the multiple
rocket launchers the only thing the brits don't get access to nearly every british

(58:38):
player included one so why didn't you go for a land mattress well it was in
it was out it was in it was out having the 25 pounders It's one of those like great units.
Cause it's both a howitzer and, and an, and a tank gun have an eight AP for
that is, is, is always good.
And, and most, when I played the rocket launchers, most of the time they do nothing all game.

(59:00):
And so, but what they do is they do force people who are smart to spread out.
I forgot this rule in turn in game six against Bill Mortensen.
Cause he was playing, but he had a land match.
I bunched up around the only building on the table.
And he punished me for that in a way that would be one of the worst drubbings

(59:20):
I've ever had in any competitive game. Okay.
If you're actually paying attention, if you spread out, you don't give them
easy shots, and they're so killed.
That's the other thing. They're usually inexperienced. You're hitting them on
fives. You kill two guys, and they flee.
My experience has been that they're more of a psychological weapon than they actually kill a lot.

(59:44):
100%. yeah that's what i'm using them for in my american
list i'm using them to keep you apart so that when the
engineers come in with the flamethrower they'll clear that unit and there's
not another unit within six inches who could then counter-attack basically because
you've spread really far out so now your counter-attack is sort of a foot away
and that's what i'm using the multiple launcher for just to keep you nice and

(01:00:06):
spread out so i can just pick you off one unit at a time.
This year i put playing all stubborn i pushed it and i would i would move just
you know you know you know the trick is coming right you know the jeep or the
or the truck is coming up and the engineers are going to come out and shoot
you with a flamethrower and i i pushed it up there.

(01:00:27):
With the idea that if they kill them all with
a good roll okay i've lost a unit but chances
are they won't and then i'll assault them back and i'll
kill them and then i'll be next to the transport and i'll get two kills out of
it versus one and i would say that i mean it
requires a lot of courage to do it but but
triggering the trap worked for me most of the

(01:00:48):
time during the tournament and it was very satisfying yeah that's
why as i say i don't think flip throws away at
the minute so if you are trying to get really competitive don't lean
at the barbecue list would be my advice did you
face any of the new italian case blue lists i didn't
no we are one of our players in england

(01:01:10):
c to italians he's always played italians
before before case blue so he it's not like he
changed from you know pre-case to case blue i know.
Against denmark one of our players obviously played against
michael christiansen who had italians i think
really good i i was i was working furiously to
see if i could get my belt before the lists were turned in and i couldn't

(01:01:30):
so i played them but i i played
him uh your your your team's three player what
was his name owen owen oh yeah great game
yeah womble womble yeah it was a great game
i think i won but it was a very close game it was so much fun that's a the new
italians rock yeah definitely yeah i played him in the warm-ups and it was a

(01:01:52):
lot of fun those cavalry that he bounced between my two ranger squads and took
them both out against the odds really and i was I was very impressed with them.
So, John, looking ahead, you know, to next year and to USA and so on,
what advice would you give to anyone listening who maybe wants to go to the WTC,
but is maybe, you know, within their first year or so of playing the game and

(01:02:16):
isn't quite sure what to expect? Are they good enough? How to go about it?
Obviously, they need to meet those first three criteria in terms of availability,
affordability, and permission from the other half and boss.
But once that's out of the way, what kind of advice would you
give to those players players who may be thinking about it i think
a lot of people look at big tournaments and they
think i'm not good enough i'm just gonna get stomped and

(01:02:38):
it's gonna be miserable and that would not be the case you have a
lot of people at these tournaments that are coming over and playing there
i would consider them good players but they're not you know like in any tournament
there's going to be a range a lot of teams have to bring somebody else in just
to make the fourth team so first off let all that go if you if you know how
to play the game and you're excited and And you want to go play in an international

(01:02:58):
event and see how people from all over the world build lists and play,
you should come because it's a great learning experience.
And the second, it's like a master's class because the Europeans,
in my opinion, play so much more frequently.
Their scenes are much more, in many countries, are much more developed.
You learn a lot about what's winning games and how they actually play the lists.

(01:03:21):
Lists from playing so even if you came over you lost every game
which you want but even if you did you'll walk away with
a with a big primer to improve your game
so i think i think anyone's remotely interested should raise their hand and
it's a good point you made about the lists and so on because you obviously you
know around the world we all play in a certain way and when we have our local

(01:03:43):
meta and we maybe have our slightly this you know slightly spread you know meta
and and not just locally or within one country.
But the way that you guys build a list compared to, we featured Spain's German
list on the pod as one to look out for because it's just so different to what we see.
Certainly my experience at Granada and also last year at World Open War was

(01:04:04):
it was fantastic to see different people playing lists in different ways,
in ways in which we in the UK might look at a list and go,
I don't think that's very good, it doesn't fit our expectations,
it doesn't fit our norms.
But then you play it so you see it being played and you're like oh okay
you know my initial response of it's maybe not the greatest
list actually with someone who understands it and that's

(01:04:24):
how they play it regularly it completely changes the
way you think about your own lists i think the other piece to it too which is
kind of hard to get out it's hard to explain it to people is just how much fun
it is is if if you come over as an american or a canadian or something right
from any country or you're coming over everyone is super welcoming they're excited
to see it and And afterwards in the bar, you know.

(01:04:48):
Don't try to hold your own drinking against the welsh but
it's always really really fun and
everyone's excited that you came and really appreciative and then
you end up making these friends from all over the world that you would never have done
before it's really a lot of fun it may be
the best one yeah i'd absolutely second that definitely yeah if
anyone is interested i'll send you my uh my contact information

(01:05:10):
if anyone is in the in the u.s or canada is interested interested North America
is interested in going they can reach out to me and I'll walk them through the
process for next year and you'd have more and more people interested every single
year so so I'd encourage anyone who's curious just to reach out to me and I'll
be glad to take you through what what it's like.
Okay and John so looking ahead for you for the rest of 2024 as I was only early

(01:05:32):
February now what's what's it looking like for you in terms of Bolsa action
and this and the scene down in Atlanta?
So for me personally personally I'm going to go to Adepticon and a tournament.
I hope they have a historic console. I have two major events this year and that's
probably going to be maybe a couple local ones, but that'll probably be the extent of my play.
But I run an event called Warzone, which is a grand tournament we host in Atlanta, Warzone Atlanta.

(01:05:57):
And it's a cool event. We have a Friday, lightweight, smaller format recon tournament,
750, and then there's thousand point, unlimited platoons, unlimited dice,
you know, bring your filth kind of tournament.
But there's awards for painting and sportsmanship, and everyone comes to get
an award. They get a cool template.
They get a former Soviet-era medal. I feed everybody.

(01:06:18):
It was built. Warzone was designed against that list we talked about.
You're going to do everything on this list. That would be the premium tournament. Yeah.
And nobody leaves the hotel because I feed you. You go in immediately and there's
a huge buffet with a bunch of food and desserts and all this kind of stuff.
And you don't have to worry about food.
And if you're thirsty, we have bartenders that will come and bring you a beer

(01:06:40):
at your table or whatever you drink. Right.
And and we start on time. We end on time. The packs go out early.
The missions are play tested so that people know what to expect.
And so all of the criteria to make sure that when people leave the event,
they feel like it was the best one that they'd ever been to.
And we typically get that kind of feedback over and over.

(01:07:01):
Our repeat rate, repeat offenders, every year, really, really high.
Our 40k event is usually sold out in a couple of days.
And so that'll be the first weekend in December right now.
And I'll send you guys a link to the Warzone site. It's 40k,
it's Age of Sigmar, and it's both action.
And we might add a fourth Star Wars or something this year, I don't know yet.

(01:07:24):
Very nice. That's fantastic.
So are you guys going to come? I was looking at the cost of flights the other
day in December to Atlanta.
In all seriousness, my other half referred to it as bolt action tourism.
And I think, you know, having a great time in Granada and meeting others at
WOW and Southend, there is definitely an appeal of going to Denmark or Holland

(01:07:47):
or France or the US or whatever to play in bolt action events.
Yeah. So, yeah, I genuinely have looked at the cost of flights.
I'm so glad i promise you guys will have a great time it'll
be really fun and the opportunity to talk about a u.s style tournament
grand tournament you know and it is different how
the lists are different that that would be some good content for your show i think that
people would love to hear it definitely yeah very

(01:08:10):
nice yeah playing the international players is the big
attraction isn't it to the international tournaments because you
get in your little bubble in your home tournaments where everyone's
sort of playing similar and it is a lot of fun going across across the
world to meet brand new people who are interested in the same
thing you are because you've got this common connection but in
a slightly different sort of perspective on it

(01:08:32):
it's not just fun and it's not just educational but you end up making these
connections and then you're talking back and forth all year long you're playing
tts with people from all from south africa or whatever and you end up widening
your total player group and this back and forth and it makes you a better player. Brilliant.
Guys should come. I'll make a special t-shirt for you.

(01:08:55):
Wear some Atlanta boxer shorts, whatever you want. You guys should come.
Sold. It was the boxer shorts. There we go. Yeah, that's what we're waiting
for. The offer of underwear.
Brilliant. Well, thank you, John, for taking the time to join us and thank you
for sharing your thoughts as well.
And it will be a really nice contrast between your experience as an experienced
international player and then also Liam, who fresh into the game in the last

(01:09:18):
year year and attending his first event last weekend in Granada as well. So thank you very much.
Well, thanks for inviting me. And I love your show. You guys do a great job.
Music.

(01:09:41):
So we're joined now by liam who was a member of
the england c team it was his first time playing at
wtc and also a player who hasn't played for
a huge amount of time so i think it'd be really interesting to hear his
experience of the wtc but also how he
got into bolt action and what led him to being selected
and coming out to granada with with the rest of us for the england team

(01:10:01):
so welcome liam thank you very much nice to
be here great to have you here as well so um yeah i
mean you know just very it's just casually at the start what
got you into bolt action what's your sort of history and background
as a gamer and all that kind of stuff sure so bolt
action was an accidental finding for me i kind of got back into making models

(01:10:21):
and things like that like airsoft and airsoft to fix models and stuff like that
probably about 18 months to two years ago you know i put tons of time into my
thoughts i wouldn't be cool to be able to play with them basically yeah yeah
And I used to play Flames of War many moons ago,
and I played a bit of 40K as well when I was younger.
So I started having a bit of a scout around, looking for games that were similar,

(01:10:42):
and stumbled across a YouTube video by Modeling for Advantage on Bolt Action.
And then went into a YouTube binge hole and spent an entire night watching most
of their episodes on it and thought, yeah, this looks all right for me.
So I had a mate of mine who was sort of into similar things,
and we agreed to go halves on the Band of Brothers box set,
that the starter army thing nice pick that

(01:11:04):
up pretty cheap on ebay and built the armies and cracked
on had a couple of play games on my kitchen or
dining room table with makeshift scenery and stuff
like that out cardboard boxes and all sorts yeah thoroughly enjoyed it and within
a week or so we were both hooked did a bit of digging found a local club well
localist to me club that play sort of every thursday evening chuck them a message

(01:11:25):
see if they were still playing because i know quite a few places didn't and
stopped so we just yeah drop the message they I said, yeah, pop along on a Thursday.
And James, who runs the little club that we've got, the little league that we've
got, was very kind and basically lent me an army. Then another chap lent my
mate an army and said, go ham, have fun.
And I've been hooked ever since.
And I walked away with an airborne army that evening because I just,

(01:11:46):
it was in a shop so i just yeah picked up a british airborne army and
haven't looked back since i mean that in itself liam
is a is a great example for warlord of you know
how people get into the game in terms of you know background in modeling or
interest in the history modeling whatever do a bit of investigation find find
some stuff on youtube start looking at the videos get excited go and play a
game pick up a style box and then off you go it's absolutely fantastic yeah

(01:12:10):
it's literally sort of textbook isn't it really but for me it was it was everything
you You know, I'm a massive history geek.
I love sort of all things Second World War and history in general.
So for me, it was a no-brainer. It was just all of a sudden there's these little
easy-to-paint figures, because anyone that's played or tried to play Flames
of War will know that they are not easy to paint, that are on their own individual
bases as well. You know, it's not eight or ten figures per base. It's one.

(01:12:31):
And again, you know, Flames of War, it's not a besmirchment of Flames of War
in the slightest, but it's company scale or even sort of brigade scale if you
really want to go into it, whereas I like bolt action because it's platoon.
Platoon or armoured platoon or whatever you want to play and it's uh for me
it was a nice game to get into and i quite like the rules as well they're fairly
easy to pick up and follow which is a big bonus because i'm thick as two short planks.

(01:12:56):
And less of a car park for your tanks as well but actually absolutely
absolutely yeah so what kind of time scales we're talking about because obviously
we were chatting away you know over the weekend in granada and you haven't been
playing for that long relatively you know to a lot of other players who were
out there pretty much well just over a week a year and a week now I started
in the first week of February which I tipped up to the league,

(01:13:18):
tipped up to the shop I think I picked up the Band of Brothers box set a wee bit before then but I,
sort of class myself as starting to play when i joined joined the league
and yeah yeah literally pretty much a year i think
granada was nigh on a year to the day when i started playing so
yeah it was quite a quick turnaround really but i really got
into it and i'm one of those people when i get a hobby that i'm really into i'll throw everything
at it for months on end and not

(01:13:41):
really relent yeah as i think a lot of us are
to be fair yeah yeah in in the in the game so
yeah i mean yeah that's that's yeah phenomenal you
know a year from you know playing playing in your first league to
you know being selected and going out to granada in terms
of like in between you know obviously you're playing in the league were you
playing in other local events other sort of regional or national
events yeah so i did in the last year i did three whole tournaments okay my

(01:14:05):
first was the juggernaut tournament not four steps back that was a litmus test
for me because i'd never done a tournament before and i went with the attitude
of i might learn something went along had fun got tabled by alan wells which
most people have at some point in their bolt action career.
But thoroughly enjoyed it and actually did all right i ended up i
think i placed fourth or fifth i did all right nice place fourth

(01:14:28):
or fifth in that and then we did a local shop where they do the
league steve ran a tournament there were about 20 of us that tipped up to
that i won that one did all right in that one brilliant so second
ever tournament won that one and then i did a pairs tournament
the warlord pairs tournament i think it was august maybe okay
i did that with phil crowcroft also from team c
phil and i went to warlord together 750 each both

(01:14:50):
played brits because british meta obviously and yeah
again we won that as well and not long after that martin who's
the captain of team c approached both phil and i and said do you
want to tag along to granada you know we're both martin plays
in our league we both played against him going really well with him
and he won't let me say this but i don't think i've ever lost to
him i know once once but

(01:15:10):
i was italian so it doesn't count fair enough so yeah
we both both got invited and both gained
permission and said yes so yeah it was like i
said it's been a very very quick turnaround and a bit of a trial by fire but
i'm pleased i did it really i'm pleased that i did it and it's yeah it's been
very very good very good i was uh very privileged and flattered to be invited

(01:15:31):
because i thought well like i'm in this conversation now i've been playing a
year so i was very surprised but i'm Pleased, very pleased and grateful.
And I guess, Liam, moving on from that, going into Granada then.
So you've been asked to play, you've been accepted onto the team,
sort of set well back in the last year, kind of like September time or so.
Yeah. So you got like, you know, four, five, six months or so to build up into it.

(01:15:52):
What was that like thinking about it and looking at the list and obviously joining
the rest of the guys on the Discord and the chats and so on?
It was quite daunting. There's some very, very, very established players in
sort of all three of the teams that have been playing for years.
Some of them going back for sort of six, seven years, if not longer.
The likes of Alan have been playing since V1.

(01:16:12):
Martin's been playing for a long time. I know the Jugger's been playing for a long time.
It was quite a daunting task because there's me sat there with my brand new
American army that I'd never played before thinking, how the hell am I going to fit in with all this?
So initially it was daunting, but everyone was very friendly and welcoming and
there was some good bands going around the Discord chat.
So that was reassuring. I sort of threw together my army because I only,
prior to Granada, I only had two armies. One was Italian, one was British.

(01:16:36):
Phil plays incredibly well with his Brits, so I didn't want to take that away
from him. He's a very, very good British player.
And we obviously have Womble as well, who's our resident Italian expert.
I didn't deign to challenge him on his Italian prowess either.
I think he only has Italians, so he didn't really have two choices,
which kind of left me thinking, well, what do I do?
And as somebody who already owned two stewarts i thought well

(01:16:57):
i'll go american then because i can still still feel my stewarts sure
and i planned on putting a 75 mil pack howitzer on
the table as well but that that went out the window because i discovered
land mattresses yeah yeah so yeah threw together the army had a few practices
which sort of bolstered my confidence a wee bit but yeah very daunting but rewarding
at the same time nice how did you get on over the weekend then with your two

(01:17:18):
stewarts and your land mattresses i did okay i did okay i won three lost three
so 50 50% not to be sniffed at.
And to be fair, reflecting on
it, the losses that I had, one of them was a big loss. I did get tabled.
But the other two were actually, on reflection, very, very close.
There were only a few points in it.
Lucky draw of a dice or lucky roll of a dice, it would have gone the other way.
So I'm pleased with that. And the three games that I lost were all against first teams.

(01:17:40):
I lost to Italy 1, who I think, did they come second or third? I don't know.
They came third yeah so lost to italy one who were
third place not bothered about that played i felt fairly well and had a very
very good game against i think his name was sir with his italian list very good
game learned a lot lovely chap to play lost to usa one again really friendly

(01:18:00):
team very very good players very experienced players and that was my least favorite one as well was it
heartbreak ridge i think where you run all the get all the enemies to the back of the board.
Penetrating Strike Penetrating Attack yeah that one I hate that one it's my least favourite.
And he had a Russian list with 8 things in outflank so
I was never going to win that and then you played Denmark 1 as well that's right

(01:18:21):
lost to Denmark 1 lost to David from Denmark 1 which was an American match two
American teams and he went on turn 7 so again I'm not going to grumble about
that it was a very good game and I learnt something from every game and had
an enjoyable time with all the games everyone that I played was incredibly friendly,
and very forgiving and very nice because you know i always introduced it i'm
new i'm gonna get stuff wrong i'm really sorry and i've been playing for a

(01:18:43):
year but i'm still make silly mistakes and get rules
slightly wrong and forget stuff so please bear with me if i have to ask lots
of questions and they were all great they were all really really good and nobody
sort of groaned or moaned because i was getting the odd rule here and there
wrong so yeah it was good it's really good brilliant but the wins that i had
i was chuffed with they were they were solid wins and as a team we cleaned up

(01:19:03):
quite well so So, yeah, it was a very enjoyable experience.
Yeah, I mean, as a team, you know, England C finished seventh overall,
which is a fantastic result, you know, higher than England B.
So, yeah, very, very good result. You mean next year's England C?
Well, yeah, obviously, you know, we'll see what happens in 11 and a bit months
time. But yeah, no, fantastic results.

(01:19:24):
And, you know, all four of you guys did brilliantly. Yeah, we all thoroughly
enjoyed it. Phil did even better than I did.
He came 16th overall. overall I think I came 23rd or 24th I can't remember exactly
and Womble did well he came 32nd overall so three of the four team members were
in the top half yeah overall which yeah we were very very pleased with we won't talk about the captain.
It's a team format isn't it yeah but then Martin won a game and we all lost so you know,

(01:19:50):
and he's a very good player martin's a very good player he just had a
list of russians that he played twice and a kv as well didn't he okay and a
kv2 he loves a big tank bless him every time i played him as germans he always
turns up the bloody stern tiger every time but it serves a purpose some people
just like the punishment don't they they do they like the big tanks i like the
punishment i don't think i've ever played martin when he's not put a big tank on the board,

(01:20:14):
he usually runs germans and i said he's always got a stern tiger or at least
a tiger on the board something big and ridiculous and easily breaks down because german.
Yeah he's a very good player fantastic what did you think of the
tables at the tournament how did they compare to the sort of stuff you're playing
on normally very very similar actually we we lay our tables out the same way
like most people do that they are 2d tables because we don't have the money

(01:20:36):
to build big fancy 3d things like they've got at warlord and like i know russell's
got a few hasn't he yeah world open war he's very keen on his big valleys and
stuff and And it does make,
it's a beautiful game to look at, but it does make it a little bit more complex
when you're like, can I see over this house?
If I'm on top of the hill, can I see over the house into the valley?

(01:20:56):
So actually I don't mind the two-dimensional element, personally.
No, I said I'm used to 2D tables.
I've played at Warlord a couple of times and I like their Normandy table and
stuff like that, where they've got a bit of a valley in the middle and a river and stuff like that.
And they're fun to play on, but you're right, it does add a complication to it.
But no, I did enjoy the tables. There were a couple of tables that,
I didn't enjoy playing the foresty one where there was just trees.

(01:21:19):
The winter table. Yeah. The winter table, nothing but trees.
And I played against Denmark one. Mm hmm.
I mean, they're Danish. They're used to trees and snow, aren't they?
So I was always at a disadvantage straight away.
Yeah, they brought their skis, didn't they? They did, exactly. Yeah.
So yeah, I think that was the only table that I didn't overly enjoy.
But even then, it was still a great game to play. But I think for the whole,

(01:21:43):
they were well laid out, well thought out. The matching terrain was nice.
Everyone was pretty open, talking about cover and stuff like that beforehand,
and what is what, and what you can and can't go over with a tank,
and stuff like that, which was really good.
So I think for the most part, yeah, the tables were well laid out.
I'd have liked a little bit more space for putting your boxes and your trays
and stuff on. That'd have been really nice to have. Would have been a little bit more space.

(01:22:05):
But at the same time, it's a massive hall full of 500 gamers.
So space is a premium, isn't it?
So it swings around about. It would have been nice to have, but I know it wouldn't have been easy.
I think, I mean, there was a lot of space around the tables.
Like it didn't feel like you were playing on top of each other. But you're right.
No, not at all. you know having space on the
tables in the area to put your dice down to put your miniatures

(01:22:28):
down all that kind of stuff or even just a foot between the mats kind of thing just
to be able to put your tray on so you're not sort of putting your tray on the table or on
the floor when you're deploying would have been really useful to to have but
it didn't send it down really no it just saved my back a little bit bending
down all the time yeah yeah i think i think we all said it on the monday we
all definitely felt like we played you know six games over the two days and
oh god and they there were long days as well. You know, the breaks were nicely spaced out.

(01:22:51):
You weren't having a 15 minute turnaround.
You know, there's a decent amount of time for a break, but it did obviously
extend the playing time, which then extended, you know, the evening activities
as a consequence knocking on. Absolutely.
Yeah, it was a lot to pack into two days. A heck of a lot to pack into two days.
But well worth it well worth it i'd do it again tomorrow

(01:23:12):
thoroughly enjoyed it oh well it's gonna be the next question did
you enjoy it would you do it again but i guess you've already answered it
yeah yeah absolutely it was different it was
different i've done in fact no i've never done a two-day tournament
it's my first two-day tournament okay so it was a bit of a rude awakening
because you know normally you do a one-day tournament you go in with a bit of
a headache and a sore back and sore hamstrings you get all that from the first
day of wtc and you have to go and do it all over again yeah so you wake up the

(01:23:35):
next morning with a bit of a heavy your head and generalize sort of aches and
pains then it's oh by the way you're playing Denmark 1 and it's like oh god,
again get into it quickly a couple of coffees maybe a sneaky rum and coke with
your breakfast all is well again.
So yeah it was thoroughly enjoyable and I'd gladly do it again brilliant what

(01:23:56):
does the next 12 months look like for you Liam so with the goal in mind of going
against WTC 2025 what are you going to be planning on more tournaments,
so i've got not five steps back next month which
is the next juggers one i'm potentially going to
do the british open maybe
a couple of others as well sort of work and family fitting

(01:24:18):
and stuff like that restart we've got another league starting
soon so i'll play in that and i think as well i really want to develop my american
list because i can't believe i'm saying this i really enjoy playing as america
didn't think i would i thought it'd be an army that i bought just for the wcc
and then put back on the shelf and never looked at again but actually really
like it yeah I really like it and I think I'll probably use it in the next league
as well and then I'll probably build another army just for a bit of fun on the side,

(01:24:41):
so yeah pretty much tournaments league and more painting and more modelling
that I always put on a shelf and forget about,
cool as is the done thing he's staring at,
sort of 50 odd unpainted italians.
So we asked this question to john ross as well so
if there's anyone out there listening who hasn't you know been to wtc but

(01:25:02):
would like to go and is thinking about it what top tips
would you give them as somebody who's you know just to reiterate has
gone you know a year beforehand playing in their
first league game to getting on that plane and doing fantastically well
as an individual as a team in granada i think
the biggest and best tip i can give you would be to know
your own list know your own army and know the own rules that go

(01:25:24):
with it having come from sort of a friendly league background
and you're playing against somebody who knows your army knows your sort
of special rules they'll say oh actually you can do that wcc is
not as forgiving a couple of times i forgot about having played
as british and italians and nothing else i'd forget the american
rule of not being able or like the no minus one for coming on
from the side of the board kind of thing off in reserve i'd forget that and

(01:25:45):
then i'd roll say i can't come on having rolled
older nine could have come on but then they don't
forgive that quite so much because it's competition i would expect them to so yeah
that probably the biggest best piece of advice i could give would be know what
your army can do yeah know your rules know what your army can do
know your special rules whatever you need to learn it know the back of your
hand don't forget it because i again my americans i played them five times before

(01:26:08):
i went so it's still quite new to playing as the us of a so yeah best ever can
give is prep well in advance get your army ready do lots of practice games and
learn your list and learn your rules.
I'd also strongly recommend taking some ibuprofen and paracetamol because you
will get a sore throat yeah your back will hurt your legs will hurt stay hydrated
as well it's bloody warm I mean less of a problem in you know Manchester in 2025 but yeah.

(01:26:35):
Yeah even in the UK because we don't have aircon you put 30 people in close
quarters it gets pretty toasty doesn't it it does it's going to get sweaty but
we're gamers we're used to sweatiness yeah Yeah,
but bringing water is the top tip. Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of us just forget about.
Yeah, yeah. Somebody said, like, go to Lidl, get six litres of water.
And I thought, that'll be all right.

(01:26:56):
End of the first day, I was straight into Lidl, straight in there,
because I just thought, yeah, it got silly. Because if you don't have it with you, you forget.
And there's not enough time in your game to go, just hold on for five minutes,
I'm just going to get a bottle of water. Can't do that.
Two and a half hour timer against 23 Russians. You can't just all of a sudden
stop the game to go and have a drink.
So, yeah, preparing would be sort of a generalised big tip. you know,

(01:27:17):
water, painkillers, food, whatever you need.
Make sure you've got it all. Yeah, I can't think of anything else really that
would be... No? Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?
I mean, can I give a shout-out? Yeah, give a shout-out. Yeah.
So, big shout-out to Dice Cavern Games in Grantham. It's where we play our league.
Steve's a great bloke, runs a great shop. If you are remotely Lincolnshire,
Leicestershire, or whatever, have a look.

(01:27:38):
We run a league every Thursday night. Come along and have a go. Brilliant.
How does the league function? Is it, like, points for a win,
and then at the end there's an overall winner? Or is it less formal than that?
No, pretty much. it's pretty much exactly what you said which is points for a win
we do secondary and tertiary as well not a
full-on swedish system but not far off but it is it essentially runs like the

(01:27:58):
premier league gets its points at the end of the day kind of thing and then
if there's a decider that needs to be had then it's based on kills and james
gives out little prizes for sort of tank kills or wooden spoon or most kills
or whatever it includes a kill death ratio as well which i quite like,
yeah that's nice yeah we're running on the jugger pack at the minute which is
good we ran out on standard rules last time this time around it's on the jugger's format.

(01:28:22):
Which has had some interesting results imagine yeah
everyone's got medium machine guns all of a sudden yeah cool
yeah i imagine martin will
love it because he gets to take german tanks at a cheaper price yeah
again every game stern tiger without fail yeah because i don't know what the
exact points are but it's a massive discount so like 500 to 300 odd yeah i'm

(01:28:43):
sure he'd take one at 700 points so he could yeah even if it meant that all
of his other units were green he'd still do it yeah just like his soviets again all green big tank.
Brilliant cool well thank you very much for coming on to talk to us about your
first experience of WTC absolute pleasure it sounds like you'll be at the next
one so anyone listening who's planning to go to the next one look out for Liam

(01:29:05):
he'll be in one of the England teams,
we don't know which one yet I imagine yeah,
Still going to get invited back, but yeah, fingers crossed. I think we've got
to do four teams this year, so I have reasonably high hopes.
Well, three wins is not a bad result.
I'll hopefully see you all there. Should be good. And I'll try and get to World
Open more if I can as well, or another tournament down south.

(01:29:26):
Yeah, well, we're going to run the qualifiers for that at the end of May as
the current holding date.
So the pack will be released for that probably in the next week or so.
But effectively, there's only going to be one, because it's a 16-team format,
matt because he does his four groups of four teams we're expecting there to
be one england team but we'll also potentially have a reserve team if we do

(01:29:48):
get an international dropout and so because of that because there's only three
places effectively there's going to be a product qualifier end of may.
And as i said details to come excellent i'll
keep my eyes peeled then yeah hopefully we'll see you there because even
if you don't make the actual team the
qualifiers i'm expecting will be a lot of fun because it's
going to be sort of a full weekend of gaming where it is

(01:30:11):
just sort of no apologies very competitive which
is quite a rare thing in the uk generally
yeah quite a lot of sort of mixed theme don't
we and we don't we tend to sort of pull our punches a
little bit and so it's quite fun just to have a weekend where
hopefully no one will get upset if you just bring your
filth and take no prisoners brilliant it

(01:30:33):
should be good on that note speaking of filth can i
pass you for some advice very briefly on american lists yeah god i want to get
rid of my stewart one of the stewards and keep one of them i want to put a 105
sherman in nice yeah question is is do i do it veteran or regular that is the
age yeah because i assume you're asking that because because you played David at WTC,

(01:30:56):
because I faced off against him as well. And it's,
it's intimidating isn't it that 105 i got quite
lucky because what i did was i sacrificed my recce jeep to use as cover and
i just put it between the 105 and the rangers i've ran the 105 veteran before
and it is really nice when in first wave missions so i'd say it's pack dependent

(01:31:17):
so if it's a pack where the missions are first wave or you plan to reserve it rolling on with no.
Net minus one for movement and firing that
he is very tasty but i think yeah
it's one of those ones where i think it depends on your list rather than
you know how there's some pieces of advice that are sort of universally

(01:31:37):
true and then there's other things that are very subjective and i
think that's one of those questions that i think will come
down to your play style and your list fair okay
i mean it'd be essentially a copy and paste for the list wise
the only difference is i'd be drop in one of the landmatches in
favor of two heavy mortars or two medium
mortars sorry two inexperienced medium mortars so essentially to

(01:31:58):
make it it's built with regular at the minute to make it veteran i'd just
drop one of those two mortars and a bar from somewhere or five points from somewhere
else just to try and buff it up to veteran it's just whether or not it's worth
doing or not i can't i really can't decide i don't know i don't know what to
do i would play test it i suppose yeah that's the only way forward isn't it
this is because the best laid plans and all that that's a good point well presented,

(01:32:21):
in the league are you able to change your list halfway through yeah you can
bring a different list every single game if you want to as long as it's the
same army you can bring a different list every time,
it's not sort of strict you must stick to one list.
Which was really useful to me when I started playing because I turned up with
a British Airborne plus an Aviary and fairly swiftly hated it,

(01:32:44):
so I was able to chop and change and all of a sudden engineers and bring in
carriers and all sorts of
wonderful british things but yeah
so the league's really well run actually i
quite like the way that we do it it's not overly strict everyone's quite
friendly it's a bit of fun and it's it's a it's a pleasure to play brilliant
yeah perfect thank you very much thank you have a chop and change cheers for

(01:33:07):
having me on gents i've appreciated it and it's uh it's been fun thanks for
joining us well yeah hopefully we'll we'll get to see you at some events at
some point what have you guys got lined up.
So we're both going to the Welsh Nationals. Ooh, when's that?
First weekend in May. May bank holiday weekend in Cardiff.
I'll be at the Warlord GT in August. I've been looking at that as well,
but I just don't like the fact that you have to pay for tickets to get into

(01:33:28):
the event and then pay for your.
Oh no no no no so warlord gt
the expo is the battle of britain
at the expo is the one where you gotta you gotta buy the expo ticket
and you gotta buy the tournament yeah tournament tickets like i think
16 quid or something it's a bit yeah it's not a lot at all but when you
add on the tournament the event ticket is really expensive yeah warlord

(01:33:48):
gt is in nottingham august like second weekend
in august i think again 1100 points
single platoon generic it's the same format as world
open war so it'll be the same as a qualifier because john
is going to run the same obviously pack or russell's going to run the same
pack and then we've got the welsh open in september in
cardiff and then the two world shows this is welsh open and welsh nationals

(01:34:11):
so the welsh nationals in may is 12 50 double generic bring all your filth and
then the welsh open is nice and fluffy and friendly albeit with a lot of competitive
players so yeah and it's It's Axis versus Allies.
So rather than Swiss pairings, it's basically you take a step to the left.

(01:34:31):
And so it's always Axis versus Allies. You never get blue on blue.
And because it is sort of your fun thematic, as I say, you just basically,
it's a bit of a random draw of who you're going to play.
Usually Mark will pair it so that you get at least one or two very thematic
games, like your Dak going against the desert rats in the desert. Yeah, cool.

(01:34:52):
But other than that, You just sort of, it's who comes up effectively.
Sounds good. And then there's Warfare in November, second weekend in November, in Farnborough.
Oh, Farnborough, okay. Farnborough, yeah, yeah. So yeah, for us,
down this way, you've got Beachhead, this weekend just gone,
so Beachhead in Bournemouth in February.
Cracking Zed out, but that wasn't it, it was 40-odd players.

(01:35:12):
44, yeah, yeah, it was bigger than any UK event last year.
Yeah um so yeah you're beachhead then you go welsh nationals
there's brick con not brick on sorry english nationals at
roll call which is in april in milton
keynes i've looked at that one i'm on holiday for that one is it second or
third week of april yeah we're not going well i'm

(01:35:33):
not going johnny might i'm not going either okay yeah we're not going um
yeah so you go beachhead and then yeah
welsh nationals you've got brick on warlord gt battle of britain warfare welsh
open open so it's probably six six or so six or seven decent two-day yeah that's
pretty good brilliant yeah we're good cool thank you jeff cheers mate nice to

(01:35:55):
see you again yeah likewise have a good Good evening. Thanks, Ian. Bye. Bye.
Music.
So once again, huge thank you to John and Liam for joining us to talk through

(01:36:18):
their experiences of WTC.
And a huge thank you to all the players of WTC for a really enjoyable tournament.
I think everyone had a great time.
And there were no major controversies. So that ultimately is full credit to
the bot action community for such a successful tournament, as well as obviously the organizers.

(01:36:39):
So yeah, massive well done and congratulations to Dave, Nolan and Craig for
putting on the event, not just the bot action event, but also Middle Earth and Star Wars Legion.
Huge thank you and well done to the TA team. So Dan, Spurly and Pete.
And also just thanks to all the England players across all three teams.
It was a great weekend and really enjoyed going across Granada with all you guys.

(01:37:00):
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Ep.42 Tabletop Dispatches - WTC Interviews | Tabletop Tommies Bolt Action Podcast

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep.42 Tabletop Dispatches - WTC Interviews | Tabletop Tommies Bolt Action Podcast