It went really well. We had 16 participants playing on 6 tables. Everyone had a good time and the rules were recieved quite favorably with the new players that were there. I took some pictures and will try to get them posted up on the LSHM website tonight. The store owner wants me to run a tournament in May. I'm open to the idea but will have to delve more deeply into how to organize and score something like that. We definately want to the greatest extent possible to have historically plausble matchups. I always did that when I ran FOW tournaments and most of the folks here around Austin seem to prefer it. Asking people to submit thier army lists prior to the event helps keep things on an even keel cause you can usually get at least a couple of folks who are willing to play either side in order to even things up and have armies to do it.
My initial thought is to suspend the rules for cavalry in determining victory level. Not because I think there is anything especially wrong with it, but it does pretty much eliminate a lot of support options in a competitive scoring environment. Falling back on my experience running Flames of War tournaments, the most desirable set of outcomes would be a draw, minor victory, and major victory for both sides. How do we define that if we aren't going to count cavalry stands after the game?
Draws are well defined, and don't require much tweeking (IMHO). So what are minor/major victories in a competitive setting?
Defender minor victory: Defender still in at least contested possesion of the objective at the end of the game and the attacker in army morale (but not yet broken) and the defender not in army morale.
Defender major victory: Attacking army breaks morale before the game ends on turns.
Attacker minor victory: Game ends on turns with the objective being contested and the defender is in army morale (but not broken) and the attacker is not in army morale.
Attacker major victory: Defending army breaks morale before the end of the game on turns or the attacker gains uncontested possession of the objective as described in the rules.
Assign point values for victory levels and I am thinking of using number/value of units a player broke during a game as a tie-breaker value.
Thats just a first pass and I haven't done an exhaustive search on the forum yet to see what other folks are doing in the way of a tournament format and I am certainly open to suggestion.
Dave