Kent Team Championship 2024, 2 March in Canterbury

Last year we ran a collaborative event between the Kent leagues as an invitational event. This was a team tournament following the rules of UKTC with 30 coaches competing. This year we opened it up as a NAF event and as part of the new South East Tournament Series.

I was expecting to get somewhere around 40-50 coaches but we soon realised it was going to be much more popular than we expected and we managed to hit 120 coaches, or 30 teams, which was as many as we expected to be able to fit in.

I had been worried about ending up with an odd number of teams as we did last year, so offered all teams the option of bringing along a spare player who would be guaranteed a game either as part of a mercenary squad or against another spare player. It was thought that this, along with a couple of other spare players, would allow us to cover all eventualities.

As it turns out, all the teams with spare players had drop outs so they were down to 4 players, and of the other teams, there were 2 drop outs so the spare players all filled in and we had exactly 30 teams. Logistically this worked nicely, however I had been heavily customising ExScore (available on Sann0638's website) to allow for spare players - all of which was then unnecessary on the day. Still, it kept me off the streets and it was better to have the functionality and not need it than to need it and not have it.

As with last year, Stu (beardedlucha) had managed to work his magic with prize support and we had offerings from Pogostick Productions, Charlie Victor, Hearthforge Games, Chaos Cards and Troll Trader who supplied a shield that we will use year on year. 

Last year we were at a community centre, but to accommodate larger numbers we were at the Spitfire Ground, home of Kent Cricket Club. As the numbers started to grow, we realised we would easily fill out one floor and so the venue kindly offered to allow us use of their lower floor at no additional cost. 

I thought the venue was great - having an on-site bar and the option to get them to provide lunches for us was really useful for ensuring everyone was fed and watered. One piece of feedback was that lunch was provided too early in the day - I think I forget sometimes that not everyone is a halfling like me. 

For the ruleset, again we kept to UKTC rules although with a couple of tiering tweaks. I think we will likely make something a bit more unique for the 2025 event, although this will be discussed with the TOs before a decision is made. Feedback so far has everyone split on whether or not stars should be included which is something we will need to do a lot of thinking about. 

Using a version of Exscore meant that we were manually inputting results. In order to not use a lot of paper, we were getting coaches to enter their results via Discord (through which we were also sharing fixtures and standings). This meant that towards the end of games, I was sat in front of the laptop watching the scores come in, like watching Grandstand. 

The system worked quite well except for the different formants that coaches were entering results in and the fact that with two lots of data entry (user and me) there was more chance of an error (although there was only two on the day- one was a user error and one was an interpretation error). Whilst it worked, I think ideally for next time I would want a system with only one data entry point. This would mean using something like Tourplay or the World Cup software, potentially. 

Jumping to 120 coaches was a bit daunting, and there was a lot of preparation and anxiety on my part at least. However the day went really smoothly, although we have had a lot of learnings from this. 

Some of these learnings include:

- If you give out a D3, make sure everyone knows it's a D3 before they start using it!

- Leave a bit more time for everything. Data entry for 60 games takes a lot longer than data entry for 15 games, and then running the fixtures meant that they were only out a couple of minutes before the round start time.

- Look into the room layout. Teams were side by side but not terribly close. We can look at whether the tables can be laid out in a different way. It will also be useful to also ensure that there is easy access to all tables, without feeling like you're trying to make your way to the front of the stage at Glastonbury.

- Don't go over the top trying to ensure you have enough spare players. I doubt other team tournaments do so.

I thought the day went about as well as I could have hoped it to do. Aside from one small thing that was discovered on Sunday morning. Below is a picture of the winning team, Teamendos (Hendy, MisspelledTree, BB_nut and StarFerret). 

They had won all 8 games with a total of 23 individual points. It looked like this meant that had beaten Team Tacklezone (nippylongskar, wulfyn, deeferdan and andydavo) on the second tie-breaker. As it turns out there was a small glitch in how the individual points for the final round came through to the standings, and Teamendous were actually tied on this with Team Tacklezone, who had 1 more point on the third tiebreaker (strength of schedule). 

After discovering this early Sunday morning, and spending time talking to the head referee and both teams, it was decided on Monday to annouce them both as joint winners. With just one point in their strength of schedule and them being so evenly match and both winning all four matchups, they are both very worthy winners. 

Teamendous will be keeping the prizes given to them and Team Tacklezone have been offered free entry to next year's event. Obviously there is no picture of them with the trophy but here is a photo of them all having a cuddle (except for AndyDavo who is too cool for that). 

I felt really bad for most of Sunday after discovering this, however the affected parties were all exceptionally kind and I have to thank them all for getting me out of a grump. This is another reason for wanting to use a different system next year - we will have to look at all options and try to pick one which is very robust. 

Thank you to all the sponsors (listed earlier) the other TOs - eldritchfox, whitehot and bearded lucha, the referee team of eldritchfox and hissa-lives, and everyone who came along. It was amazing to see so many BloodBowl friends all in one room at an event that we had put on. I am already excited and nervous about next year in equal measures! 

We're looking to expand the organisation team a bit, to include people with skills that we don't have and also to take the pressure off all of us a little bit as well. If you are interested, feel free to drop me a message. 

We have started to have discussions about the format of the event as well - whether it will be a 1 day or 2 day event, and perhaps have a sevens event the night before. Opinion on the feedback form is very divided about this, so please fill it in and express your opinion on it if you haven't already done so. We will be taking on as much feedback as possible to make the event the best it can be (although we can't take it all on because some people want different things!).