Wargamers take to the tables for local tournament

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Tabletop wargaming enthusiasts gathered at Hob’s Gaming Café, March 21, ready to sling dice and decide which among them were the greatest of generals. 

Mitchell Ton, who organized the Warhammer 40,000 tournament, explained the tournament was his way of giving back to a community which was so welcoming for him to come be a part of, and to encourage some friendly competition. 

“We have teams of two playing against each other … it is a little bit more of a casual tournament but there is still a bit of competition going down and a couple of grudge matches as well,” he said. “Each team of two has to form together an army and they strategize how they are going to build that army based off of the points (allowed) and the units that they bring. They try to coordinate together so that way they can supplement each other’s weaknesses or enhance each other’s strengths.”

Games were limited to three hours each in order to fit three in for each team throughout the course of the day. 

At the end, the greatest prize was to be awarded to the team who has the most wins throughout each of the rounds. Other prizes were awarded for categories such as most interesting team theme, best painted, or best sportsmanship.

“It is a very diverse group and everyone has their own goal, but the main goal is just for friendly competition and to show off your models … some people like to show off the hobby aspect, others like to show off their strategic skills as well,” said Ton. “Others just want to get together with friends and people they know and just have a good go at each other on the board.”

Warhammer 40,000 is a strategic tabletop miniatures war game which requires players to build and paint an army to field in a skirmish scenario against an opponent. A pre-determined game size dictates how many models any player is allowed to field.

A wide host of factions exist throughout the game, allowing anyone to pick their favourite flavour of grimdark horrors to play with – anything from the stoic and zealous defenders of humanity to enigmatic aliens, to cosmic and near-eldritch nightmares.

“Warhammer has a very strong community base where people help each other out, even in tournaments. They don’t try to get one over on each other,” said Ton. “Seeing a group of people just enjoying themselves, I think that is the biggest thing I aim for. Just coming together, having fun, and meeting new people in the community. 

Ton added he took over organizing the event due to previous members of the community no longer finding themselves with enough time to be involved in coordinating people. 

He aims to try and host a tournament for the community in one format or another once per quarter and encourage folks to come out several times throughout the course of a given year. 

With 16 people having taken part in Saturday’s tournament, Ton said he would like to see those numbers double or more for future events and expand beyond the capacity of gathering players in the Hob’s play space.