Lead Rising: Infinity at Colours 2015

Last weekend I had the pleasure of running a small tournament at the Colours even hosted by Newbury and Reading Wargames Club at Newbury Racecourse. Colours has always been a staple event of the wargaming calendar for me so, given that it didn't run last year, I was very keen to attend.

Due to logistical issues, mostly my lack of ability to transport large amounts of scenery a long way, the even had to be capped at a dozen in the end. With some last minute cancellations we ended up with ten eager competitors battling it out on the day.

I really wanted to put on a smoothly-run event this Saturday, partly because of the strict time limits on the venue but mostly because we had so many players who were completely new to the tournament scene. It's always great to see fresh faces around and I sincerely hope that everyone enjoyed themselves.

Colours 2015 Prize Pool

The prize pool was, I think, pretty decent considering the size of the event and we had support from both the Colours organisers and from Simple Miniature Games. The prizes were a winner's pack and terrain set for first place, then second, third and fourth got two items each, Last place received the remaining prize and a wooden spoon (not pictured).

The missions played were Supremacy, Antenna Field and Supplies. This was, inadvertently, very similar to the last event I ran at BIG back in July.

Supremacy is a stand-out favourite on the tournament scene and has a little something for everybody. At this point I'm of the opinion that it is a strictly better scenario than Quadrant Control and it generally gives everyone some points so it has a bit of a feel-good factor to it.

Antenna Field is a little controversial I think. It does reward beating up your opponent a fair bit and seems to produce either very one-sided games, or games with low scores all round. It seems to be a decent mission to help separate the pack for the final round.

Supplies was chosen as the final mission due to the easy set up - all you need to do is remove two of the Antenna markers from the previous round.

So how did everyone do?

Results

A big congratulations to Darren Ivey for a very consistent performance on the day and to the James, Craig and Adam for rounding out a very tight top four. You can find the lists Darren used here and here.

The average scores for the missions (with some rounding) were as follows:

Supremacy: 5.3 OP, 165 VP
Antenna Field: 4.5 OP, 165 VP
Supplies: 3.8 OP, 164 VP

Yes, the average VP retained is almost identical in every single mission (.7 difference overall). Make of that what you will.

Supplies proved to be a stumbling block for many players. Craig and Adam fought each other to a 2-2 standstill on the top table of the final round with each having only a single Supply Box and classified objective each at the end. In contrast, Russ and Alex battled it out 4-3 because neither of them managed to secure any Boxes at all, thereby scoring 2 points each (plus their Classifieds) for denying any Supply Boxes to their opponent!

The faction choices were definitely interesting on the day with Combined Army and Haqqislam players out in force. This is in stark contrast to all the Nomads we see normally who were completely unrepresented this time!

As usual, sectorial armies were thin on the ground with only a pair of Morat Aggression Force players - doubly unusual because MAF isn't typically popular. I find it very curious that sectorial armies aren't more common a tournament, but it seems people really value the tactical flexibility of the vanilla factions.

Anyway, enough waffling. The final thing I'll say is a massive thank you to all the attendees, especially those who bought scenery with them, Keith for helping with scenery and running demo games and the Colours crew for letting us run the event. Now go look at some pictures!