Warzone Atlanta has always been a special event for me. Warzone is one of the longest running Warhammer 40,000 GT events in the southeastern United States. I have attended many times over the years and have had the fortune to win Best Sportsmanship twice in 2017 and 2021 and Best Overall in 2020.
Warzone has a very unique event culture which focuses on celebrating the hobby on the whole. Their major awards every year include Warmaster (player with the best record in their games), Best Painted, Best Sportsmanship, and the main award Best Overall which is a combination of your results on the table in games, your paint score, and your Sportsmanship scores. It really is a celebration of the entire Warhammer hobby. The people that attend this event are always incredible competitors and hobbyists while also being amazing people to play against.
This year I convinced several folks in our club to attend and for most of them it was their first time going to the event. Unfortunately, I had to miss the last couple of Warzone events due to scheduling conflicts, so I was very excited to be able to return to play in the event this year. This year I decided to bring out my Blood Angels army to throw down on the tabletop.
Blood Angels is the main faction I play and I was excited to get these guys "Warzone ready" for the event. This involved ramping up some of the detail work on my models to include finishing up adding transfers, going back and doing some detail work on the weapons and gear and doing other minor touch ups to the army to get it ready for the event.
I won't go into particular detail about all of my matchups specifically, other than to say that I played against five incredible players who were amazing competitors and sportsmen on the table. Which is not unusual at this event. Sportsmanship is always so difficult to measure at Warzone because everyone is incredible to play against. As I've said I've gone to this event several times over the years and I've had the fortune to square off against some incredible opponents there and have made many friends over the years, many of which were there at the event this year as well.
I had the privilege to play against five opponents whom I had never met or played against and each and every one of them were amazing to play against. I was able to finish the event going positive at 3-2 with wins over two Space Marines armies and Astra Militarum with close losses to Tyranids and Chaos Space Marines. I couldn't have asked for five better opponents to play against this year. Each one was fun, competent and pleasant to play against and all of our games were amazing.
My goal going into this event was to try to compete for Best Sportsmanship, an honor I've been fortunate to receive multiple times before as I mentioned above, but my main goal was Best Overall, winning Best in Faction for Blood Angels and going positive at the event. I think it's important to emphasize how important Best Overall is to me. I consider myself to be a good player, but I am older now and not as sharp as I was 10 or even 5 years ago. Competing to win the entire event and win all my games is really out of the cards for me at this point in my 40K career. I am certainly not the best painter in the world, and this event is full of amazing hobbyists and to be considered for the award among all these fantastic painters and players is truly an humbling experience for me.
Sportsmanship is usually the biggest difference maker between the players in contention for Best Overall. The format for scoring Sportsmanship at the event has changed over the years and this year came in the form of a brief Google form to complete at the end of each game. I think this is important to discuss and probably warrants its own article in the future. Suffice to say I was very fortunate to have played 5 amazing sportsmen who, it would seem, felt the same way about me as I ended up being one of two players at the event that got a perfect sportsmanship score. The other individual actually won Best Sportsmanship of course and I had the honor of playing him on Sunday and I can say without hesitation that it was a well deserved award because he was absolutely fantastic to play against.
My goal when I go to an event like this is simple when it comes to sportsmanship, whether an award is on the line for it or not. I want to give my opponents the best game I possibly can by being a fair opponent, being clear about my intent and my movements in the game, being gracious in both victory and defeat and taking time to get to know who I am playing against. My philosophy when it comes to sportsmanship is simple really; be the opponent you would want to play against. It really is as simple as that. The golden rule.
For me to win Best Overall at Warzone Atlanta is truly an humbling experience. To play in the company of such legends in the hobby like John Lennon and Thomas Byrd and many others and to walk away with this means more than I can really describe. While I have won the award before, it still feels strange to be in contention for this or to even win it when there are such amazing players and hobbyists that attend Warzone Atlanta. Admittedly I was a bit shocked when my name was called. I knew I had decent sportsmanship marks, but did not think my play or paint would be enough given the stringent criteria placed on those this year. I was in shock that I won it. I think I'm still in shock nearly a week later. But I am honored as well.
All in all our club did incredibly well and I was very happy and proud of them. We took 6 players to the event out of a pool of 84 and 3 of us won Best in Faction to include Jonathan Thomas with World Eaters, Dustin Thornton with Dark Angels (who went 4-0-1 at the event and had a hell of a run), and myself with Blood Angels. Additionally Will Blair won his pod on day 2 as well. All in all it was a great weekend for Scions of War and I could not be more proud of our guys.
Next year the guys have informed me that they want to participate in the Warmaster Challenge part of the event which includes playing an extra couple of games on Friday. At my age that is a big ask, but we are going to give it a go.
I want to take one final opportunity to give a special thank you to Chris Powell, Red Powell, Namon and Mac for putting together a spectacular weekend of Warhammer for the community. This was one of the best organized events I think I've ever attended and my hats off to them for taking the time to make this event special for the community. And finally a thanks to all of my opponents at the event for being great competitors and just amazing people to play against.
See you all next year.
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