Guild Ball @ Grand Slam 2017

I ran a small tournament at the Auckland Grand Slam this past weekend - an equally small summary is offered below:

Final attendance was slightly misleading given the context of the event. The flagship tournament was a 2-day Warmachine affair, where the top 4 players of Day 1 played the semi-final and finals on Day 2, while the rest of the players durdled in a doubles tournament, or played other games.
3 of the 4 players in the Warmachine finals were intending to play Guild Ball had they not been so good, so we lost a chunk of people there. Aside from that, we had at least 3 other players who were intent on coming but were otherwise disposed due to life circumstances (work, family, etc.) shortly before the event. Them's the breaks. So we fell from a reasonable ~14 player event down to 8.

The bright side of this is that it made for a clean 3 round arrangement, which most people were happy to oblige in the end given the heat and access to cheap beer.

All guilds were represented bar Engineers and Fishermen (somewhat surprising), with Butchers being the only guild to be represented twice.

Final standings were as below:

1. Morticians (3-0)
2. Alchemists (2-1)
3. Masons 
4. Butchers 
5. Brewers (1-2)
6. Union 
7. Butchers
8. Hunters (0-3)

Interesting facts:

• Stave was not present in any roster. This is a huge decrease from my last event, where he was played twice in one game by the same player. Oh Stave, where did you go wrong.
• All rosters were dual captain with the exception of Union and (of course) Hunters.
• The Mortician team was the same every game: Scalpel, Vileswarm, Graves2, Ghast, Mist and Cosset. Take that, internet! At least you have that last place Hunters to make you feel better :)
• When asked about the secret behind his team, our Mortician player said "Hammer is the worst captain in the game". When asked to elaborate, he added: "The trick is to play Graves and Vileswarm as far away from each other as possible after the first turn". Dat synergy.
• Most goals (unsurprisingly) were Alchemists, with 8 goals across 3 games (1 Smoke, 2 Midas games).
• Takeout points were (surprisingly?) low, with the high team total being the 14 VP tallied by the Morticians. Turns out Grave Digger is pretty good....
• While neither Butchers nor Brewers took any Union, other teams took 1x Harry, 2x Minx and 2x Mist.

Thanks to our sponsors Steamforged Games (throwing in some prize support before the official kits becomes available to general pundits), Guild Ball Tonight (for some sweet dice) and Peter Williamsky, the recipient of the Billy "Wargaming Legend" Excellence Award for Wargaming: