FOW Milan Tournament – Road to the tournament

By Paolo Paglianti

Setting up a tournament can be challenging as winning a competition. After painting his first FOW army and , NDNG’s Paolo Paglianti decided to set up a FOW competition in his own city.

After years of ancient and medieval wargames, for me, Team Yankee and FOW have been the classic breath of fresh air. In less than a year, I met lots of new friends across Italy and learned two new rulesets, with totally new mechanics and lists.

So, after having painted my first army, the mighty 8th Army in the Desert, I decided to organize a tournament in Milan.

The FOW championship missed a step in Milan, so the organizer from , the Italian official Battlefront distributor, asked me back in September to create a Milan tournament. These are some advice I want to share with anyone who will be setting up a tournament of any kind of wargames, hoping they can help and inspire.

First of all, I wanted to get the word out about the tournament. Modern technology is really helpful: in a few minutes, you can create . You can choose a Facebook event or a proper page. The event is better for a single event, and will constantly remind anyone who will “like” the event about how many days till the tournament. The tricky part is the creation of the event, since if you select “private event” no one will see it other than the people invited. Since you want to find more people than your friends, be sure to select “Public event”.

Remember, No public event, no party! People won’t simply see your page unless you specifically invite them.

 

The second step is to create a website. A good option is Blogspot.com: this website offers totally free websites with a customizable address, so you can have something like “”. If you want to remove the “BlogSpot” part, you need to pay.

You can find tons of themes: they are all for blogs, but if you choose a simple one you can have a single post in the home screen, and other posts tied on the menu (on the right or on the top). Just choose one where you see all the main post at first glance, without the hideous “read more” issue. Also, choose for a theme with a good mobile visualization, since lots of players will see it thru their phones. A valid alternative is WordPress, with much greater choice in themes, and more adaptable to your needs.

Keep it simple: and be sure they can see it on mobile: people will check it often!

Both on the website and on the Facebook you need to point out when the tournament will be, where, the subscription cost and what period/special rule/army points, and where to send army lists (your email, normally). Also, have a page about subscribed players. If you think people could come for one night, also have some hotels/B&B recommendations. “This hotel is in walking distance”, “this B&B is really cheap”, “this one is near that museum, so your best half can have a good afternoon while you play toy soldiers” are welcomed! Remember to note down where is the closest pharmacy – with 30 players, you will have at least one with a cold or some fever, especially in Winter.

After the tournament, you should also update the player list with the final ranking and sharing all lists, so players can read them and have some inspiration – by the way, .

When you have a good list of players, create a Whatsapp or Telegram group. It’s fast and it’s free, too. You can share updates on the tournaments, the location on Google Maps (so they can aim their GPS with just a few touches). We had a totally paperless tournament, sending the classifications and the pairs thru this Whatsapp group. Just be sure anyone privately if is ok to share their numbers with the group; once I had a player from the military who didn’t want to have his number shared.

The prizes

The minimum you can expect from a tournament is some cups for the winners. You can buy a range of middle size cups for 20 bucks, so should be no worries with 10 players paying 10-15 Dollars/Euros. If you want, you can invest some time searching for sponsors. In my experience (I’ve been organizing tournaments since 2009) modeling shops are more than happy to give you some prizes, like a box of paints, or some 1:32 models as prizes, in exchange for some visibility on the website or the FB page. You can also contact the local Battlefront dealer and ask if they can support you.

 

The prizes for the Milan Tournament: the mat and the buildings were from Your Command

For example, I asked a prize to my friends at : since they just released for WW2, they were happy to provide some free samples for the tournament – I chose to have these prizes for the best-painted army. Since they were going to send me the package, I asked thru the WhatsApp group if anyone wanted to buy something, and three players bought a total of 160 euros and received them at the tournament. You can be sure that those players will not miss the tournament, and Baueda will sponsor my next tournament for sure!

I also managed to have some sponsorship from Slitherine, the strategy videogame publisher I work for. Ok, this is something special due to my job, but we had a full Panzer Corps Gold game for each player, with the remind we’re , so everybody was happy.

Since I also enjoy painting, I decided to have a “big” prize: 5 Italian tanks painted. I created a small diorama, with the famous writing Italians had after the El Alamein defeat. You can have similar ideas for every nation involved in WW2 – just avoid anything with “politic” relevance because it’s easy to upset people.

You can have a small diorama on Battle of the Bulge, or D-Day, or some other major event. I prefer to have this “big” prize as a random pick among all players: first of all, the players are already overcompetitive, and if the prize is something with a value, they could argue more during their games. Also, a random pick means everybody can win the “big” prize, so it’s not only for the 3-4 players who normally get to the top positions.

 

It’s easy to create a small diorama: the tanks have a small magnet on the base, and another magnet is in place on the base, so the winner will be able to get the tanks and use them in his next games!

Also, I wanted something for every player: so I bought some cheap wood sticks, I cut it in 2 cm segments and used these chips as a base for a single soldier for each player. I asked my friends at the club, and they all had some soldiers they didn’t use in their armies, so I ended up with 30 soldiers from US, British, German and Russian armies. It’s relatively easy to paint them “en masse” since almost all uniforms in WW2 are a different shade of greenish brown, except the Germans that are even easier – dark grey.

Finally, I printed a small “plaque” with the player name, so this small prize was really personalized.

Awesome, aren’t they? But you can paint them in a couple of evenings. Easy and striking!

I saw a lot of discussions on the new rules for the armies in FOW: people complaining about the “new” Axis compositions, with so many tanks nobody can easily kill. So, I decided to ride that bull, and I had a special prize for the first player killing one so hated Ferdinand. I bought a Lemoncello bottle (it’s a typical Italian spirit) and covered the label with a new one with a “Bye bye Ferdinand!” writing. When the first one was destroyed, we all had a laugh in the tournament hall!

 

The Lemoncello prize for the first player killing the so hated Ferdinand: a cheap price with personality!

Finally, a piece of advice: after each game, print the ranking with points (or send it thru Whatsapp to every player). They will check their scores and point out any error immediately, and you will save some headaches if they discover any errors before the end of the tournament.

And now, some photos from the tournament!

(My) British army siege an house and conquer the objective. Being the organizer, I add to play as the spare player, so no full tournament for me since we weren’t in a even number. Sigh. 

 

British Hurricanes target some Italian tanks: the destroyed Panzer III is their menacing base!

 

US Priest with British support assault some houses. Note one is already bailed out!

 

One of the best-painted armies, from Paolo Martiniello. In the tournament, we forbade playing with any kind of “proxy”.

 

Italians setting up to defend from the Russian armoured tide.

 

The tables had different settings: urban fighting, western/south Europe, desert North Africa. They all had a fair amount of elements, to avoid people shooting from one deployment area to the other.

Lots of players helped the organization taking their own scenic elements: 14 tables are huge and we needed lots of houses and trees!

The “random pick” prize: Erik Gillio from Turin got it, and also won the third place – lucky guy!