So I am relatively new to this Blogging lark , I started it during the dreaded lockdown as a time filler and to show off some of my models. It appears in fits and starts as you can see by the dates of the posts and generally my Blog posts are about what I have painted , games I have played or Tournaments I have travelled to. Recently my erstwhile clubmates asked me for more content , battle reports and such , so I will be doing more of those , both here and on the YouTube thing as our Trollcast studio. They also said that the Blog was a it "Dry" and I should post more about my Hobby from a more personal perspective. So there will be more of that too , starting with something that I have been thinking about for a while now and just want to get my opinion out there , I am putting it on here rather than Facebook as I have decided that my little musings have a small readership and I have small ideas lol.
So the topic of this first erratic ramble is the KoW Masters. I have enjoyed playing KoW for the past 5 Years and have found the Rankings, run by various successive people to date, to be an interesting aspect of the Players Community. As the Hobby is getting a bit larger now I have been watching with interest all the different aspects , I even tried to run a UBKoW Masters during the big boom in Universal Battles being played during Lockdown , it was a bit of fun and now I have a small side league in the UK for players in the Northern area of England. Again its just a bit of fun with the results being compiled directly from the main KoWMasters site itself. However a recent trip to Espana to play in one of their tournaments and some frank discussions about their Masters set up.
"Discussions About Spanish Masters"
Spain is about twice the size of the UK , albeit with about 15 million fewer people in it , and the Spanish Masters website lists 120 players ( I am #71 , WooHoo !) where the UK site currently has 155 players listed but has had considerably more in previous years - I know there are still several large events to happen in the UK so the number will go up. The thing I found more interesting than the statistics is the mechanism they have for their Masters , the places for their Masters event are allocated by Region , they have North (Norte) , South ( Sur), East (Levante) and Central ( Centro) and each region is allotted a number of places at the Masters event , This means players within those regions are competing against only the players in their region for the places. There is still an overall Leader board for ranking but the Masters places are not necessarily the top 16 on that .
The reason I found this interesting is because it provides a way to even out their Masters event because if they did it the way the UK does "it would just be 10 Guys from Madrid" as I was quoted :)
The UK Masters is already divided into 7 regions , so how about the Top 3 from each region presenting at the Masters for an expanded field of 21 places ? Dan King and Tom Robinson can still battle it out for the Number 1 slot on the Leaderboard but the Guys in Scotland can live in hope of getting to the Masters event someday , as can the guys from Cornwall. They would have to attend a minimum number of events to qualify for their region but it may help to get some of these areas putting on more small events to help their guys qualify. All it will require is a bit more admin as regards the rankings listings and probably some more involvement for the Committee Reps in registering and determining which region players belong to but overall it should be good for the Hobby as a whole I think. Remember this is my opinion and my observations and I am just putting my thoughts down on (electronic)Paper.
I also noted that each Spanish Tournament levied a 1 Euro Masters fee from the players , this enables them to run the Masters App and cover expenses for the Masters organisers, the TO's collect this as part of the Tournament entry and forward it on to the Committee as a subscription to allow their tournaments to be ranked I think this could be an idea and I will certainly be including a "Donation" from my tournament takings to the UK Masters Committee in the future as they do incurr costs which are currently being met by the volunteers themselves , I think that a small amount of help won't go amiss to keep up the committees work.
Anyway , enough rambling for now , I will post again soo , either more insights into my KoW Hobby or more inane ramblings from my wandering mind.
Cheerio !
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