INTRODUCTION
Following the great success of last year's event, Thunderbowl is happy to announce the 2009 SPIKE! Magazine Blood Bowl Championship. Here is all of the information that a potential coach will need in order to participate.

This year's SPIKE! Magazine Blood Bowl Championship will be a 6-game Swiss Point System Tournament. The overall scoring will incorporate game play with Painting and Sportsmanship. Our focus is to bring coaches together to play some Blood Bowl and build a better Blood Bowl community here in Western North America.

If you have any questions or concerns about anything to do with the event please feel free to contact us.

Craig McAree (thunder-bowl@hotmail.com)
President & Commissioner
Thunderbowl

THE VENUE
The 2009 SPIKE! Magazine Blood Bowl Championship will be held Aug 1-2 at:
The Compass Point Inn
9850 King George Hwy
Surrey, BC, V3T 4Y3
(604-588-9511)

For those coming from out of town, there are many hotels in the area (including of course The Compass Point).

REGISTRATION
Thunderbowl handles all the registration for the 2009 SPIKE! Magazine Blood Bowl Championship. The pre-registration price is $40 (CND) and registration at the door is $50 (CAD).  Please register with us by email (making payment to our PayPal account) or by using our online registration form. Information on how to do so is available on the registration page.  If you do not have  PayPal account, feel free to register online and mail a cheque for payment. Mail your cheque to:

Michael McAree
4343 Windsor Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada. V5V 4P6.

If paying by cheque or money order please make payment to Michael McAree. Pre-registration is recommended but it's not required.  It is advised that no one pre-register by mail in the last week before the event.

Your registration is guaranteed once payment has been processed. Every coach will be welcome regardless of registration and no one will be turned away if they choose to pay at the door.

Things you NEED to bring:
• Your Team of Miniatures (should be painted and flocked).
• 2 copies of your team roster.
• D8, 2D6 and a set of Block dice.

Recommended:
• A copy of the most recent Living Rule Book 5.0 (free online here).
• Pen or pencil.
• Your NAF number (not required to play in challenge, but necessary if you want your games to be recorded).

You will NOT need to bring a board or dugouts. These will be provided. Get ready for the big leagues; we play exclusively on 40mm-scale boards. Now you can lay your miniatures face-down without chipping the paint!

SPECIAL GIVE-AWAY
This year we will be giving away two custom Ulfwerener models designed for this event.  One has been modeled as a traditional "Werewolf," while the second is a Werebear.  Designed by Alex Garnett, these models were so impressive that Impact! Miniatures bought the rights to sell them after the event.

SCHEDULE

As we have are allowing more than enough time to complete your games (2 hours & 30 Minutes), the days will run late if we don't start on time. Please be punctual and ready to play at the scheduled times.

Saturday August 1 8:00 - 9:00      Registration 9:00 - 11:30    Round 1 11:30 - 12:30  Lunch 12:30 - 3:00    Round 2 3:15 - 5:45      Round 3 5:45 - 11:30    Dinner, Open Gaming (Challenges, Board  Games, WFB, WH40K, whatever you want to bring).

Sunday August 2 9:00 - 11:30     Round 4 11:30 - 12:30   Lunch 12:30 - 3:00     Round 5 3:15 - 5:45       Round 6 5:45 - 6:15       Calculations 6:15                  Presentations

ROSTERS
Coaches have 1,000,000 gold crowns with which to build their teams. There are no skills or skill advancement rolls given out prior to the first game played.

OFFICIAL SPIKE! TEAMS
All of the teams available in the LRB 5.0 may be used at the 2008 SPIKE! Magazine Tournament. This list includes:

As well as the standard rulebook teams, we will be allowing the three new "Experimental" teams in the 2008 Rules Review. We'll be allowing these this coming season as they've been accepted at all sanctioned tournaments worldwide. So far the only reason they're not "official" is that GW has yet to make models for them. So essentially, this is more an acknowledged option than a house rule. You can find these teams, the Chaos Pact, the Slann and the Underworld here.  (If you can't read that link, please download Adobe Acrobat Reader.  It is free from the Adobe site, here.

STAR PLAYERS, WIZARDS, NECROMANCERS AND CHEFS
All Star Players are available (for their relevant teams) at their FULL costs; ie, Griff Oberwald is worth 320,000 GC. The LONER rule will apply.
No Wizards will be allowed.
Undead coaches (Necromancers) CANNOT raise the dead in any match.
Halfling coaches may purchase a Halfling Chef as part of the coaching staff for 100,000 GC.

SKILL ADVANCEMENT
After EVERY game, each coach will be given 20,000 GC to advance a player on his/her team. These "Bonus Gold Crowns" can be used to promote any one player's VALUE amount at one time, or the coach will have the option of saving this money for a future pricier advance. Each coach's "Team Value" will be the same regardless and NO inducements will be allowed. Whether or not you choose to save up or spend the "Bonus Gold Crowns" each player may only receive one upgrade throughout the entire tournament. "STAR PLAYERS" cannot be improved in this manner. This money corresponds to the Value Modifiers Table in the LRB 5.0, p27, and depends on the skills available to the player scheduled for improvement.

Value Modifiers Table (from LRB 5.0, p 27)

+20K	New Skill
+30K	Skill that can only be taken on a double
+30K	+1 MA or +1 MA
+40K	+1 AG
+50K	+1 ST

So for example, an Amazon Blitzer could purchase the following enhancements at the following costs:

You can see why some coaches may want to save the enhancement money for later games. This is the ONLY way to advance players on your team, as we will not officially track SPPs during the SPIKE!  If you have questions please feel free to ask.

CASUALTIES
All casualties that have been inflicted on your team, including deaths, are wiped away at the end of game. In other words, the team resets after each game. Skills & upgrades accrued throughout the tournament will NOT be lost, even if the player dies.

In terms of stats, please record all casualties that remain in play at the end of the game as having been inflicted by your team. That is, injuries caused by crowd pushing and rocks thrown from the crowd may still earn you the "Rambo" award for most casualties (and possibly act as a last-resort tiebreaker for the coaching award), while injuries Regenerated or prevented by an Apothecary will not. The bottom line is, if the model is in the Dead and Injured box at the end of the game, count it, and if it is not, then don't.

2009 SPIKE! MAGAZINE BLOOD BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP FORMAT
The SPIKE! is played over both Saturday and Sunday. Each coach will participate in six games, "Swiss" style. Therefore, in the first round, coaches will be randomly matched against other coaches. After that, the coaches will be allocated by win record to encourage same skill level of play. The only exception is you can never play the same opponent twice.

To stay on schedule, Thunderbowl would like it if you would play at a brisk pace with no time wasting please. Each player will be given a special results form at the start of each game. Once you have finished your game, you must fill in the form and then hand it in to the Referee Desks. It is important you fill all the information in, as this will decide your ranking for the next round and ultimately the winner of the 2009 SPIKE! Trophy.

SCORING
After each game you will record the game results on the results form. Points are awarded as follows:

Coaching
 

Any ties in the final standings will be broken by Win record, then by TD Difference, then by head-to-head record if any, and finally by Casualty Difference.

Forfeits: Should your opponent for any reason be unable to play during the allotted time (ie must leave early or arrives more than 30 minutes late), you will be awarded a win.  If your game has begun, record the score and casualties as of the time the game ended, and the winner will receive bonus TDs to bring the game to a 2-point lead for the winner.  The Casualty record will not be changed.

Painting
PLEASE NOTE: As this is a Games Workshop event, only teams consisting of figures made by GW or by Forgeworld will be considered for the "Outstanding Painting" prize.  As there are many companies now making figures for the game, we won't turn you away for playing non-GW models.  However, it's not a great idea to field such a team unless you're not hoping to win that trophy.  Tournament Referees will award a painting score from 1-10 based on the following criteria:
    Base-coated: All the bases in the team, including sideline staff are painted and textured in some manner. A green undercoat is not enough.
     Painted: The team is painted. All models have at least three (3) colours on them. Undercoats should not be visible.
     Representative: All models on the team are representative of the race and position that they are to portray. Extra weapons that are not part of a finished and painted figure should be removed. This is a commonly misunderstood area in painting critiques, of course. Interestingly converted teams will be considered along with stock teams. After all, the hobby aspect is part of the game as well! Therefore conversions are certainly encouraged; out of fairness to your opponent, however, we ask that the positions of players at least follow some sort of reasoning. For instance, if you want to play an all-Halfling Ogre team, it should be obvious which Halflings represent Ogres and which represent Snotlings.
     Detailed: All models have had details painted in a variety of colours or with noticeable effects. This can be shading, highlighting, numbered shoulder pads, etc. This discriminates between the merely painted team and the team that has had some attention paid to it.
     WOW Factor: This includes but is not limited to conversions, base and flock, putty work, display cases or trays and coaching staff. Basically, this covers anything that makes players and referees go WOW!!

     Opponent Scoring: 0-30 points: Before each game, players will look over their opponents miniatures and mark an artistic score.  Your painting will be judged by your opponent by a series of 5 check boxes. To score maximum points you should have fully painted your team, with multiple layers in highlights and shading, and have colours that work well with the team. You will receive up to 5 points from each of your opponents as well as 1-10 points awarded from event judges.

Sportsmanship
Although we all may dream of winning the SPIKE! Trophy we want everyone to have as much fun as they possibly can. Each coach will have the opportunity to vote on which opponent deserves the Outstanding Sportsmanship award. After each game you will rank your opponent from 1-5. This allows each coach a score from 6-30. At the close of the 6th round, we will also ask that you name your three favorite opponents from your games. Rank matters here; most favorite will earn more bonus points than third most favorite (3 for 1st, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd).

With every coach having the opportunity to rate every player that they have played against will ensure that every game is important and Sportsmanship will be integral to the final scores. In the event of a tie in total points, the award will go to the player with more of these bonus points, then to the player with the most "#1 favorite" votes. Additional tie breakers if necessary will be determined by the referees.

Overall
All you mathletes will already have determined that 150 points can be earned from coaching, 40 from painting and as much as 48 from Sportsmanship. While this certainly favours Coaching more than in some other tournaments, it's still possible for a player to go 6-0 and not win Best Overall. Remember, last year's most successful coach did not win the whole thing.  So focus on those other categories as well!


Well, that’s all I can think to say. See you at the SPIKE! -- Craig