Michigan GT Bolt Action Wrap-up

This past weekend on October 1-2 gamers got together at the Michigan GT in Lansing, MI to play a ton of Bolt Action. We held two events – the Bolt Action Back to the Front! singles tournament and the Bolt Action Best Job I Ever Had! Tank War tournament.

Everything went great. Everyone had fun, there were no blow-ups or rules arguments, everyone was pretty casual and friendly. We had 20 guys for Back to the Front and 12 for Tank War. This is a definite improvement from last year, where we had 16 guys for Back to the Front (this was our first year for Tank War). Shout out to our Chicago contingent that showed up and represented well.

From a Tournament Organizer perspective, everything went well. The GT expanded to 350+ folks this year across Bolt Action, Warmachine, 9th Age, Age of Sigmar, Malifaux, Dropzone Commander, X-Wing, and of course Warhammer. We rented a room this year and it was nice. The hotel itself is a bit dated looking on the outside but nice inside.

The GT was run well by the organizers with registration being easy and tables having enough space to play. The 40k announcements got old for most players but they’re looking at solutions for next year. I am very proud of the main organizer folks – this event has gone from just a 40k tournament to a mini-con that can definitely grow to be something really special. I would advise all who can attend next year to make time to do so.

Running the tournaments was relatively painless for Paul and I. He did most of the heavy lifting for the BTTF tournament and I did most of it for the Tank War tournament. We ended up having to do V1 as many players’ rulebooks had not yet arrived, so most people were pretty well versed in the rules. I was very happy with that!

Germans were very popular over the weekend, with six out of the ten Axis on Saturday playing Germans, and six out of six Axis on Sunday playing Germans. Here are the final standings:

Bolt Action Back to the Front! Tournament

Place	Name	Score	Award	Army Played
1	Geoffrey Wing	15.1846	Best Allied	British
2	Dexter Wallis	15.1737	Best Axis	German
3	Ed Kaiser	12.3972	Best Minor	Italian
4	Thomas Grambau	12.0588		Soviet
5	Aaron Cain	11.1953		German
6	Paul Stewart	11.1798	Best Paint	USMC
7	Edin Trisc	11.1601		German
8	Joe Harter	11.1151		Japanese
9	Luke Hess	11.0967		Italian
10	Jeremy Groat	11.0891		German
11	Jeff McCoy	11.0321	Hanoswag	German Ramke Brigade
12	Brandon Pung	8.1240		German
13	Seamus Hamrin	8.0498		No. 10 Inter-Allied Commando
14	Andrew Verticchio	7.1374	Best Sportsmanship	Australian Chindits
15	Taylor Dietz	7.1192		Soviet
16	Patrick Cotter	4.0655		Soviet
17	Will Kochis	3.0647		British Commandos
18	Josh Tousignant	3.0570		Soviet
19	Robert Taylor	3.0463		British
20	Marc Loosevelt	3.0369		Americans

Bolt Action Best Job I Ever Had! Tank War Tournament

Place	Name	Score	Award	Army Played
1	Josh Tousignant	15.227100	Wardaddy (best overall)	Soviet
2	Thomas Grambau	12.094000		German Stug Battery
3	Geoff Wing	11.967300		American
4	Dexter Wallis	11.167000	Sportsmanship	German
5	Ed Kaiser	11.134300		British
6	Paul Bucholz	7.811700	Squeaky Clean (best paint)	German DAK
7	Luke Hess	7.211500	Hanoswag	American Stuart Battalion
8	Marc Loosevelt	7.201800		German
9	Bob Mills	7.107300		German
10	Brandon Pung	4.188300		German
11	Jeff McCoy	4.027900		American

Some of the notes we received on the feedback – try not to use an attacker / defender mission, use second edition next year, and people really liked the Kittyhawk Down mission. On day one we played Maximum Attrition, Kittyhawk Down, and Point Defense. On day two we played a few more casual missions – one where you have to hold five objective markers on the board, one where the defender holds the center point of the board with two units before the game starts and the winner holds the objective at the end of the game, and an attrition based mission with some special rules – dust storm, minefield, and all infantry had anti-tank grenades. These were all created by using the Tank War book.

Huge thanks to all of our amazing sponsors:

Warlord Games

Army Group North

Company B

Empress Miniatures

NWS-Online

Gamersgrass

Crescent Root Studio

Any Scale Models

Blitzkrieg Miniatures

Offensive Miniatures

Gaddis Gaming

Rubicon models

Erik Sims painting

I can’t really say much more about the events, I’m beat. We had a lot of fun, tons of Bolt Action happened, including a kitty hawk crashing into two buildings and blowing one up. I’ve uploaded a ton of images to Imgur – check them out!