I really love it when an event comes around for a game I have been buzzing about, particularly one like Age of Sigmar when I know I am going to see some beautiful armies on the table too!

This event saw 13 players descend on JustPlay and we couldn't help but welcome all the returning players and few new ones, with people travelling all the way from Leeds and Sheffield. We were extremely excited to see these armies in play, but mostly because we had finished some new fantastic boards and terrain I wanted to see in action!

Our new Iceage/Realm of Monsters board!

Around now I would normally post lost of pics of standings and army lists but you can check these all out over on the event page hosted by Tabletop Tournaments. This is in my opinion the best resource out there for TO's right now and I worked with Dennis over the last week to get the perfect setup to support AOS for this event and hopefully more going forward.

Check out my upcoming Video Blog with why I think this software is essential and should be adopted by all AOS events, along with a guide on it's features and how to use it.

But lest we ramble on into the extraneous we have to give a massive congratulations to Paul Whitehead for winning the event with his Mixed Destruction list of Savage Orcs with a Rukk and Beastclaw Raiders.

Paul took on Craig Carlton in Grudge to start out the day with a very cagey game going to time as they fought over the 3 Places of Power it took along to commit forces fully to the battle. A game well played by both saw a bloody pile of bodies but the final Initiative roll sealed it for Paul, taking a Major Victory and 1980 Warscroll points; arguably a major factor in a one day event.

Paul vs Craig in Round 1 

His second opponent was Dan Cooper and his lethal Clan Skryre force. Unhappy to face this match, Paul did not seem confident but ultimately his worries did not come to fruition as this was Dan's new army (after a badly timed selling of his Fyreslayers!) and his inexperience in target selection based on his damage output let Paul take a comfortable win in a battle for the Gifts from the heavens. A major win with 2000 points in Paul's favour and a strong boost to his morale. 

The Skaven are coming!

Just a glorious pic on our new terrain

Now on the other tables Matt Robertson of Team Wales for the 40K ETC (that some say should have stocks and shares in JustPlay with all the Store credit he has won) was firmly fixed on table two and in game 2 saw a  a brutal game, ending in a minor win by JP Stevens. This upset meant the title of Champion would be out if his hands for this event thanks to Matt Carltons two Major wins of his own with another Savage Orc Beastclaw list!

A typical Thundertusk stand off was on the cards in this face off with a flurry of measuring threat ranges and keeping each other at bay, particularly as I had rolled Take and Hold. There was some big list differences between the two generals however, Paul fielding two Thundertusks and a solitary Stonehorn and Matt on the reverse but with an additional three Bolt Throwers and no Rukk.

Paul and Matt face of on table 1 in round 3 a Major win will take the title for either of them.

The Bolt Throwers certainly paid off here with brutal ranged volleys, killing a Thundertusk turn 1 and blowing the match right open. Matt started moving his two Stonehorns up his extreme left flank to swoop in on his opponents objective, avoiding fire from Paul's Rukk and remaining Thundertusk. This was Paul's chance!

With the center of the battlefield now left open and Matt's objective only loosely held by 10 Savage Orcs it was time for the Rukk to do its thing, maximizing movement to cross the table and sneak onto Matt's objective, securing the turn 3 win for holding both and it paid off! A devastating moment for Matt but a great read of the game by Paul, taking his third Major win with just 100 warscroll points killed.

The final move by Paul to take the Justice Series II championship!

He was not finished there though, Paul brought the full package to this event with an incredibly impressive landslide win in the best painting votes for his army also.

Our champion Paul Whitehead

Thank you to everyone who came to the event, I had a great day running it all and meeting some new faces and I will leave you with some pics from the day. Remember to follow us on facebook for updates on our next event and more upcoming tournament reports.

Team JustPlay

Our final Destiny Q1 tournament has just took place and as normal with a late season event, everyone had their promos and it was quite an event. we ran two eight man events won by Bala, Jango, Trooper (Phil Ryall) and Kylo/Dooku (JP Stevens) as to be expected.

With that in mind I decided to cover one of the decks that made it to the finals, one that we had forgotten about since launch. Our initial draft of it came a long time back and Aaron's places a new spin on that.

Here is what Aaron run.

So after talking to Aaron some of the selections are based on card availability but that aside lets take a look at his interesting build.

Jango Fett and Upgrades

Mirroring the format, the deck is pretty much all about Jango, in this case just jamming Holocrons on him, cheating out blue upgrades to him and resolving them out of sequence. This deck does a lot of that often utilising his ability to resolve Holocron specials into more specials and using the battlefield to claim while still resolving dice, it certainly showed a different variation to the typical decks you find Jango in. I think the upgrade package can be a bit better in this case, personally preferring Force Choke over the Immobilize for example, and possibly more Mind Probe.

Events

He has a real deep tool box of events in this layout,  showing lots and lots of dice removal to allow him to keep Jango alive in those dire times when just rolling Jango is not enough. Aaron has picked 15 in total so don't expect to be resolving your dice very easily against this deck and watch out for your blanks against Feel Your Anger. You can get set up for a big blow out vs that and Unpredictable or Use the Force if you are not aware.

I would certainly clean the one offs up in this decks events if I was going to play it in future, so lets take a look at another build.

This build has changed what I talked about above with the upgrades getting Force Choke in and the extra Mind Probe, which are pretty straight forward changes.

Now the real changes for this deck are in the events, and one in particular which changes the way this whole deck is played and built. Before we show that we must ask ourselves;

Why Play this Deck?

Its easy to just build deck after deck and its a lot of fun, but so much of the content coming out right now is just pointless decks that accomplish nothing compared to the big 2 or 3. Whilst still playing with my Training Day deck I am coming to the conclusion that if I am going to a big event (which I am) why I am not on Vader/Raider, Kylo/Dooku or Bala, Jango, Trooper? I think this deck is maybe a deck that could be considered good enough to operate in that competitive arena, and that's because we are trying to do all the things the above decks do all wrapped up in to one little package!

Its about cheating the action phase (Jango) and using the best upgrades in the game at the same time (Holocron and co) and the other less obvious ways one of which I have bought to this build.

No Mercy

I love this card it does just the same thing as cheating the action phase if they leave you a dice up, then you can do a lot of damage without them reacting. Force Strike is the same but would not work in this, there is just not enough of the blue melee dice. 

This card has forced my selection of cards a lot, making sure I have a lot of blue cards in my deck means skipping all but He Doesn't like You, Back Up Muscle and Armed to the Teeth in Yellow. The First two are just far too good to ever leave out and Armed to the Teeth gives me another way to Finish of a Character or end a game with skipping my opponent being able to react to my dice. 

The rest of the Blue cards, like Aaron has done himself, I have packed in dice control cards along with all of the best blue ones (and again) skipped the neutral cards to support No Mercy.

In Summary

This deck plays a lot of the best cards and a lot of the best combos of cards, it tries to cheat the action phase as much as possible to build on it's strengths and assert it's own game.

Does it work? It certainly does well and is far from terrible. From my personal perspective this one is mostly theory and needs some extensive testing, but well worth thinking about as line-up for immediate play and going forward.

Let me know what you think, have you experimented with this deck at all?

Check out out singles and upcoming events if you are in the UK and follow us on facebook for all the news from JustPlay

Greetings to you all! Whether you worship the Emperor or throw your lot in with the foul denizens of the warp, I have the fantastic opportunity of bringing the war-ravaged universe of Warhammer 40,000 to you at JustPlay in a big way in the upcoming months!

For those of you who don't know, Justplay will now be open weekly on Wednesday nights! I was incredibly lucky to recently join the JustPlay team and we've agreed that Wednesday will be our dedicated Warhammer 40k night, offering campaigns, leagues, slow-grow groups and many more over the next year. For us gamers in the 40k space this is a really exciting time within the lore, with the return of several daunting primarchs, the advancement of the storyline and the likely destruction of anything that doesn't rock a 2+ invulnerable save.

The call him what you like (does anyone use his real name anyway) but its a Primarch!

Whilst we will be supporting 40k in new ways over the next year, this doesn't stop you from playing anything else that suits your fancy on Wednesday nights. Whether you're a card game player, looking to try out your new pokemon lineup or even just fancy battling for the old worlds versus some skaven we're happy to welcome you all to use the space as you see fit so come on down and join us.

It's been a long time since we've seen so much turmoil and change within the Warhammer 40k universe (it's been reported Tzeentch is joyous) and not since the Eye of Terror campaign over a decade ago have we seen such widespread destruction and chaos. This is an incredible time to be donning power armour, flying with your kabal or farmin' teef off da 'umiez. With such an exciting time we thought we'd celebrate the opening of our new night and are offering a lottery for all 40k gamers for the next four weeks. Each wednesday night any players who come down and play at least one game of Warhammer 40k will be entered into a raffle and at the end of the night the winner will receive a £20 voucher towards any 40k purchase.

For Justplay as a store this a very exciting time, but for the universe itself "the times, they are a-changing." We've seen the fall of Cadia, the wakening of the primarchs and the gathering storms broiling across the universe leaving death and destruction in their wake. This conflict will be coming to it's peak this summer with the Gathering Storm Campaign taking place very soon. The Rise of The Primarch is here and frankly, he's pissed. Cadia has fallen. Biel-Tan has fractured. Traitor Legions of Chaos march from the now-growing Eye of Terror and this summer the storm has come to Macragge...

What will come of all this? Well that's for you to decide. Come down, take part and remember, whether you're commanding titans for the imperium or running destabilising sabotage missions in the name of Alpharius; every little helps.

On that note I look forward to seeing you all and let's take a minute to remember that ancient Chinese curse:

May you live in interesting times...

Justplay Shaun

Our latest X-Wing Tournament saw 14 players competing for the latest kit from FFG, jammed in-between countless regional tournaments and the Yavin Open. We had a great turn out from our local players and are really looking forward to our next event!

The final standings for the event can be seen below and following that, the top 4 list includes a spicy surprise!

Chris Edwards - Scum

Phil Ryall - Imperial

Micheal Bennett - Rebel

Dave Friend – Rebel

Mike, who managed a solid 14th place finish at the recent Yavin open flying his dynamic Rebel Swarm, faced off against an interesting Imperial Swarm in a bloody pitched battle. This time he was flying the big ship list which he felt could deal with the current meta, but couldn't find his way past Phil’s swarm in this particular fight. In the other semi-final Chris had made short work of Dave and Dash Render, trapping him in the corner with no way out!

An action packed game has nearly everyone glued to their seats (and table), staying to watch the final and showing their support.

The final saw the Slaver tanking in the middle of the board, absorbing a barrage of fire before finally going down to the Imperial swarm. The Slaver itself did eventually go down gone down, but not before itself and Manaroo picked off several ships, with Fenn Ra skirting the edge of the fight. The evasive Fenn Rau managed to avoid getting swamped early and committed once the numbers were more even, deleting Imperial Ties at will!

Victory to Chris with his Scum!

The winner Chris Edwards, Congratulations!

Thank you as always to all who attended. We have our final Q1 event on the 25/03/17 and you can get your tickets here.  We should see an exciting event with a chance to see the latest changes in the meta thanks to the new FAQ!

Thanks for reading and we'll hopefully see you in store soon!

Team JustPlay

We have had a lot of events this month as always at JustPlay but not had the same chance as normal, with the refit and recruiting our new staff member, to write them all up so here it goes.

Star Wars Destiny Grand Tournament Febuary.

This fantastic event was streamed in full on our YouTube channel from Round 2 and you can watch the event in full below if you don't want spoilers!

The Top 4 for this event had a strong showing of the two decks putting up all the big results worldwide at the moment, we had two Elite Bala-Tik, Jango and Trooper decks along with two Vader-Raider decks.

Top 4

Mark Winckle

Stephen Jones

Emma Barnes

Phillip Ryall

It's interesting to see the meta evolving and for us to see reduced upgrades all round, decks packed full of dice control. It stands out especially when compared with the some results from other tournaments going on, particularly in the States, even seeing the differences in these the two decks here of the same archetype.

The eventual winner was Mark Winckle, Congratulations! The Top 4 games were excellent and really close (well worth a watch) Mark defeated Stephen Jones in the final, fighting though Stephen's massive amount of dice control.

Our Top 4 (left to right) Stephen, Phillip, Mark and Emma.

Ritchie and the Champion Mark Winckle

Thanks to everyone that took part and our next event is 12/03/17, If you fancy taking part you can find your tickets here

Guild Ball Northwest Frontiers Cup 4/02/17

We had 8 people take part in this event, mostly locals, with some guys making their way over from Rhyl to join us. The event's eventual winner was Jason Fox putting on a strong showing with his Union team, with Brandon Watkins taking second place with a brutal Butchers line-up.

Runner Up Brandon Watkins Playing Butchers

Jason Fox - The Union

Blackheart, Veteran Rage, Coin, Mist, A&G, Minx, Harry the Hat, Gutter, Decimate

Brandon Watkins - Butchers

Fillet, Truffles, Ox, Brisket, Shank, Boar, Meathook, Boiler, Tenderiser

Thanks to our local pundit Kyle Buckley for organizing the event and to everyone else who attended.

Eirie Downs League Cup

It was time for the first cross division clashes of our Eirie Downs Blood Bowl League with 8 Coaches taking part and aiming to lift the prestigious League Cup!

We had a brilliant day as always with Blood Bowl being super relaxed. A day filled with loads of banter brought us 3 rounds of single elimination Competition, we had Simon Donaldson with his Dwarf team in the final vs James Talyor's Shambling Undead. Simon filled in for a unfortunate drop out so his team was nearly brand new, facing off against the Top of the East Division he had nearly 500k in TV to James, lots of special play cards!

They were not enough to help him though, with James crushing him 3-0 and becoming first League Cup Champion! 

The Finalist Simon in full Dwarf mode and James.

 Ritchie and the Champion James Taylor.

Thanks to everyone who took part in these and all our other events in JustPlay during February, check out our events calendar for all our upcoming events and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for future updates and more reports on our great games.

Team JustPlay

We're very excited to announce that we have partnered with Battlefront Miniatures to become a Flames of War stockist!

For those of you who don't know, Flames of War is one of the most popular World War 2 miniatures games in the world and has been around for a very long time (14 years by my count). It's extra exciting that we're beginning to stock Flames of War right now because version 4, the new and improved edition of the game, launches on 11th March and we'll be there joining in the launch celebrations with our fellow stores around the world! Reports are already coming in that the first print run of the game has been sold out to retailer preorders, one of those retailers being us, so this game is sure to be super popular! (and don't worry - the second print run has been brought forward to cover demand, so there won't be any stock shortages) 

JustPlay customers don't have to wait until 11th March to get their hands on the game - we'll have a demo kit and sample rulebook in-store from 4th March, along with a very awesome demo board using official Flames of War pre-painted terrain and the new Flames of War neoprene Desert Mat!

 Battlefront have a great release schedule for both the Allied and Axis forces over the next few months, including not only sweet models and terrain but also army books, paint sets, tokens, and more. Check out the PDF below for more info and lots of eye candy:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2910690/Flames_Product_Brief.pdf

We'll be running narrative events such as campaign days/weekends and a store campaign, as well as tournament events for this game as soon as it's available and Battlefront also have organised play kits in the works so you can be assured that the game will be well supported at JustPlay, with lots of opportunities to get your armies onto the battlefield.

So in short - make sure you get yourself down to JustPlay from 4th March onward for a demo of Flames of War on our awesome demo board, and get your pre-orders in for this highly in-demand product and keep an eye on our Facebook Page for more updates!

See you soon, General!

-Team JustPlay

PS. If you are an FoW V3 player and want to exchange your rulebook for a V4 rulebook, we are able to do this for you - just pop in and see us any time from March 11th when the V4 rulebook is released!

Hi Guys - as you know we recently decided that we needed to recruit a staff member (before we've even been open for a year.... cool!). We had a lot of amazing applications from awesome people and we were bowled over by how many people saw our little store as a great opportunity for a role. Unfortunately, we were only able to hire one person (as much as we'd have loved to hire you all) but after some very difficult decision making we think we picked the right man for the job.

So please everyone, put your hands together, and welcome Shaun Wright to the JustPlay team!

We had another fantastic event this weekend. 23 players turned up to compete and we had full coverage of the whole event streamed on Twitch, so if you don't want spoilers you can watch the whole event below!

Watch live video from TheSaxladVGC on www.twitch.tv

We'd like to thank Thomas Platter (@TheSaxlad) and his guest Joe Birch (@ProfBirchVGC) for coming along, running the stream and doing commentary.

The event was split into two tournaments today, seeing our first dedicated Senior Division Event with 6 players and 17 in the Master portion of the event.

First lets take a look at the Senior final table:

Congratulations to our winner Jamie Molyneux

Thanks to all our competitors and parents for making some long trips to get here - we hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you again soon!

Our Senior Players!

Our Winner Jamie (left) and Runner Up, Owen.

Next we had the Masters event in full swing and with 17 players we had one player who would miss the cut on 3-2 and unfortunately it was our reigning two-time champion Jonathan! Here is how they finished:

Well done to our top 8 competitors

The Top 8 (left to right) Ben, Matt, Jamie, John, Joe, Adam, Mike, Kosta and our photo bombing coverage team Joe and Thomas!

We held the Semi Final games for the stream so you can watch the full top 4 there but we had a strong Liverpool presence in this one with Mike Abbott taking on Ben Markham and Joe Campbell vs Matt Carter. Unfortunately that was as the local boys went, leading in to a great final between two very accomplished players - Ben Markham and Matt Carter. In the end it turned out that no one could stop Ben today as he ended on an amazing 8-0 record for the day - congratulations Ben!

The winner Ben Markham

Thanks to everyone who showed up and made it a great day; these events just keep getting better and better! Our next event is on the 11/03/17, tickets and full information are available here.

Thanks for reading!

Team JustPlay

Our first X-Wing event of 2017 saw 18 players attempting to pilot their ships to victory! With FFG's Q1 Tournament Kit and £50 of JustPlay store credit as prizes, the meta broke down as follows:

7 Rebel, 5 Imperial and 6 scum - a very even field

18 players meant that MOV would be crucial, and it was in the last round, with our previous tournament champion Dan Sellen missing out on the top 4 cut by a small ship's worth of points.

Final Standings after round 4

Congratulations to our top 4 players - you can check out their lists below:

Dave Friend 

Robert Gogacz

Angus Hamill-Stewart

Stephen Denton

Our Top 4 (left to right): Angus, Robert, David and Stephen

The first semi final saw our two locals, David (undefeated in the swiss) and Stephen square off - they'd done brilliantly to get to the semis but only one could advance, and Stephen took the win!

In the second semi final, Robert took on Angus, with a convincing win to the experienced Commonwealth Defender pilot; congratulations to Angus on getting to the semis, it was his first time at one of our events and I know he was very happy to make it that far.

In the final, Stephen - in his first X-Wing tournament, to boot - was excited to take on veteran and previous JustPlay tournament winner Robert. Robert's experience carried the day, so congratulations to Robert; the first winner in our tournament series for 2017!

Stephen (left) and our winner Robert (right)

Thanks for reading! If you'd like to attend our next X-Wing event, it takes place on Sunday 26/02/17 and you can get your tickets here.

Fly Casual!

Team JustPlay

Hi Magic Players,

The last two weekends saw our biggest pre-release and launch weekends since we opened in March last year, and we'd like to thank all who attended and made it such a great weekend!

It was amazing to sell out completely (in advance, too) and for those of you that don't know, this means that for future events we can offer even more spaces. After such a great response to the pre-release we were really looking forward to the launch drafts at FNM on launch weekend, and we were not disappointed - 23 people turned up to fire almost 3 full pods, including a 7 man pod of new players taking part in their first ever draft!

So, a HUGE thank you to everyone who made the decision to celebrate the launch of Aether Revolt at JustPlay. We met a lot of new people, many of whom were visiting the store for their first time, attending their first pre-release, or drafting for the first time. We hope you all enjoyed it (and that the decks that Ritchie helped you all make were not too terrible), and we hope to see you soon for FNM and more.

Also thanks to those players who traveled from neighboring towns and cities to join us - it was great to meet you all and we hope that choosing JustPlay was worth the trip.

Finally, thanks to our local judges for taking time out from their own games to help new players with queries and new mechanics, and thanks to local judge Chris Ambery for keeping players up to date with our events via the Magic Liverpool Facebook Group.

The Aether Revolt launch celebrations continue this Friday 27th January with more drafts as well as standard, all of which is up on our events calendar that you can find here.

Thanks for reading!

Ritchie and Ian.