Its party time at JustPlay -  a whole weekender of Christmas celebrations, and with all of your favourite games being played there is something for everyone! Come join us to game, meet some new people, try some new games and join in the festive spirit. Christmas jumpers are optional but encouraged!

We've got bunches of leftover promos from OP kits that we've run this year that we'll be using as prizes, and we'll also be putting on food and treats all day.

The party starts at midday each day, and all events begin at 12.30!

Saturday.

• X-Wing Mini-Event - £3 entry, 3/4 rounds of X-Wing Swiss, and the launch of our X-wing ladder. Promos from 2016 kits will be available as spot prizes. Bring your fun lists!
• Star Wars Destiny - Swiss tournament, £3 entry, boosters as prizes!
• Magic the Gathering - Standard Showdown 1pm-6pm. Full Details here
• Guild Ball - Mini Tournament with prizes, just £3 entry!

Sunday 

• Age of Sigmar: 'He's writing a list, he's checking it twice': A festive AOS campaign day run by Nathan Foster. 10.30am - 6:30pm (More info to follow)
• Blood Bowl - Get together for some Blood Bowl league games in the festive spirit!
• Conspiracy Draft - (£12.50, 1.5 booster per person prizes)
• Star Wars Armada - Armada 2015 Spring Kit, friendly event, 3 round swiss, 400 points. £3 entry. Our growing Armada community will probably be able to help you out with a few ship loans if you need them, too!

 

We'll also have our store copies of Star Realms, Epic and Shadow Games available to play all weekend.

If your favourite game is not on the list, don't let that put you off. With party food and plenty of space for all, just come along with your game and we'll see you there! 

Finally, we'll be heading out for a few Christmas drinks to celebrate the end of JustPlay's first year open. Join us after we close (destination TBA) - speak to Ian or Ritchie for details!

Hi Everybody,

We had someone pop into the shop today and ask about Yugioh. This isn't the first time we've been asked by locals whether we're planning to stock and/or support Pokemon, Yugioh and Vanguard and so we thought it was time we did something about it!

If you play any of these three games, we'd love to hear from you! We want to know what it is that you're looking for, what we can do to help support your games, what kind of event schedules you'd like, and any other comments or feedback you'd care to throw our way. The more familiar we can get with you guys in the local community as well as the games themselves, the better we can support you. So please get in touch, whether it's to give us your big ideas, offer your help, or simply let us know that you're a player looking to play.

We would of course also be happy to stock these games and their accessory ranges (sleeves, folders, and more - we know how hard it can be to find these locally) if there is the desire for it!

You can get in touch with us in the following ways:

Facebook: Join our facebook group here and/or message our Facebook page
Email: hello@justplaygames.uk
Twitter: @justplaygamesuk

Thanks for reading this quick announcement and we hope to hear from you soon!

-Ian & Ritchie

We love all things Fantasy Flight Games (FFG), in particluar their fantastic organised play programs which support all levels of play from casual to competitive. With that in mind, for 2017 we want to increase our stable of FFG games to cover their other great titles!

X-Wing is a fantastic game, and the last 6 months at JustPlay have shown that with a great base of friendly players, weekly game nights, monthly organised play kits and the full range of stock available in-store, we can build a great community that welcomes everyone, and make it easy to find a game.

This will continue in 2017 when we will continue to run our popular monthly X-Wing events on the last weekend of each month, starting with a Q1/Winter kit event on January 28th!

Initial dates: Saturday January 28th, Sunday February 26th and Saturday March 25th.

We will also be adding four more games to our supported events:

• Star Wars: Armada
• Star Wars: Imperial Assault
• Game of Thrones
• Netrunner

We will be running events for both Netrunner and Game of Thrones starting in Q1, and adding both Armada and Imperial Assault in Q2. We're really looking for your involvement and turnout for these, as they have to be ordered over 3 months in advance and the turnouts at these events will dictate how many we order going forward. Let us know if you're excited for these games!

Initial dates

Game of Thrones Sunday February 12th and Netrunner Sunday January 29th

Armada Will begin with the The Corellian Conflict in the first Quarter of 2017 (more info to follow) and the first kit event from April 2017

Imperial Assault events will begin April 2017

And last but not least, we'll be supporting FFG's latest game, Star Wars Destiny (which is launching at our launch party on 20/11), with a full schedule of organised play events - starting in January and running monthly!

Initial dates Saturday January 21st, Saturday February 11th and Sunday March 12th. 

If you are interested in any of these games, or play them already and want to get involved with your community at JustPlay, why not join our Facebook groups and meet the other local players?

X-Wing, Armada and Imperial Assault Group here 

FFG LCGs including Netrunner and Game of Thrones can be found here

 

Thanks for reading and we hope you're looking forward to a great 2017 of FFG gaming!

Ritchie

 

At JustPlay we recently held our first Age of Sigmar Tournament with 12 players showing up to do battle at the store. I was really excited for this as Age of Sigmar has had all my focus at the moment eating up any gaming time I have.

The calm before the Battle Begins

It was great day with some fantastic armies on display and a great mix with Sylvaneth having the biggest showing either as Sylvaneth Allegiance or in Order armies but I will go over most the top performing army lists later.

Here are the final standings and you can see all the results on Tiebreak

With 3 points for a win going into round 3 we had Matt Robertson (BeastClaw) and Alex Harrison (Order) on Table 1 both with 2 Major Wins and our own local store player Tom Best (Stormcast) also on two wins and 6 points but with only 1 Major Victory needed things to go in his favor on table 1, this round they were playing Three Places of Power.

In Matt vs Alex, Matt decided to take the first turn as two of Alex's heroes were in range of his Thundertusks and another one could be reached through his Skink skirmish screen using the 2 inch reach on from the Stonehorns spear he also grabbed 2 of the objectives for himself. This all went to plan killing 2 Way Watchers with Thundertusks and a Battlemage in combat also wiping out 2 units of Skinks not at bad first turn! That said none of Alex's major units had been hurt at all and when they responded things really turned back in his favor especially when he took the double turn killing 2 Stonehorns and a Thundertusk, after that Alex still had enough heroes left to cap objectives and take the major victory.

Papa Smurf and his friends

Over to our local player Tom taking on Ben's Slyvaneth with his Stormcasts. Tom deployed in the heavens and went second with Ben advancing capping a few objectives and started racking up some early points but things quickly changed. Ben was introduced to a Azyros led Stormcast Eternal strike force and his ability to drop right into combat much to his surprise!

Hammer time!

Tom took down the Hurricanum in this exchange along with a few more of his heroes eventually leaving Ben with a Treeman sat in his Wildwood well defended who carried on capping points for most the game Ben sniped of couple of Tom's heroes to even things up. Fast forward to the end of turn 4 Tom is trying to shift this Treeman out of his woods and clear him off the objective this was unsuccessful and a final round of objective points were scored keeping him in the lead and eventually securing the game in his favor. Turn 5 was going to be crucial big initiative roll and final combats to resolve to see who got those last caps but time on the round had been called. The game might have been very different as Tom had put himself in a great position to go 3-0.

Treelord hanging out

The best painted army was also a really tight competition I asked 5 of my regular customers playing Guild Ball to cast a vote on who they thought should win.

They really liked lots of what was on display Jack Maiden's Sylvaneth's color scheme was brilliant, some of Joe's Seraphon were mentioned to me also but it came down to Martin Hall's Death Army and Benjamin Savva's Sylvaneth.

The runner up was Ben with his Slaanesh inspired army a number of his followers that had taken refuge deep in the forests as they hunted for their master (this and his next idea really inspired me to read some fluff as I do his back story no justice here).

Some select snaps I took

Martin's Undead won the vote 3-2 it was really close but it was a few of his converted characters and a technically perfect job that swung the votes his way - congratulations Martin who won a £10 Voucher for JustPlay 

The winning army

All that's left to say is a big thank you to everyone else who came especially all your kind words about the venue, tables and those who said they would return means a lot and I look forward to welcoming you all back in January at our next event The 2017 Justice Series tickets are on sale now and is capped at 20 players should be great chance to get a final test in before the first Grand Tournament Heat see you all then!

I leave you with a pic of myself with the winner Alex and Jack with his wooden spoon also the top performing army lists.

Alex Harrison and Jack Maiden 

Alex Harrison 1st Place (Order)

Leaders
Waywatcher (100)
Waywatcher (100)
Waywatcher (100)
Waywatcher (100)
Celestial Hurricanum With Celestial Battlemage (320)
Battlemage (100)

Units
Kurnoth Hunters x 6 (360)
- Scythes
Kurnoth Hunters x 6 (360)
- Scythes
Liberators x 5 (100)
- Warhammers
Liberators x 5 (100)
- Warhammers
Gryph-Hound x 1 (40)
Gryph-Hound x 1 (40)
Skinks x 10 (80)
- Meteoric Javelins & Star bucklers
Skinks x 10 (80)
- Meteoric Javelins & Star bucklers

Total: 1980/2000

Matt Robertson 2nd Place (Beastclaw)

Leaders

Frostlord on Stonehorn (460)

Frostlord on Stonehorn (460)

Huskard on Thundertusk (340)

Huskard on Thundertusk (340)

Icebrow Hunter (160)

Frost Sabres (60)

Frost Sabres (60)

Frost Sabres (60)

Skal (60)

Total: 2000/2000

Nathan Foster 3rd Place (Chaos)

List 1

Leaders
Great Unclean One (240)
Herald Of Nurgle (100)
Verminlord Deceiver (320)
Warlock Engineer (100)

Units
Plaguebearers Of Nurgle x 20 (200)
Plaguebearers Of Nurgle x 10 (100)
Plaguebearers Of Nurgle x 10 (100)
Nurglings x 3 (80)
Nurglings x 3 (80)
Warpfire Thrower Weapon Team x 1 (60)
Ratling Gun Weapon Team x 1 (80)
Ratling Gun Weapon Team x 1 (80)

War Machines
Warp Lightning Cannon (180)
Warp Lightning Cannon (180)

Batallions
Tallyband of Nurgle (100)

Total: 2000/2000

List 2

Leaders
Herald Of Nurgle (100)
Great Unclean One (240)
Verminlord Deceiver (320)
Thanquol and Boneripper (500)
- Warpfire Projectors

Units
Plaguebearers Of Nurgle x 20 (200)
Plaguebearers Of Nurgle x 10 (100)
Plaguebearers Of Nurgle x 10 (100)
Nurglings x 3 (80)
Nurglings x 3 (80)
Warpfire Thrower Weapon Team x 1 (60)
Warpfire Thrower Weapon Team x 1 (60)
Poisoned Wind Mortar Weapon Team x 1 (60)

Batallions
Tallyband of Nurgle (100)

Total: 2000/2000

Joe Grimwade 4th Place (Order)

List 1

Leaders
Skink Starseer (160)
Skink Priest (100)
- Priestly Trappings
Celestial Hurricanum With Celestial Battlemage (320)

Units
Saurus Warriors x 10 (100)
- Club
Saurus Warriors x 10 (100)
- Club
Saurus Warriors x 10 (100)
- Club
Chameleon Skinks x 5 (120)
Gryph-Hound x 1 (40)
Kurnoth Hunters x 3 (180)
- Scythes
Kurnoth Hunters x 3 (180)
- Scythes

Behemoths
Bastiladon (300)
Bastiladon (300)

Total: 2000/2000

List 2

Leaders
Celestial Hurricanum With Celestial Battlemage (320)
Saurus Scar-Veteran on Cold One (100)
Saurus Sunblood (120)
Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur (320)
Saurus Scar-Veteran on Carnosaur (260)
Skink Starseer (160)

Units
Saurus Warriors x 10 (100)
- Club
Saurus Warriors x 10 (100)
- Club
Saurus Warriors x 10 (100)
- Club
Chameleon Skinks x 5 (120)
Kurnoth Hunters x 3 (180)
- Scythes

Batallions
Bloodclaw Starhost (100)

Total: 1980/2000

Tom Best Finalist 2-0 into round 3 (Stormcast)

List 1

Leaders
Lord Celestant (100)
Lord Castellant (100)
Knight Azyros (100)
Lord Relictor (80)
Waywatcher (100)
Waywatcher (100)

Units
Liberators x 10 (200)
- Warhammers
Liberators x 5 (100)
- Warhammers
Liberators x 5 (100)
- Warhammers
Judicators x 5 (160)
- Skybolt Bows
Judicators x 5 (160)
- Skybolt Bows
Paladin Retributors x 5 (220)
Paladin Retributors x 5 (220)
Prosecutors with Celestial Hammers x 3 (100)
- Celestial Hammers

Batallions
Warrior Brotherhood (140)

Total: 1980/2000

List 2

Leaders
Lord Celestant (100)
Lord Castellant (100)
Knight Azyros (100)
Lord Relictor (80)
Lord Celestant On Dracoth (220)
- Tempestos Hammer & Thundershield
Waywatcher (100)

Units
Liberators x 5 (100)
- Warhammers
Liberators x 5 (100)
- Warhammers
Liberators x 5 (100)
- Warhammers
Judicators x 5 (160)
- Skybolt Bows
Judicators x 5 (160)
- Skybolt Bows
Paladin Retributors x 5 (220)
Paladin Retributors x 5 (220)
Prosecutors with Celestial Hammers x 3 (100)
- Celestial Hammers

Batallions
Warrior Brotherhood (140)

Total: 2000/2000

 

Bob: "Welcome sports fans, to our special piece on the little known Eirie Downs League, coming to you live from the Ostermark Province of the Empire. Stuck next to both Kislev and Sylvania, a dreary land of fog and rain on the best of days...why would anyone want to live here?"

Jim: "Well Bob, I asked the same thing when the sponsors, JustSwords, dragged us all the way here -  but all that makes for some great football and some diverse teams! One local story is that of Teebald Guymar, former pride of Reikland University and College Football. After a unfortunate incident involving a Halfling and minor Princess who's father had some pull with the league, he ended up banished to this backwater. We'll be following his progress with interest!

Our special correspondent, Richard Von Macanov, will be introducing the teams and following the league for us all whilst the Colleges of Magic broadcast the games to the civilized world, so stay tuned folks!"

In this blog series I will be reporting on our first Blood Bowl league. The league will be held in JustPlay throughout Winter 2016/2017, and is expected to run for around 8-12 weeks depending on numbers and Christmas/New Year.

I need to consume the new rule book and Death Zone to check for any major changes but we expect to run a standard league; each entrant should take on every opposing team twice, with a schedule we'll publish beforehand and a few weeks to play the currently scheduled block of games (to make sure everyone has ample time and opportunity to get their games in). At the end, there will be a Grand Finals to finish it all off; stay tuned to this blog series for more details on this!

So get your new copy of Blood Bowl, get painting, dust of your old teams and get involved! The league is COMPLETELY FREE to join so get ready and get set!

In addition, Richard Von Macanov is looking for teams to highlight for his league coverage, as he tries make it big and bag a major coverage job! So if you want to get involved, be thinking about your team, its history, and the story you can tell as your players develop. If they're from the Eirie Downs area check out the above map for ideas, or come up with your own! We'll be running league coverage articles right here on the blog so this is your chance to get featured!

If you haven't preordered your copy of Blood Bowl yet (and Death Zone, or the Skavenblight Scramblers), you can find it here at a special discounted pre-order price of just £55!

Don't forget to sign into the Blood Bowl event on Facebook!

Thanks sports fans!

Richard Von Macanov 

“Welcome sports fans to the new season of everyone’s favorite sport, Blood Bowl! It's back bigger and better than ever and we are looking forward to meeting all of the new coaches can vying to lead their team to victory!”

To celebrate the launch of Blood Bowl, we will be holding a number of events over the launch period, starting with us staying open through Thursday night until 1am Friday morning on the 25th so that you can grab your game and teams ready for the weekend!

Blood Bowl is just £55 at JustPlay if you preorder, or £58.50 on launch weekend - 10% off Games Workshop prices (available for preorder on our website on 12th November!)

In addition, we'll be running Blood Bowl intros all night on Thursday night with our classic Blood Bowl sets so you can learn to play whilst you wait to pick up your toys!

All events over the weekend will award raffle tickets in varying amounts for taking part, performing well and more, as well as simply for picking up your copy of Blood Bowl at JustPlay. Then, on Saturday evening we will hold the raffle for £25 worth of store credit!

 

Friday (Store Opens 12pm)

• Dungeon Bowl 2016

 

 

Saturday (Special early opening at 9am!)

 

• Dungeon Bowl continues - the same rules as Friday!
• Free Play Blood Bowl all day; bring your team, grab one of our pitches and score some goals (or some heads!)
• Display Your Colours - Painting Contest

 

(Bring your own paints and brushes!)

 

Sunday (Doors open 10.30am)

 

• The Victory Doughnut Autumn Cup

 

Cheers, and we look forward to seeing you for some Blood Bowl!
Jim, Bob and Ritchie

We have been talking to many of you since we announced our Store Champion Program and today we are pleased to let you all know that we have selected our first!

Nathan Foster is already heavily involved in all things Age of Sigmar at JustPlay and is currently running a ladder in store for the game. Nathan is planning to attend many events already and encourages others to attend, which in turn helps us to reach a larger crowd and brings new players to the community for you all to play against!

You may reconise our store model ! 

So, thank you Nathan for stepping up and offering to help grow the game you are passionate about.

Nathan will receive free entry to all tournaments held at JustPlay for Age of Sigmar as well as additional 10% discount on all Age of Sigmar products.

If you are interested in applying for your favourite games system check out our post with all of the relevant details. We are still looking for people to champion the following games:

• A Game of Thrones: Second Edition
• Android Netrunner
• Blood Bowl
• Bushido
• Guild Ball
• Magic: The Gathering
• Star Wars: X-Wing
• Star Wars: Armada
• Star Wars: Imperial Assault
• Vs System
• Warhammer 40,000

Thanks for reading!

Ritchie

October 30th saw sixteen pilots battling it out for a cut to Top 4 and a chance to be crowned Champion in another awesome monthly X-Wing tournament at JustPlay! On the line this month were Summer Kit prizes as well as £30 store credit to the winner and £20 to second place.

Faction Breakdown:

• Imperial 5
• Rebel 6
• Scum 5

After 4 rounds of action the final standings looked like this

With Tom 'Twiggy' Williams going 4-0 in the swiss part of the event, this left 4 players on 3-1 with Stephen Jones just missing the cut on Margin of Victory (one more damage to a K-Wing on 1 hull in his last game could have made that difference but time was called and he escaped!)

Top 4 Lists:

Tom Williams (Scum Aces)

Edward Holmes (Palp Defenders)

Christopher Zee (Han/Poe)

James Durr (Palp Defenders)

The Top 4 saw James vs Tom and Edward vs Chris in the semi finals, Edward convincingly dispatched Chris but on the next table a long duel was taking place between Fenn Rau and many Tie Defenders - one by one he took them all down, a feat which he would try to repeat in the final!

Edward, seeing the damage that Fenn was doing to the Defenders and already losing to Tom in the swiss intended to deal with him quickly in the final game but after Fenn Rau ended up far out of position due to a misjudged maneuver against the Imperial Shuttle, Kavil's Y-Wing went down first. Luckily for Edward the Imperial Shuttle carrying the Emperor held out a turn or two longer than expected against Fenn Rau allowing him to deal with Manaroo on his own. Once again it was Fenn vs Defenders, but this time it was not to be; Fenn took down one Defenders but then eventually lost the duel after a Critical hit reduced Fenn's pilot skill to zero making it eaier for the remaining Defender to catch him in-arc, the final shot coming right on the edge of range 3.

Congratulations to Edward Holmes!

Our final Summer Kit tournament (with additional store credit as prize support as always!) is on 26/11/16; you can grab you tickets here and don't forget to sign in on Facebook!

-Ritchie

In response to yesterday's blog post, a lot of people have (with good reason) asked questions about the wisdom of running two standard events on the same night. Rather than answer the question ad infinitum, I thought I'd write another quick post about it here. This is a stream-of-consciousness post so apologies if any of it reads less than perfectly!

We are part of a wider group of WPN stores in the UK that, along with WotC's Organised Play guys, discuss the topic of Magic - events, formats, growth, and more - on a daily basis. We discuss where Magic is going, how stores are doing, national trends in players, what is working for stores and what is not. It is an invaluable feedback tool and helps a lot with decisions making when parallels can be drawn between other playgroups and communities.

One of the things that is most often discussed is the matter of new players. How do we grow the game? How do we ensure that we attract new people to the hobby and make them want to play? Without new players, the game will die, so this is very important to any community. There are many answers but some of them are overwhelmingly common, particularly these ones:

*new players might not be able to, or be ready to, build complete decks - for reasons of time, money, investment, and so on
*new players often do not feel ready to compete in a "tournament" - even an FNM level tournament
*new players want to play with other new players

Now, as much as we (that's me, and Ritchie, and you guys - our locals) are always happy to educate new players in the ways of the rules, deckbuilding, play ability and more, we have to accept that that is not always what people want, and it is also not always what they need. Sometimes new players simply want to play a fun event with their current peers. They may be interested in learning how to play what I've been terming "full fat" Magic, or they may not; that choice is up to them, and therefore JustPlay should support it.

Whilst on the surface it may seem that two Standard events on the same night may conflict, they really should not. These events may have the same format but the players they are aimed at are (for the most part) players with different goals. Also, consider the advantage for new players who are playing Standard alongside experienced players; they can see awesome full-fat standard decks in action first before having to commit the resources to build one. As a new player, you can watch a game, pick up tips from experienced players, and chat Magic with them. You might not get this if the non-standard format is Modern; people look at a whole plethora of cards they don't know, or are never planning to own, and switch off.

To summarise, what we're trying to do with our new player Standard events is to give newer players, inexperienced players, or simply players who want to "try before they buy" a chance to do that in a tournament with a lower overall barrier to entry. As a new player, you can grab a free intro deck or two and join in the event. You can play with your Magic league deck. You can play with whatever you want. 

Of course, our hope is that everyone wants to start playing in more and more awesome premiere Magic events, and playing in "full fat" Friday Night Magic, but having somewhere to start is always helpful. And the choice is there for new players. That's what's important here; we are offering a choice, and that should in no way impact one event or the other.

PS:

After player feedback from our post yesterday, we've also decided to switch our bi-weekly eternal rotation from legacy to modern. This means that we will now be alternating Modern and Standard every week (alongside new player Standard, every week) with Legacy temporarily out of the rotation until we figure where to put it.

Introducing new players to Magic the Gathering is easy. It's an incredible game, it's easy to learn, and there is lots of support from your local community (and of course, us!)

The next step to learning is getting involved with all of the great events at your local game store, and for some players this seems a lot more daunting - this is something that we frequently see new players face.

We want to do our best to try and offer support to new players looking to play in more local events, starting with FNM. We want you to know that FNM is not the "local pro tour" but a fun place to hang out with fellow players, play cards and enjoy yourselves. As such, we're restructuring our FNM’s to include a low entry fee, participation-based standard tournament each week.

Starting Friday 21/10/16 we will have a £3 entry Standard tournament every week with every player receiving a booster pack on entry along with an FNM promo.

This will run alongside, not instead of, our current FNM (£5 entry / 400 JustPlay Points in the prize pool per player). Now that we're coming to the end of the new set draft scycle, we'll be returning to running Modern and Legacy formats at FNM, alternating with standard. This means a regular month of FNM at JustPlay would look like this:

Week 1

Standard - £3 entry, each player receives 1 booster on entry 

Modern - £5 entry, each player adds 400 JustPlay Points to the prize pool

Week 2

Standard - £3 entry, each player receives 1 booster on entry 

Standard - £5 entry, each player adds 400 JustPlay Points to the prize pool

Week 3

Standard - £3 entry, each player receives 1 booster on entry 

Legacy - £5 entry, each player adds 400 JustPlay Points to the prize pool

Week 4

Standard - £3 entry, each player receives 1 booster on entry 

Standard - £5 entry, each player adds 400 JustPlay Points to the prize pool

If this seems in any way confusing, we're making it very easy to see what your options are week to week; our events calendar is always up to date week to week as is Russell's local event round-up in the Magic the Gathering: Liverpool Central Facebook group.

Coming up for the next two weeks (21/10 and 28/10) we'll still be running

Draft (£14pp)
New Player Standard (£3, booster on entry)
Standard (£5, 400 JPP per entrant)

And then switching to the new format cycle at the start of November. All of this is in the calendar.

We look forward to seeing you at FNM - no matter your level of magic experience or the format that you enjoy we have something for you at JustPlay's FNM!