Thoughts on Warhammer TV's Blood and Glory coverage

[Azure Guardian]

Hello Grand Alliance this is my first post here. I am very new to the hobby as I only I started recently after coming home from university and finding I needed something new to occupy my time. So I started a Stormcast army in August with the start collecting box and my collection has been steadily growing since. I have only played a few matched games but I am eager to play more as I learn what each model and unit is capable of doing. With that in mind I thought I'd check out GW's coverage of the "Blood & Glory" event. I was hoping I would be able to see some armies I had yet to encounter and see how some veterans of the scene conduct their matches. When I got into online gaming I would watch pro tournaments to get an understand of how to play the game and thought I would see if that approach could also translate to Warhammer. Overall I have been enjoying the event and the crew has been doing a fantastic job. However I feel there are a lot of improvements that could be made to the format so I just wanted to go over some thoughts I had on the experience. I am sure most of these ideas are already being discussed and implemented by the team at WHTV but in case they are not I wanted to mention some here.

So just to get it out of the way I am going to talk about the audio quality. I am not going to harp on this because I think everyone is well aware that it was not great by any stretch of the word. I don't know if there was problems with the headset or the equipment or the venue, but whatever the problem was I hope they look into it for their next event. It wasn't a deal breaker by any means but it is hard to recommend the stream to people when the audio is a bit lacking. 

That aside the biggest problem I found with the event was the angle of the camera. I can see the thinking behind having a birds eye view as the main angle as it gives a full view of the battlefield, with spaces, terrain and models all being accounted for. However the problem with this view is that it is not very dynamic. Citadel miniatures are fantastic, but do not lend a very strong profile from a directly above angle. I know I am new so maybe others did not have this problem but I found it hard to differentiate between the armies and the units with the camera being that zoomed out. If you watch any battle reports from other independent players or companies like Mini-Wargaming on Youtube they rarely use this angle because it does little to show off the models or the game. The games themselves were much more palatable when they switched the cameras to show a view from the side of the table since it was possible to see which model was which and get invested in what was going on. The birds eye view defiantly has a place in watching Warhammer, just not as the main angle for 90% of the game. It would be much better to switch to it at the end of a turn to show how the battle has changed the landscape. It would give that angle much more weight as we could see how the game is progressing since the last time we saw it from that angle. This is all my own opinion but going forward I would hope that GW would consider using a Tele like angle of the board as if we watching a sports match like football, instead of seeing it from the top like a chess game (despite the obvious parallels).  

Now I am fairly sure what I am going to suggest next has already been mentioned on the stream as something they are looking to implement, but I wanted to mention it all the same. So I would love to see some overlays to let the viewers know in greater detail what is happening on the table. The obvious one is match points gained next to the names of the players like a football score. However there are many more I would like so see so here are a few examples.
Points Remaining: This is a number that would represent each player's army. Each unit in an army has a points cost so when a unit is wiped out or a hero dies remove the points they are worth from their total points remaining. So if a 2000 points game has a Stormcast player and at the start of the game he has a unit of Liberators wiped out, his score would go down to 1900. This would be great for new players who are not sure what is going on and why the commentators are getting more interested in the death of one guy on a dragon compared to the death of say 20 zombies. This would also allow views just tuning in (can you use that phrase in regards to web stream?) to quickly see the state of each army.
Unit Overlays: When two units are in combat with each other I would like to see an overlay which had the unit's name, wounds, bravery, move and their weapon's to hit/wound values. This would probably be the hardest to implement but would be amazing for clarity all the same.
End of turn overlay: At the end of each turn have an overlay detail what happened in that turn. Include for each player; units lost, match points gained, wounds taken, turns remaining, whether their general is still alive or not and what battalions (if any) they still have in play.  

The commentators have been doing a great job of explaining what each unit can do and how it will effect the game but having some visual overlays would work wonders for giving new players a greater clarity of the events taking place on the table. 

Next I wanted to talk more about introducing players and their armies. Despite their vastly different styles the most common comparison I can make to watching Warhammer game, is not traditional a sports or chess match, but an Esport game. Watching a game of Warhammer seems to remind me much more of a watching a game of Starcraft 2 or League of Legends. So I think GW should implement the same thing those companies do with regards to their players. Below is an graphic for a Pro LoL player after winning the MVP vote after a match. 

Before a game I would love to see something similar. Have the players name, tournament history (if there is any, if there isn't then that already just adds to the match's narrative, like a veteran vs a newbie etc), what Grand Alliance their army belongs to, what allegiance within that alliance the majority of their models's points cost belong to or what allegiance their general belongs to and what allegiance abilities they are running. That was a mouthful so let me give some examples: [Grand Alliance Order: Sylvaneth, Sylvaneth Allegiance] for a pure Sylvaneth army and [Grand Alliance Death: Deathlords, Death Allegiance] for someone running a Nagash list with skeletons or zombies for battle-line and for a mixed Chaos army have something like [Grand Alliance Chaos: Mixed Allegiance, Chaos Allegiance]. Also include who that army's general is and their armies name if they have one: In Esports players use a made up in game name for their professional persona (in the image above you can see below the player's picture is the team he plays for (CJ Blaze) and his real name (Lee Ho Jong), but within the scene he is know by his player name (Flame) rather then his real name). I don't think translates as well to Warhammer as tournament players don't appear to have the same cult of personality that esports players obtain. On the other hand, that does not mean that people should not extend the same practice to their armies. It would have to be a conscious decision that the players would have to agree on but I think it could add a new dynamic to the viewing experience as people would have a name to root for like a sports team. I mean GW already does this. In BloodBowl there are team names and in the fluff there are different names for armies within factions like the Stormcast Eternal's stormhosts, so I don't think it would be too much of a stretch.    

This is turning into something of an essay so I will ask for one final thing. This will idea probably be better served in the Narrative Play games WHTV have said they are producing for the weakly show rather then matched tournament play. When a player(s) have to roll a dice and the out come will have a major effect on the game (like turn order, a roll that could kill a hero/general/behemoth, a roll to continue the game etc), have those rolls made on a separate board with a dedicated camera. The drama and suspense that comes from watching a game of Warhammer mostly contained in the dice rolls, so they should be highlighted as much as possible. A roll that would have a significant outcome of the game should get a lot of attention in the same way goals are highlighted in a football game. To GW's credit they did have replays present in this event, I would just like to see more of a fanfare made about it. 

Other then that I have liked what GW has been doing so far. The commentary was very well done by team there, Duncan showing up is always a treat, and the commitment to community engagement should not be understated. The reason I got into this hobby in the first place is because of how much more accessible GW has been making this hobby lately. I hope GW keeps producing content like this as it can be very helpful in getting newbies like me into rolling dice at a much quicker rate with a greater understand of the games mechanics and nuances. However I believe there is much that could be done to improve the entertainment value of the experience which I hope GW will expand on going forwards. In this event you could see slight mistakes here and there which I can attribute to the team at GW being new at this type of video production. All the same I think these are more growing pains than anything else and I have full confidence in WHTV going forward and I look forward to WH Live.     

Thanks for reading

 

[Tiger]

Well said.

[TerrorPenguin]

Agree with pretty much all of that. I don't think I'd like to see it go 'full esports' (I.e we can stop at the point they have players doing a little walk up to the camera and looking nonchalant a la match of the day) but I agree that they need more investment in their video production. I think they do need to make a decision if they want to do this well and if so spend a bit of money on it.

In fairness they did have more table angle shots and it has definitely improved since warlords so hopefully it will carry on this trajectory.

Another thing is I think this is all more easily done when they control the venue (I.e at Warhammer World) when covering independent events you are at the vagaries of the venue including their internet speed and I wonder whether players would be prepared to pay more for better venues just to have better coverage on twitch?

[Mohojoe]

I think they did really well. I thoroughly enjoyed the stream. My main points would be:

 

• Requires a bit more pre-planning schedule wise. (I.e. the first thing I wanted to see day 1 was the venue, just because they have a static cam now I don't want to be watching 9 hours of them two and a topdown board) The shcedule should include more than just 3 games.
• Take a hint from the youtubers that do battle reps and show us the armies beforehand, up close and personal, have the players potentially explain what they have. 
• Interact more with the tournament as opposed to just sitting at a podium, it felt very detached from what was happening.
• Use prerecorded interviews or segments to fill the gaps between games rather than going on and off air. 
• The topdown view is great but should not be the default view of the board. It should be used to highlight positioning, show deployment or talk theoretical moves. 
• In the same vein as above^ use more interaction with people playing the game rather than chinese whispers from someone watching. I want to see people deciding to charge their remaining forces at an objective holding behemoth and physically see them making the roll for it and their resulting emotion. Thats the exciting fun bit, not someone describing it.

I realise some of this can maybe sound negative BUT I really did enjoy the coverage. The guys did great and plenty of laughs were had by all. 

[Darth Alec]

There's some great feedback here. But I'm just going to inject an important point; this was an off-venue event for the Warhammer TV team. Unlike a WHW event, they couldn't set up and test in the days before, would run into all sorts of local issues (lighting, bandwidth, noise etc) and have to deal with the schedule of the event organizer. Unlike batreps, you can't really stop everything up to get some nice camera angles either, since you're running on a fairly tight clock.

 

The Warhammer TV team has a lot to learn, but we shouldn't forget that this is literally the second live stream gaming event. I expect their coverage to just get better and better.

[Azure Guardian]

Man I really missed a few words out in that, don't drink and post kids. The thing I don't want anyone to take away from this is that I think that GW did a bad job here. It was their first time doing this at an outside venue and again they did have time concerns. Even with all that they presented a good viewing experience. I just wanted to highlight what I personally would like to see from GW going forward. They thankfully seem committed to continuing to create video content and I just want that content to be as good as it can be. Warhammer is fun to play but it's hard to translate that in a video format. Even bat reps can come a cropper due to games going so long and new players such as myself can get lost without knowing who is winning or why they are. I am sure that GW is working on getting more out of their video content I just wanted to suggest things that I personally would like to see as someone who is new to the hobby, but wants to enjoy their video content without needing to be alert to every part of the game.  

 

 

 

[MrCharisma]

Overall I thought the event was fantastic. As somebody who's based in Australia and is highly unlikely to be able to join an event like this, I was thrilled to passively participate.

Could it be improved? Absolutely.

Have they improved from The Warlords tournament? Absolutely.

My biggest piece of feedback (which I've left on the Warhammer TV FB page) was that it was difficult to plan around this event without timezones before or throughout the event. The recording has definitely made my life easier to catch up.

I don't want it to move towards an e-sport feel, however; I would like to know more about the competitors. I'd also like a roving cam of the painting competition.

[polarbear]

I loved tuning in, am very glad GW is doing it, will be watching as much as possible in the future and totally support it even just at the level it's at now.

The only negative thing I want to note is I was a little put off by Rob making a comment during one game that he would basically play it better than the player would. Eddie asked him what he would do in that situation, and Rob responded that he wouldn't get into that situation. I think it came off a little bit cocky and I don't think it reflected well on GW to have that kind of attitude and be criticizing the players during the game. I don't know if I interpreted it wrong or heard it wrong but it stood out to me when I tuned in on Saturday.

But I repeat, I love Rob on camera and on microphone, want him to keep doing these events, just think an "only good things to say" policy is appropriate.

[MidasKiss]

11 minutes ago, polarbear said:

I loved tuning in, am very glad GW is doing it, will be watching as much as possible in the future and totally support it even just at the level it's at now.

The only negative thing I want to note is I was a little put off by Rob making a comment during one game that he would basically play it better than the player would. Eddie asked him what he would do in that situation, and Rob responded that he wouldn't get into that situation. I think it came off a little bit cocky and I don't think it reflected well on GW to have that kind of attitude and be criticizing the players during the game. I don't know if I interpreted it wrong or heard it wrong but it stood out to me when I tuned in on Saturday.

But I repeat, I love Rob on camera and on microphone, want him to keep doing these events, just think an "only good things to say" policy is appropriate.

It did come off a little bit like that, though Rob seems like a stand up guy so I bet he didn't mean it to.  They have been commenting on top games so far so it might have been a little bit new for them to be commenting on play that could have been better all around. Given the amount of talking they do all day when they cover these things it must be hard to keep that filter on the whole time as well.

It's going to be tricky because although these are commentaries on tournaments quite reminiscent of those in eSports, unlike in eSports these players are not some team with management and coaches and etc that are in it for years so criticisms need to be placed a little differently. As an audience, the AoS fan base is maturing in this sense too. People have been able to treat GW as this ****** of a company for so long, now there are very public figures at the centre of these criticisms. Everyone agrees that the rate of improvement seems awesome so far.

I hope if the guys read these threads they don't feel bad about things, the work they (you) are doing is awesome.

[polarbear]

1 minute ago, MidasKiss said:

It did come off a little bit like that, though Rob seems like a stand up guy so I bet he didn't mean it to.  They have been commenting on top games so far so it might have been a little bit new for them to be commenting on play that could have been better all around. Given the amount of talking they do all day when they cover these things it must be hard to keep that filter on the whole time as well.

It's going to be tricky because although these are commentaries on tournaments quite reminiscent of those in eSports, unlike in eSports these players are not some team with management and coaches and etc that are in it for years so criticisms need to be placed a little differently. As an audience, the AoS fan base is maturing in this sense too. People have been able to treat GW as this ****** of a company for so long, now there are very public figures at the centre of these criticisms. Everyone agrees that the rate of improvement seems awesome so far.

I hope if the guys read these threads they don't feel bad about things, the work they (you) are doing is awesome.

I agree completely. Rob does a fantastic job, and I doubt he meant to come off badly. I know I make comments I don't like in retrospect during just a 10-minute chat, so no doubt things slip out in these long livestreams. 

[MidasKiss]

Just now, polarbear said:

I agree completely. Rob does a fantastic job, and I doubt he meant to come off badly. I know I make comments I don't like in retrospect during just a 10-minute chat, so no doubt things slip out in these long livestreams. 

It's exciting to see so much progress, I've come back into the hobby (though I was never far into it) on the Sylvaneth release and what a time to be in the hobby!

[AAL]

Part of what seems to be hard streaming this is the potential length in some games. It seems so easy to set up a camera and let it run but I think that that's when the interest could start to slip for viewers.

 

One interesting thought I had was on who should do game narration. Should it be left up to the players to dictate whats going on or should their be a third party "casting" or narrating the game as it develops? 

[James McPherson]

@Azure Guardian

The sound was broken because their main mics failed on the first day (Friday) so by the Saturday they were on backup mics/headsets which weren't meant for broadcast.. They also meant to wire up the table with LAVS but that failed as well for some reason.

In terms of your comments about MWG, thats a totally different thing, as one of the players playing usually holds the camera and its all post edited  (Or they have a dedicated cameraman)  but its in a small room, with nobody else walking around so no fear of bumping into people or tripping over cables etc.

If you've ever been on a movie set you will know how difficult a job it is to set up a scene with cables everywhere and equipment and people walking around everywhere and trying to control things like light, noise levels etc. At Warlords they had a 20 foot jib and a dedicated stage with table one on it, this even was just in some old banquet hall and was probably pretty crowded. What you are saying about camera angles etc just isn't realistic unfortunately. Not in an event setting like that. Maybe in a large studio space yes.

What could have worked better is if the stream was in 4k/2k or even HD and then they could have cropped into sections of the battlefield at hi resolution , maybe with a cheap crappy mountable 4k go pro it should have been possible to retain quite a bit of decent clarity and sharpness and crop in but on that sketchy twitch feed all I could see to be honest was bad low res noisey images, not sure why. Sadly the ability to stream HD depends more on your connection at home and whether or not you have bandwidth and also depends on the host content provider ie Twitch to offer those resources in the first place (not sure if it does or not?) and is all kinda out of GW's hands and one for future development.  

As far as onscreen graphics and overlays and gamers cards etc, all that would take a dedicated graphic designer many hours to create and then a lot of extra work implementing it all live including a dedicated department or artist which just isn't realistic for the size of their crew and resources at the moment. Sure they have them at GW but they are probably busy making box art and White Dwarf content and website content etc. You forget WHTV are churning out content during the week too with painting vids/ Duncan / and teasers etc, it's all the same few people doing it all so they are probably massively oversubscribed as it is at the moment.

You also probably don't realise these guys are (I expect) payed a fixed yearly salary as GW staff based off a 40 hr week , so I imagine they aren't on hourly pay, or get overtime, so I expect they were probably working unpaid all weekend, and if they were on hourly pay and overtime then it would cost a LOT of money to pay for 4 staff for the whole weekend and put them up in a hotel and feed them etc. I may be wrong but it's is often the way in the film/tv industry which I have experienced a lot.

There's a lot of room for all kinds of cool stuff going on and the sky is the limit for the future, drones hovering above tables doing slow mo fly overs, 360" cams set up for VR with user interactive panning/controls, live motion tracking overlays and graphics onto units and movement recognition (ie dice rolling) with the Microsoft Kinect and obviously things like blue screen keying different realms into the background or live graphics, all of it is just wild dreams man!

This is GW's first foray into all this, don't forget it's the first ever independent tournament covered live on TV, that is wildy outside most peoples expectations as it is, I for one am pretty happy to just watch the slow grow/see it improve over time.

Maybe in 20 years time it will be as streamlined as you hope for!

 

@Polarbear

Rob knows what he's talking about and I think it's better for those learning the game when he points out errors and gives an honest opinion. The Bloodbowl guys were doing the same at the Full Beard Cup.

[Bjarni St.]

Definitely noticed improvements from WL, the camera angles were a pretty good experiment even though it's not perfect yet. I don't think they can make it good without a cameraman though. In top-down view is almost impossible to see what's going on as the model silhouettes and basing schemes are rarely helpful.

Video overlay with names, armies, scenario and scores would definitely help things, as would things like putting army lists up on screen.

I liked that they were using a table scout to have some idea about what was going on (as opposed to WL where they didn't know anything most of the time :)). But to actually do a good job of it I think they have to be tableside or get more integrated somehow. I really do think one guy with a camera and mic, able to hear the players (and talk to if need be) would do a much better job than a standard 2-man booth away from the action can. I think we can be reasonably certain MtG coverage inspired the AoS coverage to a large extent and the problem is that you just can't read the game state and the flow of the game from the top down camera like you can in Magic (although they also use table spotters in magic).

The game on camera also doesn't have to be "Table 1". They don't do table 1 in Magic, but hand pick the "feature matches" based on what's going to be interesting. It'll always be "top tables" but there's no reason to hogtie it to Swiss draw table 1. That way you're able to get the players who feel comfortable up there and get the ability to highlight e.g. cool armies (list or painting), matchups or what-have-you.

Finally, and I expect this is the unpopular opinion, I couldn't stand Rob's commentary and I ended up tuning out after two or three games. He was a little disrespectful in a couple of places maybe (Ben Johnson isn't so much better at WH than paintedbyG that he can magically force out a scenario win if he just decides to play hard) but that wasn't what got me. It was the nonstop prattling on and laughing about some childish bullshit. His poor co-commentator was constantly reining him in as well. It was the same at Warlords and it turned me off that as well. To some degree I can forgive it as air-filler or nerves (I'm aware commentary is hard) but it was too pervasive and got in the way of actual commentary.

[James McPherson]

It didn't bother me so much, but I think listening to anyone talk for 9 hours is going to get a bit much at times, had that problem with my ex wife

 

[Chikout]

It was Rufio's enthusiastic and lightheated approach that kept me watching. I can understand though, why that might not be everyone's cup of tea. If this is a success, hopefully they will employ more commentators. 

What is very apparent, is that the commentators really know their stuff. As for the superior attitude, I guess no-one listens to British sports commentary. It is nothing but that, cricket's Geoffrey Boycott being a prime example.

The broadcast overall was a big improvement over the last one. If they can keep improving at this rate, we could end up with something really special.

[Andreas]

Well Rufio was the winner of the biggest AOS tournament to date and if you look up his different lists they are very tricked out or should I say WAAC. ? So I find it funny that for me it feals more like he wants to convey a play what you want / everything is a fiftyfifty approach to the game and not a I know better / WAAC attityd. 

I think he is the highlight of the broadcast, without him it could easily be painfully slow to watch.

[Josh Meads]

Really contradicting thought processes on this for me.

Found a lot of the games I played at the weekend at B&G were a lot drier than any other tournament. The atmosphere just seemed really......clinical and off. Can't really vocalise it any other way. Like everything was a background for the top 10 players battling for the top table. I've never been near a top table and never cared (top tables always get more attention, and it shouldn't be any other way), but I felt like a burden at the weekend.

Saying that, I like the guys who are involved putting it on (great bunch o' lads) and think its pitched really nicely as the e-sports I've seen are hilariously self important and cheesy. Also, there's a lot of new blood in the scene so maybe this is just the way its going? If AoS needs this to thrive, absolutely zero issue with it but really don't think I'll bother going to a streamed event again. Its like when rankings became a thing and everyone was just interested in kicking your face in, by whatever methods you let them get away with.

Hope this doesn't come across as too negative, especially to Bad Dice peeps as I think this is a very personal thought on the whole thing and the organisation and everything was great as always.

[gnaleinad]

I think it is a fantastic and awesome job well done! Great work and super coverage. GW getting involve is like the most awesome thingy for 2016.
2015 was a great year, 2016 was even more awesome.

And during that broadcast the official representatives of Warhammer TV dropped a giant hint at new army next year!!

Aelves of light and shadow, Duardin and their Metal Wonder, Tzeentch and.. Change..

[Chikout]

32 minutes ago, gnaleinad said:

I think it is a fantastic and awesome job well done! Great work and super coverage. GW getting involve is like the most awesome thingy for 2016.
2015 was a great year, 2016 was even more awesome.

And during that broadcast the official representatives of Warhammer TV dropped a giant hint at new army next year!!

Aelves of light and shadow, Duardin and their Metal Wonder, Tzeentch and.. Change..

Really? when was that?

[Azure Guardian]

I do understand they had a lot of issuing putting this on and I felt they did a good job all things considered. I just wanted to express what I would ideally like to see from GW's productions going forwards. I get that a lot of what I would like to see is probably too expensive or time consuming for the team there to implement, but this post was never intended to be read as demands but as just ways off the top of my head I think it could have been improved. I did mention that the video team probably had considered a lot of the same ideas I suggested. So think of this as more of a wishlist then anything else. To that end is there anything anyone else can think of that could have been done on the cheep to make it more enjoyable?  

[hobgoblinclub]

6 hours ago, Josh Meads said:

Found a lot of the games I played at the weekend at B&G were a lot drier than any other tournament. The atmosphere just seemed really......clinical and off. Can't really vocalise it any other way. Like everything was a background for the top 10 players battling for the top table. I've never been near a top table and never cared (top tables always get more attention, and it shouldn't be any other way), but I felt like a burden at the weekend. 

I have to say I completely disagree with you on this one.

I thought the atmosphere was fantastic all weekend. The bottom room in particular was really friendly and every game I had was a hoot. It'd have been nice to play some more top room games but I seemed to find my place in pecking order fairly early!

In terms of the Warhammer TV coverage, it all seemed pretty slick in the venue. There was quite a bit of trouble with the internet connection (they to keep asking us to make sure our phones weren't connected to the WiFi) but the set up looked ace. 

I'm just sad that the issues have meant game one featuring my mate playing and his interview has been lost. I was also hoping to watch the awards ceremony but that seems to have disappeared too. Apparently it was briefly on Twitch but the sound was horrible. 

While I'm sad about these issues, it's totally understandable considering this is all new. The team are great, and super friendly. Give it a few months and it'll be a slick production, I'm sure.

Rob was saying they're going to cover at least one AoS tournament every month so they should get lots of practice. Can't wait! 

[gnaleinad]

8 hours ago, Chikout said:

Really? when was that?

Nothing was said about which army. Just a tease.
Here =>

[khsofsso]

I attended the tournament on the Sunday as a glorified cheerleader. 

I managed to chat with a lot of the events team running Blood & Glory and the GW staff covering it. 

 

They all did a fantastic job. 

 

As OP says yes there's a lot more that can be done with technology these days but to stream a LIVE event like this in unknown surroundings they did brilliantly. 

Most added graphics would have to be done in post production. Got to remember the guys playing were there for the tournament not for the watchers entertainment. Their having to play the game under time restraints, remembering what their army does and what the opponents does, as well as pressure of cameras, people standing around them and background noise. 

Age of Sigmar and 40K are big games that have a lot going on in them compared to MTG and X-Wing. Covering a 6ft board with detail on a static camera is almost impossible without really slowing the play down. 

Indeed some of the commentary could have been better but again they didn't have the pressure that's on the players so can easily fall into the trap of making out of mouth comments. 

Overall it was fantastic that GW is taking notice of the community. Long overdue. 

Well done to Ben Johnson wining it. 

Massive Thanks to Ben Curry and the rest of his little helpers for running it. 

The Barber 

[James McPherson]

You can overlay all the graphics live it would just take a small team of people to create and then implement, certainly at least a producer and an editorial guy which is a waste of time and money just for that. The most cost effective way to do it would be to train Rob and Eddie to do it while they are commentating but that would be pretty distracting for them.

If you wrote a software patch using the microsoft kinnect camera you could easily track live graphics onto the screen that would follow the motion of something, so for instance at the start of the game you would type in 'Orc Warriors' as a unit label and then allocate it to something and then that graphic would follow the unit of orc warriors around for the entire game around on the table like a floating label. Or you could patch the kinnect to recognise a dice roll hand movement so each time that happens it blows up the screen around that area / does a zoom in. There's a lot of cool stuff you can do hacking the Kinnect that has potential to fit into a live wargames scenario format and the boundaries are there to be pushed. You could really get all minority report and have the players display their own army list overlayed on screen by making a certain pre-scripted hand movement to the camera at the start of the game (ie waving in a circle or spreading your hands apart like a concertina)

An permanent inlay for the dice rolling would be easy to set up which is a pretty good call, they have that in poker games etc.

A cheaper/better way to do a graphical representation is using in-camera/practical FX solutions, make a large physical turn counter clockface on the table off to the side and one which says which phase it is, and each time the player finishes his movement turn he can move the indicator to shooting phase or whatever. That's the cheapest easiest way to do it.

And to show the army list they could just give out a hyperlink in the comments , or set up a rostrum camera and put a piece of paper underneath it with the army list on.

They managed to get some instant replays going which was pretty cool to see, kudos to the improvements from Warlords. Dice rolls could do with being slow motion, would be awesome.

I hope to start my own pre-recorded bat rep channel up one day when I have a permanent home (at the moment I'm a digital nomad) so video production really interests me. I currently work as a digital compositor at Weta so things like working with models/miniatures and effects and stuff really interest me, but I also have an FdA in Interactive Media and have been into VJ'ing and other stuff in the past. The possibilities are endless and the boundaries are really there to be pushed and pioneered it's a pretty exciting area that combines my love of WH and my love of technology/ media and I hope to get a chance to really explore it one day and maybe start up my own small scale business.