Hi, I didn't attend this event due to logistics but having played at and watched the recorded stream from Warlords a couple of weeks earlier I was eager to see what it would be like to watch an AOS stream live over this weekend. I don't think enough has been said about the stream at Facehammer on Twitter or here yet due to the unfortunate loss (as I understand it) of game recordings. in comparison to the 700+ who watched the Warlords stream the steady 30-40 viewers of Facehammer table 1 was obviously less well seen but this in no way was as a result of it being any less interesting.
I was lucky enough to see 4 out of the 5 games and being able to hear the players while they played made watching the games much easier to follow. The first game between Chris and Pano was a great opener with both indulging in early morning drinking whilst swearing like dockers. Their game was much less serious than all the others with some great moments like Megaboss Krunk taking down Khul and Chris grunting like a pig when doing anything with the Gore Gruntas. It was also great to hear cheering, clapping and shouts of 'legend' from all the other other competitors when Chris bellowed 'witness me' at the top of his lungs. It really set the scene and conveyed a geat atmosphere evident.
Games 2 and 3 were understandably less raucous affairs but much better to watch than the Warlord games. Don't get me wrong, I thought the Warlords coverage was amazing but their commentators are going to need to be able to hear what the players are saying if they hope to compete with the independent scene coverage in future. One interesting side note of having mics on table 1 was that you could also hear nearby conversations off camera especially during the breaks between games - some people may not want to stand quite so near table 1 when discussing their previous opponents The addition of dice to show what turn the players were on and who had priority was very useful. Rolling dice in a separate box with a camera is probably not needed as you could work out what had been rolled by listening to the players and the games speeded up when the players stopped using the box. The on screen scores, player names, factions, round timings and scenarios were really useful but in future it would be much better to have the on screen scores updated in real time as it sometimes caused a bit of confusion following the games.
Unfortunately I missed game 4 but game 5 was excellent to see. I was trying to do other things at the same time as watching but ended up giving up on those and focusing on what was happening as it was a really tight game played by two top players with very strong lists. The slight controversy at the end over the playing of turn 5 was great drama and is the sort of thing that good post-coverage discussion could hinge on. Overall I thought that the streaming was top notch and another step forward in progressing the competitive play of miniature gaming forward. In my opinion it's important that this new development is not glossed over and continues as well as it has started. All future 2 day tournaments if possible really need to be streaming table 1 from now on to the standard that Facehammer have set.
