Today we take a look at one of the unsung heroes of the Victorian Miniature Gaming community, a Tournament Organiser (TO). They put in long hours to put together events for you and usually without enough thanx for their work. Jarrod Brehaut is fairly new to the TO game, making his debut in 2016 Co-TO'ing the Hunt, a narrative event at the House of War in Ringwood. Jarrod has stepped up as lead TO for 2017's iteration of the narrative event, rebranded it into a series labelled the Black Crusade - A Narrative Tournament Series, with the Assault on the Black Library the next in the series.
So Jarrod, tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been in the hobby?
It would have been 2001. I was at Chadstone Shopping Centre with some mates on school holidays, and we wandered into the Games Workshop store. The red shirt, as they were known at the time, grabbed us, put some dice in our hands, and walked us through a demo Warhammer 40,000 game. Orks vs Crimson Fists, from memory. I thought the little miniatures were so cool.
I had a bunch of birthday/Christmas money I’d received as gifts, and walked out of the store that day with some Plague Marines and a Chaos Space Marine codex.
At that point I was mostly interested in the painting and modelling aspect, more so than playing. I really enjoyed building and painting models.
As most people do, at some point I took a pretty lengthy hiatus from everything Games Workshop related, until about 2011, when suddenly I felt a panging to sit down and paint some models. I only ever intended to come back as an artistic hobby, and paint models that interested me. I never intended to collect an army. A mate of mine was hugely into the hobby however he had no regular opponents, so he had huge armies sitting on a shelf collecting dust. I originally started playing a few games using his armies, and while reading The First Heretic, suddenly decided I wanted to collect a Word Bearers army. From that point on, I’ve been pretty avid about all aspects, gaming as well as hobbying.
These days I do a lot of work with Menza Gaming in terms of helping to produce content to delivery to a wider audience, from volunteering to demo games at PAX, running the Menza Facebook page, and soon will be getting my hands dirty in producing some battle reports and hopefully painting tutorials.
What do you enjoy about going to events?
Initially it was a way to play against new people, but also a great way to see people’s awesomely painted and converted armies. Voting for Player’s Choice was my favourite part. I still love seeing great armies, and seeing other players ideas come to life, but I’m a lot more rounded as a Warhammer 40k player nowdays. I’m still pretty rubbish about the game, but I’m beginning to switch to a more competitive mindset.
And of course, sinking some beers and having a laugh. I’m a big fan of ‘beerhammer’.
What do you enjoy about running events?
I’m still quite new to being a TO, however for me I think the great thing is being able to run the kind of event you’d love to attend. If you can do that, and people enjoy what you do, it means other events may start to emerge that I can then attend.
Attending events, you see lots of guys putting in a lot of time and hard work in running their own events, so I also dig the idea of taking the reins so they can get back to the tables themselves.
What is your event about, and how is it different from others?
The Assault is all about being a narrative-style event. At the moment we have events that are really competitive, with big battle scores, and potentially no-comp. We have big hobby events that reward painting and modelling, and reward taking softer lists. But the one slice of the hobby pie we don’t have any events centred around, is the narrative and background.
It’s a huge part of the hobby, we play this game that has a rich immersive plot around it, and people really enjoy it. The popularity of the Horus Heresy novels is a testament to that. Yet we rarely, if ever, see this element creep into our tournament scene.
The concept for a narrative-style actually came about primarily for this year’s event The Hunt.
I’ve always loved Cypher. His little snippets of background in White Dwarf, and throughout various Chaos codexes (codices?) I’ve always found to be completely badass. He is an enigma, and I love all the theories surrounding his motives.
At some point, Matt Antonello put up a post on Facebook asking for people on information about Cypher. I PM’ed him to start unloading all the stuff I thought was awesome. He told me he was considering running an event with a ‘Cypher theme’. I at the time had been considering attempting to run an event of my own, so it seemed to be fate. We decided we could co-TO the event.
The feedback I got from that event was astounding, people really loved the opportunity to get stuck into an event with themed missions, structured around an evolving narrative. Matt Antonello has stepped down from being a TO, so I decided to step up and tackle it myself.
And here we are.
This year’s event is centred around the story-line of Ahriman attempting to bust into the Black Library, and the Eldar’s attempts to stop him, but it’s open to anybody playing any army, and even bonus points given for writing a ‘fluff piece’ as to why their army is fighting in this campaign.
Where can we find out more information about the Assault?
If you’re interested, please like the Facebook Page “Black Crusade - A Narrative Tournament Series” I plan on making this an annual event, so if you’re keen this year, or just to follow along, give it a like. The dates for “The Assault” are 20-21 May 2017 and it is being held at the House of War in Ringwood
Also make sure to check out the Menza Gaming facebook page, and check us out at menzagaming.net
We are committed to bringing loads and loads of content in the new year, and I’m personally really excited about a lot of the stuff we have coming.
