Event Review- Paul's Carnival of Chaos

This is the first year of this event in New Orleans at the Airport Hilton.  It began as a one day event making fun of noted introvert and terrible Warhammer player Paul, but has now become a major GT in its own right.

The Basics-
Years Active: 1 (I have attended one year)
Format:  5 games, 2500 points, Limited End Times Rules
Comp System:  None, but bad game votes can be given for abusive comp
Sports System:  Best Game Vote and Bad Game Vote options
Painting System:  Checklist system, some oddities
Battle System:  20-nil

Venue-
The New Orleans Airport Hilton is a pretty solid hotel and the room is located in the central hall.  There is ample space and the room itself is locked over night, letting you leave your army there.  New Orleans itself is interesting to see, but its a matter of personal preference on whether or not you will enjoy sight seeing there.  Its kind of dirty and smelly, but the seafood is excellent and there are a number of historic places to check out.

Tables-
Pretty much your typical GT standard terrain, though LOS pieces were a bit lacking.  The influence of the Masters can be seen here with the preset charts for placing terrain on the tables.

Swag-
None.  Awards were these awesome rooster trophies with random GW product tossed in.

Scenarios-
Some good ideas here with 800 bonus points tied into using banner bearing core units.  Where it fell apart was in allowing dwarf armies to use copters, scouts, and ambushers to score with.  Combined with the sparse LOS blocking terrain, this event was a dwarf players dream in many ways.  Basically, a dwarf player could run their gunline army to castle in a corner and then use their copters to poach objectives at the end.  The Scenarios conceptually were a great idea to keep end times stuff in check, but the execution basically put Dwarves in the driver seat this entire tournament.

Crowd-
Some serious reservations here.  Paul was hilarious and awesome to hang out with.  The Texans were top notch guys to play and party with.  The Bijou Rats were great people.  But, there were some seriously bad sports and known cheaters in the room that soured the event in a lot of ways.  The lack of comp of any kind combined with the scenario design led to some very ugly lists and playstyles being used, particularly with Dwarves.  There was also some serious issues with one guy the organizers knew was going to be a problem ahead of time, but did not pre-emptively address.  Those sorts of things keep guys who fly from returning.

Boozing-
The hotel bar was within walking distance of the event room, but aside from that it was BYOB.  New Orleans itself had many places to check out for booze, including breweries and the like.

Competition-
The Texans are all amazing players and aside from a newer guy in round one, all my games were against solid competition.  The lack of comp makes he room even tougher and the South Region does love them some gunline, so if you want a tough game you came to the right place.
Judging-
I normally don't discuss this because it generally is always done very well at these events, leaving only minor things that can sound like sour grapes when you bring them up.  But.... this event had some problems in a couple areas.  First, if you have read my GT recap, you will know that there was a known cheater who falsified his army.  The issue here is the TOs knew this guy had done this (and other things) in the past and often, but made little to no effort to monitor his behavior.  Second, pairings were very strange.  Twice I played people who were no where near me in Battle and this did not occur in the first two rounds.  There were a lot of people who were experiencing the same thing with no real explanation of why.  Third, the paint judging was very hit and miss.  I made a point of inspecting the other Wood Elf armies out there.  As can be seen here, my army is pretty solidly painted and has numerous conversions, yet another wood elf army that had simple three color base coating and incomplete basing scored higher than mine did, while another virtually identical looking army scored significantly lower than mine.  Last, and most serious in my mind, Bad Game votes were overturned by the organizers with no discussion with the voting parties.  In my case, I bad game voted a dwarf player based on the comp criteria in the packet (nice guy, asshole army list) and it was overturned without any discussion with me about it.  He gave me a bad game vote (not sure why, my first ever that I can recall in five years) and it stood.  All that put together left a really negative taste in my mouth and I was not alone in my experiences.  The fact that no one was allowed to see a score sheet or painting score sheet at the end of the event was a pretty big red flag for me.  Its a shame, because this event has potential, but the desire to make this kind of a trip just gets squashed when things like this happen.

Overall-
The games were mostly fun and hanging with the Texans is always a treat, but the inconsistent pairings and judging pretty much sunk this one for me.  If you want to see New Orleans and see the mythical legend that is Paul, it is worth a look and the wife and I do not regret going on that basis.  But we will not be returning to this event.  I knew being a TO is tough from personal experience and the crew running this one are good guys, but nothing kills an event faster than scoring issues.  Its the one thing that you have to be transparent and accurate with at all times.  Every other problem is forgivable and correctable, but when scoring and pairing seem fishy (even if they are not) it can kill an event outright.