ETC is the biggest wargaming event out there and is the world championship for a number of games. Every year it takes place in a different country and this year the destination was Spain, Salamanca. Usually it gathers close to 1000 people from all over the world competing in game systems like Warhammer 40k, Fantasy, X wings, Flames of War and more. 

  

Table top games are something you wouldn't imagine a grown up playing but this event gathers aroung a thousand nerds of an average age of about 28 every year and it is simply amazing. If you have followed me until now, you know that I used to be a miniature commission painter and have painted over 2.500 models but I do enjoy playing some of the games too. I go to this event every year and it is a pretty good experience seeing friends that I only see here. I went to Prague and Athenes the previous two years and signed in rather late this year. Wasn't prepared at all but still had some fun and we even got a good score, finishing 12th out of the 36 teams playing the 9th age (warhammer fantasy) which is the best score that team Bulgaria has ever had. 

The venue was pretty big and filled with tables with a small area on the side where some stores were opened, selling miniatures, books, dice or scenery. 

This was the first year we didn't have team T-shirts(every team has at least a pair) and the first year there were no official photos for each team so this is one of us from the restaurant on our lunch break. 

A bit about the tournament itself

Teams are formed out of 8 players and need a core of at least 4 players from the nationality of the team itself (4 Bulgarians in our case). If you can't make up a team out of 8 but you have at least 4 players, teams are allowed to invite mercinaries (sounds epic doesn't it!). In our case this year we had 4 Bulgarians and 4 mercinaries - 3 Italians and 1 French guy. I won't go in too deep of how the games are played but the point is to gather as many points as you can, then each team gathers the points every player has made and that makes up the team score for the round. The whole thing takes 3 days and teams play 2 games a day (three and a half hour each game with a lunch break in the middle).

A picture of our team from last year in Athenes. Try and spot the two English people.. :P

Our journey in the tournament

Every year we start quite strong but this year we just exploded. We won a massive win against Hungary. We took the maximum we could've gotten point wise. Here is my opponnent and some pictures of the start of the game : 

  A shot of my side of the table in game one. 

My first opponent was Spanish guy but was playing for team Hungary. Did try to practice some of my long forgotten Spanish. :)

Our second game we played agains Belgium. We have met Belgium once before - the very first year I went to play in the ETC in Prague and we won by a very small amount. This year we won with quite a good difference and on the second day we knew we were going to get paired against a really strong team. We were 2nd in the standings, just a few points behind Poland (The previous world champions.. they won second place the two years before that and had won the trophy once or twice more the years before). Now the game with Poland was quite intense and my own battle was quite important. I was winning and they were sweating over it because they were used to just smashing small opponents like us. Unfortunately it is a game of dice and I had a really bad luck towards the end which lost me the game and we got completely smashed (totally expected though). That got us down the road a bit and we got paired with America for the 4th round. We played America the first round in Prague but the team had changed quite a lot this year. We won against them in the past by 1 point but this year they got us and we lost our second game for the day. After the grand start we had it was a bit dissapointing how the second one went but it was quite expected. 

Day 3 I was a bit dishartened and didn't even want to play blaming my luck but we had Whales as our first match up and we knew them quite well (Most of them English guys, one of them the roommate of our Captain). The games were pretty friendly.. and they had a really rough night the night before (drinking like a true British people) so some of them spent the game under the table instead of siting behind it (not even joking). We won big against them! That got us up in the tables again and we went to play against team Mexico. Most of the people were Mexican Americans but they were cool guys. The guy I played was a youtuber that I follow and was quite fun playing with him (waiting to see myself getting smashed on youtube soon). Yep I played pretty poor and got a bad beat which made a difference in the end since we could've been in top 10 if I played a bit better. Everyone was quite happy in the end though since it was the first year we got that far and one of our mercinaries got the worst score out of all the players in the tournament... so I can't say I was the one that led the team down in the end. :D

This is my Mexican opponent taking a picture of me for his youtube blog. 

Overall it was a great time and I will be looking forward towards next years event in Zagreb. Hope you enjoyed the post! If you did don't forget to follow, upvote and comment! Have a great week and see you around!