Event Report: Clash of Kings UK 2024

Hi everyone, today we have a blog from a special guest. Friend of Mantic, and Tournament Organising extraordinaire, Steve Hildrew reflects back on running the biggest Kings of War event EVER.

Take it away Steve!

The rubble has settled. The boxes have (nearly) been cleared out of my living room. The hangovers have faded. So how was Clash 2024?

AWESOME.

We sold 201 tickets to the world’s largest Kings of War tournament, and ended up with 190 gamers on the day, which had moved from last year’s Student’s Union to the Hogwarts of the Midlands, Nottingham High School, just a short stroll down the road.

Let’s pretend this absolute masterstroke was planned, and definitely not because the original venue fell through and we spent two weeks visiting every venue in Nottingham…

Happy accidents aside, let’s take a quick tour of what happened at Clash 2024, and take a quick sneak peek forwards to Clash 2025. Why not eh!

The Set-Up

Compared to last year when we could set up from 12, we only had access to the school from 4.15pm. Because, well, it’s a school. It was slightly odd to have confused 16 year olds wander through as a bunch of wargamers sat trying to work out how to fit 100 tables into a space that quite clearly shouldn’t fit 100 tables.

Because as it turns out I’m not only bad at counting, but also measuring.

However, I do have the smarts enough to have clever people on the team, and after a frantic 90 minutes we were ready. Just pause and consider that.

Just 90 minutes to set up, lay out terrain, and get a venue ready with 100 tables. That’s nuts, and a huge testament to the many amazing people that turned up to help us get set up.

The Venue

So, the venue was amazing.

Light, spacious, not too hot, it had wi-fi, projector screens, and came with a bunch of tables. The staff were friendly…and they had a (very) reasonably priced bar.

I don’t want to jinx it, but by and large everyone seems to have had an altogether rip-roaring time. If you want an idea of scale and presence, why not check out a handy YouTube video right about…here:

We had players from all over the world fly in, clearly attracted by the chance to show us British exactly how to play the game! By my estimate we had around 60 players from outside the UK – around 30% of everyone attending.

What was lovely to see was how far we’ve come since the early days of Clash where people played the game very differently, depending where they came from. The attention to detail, precision, and careful nature of play was really gratifying, no matter where in the world the player was from.

New friends were made, alliances were forged, and I even got a game in myself after the first day, and lost embarrassingly easily to the lovely George K, who claimed the first inaugural “George Stephen Cup”.

Naturally, I will get my revenge…

Could We Do Anything Better?

Well it just wouldn’t be a huge event without a couple of hiccups! We decided we were going 100% online with results entry and we had an issue with so many people logging on all at once, and scenario setup. A massive shout-out to the amazingly handsome, tall, definitely not bald or overweight Elliott from Mantic who (definitely hasn’t gone back in to edit this article to add this or any other sentance) took all this on and got us back on track with his usual calm competence.

Also, we had some challenges with the picture and sound quality of the livestream. We’re on the hunt for better solutions, streaming platforms and kit for next year! The amazing Jon Faulkes again gave up his weekend to commentate, and we remain endlessly grateful to those that joined us from around the world to help commentate on the game at hand. Suffice to say that Radoslaw Brylowski wins the award for most entertaining player on the stream thanks to his often hilarious self-commentary against Arthur Vaisse. If you want to catch up on our streams (you might want to head straight to day 2!) you can find them HERE.

What Was Great?

Kings of War players are amazing – really, you are.

As a committee, we are filled with admiration for the incredible players of our games. The fact that they trust us en masse to create an event of this scale is humbling. That they came in their droves with a level of hobby we’ve never seen before, with display boards, with banners (BANNERS – see below!), team shirts, cakes (thanks Andy Marshall!) and such an amazing spirit of competition and camaraderie. It’s really humbling to see people truly invest in an event that’s far more than Mantic’s, or ours: at this point it truly belongs to the community, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

Even Alessio Cavatore turned up – imagine how it feels to write a game on a sheet of A4 and a decade later find two hundred people playing it in a single event. Nuts.

We also had a British one, two and three for the first time…in a very long time! Dan Wolfgang Wright came from nowhere (literally, it’s his first tournament this year) to steal the prize with his indomitable dwarfs. In her first year in the game Florence Maunders sneaked second place over current UK Number 1 Chris Lynch in third. 

The hobby awards went down a storm. To our three top awards (Best Army, Unit, and Model), we added 5 Judge’s Awards (with AdeptiCon-style medallions), and thirty “outstanding hobby badges” to armies we just thought were COOL. Jealousy was fierce, and it was great to see such a wholesome incentive to really put the effort in.

Suffice to say, deciding who got them was tough, and we’ll have to live with the guilt of our choices for quite some time to come…

What’s Next?

We’ve returned home exhausted, but invigorated, and naturally got stuck straight into planning Clash of Kings 2025….

We’re absolutely returning to Nottingham High School, and we stumbled across a third hall, meaning…the event can get even bigger!

We’re hoping to get tickets on sale before the end of the year (the perfect Christmas present!) so keep your eyes on the https://clashofkings.uk website for news, and we’ll be all over your favourite social media channel as soon as we can. We sold out in a day last year. Can we do it again? I sure hope so. 

So thanks again for an amazing Clash, and huge congratulations to all our winners.

We’ll see you next year for a bigger, better, stronger, and faster Clash of Kings, with extra command dice!

Steve and the Clash of Kings UK committee