History

At the end of 1999 voices raised at the Direwolf mailinglist, calling out for a friendly Get Together so one could finaly meet the people, everybody had been posting and mailing with for years, in real life. So it was written, and so it was done. Several US based listees organised the first Direwolf Get Together (DWGT) at the end of November 1999.

 

Of course Europe wasn't far behind, as at the same time several European listees started to work with the idea to organise a Get Together in Europe as well. The EuroGT was born.
At that time the Mordheim mailinglist had taken off with the release of this excellent game and the idea was formed that the EuroGT should also hold the world's first Mordheim Teournament.

 

Several Dutch listees, Lex, Donato, Arjan, Remi and later Harrald, stood up as organisers for the first European Get Together. A location was quickly found at the Golden Tulip Hotel at Bergen op Zoom, and the organisation was working at full speed.

 
The very first EuroGT

As this was to be a Get Together, instead of a Grand Tournament, we decided to throw the obvious swiss style tournament out of the door and opted for Jervis's Empire Team tourney style. This meant players were combined in teams and the goal was to conquer as many tables which represented territories. The whole document was rewritten to suit the ideas and plans for the EuroGT, as the players would not battle in turns, but the whole event would be in real time.

 

Since this event would also host the first ever Mordheim Tourney, there were no precedents to base any tourney rules upon. And just as with the Warhammer Fantasy Battle tournament, Swiss cheese was not an option. At the end, the Mordheim tournament was played out on a big map of Mordheim (1m10 by 1m10) where the warbands travelled around, exploring the doomed city. When two or more warbands met each other, they fought it out in a normal skirmish.

 

Both tourneys were linked by alliances that could be formed (and broken) by the players themselves, where the Mordheim players could enter their characters in a game of Dungeon Quest to gain gold and magical weapons for the Warhammer Armies, and vise verca the alliances gave the Mordheim warbands cheaper rates and better availability of goods at the Mordheim market.

 
Chaos

With about 40 attendees and 1 Guest of Honour, Mr. Tuomas Pirinen himself, we launched the first ever EuroGT at Bergen op Zoom on March 10th 2000...
Nobody had prepared any of us for this chaos. People were playing, discussing tactics, drinking, eating and gaming everywhere. Everybody was having a great time! The Empire Teams were fighting each other on the planes, and Mordheim was filled with fighting, backstabbing and fleeing warbands.

 
The start of something beautiful

All this was the start of an event that since then has been organised every year (for the first 5 years it was organised twice a year!). So far we've visited The Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and the UK! (whatever happened to the legendary Greek beach edition, nobody knows). With all the editions so far, a great group of regulars meet and play eachother for the glory of their teams. Eat, drink and tell tales and in between play a few games. It has even been rumoured that some players, play their favourite table top games, only at an EuroGt... (No names will be mentioned, especially not yours Ser Tachyon!)

 

Who knows how many more editions of this excellent event will follow...