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Who are we?
We are organisers of one the oldest SAGA tournament series in Europe.
Grand Melee Poland is a tournament dedicated to the SAGA wargame, published by Studio Tomahawk - the largest SAGA event in Europe. Players take on the roles of leaders of historical armies (from antiquity to the middle ages), commanding warbands in battles for various objectives.
The tournament will always be open to all - participants and guests alike - while maintaining a comfort of gameplay for the players! The winners will acquire rich spoils, but each competitor can write unique and unforgettable Sagas with their own actions!
SAGA Grand Melee Poland is a tournament series with a legacy. In four years of its continuous existence we observed tens of Polish players and foreign guests show-off their unique playstyles at our tables; some became victors and some bit the dust across our battlefields. Regardless of their scores we fondly remember most of them as both valiant tabletop commanders and passionate history buffs. It's for them that we continue doing what we do best - organising unique historical wargaming events.
We are the Team of Grand Melee Poland and our goal is to continue providing players with the best wargaming experience there is; both in SAGA and potentially other games which we can promote in the future. Thus we have recently expanded into WELES Association dedicated to promoting historical board games as an educational tool in Poland. Being fans of many systems we won't stop at SAGA and will reach out (or gladly respond) to any historical games' developers who may want to support our goals and include Polish features in their products.
As members of WELES we would like to thank Wargames Illustrated for a chance to present our community to a wider audience and invite you –the readers-to join our events in the future. Let us tell you briefly about our main event series and why it became a historical wargaming phenomenon in Poland as of 2023.
The Polish SAGA community is much older than its Grand Melee; it dates back to ca. 2015 and humble beginnings of SAGA’s 1st Edition. It is a federation of smaller groups and gaming clubs, each displaying its own folklore, with no “central power” holding it together. Such is also the event format designed by our Team –a tournament based on gameplay experiences, organised by players for players. It was due to our continuous work on organising quality events and bringing people together that SAGA grew so popular in Poland.
The concept of launching the first Grand Melee Poland event with a unique rules format was born in late 2018. We asked the British manufacturer Gripping Beast for sponsorship and they obliged, beginning a tradition of cooperation which brings great prizes to our competitors and new clients to GB's products as we promote them online. The first "GMP" - as the series would be later abbreviated - was held in September of 2019 for 28 players including 3 guests from Ukraine and it was only a beginning of a far greater adventure.
More players flocked to the ever-growing Polish SAGA community, especially when "Age Of Crusades" appendix introduced playable factions from the Baltic Sea region. However, the much-expected Polish faction was received with mixed feelings due to historical inaccuracies in its rules and army list. To this day it fails to bring more players to our event, hence why we came up with a brilliant remedy to this problem which we'll talk about at the end of this article. After all, one of our goals is to translate Polish history into wargaming „language” as best as possible.
When the series was re-launched after pandemic in 2021, it featured the three Divisions' format for the first time. It divides the event's players into parallel competitions based on the appendices featured at GMP's given iteration; nowadays we merge them into Dark Ages and Antiquity Divisions with the Medieval one expected to join them in 2024 after „SAGA: Age Of Chivalry” release. „Age Of Magic” might come back when the second book concerning fantasy armies is published by Studio Tomahawk but it isn’t the main focus of our work.
In 2022 our Team launched the second annual event series: SAGA Polish Open Championships, the POC. Having doubled-down on our intentions to animate (and conquer) the tournament scene, we had to diversify our offer. Thus the POC is a series dedicated to beginners and returning players, while the GMP remains as competitive as possible, in order to balance the needs of two wargaming demographics. In spring we experiment at the "chill" POC; then all "tryhards" can brawl in autumn at the GMP in a battle worthy of songs. It is an annual format which proved to be very successful for a niche wargame, bringing us 44 players at the 4th GMP (including guests from: Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Belgium and Ukraine at the same time).
The recent GMP was meant to be extraordinary from the start. First, we wanted to hold it at the most prestigious location yet, the biggest museum in Europe: Museum Of Polish History in Warsaw. In order to secure the deal and with legal advice from one of our members, Jakub Siadul, we established the aforementioned WELES Association; a few experienced players joined it, immensely supporting our efforts. The Museum saw and appreciated our previous works, including huge historical battles re-enacted in "Hail Caesar" with 1,300+ models–those were organised by our Team's logistical mastermind, Radosław Rawicz, between the main events. Together with the Museum we aim to popularise the history of Poland and our region and we are open to cooperation with any common-minded developer.
That was also the first time GMP featured supporting events such as introgaming, painting workshops for kids, historical VR simulations and history lectures. Our event became a convention for history buffs and a treat for hundreds of the Museum's visitors during two days of its runtime. The online competition for the best-painted miniature was held later at the „SAGA Grand Melee Poland” Facebook fanpage, in which some of the kids were able to win their first sets of models.
The second pillar of our success was an unprecedented and massive support of sponsors from all around the world, such as: Gripping Beast, Victrix Limited, Footsore Miniatures, Wargames Atlantic, Perry Miniatures, Studio Tomahawk, Aventine Miniatures and Polish companies such as: Rebel.pl, Bolter.pl, Ciachaj, Kuźnia Goblina, 3D Monkey, Wargamer, Scibor Miniatures and Matisoft Gaming Club. They are all invaluable supporters of our cause and we couldn’t ask for a better lineup.
One of the first to pledge their support was our favourite designer of 3D-printable models, Reconquer Designs. The sculptor honoured us by designing an exclusive model of Boleslav the Brave, the first king of Poland, on his own initiative. It was presented to all competitors as a starting gift in price of a ticket along a 28mm-scale longship designed by our graphic artist and branding specialist Andrzej Górski and laser-cut in HDF, which is a teaser for the next POC. There we will provide you with ship-boarding action in custom SAGA naval battles. You can watch a construction guide for that longship at our Association's website "www.weles.club".
Speaking of customization, another of the 4th GMP's unique selling points was our own scenario booklet. Knowing that official SAGA scenarios were lackluster in Polish players’ opinion, we decided to start from scratch and follow competitive experiences as guidelines. Our tournament referee Jan Raszyński (whom you may know as one of the developers behind "The Barons’ War: Outremer" by Andy Hobday) designed 12 new scenarios in quick succession in April-May 2023, which were later tested by some of the best players Polish, Hungarian and Australian communities have to offer.
We would like to give a particular shoutout to the Australian crew, whom we couldn't meet in person yet. Both communities remain in touch online and thus can contribute to each other’s experiences from the opposite sides of the globe. The new scenarios received mostly positive reviews from GMP's participants who provided crucial feedback too. As a Team we intend to expand our portfolio even more and design new tournament rulesets for games which we may promote in the future.
Lastly, the 4th GMP was the debut of the "Early Piast Dynasty", which is a custom faction treated as Old Friends New Enemies in "SAGA: Age Of Vikings" and playable at our events. In order to bring Early Polish faction to life we used the existing Eastern Princes' battleboard so as not to break the game's balance with a completely new army and swapped some of the wargear options for historically accurate ones. The unique 2D design for our battleboard was prepared by Andrzej and provided to all participants as a quality print. Combined with the model of king Boleslav I it may yet make our goal of popularizing Polish medieval history through wargaming come true.
However, this is not the end of our journey. The WELES Association agrees the upcoming year is a ladder of challenges which we'll climb calmly, step by step. We want to continue providing our players with the best competitive rules for SAGA tournaments and potentially other games. You can be sure we won't share something we wouldn't like to play on our own; it is an intuitive guideline which brought us success up to this date. We were able to bring the tabletop niche to a wider audience and also fully intend to make it a place where all can prosper: our sponsors, our players and ourselves.
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