Some leading Warhammer players from around the globe are turning down rare ‘Golden Tickets’ to the World Championships of Warhammer, to protest the event being hosted in the USA. Most recently Quentin Dubus, a Belgian Age of Sigmar player, says he’s “made the difficult decision not to go” to the World Championships to protest Games Workshop’s decision to hold the event in what he calls “a country currently led by a fascist figure who actively enacts policies that harm trans people, marginalised communities, the environment, and more”.
Dubus posted his statement to a variety of social media platforms on Tuesday, May 6. He’d earned his golden ticket three days earlier on Saturday, May 3, with a second-place finish at the Custom Wargame Spring Tournament, near Brussels. In his posts, Dubus calls the World Championships “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to “meet the legends of Warhammer, connect with the global community, and take part in an event at the very heart of our shared passion”.
But he says he’s not going. He calls his decision not to attend “a political and ethical one – an act of activism”. He references Games Workshop’s June 2020 statement that “Warhammer is for everyone”, and claims that “by hosting such a high-profile event in a country that systematically undermines the rights and dignity of many of its own people, they send a mixed message to the global Warhammer community”.
Other players who have decided to boycott the tournament have shared their support on social media. Konstantinos Kellis, who qualified for the Age of Sigmar Worlds by winning the Lord of the Mounds IX event in Uppsala, Sweden, at the start of March, says he will not be attending the World Championship “for the exact same reasons”.
You can watch an interview with Kellis after his win on Uppsala Wargaming’s own YouTube channel, embedded above. Kellis tells Wargamer “I felt greatly honoured to receive the Ticket, more so in an amazing tourney from an awesome TO, Erik Sundberg, but [at the] end of the day, I knew I wouldn’t take the trip”. He says “the reasons are pretty clear, and they get clearer every day, sadly”.
Australian Kill Team player Emma Hallinan, also a World Championships qualifier who’s not attending the event, underlined some of those reasons. “I’m a trans woman in Australia, and recently won the largest ever Kill Team tournament in the Southern Hemisphere”, the Good Times Rolled Grand Major on April 26-27. This was a qualifier event, and should have earned her a Golden Ticket.
But she “couldn’t accept that ticket because travelling to the US would be dangerous for me”. Hallinan has a good claim to be the continent’s best Kill Team player, having also qualified for a Golden Ticket at Australia’s previous largest Kill Team tournament in November 2024.
Wargamer has contacted Games Workshop for its comments on the boycotting players, and we’ll update this story with any further information.
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Source: Wargamer
