Here is the revised draft, thanks to everyone for their input on this, it was really helpful.

Mainly, what do you guys think about the revised missions? I tried to roll in as much of the 6th ed rules in as I felt were good for a tournament setting based on my experience, Team Zero Comp input, and your all's suggestions.

I altered the missions to be more similar to what is in the book, added the Scouring and Big Guns Never Tire, as well as alternated the scoring method of the main Victory Conditions without a huge variation. I think this is a nice mix of tactics but still remains true to the basic principles we have found to work really well. What do you guys think?


6th ed 40K Tournament Guidelines

Points: 1,500pts

We are going with 1500pts for these early 6th ed tournaments as we’ve found that the new rules slow the game down quite a bit, and we are sure people are going to be taking more time looking up rules, rolling up Warlord Traits, etc. and would rather have more time per round so as not to rush anyone. As we go through the season and people get more accustomed to the game, we will start to increase the points cap.

Missions

Round 1: Bay Area Open Scenario Alpha, Modified Hammer and Anvil Deployment

Round 2: Bay Area Open Scenario Beta, Dawn of War Deployment, The Scouring

Round 3: Bay Area Open Scenario Gamma, Vanguard Strike Deployment

Round 4: Bay Area Open Scenario Beta, Dawn of War Deployment, Big Guns Never Tire

Round 5: Bay Area Open Scenario Alpha, Modified Hammer and Anvil Deployment

Round 6: Bay Area Open Scenario Gamma, Vanguard Strike Deployment

Round 7: Bay Area Open Scenario Alpha, Dawn of War Deployment

The Bay Area Open Scenario is one we have built over a great deal of time, play testing and player feedback. It is a scenario that strives for fairness, and simplicity with multiple paths to victory. We want you to focus on playing your best game, not focusing on trying to figure out a mission you aren’t familiar with.

The Bay Area Open scenario has 3 Victory Conditions always happening simultaneously. Each is worth a varying number of Victory Points dependent upon the mission (Alpha, Beta or Gamma). There are also 3 Bonus Points per mission. The Player that earns the most Victory Points during a game, wins. If both players earn the same amount, they tie. There are no degrees of victory, if you win by 1 point or 12, it is just a win. The player packets will have a score sheet for each mission clearly showing how much each objective is worth for each game to make it easy to keep track of.

=Mission Order of Operations:

1. Place Seize Ground Objectives. Players roll off, player rolling highest places first objective. One objective always goes in the center of the board.
2. Roll for Warlord Traits (Each player rolls 1D6, chooses any of the three traits with that number for their trait).
3. Roll for Night Fighting.
4. Roll for First Turn. The player rolling highest chooses their deployment zone and deploys their Emperor's Will objective. The player going second does the same.
5. Place Fortifications if any are present. The player that won the first turn roll off places their's first.
6. Deploy forces, with the player that won the roll off deploying first.
7. Game then proceeds as normal.

1. Victory Condition 1: The Emperor’s Will. Each player places an objective on a 40mm base in their deployment zone, after deployment zones have been decided prior to deploying their forces. This objective must be 6” from a table edge. The player that controls more of these at game’s end wins this Victory Condition. In Alpha this is worth 2 points, in Beta 3 Points, in Gamma 4 points.

2. Victory Condition 2: Crusade. Three objectives on 25mm bases are placed outside of either player’s deployment zones before the roll for first turn. One is always placed in the exact middle of the board. The other two by each player (player rolling highest places the first objective), at least 6” from a table edge and 12” from another objective. These objectives have the Mysterious Objectives rule, but the player triggering it rolls 2D6 on the Mysterious Objectives table and takes the result they want. The player controlling the majority of these objectives at game's end wins. If both players control the same amount, neither achieves this objective. In Alpha this is worth 3 points, in Beta 4 points, in Gamma 2 points.

3. Victory Condition 2: Purge the Alien. Each unit is worth a number of Kill Points equal to its point cost divided by 50, rounded up. For example, a unit worth 40pts would give up 1 Kill Point if destroyed or broken at game’s end, and a unit worth 305pts would give up 7 Kill Points if destroyed or broken at game’s end. The player with more Kill Points at game’s end wins this condition. Noting this on your army list prior to the tournament makes this very easy to keep track of. NOTE, in missions where Big Guns Never Tire and The Scouring are in play, the units that can also take objectives are worth 1 more KP each than normal. If your Warlord Rolls the trait that gives him 1 VP for each Character kills in a Challenge, he earns 1 KP for each Character he kills in addition to any other KP he may have earned. In Alpha this is worth 4 points, in Beta 2 Points, in Gamma 3 points.

The Bay Open Scenario also uses Bonus Points in every mission. The Bonus Points are worth 1 Victory Point each and are the same for every game.

1. Bonus Point 1: Slay the Warlord. If you destroy your opponent’s Warlord, you earn this point.

2. Bonus Point 2: Line Breaker. You earn this point by having a scoring OR contesting unit with at least one model at least partially in your opponent’s deployment zone at game’s end. Note, a unit cannot hold an objective AND earn this Bracket Point, it can only choose to do one or the other.

3. Bonus Point 3: Preserve Your Forces. You earn this Bracket Point by having half or more of your STARTING scoring units alive at game’s end.

Every game uses the book rules for Reserves, Night Fight, Seize the Initiative, Random Game Length, controlling objectives, etc.

Modified Hammer and Anvil

This follows the standard deployment as outlined in the book with one modification. The player going first reduces their deployment zone by 12” along the long edge on one side. The player going second does the same along the opposite edge. This results in a deployment zone that is 24” out from the short board edge, and 36” up the short board edge. Note, objectives may not be placed in the gap space. Outflankers arrive via long table edges, with the roll os a 1-2 being the long edge nearest the owning player, a 3-4 being the opposite, and a 5-6 being the owning player’s choice.

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Allowed Armies

• All current Codices, and White Dwarf armies will be allowed.
• Allies per the Rule Book will be allowed.
• Forge World units will be allowed so long as they are neither a Super Heavy nor Gargantuan Creature. The most recent version of the rules must be used. This means not just the "40K Approved" units, but any that do not fall within the above restrictions.
• Forge World Army Lists will not be allowed.
• Each player MUST have his pertinent rulebook with him to show his opponent.
• Fortifications will be allowed, but not Fortresses of Redemption or Skyshield Landing Pads as they are physically too large and require too much modification to the terrain on the table to be practical for a tournament. We may alter this in time, but for now we are restricting those two pieces of terrain.

Warlord Traits and Psychic Powers

1. Warlord Traits will be determined using the following modified system: Each player rolls a die and then chooses which Trait with that number he wishes to use.
2. If you roll a psychic power the model can’t use, you may reroll on the table until you get something you can use.
Rules Judgments
Rules issues will be dealt with swiftly by a roaming judge. We use a hierarchy for determining rules issues as follows:
1. Main Rule Book
2. FAQs and Erratas
3. Consensus of judges present at the time. Please note, that these judgments are final.

Painting

All models must be painted to a 3 color minimum. We count primer as a color. If you have any models that are not painted to a 3 color minimum, you will be ineligible for prize support at the end of the event. We will use a Paint Rubric for judging paint.

Bracketing

We use Swiss Pairings, meaning that players with the same record play each other. Pairings within a bracket are randomly determined first round (friends and club mates can request not to play each other first round) and then by strength of schedule thereafter. For final rankings, the field will be stratified by accumulated Victory Points.

Comp and Sports

There will be no comp scores at this event. We feel that the game has an inbuilt comp system with the rulebooks and Codices. We do not feel that a second, player created level of comp is necessary. So bring whatever army you want to play!
Sportsmanship will be handled as a simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down check box on the results sheet.

The temptation to ding someone on sports after a tough loss is often too much for many players to resist. We therefore are providing a very narrowly defined set of terms under which a player may mark their opponent with a thumbs down mark on sportsmanship. This system is intended to punish those who are being abusive, but to not allow chimpmunking. After a great deal of real world use, we have found this system to work very well.

Legitimate reasons to give an opponent a thumbs down on sports:

1. Your opponent was 15 or more minutes late to the round.
2. Your opponent was verbally abusive. This does not mean you argued with your opponent or that your personalities clashed, but that they were verbally abusive and insulting.
3. Your opponent intentionally cheated. Be prepared to support your case to a judge.
4. Your opponent slow played. We define slow playing as not completing 4 game turns of play. In the case of 20 or less minutes left to play, divide the time remaining between players to complete one full GAME turn. Time each other during this period to ensure that each player has an equal amount of time to complete a full game turn. If one player does not finish within their limit, the other player can force them to stop and then begin their turn. This mechanic is in place to ensure no one is slow played out of a turn of play.

What does NOT constitute a thumbs down on sports?

1. You argued over rules with your opponent.
2. Your opponent beat you.
3. You didn’t like your opponent’s army.
4. Your opponent likes Star Trek Voyager. Picard was the best!! NERD RAGE!
A negative mark on sportsmanship will be met with administrative action as follows:
1. First thumbs down: A verbal warning from a judge, up to reversing a win to a loss.
2. Second thumbs down: Reversing a win to a loss, up to disqualification from any prize support.
3. Third thumbs down: disqualification from any prize support, up to expulsion from the event with no refund of the ticket price.
4. Fourth thumbs down: Expulsion from the event with no refund of the ticket price.

WYSIWYG

All models are expected to be WYSIWYG as much as is reasonable. Proxies are not permitted. Counts As armies with counts as allies will only be permitted if they represent a clearly concerted effort to build a unique army around an obvious theme. For example, an Adeptus Mechanicus army using extensive kit bashing and conversions will be fine. If you go this route, YOU ARE REQUIRED TO HAVE A HANDOUT TO SHOW YOUR OPPONENT THAT SHOWS WHAT EACH UNIT IN YOUR ARMY IS ALONG WITH ITS STATS AND PERTENANT RULES! You must also present this to them prior to the game so that they have time to understand what they are playing against. There will be no exceptions to this.

If your army uses only a single Codex but if for example you have Crimson Fists models using the Blood Angels Codex, or Chaos models using the Space Wolves Codex, that is acceptable. Allies for this type of army however, MUST be represented by their actual models. This is to avoid confusion. No exceptions.

If you are using converted or scratch built models with Forge World rules, this is acceptable so long as your model is as close to the represented model as possible in terms of equipment, size and shape. We will not be lenient with this.

If you have any questions about your army, ask us prior to the event so that we can let you know if what you have will be acceptable or not.

Terrain

Terrain will be prearranged and laid out by the TO’s prior to the event. We will not be using terrain placement rules per the book as it is too time restrictive. If you come to a table and feel that it is not sufficiently or fairly arranged, or that it may have been moved by the previous players, alert a TO who will arrange the terrain appropriately.

Mysterious Terrain: Will not be used.

Fortifications: If any fortifications are being used, they will be placed prior to army deployment by both players, after they have determined deployment zones. The player that chose their deployment zone first, places his Fortification first. Scratch built fortifications will be allowed so long as they are closely the same shape and size of what they are meant to represent. Again, if you are unsure, ask before the event to avoid disappointment.

Hills: All hills are open terrain, granting cover via LOS blocking/interference as normal.

Barriers: All barriers grant cover per the book and are not considered to be Aegis Defense lines unless they were purchased and placed by a player.

Buildings/ruins: All buildings and ruins are assumed to have a ladder or other means for moving up and down. Rules in the Rule Book will be used for Ruins and Buildings.

Rock Towers, Crates, and Can Towers: Are impassible and block LOS completely (even if there are actual gaps in the terrain pieces).

All other terrain functions as outlined in the book.

What to Bring

• Your Army
• Tape Measure, Dice, Game Aids, etc.
• 3 Objective Markers on 25mm bases, 2 Objective Markers on 40mm bases.
• 9 Typed Copies of your army list. Be sure to include write how many Kill Points each of your units is worth on your list for ease of reference.
• All pertinent rules for your army. Codecis, White Dwarf Articles, Foregworld Rules, etc.
• If you are using a counts as army, YOU MUST HAVE YOUR PLAYER HANDOUT FOR YOUR OPPONENT IDENTIFYING WHAT EACH UNIT IN YOUR ARMY IS, NO EXCEPTIONS!! You don’t need to have one for every player, just one for the judges, and one to show each opponent.
• A rocking pair of Jean Shorts. Chicks dig em.

Really like this idea. (apart from FW stuff lol)

=Basics
Agree

= We will be using a "BAO" (Bay Area Open) style mission similar to what we did last year.
Looks like a smart way to handle missions, I feel like this is where we will see the most variety in tourneys.

=Psykers
Good approach.

Points Level
I support lower point value, especially while the metabase is taking shape. I feel from a logistical POV that people are going to be tempted to play too many points for 6th and this will increase the mistakes and slips back to 5th. I really never liked 2500 points and now I think double-force org is potentially the biggest threat. (hence 1999 and under is a good option)

Forge World
Allies are way worse than FW now. Basically adding FW units in 5th edition was the equivalent of bringing an allied force as you could get units which plug blatant holes in your codex. Now that I can do that with allies, FW is not much of an issue anymore.

=Counts As Armies and WYSIWYG
eeeeeeeeh... this is going to be a huge issue IMHO. I feel like people are going to abuse this to extremes as some people only see WEAPONS and don't see toughness profiles or armor save. An Ork boy model is not a Tau fire warrior or a Iguard trooper. A Ork boy in a tee shirt is not a space wolf or space marine. I feel like for a 'counts as' ork to be either of those, you need CLEARLY SMALLER orks like Yoofs or 2nd edition models for weaker toughness models or you need significant over-armored orks to represent 3+ armor. By time you have a counts as unit that meets what it takes to be those other units, it is almost going to have no ability to function as anything else. If I make 4 Orks in power armor with massive weapons and put them on Super Cyboars as allied SW TWC, there is going to need to be effort where they won't be able to possibly be anything from the ork codex by time they are done.

I have to say the proxy talk has already gone through the roof, especially with the space marine/chaos space marine as so many people play chaos as BA or SW.

I think TOs should be super proactive and really ask for pre-submission of any 'COUNTS AS'.

=What are we missing?

Looks good. I think the first 3 months of events will be huge for feedback.

I also feel like the big 'missing' aspect right now is the rules arguments and lack of FAQs out there. People are going nuts with some of the arguments and some issues have very legitimate holes. I feel like maybe the top 10 issues need to be identified and FAQed per event. I feel two things right off the bat which are far sweeping are challenge wound over flow and "what is my power weapon?" impact everyone and are really tough right now... I am sure there are going to be other game breaking arguments which need answers way before someone shows up with a list based upon a particular interpretation.

@Gregor

Thanks!

And can I ask what your biggest resistance to FW is? We don't want to force our preference on people, but we really like FW particularly the AA units and Flyers they bring to the table to allow armies a level playing field in that regard.

What holds you back the most from thinking it woul dbe fun to have FW?

@nklesch

Thanks a ton for the feedback!

Yeah, Counts As is going to be really tough. It's a subject so easily abused but also so easily made to be AWESOME!

If someone models up sweet conversions like you mentioned, then we WANT that to be at our events as that is half the fun of going to a big tournament: seeing the beautiful armies. Often, creative conversions are the best parts of these.

Then, we also get the gamer that is abusing it (sometimes unintentionally) and just confuses and upsets his opponent.

However, it can also get crazy confusing to tell the difference. It's like a supreme justice said about the difference between porn and art: I can't define it but I know what it is when I see it.

It may come down to a judgement call or pre-submission like you mentioned. The only issue there is that in a big event, that can get crazy to keep organized.

@Reecius

Outside of missions, this generally looks to be the way most tournaments are heading. We are still working on our draft rules, but also looking at work other events are coming up with. I still think it is way too early in the game to us to make any major decisions, but we have a general idea of where we are headed. I do not see AdeptiCon banning any particular aspect of 6th edition, but I do believe there are ways to make it work a bit more smoothly.

BASICS
Not 100% in agreement with the removal of Mysterious Terrain/Objectives. I understand the desire to eliminate randomness, but we pretty much throw any hope of controlling that out the window the second we generate Round 1 table pairings. I find the Feast of Blades idea of 'All Mysterious Terrain is the same once revealed' interesting in terms of leveling things, but I need to consider it more closely.

I think removing certain Fortifications is perfectly fine. My original thought was to impose a maximum % of your total points that could be spent on Fortifications. IIRC 10% of 1850 would allow you to purchase a fully kitted out Bastion, but would keep the Fortress of Redemption out of play. That said, simply stating like you do here, is perfectly reasonable given table size and your terrain make up.

Warlord Traits. We had this exact same idea not too long ago. At first glance I thought this looked like a decent solution, and it could very well be one in the immediate future, but I think you will have problems down the road when new books are released and certain characters now have 4 or more viable trait tables. This would give those characters an unfair advantage unless you had some additional bulky lair of rules restricting the number of tables you could choose from.

Allies. 100% in agreement.

Terrain. This is our current discussion. Time is of great value at these events and preset terrain can speed play up. How do you propose to maintain the tables after people get done shifting pieces to make room for display boards or fortifications? I like the general of idea of a preset table where you replace one terrain feature with a fortification if purchased.

Yep to everything else.

MISSIONS
Is the path to victory like the AdeptiCon missions? Achieve more objectives to win? Of course I like this style if it is! I am always leery of VPs as an objective. They can be time consuming and most prone to errors out of all the mission results. We tried to stay away from them the past 2 years for that very reason. That said, I completely agree that KPs are simply no longer viable as a majority mission. More or less using the Secondary book objectives as tie breakers is interesting, although I still might be tempted to work some of them in are primary objectives in lieu of VPs (which of course isn't possible for you if you want to have all rounds play the same missions). Agreed on First Blood.

Overall - looks like a solid system.

OTHER STUFF
Psykers. Yep.

Points Level. 1500 has some appeal. I think in the immediate future it makes good sense as it will make for smaller/faster games.

Forge World. I can get behind this. Most of the old objections/reasons for banning FW no longer exist. Although I am sure spammed Lucius Pattern Drop Pods and Hades Breaching Drills will still upset people. The increased access to Fliers and AA is an all around boost to most forces. I guess we will need to see where FW units land after the updates.

Counts As. Yeah. Ugh. Hated dealing with this under 5th, will hate it more under 6th. Our policy states:

Count-as armies are allowed at AdeptiCon as long as they follow all the above rules and restrictions. The onus is on the owning player to alleviate any and all avenues of confusion that might result from using count-as models/armies. Countas models MUST be WYSIWYG, appropriately equipped and sized accordingly in order to best represent the model/unit in
question. Count-as armies should demonstrate reasonable effort when it comes to conversions, simply using an existing army with a different codex (as a proxy) is NOT allowed.

It isn't very definitive simply because I do not know how you could deal definitely with this issue. Our goal is not hinder creativity, but to limit people from using things like their Eldar as Grey Knights in order to field a Paladin block. It is honestly another reason 1500 might be a good idea. Less models, less counts as, less time trying to figure our what is what.

MISSING
How long are the rounds? Are you using the same appearance/sportsmanship system as last year?

Really looking forward to seeing the results/feedback from some large 6th edition events.

In games where there are objectives worth different point values then maybe auto assigning their locations.

In missions where there are auto assigned locations for those objectives I think it would be ok to auto assign a mysterious objective trait to them - but not making it mysterious. Just say that the X point objectives are 'this' and the Y point objectives are 'that.'

Might perserve the over all 'feel' of this edition for the casual gamer while not offending the hard core no random liking tournament player.

First blood is very important. It helps mitigate the last turn objective grab so many tournament playes rely on to win. Game after game in a timed tournament setting is determined by the guy going second making sure the game slows down so random game length is taken away and the game ends on turn 5. That way they can make a free grab for objectives, which everyone mission is, and win the game.

If you want to get rid of First Blood, which is not unfair, learn to hide a model or don't take anything that can get killed on turn 1, then you have to make sure every game must continue until it's natural conclusion or else the advantage the second player gets is to great in these events.

Everything you've said seems to make sense Reecius. I particularly like the enthusiasm for FW models. Hopefully the US tournament scene starts to allow this, and acceptance for FW models filters over here to the UK

Looks pretty well thought out, Reece.

I think you should reconsider Mysterious objectives. First blood is also important, and you should reconsider.

They help to balance out a lot of the game. Flyers are super powerful and the ability for an objective to give a unit Skyfire helps to keep some of those flying circuses' in line. First Blood also helps to balance out the missions more, it provides even more incentive to deploy forces well and use the terrain on the table. Otherwise this looks decent.

Reecius wrote:
=Basics

Mysterious Terrain; hmm, we haven't used this much either while we are still getting to know the rules, but it does make terrain much more of a factor, which can be good, can be bad. Plus it's one of the only ways to get Skyfire (I know you address this later).

Mysterious Objective; agreed.

Fortifications; I don't see what difference the size of the thing matters? Are your tables that full of large terrain pieces you won't be able to fit them on? I doubt you'd see more than a couple anyway... just seems silly to allow some, but not others. The bastion's are about the same volume as the Skyshield - you can fit more under/over the landing pad than the bastion so why not ban the bastion if space is an issue?

Warlord traits; either remove it entirely or just deal with the random roll. Sometimes you'll get a useless trait, sometimes you won't. I think removing some of the random from it will benefit some armies a lot more than others. Case in point; Imperial Guard HQ's don't really benefit much from any of the traits (maybe Strategic) whereas MEQ HQ's can get much more mileage from any of the three choices.

Reecius wrote:
= We will be using a "BAO" (Bay Area Open) style mission similar to what we did last year.

Seems good. The Hammer and Anvil deployment isn't great for end-end tables but I fail to really see the difference between Spearhead and the Vanguard Strike, except Spearhead is much more restricted...

Victory points is a good idea.

Objectives giving Skyfire... not sold on that one personally.
If player A has thought seriously about fliers and how their army can/can't handle them and turns up with allies or aegis/bastion quad guns and player B just brings their 5th ed list with no thought how to handle fliers - is it fair that player B can just move up a bit to an objective then start blasting fliers out of the sky?
The Aegis with quad isn't that expensive and AFAIK every army can take one if they're worried about fliers.

Reecius wrote:
=Psykers

If you roll a power you can't use, either because of Force Charge or the inability to use it such as a Broodlord rolling a shooting power, you can reroll till you get one you can use.

I can get behind that one - I think that should have been in the BRB anyway - how much fun is it to roll up two powers that your Psyker can't use? This is one of the more slowed things in (or left out of) the rules.

Reecius wrote:
Points Level

1500 pts - if only while people are still getting used to the rules. A sensible limit that means you actually have to think carefully about what to take.

Reecius wrote:
Forge World

The biggest objection previously was that FW upset the balance of the game.

Actually, the biggest objection is that the FW books cost more than NASA's yearly budget. Not everyone can afford them and to those players that can't - they suddenly have to deal with a bunch of new units they've never seen before, let alone know the rules for.

If you're going to allow FW units in your tournament, you need to insist that those players bringing them must bring the relevant IA book with the rules in to show the opponents if requested.

Final thought; if fliers are that much of a concern, can't you cap them to say, 25% of the total points?

I like where this is headed Reece.

I am still of the opinion that selecting a warlord trait is ultimately going to be the way. Once 3 or 4 codex's come out, there will be more tables to select from, thus making the proposed style very unbalance in favor of the newest codex's.

I am confused as to why people are assuming selecting a trait will unbalance the game? People will get to re-roll reserves? Fortifications do that, can make the HQ scoring?

Everyone can select from the same lists, how is that not fair?

The hobby is expensive. We shouldn't get into arguments about how expensive it should be.

I am all for FW (obviously the warhammer 40k stamped stuff) being let in.

100% that the players must have the model(or an amazing conversion) and the actual rules for that model.

As I said here http://www.3forint.com/2012/07/tournament-organization-in-6th.html, if a good standard tournament format emerges, then it may be feasible to play 6th in a tournament format.

But there are a lot of things going against it making it as a tournament game. Mostly GW. There are going to be many things that will absorb a fair amount of time in the 6th book. So I think round times will be longer until people figure out a way to speed things up.

Blood Lord Soldado wrote:Everyone can select from the same lists, how is that not fair?

There's a couple that are really good for certain lists.

Inspiring Presence for Foot Guard (Orders on Ld10? Thanks!)
Immovable Object for St Celestine or any Necron.
Legendary Fighter for the choppy warlords is VERY good. Considering some missions have a pretty narrow margin of victory.
The Dust of a Thousand Worlds for any army that has bikes/jetbikes/etc that don't come with MTC would be pretty important.

Those are off the top of my head. I know I would always take Immovable for Celestine, Legendary Fighter for my TWC Lord, TDoaTW for my BikeBoss and Inspiring Presence for my CCS.

pretre wrote:

Blood Lord Soldado wrote:Everyone can select from the same lists, how is that not fair?

There's a couple that are really good for certain lists.

Inspiring Presence for Foot Guard (Orders on Ld10? Thanks!)
Immovable Object for St Celestine or any Necron.
Legendary Fighter for the choppy warlords is VERY good. Considering some missions have a pretty narrow margin of victory.
The Dust of a Thousand Worlds for any army that has bikes/jetbikes/etc that don't come with MTC would be pretty important.

Those are off the top of my head. I know I would always take Immovable for Celestine, Legendary Fighter for my TWC Lord, TDoaTW for my BikeBoss and Inspiring Presence for my CCS.

So then you agree that selecting these for a particular army can be useful, but still balanced vs another army that also gets to select from the list?

Dok wrote:As I said here http://www.3forint.com/2012/07/tournament-organization-in-6th.html, if a good standard tournament format emerges, then it may be feasible to play 6th in a tournament format.

But there are a lot of things going against it making it as a tournament game. Mostly GW. There are going to be many things that will absorb a fair amount of time in the 6th book. So I think round times will be longer until people figure out a way to speed things up.

It worked perfectly fine in our tournament last weekend with 25+ players. Changes need to be made to the missions, which if we all remember back to 4th there were specific tournament missions anyway not to mention all the GTs have their own missions so no big deal here, but I would be leery to make too many sweeping changes. Warlord Traits should be random. Period.

Those of us who have logged significant numbers of games with the new rule set have seen that the games go by just as fast as before. You need to understand wound allocation though for the game to work and unfortunately there are many people who still can't understand wound allocation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blood Lord Soldado wrote:

pretre wrote:

Blood Lord Soldado wrote:Everyone can select from the same lists, how is that not fair?

There's a couple that are really good for certain lists.

Inspiring Presence for Foot Guard (Orders on Ld10? Thanks!)
Immovable Object for St Celestine or any Necron.
Legendary Fighter for the choppy warlords is VERY good. Considering some missions have a pretty narrow margin of victory.
The Dust of a Thousand Worlds for any army that has bikes/jetbikes/etc that don't come with MTC would be pretty important.

Those are off the top of my head. I know I would always take Immovable for Celestine, Legendary Fighter for my TWC Lord, TDoaTW for my BikeBoss and Inspiring Presence for my CCS.

So then you agree that selecting these for a particular army can be useful, but still balanced vs another army that also gets to select from the list?

Nope. Not balanced.

keithb wrote:The hobby is expensive. We shouldn't get into arguments about how expensive it should be.

I am all for FW (obviously the warhammer 40k stamped stuff) being let in.

100% that the players must have the model(or an amazing conversion) and the actual rules for that model.

Now if somebody can take a undercosted overpowered forgeworld unit, there is a good chance that we can take an ally that is just as good or even take the same FW unit as an ally.

In 5th edition, we didn't have this option to plug holes in our codex when Imperial armies got all the cool cinematic toys. Now we do.

Blood Lord Soldado wrote:

pretre wrote:

Blood Lord Soldado wrote:Everyone can select from the same lists, how is that not fair?

There's a couple that are really good for certain lists.

Inspiring Presence for Foot Guard (Orders on Ld10? Thanks!)
Immovable Object for St Celestine or any Necron.
Legendary Fighter for the choppy warlords is VERY good. Considering some missions have a pretty narrow margin of victory.
The Dust of a Thousand Worlds for any army that has bikes/jetbikes/etc that don't come with MTC would be pretty important.

Those are off the top of my head. I know I would always take Immovable for Celestine, Legendary Fighter for my TWC Lord, TDoaTW for my BikeBoss and Inspiring Presence for my CCS.

So then you agree that selecting these for a particular army can be useful, but still balanced vs another army that also gets to select from the list?

Not sure that it is balanced. What does a Dark Eldar or Tyranid army get from any of these that is equivalent to a nigh-unkillable scoring unit or the ability to generate tons of extra victory points (Immovable and Legendary)?

The issue is, randomly 1 person getting this while his opponent gets nothing per say (-1 to opponents reserve rolls vs an opponent that has no reserves) is not balanced either. The idea of rolling then selecting from tables only works until a codex comes out and has Chaos Space Marine only tables.

Maybe removing them all together is a better solution.

I kind of like the idea of rolling once and picking from one of the three tables.

Blood Lord Soldado wrote:The issue is, randomly 1 person getting this while his opponent gets nothing per say (-1 to opponents reserve rolls vs an opponent that has no reserves) is not balanced either. The idea of rolling then selecting from tables only works until a codex comes out and has Chaos Space Marine only tables.

Maybe removing them all together is a better solution.

Too many sweeping changes to the core rule book won't make tournaments better or make the game "more tournament worthy". Making sweeping changes to the core rules will kill the tournament scene. Why? Because no two tournaments will ever agree to run everything by another tournaments set of house rules. So we are going to end up with a huge disparity of what to expect store to store or GT to GT and the scene will fall apart from the sheer number of players who don't want the headache of learning a new rule set for each tournament or building entirely different armies for every GT. Too many changes will kill the tournament scene I guarantee you that.

I have played a tournament with 6th ed rules, including random psychic powers, and random warlord traits and it worked. Like I already said the missions need serious work and Fortress' of Redemption/Landing pads probably are too big for use in tournaments. But everything else worked just fine, if we don't give the rules as is an actual shot then we are going to doom this game from the out set. Try it in a competitive environment first, I implore you.


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pretre wrote:I kind of like the idea of rolling once and picking from one of the three tables.

I would be ok with that, if it were for every game. But again the issue comes up of a non-standard standard for every tournament. You won't get every TO to agree to these changes.

Selecting your exact trait will be unbalanced, imo...

Selecting your trait is bad, b/c you can build entire lists around it if you know you'll be able to select it, and it's free ... the traits were NOT balanced around being able to list-design specifically for one.

The solution is some form of modification to prevent the whole .... he got a great one, I got an awful one, now it's not a "fair" game ... especially in a tournament setting where on every other table, potentially game-changing rolls are always different, and so the whole field isn't really playing the same mission.

The problem is figuring out what modification is the most appropriate for the setting ... and it may be "no warlord traits," or some of the other suggestions made here.

Could you imagine the scoring one with the Eldar Harlequin / Eldrad / Vect deathstar?

OverwatchCNC wrote: Too many sweeping changes to the core rule book won't make tournaments better or make the game "more tournament worthy".

I am on board with everything else Reece is proposing. I think calling removing the warlord randomness a sweeping change is a little over-stated. I am of the opinion that removing the table and roll is the best way to handle it, but I do understand that people want to use all aspects of the new rules and I do appreciate that. I also agree that having a uniform way of playing tournament 40k is more important than my opinion, which is why I am / was proposing the alternate method that is simple in application. Again, rolling and then selecting from the tables has a limited shelf life and is band-aid fix to something that can be addressed from the get go. (Or can it?)

It's a rough spot to be in, particularly since you're trying to sell tickets, and I'll be there for at least one of those September events that I have an interest in being a success!

As I see it, you're most likely to draw guys with a format that is familiar. While this has the risk of setting a trend of larger events being run basically as 5th ed. .tournaments with 6th ed. core rules, which will make the tournament scene more fractured initially, you need butts in seats from an organizers perspective, and even from a player's perspective, I think most of us would agree that we'd rather go to a larger event, especially when we're talking about something you'd likely be traveling to. No one wants to make a bunch of plans in advance, take time off of work, cash in chips with wives/families/girlfriends/etc., and generally uproot your life for weekend and show up to a tournament with 25 guys because no one was comfortable going to an event with unfamiliar rules.

That being said, I'm on team Frontline doing this as much 'business as usual' as possible.

In specific:

Basics:

Everything here is as I would do it (half the tables will forget about Mysterious anything anyway! ). Aegis Defense Lines are a non-issue and Bastions are a deathtrap with a giant target painted on it, based on our little bit of experience, everyone is comfortable with Seize and Random Game Length, and the new Night Fighting rules are actually pretty good.

I'd at least consider removing Warlord Traits altogether, since they are a random factor that could potentially unbalance things the same as Mysterious terrain. Just my thoughts.

The Mission:

I'm no fan of the BAO mission as I think it creates too much potential for draws, but everyone is very familiar with it and until a more authoritative 6th missions packet starts to take shape, it is the format I'd be most likely to commit to for a bigger event, since it's tried and true.

Hammer and Anvil being out in large events due simply to the table layout was no surprise to anyone I'm sure; I'd consider using First Blood as a bracket point instead of Preserve: First Blood is dependent on things like luck in the first turn and Seizing and so on, but a player can deploy in such a way that they minimize the risk of giving that point away, and everyone is just as much at risk of giving it up, while Preserve becomes an army-build issue where some lists are going to hand out that point like candy and some lists may not even give it up once, and it creates situations where a player could be stuck giving that point up in order to try and win. Since the bracket points determine pairings and break ties for placings, you could run into a situation where a guy gets an easier day or ends up with an award based on his opponent's army builds.

As an aside, the Relic is a joke for competitive play. I'd be shocked if I ever saw that in a tournament.

Psykers:

The BRB includes a re-roll for powers above your Mastery Level anyway, but allowing a re-roll for unusable powers seems legit.

Points:

Guys will have more experience with the game in two months, and higher points opens the Allies and Fortifications doors a bit wider, but I'd say that 1500 is the best bet. 1750 at max.

Forge World:

LOL nope! Most guys will be shouldering the yoke of still ironing out the kinks of the new system, in addition to playing a bunch of games against armies they've never squared off against, builds they've never seen, and players they don't know, in a game system they don't have a lot of experience with. Put a FW cherry on top and you're creating the potential for problems. There's enough out there for guys to have to deal with that's printed in books they can go to their LGS and buy, let alone FW stuff.

That being said, GW accualy is Dolan and I'm getting ready to not be surprised when they FAQ everything from FW into the main game, LoLLerZ!

Counts as:

Huge landmine here. It's a big event and it creates a lot of front-end work to approve counts-as stuff before game 1, but it might be necessary. Counts-as Allies are right out. If on the one hand you're going to say that the exceptionally expensive and quite difficult to acquire Forge World component enriches the game and should be allowed, and then let oddball, inaccurate models in for counts-as allies, freeing guys from having buy the models, that's Chewbacca Defense all the way. Having to remember two armies' worth of potential counts-as is just going to create rough feelings in games. It's like when Marty went to the diner in Back to the Future...

"can this wonky scratch-build be a Vendetta??"
"you want a Vendetta, pal, you gotta pay for it!"

Missing Anything?

Not really. Keep things simple and in line with the current format for now, the event will be more successful for it.

Of course, my own local events are as 6th as possible, but I'm not trying to pull in a hundred guys (yet!)

I would say you should allow all forgeworld. Just like everything the player should use the most up to date rules but by allowing it all you wont have people who can't use something because it was not in the latest book when they finally put the stamps on them. Imperial Armor Apocalypse 2 (not second edition) has a full list in the back of the book for what force org slot each item is. The reason I say allow people to use the forgeworld army lists is that they are basically underpowered but if someone spent the time and money to put one together then it really sucks for people not to let them play them.

The problem with Forgeworld is that not everyone is familiar with all of the FW books. It adds another level of preparation.

Including FW allies, even?

disdainful wrote:It's a rough spot to be in, particularly since you're trying to sell tickets, and I'll be there for at least one of those September events that I have an interest in being a success!

As I see it, you're most likely to draw guys with a format that is familiar. While this has the risk of setting a trend of larger events being run basically as 5th ed. .tournaments with 6th ed. core rules, which will make the tournament scene more fractured initially, you need butts in seats from an organizers perspective, and even from a player's perspective, I think most of us would agree that we'd rather go to a larger event, especially when we're talking about something you'd likely be traveling to. No one wants to make a bunch of plans in advance, take time off of work, cash in chips with wives/families/girlfriends/etc., and generally uproot your life for weekend and show up to a tournament with 25 guys because no one was comfortable going to an event with unfamiliar rules.

That being said, I'm on team Frontline doing this as much 'business as usual' as possible.

In specific:

Basics:

Everything here is as I would do it (half the tables will forget about Mysterious anything anyway! ). Aegis Defense Lines are a non-issue and Bastions are a deathtrap with a giant target painted on it, based on our little bit of experience, everyone is comfortable with Seize and Random Game Length, and the new Night Fighting rules are actually pretty good.

I'd at least consider removing Warlord Traits altogether, since they are a random factor that could potentially unbalance things the same as Mysterious terrain. Just my thoughts.

The Mission:

I'm no fan of the BAO mission as I think it creates too much potential for draws, but everyone is very familiar with it and until a more authoritative 6th missions packet starts to take shape, it is the format I'd be most likely to commit to for a bigger event, since it's tried and true.

Hammer and Anvil being out in large events due simply to the table layout was no surprise to anyone I'm sure; I'd consider using First Blood as a bracket point instead of Preserve: First Blood is dependent on things like luck in the first turn and Seizing and so on, but a player can deploy in such a way that they minimize the risk of giving that point away, and everyone is just as much at risk of giving it up, while Preserve becomes an army-build issue where some lists are going to hand out that point like candy and some lists may not even give it up once, and it creates situations where a player could be stuck giving that point up in order to try and win. Since the bracket points determine pairings and break ties for placings, you could run into a situation where a guy gets an easier day or ends up with an award based on his opponent's army builds.

As an aside, the Relic is a joke for competitive play. I'd be shocked if I ever saw that in a tournament.

Psykers:

The BRB includes a re-roll for powers above your Mastery Level anyway, but allowing a re-roll for unusable powers seems legit.

Points:

Guys will have more experience with the game in two months, and higher points opens the Allies and Fortifications doors a bit wider, but I'd say that 1500 is the best bet. 1750 at max.

Forge World:

LOL nope! Most guys will be shouldering the yoke of still ironing out the kinks of the new system, in addition to playing a bunch of games against armies they've never squared off against, builds they've never seen, and players they don't know, in a game system they don't have a lot of experience with. Put a FW cherry on top and you're creating the potential for problems. There's enough out there for guys to have to deal with that's printed in books they can go to their LGS and buy, let alone FW stuff.

That being said, GW accualy is Dolan and I'm getting ready to not be surprised when they FAQ everything from FW into the main game, LoLLerZ!

Counts as:

Huge landmine here. It's a big event and it creates a lot of front-end work to approve counts-as stuff before game 1, but it might be necessary. Counts-as Allies are right out. If on the one hand you're going to say that the exceptionally expensive and quite difficult to acquire Forge World component enriches the game and should be allowed, and then let oddball, inaccurate models in for counts-as allies, freeing guys from having buy the models, that's Chewbacca Defense all the way. Having to remember two armies' worth of potential counts-as is just going to create rough feelings in games. It's like when Marty went to the diner in Back to the Future...

"can this wonky scratch-build be a Vendetta??"
"you want a Vendetta, pal, you gotta pay for it!"

Missing Anything?

Not really. Keep things simple and in line with the current format for now, the event will be more successful for it.

Of course, my own local events are as 6th as possible, but I'm not trying to pull in a hundred guys (yet!)

I can get on board with most of that.

The counts-as debacle that permeated the end of 5th is going to cause some major headaches for the initial 6th ed tournaments.

I would like to see a Missions packet, similar to the BAO packet, that is specifically geared toward and uses the 6th ed missions. Though admittedly probably not Relic. The BAO missions while fairly well balanced ended up becoming very stale by the end of the event. Having more variety would be nice.

pretre wrote:The problem with Forgeworld is that not everyone is familiar with all of the FW books. It adds another level of preparation.

The only ones who really need to be fully familiar with forgeworld are the tournament orginizers/judges, not every player is familiar with every codex either.


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RiTides wrote:Including FW allies, even?

Sure, it would be cool to have a Death Corps army call in Elysians for some air support.

vhwolf wrote:

pretre wrote:The problem with Forgeworld is that not everyone is familiar with all of the FW books. It adds another level of preparation.

The only ones who really need to be fully familiar with forgeworld are the tournament orginizers/judges, not every player is familiar with every codex either.

But it is much easier to be familiar with all the codices since you have easier access to the rules and have a higher chance of having actually played against the units from a codex as opposed to most of the FW units.

OverwatchCNC wrote:

vhwolf wrote:

pretre wrote:The problem with Forgeworld is that not everyone is familiar with all of the FW books. It adds another level of preparation.

The only ones who really need to be fully familiar with forgeworld are the tournament orginizers/judges, not every player is familiar with every codex either.

But it is much easier to be familiar with all the codices since you have easier access to the rules and have a higher chance of having actually played against the units from a codex as opposed to most of the FW units.

But why do you need to know all of the rules for everyone elses army. As long as the orginizer knows it is legal and they can show you the rules than it is a fair game.

Reecius wrote:

=Basics

We won't be using mysterious terrain. Some of these are just too unbalancing for some armies.

We won't be using mysterious objectives unless they are predetermined, which will be explained below.

We will be using Fortifications, but not Fortresses of Redemption or Skyshield Landing Pads as they are just flat out too big, particularly if both players bring one.

Warlord Traits: Frankie had the idea of rolling once and then choosing that number power on any of the three traits. This means the system is still random, but it gives you the ability to avoid rolling a worthless trait. Feedback on this one would be appreciated.

Allies are in. They bring more balance to the game as IMO, the core mechanics of the game are what now create imbalance. When everyone's power level is cranked to 10, it helps to level the playing field.

Terrain will be pre-arranged. Having players arrange terrain just isn't practical for a tournament from a time perspective.

Book Night Fighting will be in as will Random Game Length and Stealing of the Initiative.

About what I'd do, though warlord traits are still just by nature highly valuable to some armies and often worthless to others, most of this just seems like changes to make it actually possible to function which is fine.

= We will be using a "BAO" (Bay Area Open) style mission similar to what we did last year.
=Psykers

Not a fan of this particular ruleset as it gets really wonky results sometimes (played in an event once where I tabled each of my opponents with a relatively easy list, including one with an almost identical list just different upgrade weapons on two troops units, he got best general, I got nothing ) but in the end, between its own wonkiness and the 6E rules...nothing is really going to reflect much of anything appropriately so why not

If you roll a power you can't use, either because of Force Charge or the inability to use it such as a Broodlord rolling a shooting power, you can reroll till you get one you can use.

Sounds good.

Points Level

This is the one where we're really scratching our heads. We want to go with 1500 as the game really slows down and counter-intuitively, the better you are the slower it goes. Why? Every little micro-movement becomes really important. It bogs the game down a ton. We just don't see games finishing in the same time limit we had previously with 1750pt limits. Experience will be the best teacher here and it may turn out that we are wrong, but we have to post a points limit before we have any experience, hahaha! So, we're leaning towards 1500 at this point. What do you all think?

1500 at an "early edition" game is fine, I used to prefer 2000 but everything has gone topsy-turvey so 1500 works.

Forge World

We propose to allow any units with the 40K approved stamp to be allowed in the game.

personally I'd allow anything that's isn't sporting Structure Points/isn't a gargantuan creature in, as many FW units exist that are designed for normal 40k play but just don't have the stamp and likely won't get it because they don't have another book to be featured in.

=Counts As Armies and WYSIWYG

I anticipate this is going to get crazy. Can anyone say, "counts as allies?"

Personally?

I'd enforce strict WYSIWYG with exceptions only for well done conversions/scratchbuilt models to tone avoid craziness.

Thanks a ton for the excellent feedback. A lot of good ideas and opinions here.

I am really excited to see how things pan out! Golden Throne and NOVA are going to provide a lot of good data. Mathias, I think Adepticon is in a really good position to use that info to put a great format out there.

Rounds will be our standard 2hours and 15minutes, which will be WAY more than enough time for 1500 points, even with getting to know the rules. We can then start working our way back up to 1750 if it doesn't result in a lot of unfinished games.

The mission is victory conditions, where each is separate, like Adepticon. It allows for multiple paths to victory. And the Tie Breaker points are only for Bracketing, not for breaking actual ties in the game.

We actually don't have that many ties in our format. We found that less than 15% of games were ties. I think that is acceptable and it allows people to play for a tie when they get a really rough match-up.

Very few players said the games got stale (OverwatchCNC withstanding!) as it resulted in a different game every time. It also keeps things familiar and simple, which will help a lot, I think. We can then start altering it as we go to better fit 6th ed.

@Vaktathi
Hmm, in our format if you table your opponent you win....so maybe the format you played in was a modified version of ours?

Warlord traits is a weird one. I don't think dropping it is the solution, nor do I think picking them is the solution as you can combo out some really powerful armies with it. We can always easily change this if it turns out to not be the best solution.

We are open to including mysterious objectives if they are predetermined such as with skyfire. Some of them are just so powerful in certain situations that we find it to be a bit much, same with terrain. It can create really, really unbalancing situations.

I think the argument that there is too much gong on for players to include FW too is somewhat valid, but the downside to that is if we wait, then people will get used to playing it the way we do now, and then will be resistant to FW based upon the same reasons they do now! hahaha

I honestly and truly think the game will be MORE FUN with FW. We use it here all the time and find it to be neither confusing, OP or too expensive. The too expensive argument to me doesn't hold water either as unless you come to an event with every codex and WD rules supplement, there isn't much argument there. And you can get any of the rules online from a certain Bay of Pirates, or with a simple Google Search if you want to, just as you can with the Codices.

We go to FW tournaments often, and honestly, at an event (particularly 1500pts) you don't see much if any of it. At the last tournament we went to with FW I played ZERO FW units! haha.

I think all it will take will be a little bit of acclimation to it, and it will be second nature and all of a sudden we get to use twice as many toys as we did previously. I only see positives.

By requiring players to have the rules on hand, and with the long time limits, there should be plenty of time to get up to speed on what this stuff does, particularly if there are only 1 or 2 units in there to get to know.

We'll come up with a system for counts as allies, but I think a strict no proxy rule will be a definite. That is going to be a bit of an ambiguous one by its nature. We'll work it out as we go, but start with some guidelines to help people out.

Again, thanks for the feedback! Keep it coming, it really is appreciated.

Reecius wrote:By requiring players to have the rules on hand, and with the long time limits, there should be plenty of time to get up to speed on what this stuff does, particularly if there are only 1 or 2 units in there to get to know.

This would alleviate a lot of concerns. As long as there's time for me to review pre-game, I'm cool.

On the psyker thing, my army can't take any of the new psychic abillitys. A lot of the new powers are much more awsome then the original powers these models get. I think getting a useless power is part of the gamble of trying to upgrade. It feels like your taking out a mechanic that is used to balance the buff many psykers get in 6th edition because "that sucks, I got a useless power. My game is now ruined". These people need to suck it up. IMHO I think they made the game much more random so the same armys wouldnt be dominating so much. Mabey it would be fun to play that way (no matter what people say its pretty random anyways, theres just ways to mitigate that randomness which is a big part of competitive play and list building). Once people get used to it they will find was around the new random elements.

The issue is with the Psykers being super random is they become to risky to take....much like a weirdboy...

And Reece's propsoed rules only allow you to reroll if you Can't use the power. If you get a sucky power you can use you are stuck with it, or the primaris. I can see this being fair, as paying 100ish points for a model that gets shafted in a single dice roll is pretty lame.

Grimgob wrote:On the psyker thing, my army can't take any of the new psychic abillitys. A lot of the new powers are much more awsome then the original powers these models get. I think getting a useless power is part of the gamble of trying to upgrade. It feels like your taking out a mechanic that is used to balance the buff many psykers get in 6th edition because "that sucks, I got a useless power. My game is now ruined". These people need to suck it up. IMHO I think they made the game much more random so the same armys wouldnt be dominating so much. Mabey it would be fun to play that way (no matter what people say its pretty random anyways, theres just ways to mitigate that randomness which is a big part of competitive play and list building). Once people get used to it they will find was around the new random elements.

QFT. I have found many of the random elements are adding much more balance to the game than imbalance. Too bad if you get a bunk power or warlord trait! You can still win the game, of the 3 games I played in the tournament last Saturday my Warlord trait mattered once and it wasn't game changing.

The precedent was already set for rerolling an unusable power in the BRB, we just applied it to an additional set of circumstances to make it more fair is all.


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@Pretre

That is what we were thinking. It gives plenty of time to figure out what you are up against.

Reecius wrote:=Basics

We won't be using mysterious terrain. Some of these are just too unbalancing for some armies.

Understandable, though unfortunate. Personally, I think a lot of boards could benefit from a Mysterious River running through it, but this is fine.

We won't be using mysterious objectives unless they are predetermined, which will be explained below.

I don't like this, for reasons I'll also explain below.

We will be using Fortifications, but not Fortresses of Redemption or Skyshield Landing Pads as they are just flat out too big, particularly if both players bring one.

Fine, though I wonder about the Skyshields already in your tournament terrain collection - will you be removing those, or just not using the rules for them?

Warlord Traits: Frankie had the idea of rolling once and then choosing that number power on any of the three traits. This means the system is still random, but it gives you the ability to avoid rolling a worthless trait. Feedback on this one would be appreciated.

Interesting idea; have to sit and look at the table (it's not in front of me), but that seems like it might be an okay approach. It does mitigate the risk factor a bit, though - if I choose to try and roll for "Warlord gains +1" to charge ranges," I should have to risk "Everyone w/in 12" gets Warlord's leadership in your Tyranid army."

Allies are in. They bring more balance to the game as IMO, the core mechanics of the game are what now create imbalance. When everyone's power level is cranked to 10, it helps to level the playing field.

Short term, definitely. Will be interesting to see what trends develop over time, though. I'd like to add a requirement that Allies be painted in a manner distinct from the primary army, though - I don't want to have to tell one set of unpainted Marines from their unpainted Allied Blood Angel buddies. If people really want to use Allies, make them put in the effort to do so.

Terrain will be pre-arranged. Having players arrange terrain just isn't practical for a tournament from a time perspective.

Absolutely.

Book Night Fighting will be in as will Random Game Length and Stealing of the Initiative.

Good.

= We will be using a "BAO" (Bay Area Open) style mission similar to what we did last year.

What this means is that we will essentially have a single, multi-layered mission with different deployments. What we have found is that the mission is sufficiently complex enough that when combined with differing terrain, deployment and opponents, provides for a unique play experience every game that also allows for multiple paths to victory. Playing the same mission also means that you are never left trying to figure out what to do in a given mission. You already know it and get better at it each round. It allows you to focus on playing your best instead of trying to figure out how to play.

It's also a rather different game. I don't mind the difference, but armies that are good at the BAO mission are certainly different than armies that are good at a standard book mission.

I don't like the absence of "Big Guns Never Tire" or "The Scouring" - having the occasional mission with scoring Fast Attack units (which also count against you if they die) makes for a nice change, and encourages balanced tourney lists to diversify into those areas.

The first victory condition will be 2 Capture and Control objectives on 40mm bases that can be placed anywhere in your deployment zone at least 6" from a table edge or 12" from another objective. The player controlling the most of these (as per the BRB) wins this victory condition.

There will also be 3 Seize Ground Objectives on 25mm bases which must be placed outside of either player's deployment zone, 6" from a table edge and 12" from another objective following the rules in the BRB. The player controlling the most of these (as per the BRB) wins this victory condition. We are 90% sure we will allow at least one of these to always give Skyfire to a unit within 3" of it so long as you control that objective (ANY one unit within 3", not just the scoring unit controlling it) to mitigate the threat Flyers pose to armies without a lot of counters. What are your alls feelings on this? We think it is fair as it allows armies to fight back against Flyers but it isn't a gimme. You have to get into position to use it and the other player can prevent you from doing this. We think it is a good compromise but would love some feedback.

Hell no. The "answer" to flyers isn't to hand everyone guaranteed anti-air on every table, every game. You complete negate the metagame decision at that point; everyone can just bring their normal shooty stuff, and if they happen to be fighting a flyer that game, they'll know to go park their Hive Guard/Lootas/Long Fangs on that objective.

Yes, not every army is equal against Flyers at the moment; my Tyranids are painfully aware of that, believe me. But this looks like a serious overcorrection. I'd rather you stuck with normal mysterious objective rules, so that there is always the risk to Flyers, without the guarantee.

The third victory condition will be Victory Points as in the old system. We wanted to keep KPs but due to the amount of Deathstar style units we anticipate will become prevalent in the game, the KP system becomes silly. KPs are meant to balance out MSU, which is still really powerful in 6th (if not BETTER) but now that the Draigowing style units are going to become the norm, saying destroying one of those is the equivalent of taking out a unit of Grots is not fair. So, Victory Points, while more mentally taxing at the end of a long game, seems to be the best bet. Half points if the unit is immobilized or below half strength at games end, full points if it is destroyed or broken at game's end. Whoever has more VP's wins this victory condition. An alternative to this we are considering is to say a unit is worth 1 KP for every 25 or 50 points it costs. You then put this number on your army list to make the math at the end of the game easy. The downside here though, is that it creates situations where having multiple units just over the break point can mean your army will give up a great deal more points proportionally than an opponent who has a lot of units just under the break point.

I'm not certain Draigowing will be as big a problem as you think, at least in the context of a BAO-style mission. Consider: single units can no longer hold multiple objectives. If you spend 50% of your points on a Deathstar unit, even if it is scoring, at best you'll only be able to hold 1 of the 5 objectives on the board with it. It seems like being only worth 1 KP is a valid benefit to that new limitation.

But why old-style VPs at all? Why not put The Relic in play? Add that controlling The Relic counts as controlling an objective for the purposes of only letting a unit control one at a time. Or how about the various secondary objectives defined by the rulebook? Let Fast Attack units control Seize Ground objectives, and make them worth a VP when killed. Let Heavy Support hold Capture & Control objectives, and make THEM worth a VP. For that matter, you don't mention new-style VPs at all - if you allow Warlord traits, what'll you do with the "+1 VP for killing enemy characters in challenges" ability, if you have no VPs?

We will use 3 Tie Breaker Points for bracketing purposes per the BAO style. As the old BAO Tie Breaker points were really similar to the new ones in the book, we'll largely keep these apart from First Blood which we find is just too easy for the player going first to get.

Slay the Warlord
Linebreaker
Preserve Your Focres=You get this is half or more of your scoring units, rounding up, are not destroyed or broken at game's end.

We will use the following deployments:
Dawn of War (6th ed version, was called pitched battle in 5th)
Vanguard Strike (triangle deployment)
Spearhead from 5th

We are considering Hammer and Anvil but in a tournament setting where tables are butt to butt, it can get really, really inconvenient. What do you guys think? I just don't think think it's practical and Spearhead is pretty close to it.

Agreed on logistics of Hammer & Anvil, though it's a pity - the deployment type is actually more fun than I expected.

This mission then stays very true to the book missions as we like to do, but also (hopefully) balances out some of the inequities those missions have. For example the mission in the book "The Relic" is just so unfair for shooty armies or if you have a scoring Deathstar such as Nob Bikers who can just drive forward, grab it, and then drive away. They are tough enough to just shrug off any damage.

If you kick over to "sum of VPs," rather than 3 independent missions scored win/loss, the problems seem to diminish. Nob Bikers may have the objective (keep in mind they can only drive 6" away a turn), but that means they're not scoring/contesting any of the other objective types.

=Psykers

If you roll a power you can't use, either because of Force Charge or the inability to use it such as a Broodlord rolling a shooting power, you can reroll till you get one you can use.

No. This ONLY benefits Broodlords, as they are the only psyker out there with BS 0. It guarantees them Blessings & Maledictions; as they have Infiltrate, they can actually USE Maledictions on turn 1, which is otherwise very rare (most have 24" range). Too much of a benefit for that particular model, and no effect anywhere else.

Points Level

This is the one where we're really scratching our heads. We want to go with 1500 as the game really slows down and counter-intuitively, the better you are the slower it goes. Why? Every little micro-movement becomes really important. It bogs the game down a ton. We just don't see games finishing in the same time limit we had previously with 1750pt limits. Experience will be the best teacher here and it may turn out that we are wrong, but we have to post a points limit before we have any experience, hahaha! So, we're leaning towards 1500 at this point. What do you all think?

We also find that at this points level you can't pack in all the goodies, which is good and bad. For one, most Deathstars fit in at 1500pts, and as such they can really dominate the game. On the flip side, it also means that you can't bring a deathstar AND crazy support units. We're finding it can be a bit more rock, paper, scissors at 1500pts.

We're open to non-traditional points levels too, such as 1600, or 1650. Now is a good time to throw off old traditions if they no longer fit the dynamic of the game.

Start with 1500, preferably at 2:15 or 2:30. Revise as people get better with the rules. 2 hours for 1500 was too short last weekend, but will probably be fine by next year.

Forge World

Most of you know we at Frontline love Forge World and have pushed to have it in tournaments previously but were met with a lot of community opposition.

The biggest objection previously was that FW upset the balance of the game. Well, hahaha, no worries about that now! Game balance went out the window with 6th in a big way and the power combos that the game provides don't need FW. The worst offenders that people complained about were Vehicles (Achilles, Lucious Drop Pod, Caestes Assault Ram) and those have all been hit with the NERF bat due to Hull Points, so I don't see it being as big of an issue.

Hull Points do nothing to alter the Lucious Drop Pod or the Hades Breeching Drill; the Ram actually gets BETTER (via the Flyer rules).

The second biggest objection was that most players didn't know the FW rules. Well, now everyone is relearning the rules and this is a perfect time to open the doors and broaden our horizons. I think particularly the inclusion of the FW AA units will go a long way to helping to even out some of the crazier lists. Mostly though, FW units just add a lot of character to armies and the vast majority of them are under powered if anything.

We propose to allow any units with the 40K approved stamp to be allowed in the game.

Ultimately I think FW increases the fun of the game and the diversity of toys we get to play with. What do you all think?

Relearning the core rules != learning all the FW rules. For starters, I picked up my 6e rulebook at my FLGS; I can't do the same with FW books.

I don't mind FW units, most of the time. It requires that people who want to bring them a) have the rules themselves; b) offer the rules WITHOUT PROMPTING to their opponents; and c) accept that any game w/FW units will go slower.

I don't object to your desire to bring FW more mainstream; just don't pretend that any of the underlying complaints people have are any different now than they were in June.

=Counts As Armies and WYSIWYG

I anticipate this is going to get crazy. Can anyone say, "counts as allies?"

Yeah, that is going to get bananas.

So, we'd love to hear some ideas on where to draw the line? Particularly with FW models, this gets crazy. So, what do you do when you have someone who has built an awesome AdMech army using all kinds of beautiful conversion but is using two different codices and FW models? Even worse, the guy with a bunch of half painted models or models from his and 4 friends' collections that all have different paint jobs and represent an allied army. That could very easily get confusing.

We don't want to limit people's creativity, so what are some ideas to make this easy? My thoughts were to include a hand-out for players who are doing this to give to their opponent that includes at the very least a unit to unit breakdown, ie. this unit in my army=this unit from this codex, and etc. Preferably with a brief stat breakdown.

The point of WYSIWYG is that you can look at the model, and know what you're fighting. I love Hulk's AdMech/daemon army for its appearance, but it's difficult to play against on the table. Adding Allies to it is, I think, just too much.

I'd go with a zero-tolerance stance on WYSIWYG for any army including Allies. If you want to use Allies, then you'll have to use the appropriate models, painted in a manner that lets your opponent know at a glance what he's looking at. If you aren't using Allies, then "counts as" is a little more tolerable.

I'd also go zero-tolerance on FW units; if you want to use it, you'll have to have the official model; that one is mostly for the TOs, as otherwise you get to decide case-by-case if someone's homebrew Ram is sufficiently similar. The argument for including FW rules has often fallen back on the "let me use my cool models." Fine, but you have to USE the cool models.

So Misfortune and Precognition are not upgrades to Eldars doom and fortune. So if a Divination psyker that doesnt have Reserves (and since were not rolling for mysterious) they get to reroll instead of picking primaris power because they didnt get a power they could use. how is that fair to armys that don't get any powers when every other ability on that chart is tits (no cover save, 4+ inv, overwatch at BS, reroll all failed save/to hit, and reroll any save your opponant makes)? if you give one side a win win with no risk why wouldn't you always go for it. Or maybey the random roll was put in to make you think about giving up your original ability.

Grimgob wrote:So Misfortune and Precognition are not upgrades to Eldars doom and fortune.

They weren't before. Precog only works on the Psyker, not his unit, and Misfortune is more of an upgrade for Null Zone.

Misfortune makes the target unit reroll all succesful saving throws (how is that not doom plus reroll succesful inv. saves?) and precog is still a good power.

RE: Lucious drop pod - You still can't assault from reserve, right? So what's the beef with it? Did they specifically FAQ that to work?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I think if you allow forgeworld, there is no need to have static objectives. The forgeworld items that most armies can take allow for some kind of skyfire. This will actually encourage people to use the forgeworld units and learn what they do imo.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another question you might ask is, are forgeworld armies allowed? If so, what can they ally with? It might be easier to just leave them out, but why just disallow them and allow other things?

Whoa, I just realized what you did with the missions. Giving each player a guarateed skyfire granting objective is a terrible idea. You can buy skyfire weapons in the form of Aegis and Bastions, giving it out for free means players no longer have to make the hard choices about how to build their list to deal with flyers and instead you are just giving it away for free.

That is really bad mission design imo not good mission design. You are taking a huge part of the game, accessing skyfire and building lists to deal with flyers, and throwing it out completely. This is what I was talking about in my previous posts about changing the core rules too much and creating imbalance through trying to create balance.

This is why mysterious objectives should be included, it gives you the chance of having a skyfire objective but it is not guaranteed and therefore doesn't create a situation where people don't want to play flyers. Honestly with that mission design I will just be playing Missile Wolves or psyfleman spam again because I know I will have access to skyfire, knowing that there is no way I would want to bring Scythewing crons or SR BAs because everyone will have skyfire access and you've just effectively nerfed flyers through your mission design.

Dok wrote:RE: Lucious drop pod - You still can't assault from reserve, right? So what's the beef with it? Did they specifically FAQ that to work?

You can't Assault from Reserves unless specifically allowed to do so. The Lucius says a Dread may assault out of it; that's specific permission.

(Vanguard Vets, Ymgarl Genestealers, CSM Lesser Daemons, and Zagstruk-led Storm Boyz are, I think, the complete list of core 40k units that can assault from Reserve right now.)

If everyone is playing the same number of objectives and missions why don't you (as TO) roll for mysterious terrain (tourny wide 1 roll each trees/river) and mysterious objectives. its still random but will standardiz every table at the tournament. you would just have to have set placement for objectives each mission (but could change positions of them between each game directed per mission primer hand out. This also could help you set the tone for each mission, just anounce the mysteries when the round starts.

Janthkin wrote:

Dok wrote:RE: Lucious drop pod - You still can't assault from reserve, right? So what's the beef with it? Did they specifically FAQ that to work?

You can't Assault from Reserves unless specifically allowed to do so. The Lucius says a Dread may assault out of it; that's specific permission.

(Vanguard Vets, Ymgarl Genestealers, CSM Lesser Daemons, and Zagstruk-led Storm Boyz are, I think, the complete list of core 40k units that can assault from Reserve right now.)

Then why can't units coming on from reserve in assault vehicles assault? Like land raiders that outflank through the use of Saga of the Hunter or Khan's ability... Don't have my BRB in front of me so I am just pondering off the top of my head.

OverwatchCNC wrote:

Janthkin wrote:

Dok wrote:RE: Lucious drop pod - You still can't assault from reserve, right? So what's the beef with it? Did they specifically FAQ that to work?

You can't Assault from Reserves unless specifically allowed to do so. The Lucius says a Dread may assault out of it; that's specific permission.

(Vanguard Vets, Ymgarl Genestealers, CSM Lesser Daemons, and Zagstruk-led Storm Boyz are, I think, the complete list of core 40k units that can assault from Reserve right now.)

Then why can't units coming on from reserve in assault vehicles assault? Like land raiders that outflank through the use of Saga of the Hunter or Khan's ability... Don't have my BRB in front of me so I am just pondering off the top of my head.

Ymgarl can "move and assault as normal" when coming in from Reserves. Assault vehicles allow units to assault after disembarking, but are silent about Reserves.

Basically, if your rules say "you can assault from Reserves," you can. Assault vehicles don't have that.

Hey guys, the proposed Skyfire objective is NOT IN EITHER PLAYERS DEPLOYMENT ZONE. I think there was some misunderstanding, there.

It would be in no-man's land and you have to control it to use it, which means the other player can stop you from controlling it by contesting it.

It is in no way a gimme. At all.

But, I hear the argument for FW AA units and Flyers as that would put everyone on a level playing field.

As for requiring the models? That opens a whole new can of worms as then people get mad because they are expensive and they can kit bash them.

The only way to fairly treat it, is to apply the same rules to them that we do for all models. If a conversion or scratch build is close to the real thing, using the same guidelines we do for normal models, it would be cool.

No Forgeworld army lists, just the units. The Army Lists get too crazy and confusing.

MVBrandt had a good idea to mitigate Hammer and Anvil, you shorten the deployment zone by 12" on one of the edges so that it is more like a distorted SPearhead. This mitigates reaching across the entire table but keeps the deployment in the game to an extent.

I think possibly including The Scouring or Big Guns Never tire in missions may be a good idea as it changes things up a bit and it is an easy inclusion.

We considered VPs but then you have weird situations. How do you score objectives compared to units? VPs for destroying units will quickly outstrip the value of objectives for some lists if you make objectives worth 3 VP each per the book, while some lists will have far less.

Keeping them separate keeps the playing field level. However, one advantage of combing them is that ties are far less likely. It is something to consider.

And the Warlord trait is an easy fix, you either simply ignore that and choose from one of the other 2, or we make the character killed in a challenge count for double VPs or something. Easy to fix.

Good ideas here though, it is good to see other people's perspectives.

Janthkin wrote:

OverwatchCNC wrote:

Janthkin wrote:

Dok wrote:RE: Lucious drop pod - You still can't assault from reserve, right? So what's the beef with it? Did they specifically FAQ that to work?

You can't Assault from Reserves unless specifically allowed to do so. The Lucius says a Dread may assault out of it; that's specific permission.

(Vanguard Vets, Ymgarl Genestealers, CSM Lesser Daemons, and Zagstruk-led Storm Boyz are, I think, the complete list of core 40k units that can assault from Reserve right now.)

Then why can't units coming on from reserve in assault vehicles assault? Like land raiders that outflank through the use of Saga of the Hunter or Khan's ability... Don't have my BRB in front of me so I am just pondering off the top of my head.

Ymgarl can "move and assault as normal" when coming in from Reserves. Assault vehicles allow units to assault after disembarking, but are silent about Reserves.

Basically, if your rules say "you can assault from Reserves," you can. Assault vehicles don't have that.

Thanks for the clarification.

Janthkin wrote:

OverwatchCNC wrote:

Janthkin wrote:

Dok wrote:RE: Lucious drop pod - You still can't assault from reserve, right? So what's the beef with it? Did they specifically FAQ that to work?

You can't Assault from Reserves unless specifically allowed to do so. The Lucius says a Dread may assault out of it; that's specific permission.

(Vanguard Vets, Ymgarl Genestealers, CSM Lesser Daemons, and Zagstruk-led Storm Boyz are, I think, the complete list of core 40k units that can assault from Reserve right now.)

Then why can't units coming on from reserve in assault vehicles assault? Like land raiders that outflank through the use of Saga of the Hunter or Khan's ability... Don't have my BRB in front of me so I am just pondering off the top of my head.

Ymgarl can "move and assault as normal" when coming in from Reserves. Assault vehicles allow units to assault after disembarking, but are silent about Reserves.

Basically, if your rules say "you can assault from Reserves," you can. Assault vehicles don't have that.

The pod has the assault vehicle special rule. It's not mentioned in the forgeworld FAQ, but I think this would just be replaced by the assault vehicle special rule in the rule book. If that's the case, then the lucious is kinda crappy.

Out of curiosity what is confusing about the FW army lists??

Dok wrote:
Another question you might ask is, are forgeworld armies allowed? If so, what can they ally with? It might be easier to just leave them out, but why just disallow them and allow other things?

FYI: FW already released an ally matrix for all FW lists.

That's why I like forgeworld. They keep their business tight. They always have the updates ready to go when they need to be.

For those that are curious.
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/a/allies.pdf

FW released an ally matrix? No kidding, I missed that.

ForgeWorld models is my only concern. If a opponent provides the material to view on the FW model in question then people properly prepare and see what that model can do. If not then that is an unfair advantage to those people who do not pick up FW books.

So perhaps an open list would solve the problem all together?

Adam LongWalker wrote:ForgeWorld models is my only concern. If a opponent provides the material to view on the FW model in question then people properly prepare and see what that model can do. If not then that is an unfair advantage to those people who do not pick up FW books.

So perhaps an open list would solve the problem all together?

So by that logic it is an unfair advantage to play Orks against someone who has not bought the ork codex. Everyone should always bring the rules for anything they are playing to any game if not they do have an unfair advantage.

There really is middle ground in this... it bothers me that both threads talking about allowing FW are so polarizing.

At the moment, I think there could be problems with going all-in on FW... but I am certainly open to it. People over-stating the case on both sides doesn't help things either way.

It's going to be challenging to work out all the kinks... but I think it's worth trying. However, it's not a complete slam dunk, and there are plenty of reasons why... but no reason why we can't have an intelligent debate/conversation about it.

vhwolf wrote:

Adam LongWalker wrote:ForgeWorld models is my only concern. If a opponent provides the material to view on the FW model in question then people properly prepare and see what that model can do. If not then that is an unfair advantage to those people who do not pick up FW books.

So perhaps an open list would solve the problem all together?

So by that logic it is an unfair advantage to play Orks against someone who has not bought the ork codex. Everyone should always bring the rules for anything they are playing to any game if not they do have an unfair advantage.

Is the ork codex a Forgeworld Book? No. Welcome to the world of Ignore.

The only issue I have is the point values....I feel that 1500 is too low. Bigger games are better, IMO - make it 1750, 1850, even 1999, anything higher than 1500. I see the point about not being able to take everything and making hard choices, but I want to use my toys :(

Bring on the Forgeworld, to hell with Mysterious terrain, and 1999 or bust!

This thread is great.

Hey Reece! Good to see you becoming the paragon of the community you were destined to be

I'm coming back to 40k for casual play, we will see how long I stay casual with my 'type A' personality.

I've been playing "the other game" and I did want to say that, even with warmachine's pedigree as well balanced, tourney game, the main rulebook missions are not used in any tournaments.

Every year they release a tourney ruleset, and the ruleset was born from a third party outside the organization. The guy who does it still isn't an official insider, but the parent company does work closely with him as he makes his tourney doc.

Things that are not covered in the main warmachine rulebook that are required for tourney play, that you should cover in your doc.

-ROUND TIME LIMITS

-TIEBREAKERS

-WIN CONDITIONS THAT FORCE AGGRESSIVE ACTIONS

-EXTENSIVELY TESTED SCENARIOS (MULTIPLE)

Getting the community together on this, and through including TOs in the discussion and testing of this living format is the key here. Don't be afraid to make adjustments, edit the document and fix imbalances, and definitely plan to throw the whole thing away every year and have a new document. Adepticon can be your anchor point for it.

There are many reasons why the book missions are completely inappropriate for tourney play. Many of which yourself and Yakface have mentioned. A couple quick ones are...

-terrain placement is impractical.
-objective placement is skewed big time (my IG is already blatantly abusing this)
-mysterious terrain and objectives is time consuming and burdensome for players to track
-the sideways deployment type is impractical for tourney tables
-and the bottom line is that the objectives of the book missions just don't force enough aggressive action to make the game dynamic. With all the sound and fury of characters, challenges and random charges, the game is a shootout.

I glanced briefly at the specifics, and I do want to say that you are really going the right direction, and as long as you weigh feedback by everyone, and don't fall in love with any of your groups ideas, then this is going to turn out well.

I would like to advocate for the fortifications to ALL be made legal, and I propose a solution. As per the terrain placement document, fortifications are counted against the terrain density of a table. When any player has fortifications, they could call for a judge. They could say "I want my aegis to go HERE" and the judge would determine the area that the terrain will be going in, and remove a piece of terrain that was in that area to compensate. Remember that by allowing the aegis but not the skyshield or the fortress, you are allowing players to increase terrain density. No matter what fortification gets placed, terrain MUST be removed.

And I've TOd tourneys before. It would be a simple and objective task for judges to briskly move around the hall and make the terrain adjustments. And I think fortifications are worth it.

And one last suggestion, then I will go back to following and supporting this thread from the shadows...

Don't directly ban anything unless your meta devolves into brokenness. This is why it is so important to re-invent the document every year. If fortiifications are too good, don't ban them, just create new mission parameters that make fortifications less valuable. If a certain ally combination is wreaking havoc, find out what element of a blanaced force it is lacking, and make missing that piece hurt in the next mission.

I LOVE bringing on forgeworld, we all know that is coming anyway.

I'm rooting for this to get embraced and maybe become the 40k equivalent of steamroller. It could really make 40k tourneys something great.

vhwolf wrote:

Adam LongWalker wrote:ForgeWorld models is my only concern. If a opponent provides the material to view on the FW model in question then people properly prepare and see what that model can do. If not then that is an unfair advantage to those people who do not pick up FW books.

So perhaps an open list would solve the problem all together?

So by that logic it is an unfair advantage to play Orks against someone who has not bought the ork codex. Everyone should always bring the rules for anything they are playing to any game if not they do have an unfair advantage.

No, but you should always have your codex with you to show your opponent stuff they have the questions about. I think that's the jist of what people are saying.

Adam LongWalker wrote:

vhwolf wrote:

Adam LongWalker wrote:ForgeWorld models is my only concern. If a opponent provides the material to view on the FW model in question then people properly prepare and see what that model can do. If not then that is an unfair advantage to those people who do not pick up FW books.

So perhaps an open list would solve the problem all together?

So by that logic it is an unfair advantage to play Orks against someone who has not bought the ork codex. Everyone should always bring the rules for anything they are playing to any game if not they do have an unfair advantage.

Is the ork codex a Forgeworld Book? No. Welcome to the world of Ignore.

My point was not everyone buys every codex, and that in every game you are supposed to bring your relevant rules to the table.

@Dogstar34

Yeah, I hear you. I think we will start at 1500 just to ease everyone into this and then work our way up to 1750.

I anticipate by the time we get to BAO, we'll be back up to that level. So long as games are finishing to completion in the time limit allowed, we'll be solid.

@Shep

Shep! What up buddy, how you been? Man, you vanished! We've been playing Warmachine too, but since 6th dropped we've been all over it like a cheap suit.

We emulated a lot of what you guys did with the Sprue Posse GT, that was a great event and a lot of the concepts you guys put forth helped us to run events a ton, so thanks!

I agree with a lot of your points. We definitely want to use the best ideas, regardless of where they come from.

That said, using the huge pieces of terrain seems like it will be tough to work in to the system. With all the increased time expenditures needed to play the game (rolling abilities, placing fortifications, roll powers, etc.) having to remove terrain will be another point that requires a fair bit of time. When you have 100+ players, it really can get crazy trying to make sure every table with fortifications is properly set, etc.

I am not saying that it is impossible by any means, but I think we may try it out at local level RTTs first, and then implement it into larger GTs once we a better idea of how it will work.

And this tournament guideline set will DEFINITELY be a living document. We will be adjusting it as we go, and refining it with experience. What we're doing now is setting a starting point so that we have a place to start from.

The only thing I firmly oppose is the random terrain as it is so damn powerful in a bad way. In our test games, it has been not fun, and totally unbalancing.

Thanks for you feedback, buddy! I hope to get a rematch against you at an event, soon!

Reecius wrote:
We won't be using mysterious terrain. Some of these are just too unbalancing for some armies.

We won't be using mysterious objectives unless they are predetermined, which will be explained below.

I'm fine with no mysterious terrain, mainly just because its a pain to track if its per terrain piece or can be wildly game changing if applied to every terrain piece and happens to help or hinder one of the two armies to a large degree.

I don't like tracking each Mysterious Objective either (and often just forget to roll anyway), but I would say that at least one of the Warlord Traits (the one where you get to re-roll when firing at a unit within range of an objective) seem to be purposely written under the presumption that units will want to be hanging out on an objective for the whole game (something that the Objective Traits often cause to happen), so it almost seems wrong in that respect to keep Warlord Traits in but remove the objective abilities.

What about just rolling two D6s and then getting to pick which of the two results you want for the objective? That would limit the explosion result to a double '1' roll and in general would slightly help players not get completely stuck with worthless objectives while their opponent has great ones. I mean, it can still happen, but it is less likely to happen.

Barring some slight fix to the randomness like that, I'd just say get rid of the objective abilities all together. If you're going to do auto-sky fire on the middle objective it seems you should stick to the core rules on who benefits from it IMHO. Suddenly changing the rules to have it to apply to all units within range is a pretty big change and definitely strays into the realm of you guys essentially creating tournament rules to punish flyers, which may actually be needed, but why are flyers getting the shaft from the tournament organizers and not crazy allied Deathstar shenanigans, etc?

As for the fortifications, sounds fine to me.

Warlord Traits: Frankie had the idea of rolling once and then choosing that number power on any of the three traits. This means the system is still random, but it gives you the ability to avoid rolling a worthless trait. Feedback on this one would be appreciated.

Allies are in. They bring more balance to the game as IMO, the core mechanics of the game are what now create imbalance. When everyone's power level is cranked to 10, it helps to level the playing field.

Terrain will be pre-arranged. Having players arrange terrain just isn't practical for a tournament from a time perspective.

Book Night Fighting will be in as will Random Game Length and Stealing of the Initiative.

Dig the Warlord rule...I like it a lot actually.

Everything else sounds good (even though I hate seize personally).

We will be using a "BAO" (Bay Area Open) style mission similar to what we did last year.

What this means is that we will essentially have a single, multi-layered mission with different deployments. What we have found is that the mission is sufficiently complex enough that when combined with differing terrain, deployment and opponents, provides for a unique play experience every game that also allows for multiple paths to victory. Playing the same mission also means that you are never left trying to figure out what to do in a given mission. You already know it and get better at it each round. It allows you to focus on playing your best instead of trying to figure out how to play.

I'll go on the record as saying that I definitely felt playing 7 games of the BAO mission last year felt repetitive...every single game I was basically doing a slight variation of the same tactic...since I knew I tended to have a KP advantage over my opponent, I was always just playing defense, hanging onto my C&C objective and then just trying to win on Kill Points, unless 2 of the 3 Seize Ground objectives happened to be near my deployment zone in which case I'd try to hold those as well.

While it certainly wasn't 'bad' it was definitely much less interesting than tournaments with different missions each round, because I never was having to do anything outside my army's comfort zone.

The third victory condition will be Victory Points as in the old system. We wanted to keep KPs but due to the amount of Deathstar style units we anticipate will become prevalent in the game, the KP system becomes silly. KPs are meant to balance out MSU, which is still really powerful in 6th (if not BETTER) but now that the Draigowing style units are going to become the norm, saying destroying one of those is the equivalent of taking out a unit of Grots is not fair. So, Victory Points, while more mentally taxing at the end of a long game, seems to be the best bet. Half points if the unit is immobilized or below half strength at games end, full points if it is destroyed or broken at game's end. Whoever has more VP's wins this victory condition. An alternative to this we are considering is to say a unit is worth 1 KP for every 25 or 50 points it costs. You then put this number on your army list to make the math at the end of the game easy. The downside here though, is that it creates situations where having multiple units just over the break point can mean your army will give up a great deal more points proportionally than an opponent who has a lot of units just under the break point.

Yeah, I'm with Janthkin here. Especially at 1,500 points and with units not being able to capture more than one objective (and we'll be having 5 in these scenarios it sounds like) Deathstars are actually going to be a big problem for the players using them unless they wipe their opponent off the table...as you're generally not going to have enough points in scoring units. I think sticking with straight up Kill Points is fine and keeps with 6th edition's take on it as well.

We will use 3 Tie Breaker Points for bracketing purposes per the BAO style. As the old BAO Tie Breaker points were really similar to the new ones in the book, we'll largely keep these apart from First Blood which we find is just too easy for the player going first to get.

Slay the Warlord
Linebreaker
Preserve Your Focres=You get this is half or more of your scoring units, rounding up, are not destroyed or broken at game's end.

As these are just tiebreakers, you should feel free to do what you want here and all of these are fair objectives for people to aim for.

We will use the following deployments:
Dawn of War (6th ed version, was called pitched battle in 5th)
Vanguard Strike (triangle deployment)
Spearhead from 5th

We are considering Hammer and Anvil but in a tournament setting where tables are butt to butt, it can get really, really inconvenient. What do you guys think? I just don't think think it's practical and Spearhead is pretty close to it.

Seems completely reasonable.

If you roll a power you can't use, either because of Force Charge or the inability to use it such as a Broodlord rolling a shooting power, you can reroll till you get one you can use.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of this. Again, this seems too much like you're fixing something specifically in the Tyranid codex, which isn't right. There's nothing stopping people from sticking to their codex powers if they don't want to take the risk.

This is the one where we're really scratching our heads. We want to go with 1500 as the game really slows down and counter-intuitively, the better you are the slower it goes. Why? Every little micro-movement becomes really important. It bogs the game down a ton. We just don't see games finishing in the same time limit we had previously with 1750pt limits. Experience will be the best teacher here and it may turn out that we are wrong, but we have to post a points limit before we have any experience, hahaha! So, we're leaning towards 1500 at this point. What do you all think?

We also find that at this points level you can't pack in all the goodies, which is good and bad. For one, most Deathstars fit in at 1500pts, and as such they can really dominate the game. On the flip side, it also means that you can't bring a deathstar AND crazy support units. We're finding it can be a bit more rock, paper, scissors at 1500pts.

We're open to non-traditional points levels too, such as 1600, or 1650. Now is a good time to throw off old traditions if they no longer fit the dynamic of the game.

My vote personally is for 1,500 for the time being, but then again I was always pushing for smaller point sizes in order to have more slightly relaxed games.

Most of you know we at Frontline love Forge World and have pushed to have it in tournaments previously but were met with a lot of community opposition.

The biggest objection previously was that FW upset the balance of the game. Well, hahaha, no worries about that now! Game balance went out the window with 6th in a big way and the power combos that the game provides don't need FW. The worst offenders that people complained about were Vehicles (Achilles, Lucious Drop Pod, Caestes Assault Ram) and those have all been hit with the NERF bat due to Hull Points, so I don't see it being as big of an issue.

The second biggest objection was that most players didn't know the FW rules. Well, now everyone is relearning the rules and this is a perfect time to open the doors and broaden our horizons. I think particularly the inclusion of the FW AA units will go a long way to helping to even out some of the crazier lists. Mostly though, FW units just add a lot of character to armies and the vast majority of them are under powered if anything.

We propose to allow any units with the 40K approved stamp to be allowed in the game.

Ultimately I think FW increases the fun of the game and the diversity of toys we get to play with. What do you all think?

I think you know how I feel...bring it on!!!

I do think that FW army lists should not be allowed, because the ally system would be really, really confusing to people not up on the FW army lists. And plus a bunch of the FW army lists have additional issues that need to be FAQ'd, but you're talking about so much more additional info to deal with and try to FAQ. Because frankly the INAT has never tried to FAQ Forgeworld's army lists (because they tend to have quite a few issues) so you'd have to be dealing with any potential issues as they come up, which would be a pain.

I anticipate this is going to get crazy. Can anyone say, "counts as allies?"

Yeah, that is going to get bananas.

So, we'd love to hear some ideas on where to draw the line? Particularly with FW models, this gets crazy. So, what do you do when you have someone who has built an awesome AdMech army using all kinds of beautiful conversion but is using two different codices and FW models? Even worse, the guy with a bunch of half painted models or models from his and 4 friends' collections that all have different paint jobs and represent an allied army. That could very easily get confusing.

We don't want to limit people's creativity, so what are some ideas to make this easy? My thoughts were to include a hand-out for players who are doing this to give to their opponent that includes at the very least a unit to unit breakdown, ie. this unit in my army=this unit from this codex, and etc. Preferably with a brief stat breakdown.

I think one of the main reasons that people pushed for 'count-as' was simply to use a more powerful codex (or what they perceived as such), so you'd get people wanting to play their CSM models as Space Wolves, for example. With allies now in the mix, there's much less need for that IMHO. A CSM army can simply be 'boosted' by pulling allies in from another codex. But at the same time, having allies included also means more opportunities for confusion if people are trying to use 'counts as' models for their allies, but still using models from the same army.

As such, I personally think you should take a hard-line and say that under no circumstance can you just use models from one army and just count them as models from another codex (like CSM for Space Wovles, for example). You can still do a pure 'counts-as' army (like Hulksmash's Admech for Daemon custom build), however any allies should ALWAYS have to be WYSIWYG. In other words, there should be absolutely no such thing as 'counts-as' ally models.

Thanks very much for the thoughtful feedback, Yak, it's appreciated.

I really like that idea for rolling 2D6 on the mysterious objectives and choosing one. That is pretty solid, and I think we will use that for the 3 seize ground objectives that are in no man's land.

In our play testing, having the middle objective give Skyfire has proven to be not much help, hahaha. Controlling it has proven to be very difficult, and even against JMac's flying circus Nids, I wasn't able to even control it to get a shot off at his FMCs. In our other test games it went the same, no one controlled it until late game when it didn't really matter. I think rolling for it would be a nice fix that still keeps the random elements, but makes it more of a manageable risk.

I think we will also use Janthkin's idea for implementing the part of Big Guns Never Tire and the Scouring where Heavy Support and Fast Attack units can be scoring in 2 of the missions. In these missions we'll make those units give up an additional KP.

I agree about FW army lists, I feel that it's just a bit much at this stage. Just introducing FW units will be a lot of fun and not too crazy.

We've been plays testing the KP system of having each unit worth 1 KP per 50pts and it works pretty dang well. We've been finding that the Deathstars, particularly the mobile ones like Nob Bikers, can take out several units at once with ease. The nice thing, is that when you do take one out, it is worth a boat load of points. My Nob Bikers, for example, gave up 13!

We're finding that it is still really easy to keep track of, and evens things out but still punishes MSU as armies that have a lot of units will have a disproportionately larger number of KP to give up, roughly 1 extra per unit. It seems like a good compromise so far.

We're for sure going 1500 to start with, games just take a lot longer now. I would like to see that increase, but now while everyone is getting the hang of things, no reason to make it crazier than it needs to be.

As for counts as, you may be right. I think we may have to go with the rule of cool on this one. If the army is obviously built with a cohesive theme, and the units are clearly representational of what they counts as, then cool. But it will be difficult.

At first we may just have to say strictly bring representational units to make things easy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the BAO mission, we can switch it up a bit with some small changes, or we could simply tier the Victory conditions, making the first worth 1 points, the other 2, and the last 3, and alternating them. This means that You would have to alter your strategy to accommodate that.

We can also play test some alternate conditions.

The nice thing about that is that it means you can't just build an army to do one thing, you have to plan for differing victory conditions but you still know largely what the missions will be.

Points: 1,500pts

Perfect!

Missions

I'm not as concerned about being able to hold enough objectives with only 1500 points (I once was). I like the tiered objectives, and the bonus points. I'm still worried about the mysterious objectives. While the 2d6 roll smooths out the wrinkles, it still is something that you can't plan for and have to keep track of. I am confused on victory points. Is the maximum number of victory points 12 (4+3+2 for Victory Conditions +3 for Bonus)?

Modified Hammer and Anvil


I'd like to see a picture of the deployment zones, but I think that this is workable. I'm really glad that you've come up with a way to make Hammer and Anvil work!

I like most of the tweaks you posted above, Reecius, although the 50 points = 1 KP thing sounds a bit needlessly complicated, imo. Other than that, looking great!!

Allowing FW but NOT FW army lists sounds like a great compromise to start, too.

In Big Guns Never Tire, transports for heavy support units end up being scoring too, right- like the drop pods for my 3 dreadnoughts . But then they give up a point by being killed, so 6 points up for grabs there! Not sure if this mission is going to hurt or help me, in general...

@Anpu-Adom

Yakface's idea on the 2D6 for objectives convinced me it was a good idea, and here's why: With 2D6, you only have a 1/36 chance of getting something bad, which means you will almost always get something good.

Since the only objectives that give this are in No Man's land, it encourages players to play aggressively and not castle up as the middle objectives will give a benefit to who controls it. I think that is a nice benefit to going out and taking objectives.

I will clarify Victory Points.

You can get a total of 12 in each game. The player with more wins, no mater if he has 1 or 12 more points. If both players have the same amount of points, they tie. We're going with an alternating amount of points so that you can't always play the same way, as different Victory Conditions are worth a varying amount of points, armies will have to alter their play style to compensate.

Here is a picture of the deployment we're talking about. MVBrandt told me about it, and a lot of TOs I know said they've been running Hammer and Anvil in events and it has worked fine. I like the deployment as it is a lot of fun, and want to try and make it work.



The 12" restriction means that you will be less likely to have to reach across the table or walk around and play on the other side of the board. So far it works in our playtesting.

Thanks for the feedback!

@RiTides

The KP missions is more complex than it was but it still punishes MSU (they will have disproportionately more KP) while not giving Deathstar armies such a big advantage (by having a disproportionately low amount of KP). I think it will just take a little getting used to but so far we have found it to be a really good middle ground. We are open to new ideas though, for sure.

And yeah, Big Guns Never Tire and the Scouring keep the missions closer to the book, but are still fairly balanced. Those units give up more KP but can grab those objectives.

Thanks for the feedback, also!

Using your own missions worked in 5th but 6th doesn't seem right. it feels like your holding onto 5th a bit to much. Warlord traits are fine the way they are? none of them hurt an army just a plus if you get them. Id say with fotrs i would ban fortress of redemption mainly due to size. Also what is the standing rule for forts? make your own model or use GW?

My only problem with that deployment is that it makes the opponent's back corner (where he will definitely be putting his objective) even further away than normal Hammer & Anvil.

But running the math, it's the difference between a 42" shortest path, and 42.5", which isn't exactly game-breaking.

But still - maybe make "The Emperor's Will" worth the fewest points when paired with H&A deployment?

I'm curious why FW units are allowed but not FW armies, generally these lists are rather tame but very fun, I find it odd that allowing all the FW units to be taken hodge-podge wherever but not the armies that they were designed to be used in. I agree they have FAQ issues...but every 40k army list does.

Additionally, If you're going to allow FW stuff, might as well allow anything that isn't Apoc specific, much of it is in older books that have updated rules for 6E but don't have the silly little stamp, and may not for years or ever because they don't need to be reprinted in a new book since their rules already exist.

Vaktathi wrote:I'm curious why FW units are allowed but not FW armies, generally these lists are rather tame but very fun, I find it odd that allowing all the FW units to be taken hodge-podge wherever but not the armies that they were designed to be used in. I agree they have FAQ issues...but every 40k army list does.

Additionally, If you're going to allow FW stuff, might as well allow anything that isn't Apoc specific, much of it is in older books that have updated rules for 6E but don't have the silly little stamp, and may not for years or ever because they don't need to be reprinted in a new book since their rules already exist.

I'll tell you my opinion as to why FW army lists are a different beast than the units (in terms of using them in tournaments):


1) When it came to whether or not to include FW army lists as something for the INAT to tackle trying to FAQ issues, it quickly became apparent to me when I really tried to dig deep into them and FAQ all pertinent issues that they do tend to have much, much more significant gaps in their rules than standard Codex army lists. I think this is probably because often they are built off of an existing codex, and then when GW goes and updates to a new codex, the FW authors go back through and try to update the lists as best they can to fit in with the new codex styles, but invariably you still have all these little gaps, where weapons and equipment in the FW army list are slightly different than the current version of the codex...so from a FAQ level, you get back to the question of: Do you allow these old codex issues to remain even though it can cause confusion to have similar gear with different rules in the game, or do you go out on the limb and play 'game designer' a bit and do what should have been done in the first place and FAQ the stuff to match the current iterations.


2) If you do allow strange legacy rules to remain in the FW army lists, then especially now with allies you can have a situation where a player is allying with an army list from the same 'race' but now some stuff is behaving one way (the primary codex stuff) and some stuff is behaving slightly differently (the allied FW stuff). Needless to say this could get very confusing.


3) And on the ally topic, again in tournaments I think TOs are going to have to be really strict about limiting counts-as with allies because it can get really, really confusing fast...and having people 'ally' with army lists from the same race makes that even MORE confusing because how exactly do you mandate that players make it clear the difference between Orks from Codex Orks and Orks from the Dread Mob IA army list? Either you say that people have to paint their stuff totally different (which most people aren't going to want to do) or you just allow it to happen and then opponents get confused as to what is an allied unit or not.


4) Forgeworld has been doing a MUCH better job about updating their rules and army lists than they used to, but there is still typically a gap when a new codex is released. If tournaments are allowing FW army lists, all of a sudden they will have to start keeping up with which FW army lists are currently updated and which are not, which is frankly an unneeded pain in the butt. So instead of just knowing: Hey this new IG codex is now out so you have to use it in the tournament, now you have to check and see if all the rules in the FW army lists that are based off of the IG codex have any new issues.



---


But as for you point about the 'stamp' unis, I totally agree. The 'stamp' is nothing new except a new way to more easily represent what they've already been doing for years. There are tons of units in IA Apoc 2 (not 2nd edition), for example, that as far as FW are concerned are perfectly acceptable rules, but they just don't have the 40K or Apoc stamp on them because they hadn't started doing that yet. However, the rules are still quite clear in those books as to what is useable in regular 40K games and what is useable only in Apoc games.

@Cage00

These missions are almost exactly a 6th ed version of what we did in 5th ed. These are 6th ed book missions, combined together. We do this because if we ran a straight up book missions tournament, an army geard towards taking objectives well has a huge advantage. 5/6 missions are objective missions! haha, that gets boring and is too one dimensional.

We're using 6th ed deployments, 6th ed mysterious objectives, fortifications, warlord traits, etc. We're just tapering off some of the really crazy randomness to make things a little more predictable and altering things for practicality. We're trying to stay as close to the book as possible but still have a good tournament format.

As for Warlord traits, EVERY SINGLE GAME i have played so far, I have rolled a worthless trait. That isn't why we are changing it, it just an example of why I think the system is flawed. I have seen about 4 of the practice games we've played won because one person rolled a beneficial Warlord trait, they can be extremely powerful. We're not dropping it, just trying to mitigate the impact it can have on the game.

Thanks for expressing your concerns though, it's appreciated.

And as for Fortificatoins, we will allow scratch-builds so long as they are roughly the same size and shape of what they are imitating. This has to be a very close match though, as this can be easily abused.

@Jathkin

I was thinking the exact same thing.

I also want to make sure the Scouring and Big Guns Never Tire missions don't correlate with missions that are beneficial to them. For example, we don;t want Big Guns Never Tire on a 4 point Emperor's Will mission as that is just too good for some armies.

@Vaktathi

We are allowing non 40K approved units. The rule states anything that isn't a super heavy or gargantuan creature is cool so long as it is the most recent version of the rules.

As for the army lists, we feel it is a bit too much for now. We accept the fact we will never make everyone happy with our decisions, and for everything we try to and do, some will like it and some wont.

I think allowing FW units in now will be a great first step. If it is well received, next year we can look at expanding it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yakface said it very well, there are a number of reasons why we don't want to allow FW lists yet. Thanks, Yak!

I am totally on board with the mission set up since they are all amalgamations of the 6th ed missions.

I am not on board with changing any of the core mechanics, i.e. Warlord Traits/Psychic Powers, because it will cause a lot of confusion across tournaments and the randomness of the 2 are not game breaking. If you build an army to get a specific Warlord trait then you have a large chance of the army not working right, so it's your choice when designing the army whether or not to hope for the best Warlord Trait roll. No one is forcing you to do that. The same goes for the Psychic powers. No re-roll is needed beyond anything the BRB or your codex allows you to do.

I can get behind that reasoning once explained out like that, I'd go to that event

@Vaktathi

Awesome, that is the goal, to make a fun event for everyone to enjoy!

@OverwatchCNC

I understand your reasoning, I really do. We just feel that the core mechanics in question are not balanced.

Like I said, we have had a LOT of games won or lost by that Warlord trait roll. We want to flatten out the curve a little bit to make the results slightly more predictable.

As for the Psychic Powers, it effects a tiny portion of the armies in the game, really only Broodlords. And, our reasoning behind it is that if someone buys their super cool Broodlord and wants to roll for a different power and rolls something they literally can't use, that sucks.

If it turns out to be too powerful, we'll change it back, no question. But so far, it is hardly game breaking in our experience. It simply prevents people from feeling like they got a bum deal.

I am glad you like the majority of it, though, that is cool.

We may modify some of the missions down the road to incorporate the random objectives values for the seize ground objectives, too. I think for now though, this is enough and a good starting point.

Like I said, we are by no means married to our ideas. We're play testing these ideas every day and altering it to what we think is best and most fair for everyone.

After our first event (Celesticon) we'll have a lot more feedback, and then we have Comikaze and Duelcon which will really give us a ton of feedback to see how these things work in a larger sample set.

We have to start somewhere though, and I feel confident this is a good place to build from.

The Revision looks good Reecus.

Thanks!

The revisions look great Reece. I think the 40k approved FW is a great place to start, although I think the Badab War lists are pretty damned solid. Maybe they are worth looking at for inclusion in the future, cause they add some real variety to codex Marine lists.

When is Comikaze this year? I can't make Duelcon but Comikaze may be doable.

@Jim

I need to make it more clear I think as you are the second person to miss it. We are saying ANY FW units are cool that don;t have structure points or are Gargantuan Creatures. So Baddab characters (which I agree are awesome) are good to go.

Glad you like the structure!

@OverwatchCNC

September 15th and 16th

It's going to be sweet! Tony Hawk will be there with some of his guys in an indoor Half-Pipe promoting their new video game.

Plus the Cos Play girls everywhere is certainly not a bad point, either!

Reecius wrote:@Jim

I need to make it more clear I think as you are the second person to miss it. We are saying ANY FW units are cool that don;t have structure points or are Gargantuan Creatures. So Baddab characters (which I agree are awesome) are good to go.

Glad you like the structure!

@OverwatchCNC

September 15th and 16th

It's going to be sweet! Tony Hawk will be there with some of his guys in an indoor Half-Pipe promoting their new video game.

Plus the Cos Play girls everywhere is certainly not a bad point, either!

Hmmm... That is really close to the wifes' due date but I may be able to swing it...

Congratz on the baby!

But yeah, if you can make it, this is going to be an AWESOME event. Like 30,000-40,000 people coming. Stan Lee is the main sponsor.

Duelcon will be awesome, too. September is going to be a lot of fun.

Reecus Wrote:

Plus the Cos Play girls everywhere is certainly not a bad point, either!

Eye Candy is fine but no licky

Reecius wrote:@Jim

I need to make it more clear I think as you are the second person to miss it. We are saying ANY FW units are cool that don;t have structure points or are Gargantuan Creatures. So Baddab characters (which I agree are awesome) are good to go.

Glad you like the structure!

That is excellent, I can totally get behind that. So for the sake of clarity since I am not the only one who missed it the first time; the FW Characters (Badab or otherwise) are in, just not the special lists like Tyrants Legion and Siege assault.

@Jim

You got it! No lists, but any unit.

@Adam Long Walker

Well, I'm single so if I can, I will! hahahaha

Running a tournament every other weekend, you are hardcore man! Is Comikaze going to be a two day tournament or will it be just one day like Celesticon? I might be able to come up for Celesticon since it is only one day I can bring the fam and check out the Bay Area for a few days. Also, Comikaze and Duelcon will be 1500 by the current plan while Celesticon is 1750 correct?

I prefer random Warlord and Psyker abilities, but I see the reasoning on the changes. I only worry that parts of 6th that are subtle balancing factors may be eliminated in the name of getting rid of randomness.

Wait, so I can use corsair units but not the corsair list? How does that work? I'm not familiar with all of the IA books, but isn't the badab stuff the same or do they specifically say you can take them in chaos space marine lists?

Also, the farseer in the IA11 book modifies your Force org chart. We can play that as-is?

@Bladewalker

Yeha, we have 3 events in 5 weeks! It's going to be draining, but fun.

Celesticon is going to be a 2K event (single FOC) and only 2 games with 3 hours per round. We're calling it the Lazy Boys Tournament!

It's gong to be super laid back, bring your toys and have a good time kind of thing. The 1750 event on the site is a different tournament, they have a lot of stuff going on.

Comikaze and Duel Con are 2 day events.

Hope to see you there!

@Dok

That's right, no army lists but yes, you can use the units. The book describes how they are used in an Eldar list.

And yes, if the character modifies the FOC that is fine. Lots of the Baddab war books do that as well.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

The Farseer rules in IA11 are written in a way that they are pretty clearly only used when your opponent is cool with it and when the mission doesn't use a specific force org chart, so its the kind of thing that a tournament could allow or disallow at their discretion (by simply stating that the tournament uses the standard force org chart in all cases).

But it doesn't seem like a 175 point Farseer that unlocks an extra Heavy Support slot and drops Troops down to a max of 4 would break the game. It would be good in Big Guns Never Tire though to have 12 Warwalkers, though!

I'm not trying to break the game. I'm just trying to figure out what's cool and what's not cool. We're in a whole new world now!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although... taking 4 war walker squads and 3 hornet squads makes for a lot of dakka...

Yeah, but remember that the Farseer himself is pretty putz (no guide to make the War Walkers scary), has no RoW, you can't take another Farseer if you take him, you only get 2 Elites with him, and it's a 1500pt tournament which means not as much of the craziness.

I don't see it as game breaking at all.

But yeah Dok, that would be fine.

Check out some of the Baddab war characters, they are super cool!

So given the high likelihood that future codexes will have either a special Warlord table for that codex and/or particular Warlord traits for specific models (probably special characters, I'd imagine), does that need to change the thinking at all on Warlord traits in tournaments?

Specifically:

1) It would seem at that point you can't just not include Warlord traits as characters will be pointed in their codex under the presumption of being able to use their Warlord traits.

2) If you do allow some kind of Warlord re-roll, or the ability to pick from multiple tables off of a single roll, would that not effectively reduce the edge that a character who comes with a fixed trait gets? So if you're paying like 275 points for a new-school Abaddon and he comes with awesome Warlord trait X, would that not be part of his cost (that his Warlord trait is fixed)? And if so, by allowing other Warlords to increase their chance of getting a better trait does this not unfairly penalize the new-school Abaddon as he's 'paying' for that fixed ability that every other Warlord is now getting for free (well, at least a better chance at getting a trait they want).


So with that in mind, maybe it is necessary to leave Warlord traits as purely random?

Why add all of this complexity?

Why not just play as close to 6th edition as you can?

I agree with Yak and Blackmoor here. This edition does seams random but I also think that is a big part of this edition thats suposed to be that way. I think it will absolutly seperate the good generals, when in war does everything go your way? You guys should at least run something small with all the rules and actually see how it unfolds.

Blackmoor wrote:Why add all of this complexity?

Why not just play as close to 6th edition as you can instead of playing Reesehammer?

If you disagree with some of Reece's thoughts then by all means you should express your concern (that's the whole point of this thread, after all).

But to sink to the level of calling his ideas 'Reesehammer' is not cool IMHO. I know you don't mean any malice behind it, but this is the same kind of crap that people typically sling in order to defame the hard work that people put into running events when they disagree with it by implying it is somehow lesser than the 'pure' game of 40k, despite the fact that the 40k rules have always said that players should see the basic rules as simply a starting point to be modeled as the players see fit.

It also tends to imply that Reece is trying to change the rules into something more of 'his own', which discounts the fact that he runs tons of events purely to help support the community. He doesn't stand to benefit at all by running his events in his own way as he doesn't play in them, so his only priority is to try to make an event that will appeal to as many players as possible.

Typically, players have frowned upon having completely random elements in their tournament games that can have major impact on the outcome of the game. For example, in previous editions if we were having a tournament and the custom mission created by the tournament introduced Warlord Traits, Mysterious Objectives and Mysterious Terrain, then players would scream bloody hell that the missions were so random that they were helping to decide the winners of games instead of player skill.

So Reece is clearly trying to gauge player opinion and create a format where people won't walk away feeling like they got robbed simply by one or two dice rolls. However, if the majority of players suddenly feel that because 6th edition IS so random that they WANT this kind of randomness even in their tournament games, then by all means express this opinion to him and I'm sure if enough people say it, he'll listen.

But please leave that 'Reecehammer' crap out of this, because while you may not have any ill will behind it, the other people that see what you write and then start slinging it around as a real insult will be trying to defame him.

Grimgob wrote:I agree with Yak and Blackmoor here. This edition does seams random but I also think that is a big part of this edition thats suposed to be that way. I think it will absolutly seperate the good generals, when in war does everything go your way? You guys should at least run something small with all the rules and actually see how it unfolds.

You should have come to the first 6th ed tournament at GE, it went really well. The only thing we didn't use was Mysterious Terrain.

I have been saying the same thing for a long time on this thread and others. We should play 6th edition, not an odd concoction of house rules and 5th ed remainders. I like a lot of what Reece has put together and his events are always awesome but moving too far away from the book will be too debilitating to the tournament scene imo. All psychic powers and Warlord Traits should be random, end of story. The edition, and it would seem the editions codices, are being designed around these random elements. So let them stand, the game was designed a certain so we should play it that way. Making too many sweeping changes before seeing what the true 6th ed codices bring, at minimum waiting to see the first one, could cause a lot of confusion and back pedaling.

More often than not in my own game experiences and in all the battle reports I have been watching the random elements actually make the game more competitive. I understand you can get a really bunk combo of Warlord traits or Psychic powers but without those random elements most players can see how a battle will go after deployment is rolled just by looking at the lists. I like to feel like I have a chance even in a huge list mismatch, random elements can be a saving grace in that situation. I also think that there has been as much random removed from the game as there has been added if that makes any sense... to remove the random parts that are part of the core game will quickly turn it into a math-hammer exercise that both players can see the inevitable end of before they even start to play the game... imho.

I think the best approach is to use the core rules and keep things outside of that scope (eg the missions, ect) simple until people get the basics down. This is obviously going to be an ongoing process. If I can make Kamakaze, I will, as I want to see where you are going with this as we are taking our cues from you lately.

And yeah, Blackmoor, calling it Reesehammer is a bit unfair. Right now he is running the largest number of successful events on the west coast and he has to come up with something that works in the time allotted. I think its fair to say that he is doing a ton of testing, as it is his livelyhood.

Phazael wrote:I think the best approach is to use the core rules and keep things outside of that scope (eg the missions, ect) simple until people get the basics down. This is obviously going to be an ongoing process. If I can make Kamakaze, I will, as I want to see where you are going with this as we are taking our cues from you lately.

And yeah, Blackmoor, calling it Reesehammer is a bit unfair. Right now he is running the largest number of successful events on the west coast and he has to come up with something that works in the time allotted. I think its fair to say that he is doing a ton of testing, as it is his livelyhood.

Quite true. He has to fill these events up in an environment where players are currently leery of spending a lot of money traveling to an event using rules they don't know quite yet. Our first RT drew in more players than the previous 3 combined, but it was a local 3 round that is cheap to go to. Reece is dealing with an entirely different beast but I still think sticking as close to core mechanics as possible will be best.

All said Reece is a good friend and I will probably make it to Komikazi and Duelcon but this is an open discussion on stuff I as a tournament goer would like to participate in. I'm just saying have one of your local RTTs just streight book and see's how it goes as an experiment then reevaluate.

IMO tournament organizers should change the rules as little as possible to stay true to the core rulebook and not make wholesale changes.

I like Reese a lot and he is doing a good job by trying to build excitement for the West Coast tournament scene. I was having some fun by calling it Reesehammer, but I also did it to illustrate just how radical the changes to the core rules he is proposing are.

I understand that there are some rules that need tweaking for tournament play (Fortress of Redemption, terrain placement, objective placement, closed lists, etc) but a TO should not be making changes that are not in the rulebook, or supported by the rules to fundamentally change the game.

For example:

Changes to the rules just for a perceived imbalanceYou do not need to change things that do not need to be changed (see Warlord traits and psycher powers).

Randomness
There is always randomness to 40k, but you were just unaware of it. It is random when you play Chaos Demons and you end up getting pair up against a Mech Dark Eldar player and get randomly screwed. It is random with you take Kroot and there are no forests on the table, It is random when you take a tech marine and there are no ruins to bolster. It is random when you take a lot of melta guns and you go up against an ork horde. In 5th edition you were often put at a disadvantage due to the random nature of 40k and you just dealt with it the best you could. In assaults most of the time you charged into terrain anyways, so you had a random roll for the charge distance. It was something that we have always done so we took it for granted because it was just the way the game was played. Now they want to change the charge range to 2d6 and everyone is up in arms because their charges might fail. As far as random terrain and objectives goes, my theory is that if you have a well balanced list that is build with 6th edition in mind, you should be able to deal with all of the “randomness”. Only if you have a poorly built list, or are still stuck in 5th edition is when you will have a lot of trouble.

Missions
Yakface wrote my thoughts on the removal of KPs. Deathstars are not as powerful already as MSU armies and they nerfed them in 6th edition when they can now only hold one objective. Also why does a psybolt razorback only worth 1 KP, and a chimera 2?

Forgeworld
I can write a long piece on why you should not have forgeworld in a 40k tournament, but I will sum it up this way: With the new edition they had the chance to include it into the game but they didn’t. That tells me all I need to know. When (and if) GW embraces it for their games I will be on board, but until then they have no business being in a game of Warhammer 40k.

Blackmoor wrote:IMO tournament organizers should change the rules as little as possible to stay true to the core rulebook and not make wholesale changes.

I like Reese a lot and he is doing a good job by trying to build excitement for the West Coast tournament scene. I was having some fun by calling it Reesehammer, but I also did it to illustrate just how radical the changes to the core rules he is proposing are.

I understand that there are some rules that need tweaking for tournament play (Fortress of Redemption, terrain placement, objective placement, closed lists, etc) but a TO should not be making changes that are not in the rulebook, or supported by the rules to fundamentally change the game.

For example:

Changes to the rules just for a perceived imbalanceYou do not need to change things that do not need to be changed (see Warlord traits and psycher powers).

Randomness
There is always randomness to 40k, but you were just unaware of it. It is random when you play Chaos Demons and you end up getting pair up against a Mech Dark Eldar player and get randomly screwed. It is random with you take Kroot and there are no forests on the table, It is random when you take a tech marine and there are no ruins to bolster. It is random when you take a lot of melta guns and you go up against an ork horde. In 5th edition you were often put at a disadvantage due to the random nature of 40k and you just dealt with it the best you could. In assaults most of the time you charged into terrain anyways, so you had a random roll for the charge distance. It was something that we have always done so we took it for granted because it was just the way the game was played. Now they want to change the charge range to 2d6 and everyone is up in arms because their charges might fail. As far as random terrain and objectives goes, my theory is that if you have a well balanced list that is build with 6th edition in mind, you should be able to deal with all of the “randomness”. Only if you have a poorly built list, or are still stuck in 5th edition is when you will have a lot of trouble.

Missions
Yakface wrote my thoughts on the removal of KPs. Deathstars are not as powerful already as MSU armies and they nerfed them in 6th edition when they can now only hold one objective. Also why does a psybolt razorback only worth 1 KP, and a chimera 2?

Forgeworld
I can write a long piece on why you should not have forgeworld in a 40k tournament, but I will sum it up this way: With the new edition they had the chance to include it into the game but they didn’t. That tells me all I need to know. When (and if) GW embraces it for their games I will be on board, but until them they have no business being in a game of Warhammer 40k.

I agree with pretty much all of that. The only caveat I will add is that I am not as opposed to FW as Blackmoor. I would prefer not every tournament allow FW but if some do I am cool with that and would still attend.

Blackmoor wrote:Forgeworld
I can write a long piece on why you should not have forgeworld in a 40k tournament, but I will sum it up this way: With the new edition they had the chance to include it into the game but they didn’t. That tells me all I need to know. When (and if) GW embraces it for their games I will be on board, but until them they have no business being in a game of Warhammer 40k.

I would sincerely appreciate it if you would put your thoughts about Forgeworld inclusion at tournaments into a post on your blog.

@Blackmoor

I know you and we're friends in real life so I understand your sense of humor and don't take offense at all, but like Yak said, it would be really easy to misconstrue that as an attack by people who don't know you. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't do that kind of thing going forward.

And again, as Yak pointed out, we do not have an agenda here. We don't even play in our events, we are strictly trying to make a tournament format that is as fun as possible for as many people as possible.

That's it.

If you guys have legitimate questions and concerns, we are all ears. We've demonstrated over and again our willingness to alter our system to meet player requests. We are not married to our ideas and we know the best system is a flexible one that can change with perspective and experience.

But, like I said, WE HAD TO START SOMEWHERE. This is only the second draft of these rules, and I know they will change as we go. I plan on taking a lot of notes at the Golden Throne and speaking to MVBRandt at length after NOVA to get their feedback. If any of the ideas we're proposing here don't work, we'll change them. Simple as that.

What we're doing here is a first step. We tried to stick as closely as possible to both the format we know works well (the BAO format) and 6th edition.

And honestly, what are these radical changes to the core mechanics? We didn't touch the core mechanics (although I would love nothing more than to take a machete to Wound Allocation, Random Charge Lengths and LoS!).

And saying we're unaware of the randomness in 40K previously is more than a little condescending, Allan. We are more than aware of the random elements in the game, but they have been increased dramatically with this edition.

Let's sum up the actual changes we're proposing:

1.) Warlord Traits, slight change to ensure you don't get a dud ability while their opponent gets a game winning trait. This makes the games more enjoyable in our experience.

2.) Dropping Random Terrain. Fantasy did it, too, and I doubt many tournaments will use it. It is an optional rule in the BRB, too, so really, not a core change.

3.) Slightly altering Random Objectives to again, try and make it more FUN and FAIR for both players.

4.) Slightly Altering psychic powers to ensure players don't literally don't roll a power they can't use. Really only applies to Broodlords. Tiny change to make the game more enjoyable, in our opinions.

5.) Altered missions. This is the only major departure from the book, but again, almost every major tournament in the country uses their own missions. This is nothing out of the ordinary. Our missions are an amalgamation of the new book missions that closely follows the pattern we set with the BAO altered to fit 6th ed. People really liked those missions a lot, so we took that experience and applied it. It allows multiple paths to victory and avoids a lot of the terrible mismatches that can otherwise occur.

The book missions are largely good, but they favor MSU in a huge way, and the Relic is a joke in a competitive setting (every time we've played it, the game is over by turn 2-3). And the KP argument has been run through a million times, so I won't rehash it.

6.) Forgeworld. FW is fine for competitive play. People knee-jerk against it because of a fear of the unknown. We've play tested this stuff and it is almost universally underwhelming. We have also played with and against it in a LOT of tournaments. We have real world experience with it as opposed to a lot of the theorizing opponents to FW throw out there. Again, we just want to make the events more fun and open the doors to a wider, more enjoyable game.


And again, as I always tell people, it is a lot easier to be a critic than to get out and do what we do. No matter what decision we make, someone will not like it. We accept that we aren't going to please everyone, but we do try to please as many people as possible. If you believe you can do it better, then by all means; proceed. Pony up the thousands of dollars, and hundreds of hours it takes to pull these events off. It would be nice to be able to actually go to some events instead of running them all.

@Thread

Again, the feedback is wanted and appreciated. We're scrambling to get everything lined up for the events we've got lined up in the near future and we want to be sure to do a good job. As a lot of you guys are the people coming to our events, we appreciate and hear what you have to say and I assure you, we take it all into consideration.

Reecius wrote:@Blackmoor

I know you and we're friends in real life so I understand your sense of humor and don't take offense at all, but like Yak said, it would be really easy to misconstrue that as an attack by people who don't know you. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't do that kind of thing going forward.

I owe you an apology, and I am sorry that I put it out there. It was a pejorative and it came off a bit too harsh.

I think the addition of forgeworld fills a lot of holes in armies that wouldn't stand a chance against some of the more overpowered stuff that has come out in 6th. The only thing that seems like it may be a bit over the top is the Caestus assault ram, but I haven't seen that in a game so I can't say for sure.

Dok wrote:I think the addition of forgeworld fills a lot of holes in armies that wouldn't stand a chance against some of the more overpowered stuff that has come out in 6th. The only thing that seems like it may be a bit over the top is the Caestus assault ram, but I haven't seen that in a game so I can't say for sure.

I thought that is what allies are for.

Blackmoor wrote:

Dok wrote:I think the addition of forgeworld fills a lot of holes in armies that wouldn't stand a chance against some of the more overpowered stuff that has come out in 6th. The only thing that seems like it may be a bit over the top is the Caestus assault ram, but I haven't seen that in a game so I can't say for sure.

I thought that is what allies are for.

FW does offer some non-IG "Skyfire" units.

Dok wrote:I think the addition of forgeworld fills a lot of holes in armies that wouldn't stand a chance against some of the more overpowered stuff that has come out in 6th. The only thing that seems like it may be a bit over the top is the Caestus assault ram, but I haven't seen that in a game so I can't say for sure.

I haven't found anything in sixth to be overpowered to the extent that armies can't compete. Unless of of course you're playing with out allies or with chosen Warlord Traits and Chosen Psychic powers. In that case there are some really OP things, but in those cases you aren't really playing 6th so...

With the exception of modifying how Warlord Traits and Psychic powers are working Reece I am very happy with your tournament set up. Using specifically designed tournament missions was going to be a must anyways and it was in 4th and 5th to a certain extent as well. I get bored of the book missions after a while and using specially designed tournament missions is a nice way to break the monotony.

Blackmoor wrote:I thought that is what allies are for.

Everyone taking IG allies seems like a much more boring solution. Except for Tyranids. No Hydras or vendettas for them.


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OverwatchCNC wrote:
I haven't found anything in sixth to be overpowered to the extent that armies can't compete.

You might want to qualify that with "while playing a new codex."

Dok wrote:

Blackmoor wrote:I thought that is what allies are for.

Everyone taking IG allies seems like a much more boring solution. Except for Tyranids. No Hydras or vendettas for them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

OverwatchCNC wrote:
I haven't found anything in sixth to be overpowered to the extent that armies can't compete.

You might want to qualify that with "while playing a new codex."

? I've played with GK, CSM, and SW so far in 6th.

I've lost to Tau, Orks, Eldar w/ DE, and Orks w/Tau

Blackmoor wrote:

Reecius wrote:@Blackmoor

I know you and we're friends in real life so I understand your sense of humor and don't take offense at all, but like Yak said, it would be really easy to misconstrue that as an attack by people who don't know you. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't do that kind of thing going forward.

I owe you an apology, and I am sorry that I put it out there. It was a pejorative and it came off a bit too harsh.

Forgiven and forgotten. No worries, I know you didn't mean anything by it, but the internet makes it easy to assume the worst.

We really do value your input though, buddy, so please feel free to give it. It would just be preferable if it were not in a way that made me look like a dick! hahah

@Dok

Yeah, the only things we're thinking about limiting is the Hades Breaching Drill (that thing should be triple the points).

The Caestus is REALLY good, but not OP, IMO. Here's why.

If you load it up with 10 terminators that is a minimum 675 point investment, it won't be on the board until turn 2 at best, and the unit inside won't be charging until turn 3 at best.

That gives you plenty of time to react to it, and as Deathstars go, this is a good one but no where near being the best.

It is really good, no doubt, but in our test games it usually gets smoked the turn it comes in.


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@Janthkin

Yeah, that is one of the main reasons we think FW will be great. It opens the game of Flyers and AA to every army.

@OverwatchCNC

Thanks! As we play these out more and more outside of our Team, we'll have a better and better idea of what the best format is.

I am sure we will revise it several more times.

The drill is not that ridiculous, especially now in 6th. Its a 150-200 point investment, counting the unit it comes with. You can't assault the turn you arrive and the opponent gets one turn to plug the hole by killing a ludicrously fragile vehicle. You pay 50pts for a really crappy drop pod that comes in with a Mawloc effect in a meta where spamming vehicles is less effective.

I agree the Cestus is not out of hand, even if you lack AA weapons in your list. At least not for what it costs.

The Achilles got tanked by the new hull point system, though Orks and Nids are still royally boned by it. It can at least be glanced to death in HtH if nothing else.

The Deathwind and Lucious Pods are the problems, in my mind. The Deathwind is designed for Apoc, where lighting up a dozen units with one 80pt models is not a big deal. The Lucious goes against a major design philosophy of 6th, namely not being able to assault out of reserves, and just flat out rapes certain armies. Three of them is basically an auto-win against Tau or many Eldar builds. Being autocharged by a siege dred with no means of response is not fun for anyone.

Rest of the forgeworld stuff is acceptable, but I don't see it closing the gap for weaker armies. How could it? Most of it is designed for the stronger and more popular armies in the game, especially Guard.

I disagree about the Lucius.

I have against it several times and I was always underwhelmed by it.

If you have 3 of them, there's a 50% chance one of the Dreads will immobilize itself coming in.

And it is about a 200pt investment to assault turn 1. Now, with over watch as well, if you deploy appropriately, they really aren't going to do that much.

But, opinions on this stuff varies, just as it does with anything.

Reecius wrote:I disagree about the Lucius.

I have against it several times and I was always underwhelmed by it.

If you have 3 of them, there's a 50% chance one of the Dreads will immobilize itself coming in.

And it is about a 200pt investment to assault turn 1. Now, with over watch as well, if you deploy appropriately, they really aren't going to do that much.

But, opinions on this stuff varies, just as it does with anything.

But their threat range is also significantly larger, given the new Disembark rules and the random charge ranges.

Very true.

A weapon with Interceptor would also be very useful at stopping these

If someone wants to dedicate 3 Elites/Heavy slots and 3 Fast attack slots to pulling this off and 600+ points, I don't see it as being unfair or game winning. A weapon with Interceptor can stop this dead in its tracks, too.

We'll do some more video bat reps showing these units in action so that people can see that they really are nothing to be feared. What the regular codices can pull out now is far worse.

We'll play-test it and see how it goes, but I am honestly not that worried about it.

Janthkin wrote:But their threat range is also significantly larger, given the new Disembark rules and the random charge ranges.

Is that really much of a benefit? Given that Drop Pods are usually pretty darn easy to pinpoint your spot, I don't honestly see that being much of a boost and if anything the random charge range can theoretically leave the Dread with a failed 'double 1's' on his charge range every now and then.

But on the flip-side, how have Dreads gotten even worse in 6th?

• Everyone can use Grenades on them using their normal WS.
• If they get immobilized, you're hitting on back armor.
• Those that don't have any means to hurt a dread are able to auto-fail their morale check to escape when it benefits their army.
• Hull Points...don't need to say more.

And let's not forget that they're a Fast Attack choice, which although it makes the pod able to be a scoring unit in that one mission, it also makes them pretty easy VPs to get as well (being open-topped and immobile, after all).

Honestly I thought Lucius Pods were pretty well balanced by the latest rules update and now I think they're kind of a joke in a tournament format. Yeah, you may draw the right matchup where your dreads coming in from these pods do something amazing, but for the most part they're a kill one unit (if that) and die kind of threat...and with most armies featuring much more infantry, bubble-wrapping to prevent these Dreads from charging anything good shouldn't be that hard.

So I say, bring 'em on.


But I really don't get the 'fear' people seem to have with Forgeworld. There have been cities and even whole countries allowing FW units for years now with no reports of forgeworld somehow ruining the game. But people keep burying their head in the sand acting as though they are afraid of what might happen if Forgeworld were allowed. Why not try allowing it and then if the world collapses in a heap of Forgeworld horribleness then you can go back to banning them from your tournaments.

But to cross your arms and say 'no, I won't try forgeworld in my tournaments' is IMHO like a child refusing to even try a vegetable, even though if they did, they might end up really liking it.

And as for what 'lesser' codexes benefit from FW, I would safely say that Eldar, Tau, Orks & Chaos Daemons all have some nice choices that fill gaps in their codex. And with allies, even all the Imperial FW units have the ability to be utilized in plenty of other armies.

I have posted previously I have dealt with the antics of people using FW models in game play and in my tournaments. Again I see the haves and have nots in this situation. Not many people carry all of the FW books and to me that is not fair to those people.

In my case, as long as I am able to see a sheet on a FW product for myself to keep during the game at any time (as well as the army list in question), It would satisfy the majority of my concerns.

If my health holds I might even go down and be in that tournament because everything Reecus (and crew) are trying to do is to me is an attempt to make the tournament experience enjoyable. If their method of bringing playability to 6th Rules in a competitive fashion I might modify my own structure to make it playable when I run my own, albeit in a smaller venue.

I give credit when credit is due when I believe someone is doing something right. and I hope Reecus and group is successful in their venture.

@Yak

You said it.

I have played against the Lucius multiple times and was always underwhelmed by it.

It drops down, kills one thing (maybe) that I fed it, then dies. And, the person paid 200+ points and gave up to KP and two FOC slots to accomplish that. It really isn't that great. Plus, as Yak pointed out, Dreads got a general nerf this edition. I know Bjorn won't be seeing any play time in 6th! hahaha

Eldar get a HUGE boost with FW. So do Tau, and Orks get some awesome stuff, too. Chaos and Daemons, and Bugs get some awesome stuff, too.


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@Adam

Thanks! We appreciate that.

That is our goal, to make the most fun events we can the grow the community and hopefully help people to make good memories and friendships while also playing a game they love.

Could you post what, if any, changes have been made to your original layout based on the feedback here? It'd be encouraging to know if there have been any changes...

Basically, I think it's valuable to not only hear the other side of the coin, but take their feedback into account. Now that it's past the misunderstanding, I thought Blackmoor made some excellent points.

Since the first post is edited, I can't compare what it was to what it is now... but from what I can see, the main strokes are still there (FW allowed, warlord traits determined by picking one of that number from ANY of the 3 columns, and are the somewhat modified KPs still in somewhere? I didn't see them...).

I mention these since they kind of stuck out to me as controversial ones... in particular, I'm not so sure about the warlord trait "fix"... some numbers are probably still much better than others, so it's still random, why "fix" it? And the modified KPs seemed way too complicated to me, did that get dropped? If so, I think that's very good...

Basically, a summary of the feedback taken that has caused changes would be sweet, if any...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Put in a break as this is unrelated to the above:

The whole issue with Forgeworld really illustrates to me how GW cannot get their act together on competitive gaming, forcing the community to try to do it for them. For those of you who play this as well as Warmachine/Hordes (I think Zero Comp does, right?) which I do... can you even imagine there being a series of IA equivalent books, with stats for various special-order models all over the place, that you may or may not be able to use in a "normal" game based on the inclusion of a watermark on the page? It just boggles the mind how needlessly complicated this all is, and I think THAT, more than anything, is what gives people pause about the whole issue.

Put it another way- who WOULDN'T want to play with cool models? Everyone I've talked to at the local store who knows I got the Mountain King early for Hordes wants to play against it. But put those rules in a book that has to be ordered from the UK, with certain units marked usable for a "normal" game and others not, and you can see how easily that enthusiasm to play against awesome models would wane.

I still am very interested in playing against FW models, but I just don't think the blame for reluctance to do so should be placed on the players. It's clearly GW's fault for the disorganized approach they have to Forgeworld units and rules, which causes confusion in players, which causes them not to want to have to deal with it in a competitive environment.

robpace wrote:

Blackmoor wrote:Forgeworld
I can write a long piece on why you should not have forgeworld in a 40k tournament, but I will sum it up this way: With the new edition they had the chance to include it into the game but they didn’t. That tells me all I need to know. When (and if) GW embraces it for their games I will be on board, but until them they have no business being in a game of Warhammer 40k.

I would sincerely appreciate it if you would put your thoughts about Forgeworld inclusion at tournaments into a post on your blog.

Expect it tomorrow.

@RiTides

We took Yakface's suggestion on including slightly modified random objectives back in as oposed to just dropping them entirely, Jathkin and MVBrandts suggestion on including Hammer and Anvil deployment (although modified again, for practicality), included FW because the community was largely for it (not just us wanting it), and we altered the basic mission structure to more closely resemble 6th ed. We added in Big Guns Never Tire and the Scouring. That's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

We made a LOT of changes from the first draft all based on community feedback and after our first events, I am sure we will make even more changes.

Warlord traits are so hit or miss. We have been playing 6th ed EVERY DAY since the edition change came and I feel pretty damn confident in saying we have more experience with it than most of the people posting in this thread.

In our games, the Warlord traits have more often than not given one player nothing at all even slightly useful, and the other player has gotten something game winning.

That isn't balanced in our eyes, and so we changed it to make the field more level.

As for the Kill Point system, as I have explained earlier, with the amount of Deathstars we anticipate people using (cheap to buy, easy and super powerful to play, easy to paint) saying a 600+ point unit should be worth what a Grot squad is, is stupid.

And, as there is almost no reason not to go MSU with vehicles now, you need a way to reign that in as well. Our system will result in MSU armies having disproportionately more KP's than armies with less units, but it won't be so unfair as when a Darigowing player with 5 KP faces a Mech Deldar Player with 20+ KP.

VP's can get confusing at the end of a long game so we blended the two.

It seriously isn't complex at all. For every 50 points or fraction thereof a unit is worth, it gives up that many Kill Points if destroyed.

That's it. It isn't complex at all, honestly, particularly if you just put how many points each unit is on your army sheet as we suggest. It's easier than VP's and more fair than KPs. At the end of the game you go, is that unit destroyed? Yes? My opponent get's X points.

I appreciate the thorough reply, even though I don't agree with all the changes you've chosen. I would much rather see VPs than KPs, as I build my dread-pod army up for Nova I hope they're not adding them in (Edit: they are, although it's the tertiary goal in two of the primer missions). It's one of my least favorite mechanics from 5e (don't know if it was in 4th, I skipped from 3rd to 5th). I still hold to my opinion that that and your warlord solution are unnecessary. VPs given up for partial units would handle deathstars just fine. And the point of warlord traits was partially to be committed to one "type", not have a shot at all types.

In particular the KPs just shift what is "good" away from MSU, which if you want to avoid deathstars doesn't make much sense to me. In fantasy VPs are always added up at the end of games, it's easy. I see this as trying to shift the meta, but IMO if you want to do so, pure VPs would be simpler and better than a KP/VP hybrid.

The Lucious is not a big deal when you are a Marine army, as all your basic guys have krak grenades, fists, or both. Siege dread that hits you instantly still sucks equestrian phallus. I know as an Eldar or Nid player, I really could live without getting instacharged on turn one anywhere on the table the enemy wants, like say my hiveguard or warrior unit. I guess the obvious answer is that if it does not hinder marines, its not a problem, which is reasonable I guess since the bulk of the field is MEQ.

The Deathwind is just stupid, though. especially with focus fire against a xenos player. The whirlwind variant can easily rack up its cost against even a MEQ player, to say nothing of us poor xenos scum wandering around in our 6+ T-Shirts. I have no idea how you can consider hades drills ban worthy and think these are perfectly fine. except that the hades is slightly more spammable and good against MEQ, too.

But I understand the all or nothing approach. Its cuts out a lot of arguing, but expect some ugly lists to surface with no comp system in place.

@RiTides

VP's do fix deathstars, but they don't fix MSU, that's the point.

MSU has a huge mathematical advantage. Too many targets to shoot, too many targets shooting. They are much more efficient and much more durable.

KP is meant to counter-balance MSU. You get punished for taking a lot of units.

You may not like it, a lot of people don't, but it most certainly does punish MSU. The problem is that I think it is too much.

Straight VPs actually favors MSU. It makes MSU better than it already is. That is why I don't think it is the better choice.

A hybrid system brings together elements of both systems. It punishes Deathstars and MSU, but neither is overly punished.

As for Warlord Traits, if it proves to be too much, we'll change it. None of us here like Warlord traits the way they are and feel that the system isn't even remotely balanced. Again, you may disagree, and we expect some people will, but we're making only those changes we feel will make the game more fair ad enjoyable for everyone.

@Phazael

Yup, that is the conclusion we came to as well. Just let it all in and that eliminates the arguments. I was tempted to limit the Hades, but for the exact reason you stated, refrained.

My problem with dropping Warlord traits is that this likely won't be able to last. Rumor has it that the new Chaos Codex has its own custom Warlord traits and other rules that interact with this mechanic. Removing this mechanic makes sense when everyone is running 4th or 5th edition books, but as new books come out that deal with Warlord traits more directly, people are going to want to include them so that they can use their new stuff.

My problem with including Forge World units is that they make flyers completely dead in the water. There's no point in fielding flyers when your opponent's three Mortis dreadnoughts (which they would be taking anyway) all have Skyfire and Interceptor and kill you before you attack. I think that's dumb and that given the choice between flyers (a part of the core game) and Forge World stuff, I'd prefer to choose flyers. Doing so also eliminates the problem with Hades Breaching Drills and the like.

Looks like Nova is going with straight KPs, although it's the tertiary goal in 2 of the 3 primer missions (and you must score 3 more KP than your opponent to win that goal).

That's a bummer for me... I've been thinking about the rulebook scenarios and First Blood, Warlord, and Objectives I can do... but trying to get objectives, table quarters, and preserve my kill points with a dreadnought drop pod army looks like a tall order. Looking forward to giving it a try, but my few scoring/denial units are going to have to go a long way!

I'm alittle confused about this rule:

Forge World Army Lists will not be allowed.
but Forge World units are allowed

Fetterkey wrote:My problem with including Forge World units is that they make flyers completely dead in the water. There's no point in fielding flyers when your opponent's three Mortis dreadnoughts (which they would be taking anyway) all have Skyfire and Interceptor and kill you before you attack. I think that's dumb and that given the choice between flyers (a part of the core game) and Forge World stuff, I'd prefer to choose flyers. Doing so also eliminates the problem with Hades Breaching Drills and the like.

I don't see them as making flyers dead in the water unless you go competely bonkers with flyers and get matched up with an opponent who went gonzo for anti-flyer FW. How is that any different than a horde player getting matched up with a parking lot IG force with 9 templates a turn? If your entire army premise is based on scissors, why is unfair to think that eventually you'll meet a rock based player? In addition, that 600pts they're spending on dreads (which have gotten worse in this edition) is 600pts they're not spending on things that have gotten better instead.

Flyers in 40k are a completely new invented mechanic for this edition that lopsidely affect only the last two years worth of codicies. How is that fair for the people who have none of them in their own codex and ALSO have no viable counter to it either? Not including them when other armies have flyers and anti-flyer units in their codicies is the biggest upset to any percieved balance IMO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blackmoor wrote:

Dok wrote:I think the addition of forgeworld fills a lot of holes in armies that wouldn't stand a chance against some of the more overpowered stuff that has come out in 6th. The only thing that seems like it may be a bit over the top is the Caestus assault ram, but I haven't seen that in a game so I can't say for sure.

I thought that is what allies are for.

You may be surprised to find out that some people like all their units in an army to have a cohesive appearance and dislike having a single snuffaluffagus on their display case between all the big birds. FW units allow alot of armies to fill some gaps (especially important for older books) yet still maintain a visual and mechanical theme for their armies.

@Fetterkey

No, they don't make Flyers obsolete at all.

I think you are overreacting here. I highly doubt we'll see every marine list with 3 Mortis Dreads, they are good, but they aren't that good (we use them at the shop all the time here). Plus, don't forget that we're only playing 1500pts, and what is good against 1 list will be a liability against another.

@Mr. Black Sunshine

Doesn't sound like you are confused at all to me as you got it exactly right.

@RiTides

You have to get 3 more KP? That's a bummer, what about armies that only have 5 or 6 KP?

And that is the point though, with layered missions which all of the bigger tournaments use, they are purposely designed so you can't get them all. It is meant to be really hard to achieve all of the goals in order to make the missions challenging and to stratify the field.

@Warboss

You said it.

I think after we get through this first season and everyone sees FW is really no big deal, this will issue will be gone and forgotten.

Reecius wrote:@Fetterkey

No, they don't make Flyers obsolete at all.

I think you are overreacting here. I highly doubt we'll see every marine list with 3 Mortis Dreads, they are good, but they aren't that good (we use them at the shop all the time here). Plus, don't forget that we're only playing 1500pts, and what is good against 1 list will be a liability against another.

I'm not talking the Mortis Contemptor here (which I agree is not a super mainstream unit), I'm talking the normal Mortis (Rifleman) Dreadnought. It gets this benefit too, though it can only be taken by Dark Angel armies. But wait... what's the next Codex coming out after Chaos...

Well, I'm not worked up over it but if anything, I think having to get 3 more KP than the other person makes it easier for me not to give that up (i.e., they have to get 3 more than me!). MVBrandt also posted that they're going to keep KP as the lower goals in many of the scenarios, since it's only in 1/6 rulebook missions (paraphrasing here).

But I'm going to stop cross-polinating the threads now

Fetterkey wrote:
I'm not talking the Mortis Contemptor here (which I agree is not a super mainstream unit), I'm talking the normal Mortis (Rifleman) Dreadnought. It gets this benefit too, though it can only be taken by Dark Angel armies. But wait... what's the next Codex coming out after Chaos...

So you're saying one dreadnought in one codex that is completely unknown is going to ruin flyers?

Dok wrote:

Fetterkey wrote:
I'm not talking the Mortis Contemptor here (which I agree is not a super mainstream unit), I'm talking the normal Mortis (Rifleman) Dreadnought. It gets this benefit too, though it can only be taken by Dark Angel armies. But wait... what's the next Codex coming out after Chaos...

So you're saying one dreadnought in one codex that is completely unknown is going to ruin flyers?

Yes. It's so overpowered that there's no point in fielding flyers if it's in the game. In any competitive event that allows FW, I would switch from Space Marines to Dark Angels just to be allowed to field these.

Fetterkey wrote:

Dok wrote:

Fetterkey wrote:
I'm not talking the Mortis Contemptor here (which I agree is not a super mainstream unit), I'm talking the normal Mortis (Rifleman) Dreadnought. It gets this benefit too, though it can only be taken by Dark Angel armies. But wait... what's the next Codex coming out after Chaos...

So you're saying one dreadnought in one codex that is completely unknown is going to ruin flyers?

Yes. It's so overpowered that there's no point in fielding flyers if it's in the game. In any competitive event that allows FW, I would switch from Space Marines to Dark Angels just to be allowed to field these.

Even if it were true that one unit can totally dominate flyers, how is that any worse than having flyers totally dominate most games currently without fear or real reprisal?

The reality is, with each new codex released I'm sure we are going to see more and more anti-flyer units filter into the game so people are going to have to get used to the traditional rock-scissor-paper match ups if they decide to go flyer heavy and then run into an army that is designed to take out flyers.

However, the reality is that skyfire + interceptor is not as amazingly powerful against flyers as they think it is, especially on a walker if people interpret the 45 degree arc of fire as a limitation on where the walker is allowed to shoot when making interceptor shots (as I believe most will).

And even when they get to fire with two twin-linked Autocannons at a flyer, these are not AP1 or 2 weapons and with the new damage table it actually makes much less susceptible to being taken out by the random penetration. Can the flyers be glanced to death? Sure, but outside of the AV10 Ork and DE flyers, the Necrons have AV11, the SM's have AV11 & 12 & the IG have AV12.

Most flyers have 3 Hull Points, so to reliably glance them out with S7 shooting its going to take an average of:

• 5 hits for an AV10 flyer.
• 6 hits for an AV11 flyer.
• 9 hits for an AV12 flyer.

So even with an AV10 flyer, you're talking about needing two Mortis to be within range and LOS to take one flyer out. If we're talking about a Necron flyer army, then even all 3 are going to maybe take 1 or 2 if you're really lucky before the Necrons obliterate your Dreadnoughts (as Necrons have no trouble taking out armor as we all know). And that's not even taking into account the flyer utilizing 'dive' to get jink saves.

The AV12 IG and SM flyers can feel pretty comfortable flying directly into the teeth of all 3 Mortis and trusting jink to protect them from death.

And of course if the Dreads fire this way they only fire snap shots in their own turn, and if they need to move at all, then they don't get the Interceptor & skyfire rules at all in the opponent's turn.

And taking 3 Autocannon dreads is not going to do you any favors against a non-flyer army. You lack the S8 instakill and armor punch that Grey Knight Dreads do and its really not that hard to get the 3 Hull Points needed against Dreads to take them out.


So long story short, I think 3 Mortis's would put you in a great position against armies that only take one or two light flyers. But those that have a bunch or those that have higher AV flyers are still going to be fine, and depending on the deployment types some movement phases there might be options for flyers to get out of the Dread's LOS arc and/or stay out of their range (in the case of Hammer and Anvil Deployment).

So bring on FW and if it causes flyers to become obsolete, then so be it. But living in fear of what might happen is just silly and punitive against the people who just want to play with the models they've purchased from Games Workshop that have rules written by Games Workshop.

yakface wrote:So bring on FW and if it causes flyers to become obsolete, then so be it. But living in fear of what might happen is just silly and punitive against the people who just want to play with the models they've purchased from Games Workshop that have rules written by Games Workshop.

I would rather disallow Forge World than de facto disallow flyers. Interceptor is a completely insane rule that should really be one per army. GW kept it restricted-- and rightfully so, but FW is poised to break that balance open.

I have multiple Forge World models, think they're awesome, and frequently use them. But I don't think Forge World's rules are ready for prime time.

Yak, you keep focusing on the players with your comments about them being like "a child refusing to try a vegetable" and now this is the second time just on this page that you've characterized them as "living in fear".

You also ignored my point above. Imo, your focus is wrong. It's the obligation of GW to lay out clear rules to follow. They've waffled on FW (in particular, you and Reece seem to think the 40k watermark in their books is irrelevant? How is that NOT confusing?) and so of course players do as well.

To restate, as another poster did, I like seeing some FW. However, due to their rarity, I like the event to require a printed out sheet, like the army list, that my opponent will be able to give me to consult. I think that's a fair requirement.

But continuing to characterize people with another viewpoint as analogous to children or as somehow "afraid" is just silly. Blackmoor thinks differently than you on this, and we all know the experience/success he's had. Not that that's required- but since Reece mentioned their playtesting experience I think it's worth noting.

Luckily, Reecius thinks similarly to you, and has an event near you. But I definitely think most other events should not feel pressured to allow FW if they don't want to (which really is what you're doing with that language).

If nothing else, they can see how this early 6th ed tourney does with it, and compare to an early 6th ed tourney without (like Nova) and make a judgment call.

Room for everybody and different style events under the tent, right? And even at Nova, I think you can use FW in several events, just not the main GT.

RiTides wrote:Yak, you keep focusing on the players with your comments about them being like "a child refusing to try a vegetable" and now this is the second time just on this page that you've characterized them as "living in fear".

You also ignored my point above. Imo, your focus is wrong. It's the obligation of GW to lay out clear rules to follow. They've waffled on FW (in particular, you and Reece seem to think the 40k watermark in their books is irrelevant? How is that NOT confusing?) and so of course players do as well.

To restate, as another poster did, I like seeing some FW. However, due to their rarity, I like the event to require a printed out sheet, like the army list, that my opponent will be able to give me to consult. I think that's a fair requirement.

But continuing to characterize people with another viewpoint as analogous to children or as somehow "afraid" is just silly. Blackmoor thinks differently than you on this, and we all know the experience/success he's had. Not that that's required- but since Reece mentioned their playtesting experience I think it's worth noting.

Luckily, Reecius thinks similarly to you, and has an event near you. But I definitely think most other events should not feel pressured to allow FW if they don't want to (which really is what you're doing with that language).

If nothing else, they can see how this early 6th ed tourney does with it, and compare to an early 6th ed tourney without (like Nova) and make a judgment call.

Room for everybody and different style events under the tent, right? And even at Nova, I think you can use FW in several events, just not the main GT.

All great points that I have no problem with expanding upon.

First off, GW has not ever waffled on Imperial Armor...in fact, if you look at the 13+ books they've produced they've actually been remarkably consistent with their verbiage. The only thing that makes it seem like they may be waffling is that players keep trying to apply labels onto Forgeworld and Imperial Armor that they've never come out and said themselves.

And the '40K' stamps in the newer books are actually a great example of precisely that.

So what do we know for sure about Imperial Armor?

1) It is produced by Games Workshop. The stamp is on the front of the book and that makes it a product of that company. I know some people want to pretend that Forgeworld is a separate company from Games Workshop, but as far as their rulebooks are concerned, they are clearly not.

2) They are expansions, as the books say so right on the front cover. What does that mean? As explained in both the 6th edition rulebook and the Imperial Armor books themselves, this means they are rules to be included in your games of 40K if you'd like to use them, just like a game of Planetstrike, Apocalypse, Cityfight, Spearhead, etc, with the big difference here being that these rules can be used within standard games of 40K (or within one of those themed expansion games too).

3) As clearly explained in the Imperial Armor prefaces, the rules for their units are as official as any other rules produced by Games Workshop, but your opponent should be notified ahead of time about their use and should be happy to play against them.

4) Some Imperial Armor units are only useable in Apocalypse games and some are usable in any type of 40K game. In older books, you actually had to read into the unit entry to see if a unit was allowed in a standard 40K game, but in more recent books they've included a stamp on the unit entry to help make it easy to spot which units are 'Apoc only' and which are useable in any game of 40K. However, these stamps alone do not carry any sort of new level 'officialness' to them, because these rules are already classified as being 'official' in the preface of the book! The stamp is simply an easy way to tell what type of game the unit can be included in.


To recap then:

Imperial Armor is a Games Workshop expansion for 40K that contains 'official' rules additions that requires both players to agree to play with.

---

So now you're probably thinking: Well, at a tournament there may always be one or more people who don't want to play with Imperial Armor stuff, so that means these rules should never be allowed in a tournament.

Well, that's where the role of the tournament organizer comes into play. A tournament organizer is the one who chooses which rules will or will not be utilized, including tournament FAQs, tournament special mission rules, etc. All of these things are published ahead of time as being included in a tournament which means that when players show up to play they are implicitly agreeing to play under the conditions set by the TO.

Which brings me to the point of me saying people are acting purely out of fear when it comes to Forgeworld.

We all know that tournament organizers listen to their players and as with anything in life, the people who are unhappy about something are the ones who take the time to complain the loudest. So when people moan and complain about Imperial Armor, tournament organizers choose to err on the side of caution and disallow Imperial Armor.

But this is where the comments about 'fear' and the child not eating vegetable analogy apply: You will be hard pressed to find someone complaining about Forgeworld/Imperial Armor causing trouble in a tournament that has actually regularly played with Imperial Armor in their tournaments.

In fact, all the comments you hear from tournament organizers who actually regularly allow forgeworld in their tournaments is that its no big deal. There are no reports of massive Forgeworld armies ruling the day because they are so wickedly overpowered allowing only those with deep pockets to rule the day.

THESE ARE ALL SPECULATIVE MYTHS that don't actually happen when put to the test of real life tournament gameplay.

But the crazy thing about all of this is that as long as people refuse to allow Imperial Armor into their tournaments, than the 'legend' of how Forgeworld will break the game gets to persist and as long as that legend persists then this mythical reason to not allow Forgeworld into tournaments exists. It is a never-ending cycle that perpetuates itself!

The ONLY way to break the cycle is to try allowing Forgeworld. And what's the worst that can happen? If FW-heavy armies start dominating your tournaments and your players now complain based on REAL ACTUAL EXPERIENCE, then the tournament organizer can take steps to neuter or ban IA completely again.

But what does it hurt to give it a try? The answer is absolutely nothing. But what does it hurt to continue to deny IA to be allowed in tournaments? You keep people from playing with some of the coolest models in the game that they've spent tons of money and time buying and painting.

At the end of the day like you say, every tournament organizer is the captain of their own ship and needs to create the event they want, and if they've tried allowing Forgeworld units and it didn't work out for them in their tournaments, then god bless their decision to now allow those units into their event.

However, what I am trying to hammer home is to those players and tournament organizers who have not given IA units even a shot to prove whether they will completely ruin everything, is that this is a fear-based reaction that being made. All I ask is that the shot be given to see what happens, because there really is no worst-case scenario that can occur...if IA does feel like it breaks your tournaments, then you go right back to where you are now (not allowing it), but if it doesn't break everything then all of a sudden you've made a whole bunch of players who own these models very happy that they can finally use their toys in their tournament games.


---


Oh, and of course you absolutely have the right for your opponent to bring a copy of the rules for every unit they are playing with. I don't know about forcing people to make a copy of the rule, but they MUST bring either a copy of it or the actual book itself or those players should be booted from the event the same as if they don't bring a copy of their codex.

Players are absolutely responsible for bringing the rules for their entire army to a tournament with no exceptions, IMHO.

Yakface Wrote:

However, what I am trying to hammer home is to those players and tournament organizers who have not given IA units even a shot to prove whether they will completely ruin everything, is that this is a fear-based reaction that being made. All I ask is that the shot be given to see what happens, because there really is no worst-case scenario that can occur...if IA does feel like it breaks your tournaments, then you go right back to where you are now (not allowing it), but if it doesn't break everything then all of a sudden you've made a whole bunch of players who own these models very happy that they can finally use their toys in their tournament games.

I have already posted my situations dealing with people with FW, models. My comment still stands.

Oh, and of course you absolutely have the right for your opponent to bring a copy of the rules for every unit they are playing with. I don't know about forcing people to make a copy of the rule, but they MUST bring either a copy of it or the actual book itself or those players should be booted from the event the same as if they don't bring a copy of their codex.

Players are absolutely responsible for bringing the rules for their entire army to a tournament with no exceptions, IMHO.

In my case I will enforce the person making a copy of the rule set of the FW model in question If I decide to bring them in the tournaments I run. I own many of the FW books. That is not the problem. The problem is that people including myself have been stung by people using FW models without complete reference material in a tournament. Too many people on the interwebs have made this same complaint to the point that it is a valid concern.

That is the nature of the beast for some people to win at all costs. Any angle that they can get. One angle is the use of FW models without the relevant information to give to your opponent or TO in question.

That is how I am going to deal with FW and in my case there is no exceptions. No printout/copy of the rule set for FW equates to no model getting into that tournament.

As I have posted previously Reecus's format satisfies most of my complaints and am interested to see how it all goes down with his tournament.

Adam LongWalker wrote:In my case I will enforce the person making a copy of the rule set of the FW model in question If I decide to bring them in the tournaments I run.

That's reasonable and I don't think anyone here who advocates allowing FW has expressed an opinion that it isn't. I'd even say that requiring a *LEGAL* copy of the most recent rules (i.e. the latest phsycial dead tree book with rules for that model or an older book with a printout of its official pdf update) to use with the official FW model or suitably converted plastic variant would be fine.

yakface wrote:But the crazy thing about all of this is that as long as people refuse to allow Imperial Armor into their tournaments, than the 'legend' of how Forgeworld will break the game gets to persist and as long as that legend persists then this mythical reason to not allow Forgeworld into tournaments exists. It is a never-ending cycle that perpetuates itself!

Unfamiliarity with FW rules and models is only half the problem. The other half of people's reticence in allowing FW stuff comes from people who use FW rules from memory (or at best pirated printouts) with inaccurate counts as models (like a regular drop pod or even plastic cup as a lucius pod). Increasing the quality of gamers' experiences with FW rules and models is just as if not more important as the quantity of experiences.

yakface wrote:But this is where the comments about 'fear' and the child not eating vegetable analogy apply: You will be hard pressed to find someone complaining about Forgeworld/Imperial Armor causing trouble in a tournament that has actually regularly played with Imperial Armor in their tournaments.

Language like this doesn't help your persuasiveness, for the usual reasons.

I can tell you that my primary concern about including FW rules stems from Adepticon (both the TT and the Gladiator, from playing against, playing with, and helping to run a tournament), and it's solely time-driven. Adding FW units makes games take longer. People aren't used to seeing them, so have to read the rules beforehand. They take longer thinking about how to deal with the FW units. Often, the owning player takes longer, because he's not as familiar with the unit. And given how hard it is to play a game to its natural conclusion under time pressure in any tournament, much less 6e right now, I'd rather not have to deal with the complications.

Give me 3 hour rounds, and my concerns go away.

But what does it hurt to continue to deny IA to be allowed in tournaments? You keep people from playing with some of the coolest models in the game that they've spent tons of money and time buying and painting.

This would be more compelling, if Reece wasn't allowing people to "convert their own" FW units.

I think part of it, too, from Yak's perspective is that the Tau anr Ork units are all pretty much balanced. At the very least, there are not units that grant large access to abilities the armies did not originally have or make people go "how is my army going to deal with that?". A lot of the MEQ (and a couple of the Guard) units fall into either the Contemptor catgory (ie buttloads of extra skyfire and interceptor) or the Cestus/Lucious catagory of gee my nids/eldar/sisters are autoboned by this unit.

Janthkin points out most of the major logistical issues that the inclusion of FW in a normal event presents, at least from an organizer perspective. It would help a lot of many of the more popular FW units did not have walls of rules text longer than some people's army lists, as well. I also agree with Fetter in that I would like to see how the actual core rules work with the core codex units before dropping wide access to intercept/skyfire to the entire playerbase. Talk about being fearful, the mental and semantic gymnastics people are going through to try and nerf the Cron Air army (that has not seen one major event yet) makes the GK qhining look reasonable, in comparison. Like the GK whining, no one seems too terribly interested in actual hard data and event results, because those contradicted the hyperbole. Consider that handing out Skyfire/Intercept all over the place is pretty much going to make things a lot harder for some of the already weaker armies (especially Daemons), because nothing is more fun than eating a bunch of S7-8 shots every time a unit hits the table...

I will go with the crowd on this, but I really think that FW is one of those elements (like mysterious terrain) that should be introduced about a year into the life cycle of the edition, so people have some time to learn all the other new stuff. Consider also that the forge world guys are basically rewriting stuff in a rush to match the new edition and the capacity for them to botch something is a lot greater (which is saying something) compared to the core GW rules team. The fantasy community took a staggered approach to these things and they had a lot less to deal with. I do not think it would hurt the 40k crowd to ease into things.

I'm starting to question if some of the folks here have read the tournament guidelines I posted! haha

WE REQUIRE PLAYERS TO HAVE THE RULES FOR ANY UNIT TO BE ON HAND!!!!*%!&*$%

It says it point blank in the tournament guidelines. No rules for the unit=no dice. Seems like Adam Longwalker seems to be the only one who read that, or at least the only one who acknowledged it. There will be no surprises.

@Janthkin

2 hours 15minutes for 1500pts is plenty of time, I doubt we will have any issues. That is exactly why we are giving so much time at low points levels, for people to acclimate to the new core rules, any FW stuff, etc.

And yes, we are allowing people to scratch build stuff. That gets around the arguments of not being able to afford FW.

And, if someone slaps some multi-meltas and a thunderfire cannon barrel on a Land Raider and says it's an Achilles, so what? Close enough to the real thing.

A lot of the Characters in the books such as the Baddab war, don't have a model and can be easily modeled up with conversions.

If someone has a normal drop pod and tries to use it as a Lucius, we'll say no go (just as it says in the tournament guidelines). We will not allow abuses in modeling. So don't worry about that.

@Fetterkey

Dude, talk about the definition of overreaction! hahahaha, one unit completely destroys flyers? Bro, you have to see how preposterous that is.

Interceptor/Skyfire is cool, but it is far from a game ending combination. A Necron Air Force will laugh at 3 Mortis Dreads.

And there are a lot of units with Interceptor and Skyfire, big deal? One unit in a very seldom used Codex by no stretch of the imagination is game breaking. If it means we see more Dark Angels that aren't Deathwing? Awesome. I see that as a win.

Our most competitive lists so far don't even use Flyers. Flyers are good but with smart movement you can get around them, and they are balls at taking objectives. If you build a list JUST to counter Flyers, you are barking up the wrong tree in 6th ed.

Anyway, the decision is made on this matter and I will bet money right now, that after the first event, it will be no big deal at all, and all of this hand wringing will have been for nothing.

Reecius wrote:I'm starting to question if some of the folks here have read the tournament guidelines I posted! haha

WE REQUIRE PLAYERS TO HAVE THE RULES FOR ANY UNIT TO BE ON HAND!!!!*%!&*$%

It says it point blank in the tournament guidelines. No rules for the unit=no dice. Seems like Adam Longwalker seems to be the only one who read that, or at least the only one who acknowledged it. There will be no surprises.

Take a deep breath and then take your own advice about actually reading the thread. No one has said that you're allowing the units without the rules on hand; we're simply discussing the concept.

Reece, I do think there are a couple logistical things to consider as it pertains to forgeworld:

The requirement to have the official GW printed material is a good one, but in theory people are required to have their army books on hand at every event and I know for a fact that TOs have been lax on that one. Consider also that someone flying is already limited in what they can drag along. I just do not see someone dragging a Fortress of Redemption on a plane as it is and the addition of several FW books to one's luggage is effectively another logistical issues that the locals do not have to contend with. From personal experience I can tell you that expensive resin models do not travel well on a plane, either. Obviously these concerns are not on the top of your priority list, but it is something to weigh when considering the inclusion of FW at major events.

Reecius wrote:@Janthkin

2 hours 15minutes for 1500pts is plenty of time, I doubt we will have any issues. That is exactly why we are giving so much time at low points levels, for people to acclimate to the new core rules, any FW stuff, etc.

We'll have to agree to disagree here. I've helped run the Gladiator at Adepticon for the past couple years; I've seen how long it takes people to read FW rules (much less understand) in a tournament scene. And I expect you're getting pretty quick with your 6e games, given significant practice; I'm not playing up to my normal speed with my Tyranids yet, and I don't even have complex units with LoS! to worry about.

And yes, we are allowing people to scratch build stuff. That gets around the arguments of not being able to afford FW.

And, if someone slaps some multi-meltas and a thunderfire cannon barrel on a Land Raider and says it's an Achilles, so what? Close enough to the real thing.

A lot of the Characters in the books such as the Baddab war, don't have a model and can be easily modeled up with conversions.

If someone has a normal drop pod and tries to use it as a Lucius, we'll say no go (just as it says in the tournament guidelines). We will not allow abuses in modeling. So don't worry about that.

Yak's point was that allowing FW in tournaments lets people use their really cool models. You're not requiring that the people actually HAVE the really cool models to use; that makes Yak's point somewhat less telling.

But on the whole, relax! You guys have to make some decisions right now, where most of us are living in hypothetical land. I do appreciate the chance to offer feedback before you've set everything in stone. When you're ready, pick your direction, post it, and see what happens. Much like our prior discussions of desirable venues, you're not going to please everyone all the time, and trying will just cost you (more) hair.

$.02 as we've gone through the final mission packet production for the NOVA:

One of the more frustrating components of KP in the past was less the imbalance of grots = paladins, and more the very arbitrary way in which close fought games would end ... i.e., "I need 1 kp to win? There's dangerous key units in front of me? I'm going to shoot that there Rhino." Wins "by 1" were always a frustrating thing about the KP game, in terms of feeling like the results were meaningful.

While I rather admire / like the simplification of old school victory points into "round-up" points, there's still the nagging annoyance of .... close games being determined by killing a couple grots or a trukk or something. I'd encourage some kind of margin (a la original VP in RTT's/etc.) for the difference between winning such a mission, and tying one. Having it be all or nothing off a single point becomes even more exacerbated in "feel" (in test, as we've fiddled with this one, also) than it otherwise would.

Reecius, we were discussing this in a broader sense, not just for the BAO... It's fine that you've already made your decision but you have been talking about 6th ed in general so it naturally led to this. I think you're over reacting a bit. A lot of fine points have been made, not just "bring the rules" which is a baseline. Your saying no one noticed you had that requirement makes me wonder if you fully read the above posts!

Imo it's a great discussion, and I'm happy you opened it. I think discussing this is the first step and you should actually be happy about it. And certainly, there are going to be a range of views, and one event into 6e won't settle this... nor should it, since what works for one TO might not for another.

But again, it's a healthy discussion, chill out man . Where's that SoCal vibe when I need it!

Janthkin wrote:
But on the whole, relax! You guys have to make some decisions right now, where most of us are living in hypothetical land. I do appreciate the chance to offer feedback before you've set everything in stone. When you're ready, pick your direction, post it, and see what happens. Much like our prior discussions of desirable venues, you're not going to please everyone all the time, and trying will just cost you (more) hair.

Hahaha, burn! I may be losing my hair, but I like to think that I am energy efficient! My bald spots are solar panels, I am warmed by the sun! Being from California, we like to be as green as possible! hahahaha

@Thread

Ah OK, I admit, I lost my temper, and you guys are right, I need to chill out! hahaha, sorry about that. Sometimes it gets hard to stand up to criticisms on multiple fronts (we have lots of interactive media we operate in) when you feel like you'e repeating yourself over and over.

Sorry guys. You're input here seriously is valuable as you guys really do know what you're talking about and help us to see things from perspectives we had not considered.

@MVBrandt

I can see that argument, for sure. The way we get around it in our format is to minimize the impact KP/VP have by having multiple victory conditions (as you do). My only concern when you need a KP differential to win, is when you come up against the ultra low KP armies in a KP match (Draigowing) and you essentially have to table them to win.

I understand both sides of the argument and I think both are valid concerns. Honestly, I don't see a "best" answer, merely the lesser of evils. I think the closest thing to a best answer is to come up with a system that you and your attendees are happy with and then stay consistent in order to allow players to anticipate what is to come and plan accordingly.

Reece - the flipside to that Draigo argument is they also have a much harder time winning. In "standard" KP a Draigo list can get a KP or three - your eaiest ones - even if you try desperately to hide the easy ones (reserves eventually have to come on), and you have to completely eliminate large units to counteract this ... something hard to guarantee full accomplishment of (especially as tourneys have more and more of appropriate levels of LOS blocking terrain for the 5th/6th TLOS environment).

In this situation, a Draigo type list has to fully commit itself to the game to earn enough KP to actually WIN on KP, whereas it is still risking itself with too much of a heavy-handed build in broader objectives. Still, just $.02

PS - I agree completely with your last sentiment. There's NEVER a best tournament format, nor should people strive for one. There's the best for any given individual, and for some individuals (or many) the "best" is "variety." Just adding my own feedback, as we've playtested out a lot of KP variants.

What we'll probably stick with is tertiary suppression of KP as a goal, and maintenance of the 3-margin for it, possibly with occasional missions where the margin increases, making Points the de-facto Tertiary.

Cheers for the thoughtful responses, guys (both yak and Reecius). I look forward to all the sweet events coming up through the rest of this year! And seeing how 6th ends up translating to large tournaments, and what the armies look like that do well at them .

@MVBrandt.

When your event is over, could you post online your opinion on the positives and the negatives of what transpired using the new rule set. Time constraints is one of my major concerns with 6th at Higher point levels.


Thanks.

Adam LongWalker wrote:

I have already posted my situations dealing with people with FW, models. My comment still stands.

In my case I will enforce the person making a copy of the rule set of the FW model in question If I decide to bring them in the tournaments I run. I own many of the FW books. That is not the problem. The problem is that people including myself have been stung by people using FW models without complete reference material in a tournament. Too many people on the interwebs have made this same complaint to the point that it is a valid concern.

That is the nature of the beast for some people to win at all costs. Any angle that they can get. One angle is the use of FW models without the relevant information to give to your opponent or TO in question.

That is how I am going to deal with FW and in my case there is no exceptions. No printout/copy of the rule set for FW equates to no model getting into that tournament.

As I have posted previously Reecus's format satisfies most of my complaints and am interested to see how it all goes down with his tournament.

This is purely a rules logistics issue for the tournament, and it would similarly apply if a player didn't bring a codex for the army he's playing and his opponent is unfamiliar with the codex and asks to see a copy of the rules.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a tournament absolutely requiring players that are using Imperial Armor units to come with a copy of the rules for their units and to disallow them from using said units if they don't have those rules on them.

Simply enforcing that rule will solve this problem completely, but ultimately this has nothing to do with IA unbalancing the game, which is the primary reason people tend to claim that these rules should not be allowed.

Janthkin wrote:
I can tell you that my primary concern about including FW rules stems from Adepticon (both the TT and the Gladiator, from playing against, playing with, and helping to run a tournament), and it's solely time-driven. Adding FW units makes games take longer. People aren't used to seeing them, so have to read the rules beforehand. They take longer thinking about how to deal with the FW units. Often, the owning player takes longer, because he's not as familiar with the unit. And given how hard it is to play a game to its natural conclusion under time pressure in any tournament, much less 6e right now, I'd rather not have to deal with the complications.

But to that argument I'd say that its a self-fulfilling issue. Probably the main reason tournament players are unfamiliar with IA units is because they don't see them in most tournaments and then the reason they're not allowed in tournaments is because players are unfamiliar with the IA rules?

Again, that problem only tends to exist as long as the myth about Imperial Armor being unsuitable persists. Once that's dropped and these units are allowed in more tournament games then people will get familiar with them and then this whole issue will become increasingly less prevalent.

And on top of that, I really do think there is a massive difference between the IA units allowed in regular games and those that are found in the Gladiator (the big boys). The latter really have much more complex rules that absolutely take more time to work through if you're unfamiliar with them...but 95% of the regular IA units don't really have rules that take more than a cursory glance to comprehend.

I am still strongly against Forge World and I think allowing these units will likely mess up the game. That being said I am certainly down with seeing how it goes-- I just won't participate (or at least won't play to win) in the first few events that allow Forge World stuff. Overall, I'd be happy to be proven wrong, as I have several Forge World models that I would like to field myself, but I really do think that allowing this stuff in regular tournaments will not prove to be good for the game.