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I am going to organize an event with the restrictions above. No heros, no lords, no magic, no magic items, no monsters. Good old fashioned troops and war machines. Before I get too far into it though I would like to see if anyone can think of units or rules that culd cause a problem and be unbalanced in this setting.

The ones that I thought of so far: Ethereal ... I decided to change ethereal to hit by normal weapons but recieve a 4+ ward save. Not too powerful, but still allows for ignoring terrain and such.

Armies with crumble rules when the general dies: I think I will have this not happen as the lack of raising, marching, extra movement and magical buffs should be enough to compensate.

Tzeentch horrors ... Havn't decided on them yet. I think they might be too much, but I have only fought against them once ... I'm hoping to borrow a demon book and glance through it for any other problems...

Anything you can suggest that might cause problems with balance would be appreciated. I want everyone to have fun with something different, and I want to be able to spot units that I might ask a player to consider not fielding or limit the number they field so as to not be overwhelming. I do expect to ask players what they will field in advance so that we can all work to a compromise on anything and all have a good time.

I also plan to control the matchups a little so that things like Orcs and goblins wont have to fight undead every round, etc.

Oh and I already perused the no magic/magic items thread that I didn't see before posting in here. I've been kicking this idea around for a while, and got some local interest so decided to give it a go.

Meph

My suggestion: don't do it.

The army books are (in theory) balanced on the whole book, not the troops aspect. By removing whole chunks of the game, you seriously unbalance everything.

Imagine what it's going to be like for a VC player, even with the modifications you mention: their basic trooper is WS2 I2 and 8 points; and Empire Swordsman is WS4 I4 and 6 points. Sure, the Skeletons get Fear, but the Swordsmen will hack through them quickly and crunble them.

Many armies require magic to be competitive. Please don't cut out whole aspects to the game and expect everything to be 'okay'.

VC will get off petter than the poor tomb kings.

I understand your concerns, but we are not talking about changing the game forever .. just for one day, one event. It's not even a tournament though we will keep track of things just to see how everyone did.

I have already talked to several local players and they are excited to give it a try. I understand that magic is the backbone of some armies .. however, with no hero or general leadership the whole army causing fear and some units causing terror will have a pretty big effect on the average unit leadership of 8 for most armies, even at 9 for armies like elves etc that's a 1 in 4 chance of every charge failing, and being scared even if they don't run is pretty decent.

And at 2250 thats a lot of models with no points spent on vamps or magic. My 2 minute test list based off just my current figs on hand:

5 bases of batswarm
12 crypt ghouls
12 crypt ghouls
10 dire wolves
20 skeletons FC
20 skeletons FC
20 Zombies FC
20 Zombies FC
10 black knights FC
3 Fell bats
20 grave guard FC
5 bases spirit host
4 wraiths + banshee

Not too shabby. Plus, thats the list I will play so if it is underpowered, then so be it. I'm the only local VC player and I think the Tomb king player will either relish the challenge of winning even with the disadvantage.

Other local armies I expect to participate are warriors of chaos, lizardmen, demons, high elves, wood elves, dark elves, dwarves. Maybe skaven and O & G but I see them less often and I'm not sure they will be able to make it.

Anyway enough defending the idea. I know it won't be perfect as the rules are balanced for the whole picture. But variety spices things up and I look forward to a game without a bunch of time spent pouring over the items in the magic section trying to find combos and think of things my opponents are going to combo from their books. Well, that was more defending, but ... meh.

Thanks for sharing your POV anyway. If anyone has any suggestions on things that might cause problems I'm still interested in hearing them as I am not that familiar with the new army books outside of DE, VC and Dwarves.

Meph

Empire are screwed big time without heros to lead them, they really need the extra leadership for them to stick around.

Sign me up for dark elves!

Assassin, assassin everywhere! Gifts of Khaine laff at your petty non-magic item rules!

Might even be worth it to bring out the special unit champs!

Heck, even saurus rank and file would have a fun time with LD 8 on 3d6, not really needing a general's leadership.

It would certainly be an interesting game to play-- I like the idea, particularly the "no magic items" part as those seem to cause quite a lot of trouble.

Vampire Counts should be fine-- first of all, they are too powerful as it is, only Daemons can hope to be a good match for them. Second, what Manfred totally forgot when replying is that those skeletons have another advantage over the swordsmen... UNBREAKABLE. That's nothing to overlook. Maybe the skeletons are still not-up-to-par, but the Ghouls most definately are.

In an all-troops army, Orcs and Goblins as well as Skaven might actually be worth playing! They'd lose their high Ld, but their troops are the main bulk of their power anyway. The effect on Ogre Kingdoms, Dwarfs, Bretonnia, Dark Elfs and Wood Elfs is negible since you don't really use them as high-magic anyway. High Elfs, Lizardmen and Chaos can both be built without heroes without withough reducing their power too much since they are all pretty much all-around good.

Daemons and Vampire Counts are the real abusive armies and removing their heroes might well bring them down to par with other armies.

Tomb Kings are the only ones that will suffer badly.

TOmb kings would simply hit the board and crumble. Everybody else could just take cannons and blast away.

long story short:

skaven and most O&G players are fethed.

tomb kings would due very quickly.


allthough, im sure WOC would do well since theres very little in the way of worries for them.

also, things like giants can be a pain to kill, by removing all the "hitty" stuff units like that will become a problem.

Giants, Stegadons, and Hyrdas (Oh MY!!) won't be a problem because Giants, Stegadons, and Hydras (Oh MY!) are Monsters, and as such, not allowed under these rules.

Assassins and more assassins shred everything and leave nothing!! DE will rock hard nutz in something like this!!

What ever gave you the idea to do this? Slice apart the book and use only certain pieces, it might work...just not well. Tell us how it goes.

Gunlines FTW?

Gross amounts of troops against a Mortar & Rocket Empire army? It might not be fun to play, but I'd love to watch it.

Rhinox Riders are cavalry, not monsters, yes? Ogre players might really like this event. No gut magic, but for a change there will be nothing but squishy things that cannot do much damage.

THis idea is, in my opinion, like potatoes without salt. If you want this kind of thing in a game, go play warhammer ancients.

At 2250 x2 units of 10 wraiths with banshee in each for VC (just hope no daemon enemies.

Daemons would become even more powerful. :(

I played in a Core Competition where a certain percentage of your models had to be Troops. It
was a fun tournament, and not too unbalanced.

I was reading through some of my old White Dwarfs the other day and ran across the article on "Low Fantasy." This kind of reminds of that, only more extreme.

Wow, a few more comments! I stopped checking as I thought the genral consensus was "don't do it."

The players who would participate are friendly gamers who can scale back the cheese to make an event fun, so no one will be spamming assassins, and the like(IMO they would be classified as characters anyway). There will proboly be a dwarf gunline, but those are the challenges this event is meant to explore. Flying units like harpies, etc are still allowed, cav and fast cav will be in most armies, etc.

IMO demons would be a little over the top because I think their book gave them a per point advantage that current books have trouble competing with. There is only one demon player so far and he is pretty cool and isn't going to cheese out either.

My main concern was trying to spot units that might be unbalanced in this environment so that we could consider their impact, for the most part though I think the guys playing will be pretty cool about it and it will take care of itself.

I have a little more plannign to do for this event and my local store is running a slew of events lately, so as soon as they slow down a little bit I wil lprobboly put this event together and see what happens.

Thanks again for all comments on both sides of the fence.

Meph

If you realy want to do a troop based warhammer game, get the rules for Warhammer Anchients as they realy down play the roles of characters and boost up the roles of infantry and cavalry.

Blood knights also have the potential to carve huge swaths of destruction through a game like this.

Beisdes demons and other VC, there is little out there to stop ethereals.

Chariots gain a bit, but not sure it would ever be enough to boost tomb kings to even competative here.

Do Tzeentch demons loose casting ability or are they the only mages out there? Two plus big blocks of horrors would be mightmarish.

Thanks shotgun.

I am the only VC player and I prefer black knights over Blood knights, and we are modifying ethereal to allow everyone to hit them but giving them a 4+ ward save.

We all ahd the same thought about TK, though no leadership boosts anywhere make them slighty better in this situation and ushabti and other units usually considered sub par gain some ground without having to worry about characters and magic weapons destroying them. The local TK player is pretty savvy and I think he might relish the chance to try and win under these conditions. Or he will play his lizards instead

The demon player will prorobly run khorne or nurgle and we already talked about not fielding horrors (he has a pretty large selection of figures and enjoys switching gods often in regular games anyway).

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Meph

Beastmen would do well. Although High Elves would scare me in this sort of thing. Swordmasters you can't zap OUUCH

dwarfs would rule at this tons of warriors, thunderers, warmachines, and rangers.

The event is basically off limits to Tomb Kings and Ogres. Your restrictions hurt them too much to be even fun to play, in my opinion.

Gunlines would rule the roost in that event. If that's what you want, fine. If you want to mitigate that to some degree, set up the terrain yourself and put no hills in any deployment zone.

Why not just play 1999 pts, 1750, or 1500 pts?

At 1999 pts, the reduced Heroes, NO Lords, limited Specials & Rares, will reduce the amount of problem stuff available, while still keeping armies in the regular rulebook.


If you really want to put the screws down further:
- take away a Hero
- require 3+ Core
- NO starting PD

You might want to say no steam tank, since you are taking out everyone elses monsters.

i would run

10 x 10 chaos warriors shields full command halberds

5 chaos knights


i dare you to try and kill it all

With pure point-and-click Brets, I probably can...