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For a narrative event I did last summer we held it in a jungle set in ghur and I provided each table with three or four monsters from my collection that would randomly come out.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It seems like the easy answer is to assign a realm to each table for the event. Rather thematic too.

The way GW did it at their event recently was purportedly even easier than that:

15 minutes ahead of time for the next pairings(there were breaks between games it seems), they announced a Realm that everyone used and every terrain used a specific set as well.

Yeah I think this is the correct way to do it - announce pre rounds what realm the round is in as well as the realm trait. Lets you keep control over the event, limit any of the glaring realm traits, etc. Don't like the Ghur realm rules? Don't run Ghur in your event.

Marmatag wrote:If you actually believe that Age of Sigmar is a true test of your intellect, then it probably is, just in a very disappointing way :(

It's like Mensa where the real test of your intelligence is whether or not you can be talked into paying membership dues.

Joking aside, I think these realm rules are great for a tournament. Skew lists should just have bad matches and lose and be unable to win the even without getting very lucky and dodging both bad match ups and bad realms.

If someone is trying to figure out how to win an event they need to figure out how to both beat the various match ups they might come across as well as deal with the scenarios, terrain and rules the event is using.

I look forward to seeing more generalist forces showing up at events. The skew lists tend to trickle out into the wider community and are often pretty not fun to play against.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It seems like the easy answer is to assign a realm to each table for the event. Rather thematic too.

The way GW did it at their event recently was purportedly even easier than that:

15 minutes ahead of time for the next pairings(there were breaks between games it seems), they announced a Realm that everyone used and every terrain used a specific set as well.

Yeah I think this is the correct way to do it - announce pre rounds what realm the round is in as well as the realm trait. Lets you keep control over the event, limit any of the glaring realm traits, etc. Don't like the Ghur realm rules? Don't run Ghur in your event.

The problem is once you decide the game is balanced around the realms, you can’t leave any of them out. Once you start to pick and choose you’re entering the realm of Houserules.

Doesn't bother me lol I've been in the realm of Houserules for many many years.

GW's podcast (The Storm Cast) yesterday had Jervis and Ben on to talk about this. It's only about 15 minutes. They basically say that it's okay to have TOs pick realms that they feel would be cool. I suggest listening to it, gives good insight from the designers.

 AduroT wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It seems like the easy answer is to assign a realm to each table for the event. Rather thematic too.

The way GW did it at their event recently was purportedly even easier than that:

15 minutes ahead of time for the next pairings(there were breaks between games it seems), they announced a Realm that everyone used and every terrain used a specific set as well.

Yeah I think this is the correct way to do it - announce pre rounds what realm the round is in as well as the realm trait. Lets you keep control over the event, limit any of the glaring realm traits, etc. Don't like the Ghur realm rules? Don't run Ghur in your event.

The problem is once you decide the game is balanced around the realms, you can’t leave any of them out. Once you start to pick and choose you’re entering the realm of Houserules.

There is 0 difference in pre-selecting realms or randomly generating them. Unless you play in an 8 round event you'll miss 3 realms every time, how those 3 realms are selected is irrelevant. What you've done is latch on to and then argue in a disingenuous manner the statement regarding that the game is balanced with realm rules in mind. You know good and well that statement is meant to read balanced with playing in a realm, not all 8. 5 rounds, 5 realms - how those are selected are immaterial.

I for one am a huge proponent of different events having different flavors. Keeps things from getting static and boring and also helps curb some netlisting by having different metas at different events.

The random generation of realms and of realm effects is like the random generation of spells. The game works in 6s and allows you to use dice to make the choices for you if you want (and your opponent agrees). And its there to be a mediation point to get a game started rather than having two players argue forever over a realm.

However most of those rules work if formally assigned; the random dice roll isn't giving you any bonus or negative aside from being random.

It's not like dice rolls in game where its representing the randomness of battle. The setup phase rolls are nearly all optional roles.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It seems like the easy answer is to assign a realm to each table for the event. Rather thematic too.

The way GW did it at their event recently was purportedly even easier than that:

15 minutes ahead of time for the next pairings(there were breaks between games it seems), they announced a Realm that everyone used and every terrain used a specific set as well.

Yeah I think this is the correct way to do it - announce pre rounds what realm the round is in as well as the realm trait. Lets you keep control over the event, limit any of the glaring realm traits, etc. Don't like the Ghur realm rules? Don't run Ghur in your event.

The problem is once you decide the game is balanced around the realms, you can’t leave any of them out. Once you start to pick and choose you’re entering the realm of Houserules.

There is 0 difference in pre-selecting realms or randomly generating them. Unless you play in an 8 round event you'll miss 3 realms every time, how those 3 realms are selected is irrelevant. What you've done is latch on to and then argue in a disingenuous manner the statement regarding that the game is balanced with realm rules in mind. You know good and well that statement is meant to read balanced with playing in a realm, not all 8. 5 rounds, 5 realms - how those are selected are immaterial.

The realms feel roughly parallel to scenarios from a scenario packet. A tournament won't use them all, but they provide variety across different tournaments.

Wich is Gw's point. A skew list might be hheavily favoured in one realm but struggle in another.

Even if an event only uses 3 realms and randomly selects them ath the start of the day. You might still need to prepare for all 8.

 Earth127 wrote:
Wich is Gw's point. A skew list might be hheavily favoured in one realm but struggle in another.

Even if an event only uses 3 realms and randomly selects them ath the start of the day. You might still need to prepare for all 8.

Having to prepare for all of the realms just means you're better off not preparing for any. It's much more efficient to build your list as if you weren't going to have any realm rules than it is to somehow try and predict which option out of the 7 (or 42 if you bother with the realmscape features) options you could get dropped into. Any attempt to maximize your capability in one realm scenario will absolutely hamstring you somewhere else. It's more like randomly getting plus or minus 250 points at the start of the game than anything strategic.

Skew lists are just as likely to sail to easy victories on the backs of favorable draws as they are to be punished. The random nature of it increases the risk AND the reward equally so skew lists are likely to see the same representation. Though it is certainly possible that skew list show up MORE because the chance of pulling a favorable realm rule against an army that counters their skew could end up with them on a podium they wouldn't have otherwise gotten to.

Also, the vast majority of the realm rules are 'roll a 6 to see who's the better player'. How do you "plan" for your opponent randomly rolling a 6 at the right time and doing a bunch of mortal wounds, or debuffing your super pivotal monster, or obliterating 3/4s of your army because he got 3(or even 4) combat phases accross his double turn. Just because the CHANCE of you getting hit with these abilities is the same for both players doesn't mean the OCCURANCE will be.

Then you have rules like Fecund Quagmire that totally shut down certain units and armies, rendering them largely useless (DoK, Slaanesh, any melee unit with 5 or less movement that can't teleport). Or Ulgu's shooting range reduction making anything with longer than an 18" range totally worthless(but...but muh teleport?! If you spend a CP to suicide a long range shooting unit, you deserve to lose. Long range units are valuable because they're LONG RANGED. Even if you do get them within 12 to shoot, most long range units are good because they do consistent damage over multiple turns, but do jack gak in a single round. They'll also die immediately being 12" away.)

THEN you have the rules that just make specific things radically better for no reason. Mirrorpool from Ghyran makes Allarielle, Archaon, and Nagash walking nightmares. Every single realm spell lore makes mages like Nagash, Arkhan, Lady Olynder, etc far stronger for free. Fecund Quagmire makes Stormcasts and Nighthaunt basically unstoppable, etc.

IF you're going to use the realm rules in a tournament then they should absolutely be selected far in advanced and the realmscape features should be set ahead of time as well. There is no ration reason to force players to slog through a fecund quagmire or 6" shooting range game. You're just being a dick to your players with those. You also shouldn't allow Ghur to be used at all because forcing players to buy, build, paint, and transport TWO extra monsters just to be screwed over by them is ASININE.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 AduroT wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It seems like the easy answer is to assign a realm to each table for the event. Rather thematic too.

The way GW did it at their event recently was purportedly even easier than that:

15 minutes ahead of time for the next pairings(there were breaks between games it seems), they announced a Realm that everyone used and every terrain used a specific set as well.

Yeah I think this is the correct way to do it - announce pre rounds what realm the round is in as well as the realm trait. Lets you keep control over the event, limit any of the glaring realm traits, etc. Don't like the Ghur realm rules? Don't run Ghur in your event.

The problem is once you decide the game is balanced around the realms, you can’t leave any of them out. Once you start to pick and choose you’re entering the realm of Houserules.

There is 0 difference in pre-selecting realms or randomly generating them. Unless you play in an 8 round event you'll miss 3 realms every time, how those 3 realms are selected is irrelevant. What you've done is latch on to and then argue in a disingenuous manner the statement regarding that the game is balanced with realm rules in mind. You know good and well that statement is meant to read balanced with playing in a realm, not all 8. 5 rounds, 5 realms - how those are selected are immaterial.

Except if the game is balanced on the idea that any of those realms could come. But then if some of them can't come up with skew armies can stop worry about those realms as they won't be. So the "balance" goes away as there's no chance of getting that bad realm for your units that are rock awesome and overpowered in other realms.

Albeit idea of balancing game by having random realm is stupid anyway but GW has never shown particular apt in making balanced game so no surprise.

personally we are doing it where we are not fighting in any realm unless both agree. The issue with sigmar has always been that so much of the game boils down to a single dice role, inititive roll. And with realms even more so, a single good roll to get the realm you want can pretty much skew the game so bad in someones favor its not worth playing even. I mean one of the realms iirc makes it so you cast 2 purple sons for the cost of one.

That's why you're supposed to choose a realm, not roll randomly for it.

 AduroT wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It seems like the easy answer is to assign a realm to each table for the event. Rather thematic too.

The way GW did it at their event recently was purportedly even easier than that:

15 minutes ahead of time for the next pairings(there were breaks between games it seems), they announced a Realm that everyone used and every terrain used a specific set as well.

Yeah I think this is the correct way to do it - announce pre rounds what realm the round is in as well as the realm trait. Lets you keep control over the event, limit any of the glaring realm traits, etc. Don't like the Ghur realm rules? Don't run Ghur in your event.

The problem is once you decide the game is balanced around the realms, you can’t leave any of them out. Once you start to pick and choose you’re entering the realm of Houserules.

Isn't any tournament pack in "the realm of Houserules"?

Oh look, a pristine baby. But, this bathwater is filthy. Time to hit the reset button.

 Marmatag wrote:
Oh look, a pristine baby. But, this bathwater is filthy. Time to hit the reset button.

Marm, throwing the baby out with the bathwater would be easily the MOST reasonable argument I've ever seen from you on this site.

I was wondering why random bollocks was being shoe horned into tournements officially, the I saw JJ's name and it all makes sense.

JJ considers tournements to be abhorrent as competitive gaming tends to show games he designed to be gak. As such he considers tournament player's as the lowest of the low and wants to make your experience as unpalatable as possible in the hope you all feth off leaving the caac players and the kids.

Jervis organised the first ever official Warhammer tournaments back in the 90s. It's fair to say he doesn't think they're "abhorrent". However, even back then he was a strong proponent of tournaments having themes and having more restrictions than the default limitations in the base rules. He described each tournament rules pack as a puzzle that players need to solve.

He likes tournaments - he just doesn't think they're the only way to play. The game is set up with that same philosophy, probably not coincidentally.

Thommy H wrote:
Jervis organised the first ever official Warhammer tournaments back in the 90s. It's fair to say he doesn't think they're "abhorrent". However, even back then he was a strong proponent of tournaments having themes and having more restrictions than the default limitations in the base rules. He described each tournament rules pack as a puzzle that players need to solve.

He likes tournaments - he just doesn't think they're the only way to play. The game is set up with that same philosophy, probably not coincidentally.

Actually as per JJ's ethos the game was originally setup to make any type of competitive play very difficult/impossible as there was no balancing mechanic and as such house rules were needed to make the game functional. Thankfully the game bombed at launch and changes were made to enable competitive play.

As for him liking tournements that's not the impression his WD articles gave and as for setting up tournements that was his job he did not have much choice at that time.

From when he was a guest speaker at a games day back in ... 2005 or so... his impression of tournaments were that they were fun, but if that was all you played you were missing out on 95% of the rest of the game.

He didn't give the impression that they were abhorrent to me. Just that they shouldn't be the end all be all, which I agree IS reflected in their ruleset as its not suitable for pure competitive play in a lot of peoples' opinions.

I used to dislike JJ's attitude but the more I read it, the more it resonated. Too many people only care about competitive play and want to turn everything in warhammer to some sort of e-sport with "world championships" and sponsorships and celebrity-like prestige. They miss out on huge swathes of the game because they are too focused on "what if <opponent does something "unbalanced">" instead of actually playing the game.

I now agree with Jervis a lot.