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Greetings Dakka…long time lurker, first time poster 

This is my tournament director report for the monthly 40k tournament at Mind Games in SLC, UT. Once upon a time I ran LOTR TCG tournaments for the store, so I have had experience with TDing. The owner of the store has been running the tournaments for the last 6 months but his wife demanded a vacation so knowing my history of TDing he asked if I could step in and handle it while he and the wife went to Mexico. While bummed I wouldn’t be able to play, I accepted.

The basic format we have been using for the last 6 months is this:

-$5 entry fee, prizes for 1st, 2nd and best painted.
-Fully painted not necessary, but fully painted armies gain an in game bonus(in this case, once per game you can reroll any 1 die).
-change to the FOC thus: 1 HQ, 2-6 troops, 2 elite, 2 FA, 2 heavy
-3 games, 90 minute rounds. Standard missions from the rulebook
-win/loss record determines placing, strength of schedule breaks ties

This format worked well for us, averaging 14-16 players every month (max capacity for the store is 16) with people on a waiting list for a couple of tournaments. We did run into some many way ties even after strength of schedule tie breaks and the novelty of the basic missions wore off (we used some mildly altered missions from the battle missions book which were received with mostly positive reviews.

Given this was my tournament to run for the most part, I decided to use the Ard Boyz semi final scenarios with a few minor changes to scale down to 1500 points from 2500 points. I decided to use battle points only as tie breakers for placing/pairings, giving win/loss precedence over total BP. I also changed the order of the scenarios, putting the fog of war scenario in the middle.

The day of the tournament I was skeptical of getting a lot of people since the shop recently moved to a new location, many of the regulars were out of town and we only had 5 people pre pay, but come noon we had 10 people show which I was pleased about. Armies played were:

-blood angels all jump packs, lots of FNP and mephiston
-generic mech marines w/bike command squad
-necrons
-space wolves
-2 tyranid armies
-generic mech marines w/2 vindicators
-tau
-imperial guard semi mech, leman russes
-black templar

We usually have a few eldar and chaos players, but they were all out of town or had other commitments, but even with all the marine lists they all played quite differently (a testament to how much better the new books are IMO). Anyhow. The BA player ended up winning with 2 massacres and 1 minor victory, claiming his $67 box prize. There was a 4 way tie for 2nd with the bike command list taking 2nd having the most battle points. Both him and the best painted tyranid army walked away with $32 boxes. There were very few rules questions and no real disputes at all, everyone was well behaved 

We sat around and talked about the format and scenarios, and general consensus was that everyone liked battle points as tie breaks as opposed to SOS, and most all the players missed the random game length and seizing the initiative. Given the feedback I think the next tournament will incorporate all those suggestions.

A good time was had by all, and if youre in the SLC area the 3rd Saturday of the month, feel free to stop by and play. Its only 5 bucks after all :p

HAG

I might stop by there one of days for a tournament.

My question is why the change to the FOC?

Not all armies are created equal and some have better troops, and some have better FA or HS.

Blood Angels are a well rounded army that have good Elites, Troops, FA and Heavy Support, so they are not hurt by this change. On the other hand the strength of the Eldar army are in there Elites and Heavy Support, and the same thing with Tau is that when you alter the FoC that you punish armies that should not be punished.

Blackmoor wrote:I might stop by there one of days for a tournament.

My question is why the change to the FOC?

Not all armies are created equal and some have better troops, and some have better FA or HS.

Blood Angels are a well rounded army that have good Elites, Troops, FA and Heavy Support, so they are not hurt by this change. On the other hand the strength of the Eldar army are in there Elites and Heavy Support, and the same thing with Tau is that when you alter the FoC that you punish armies that should not be punished.

Agree to the FOC change is a bad idea. As stated, each army uses different FOC slots for its strengths. 5th edition forced people to rely on troops as the only standards coring units (notice I said standard).

If you are going to go that route, I suggest a quantitative composition score where you get points for unique unit selection type selection (except troops can have 2 of each). The point scale you use would depend on the rest of the tournament and weight you want comp to have. This system also removes the opinion of the judges out of the way. Either it is a unique or not (unique being grey hunters = grey hunters regardless of gear or transport).

the FOC change is a holdover from an escalation league that we were doing in the store (ima post that in a bit for peoples perusal, it did amazing things for our store in terms of games played and fun level increased).

the first 3 months of tournaments we did this year were only 1000 points and we wanted to keep people away from spamming hyper efficient units at such a low points limit.

i do agree that at 1500 points the FOC should be unlocked and that is something we will almost surely change in the coming months.

ser_hag wrote:the FOC change is a holdover from an escalation league that we were doing in the store (ima post that in a bit for peoples perusal, it did amazing things for our store in terms of games played and fun level increased).

the first 3 months of tournaments we did this year were only 1000 points and we wanted to keep people away from spamming hyper efficient units at such a low points limit.

i do agree that at 1500 points the FOC should be unlocked and that is something we will almost surely change in the coming months.

Ah, now that is a horse of a different color!

we were having mostly higher point tournaments (1750-2500) last year, but that combined with a super cutthroat attitude that pervaded our shop had driven quite a few people away so we decided to scale it back and try and make it more about playing for fun than playing to win.

when youre playin lower points (>1500) i really think you need to have some kind of way to restrict the builds. i mean some armies at 1000 points wouldnt be able to deal with say 2 land raiders or 3 full fiend units or whatever. we schemed a lot for a reasonable, easy to follow method and this worked really well for us.

i definitely think that 1500 points having all the FOC slots is important so ima plead my case to the shopkeep this week when i go in.

hi,

I'm curious to know - if I was to drive up for the tourney happening in July, just what kind of FOC restrictions & scenarios could I expect?

I personally love this idea of scheduled tourneys on set days [3rd Saturday, etc.], and $5 is my kind of entry fee! However, I'd like to know what to expect so I don't show up & have to spend a bunch of time tweaking a list to fit the tourney rules?

I checked on the Mind Games website, but didn't find much more than the escalation league [also cool, btw] stuff & the calendar listing the July tournament?

anyhow, keep the home fires burning!
thanks

for now its still got the FOC restrictions, but ima talk to the owner today and try to prevail upon him to change it. stay tuned :-p

ser_hag wrote:
when youre playin lower points (>1500) i really think you need to have some kind of way to restrict the builds. i mean some armies at 1000 points wouldnt be able to deal with say 2 land raiders or 3 full fiend units or whatever.

This just makes no sense to me-- I'd love to play against an opponent with 2 landraiders-- if I can eliminate over a THIRD of your army in two shots, you've done something horribly wrong with your list.

Altering the FOC doesn't do much towards actual game balance- the 2 landraider list you mention is still fieldable at 1500 (in fact, a player could still get 5 raiders in at 1500, even with the truncated FOC, if they wanted to).
----------------

That said-- if it gave the players the feeling that they had a better shot and thus they had a better time... run with it. But, really, it doesn't do much except discourage player growth- if I can count on going to tourneys where I'm not challenged by competitive lists, then there's little incentive for my personal gaming to improve.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh-- I do like the small in-game advantage for a fully painted force. It's a good compromise versus a paint score, and still very much encourages painted forces.

I would argue that even at lower points, i.e., 1000 + below, you don't want to cut FOC. It just has too many unintended effects. Say I want to run 3 separate Landspeeders. I'd be hard pressed to say that's overpowering, but it's a pretty credible plan at low points given their mission flexibility. I can't do it with the modified FOC, but I could still bring a couple Landraiders in some of the codexes. At low points I think it makes more sense to cut the requirements, not the caps. E.g., at 750 and below I would totally buy into not requiring an HQ.

If you want to disallow problematic stuff, then you need to make clear rules outlining the problem you want to get rid of, rather than wiping out FOC sections. For example, in my group at 750 and below we usually apply rules similar to Combat Patrol but updated---no more than 3 wounds, no armor facing of 13 or more, etc. Those kinds of things tackle the issues those FOC restrictions are trying to address in a much more targeted way. As for why you would want to do that, I would argue that at very low points if you don't add those kinds of restrictions you exacerbate the rock-paper-scissors effect, but that's a whole discussion on its own.

But, sounds great that your first run as TO went well! I like the painting buff; it's not overpowering, but definitely strong encouragement. I usually run that painted is +1 for turn order roll, but I think I like yours more.

kartofelkopf wrote:

ser_hag wrote:
when youre playin lower points (>1500) i really think you need to have some kind of way to restrict the builds. i mean some armies at 1000 points wouldnt be able to deal with say 2 land raiders or 3 full fiend units or whatever.

This just makes no sense to me-- I'd love to play against an opponent with 2 landraiders-- if I can eliminate over a THIRD of your army in two shots, you've done something horribly wrong with your list.

lemme guess...you play an army that has melta or railguns? what happens when you dont have that? i imagine if you played orks or demons you would sing a different tune.

tjkpena wrote:If you want to disallow problematic stuff, then you need to make clear rules outlining the problem you want to get rid of, rather than wiping out FOC sections. For example, in my group at 750 and below we usually apply rules similar to Combat Patrol but updated---no more than 3 wounds, no armor facing of 13 or more, etc. Those kinds of things tackle the issues those FOC restrictions are trying to address in a much more targeted way. As for why you would want to do that, I would argue that at very low points if you don't add those kinds of restrictions you exacerbate the rock-paper-scissors effect, but that's a whole discussion on its own.

check out my post 'escalation league' in the 40k general section...we actually did a lot of that same kind of stuff

Any tournaments scheduled later this summer? I'm gonna be moving from Provo to SLC in August.

yep...every 3rd saturday at noon.

and you can get a game any day of the week except sunday, but for lots of people come in fridays and saturdays.

Good on you for running the Tourney- wish I could make it :(

Takes real love of 40K to run a Comp- Kudos

so we have prevailed upon the owner and the next tournament on 7/17 will be regular FOC, so bring whatever army you want

besides, its 5 bucks. who cant afford that?