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Hey guys. I am running a league in my local store. The idea is to encourage skillful play with no nonsense.

Here are my rules. Please can people post lists that they believe will break the system just so I can see if it is watertight!

Everyone will play each other once. One point for a win. Person with post points at the end wins the league. In case of a tie winner will go to who who beat who when said players played each other.

Armys will be 1,750points.

No more than one of the same HQ entry.
No more than two of the same elite entry.
No more than four of the same troops entry.
No more than two of the same fast attack entry.
No more than two of the same heavy support entry.

No more than 750 points can be spent on units with a armor value.

I was toying with the idea of banning special characters. But I decided that they are part of the game so players will just have to deal with them.

All games will use the same scenario:

When placing terrain no multi-level terrain can be placed withing 12 of a long table edge. Players are encouraged to have at least 8 pieces of terrain on the board, four being terrain that completely blocks line of sight.

Both players roll a dice. Winner chooses a long table edge and places an objective within 12 of his own long table edge. His opponent then places an objective within 12 of his own long table edge.

Winner then deploys his army withing 12 of his own table edge. Keeping units in reserve if he wishes as normal. Other player then does the same.

Winner then takes first turn. Note that seize the initiative is not used.

The game lasts 6 turns. Note that random game length is not used.

The winner is the person with the most points. Points are awarded as follows:

Kill points for units killed, as is normal for a kill point mission.

Points for kill points left on the table of a players own army, (units in transports count as being on the table). ie add the amount of units you have killed to the amount of your own you have left on the board.

8 additional kill points are awarded for each objective, captured in the normal way, a troop unit within 3 inches and no enemy within 3.

In a case of a tie, total the points value of all destroyed units. Whoever has killed the most wins(ie victory points as is done in warhammer fantasy or 4th edition 40k). If this is also a tie roll off to decide who wins.

No more than one of the same HQ entry.

this will limit some armies to basically 1 HQ choice(Tau and Necrons specifically) For Tau they can only ever have 1 Crisis commander because Ethereals are absolute garbage, and commander Shadowsun is pretty bad too(although a Farsight enclave at this league could function fairly well).

No more than four of the same troops entry.

this could be detrimental to Necrons as they only have 1 troops choice, and need as many necron units on the table as possible to not "Phase out"; the phase out rule can be mitigated with more "necron units" in other slots but still..

The point system has a few flaws; my all infantry horde guard could win most every scenario by virtue of having more units on the field than could ever possibly be destroyed(it has 15 units base; only 3 of those units have less than 10 men in them) I could also cut out some points here or there to add another 10 man squad(especially seeing as I only bring 1 HQ, and 4 troops FOC selections to the table). the bonus 8 points would also allow me to "castle" around my objective, while sending a great number of shots down field to clear your objective for my dedicated objective grabbers(which is my Base style of play to begin with)

GhostfaceKillah wrote:
No more than 750 points can be spent on units with a armor value.

Which can suck for that one guard player that likes to play Armored Company and wants to take squadron-ed Leman Russ's, also would the limit of one of each type of heavy support include ALL the Leman Russ variants as one type of heavy support or not?

Could probably fit a pretty nasty nidzilla list into those rules. You have rules against vehicle spam, but there is nothing stopping monstrous creature spam.

Cambak wrote:

GhostfaceKillah wrote:
No more than 750 points can be spent on units with a armor value.

Which can suck for that one guard player that likes to play Armored Company and wants to take squadron-ed Leman Russ's, also would the limit of one of each type of heavy support include ALL the Leman Russ variants as one type of heavy support or not?

Yes. They are one entry.

I'll put it simply, I wouldnt be showing up for this tournement.

Sounds rigidly boring tbh man.

I get that you are trying to lock out people who spam the same units over and over but at the same time it is making the tournament feel to rigid.

Your system seems like a way to keep players like me out of your gaming group. Do what every you think is fun but if i was a regular at your FLGS i would be pretty bummed out that I couldn't use the armies I painted and liked to play with. I would attempt to explain why I wouldn't be joining your system since I don't think its fair to bar people from using the units they paid for that are legal in the rules and if you still wouldn't let me play I'd leave it at that and keep the rest of my opinions to myself but id be pretty upset with you. If everyone at your FLGS sees eye to eye with you this is fine but try to make sure your not alienating people.

While there are some issues, like w/ Necrons and Nidzilla lists. I think its perfectly fine to set limitations how you want for a tourney. Specifically since you are wanting to, "encourage skillful play with no nonsense".

I don't think this setup will work very well. While this may stop some spam armies, it will hinder normal and skilled players as well. As was mentioned earlier, the 750 limit on armor can hurt a lot of guard players who play full mech lists.

I am not a fan of the 6 turns either. When you know when the game will end you can abuse it too easily. A player can go second, and use fast vehicles or skimmers to contest objectives last turn without fear of being attacked.

The rules are just too strict for my tastes. You can try it though, I am sure some people will show up to see how it goes, just be ready when people are not thrilled with results. But then again they may love it.

GhostfaceKillah wrote:In case of a tie winner will go to who who beat who when said players played each other.

I didn't even need to read the rest... That line deflates your whole system before I even needed to read any farther.

Why?

Because you can have a fluke game where dice rolls are against you or something else odd happened. Winning once proves nothing. It should be played out like a losers bracket where the loser of the first game needs to beat the opponent twice. If the original winner can pull out a single win in the subsequent two games he is the over all victor. It basically becomes a best out of three match that counts the original game.

Yeah, it's not too bad as far as breaking it is concerned.

I wonder, though, why the system you've come up with is in any way superior to just following the BRB instructions as usual. If anything, it's slightly worse as you're always only using one deployment and mission type. That and taking away initiative seizing encourages sloppy play while giving an even greater advantage to whoever goes first, while setting the game length at exactly six turns encourages both sloppy play AND sloppy list building while giving an uneccessary advantage to whoever goes second.

Basically, I question why all of this is even necessary. Why not just have a 1750 BRB tournament?

Everyone will play each other once. One point for a win. Person with post points at the end wins the league. - This is good, better than battlepoints. A win is a win, regardless of the margin.

No more than one of the same HQ entry.
No more than two of the same elite entry.
No more than four of the same troops entry.
No more than two of the same fast attack entry.
No more than two of the same heavy support entry.
No more than 750 points can be spent on units with a armor value. - I'm firmly against comp so dislike all of this. Why do you feel this is necessary?

When placing terrain no multi-level terrain can be placed withing 12 of a long table edge. Players are encouraged to have at least 8 pieces of terrain on the board, four being terrain that completely blocks line of sight. - Possibly a bit more guidance on terrain placing. What happens if one player wants lots of terrain and the other wants little? How about taking it in turn to place six piece each but you can choose not to place a piece on your turns. (so even if one player wants no terrain the other player still gets to place six pieces)

Both players roll a dice. Winner chooses a long table edge and places an objective within 12 of his own long table edge. His opponent then places an objective within 12 of his own long table edge. - How about making that "places an objective exactly 12" from his own long table edge and at least 12" from either short edge" to stop people placing it right on the table edge?Also, I think there should be a third objective in the middle. One objective each in deployment zones almost always ends ups as one each.

Winner then takes first turn. Note that seize the initiative is not used. - Why not?

The game lasts 6 turns. Note that random game length is not used. - Why not? Tournaments don't use variable length due to time constraints. You don't have that problem.

Points for kill points left on the table of a players own army, (units in transports count as being on the table). ie add the amount of units you have killed to the amount of your own you have left on the board. - I like this, stops the Ha-I-only-have-four-kill-points-in-my-entire-army-so-I-can't-lose.

Drop the comp garbage. People go to tourneys to play in a highly competitive environment. Why take that away from people? Also, I run a "fluffy" Death Guard list. Why would I not be able to use more than 2 squads of Plague Marines?

The fact that you have a Pokemon James avatar tells me you're awesome.

Relax the rules a bit for force organization. I mean, you're going to have top tier lists against older codices, but that's 40K for you.

Everything else is cool - it has issues (like some said, knowing the exact turn a game ends supplements turbo boosting objective sleaze), but it's not as bad as restricting people from using armies they bought.

On the FoC thing you could simply say that if you go over the limit allowed you take away points from the left over kill-point idea. Because this'll need a case by case review, you can decide to leave old 'dexes alone or only charge one or two points to a mech heavy guard player and so on if you get my drift.

JGrand wrote:Drop the comp garbage. People go to tourneys to play in a highly competitive environment. Why take that away from people? Also, I run a "fluffy" Death Guard list. Why would I not be able to use more than 2 squads of Plague Marines?

Uh no. According to his rules, you would be able to have at least 4 squads of plague marines.

@GhostfaceKillah
Your idea is good in theory. I like your idea of trying to reduce spam lists. I also like the idea of specialised tournament. Your proposal is an alright "draft" as it is apparent that certain armies would have issues with some of your restrictions. Space Marine Equivalents and newer armies wouldn’t have a problem with your rules but older armies that don’t have as much choice or have limited builds appear to suffer somewhat.

I suggest getting some mates and codices and try building various competitive lists within your rules and tweaking the rules to compensate for any issues found.

Question-- why should my Sisters be unable to have more than four Battle Sister Squads? That's the only troops choice available to them.