U.S. WHFB ETC team penalized for illegal list submission

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**olympia**

Army list submission Bonus point award

For the 5th year in a row this year we have seen some illegal lists submitted, others not respecting the required submission format...I find it very strange that teams of 8 international veteran players can't draft 100% correct rosters in English following a simple format with several months heads-up. Those who do not manage this little effort cost everyone a lot of time during the list corrections process, and more for teams who rehearse game pairings (which I can tell is increasing year after year). That is why the rulespack is planning a sanction system to motivate entrants to comply to a clean list submission (also as a deterent to those who would be tempted to adjust their list composition after seing other nations rosters), and this year the referee corp is in charge of awarding this bonus.

Eventhough list submission wasn't perfect, it must but aknowledged that this year was probably the best in terms of initial quality submission, list format compliance and national teams involvement in list correction. Every team made and effort to follow the submission template, to correct their assigned rosters in time, and to reply to requests and adjust rosters in a timely fashion.

In deciding about the bonus point award, we were faced with 7 nations with serious issues :
-one missed the checking deadline : Latvia
-those with 1 illegal roster : Austria, Republic of Ireland, Norway, USA
-those with 2 illegla rosters : Czech, Poland
For this year, we decided to leave out the minor format or computing mistakes, as well as be forgiving to those teams suffering list change due to player dropouts.

We had long talks about it, and in the end we couldnt bring ourselves to apply the preplanned sanction to offenders : 2 Match Points (MPs) is a crippling blow to a nation's chances to place on the podium, and seemed too high when considering that we found all teams where really involved in getting things right plus the cost and length of travels involved to attend to ETC.
As a consequence, every team is awarded the match point bonus for list submission.

However, as guardians of the law, we couldnt either let offendents get away with poor list submission entirely for free. We decided to assign a 20 Battle Points (BPs) malus per serious mistake. This penalty will be applied to the rankings after the round 6, as to not affect previous game pairings.
This means that Austria, Republic of Ireland, Norway, USA and Latvia will get a -20 BPs penalty. Czech and Poland get a -40 BPs penalty.
This is not the sanction planned in the rulespack which was deemed too strong. Its not an insignifiant measure either : BPs are the second criteria for rankings and every year they influence rankings in a major way. To illustrate this point : if they hadn't been untied on BPs twice, Poland would have been all-time ETC champ. This is the best compromise we have found between either punishing too hard or letting everyone walk.

Respectfull comments are welcome as usual, but beware that this is a referee decision to which undue opposition could not only be sanctionned with forum moderation but also with yellow card BPs malus. Next year, we will no doubt adjust the system to make it more applicable, if you have any suggestions don't hesitate to post them.

chtiofonce on behalf of the referee team

**Monster Rain**

What was illegal about the list, exactly?

**olympia**

I've no idea. If I had to guess I would say over points.

**Monster Rain**

Huh.

At least they weren't the only ones, I guess. "Serious Issues" though.

That sounds ominous.

**olympia**

Monster Rain wrote:Huh.

At least they weren't the only ones, I guess. "Serious Issues" though.

That sounds ominous.

I hope it doesn't go down on their permanent record.

**Alfndrate**

I'm actually more worried about Poland, haven't they like whooped butt in past years? They've got 2 illegal lists.
Also, the lists have been submitted for a few weeks now, so how come we're just hearing about this now?

I would like to know the specifics of the infraction (like over points, extra wargear, special character, etc...)

**Kilkrazy**

I presume an illegal list gets rectified.

**chaos0xomega**

Meh, I find the entire concept of a national team championship to be ridiculous, but maybe its just me. Am curious what the infractions were though.

**olympia**

The infractions were known some time ago; it is the announcement of the penalties that is new.

**mikhaila**

chaos0xomega wrote:Meh, I find the entire concept of a national team championship to be ridiculous, but maybe its just me. Am curious what the infractions were though.

It's just you.)
It's not really a national team championship.

- It's a tournament.
- Teams compete.
- Each team consists of 8 players. How those players get picked isn't a set thing. In some cases, it's who has money to fly to Europe for a week for warhammer. In other
countries, they have a playoff, or it's based on who you know. But in the end, you show up with a team of 8 guys who represent that country.
- Only one team is allowed from each country. Except the UK, who gets 4.

- Each team can only field each army one time.

Some people like the format, some don't. Those that go have a great time, and there are a lot of people that follow it. But there isn't any attempt to find a countries best players, or anything like that.

**olympia**

mikhaila wrote:
- Only one team is allowed from each country. Except the UK, who gets 4.

Last year Denmark had two teams: the Danes and the Faroes Islands (Faroese)

**snake**

olympia wrote:
Monster Rain wrote:Huh.

At least they weren't the only ones, I guess. "Serious Issues" though.

That sounds ominous.

I hope it doesn't go down on their permanent record.

They're probably never going to be able to get jobs now.

**Monster Rain**

McDonald's Manager: How can you be trusted to run the fry station when you can't even make a legal 40k list? Good day to you, sir.

**RiTides**

mikhaila wrote:
chaos0xomega wrote:Meh, I find the entire concept of a national team championship to be ridiculous, but maybe its just me. Am curious what the infractions were though.

It's just you.)
It's not really a national team championship.

- It's a tournament.
- Teams compete.
- Each team consists of 8 players. How those players get picked isn't a set thing. In some cases, it's who has money to fly to Europe for a week for warhammer. In other
countries, they have a playoff, or it's based on who you know. But in the end, you show up with a team of 8 guys who represent that country.
- Only one team is allowed from each country. Except the UK, who gets 4.
- Each team can only field each army one time.

Some people like the format, some don't. Those that go have a great time, and there are a lot of people that follow it. But there isn't any attempt to find a countries best players, or anything like that.

The whole idea turns me off a bit... actually, not the idea, but the execution. It just ends up coming off a bit elitist... and decisions like this really sound like a "kangaroo court".

ETC wrote:Respectfull comments are welcome as usual, but beware that this is a referee decision to which undue opposition could not only be sanctionned with forum moderation but also with yellow card BPs malus.

I have no idea what "yellow card BPs malus", but I assume it means some sort of penalty at the event for complaining too much on a forum. If that were true for other events... well, there might not be too many people playing without some sort of cards

The title of the thread is a little misleading, though- it's 7 teams that are being penalized... out of 8? I guess they could've just banned all 7 and let the 1 team that submitted "correct" lists be the de facto champion, and skip the whole thing! Instead they're "just" docking 20 battle points from most, 40 from some.

I don't know, like I said it seems a bit elitist... whether or not that's the case, they could certainly work on their presentation of these kinds of things... but I get the impression they don't care what anyone else thinks (for better or worse).

**Eilif**

I'm don't thing that a team for a violation of the rules is "elitist".

Whether the teams got of easy or not with the lowered penalty is debatable, but there's nothing elitist about penalties for breaking rules.

**Ahtman**

So this is essentially the Olympics and this is a steroid scandal.

**Sarigar**

Jeez. I think I'd be a bit upset if I spent a thousand or more dollars, took vacation time and sweet talked my spouse just to play 40K in Europe, then find out I'm getting some sort of penalty for an error in an armylist the judges caught prior to the actual event. I thought that is why lists are turned in early to ensure legality. If there is an error, there is time to make the appropriate changes prior to any gameplay.

**thehod**

Yea I figured it would just be a list correction and penalties would occur if it happened during the day of competition.

**olympia**

There are dozens of countries competing in the ETC. Every country in Europe basically, plus the U.S. and even South Africa I think. Teams that submitted illegal lists should be penalized and these penalties are relatively minor. It's not that hard to make a legal list and if the best of the best of the best can't get their gak together to do it well perhaps they ought to stick with checkers. Had the judges not caught the illegal lists these guys would be playing with illegal lists. These seems to happen enough at "top" u.s. tournaments. I don't think the Europeans want the drama.

**sennacherib**

40k rules are so well designed and balanced that this is a really great test of individual ability. An amazing test of skill and the worthy culmination of many youth’s lifelong dreams. All those lesser tests of skill, games like chess etc have failed to stand the test of time. Truly there can be only one. WARHAMMER!!!!

Yeah... I agree with those that think this is a bit ridiculous. And in case some of you missed it that was sarcasm earlier.

**Sarigar**

olympia wrote:There are dozens of countries competing in the ETC. Every country in Europe basically, plus the U.S. and even South Africa I think. Teams that submitted illegal lists should be penalized and these penalties are relatively minor. It's not that hard to make a legal list and if the best of the best of the best can't get their gak together to do it well perhaps they ought to stick with checkers. Had the judges not caught the illegal lists these guys would be playing with illegal lists. These seems to happen enough at "top" u.s. tournaments. I don't think the Europeans want the drama.

Best of the Best is a subjective statement and doesn't really matter. Folks spending lots of money to play with toy soldiers for essentially fun games and some bragging rights should not have their chances of winning diminished b/c the judges caught a list error prior to the event. Make the players fix the error prior to the tourney and move on.

If it was during the event, I agree about assessing a penalty, but not prior to an event with the judges reviewing lists checking for errors (which is why you submit lists in advance). If it was a severe enough penalty, I'd seriously consider cancelling the trip if possible or just go on a European vacation if I couldn't cancel.

**olympia**

Sarigar, I was being sarcastic when I said "best of the best of the best." The penalties for illegal lists where known in advance and they were harsh. Given this, and given the amount of coin involved in the trip, why not double check your list? The actual penalties applied are mild enough.

**Danzag**

Monster Rain wrote:McDonald's Manager: How can you be trusted to run the fry station when you can't even make a legal 40k list? Good day to you, sir.

Sig'd.

**notprop**

Elitism is fine, this is supposed to be an elite tournament is it not?

Expecting the highest standards from the the entrants should be expected as a bare minimum. Hard to beleive that 1 list out of eight could be wrong but two?

As for the Yellow Card phrase. A yellow card is issued on football (not the hand-football Americans use

) as a warning against an offence, a second Yellow card offence (not necessarily the same type of offence) results in a red card; which is sending off/expulsion.

**Sarigar**

olympia wrote:Sarigar, I was being sarcastic when I said "best of the best of the best." The penalties for illegal lists where known in advance and they were harsh. Given this, and given the amount of coin involved in the trip, why not double check your list? The actual penalties applied are mild enough.

I'd imagine lists were double checked, but I could be wrong (I concur with you as I definitely would have double checked my list). However, mistakes do happen (as apparent in couple of GTs in the past year or so) and the point of early list submission is to ensure all lists are legal prior to the beginning of an event.

I just don't agree with penalizing a team prior to the first dice roll ever being cast.

**Darkwynn**

This looks like it was for fantasy and not 40k. None of us on the 40k side know about this one.

**RiTides**

notprop wrote:Elitism is fine, this is supposed to be an elite tournament is it not?

Expecting the highest standards from the the entrants should be expected as a bare minimum. Hard to beleive that 1 list out of eight could be wrong but two?

As for the Yellow Card phrase. A yellow card is issued on football (not the hand-football Americans use ) as a warning against an offence, a second Yellow card offence (not necessarily the same type of offence) results in a red card; which is sending off/expulsion.

I guess that's the idea, notprop, as they explain in the quoted text above... but I wouldn't go near this event with that attitude.

Also, about the cards- I'm aware of the rules of soccer/football (it's my sport

and I'm in the states) I just was curious if they apply it to warhammer. I'd find that part pretty interesting!

**CaptainRavenclaw**

With that many people involved and the sheer headache it must be to organise so many competitors from so many nations with English not being first language to a lot of the folks....I'm glad there's an incentive to submit correctly and promptly. Sad for the teams who missed out on points but hopefully they can still make an honest go of it. Go team Ireland!!!

**BuFFo**

Ahtman wrote:So this is essentially the Olympics and this is a steroid scandal.

Not really.

The Olympics is obviously a tournament based entity with strict rules for competition.

40k, is not. 40k is a relaxing hobby with loose, open rules.

A better analogy would be...

So this is essentially friends making stuff up to have fun and this is a beer scandal.

As for the op, well, people can't read numbers and words correctly it seems, so to the gallows with them!

**olympia**

s.j.mccartney wrote:With that many people involved and the sheer headache it must be to organise so many competitors from so many nations with English not being first language to a lot of the folks....I'm glad there's an incentive to submit correctly and promptly. Sad for the teams who missed out on points but hopefully they can still make an honest go of it. Go team Ireland!!!

Well said. There are hundreds of lists to check afterall.