Wittman79 wrote:Hi am running tournament and a few people want to use imperial armour models and 1 guy want to use full list what's people's opinions on this matter and imperial armour in tournaments in general ?
Most tournaments do not utilize Imperial Armor rules. As Reece mentioned they allow the Forgeworld models to be used to represent normal codex choices, but they don't allow the use of any Imperial Armor rules or their associated army lists. There are some exceptions to this, probably most notably being Adepticon, which has traditionally allowed some Imperial Armor units in some of their tournaments (but not all of them).
The big complaint that many players have against the use of Imperial Armor rules are:
1) The rules are imbalanced.
2) People are unfamiliar with them so players feel like they're getting blind-sided when they run up against the uber-powerful
IA units and don't know what to do against them.
My rebuttals to these arguments are:
1) The units within the codexes themselves are incredibly imbalanced. If you took Space Wolf Thunderwolves, Grey Knight Henchman units, etc, out of their codex and had them as an Imperial Armor units, people would scream bloody murder about them. But because they're in the codex, then people just have to deal with them regardless of how uber they may be.
But since Imperial Armor books
are expansions, it gives a nice clear separation for people to say: "No I don't want to allow those specific units I find broken in Imperial Armor, so I think we shouldn't allow any Imperial Armor rules", because that's easier then trying to decide on exactly which
IA units are totally broken and shouldn't be allowed while leaving the majority of the totally fine
IA units into the tournament.
2) This situation is no different then when people are playing against a codex they aren't familiar with. Is the problem exacerbated because less people have and are familiar with Imperial Armor rules? Sure. But the big way around this situation is to properly identify up front that your tournament is special, that you are running a
40K tournament
with Imperial Armor expansions. If everyone is clear about that up front and that you are running a special themed tournament, then everybody attending should have the proper mindset going in and should leave the complaints at home...they KNOW ahead of time they're going to be facing
IA rules, so they should be prepared to ask their opponent for a copy of the unit's rules before the game to brush up on what they're facing.
And that's really the thing to remember. Imperial Armor rules are an
expansion to the game of
40K, so just as you can have a 'Cities of Death', 'Planetstrike' or 'Apocalypse'
40K tournament, there's no reason you can't or shouldn't have an Imperial Armor tournament...its fun to explore the different aspects of the
40K game and expansion tournaments can be great fun as long as everyone knows coming into it what they're getting into...so make sure you
publicize loudly and up-front that your tournament will be using Imperial Armor rules.
Now, if you are committed to using Imperial Armor rules in your tournament, what's the next step?
Well, the big issue is that there are a lot of Imperial Armor books many of them containing different rules for the same model. The way Forgeworld tends to update the rules for their models is simply to release a new book with a new set of rules for the unit and you just have to figure out that the new rules replace the older ones. This can obviously be a bit confusing, but there's help!
If you go up to the
INAT FAQ link at the top of any page here on Dakka, you can download the
INAT FAQ appendix, which is a completely unofficial
FAQ for Imperial Armor units. But at the very back of that document is a complete listing of every Imperial Armor unit published in any of Forgeworld's books and it shows which Imperial Armor book contains the most recent set of rules for every single unit.
So by using this listing and publishing it for your potential players, you can let them know which set of rules you are expecting them to use for each Imperial Armor unit.
The other thing I'd strongly recommend is that you don't allow players to use an Imperial Armor unit entry for a unit that is also found in their codex. This is because the
IA unit entries are sometimes rather different from their codex versions, and it can be incredibly confusing for players to be facing the same unit in two different games and not know which set of rules they are playing against. Although
GW has dramatically rectified this issue quite a bit with the Dark Angel/Black Templar
FAQ update (not to mention updating the
WH codex via White Dwarf), in general I think using this guideline will save you and your players a bunch of headaches.
When it comes to allowing the actual Imperial Armor army lists, the thing you have to recognize is that many of these army lists refer back to a codex. In the case of some of the older Imperial Armor army lists, they refer back to
old version of codexes that are no longer in use. Therefore, these army lists really cannot be used as printed and need to be banned from any 5th edition tournament unless you plan to do extensive
FAQs for your players.
So the Imperial Armor army lists that are 'current' (refer to the current crop of codexes) are:
[
IA10] Space Marine Siege Assault Vanguard
[
IA9] Space Marine Tyrant Legion (
SM/
IG combo)
[
IA8] Ork Dred Mob
[
IA8] Elysian Drop Troops
[
IA7] Krieg Armoured Battlegroup (Krieg tank company)
[
IA7] Renegades & Heretics - Servants of Decay (
CSM/
IG Nurgle combo)
[
IA6] Renegades & Heretics - Servants of Slaughter (
CSM/
IG Khorne combo)
[
IA1] Armoured Battlegroup (tank company, updated via Forgeworld online PDF)
All other Imperial Armor army lists refer to
OLD codexes, and therefore
cannot be used without massive FAQing on your part. These include:
[
IA5] Death Korps of Krieg Siege
[
IA5] Reneages & Heretics - Defenders of Vraks
[
IA4] Detachment D-99 Elysian Drop Troop Veterans
[
IA3] 23rd Elysian Regiment
[
IA3] Tallarn Imperial Guard
Now, if you DO decide to include Imperial Armor rules in your tournament (and you should if you want) you may want to also consider restricting some units from play.
Obviously Super Heavy vehicles, Gargantuan Creatures must be dis-allowed unless you want a big 'Apocalypse' style tournament. Flyers should also probably be dis-allowed as they alter the game quite radically, but that's really a personal call.
Finally there are the units that
most people consider to be over the top powerful and are what really give Imperial Armor its undeserved bad name in some circles. Removing these units (and there may be a few more) will leave the rest of the Imperial Armor units that are either perfectly balanced, or in most cases, too expensive points-wise for what they do (which is fine, from your perspective as a
TO).
They are:
[
IA10]
SM Land Raider Achillies
[Iimperial Armor Apocalypse 2]
IG Hades Breaching Drill
[Iimperial Armor Apocalypse 2]
SM Lucius Pattern Drop Pod
And that's it! As you can see, using Imperial Armor rules in your tournament is not necessarily an 'easy' thing, but that really shouldn't dissuade you from including them as they allow players to have a different experience then they get in 'most' tournaments and allow people to use all their models they paid good money for...so as a unique experience, you should embrace it!
Renegades - 
Night Lords (40k): 3500pts
Klan Zaw Klan: 4000pts
