It's a rough spot to be in, particularly since you're trying to sell tickets, and I'll be there for at least one of those September events that I have an interest in being a success!
As I see it, you're most likely to draw guys with a format that is familiar. While this has the risk of setting a trend of larger events being run basically as 5th ed. .tournaments with 6th ed. core rules, which will make the tournament scene more fractured initially, you need butts in seats from an organizers perspective, and even from a player's perspective, I think most of us would agree that we'd rather go to a larger event, especially when we're talking about something you'd likely be traveling to. No one wants to make a bunch of plans in advance, take time off of work, cash in chips with wives/families/girlfriends/etc., and generally uproot your life for weekend and show up to a tournament with 25 guys because no one was comfortable going to an event with unfamiliar rules.
That being said, I'm on team Frontline doing this as much 'business as usual' as possible.
In specific:
Basics:
Everything here is as I would do it (half the tables will forget about Mysterious anything anyway!
). Aegis Defense Lines are a non-issue and Bastions are a deathtrap with a giant target painted on it, based on our little bit of experience, everyone is comfortable with Seize and Random Game Length, and the new Night Fighting rules are actually pretty good.
I'd at least consider removing Warlord Traits altogether, since they are a random factor that could potentially unbalance things the same as Mysterious terrain. Just my thoughts.
The Mission:
I'm no fan of the
BAO mission as I think it creates too much potential for draws, but everyone is very familiar with it and until a more authoritative 6th missions packet starts to take shape, it is the format I'd be most likely to commit to for a bigger event, since it's tried and true.
Hammer and Anvil being out in large events due simply to the table layout was no surprise to anyone I'm sure; I'd consider using First Blood as a bracket point instead of Preserve: First Blood is dependent on things like luck in the first turn and Seizing and so on, but a player can deploy in such a way that they minimize the risk of giving that point away, and everyone is just as much at risk of giving it up, while Preserve becomes an army-build issue where some lists are going to hand out that point like candy and some lists may not even give it up once, and it creates situations where a player could be stuck giving that point up in order to try and win. Since the bracket points determine pairings and break ties for placings, you could run into a situation where a guy gets an easier day or ends up with an award based on his opponent's army builds.
As an aside, the Relic is a joke for competitive play. I'd be shocked if I ever saw that in a tournament.
Psykers:
The
BRB includes a re-roll for powers above your Mastery Level anyway, but allowing a re-roll for unusable powers seems legit.
Points:
Guys will have more experience with the game in two months, and higher points opens the Allies and Fortifications doors a bit wider, but I'd say that 1500 is the best bet. 1750 at max.
Forge World:
LOL nope! Most guys will be shouldering the yoke of still ironing out the kinks of the new system, in addition to playing a bunch of games against armies they've never squared off against, builds they've never seen, and players they don't know, in a game system they don't have a lot of experience with. Put a
FW cherry on top and you're creating the potential for problems. There's enough out there for guys to have to deal with that's printed in books they can go to their
LGS and buy, let alone
FW stuff.
That being said,
GW accualy is Dolan and I'm getting ready to not be surprised when they
FAQ everything from
FW into the main game, LoLLerZ!
Counts as:
Huge landmine here. It's a big event and it creates a lot of front-end work to approve counts-as stuff before game 1, but it might be necessary. Counts-as Allies are right out. If on the one hand you're going to say that the exceptionally expensive and quite difficult to acquire Forge World component enriches the game and should be allowed, and then let oddball, inaccurate models in for counts-as allies, freeing guys from having buy the models, that's Chewbacca Defense all the way. Having to remember two armies' worth of potential counts-as is just going to create rough feelings in games. It's like when Marty went to the diner in Back to the Future...
"can this wonky scratch-build be a Vendetta??"
"you want a Vendetta, pal, you gotta pay for it!"
Missing Anything?
Not really. Keep things simple and in line with the current format for now, the event will be more successful for it.
Of course, my own local events are as 6th as possible, but I'm not trying to pull in a hundred guys (yet!)
