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I'm interested in running a small tournament or league with my gaming group and the idea of doing using an escalation format was presented. I think I understand the basic idea of an escalation league but I was hoping someone with more experience could explain it to me more fully.

escalation leagues are great for getting a group of people to start playing regualrly and to build up their army.

Start at small pts level, play for a month. Then every month add some points to the standard game. The one I played in went 500, 1000, 1500, and finished the fourth month at 2000.

either have a dedicated league day where everyone plays their escalation league games for the month that day. or have it open where people can play their games whenever and record the results.

You can add bonuses for those who not only put their army together, but also get them painted.

Escalation leagues are usually used to promote 'sales' or 'painting' as it is designed around growing a force and giving rewards for growing it.

A store in my area does one like this:
*Month 1: Buy your HQ
*At checkout, you pull from a deck of cards and that HQ gets a 'trait bonus' for being brought in the store.
*All month people play 500pt games and that person may use their HQ with the bonus all month.
*At the end of the month if you have painted it, your HQ keeps his bonus for the entire leauge.

Next month, fast attack and so on.

It is trying to promote 'buy in the store' and 'paint your stuff'. Anyone can play but people do get excited and it does help people grow armies.

In a 'tourney' I haven't seen so much escalation, but I have seen sideboards. You bring a 1500 point army with two self-contained 250pt sideboards. And game 1 is 1500, game 2 is one of your sideboards chosen when you see the opponent. Game 3 is the other sideboard you didn't choose, game 4 is everything.

When the point allowance jumps up are you typically able to change your list or do you have to keep the same list from the earlier point bracket and build upon it?

Depends... Usually in leauges/campaigns though, your units may get experience so you want to re-use units as they will gain extra skills or stats.

Some require static lists but others just are point values. Depends what the goal is.

Usually when the points jump up its better to let people write a new list (but they must keep the same Army).
This way one guy may decide to get some assault marines for his fast attack buildup, while another guy may decide to go with Speeders or Flyers, while a third guy is looking at Bikes. All Fast units for a generic Space Marine Army, but each with very different points costs and play styles. They will need the freedom to redo their lists to accomodate their selections.
After a League or 2 your members should have a pretty good sized Army with most of the FOCs represented. Then you run a Character league. That gets them into buying/building an actual Character HQ and learn how these change the Armies play style (Lysander vs Khan vs Vulkan).

The important thing to track is the free cash your players have. Its tough when you do a 500 point jump, but half your members only have the spare cash to buy a single model that is 200-300 points max ( I can buy some Terminators or the Land Raider..but not both). They end up in a points deficit and it becomes a game of who is the richest guy that can afford all the toys. Causing people to cut their losses and walk away.

So it all depends, really, on how fast you want it to progress. And there's not too many details about the escalation itself - just do jumps in points that you want to do, and set a time frame for each jump.

While on one side it promotes sales, it is also a funn way to get new players to join the game. Some armies do not work so well at low point levels. But the premisse that ab arny grows as it gets bigger is funn.

Wolfsblood wrote:
When the point allowance jumps up are you typically able to change your list or do you have to keep the same list from the earlier point bracket and build upon it?

I've seen both. Most commonly I see it run that you keep adding stuff to the same core list, although then you need to specify some additional rulings- like can you add wargear or models to units which are already in the list, or are they "fixed" and do you need to spend the additional points on new units.

Making it so that the larger list doesn't HAVE to include the same units as the smaller gives players more flexibility, but OTOH it also gives a significant advantage to experienced players with existing collections of models, as they have more options to change things up and optimize their lists for each point level.

You also need to gear your missions with your points limit in mind. Doing a 6 objective take-and-hold mission at 500 points will be dull. You will essentially have 2 troops, an HQ, and maybe 1 other low cost unit (Like an IG Sentinal or SM Speeder. You grab 2 objectives and your opponent grabs 2. Everyone ties and it was boring.
So really think about your points level and come up with some simple missions that also get people into the rules a bit at a time. For low points matches also consider a 4x4 board. It gets people in the fight sooner.
If you want to encourage FOC slot development, when you do a points jump tell your group ahead of time that the next mission will have Fast or Heavy or even Elites as scoring. This will guide people into getting a unit to fill in that FOC slot as they build up their army.

I agree with the points jumps comment from dkellyj.

You really have to know the people in the group or at least talk to everyone about the spare cash they have, their is nothing worse than losing 5 people halfway through the league because people can't afford a 500 pt jump in their army roster in Decemeber with christmas 15 days away.

Knowing the people you are playing with and taking the time to figure out the type of cash everyone is willing to spend every month is going to get you along way.

Also someone mentioned a 4 month timeline. It doesnt have to stop after 4 months or even 6. As long as you speak with the other players participating you can have a league go for 8 months. The points limits might be smaller jumps. You might go the first 3 months without requiring FOC. It all just depends on the people participating. So that would be my biggest piece of advise, figure out what everyone likes the best and run with it.

Also the longer the event goes the longer people have to get models painted and converted up. This will be a factor that draws people in and pushes some away, its all just going to be up to the people in the league determining how much time they want to spend on this.

Another factor that might draw people in is to allow people to play older armies that maybe they havent had out in awhile or rarely play. Allowing people to do such things will most likely draw more people in. It also helps people to paint up old armies that have little or no paint.

Best of luck! These leagues are one of my favorite ideas that the community ever came up with. I hope you have a favorable experience!

Just as a clarification, this league will be a Fantasy league, not 40k. Not that it really matters with the advice that's been given, though.