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There really is middle ground in this... it bothers me that both threads talking about allowing FW are so polarizing.

At the moment, I think there could be problems with going all-in on FW... but I am certainly open to it. People over-stating the case on both sides doesn't help things either way.

It's going to be challenging to work out all the kinks... but I think it's worth trying. However, it's not a complete slam dunk, and there are plenty of reasons why... but no reason why we can't have an intelligent debate/conversation about it.

vhwolf wrote:

Adam LongWalker wrote:ForgeWorld models is my only concern. If a opponent provides the material to view on the FW model in question then people properly prepare and see what that model can do. If not then that is an unfair advantage to those people who do not pick up FW books.

So perhaps an open list would solve the problem all together?

So by that logic it is an unfair advantage to play Orks against someone who has not bought the ork codex. Everyone should always bring the rules for anything they are playing to any game if not they do have an unfair advantage.

Is the ork codex a Forgeworld Book? No. Welcome to the world of Ignore.

The only issue I have is the point values....I feel that 1500 is too low. Bigger games are better, IMO - make it 1750, 1850, even 1999, anything higher than 1500. I see the point about not being able to take everything and making hard choices, but I want to use my toys :(

Bring on the Forgeworld, to hell with Mysterious terrain, and 1999 or bust!

This thread is great.

Hey Reece! Good to see you becoming the paragon of the community you were destined to be

I'm coming back to 40k for casual play, we will see how long I stay casual with my 'type A' personality.

I've been playing "the other game" and I did want to say that, even with warmachine's pedigree as well balanced, tourney game, the main rulebook missions are not used in any tournaments.

Every year they release a tourney ruleset, and the ruleset was born from a third party outside the organization. The guy who does it still isn't an official insider, but the parent company does work closely with him as he makes his tourney doc.

Things that are not covered in the main warmachine rulebook that are required for tourney play, that you should cover in your doc.

-ROUND TIME LIMITS

-TIEBREAKERS

-WIN CONDITIONS THAT FORCE AGGRESSIVE ACTIONS

-EXTENSIVELY TESTED SCENARIOS (MULTIPLE)

Getting the community together on this, and through including TOs in the discussion and testing of this living format is the key here. Don't be afraid to make adjustments, edit the document and fix imbalances, and definitely plan to throw the whole thing away every year and have a new document. Adepticon can be your anchor point for it.

There are many reasons why the book missions are completely inappropriate for tourney play. Many of which yourself and Yakface have mentioned. A couple quick ones are...

-terrain placement is impractical.
-objective placement is skewed big time (my IG is already blatantly abusing this)
-mysterious terrain and objectives is time consuming and burdensome for players to track
-the sideways deployment type is impractical for tourney tables
-and the bottom line is that the objectives of the book missions just don't force enough aggressive action to make the game dynamic. With all the sound and fury of characters, challenges and random charges, the game is a shootout.

I glanced briefly at the specifics, and I do want to say that you are really going the right direction, and as long as you weigh feedback by everyone, and don't fall in love with any of your groups ideas, then this is going to turn out well.

I would like to advocate for the fortifications to ALL be made legal, and I propose a solution. As per the terrain placement document, fortifications are counted against the terrain density of a table. When any player has fortifications, they could call for a judge. They could say "I want my aegis to go HERE" and the judge would determine the area that the terrain will be going in, and remove a piece of terrain that was in that area to compensate. Remember that by allowing the aegis but not the skyshield or the fortress, you are allowing players to increase terrain density. No matter what fortification gets placed, terrain MUST be removed.

And I've TOd tourneys before. It would be a simple and objective task for judges to briskly move around the hall and make the terrain adjustments. And I think fortifications are worth it.

And one last suggestion, then I will go back to following and supporting this thread from the shadows...

Don't directly ban anything unless your meta devolves into brokenness. This is why it is so important to re-invent the document every year. If fortiifications are too good, don't ban them, just create new mission parameters that make fortifications less valuable. If a certain ally combination is wreaking havoc, find out what element of a blanaced force it is lacking, and make missing that piece hurt in the next mission.

I LOVE bringing on forgeworld, we all know that is coming anyway.

I'm rooting for this to get embraced and maybe become the 40k equivalent of steamroller. It could really make 40k tourneys something great.

vhwolf wrote:

Adam LongWalker wrote:ForgeWorld models is my only concern. If a opponent provides the material to view on the FW model in question then people properly prepare and see what that model can do. If not then that is an unfair advantage to those people who do not pick up FW books.

So perhaps an open list would solve the problem all together?

So by that logic it is an unfair advantage to play Orks against someone who has not bought the ork codex. Everyone should always bring the rules for anything they are playing to any game if not they do have an unfair advantage.

No, but you should always have your codex with you to show your opponent stuff they have the questions about. I think that's the jist of what people are saying.

Adam LongWalker wrote:

vhwolf wrote:

Adam LongWalker wrote:ForgeWorld models is my only concern. If a opponent provides the material to view on the FW model in question then people properly prepare and see what that model can do. If not then that is an unfair advantage to those people who do not pick up FW books.

So perhaps an open list would solve the problem all together?

So by that logic it is an unfair advantage to play Orks against someone who has not bought the ork codex. Everyone should always bring the rules for anything they are playing to any game if not they do have an unfair advantage.

Is the ork codex a Forgeworld Book? No. Welcome to the world of Ignore.

My point was not everyone buys every codex, and that in every game you are supposed to bring your relevant rules to the table.

@Dogstar34

Yeah, I hear you. I think we will start at 1500 just to ease everyone into this and then work our way up to 1750.

I anticipate by the time we get to BAO, we'll be back up to that level. So long as games are finishing to completion in the time limit allowed, we'll be solid.

@Shep

Shep! What up buddy, how you been? Man, you vanished! We've been playing Warmachine too, but since 6th dropped we've been all over it like a cheap suit.

We emulated a lot of what you guys did with the Sprue Posse GT, that was a great event and a lot of the concepts you guys put forth helped us to run events a ton, so thanks!

I agree with a lot of your points. We definitely want to use the best ideas, regardless of where they come from.

That said, using the huge pieces of terrain seems like it will be tough to work in to the system. With all the increased time expenditures needed to play the game (rolling abilities, placing fortifications, roll powers, etc.) having to remove terrain will be another point that requires a fair bit of time. When you have 100+ players, it really can get crazy trying to make sure every table with fortifications is properly set, etc.

I am not saying that it is impossible by any means, but I think we may try it out at local level RTTs first, and then implement it into larger GTs once we a better idea of how it will work.

And this tournament guideline set will DEFINITELY be a living document. We will be adjusting it as we go, and refining it with experience. What we're doing now is setting a starting point so that we have a place to start from.

The only thing I firmly oppose is the random terrain as it is so damn powerful in a bad way. In our test games, it has been not fun, and totally unbalancing.

Thanks for you feedback, buddy! I hope to get a rematch against you at an event, soon!

Reecius wrote:
We won't be using mysterious terrain. Some of these are just too unbalancing for some armies.

We won't be using mysterious objectives unless they are predetermined, which will be explained below.

I'm fine with no mysterious terrain, mainly just because its a pain to track if its per terrain piece or can be wildly game changing if applied to every terrain piece and happens to help or hinder one of the two armies to a large degree.

I don't like tracking each Mysterious Objective either (and often just forget to roll anyway), but I would say that at least one of the Warlord Traits (the one where you get to re-roll when firing at a unit within range of an objective) seem to be purposely written under the presumption that units will want to be hanging out on an objective for the whole game (something that the Objective Traits often cause to happen), so it almost seems wrong in that respect to keep Warlord Traits in but remove the objective abilities.

What about just rolling two D6s and then getting to pick which of the two results you want for the objective? That would limit the explosion result to a double '1' roll and in general would slightly help players not get completely stuck with worthless objectives while their opponent has great ones. I mean, it can still happen, but it is less likely to happen.

Barring some slight fix to the randomness like that, I'd just say get rid of the objective abilities all together. If you're going to do auto-sky fire on the middle objective it seems you should stick to the core rules on who benefits from it IMHO. Suddenly changing the rules to have it to apply to all units within range is a pretty big change and definitely strays into the realm of you guys essentially creating tournament rules to punish flyers, which may actually be needed, but why are flyers getting the shaft from the tournament organizers and not crazy allied Deathstar shenanigans, etc?

As for the fortifications, sounds fine to me.

Warlord Traits: Frankie had the idea of rolling once and then choosing that number power on any of the three traits. This means the system is still random, but it gives you the ability to avoid rolling a worthless trait. Feedback on this one would be appreciated.

Allies are in. They bring more balance to the game as IMO, the core mechanics of the game are what now create imbalance. When everyone's power level is cranked to 10, it helps to level the playing field.

Terrain will be pre-arranged. Having players arrange terrain just isn't practical for a tournament from a time perspective.

Book Night Fighting will be in as will Random Game Length and Stealing of the Initiative.

Dig the Warlord rule...I like it a lot actually.

Everything else sounds good (even though I hate seize personally).

We will be using a "BAO" (Bay Area Open) style mission similar to what we did last year.

What this means is that we will essentially have a single, multi-layered mission with different deployments. What we have found is that the mission is sufficiently complex enough that when combined with differing terrain, deployment and opponents, provides for a unique play experience every game that also allows for multiple paths to victory. Playing the same mission also means that you are never left trying to figure out what to do in a given mission. You already know it and get better at it each round. It allows you to focus on playing your best instead of trying to figure out how to play.

I'll go on the record as saying that I definitely felt playing 7 games of the BAO mission last year felt repetitive...every single game I was basically doing a slight variation of the same tactic...since I knew I tended to have a KP advantage over my opponent, I was always just playing defense, hanging onto my C&C objective and then just trying to win on Kill Points, unless 2 of the 3 Seize Ground objectives happened to be near my deployment zone in which case I'd try to hold those as well.

While it certainly wasn't 'bad' it was definitely much less interesting than tournaments with different missions each round, because I never was having to do anything outside my army's comfort zone.

The third victory condition will be Victory Points as in the old system. We wanted to keep KPs but due to the amount of Deathstar style units we anticipate will become prevalent in the game, the KP system becomes silly. KPs are meant to balance out MSU, which is still really powerful in 6th (if not BETTER) but now that the Draigowing style units are going to become the norm, saying destroying one of those is the equivalent of taking out a unit of Grots is not fair. So, Victory Points, while more mentally taxing at the end of a long game, seems to be the best bet. Half points if the unit is immobilized or below half strength at games end, full points if it is destroyed or broken at game's end. Whoever has more VP's wins this victory condition. An alternative to this we are considering is to say a unit is worth 1 KP for every 25 or 50 points it costs. You then put this number on your army list to make the math at the end of the game easy. The downside here though, is that it creates situations where having multiple units just over the break point can mean your army will give up a great deal more points proportionally than an opponent who has a lot of units just under the break point.

Yeah, I'm with Janthkin here. Especially at 1,500 points and with units not being able to capture more than one objective (and we'll be having 5 in these scenarios it sounds like) Deathstars are actually going to be a big problem for the players using them unless they wipe their opponent off the table...as you're generally not going to have enough points in scoring units. I think sticking with straight up Kill Points is fine and keeps with 6th edition's take on it as well.

We will use 3 Tie Breaker Points for bracketing purposes per the BAO style. As the old BAO Tie Breaker points were really similar to the new ones in the book, we'll largely keep these apart from First Blood which we find is just too easy for the player going first to get.

Slay the Warlord
Linebreaker
Preserve Your Focres=You get this is half or more of your scoring units, rounding up, are not destroyed or broken at game's end.

As these are just tiebreakers, you should feel free to do what you want here and all of these are fair objectives for people to aim for.

We will use the following deployments:
Dawn of War (6th ed version, was called pitched battle in 5th)
Vanguard Strike (triangle deployment)
Spearhead from 5th

We are considering Hammer and Anvil but in a tournament setting where tables are butt to butt, it can get really, really inconvenient. What do you guys think? I just don't think think it's practical and Spearhead is pretty close to it.

Seems completely reasonable.

If you roll a power you can't use, either because of Force Charge or the inability to use it such as a Broodlord rolling a shooting power, you can reroll till you get one you can use.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of this. Again, this seems too much like you're fixing something specifically in the Tyranid codex, which isn't right. There's nothing stopping people from sticking to their codex powers if they don't want to take the risk.

This is the one where we're really scratching our heads. We want to go with 1500 as the game really slows down and counter-intuitively, the better you are the slower it goes. Why? Every little micro-movement becomes really important. It bogs the game down a ton. We just don't see games finishing in the same time limit we had previously with 1750pt limits. Experience will be the best teacher here and it may turn out that we are wrong, but we have to post a points limit before we have any experience, hahaha! So, we're leaning towards 1500 at this point. What do you all think?

We also find that at this points level you can't pack in all the goodies, which is good and bad. For one, most Deathstars fit in at 1500pts, and as such they can really dominate the game. On the flip side, it also means that you can't bring a deathstar AND crazy support units. We're finding it can be a bit more rock, paper, scissors at 1500pts.

We're open to non-traditional points levels too, such as 1600, or 1650. Now is a good time to throw off old traditions if they no longer fit the dynamic of the game.

My vote personally is for 1,500 for the time being, but then again I was always pushing for smaller point sizes in order to have more slightly relaxed games.

Most of you know we at Frontline love Forge World and have pushed to have it in tournaments previously but were met with a lot of community opposition.

The biggest objection previously was that FW upset the balance of the game. Well, hahaha, no worries about that now! Game balance went out the window with 6th in a big way and the power combos that the game provides don't need FW. The worst offenders that people complained about were Vehicles (Achilles, Lucious Drop Pod, Caestes Assault Ram) and those have all been hit with the NERF bat due to Hull Points, so I don't see it being as big of an issue.

The second biggest objection was that most players didn't know the FW rules. Well, now everyone is relearning the rules and this is a perfect time to open the doors and broaden our horizons. I think particularly the inclusion of the FW AA units will go a long way to helping to even out some of the crazier lists. Mostly though, FW units just add a lot of character to armies and the vast majority of them are under powered if anything.

We propose to allow any units with the 40K approved stamp to be allowed in the game.

Ultimately I think FW increases the fun of the game and the diversity of toys we get to play with. What do you all think?

I think you know how I feel...bring it on!!!

I do think that FW army lists should not be allowed, because the ally system would be really, really confusing to people not up on the FW army lists. And plus a bunch of the FW army lists have additional issues that need to be FAQ'd, but you're talking about so much more additional info to deal with and try to FAQ. Because frankly the INAT has never tried to FAQ Forgeworld's army lists (because they tend to have quite a few issues) so you'd have to be dealing with any potential issues as they come up, which would be a pain.

I anticipate this is going to get crazy. Can anyone say, "counts as allies?"

Yeah, that is going to get bananas.

So, we'd love to hear some ideas on where to draw the line? Particularly with FW models, this gets crazy. So, what do you do when you have someone who has built an awesome AdMech army using all kinds of beautiful conversion but is using two different codices and FW models? Even worse, the guy with a bunch of half painted models or models from his and 4 friends' collections that all have different paint jobs and represent an allied army. That could very easily get confusing.

We don't want to limit people's creativity, so what are some ideas to make this easy? My thoughts were to include a hand-out for players who are doing this to give to their opponent that includes at the very least a unit to unit breakdown, ie. this unit in my army=this unit from this codex, and etc. Preferably with a brief stat breakdown.

I think one of the main reasons that people pushed for 'count-as' was simply to use a more powerful codex (or what they perceived as such), so you'd get people wanting to play their CSM models as Space Wolves, for example. With allies now in the mix, there's much less need for that IMHO. A CSM army can simply be 'boosted' by pulling allies in from another codex. But at the same time, having allies included also means more opportunities for confusion if people are trying to use 'counts as' models for their allies, but still using models from the same army.

As such, I personally think you should take a hard-line and say that under no circumstance can you just use models from one army and just count them as models from another codex (like CSM for Space Wovles, for example). You can still do a pure 'counts-as' army (like Hulksmash's Admech for Daemon custom build), however any allies should ALWAYS have to be WYSIWYG. In other words, there should be absolutely no such thing as 'counts-as' ally models.

Thanks very much for the thoughtful feedback, Yak, it's appreciated.

I really like that idea for rolling 2D6 on the mysterious objectives and choosing one. That is pretty solid, and I think we will use that for the 3 seize ground objectives that are in no man's land.

In our play testing, having the middle objective give Skyfire has proven to be not much help, hahaha. Controlling it has proven to be very difficult, and even against JMac's flying circus Nids, I wasn't able to even control it to get a shot off at his FMCs. In our other test games it went the same, no one controlled it until late game when it didn't really matter. I think rolling for it would be a nice fix that still keeps the random elements, but makes it more of a manageable risk.

I think we will also use Janthkin's idea for implementing the part of Big Guns Never Tire and the Scouring where Heavy Support and Fast Attack units can be scoring in 2 of the missions. In these missions we'll make those units give up an additional KP.

I agree about FW army lists, I feel that it's just a bit much at this stage. Just introducing FW units will be a lot of fun and not too crazy.

We've been plays testing the KP system of having each unit worth 1 KP per 50pts and it works pretty dang well. We've been finding that the Deathstars, particularly the mobile ones like Nob Bikers, can take out several units at once with ease. The nice thing, is that when you do take one out, it is worth a boat load of points. My Nob Bikers, for example, gave up 13!

We're finding that it is still really easy to keep track of, and evens things out but still punishes MSU as armies that have a lot of units will have a disproportionately larger number of KP to give up, roughly 1 extra per unit. It seems like a good compromise so far.

We're for sure going 1500 to start with, games just take a lot longer now. I would like to see that increase, but now while everyone is getting the hang of things, no reason to make it crazier than it needs to be.

As for counts as, you may be right. I think we may have to go with the rule of cool on this one. If the army is obviously built with a cohesive theme, and the units are clearly representational of what they counts as, then cool. But it will be difficult.

At first we may just have to say strictly bring representational units to make things easy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the BAO mission, we can switch it up a bit with some small changes, or we could simply tier the Victory conditions, making the first worth 1 points, the other 2, and the last 3, and alternating them. This means that You would have to alter your strategy to accommodate that.

We can also play test some alternate conditions.

The nice thing about that is that it means you can't just build an army to do one thing, you have to plan for differing victory conditions but you still know largely what the missions will be.

Points: 1,500pts

Perfect!

Missions

I'm not as concerned about being able to hold enough objectives with only 1500 points (I once was). I like the tiered objectives, and the bonus points. I'm still worried about the mysterious objectives. While the 2d6 roll smooths out the wrinkles, it still is something that you can't plan for and have to keep track of. I am confused on victory points. Is the maximum number of victory points 12 (4+3+2 for Victory Conditions +3 for Bonus)?

Modified Hammer and Anvil


I'd like to see a picture of the deployment zones, but I think that this is workable. I'm really glad that you've come up with a way to make Hammer and Anvil work!

I like most of the tweaks you posted above, Reecius, although the 50 points = 1 KP thing sounds a bit needlessly complicated, imo. Other than that, looking great!!

Allowing FW but NOT FW army lists sounds like a great compromise to start, too.

In Big Guns Never Tire, transports for heavy support units end up being scoring too, right- like the drop pods for my 3 dreadnoughts . But then they give up a point by being killed, so 6 points up for grabs there! Not sure if this mission is going to hurt or help me, in general...

@Anpu-Adom

Yakface's idea on the 2D6 for objectives convinced me it was a good idea, and here's why: With 2D6, you only have a 1/36 chance of getting something bad, which means you will almost always get something good.

Since the only objectives that give this are in No Man's land, it encourages players to play aggressively and not castle up as the middle objectives will give a benefit to who controls it. I think that is a nice benefit to going out and taking objectives.

I will clarify Victory Points.

You can get a total of 12 in each game. The player with more wins, no mater if he has 1 or 12 more points. If both players have the same amount of points, they tie. We're going with an alternating amount of points so that you can't always play the same way, as different Victory Conditions are worth a varying amount of points, armies will have to alter their play style to compensate.

Here is a picture of the deployment we're talking about. MVBrandt told me about it, and a lot of TOs I know said they've been running Hammer and Anvil in events and it has worked fine. I like the deployment as it is a lot of fun, and want to try and make it work.



The 12" restriction means that you will be less likely to have to reach across the table or walk around and play on the other side of the board. So far it works in our playtesting.

Thanks for the feedback!

@RiTides

The KP missions is more complex than it was but it still punishes MSU (they will have disproportionately more KP) while not giving Deathstar armies such a big advantage (by having a disproportionately low amount of KP). I think it will just take a little getting used to but so far we have found it to be a really good middle ground. We are open to new ideas though, for sure.

And yeah, Big Guns Never Tire and the Scouring keep the missions closer to the book, but are still fairly balanced. Those units give up more KP but can grab those objectives.

Thanks for the feedback, also!

Using your own missions worked in 5th but 6th doesn't seem right. it feels like your holding onto 5th a bit to much. Warlord traits are fine the way they are? none of them hurt an army just a plus if you get them. Id say with fotrs i would ban fortress of redemption mainly due to size. Also what is the standing rule for forts? make your own model or use GW?

My only problem with that deployment is that it makes the opponent's back corner (where he will definitely be putting his objective) even further away than normal Hammer & Anvil.

But running the math, it's the difference between a 42" shortest path, and 42.5", which isn't exactly game-breaking.

But still - maybe make "The Emperor's Will" worth the fewest points when paired with H&A deployment?

I'm curious why FW units are allowed but not FW armies, generally these lists are rather tame but very fun, I find it odd that allowing all the FW units to be taken hodge-podge wherever but not the armies that they were designed to be used in. I agree they have FAQ issues...but every 40k army list does.

Additionally, If you're going to allow FW stuff, might as well allow anything that isn't Apoc specific, much of it is in older books that have updated rules for 6E but don't have the silly little stamp, and may not for years or ever because they don't need to be reprinted in a new book since their rules already exist.

Vaktathi wrote:I'm curious why FW units are allowed but not FW armies, generally these lists are rather tame but very fun, I find it odd that allowing all the FW units to be taken hodge-podge wherever but not the armies that they were designed to be used in. I agree they have FAQ issues...but every 40k army list does.

Additionally, If you're going to allow FW stuff, might as well allow anything that isn't Apoc specific, much of it is in older books that have updated rules for 6E but don't have the silly little stamp, and may not for years or ever because they don't need to be reprinted in a new book since their rules already exist.

I'll tell you my opinion as to why FW army lists are a different beast than the units (in terms of using them in tournaments):


1) When it came to whether or not to include FW army lists as something for the INAT to tackle trying to FAQ issues, it quickly became apparent to me when I really tried to dig deep into them and FAQ all pertinent issues that they do tend to have much, much more significant gaps in their rules than standard Codex army lists. I think this is probably because often they are built off of an existing codex, and then when GW goes and updates to a new codex, the FW authors go back through and try to update the lists as best they can to fit in with the new codex styles, but invariably you still have all these little gaps, where weapons and equipment in the FW army list are slightly different than the current version of the codex...so from a FAQ level, you get back to the question of: Do you allow these old codex issues to remain even though it can cause confusion to have similar gear with different rules in the game, or do you go out on the limb and play 'game designer' a bit and do what should have been done in the first place and FAQ the stuff to match the current iterations.


2) If you do allow strange legacy rules to remain in the FW army lists, then especially now with allies you can have a situation where a player is allying with an army list from the same 'race' but now some stuff is behaving one way (the primary codex stuff) and some stuff is behaving slightly differently (the allied FW stuff). Needless to say this could get very confusing.


3) And on the ally topic, again in tournaments I think TOs are going to have to be really strict about limiting counts-as with allies because it can get really, really confusing fast...and having people 'ally' with army lists from the same race makes that even MORE confusing because how exactly do you mandate that players make it clear the difference between Orks from Codex Orks and Orks from the Dread Mob IA army list? Either you say that people have to paint their stuff totally different (which most people aren't going to want to do) or you just allow it to happen and then opponents get confused as to what is an allied unit or not.


4) Forgeworld has been doing a MUCH better job about updating their rules and army lists than they used to, but there is still typically a gap when a new codex is released. If tournaments are allowing FW army lists, all of a sudden they will have to start keeping up with which FW army lists are currently updated and which are not, which is frankly an unneeded pain in the butt. So instead of just knowing: Hey this new IG codex is now out so you have to use it in the tournament, now you have to check and see if all the rules in the FW army lists that are based off of the IG codex have any new issues.



---


But as for you point about the 'stamp' unis, I totally agree. The 'stamp' is nothing new except a new way to more easily represent what they've already been doing for years. There are tons of units in IA Apoc 2 (not 2nd edition), for example, that as far as FW are concerned are perfectly acceptable rules, but they just don't have the 40K or Apoc stamp on them because they hadn't started doing that yet. However, the rules are still quite clear in those books as to what is useable in regular 40K games and what is useable only in Apoc games.

@Cage00

These missions are almost exactly a 6th ed version of what we did in 5th ed. These are 6th ed book missions, combined together. We do this because if we ran a straight up book missions tournament, an army geard towards taking objectives well has a huge advantage. 5/6 missions are objective missions! haha, that gets boring and is too one dimensional.

We're using 6th ed deployments, 6th ed mysterious objectives, fortifications, warlord traits, etc. We're just tapering off some of the really crazy randomness to make things a little more predictable and altering things for practicality. We're trying to stay as close to the book as possible but still have a good tournament format.

As for Warlord traits, EVERY SINGLE GAME i have played so far, I have rolled a worthless trait. That isn't why we are changing it, it just an example of why I think the system is flawed. I have seen about 4 of the practice games we've played won because one person rolled a beneficial Warlord trait, they can be extremely powerful. We're not dropping it, just trying to mitigate the impact it can have on the game.

Thanks for expressing your concerns though, it's appreciated.

And as for Fortificatoins, we will allow scratch-builds so long as they are roughly the same size and shape of what they are imitating. This has to be a very close match though, as this can be easily abused.

@Jathkin

I was thinking the exact same thing.

I also want to make sure the Scouring and Big Guns Never Tire missions don't correlate with missions that are beneficial to them. For example, we don;t want Big Guns Never Tire on a 4 point Emperor's Will mission as that is just too good for some armies.

@Vaktathi

We are allowing non 40K approved units. The rule states anything that isn't a super heavy or gargantuan creature is cool so long as it is the most recent version of the rules.

As for the army lists, we feel it is a bit too much for now. We accept the fact we will never make everyone happy with our decisions, and for everything we try to and do, some will like it and some wont.

I think allowing FW units in now will be a great first step. If it is well received, next year we can look at expanding it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yakface said it very well, there are a number of reasons why we don't want to allow FW lists yet. Thanks, Yak!

I am totally on board with the mission set up since they are all amalgamations of the 6th ed missions.

I am not on board with changing any of the core mechanics, i.e. Warlord Traits/Psychic Powers, because it will cause a lot of confusion across tournaments and the randomness of the 2 are not game breaking. If you build an army to get a specific Warlord trait then you have a large chance of the army not working right, so it's your choice when designing the army whether or not to hope for the best Warlord Trait roll. No one is forcing you to do that. The same goes for the Psychic powers. No re-roll is needed beyond anything the BRB or your codex allows you to do.

I can get behind that reasoning once explained out like that, I'd go to that event

@Vaktathi

Awesome, that is the goal, to make a fun event for everyone to enjoy!

@OverwatchCNC

I understand your reasoning, I really do. We just feel that the core mechanics in question are not balanced.

Like I said, we have had a LOT of games won or lost by that Warlord trait roll. We want to flatten out the curve a little bit to make the results slightly more predictable.

As for the Psychic Powers, it effects a tiny portion of the armies in the game, really only Broodlords. And, our reasoning behind it is that if someone buys their super cool Broodlord and wants to roll for a different power and rolls something they literally can't use, that sucks.

If it turns out to be too powerful, we'll change it back, no question. But so far, it is hardly game breaking in our experience. It simply prevents people from feeling like they got a bum deal.

I am glad you like the majority of it, though, that is cool.

We may modify some of the missions down the road to incorporate the random objectives values for the seize ground objectives, too. I think for now though, this is enough and a good starting point.

Like I said, we are by no means married to our ideas. We're play testing these ideas every day and altering it to what we think is best and most fair for everyone.

After our first event (Celesticon) we'll have a lot more feedback, and then we have Comikaze and Duelcon which will really give us a ton of feedback to see how these things work in a larger sample set.

We have to start somewhere though, and I feel confident this is a good place to build from.

The Revision looks good Reecus.

Thanks!

The revisions look great Reece. I think the 40k approved FW is a great place to start, although I think the Badab War lists are pretty damned solid. Maybe they are worth looking at for inclusion in the future, cause they add some real variety to codex Marine lists.

When is Comikaze this year? I can't make Duelcon but Comikaze may be doable.

@Jim

I need to make it more clear I think as you are the second person to miss it. We are saying ANY FW units are cool that don;t have structure points or are Gargantuan Creatures. So Baddab characters (which I agree are awesome) are good to go.

Glad you like the structure!

@OverwatchCNC

September 15th and 16th

It's going to be sweet! Tony Hawk will be there with some of his guys in an indoor Half-Pipe promoting their new video game.

Plus the Cos Play girls everywhere is certainly not a bad point, either!

Reecius wrote:@Jim

I need to make it more clear I think as you are the second person to miss it. We are saying ANY FW units are cool that don;t have structure points or are Gargantuan Creatures. So Baddab characters (which I agree are awesome) are good to go.

Glad you like the structure!

@OverwatchCNC

September 15th and 16th

It's going to be sweet! Tony Hawk will be there with some of his guys in an indoor Half-Pipe promoting their new video game.

Plus the Cos Play girls everywhere is certainly not a bad point, either!

Hmmm... That is really close to the wifes' due date but I may be able to swing it...

Congratz on the baby!

But yeah, if you can make it, this is going to be an AWESOME event. Like 30,000-40,000 people coming. Stan Lee is the main sponsor.

Duelcon will be awesome, too. September is going to be a lot of fun.

Reecus Wrote:

Plus the Cos Play girls everywhere is certainly not a bad point, either!

Eye Candy is fine but no licky

Reecius wrote:@Jim

I need to make it more clear I think as you are the second person to miss it. We are saying ANY FW units are cool that don;t have structure points or are Gargantuan Creatures. So Baddab characters (which I agree are awesome) are good to go.

Glad you like the structure!

That is excellent, I can totally get behind that. So for the sake of clarity since I am not the only one who missed it the first time; the FW Characters (Badab or otherwise) are in, just not the special lists like Tyrants Legion and Siege assault.

@Jim

You got it! No lists, but any unit.

@Adam Long Walker

Well, I'm single so if I can, I will! hahahaha