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So like the title says. I'm hoping to run a casual/introductory tournament. Usually our meta is pretty competitive but I'm hoping to add in a few restrictions in order to keep this specific event from turning into a WAAC gak-show, just in case we can convince some new players to come out and not chase them off by having somebody bring the hobby-killer to a small tournament. As such, my initial ideas were:

1. 1500 points limit
2. single CAD. No formations, no extra detachments, list must have HQ and 2 troops, (so no all knights list, inquisition, harlequins, etc)
3. Highlander rules. (all units other than troops are limited to 0-1, troops can be copied but you must use all other troop type choices before adding additional non unique units)
4. No superheavies or gargantuan creatures
5. No Forgeworld
6. Tournament missions will be selected from current ITC scenarios.

Does this sound like a reasonable set of rules for what could be a casual/introductory tournament? Comments and critique are welcome.

Seems good for an introductory thing. Only thing is, imo, if you are looking to get new people, maybe drop the part of highlander rules about troops. I don't know if my experience is typical, but (for example) I started with a small blood angels army, and only ever had (and still only have) tactical marine troops. I couldn't make a CAD for this event, because I would need scouts that I don't own.

Having been part of the hobby for a few months now, I could do it with my Eldar, I've got all kinds of troop choices I own, but when I was beginning and just starting to learn and get things together with my BA, wouldn't be able to play your introductory event.

First thoughts. Grain of salt, you know.

Not really sure why the ban on FW stuff, if one looks at other events without FW restrictions, FW units and list arent exactly dominating anything, or even appearing all that much, with basic Codex stuff largely being better across the board.

Highlander can also really cripple many of the older armies or armies with very limited unit selection, and really hits lots of highly themed lists particularly hard (things like Thousand Sons or Blood Angels jump pack armies for example), and, at least in my opinion, doesnt limit the higher end armies as much as it really tries to. Eldar and Necrons can function almost as well in Highlander as they would otherwise, but you've just kneecapped armies like CSM's.

Aside from that it looks great to me and would be right up my alley.

thanks for the input. maybe I should modify the highlander rules to units can be copied but they cannot have the same loadout. so someone could bring 2 units of tactical marines but only one can have a meltagun, the other unit has to tote a plasmacannon or something. or necrons can bring two units of warriors, but only one unit can be 10 guys in a ghost ark, the other has to be 10+ guys footslogging.

The forgeworld restriction is specifically for two players. one who runs CSM with a fire raptor, sicarian, and a brass scorpion. the other would probably bring a lynx on a skyshied or behind a voidshield if given the chance.

Why are you concerned about 2 tactical squads having the same loud-out?

Or is this more concern over 2 squads of eldar bikes with maxed scatterlasers?

I would assume the restrictions on SH/GC units would hold, making the Brass Scorpion and Lynx moot. Aside from that, if a Fire Raptor and Sicaran are the worst you would be expecting, I dont think it'd be a huge issue, particularly given how weak CSM's are as a whole and how other armies have access to things just as, if not more, powerful as basic Codex units, things like scatterlaser jetbike troops, D weapon wielding Wraithguard, Riptides, Grav Centurions, TWC's, etc.

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:
5. No Forgeworld

Seriously, stop doing this. There is no justification at all for blanket bans on FW rules, and this policy is no more reasonable than saying "no tactical squads allowed".

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:
So like the title says. I'm hoping to run a casual/introductory tournament. Usually our meta is pretty competitive but I'm hoping to add in a few restrictions in order to keep this specific event from turning into a WAAC gak-show, just in case we can convince some new players to come out and not chase them off by having somebody bring the hobby-killer to a small tournament. As such, my initial ideas were:

1. 1500 points limit
2. single CAD. No formations, no extra detachments, list must have HQ and 2 troops, (so no all knights list, inquisition, harlequins, etc)
3. Highlander rules. (all units other than troops are limited to 0-1, troops can be copied but you must use all other troop type choices before adding additional non unique units)
4. No superheavies or gargantuan creatures
5. No Forgeworld
6. Tournament missions will be selected from current ITC scenarios.

Does this sound like a reasonable set of rules for what could be a casual/introductory tournament? Comments and critique are welcome.

Scatterbike spam is still a thing, given your rules.

Traditio wrote:

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:
So like the title says. I'm hoping to run a casual/introductory tournament. Usually our meta is pretty competitive but I'm hoping to add in a few restrictions in order to keep this specific event from turning into a WAAC gak-show, just in case we can convince some new players to come out and not chase them off by having somebody bring the hobby-killer to a small tournament. As such, my initial ideas were:

1. 1500 points limit
2. single CAD. No formations, no extra detachments, list must have HQ and 2 troops, (so no all knights list, inquisition, harlequins, etc)
3. Highlander rules. (all units other than troops are limited to 0-1, troops can be copied but you must use all other troop type choices before adding additional non unique units)
4. No superheavies or gargantuan creatures
5. No Forgeworld
6. Tournament missions will be selected from current ITC scenarios.

Does this sound like a reasonable set of rules for what could be a casual/introductory tournament? Comments and critique are welcome.

Scatterbike spam is still a thing, given your rules.

How so? Warp Spider is Fast Attack. You can have one (1) unit of them. EDIT: You caught this one.

As currently written, you can then also have one (1) unit of scatbikes, unless you first take a unit of dire avengers, rangers, and guardians. Then you can have more scatbikes, but I wouldn't call that "spam" per se.

A min squad of rangers, DAs and Guardians and then just drown you in Scatterbikes seems very viable, and will easily butcher casual/new players of any non-top codex.

Yeah, I'm never too fond of Highlander style restrictions - prohibits fluffy lists as well as competitive ones.

The no FW thing isn't too fair either - Scatterbikes are worse than most FW units.

It doesn't require that many restrictions to make a casual tournament.

The FLG I play at runs casual events like this:

1 - No prize for 1st place. The big prize is randomly drawn at the end.
2 - Require lists to be turned in ahead of time and review them. If a player submits list that you feel isn't appropriate for your event tell them it needs to be toned down and re-submitted.

-frank

i have to jump in and say i like the FW ban... its not per se that the FW stuff is OP in general... but there are countless comninations that are impossible to check.

i like the "back to basic" style tournaments, although i would allow one non decurian type formation, but thats personal preference...

but i really dont like the highlander rules... it limits your listbuilding and normally troops arent that bad. lists without this requirement tend to minmax alot, but thats the game and at 1500 points you cant bring to much boring stuff without crippling your objective grabbing ability

just make sure you play at least 2 out of 3 games as maelstrom and forbid the use of special objective cards (so you have more "hold objective x" cards)

as to the scatterbike dilemma... in the last couple of tournements i attended they moved the scatterbikes from troops to fast attack (where they honestly belong to anyway)

I wish people would stop jumping on folks for trying to do something that is different or simpler. If you're trying to set up a casual tournament that is more accessible for folks, then you absolutely are right to consider various forms of bans and limitations. A big one would be banning defensive psychic powers (i.e. invisibility, fortune, etc.), which would get rid of superstars at their extremes. Also, limiting FW out just to keep the field and list-building considerations simpler is great. Just like it could be great to do a FW-ONLY tournament. Do whatever you want - it's your event. Someone doing so doesn't mean they think FW is overpowered or inappropriate; one could just as easily limit the field to a smaller # of codices if they wanted to.

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:


1. 1500 points limit
2. single CAD. No formations, no extra detachments, list must have HQ and 2 troops, (so no all knights list, inquisition, harlequins, etc)
4. No superheavies or gargantuan creatures
6. Tournament missions will be selected from current ITC scenarios.

Since you asked for critique, I would consider the above to be mostly friendly. Still some chance for eldar scatterbike craziness, but most of the entries should be reasonable. I'd play in this event.

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:
So like the title says. I'm hoping to run a casual/introductory tournament. Usually our meta is pretty competitive but I'm hoping to add in a few restrictions in order to keep this specific event from turning into a WAAC gak-show, just in case we can convince some new players to come out and not chase them off by having somebody bring the hobby-killer to a small tournament. As such, my initial ideas were:

1. 1500 points limit
2. single CAD. No formations, no extra detachments, list must have HQ and 2 troops, (so no all knights list, inquisition, harlequins, etc)
3. Highlander rules. (all units other than troops are limited to 0-1, troops can be copied but you must use all other troop type choices before adding additional non unique units)
4. No superheavies or gargantuan creatures
5. No Forgeworld
6. Tournament missions will be selected from current ITC scenarios.

Does this sound like a reasonable set of rules for what could be a casual/introductory tournament? Comments and critique are welcome.

Requiring a single CAD and allowing no other formations/detachments eliminates many of the Factions from being able to participate. Off the top of my head, you're excluding players who purchased Eldar Harlequins, Imperial Knights, Renegade Knights, Inquisition, Legion of the Damned, Officio Assassinorum and Deathwatch. I may have missed some, but that excludes seven full factions from your event. I don't know about others, but I can't support an event that is structured to flat out exclude whole segments of the gaming community. Your group/event might need to come to terms with the fact that Warhammer 40k isn't built around a single CAD style Force Org Chart anymore.

To be fair, most of those arent really full factions in the first place (and rarely see play as anything but a rump detachment either way...if at all) and some can still be run as parts of other armies (e.g. LotD, Harlies) while the Knights are already out due to being SH's. It's not like saying you can't play Eldar or Space Marines.

Its also relatively easy to fix for most of these. Make an Assassins an Elites choice for Imp armies (who's running these as anything else?), allow Harlies to take one of their Characters as an HQ, etc. I also dont know of any event that allows armies of Knights anymore, though they may be out there, theyre pretty much universally restricted in some way.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, most of those arent really full factions in the first place (and rarely see play as anything but a rump detachment either way...if at all) and some can still be run as parts of other armies (e.g. LotD, Harlies) while the Knights are already out due to being SH's. It's not like saying you can't play Eldar or Space Marines.

Its also relatively easy to fix for most of these. Make an Assassins an Elites choice for Imp armies (who's running these as anything else?), allow Harlies to take one of their Characters as an HQ, etc. I also dont know of any event that allows armies of Knights anymore, though they may be out there, theyre pretty much universally restricted in some way.

Nice to be told that my Skitarii force isn't really a real army. Hence, my comment on the exclusive nature of these sorts of rules sets. My standard army is a Skitarii force with a small Inquisitorial Detachment and an Officio Assassinorum dude. Per your rules, no part of my frankly below average army is good enough to play at your table. Skitarii doesn't have HQs. Inquisition doesn't have Troops. The Assassins don't have either.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm not allowed to play with my Tau because they're "Ehremegerd cheez OP" and now I can't play with my new armies because they don't fit a 6th edition play style. And people wonder why casual players hate organized events. "Play my way or don't bother showing up".

If you've built such an army, I can understand the feeling, but lets be real here, Skitarii as they are currently built, are not a full army, they're basically 4 or 5 units with some wagear variant units, lacking key items like dedicated transports, and should have been part and parcell with the Cult Mechanicus instead of inexplicably being two different books, a victim of GW's marketing pipeline demands, an infuriating situation to be sure. The Inquisition likewise arent really an army unto themselves either, any more than Assassin are. They really should be treated as generic HQ/Elite options to other Imperial Armies, as thats how they're actually utilized. Thats part of the problem with 7E army construction, and makes it difficult to enact restrictions to tone down some of the more absurd things that this edition allows without stepping on *somebodies* toes.

Ultimately, it's a relatively easy fix to fit these into a single CAD system, just allow a Skitarii character to be taken as an HQ unit, make Assassins an Elites choice for Imperial armies and Inquisitors as an HQ choice, though at the same time, having all these elements in a single army is a relative niche scenario.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If you've built such an army, I can understand the feeling, but lets be real here, Skitarii as they are currently built, are not a full army, they're basically 4 or 5 units with some wagear variant units, lacking key items like dedicated transports, and should have been part and parcell with the Cult Mechanicus instead of inexplicably being two different books, a victim of GW's marketing pipeline demands, an infuriating situation to be sure. The Inquisition likewise arent really an army unto themselves either, any more than Assassin are. They really should be treated as generic HQ/Elite options to other Imperial Armies, as thats how they're actually utilized. Thats part of the problem with 7E army construction, and makes it difficult to enact restrictions to tone down some of the more absurd things that this edition allows without stepping on *somebodies* toes.

Ultimately, it's a relatively easy fix to fit these into a single CAD system, just allow a Skitarii character to be taken as an HQ unit, make Assassins an Elites choice for Imperial armies and Inquisitors as an HQ choice, though at the same time, having all these elements in a single army is a relative niche scenario.

Right, so you feel bad for me, but still won't let me play at your table. Noted.

I don't mean to sound bitter, but I'm kind of bitter. These sort of event rules that exclude players make those players feel really unwanted. It's crappy. If you're looking to build the community, this is not the way. If you don't care about community and are ok with losing players based on excluding entire armies, go crazy. I don't live where you live, so my opinion probably counts for nothing.

When you say "that's part of the problem with 7E army construction", I do sort of shake my head. I totally understand why 7E army constructions feels broken if you try to smash it into a 6th Edition shaped hole. Lots of factions simply don't fit. If you want to eliminate cheese, identify the cheese and house rule against it or just play Unbound Highlander with no Formations allowed. No spamming units. No weird intra-detachments interactions. Plus, it excludes precisely nobody. Everyone can play. Your method picks and chooses who is allowed to play. There are a million ways to setup balanced event house rules that make for fun games where everyone can play.

Incidentally, I'm speaking as someone who ran a successful hobby store that ran multiple 40k/Fantasy/LotR events every week and never excluded anyone. It can be done. The above just isn't the way.

 Kriswall wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
If you've built such an army, I can understand the feeling, but lets be real here, Skitarii as they are currently built, are not a full army, they're basically 4 or 5 units with some wagear variant units, lacking key items like dedicated transports, and should have been part and parcell with the Cult Mechanicus instead of inexplicably being two different books, a victim of GW's marketing pipeline demands, an infuriating situation to be sure. The Inquisition likewise arent really an army unto themselves either, any more than Assassin are. They really should be treated as generic HQ/Elite options to other Imperial Armies, as thats how they're actually utilized. Thats part of the problem with 7E army construction, and makes it difficult to enact restrictions to tone down some of the more absurd things that this edition allows without stepping on *somebodies* toes.

Ultimately, it's a relatively easy fix to fit these into a single CAD system, just allow a Skitarii character to be taken as an HQ unit, make Assassins an Elites choice for Imperial armies and Inquisitors as an HQ choice, though at the same time, having all these elements in a single army is a relative niche scenario.

Right, so you feel bad for me, but still won't let me play at your table. Noted.

It's neither my table nor my event...I'm not detailing my own personal house rules here.

I don't mean to sound bitter, but I'm kind of bitter. These sort of event rules that exclude players make those players feel really unwanted. It's crappy. If you're looking to build the community, this is not the way. If you don't care about community and are ok with losing players based on excluding entire armies, go crazy. I don't live where you live, so my opinion probably counts for nothing.

Having seen my community largely disintegrate because of the crazy things and near infinite possibility of combos that people see, I would heartily hop into such an event.


I havent run an event since 6E, so my TO experience is a couple years out of date, but my local store hasnt even been able to generate enough players to actually host our last two or three events.

Also, having played things like DKoK through editions like 4th and 5th, where FW wasnt allowed at all...anywhere, or Warriors of Chaos during the strange interlude in 7E Fantasy where they didnt have a legal list for some time, I can understand the frustration of not being able to play an army. However, when you're looking at armies built from 3 or 4 different books from incomplete factions, that becomes *much* harder to work around.

That said, as I noted, there are easy fixes for such factions if the TO so desires, which i believe I've stated repeatedly.

When you say "that's part of the problem with 7E army construction", I do sort of shake my head. I totally understand why 7E army constructions feels broken if you try to smash it into a 6th Edition shaped hole.

It's broken because...it's broken, as in, it allows for things never intended by the writers, that bear no resemblance to the background material, and allow things most armies simply do not have the tools to reasonably fight, and many of these smaller factions are treated as unique armies when they're really fragments of larger factions in terms of battlefield functionality.

In fact, its so bad that even the most well run and largest of events cannot vet lists properly anymore.

Lots of factions simply don't fit. If you want to eliminate cheese, identify the cheese and house rule against it or just play Unbound Highlander with no Formations allowed.

So a 5 Knight army (all different) is fine and not going to cause any issues? Or a Warhound Titan backed up by different Knights? Highlander doesnt fix as much as it likes to portray. Spam isnt always necessarily the issue either, and this would lock out many ostensibly fluffy lists as well that are built around multiples, something like Thousand Sons or BA jump armies for example.

There is no single good fix that will satisfy everyone

No spamming units. No weird intra-detachments interactions. Plus, it excludes precisely nobody.

so...the guy showing up with the fluffy Thousans Sons army is *not* going to have a problem?

 Vaktathi wrote:
...but my local store hasnt even been able to generate enough players to actually host our last two or three events.

If you're having problems with attendance, running events that exclude players probably isn't the answer.

The obvious core issue is that GW doesn't care about competitive play and Warhammer 40k, in its current incarnation, doesn't lend itself at all to balanced competitive play. If you want people to participate in events, you either need a very knowledgeable TO willing to put hours and thousands of dollars into absorbing the entire rule base and coming up with a balanced event pack OR avoid the traditional 1500/1850 point tournament structure.

Some examples of extremely successful 40k events we ran...

1. Racing Events - each participant buys, converts and paints a single "racer". This could be a vehicle, bike, or beast. As the TO, I had final say and allowed pretty much anything fun. Everyone started on the track (arbitrary circle on a 4'x6' table) and couldn't attack each other until at least the second lap. If you got knocked out, you'd pull over and on a 2+ could get back up the next turn. It sounds weird, but people loved it. Always generated sales and we always had a full house.

2. Trial of Champions - each participant buys, converts and paints a single HQ with a single Elites Choice "retinue". Total point cost available is 400 points and no Unique units allowed. We'd run a normal tournament bracket and play a standard game on a 2'x2' tile loaded with terrain. Again, huge draw, always fun.

3. Campaign of Attrition - Each player shows up with a 4000 point Unbound list. They then build a 1500 point or less Battleforged list using only the units on the bigger list, with no changes allowed to be made to wargear. If the unit was 254 points on the big list, it's equipped the same and 254 points on the smaller list. During the course of the first game, when a unit is killed, it is scratched off the 4000 point list. The second and third games work the same, but your 4000 point list has obviously shrunk each time. This adds a new element to the game... do you deploy your best units now and risk not being able to use them in games 2 and 3 or do you wait until the end of the tournament to pull them out? Players tended to play more defensively, knowing that losing a unit could cripple their strategy for future games. It was very possible to lose enough that your last game might be less than 1500 points and with a random mix of units that could only be fielded as Unbound. Again, tons of fun.

What doesn't work in today's context for casual players (i.e. most FLGS communities) is a standard tournament with 1500/1850 point lists. One ultra-competitive player can ruin the day for everyone.

 Kriswall wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
...but my local store hasnt even been able to generate enough players to actually host our last two or three events.

If you're having problems with attendance, running events that exclude players probably isn't the answer.

none of these are rules my store uses...they allow pretty much anything and everything.

The obvious core issue is that GW doesn't care about competitive play and Warhammer 40k, in its current incarnation, doesn't lend itself at all to balanced competitive play. If you want people to participate in events, you either need a very knowledgeable TO willing to put hours and thousands of dollars into absorbing the entire rule base and coming up with a balanced event pack OR avoid the traditional 1500/1850 point tournament structure.


What doesn't work in today's context is a standard tournament with 1500/1850 point lists. One ultra-competitive player can ruin the day for everyone.

I absolutely agree, but given that such tournament play is also closest to how people play outside of tournaments, its how most events are run. We still do the odd one off thing, we just recently had a single-tank event where everyone just brings a tank of whatever kind and everyone hashes it out. It was fun, but its a side thing. If people *do* want to play a competiive tournament that easy to administer, easily repeatable, and weed out some of the more onerous stuff without getting into the infinite depths of specific combos or units/powers/etc, detachment and formation restrictions are unavoidable.

 Vaktathi wrote:
...detachment and formation restrictions are unavoidable.

Right. And at that point you're not really playing Warhammer 40k anymore. Your house ruled derivative game is just closer to the original than my three example house ruled derivative games.

 Kriswall wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
...detachment and formation restrictions are unavoidable.

Right. And at that point you're not really playing Warhammer 40k anymore. Your house ruled derivative game is just closer to the original than my three example house ruled derivative games.

Nobody plays 40k straight from the book, and its pretty much impossible to run an event that doesnt house rule some things even if theyre not related to army construction (if nothing else than terrain setup & mission determination just for the structure of the event). If you look at every major event and tournament format, they all impose restrictions and changes of various sorts, usually with more text than some entire games need for rules.

Kriswall, I'm sorry if the rules modifications that I suggested seem to exclusionary for you and what you wish to play in 40k, but to be fair none of the events that you mentioned are any more inclusive then the the one I am hoping to run. I do not think a 4000 point attrition campaign tournament will go over well with anybody, much less new players who may have just gotten up to their first 1500. I am merely trying to craft a set of rules that will hopefully tone down some of the more WAAC players in my area so that they can participate along with hopefully some newer players. I know that Higlander rules and banning forgeworld will not solve all those problems, but I feel that they are necessary crutches to lean on at least for now. In the last local tournament I participated in which was much looser in regards to what people could bring, some of the armies I saw brought included:
an army that was as many thud-guns(or whatever they are called now) that would fit on top of a skyshied.
an unbound army of nothing but ~30 lvl 1 librarians all using only psychic shriek,
some spacewolves, marine combo with cover ignoring devastator squads
and a maximum riptide wing
this was against kids who had brought a new (still unpainted) foot slogging tyranids army or another kid who had a really fluffy blood angels army headed by the sanguinor. I watched that kid putting his tryanids away after a match where he hadn't caused a single wound and had been tabled before he even got across the board.
I understand tournaments are supposed to be competitive and that you cannot control how hard people are going to powergame, I'm just trying to make it a fun enough time so some kid can show up and not feel like he's wasted an entire day doing nothing but putting his army on a table and then picking it back up without having rolled any dice.

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:
I know that Higlander rules and banning forgeworld will not solve all those problems, but I feel that they are necessary crutches to lean on at least for now.

But they aren't, because they don't really accomplish all that much. Highlander rules aren't all that significant at 1500 points, especially since troops are exempt. And a blanket ban on FW accomplishes nothing besides excluding the players (some of which may be the new players you are trying to attract!) who have FW rules in their armies. It doesn't do anything to fix balance issues or stop competitive players from crushing newbies because FW rules are no more overpowered than any other rules GW publishes. A player that is going to bring a newbie-crushing list to a newbie tournament and table everyone will accomplish that goal just fine with a codex-only army.

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:
Kriswall, I'm sorry if the rules modifications that I suggested seem to exclusionary for you and what you wish to play in 40k, but to be fair none of the events that you mentioned are any more inclusive then the the one I am hoping to run. I do not think a 4000 point attrition campaign tournament will go over well with anybody, much less new players who may have just gotten up to their first 1500. I am merely trying to craft a set of rules that will hopefully tone down some of the more WAAC players in my area so that they can participate along with hopefully some newer players. I know that Higlander rules and banning forgeworld will not solve all those problems, but I feel that they are necessary crutches to lean on at least for now. In the last local tournament I participated in which was much looser in regards to what people could bring, some of the armies I saw brought included:
an army that was as many thud-guns(or whatever they are called now) that would fit on top of a skyshied.
an unbound army of nothing but ~30 lvl 1 librarians all using only psychic shriek,
some spacewolves, marine combo with cover ignoring devastator squads
and a maximum riptide wing
this was against kids who had brought a new (still unpainted) foot slogging tyranids army or another kid who had a really fluffy blood angels army headed by the sanguinor. I watched that kid putting his tryanids away after a match where he hadn't caused a single wound and had been tabled before he even got across the board.
I understand tournaments are supposed to be competitive and that you cannot control how hard people are going to powergame, I'm just trying to make it a fun enough time so some kid can show up and not feel like he's wasted an entire day doing nothing but putting his army on a table and then picking it back up without having rolled any dice.

Why not just double up your events and run side by side "noob" and "waac" tournaments? As TO, you have final say over which tournament people play in. You're never going to get a fair fight between a competitive veteran who prioritizes winning over sportsmanship and a new player. Why not just avoid that matchup altogether?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
...detachment and formation restrictions are unavoidable.

Right. And at that point you're not really playing Warhammer 40k anymore. Your house ruled derivative game is just closer to the original than my three example house ruled derivative games.

Nobody plays 40k straight from the book, and its pretty much impossible to run an event that doesnt house rule some things even if theyre not related to army construction (if nothing else than terrain setup & mission determination just for the structure of the event). If you look at every major event and tournament format, they all impose restrictions and changes of various sorts, usually with more text than some entire games need for rules.

Ok? So you're agreeing that pretty much every organized event plays a house ruled 40k derivative game? Based on GW's repeated comments, pure 40k is intended as a casual beer and pretzels game. It will never lend itself to organized play without a house rule pack.

 Kriswall wrote:


Ok? So you're agreeing that pretty much every organized event plays a house ruled 40k derivative game?

I dont think I ever disagreed with that or attempted to assert anything to the contrary. In fact, I dont think anyone I've ever seen has really played 40k strictly by the book without any modifications or changes since the end of 5th edition in at least some way.

Based on GW's repeated comments, pure 40k is intended as a casual beer and pretzels game. It will never lend itself to organized play without a house rule pack.

Right...we're not disagreeing at all here. The big problem with 40k is that it requires just as much houseruling for narrative and casual play for most people (even if it is unstated), still fundamentally built around pickup style games...just really poorly.

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:

1. 1500 points limit
2. single CAD. No formations, no extra detachments, list must have HQ and 2 troops, (so no all knights list, inquisition, harlequins, etc)
3. Highlander rules. (all units other than troops are limited to 0-1, troops can be copied but you must use all other troop type choices before adding additional non unique units)
4. No superheavies or gargantuan creatures
5. No Forgeworld
6. Tournament missions will be selected from current ITC scenarios.

Personally I think it's a great idea, but needs a bit if tweaking.

I am in the military and one (of many things) I have learned over the years is to consider your primary training audience. In your event, you want to help new people gain experience in a positive way that removes some of the cut throat competitiveness and enables a sound learning environment.

My suggestions to you, since it is geared toward new players, are the following:

1. Lower the point value to 1000. This allows newer players to get into the game quicker but still allow for a decent force. There should be enough variety at that level to get multiple unit types, vehicles, etc.

2. Force a CAD for those factions that can take it, but allow factions that must take their "default" formation to do so. This enables the inclusion of more forces without modifying rules in a potentially complex manner.

3. I am personally quite fond of the Highlander rules etc because it is simple and adds a nice dynamic to the game. My suggestion to improve it for your specific event would be to remove the restriction on troops so that players could (fir example) field multiple tactical squads without unnecessary restrictions (ie different loadouts).

4. I agree with this point fully.

5. I would allow FW if they have it, but I doubt that many new players will actually have any FW models.

6. I know someone mentioned no missions from the book, but in this case it may be beneficial as a new player would theoretically have the rulebook and thus easy access to official material. Alternatively, you could make the missions transparent and available to all those participating well in advance.

Overall I think you have a great idea and I like that it is geared toward new people, thus advancing the hobby in your area. I would also recommend you get some of the locals who are willing to spend the extra time to partake and actually help/mentor new players to better understand the game.

If your goal is to help new people, I believe you are on the right track. Some kinks to iron out before you enact it, but a good idea for sure!

Sidebar, I apologize for weird typos; I am on my phone and autocorrect does obtuse things.