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My local hobby group is going to start an escalation league next month "new year, new army" type of deal and i wanted to ask those of you who have run/attended those events:

What was your overall impression?

How fast did you escalate (points)?

What units do you consider to be "that guy" moves? Example being bringing a Crusader at 500 points. Follow up did you allow FW units or super heavies?

We had 500 to star(patrol only, max 1 vehicle). Then 300 pts per month increasing potential detachments slowly.

Fun.

Be mindful of who is playing. They are easy to "stack". I've seen people bring in 3 friends that just throw games out. I've seen people lie about their achievements.

I am currently in an Age of Sigmar Escalation League. I found out about it a little late, but they started at 500 and have been increasing each week with an additional 250 points. However, Thanksgiving weekend to was a bye week for everyone. Currently, the league is at 1000 points.

It has been a little bit fast for me who is both trying to learn the game and get at least a little bit of paint on my models. Joining late didn't help matters Nor that my Battletome comes out next week. Until then, I have been using the rules that came on the build instruction sheets.

Honest, I am pretty disgruntled by the whole league I am in. The store hosting it was supposed to offer those in the league a slight discount (basically internet prices) of their escalation project which I didn't get on my initial purchase for my army. I lost my first game so badly I would have done better if I hadn't done anything. This week, I got left off the pairing list and even after speaking up about it was told by the organizer that they were waiting to here back from another player before finalizing my pairing, so I don't even know if I will have a game this week since I believe Saturday is the last day of week for each game.

I am in a league that is 40k, 250, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000 points and goes by 2 week intervals. The first two roudns were a lot of fun because the missions they created (they put a lot of thought there) greatly offset the advantages the nu-marines otherwise had. This allowed me to do well when a straight up shooting match would have been lethal for my scions.

However, a few of the restrictions on the setup. One codex only. One SUBFACTION only, from week to week. If you are cadian or ravengaurd, that is all you get and your faciton and subfaction are locked from the moment you choose them.
(I have balked so far as scions don't have a "faction" per se, and I am planning to bring in cadians or tallarns eventually. Maybe this week!)
But, for example, the same marine player who faced me at 500 points had a fairly useless 3 inch range extension locked in from the whole tournament, which didn't much help his aggressors at all. (He was a ravengaurd successor, and bitterly and often commented how he would have so much kicked my butt if only his troops had a -1 to be hit at range instead of 3 inch longer bolters. But the tourney forced him to pick those and lay out his course, which I think balances things across games.

That being said, each point level is going to favor a different army mix greatly. Knights could run only 1 (one) armiger at 250 points, and it was pretty much toast against larger numbers of enemy forces. Especially with obsec requirements.
By 500 they can run a crusader instead, and really rough up 500 poitns of (for example) gaurd infantry and tanks, without much hassle.

By 2000, they will be again sucking wind, I think, as they won't have the ability to screen their forces from enemy units very well at all, and the bigger numbers of knights become far harder to individually protect via warlord trait, relic, and shield rotation. Where 1 crusader can seem unstoppable, 3 crusaders may well be just 3 big targets for three thundercaptains to take out, allowing everyone else to wipe the board of armigers without worry.

So an early loss isn't necessarily a late loss, or a now win predictive of easy sailing.

Exception, numarines and their bullcrap. Of course.

The escalation league I was a part of left me with a lot of bad taste in my mouth.

I was running my Custodes, and this was around 3 months after their Codex release. First game was against the organiser, who ran a 1000pts cadian army with both Creed and Pask.

Yeah. Alarm bells started ringing. I won (just), but jesus. Next game was against an ultramarine army led by Guilliman. Christ. After that a Drakhuri army full of Talos units and even the FW Tantalus and an obnoxious Tyranids spam list of 10 Tyrant guard with mortars and 100+ gaunts with devourer. And lastly, a blood angels player who ran two storm raven gunships in 1250pts against my Custodes, in a blatant case of listing I've ever seen.

It was a poorly run and ruled event. The only rule? Stick to points limit. Yeah. This was billed as one for people new to 8th to get used to playing. It was anything of the sort. Horrible power gaming from the start.

I was playing in one last year that was 250 points every two weeks, starting about two weeks after the GSC codex I was using came out.

I enjoyed my self quite a bit even getting stomped a few times, even with the guy who brought in the knight at 1k and a second at 1500. Had some fun pointing out we were playing objectives and not kill points.