Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Admittedly, this idea came from looking at the chaplains that black Templar are getting, seeing some modeled with plasma pistols. I thought to myself, why don’t chaos dark apostles have plasma pistols as an option too? Then I thought about how funny it would be if a significant portion of tournament players were to unanimously put their favorite legends in their tournament lists or even use illegal configurations not supported by legends or current rules, like the plasma pistol dark apostle.
Then I figured wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a tournament that allowed legends and house ruled armies to be up to date with each other... basically run a fun tournament where people could run what they want. Have democratic processes for approving house rules and even fandexes. I would love to give squat fans and renegade and heretics players a way to play the game in a centralized way, and for everyone to have functioning codices.
Let’s see those warbosses on bikes, the variety in HQ slots that dark elder miss, the entire renegade and heretics range, and everything else you wish you could still run!

Open Play tournament?

I like that sound of that! That'd actually make me interested in attending, something I never even considered before

I think getting a significant playerbase to democratically approve stuff is going to be awkward and difficult; speaking as someone who does homebrewing in their spare time I find writing for 8th/9th much more complicated than writing for older editions simply because of the amount of synergy you have to take into account and the fact that there aren't really good stat benchmarks. You might have more luck setting up a committee to back-port newer models to an older edition of the core rules.

Honestly I think stratagems need to be changed anyways; I don’t believe that slaanesh marked units getting to shoot twice is a good mechanic for example. I say this as a chaos space marine player. That loves playing slaanesh shooting lists. Other strats actively gimp your army as well; flak missile allowing you to shoot ah flak missile as a strategem does very little to help you fight flyers for example; at this point they could conceivably be 5ppm and be significantly more helpful because all your missile launchers have potentially the ability to be antiaircraft weapons. Having a list of restricted stratagems might go a long way to combatting those issues.

macluvin wrote:
Admittedly, this idea came from looking at the chaplains that black Templar are getting, seeing some modeled with plasma pistols. I thought to myself, why don’t chaos dark apostles have plasma pistols as an option too? Then I thought about how funny it would be if a significant portion of tournament players were to unanimously put their favorite legends in their tournament lists or even use illegal configurations not supported by legends or current rules, like the plasma pistol dark apostle.
Then I figured wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a tournament that allowed legends and house ruled armies to be up to date with each other... basically run a fun tournament where people could run what they want. Have democratic processes for approving house rules and even fandexes. I would love to give squat fans and renegade and heretics players a way to play the game in a centralized way, and for everyone to have functioning codices.
Let’s see those warbosses on bikes, the variety in HQ slots that dark elder miss, the entire renegade and heretics range, and everything else you wish you could still run!

I would 100% do a fan dax, i would play Corsairs again. So sad they were squated, even though they invented 8th detachments and army traits (you had detachments and each detachment had to be a trait in their 7th codex).

The Legends thing might work.

Other aspects . . . good luck.

There's quite a difference between letting models take weapons that already have stats and point costs, and homebrewing rules for models that haven't existed for four editions. It would be hard enough with just a couple of people trying to agree on rules, without trying to do it democratically and let everyone at the tournament have a say.

(FWIF I do agree with your overall message, I just think trying to get 40k players to agree on homebrew rules is akin to trying to heard cats).

 vipoid wrote:
The Legends thing might work.

Other aspects . . . good luck.

There's quite a difference between letting models take weapons that already have stats and point costs, and homebrewing rules for models that haven't existed for four editions. It would be hard enough with just a couple of people trying to agree on rules, without trying to do it democratically and let everyone at the tournament have a say.

(FWIF I do agree with your overall message, I just think trying to get 40k players to agree on homebrew rules is akin to trying to heard cats).

Would a committee consisting of a panel of players across all factions work? I mean a primarily tau player, primarily chaos daemon player, drukhari player, etc etc? That way each side is fairly represented. I would also say that a 50% vote should be enough to warrant testing the rules and afterwards a 60% vote should be enough to pass them. There are a kajillion different ways to do it. Or even just have the TO approve rules or reject them with notes for recommended changes. I wouldn’t measure the rules based on competitive outcomes as much as how much fun both players had. There even could be stipulations that experimental rules are in their own category and not subject to winning the actual tournament. Since we lack the rosources for actual play testing. And if someone breaks the faction or finds an interaction it can be patched for the next tournament.

Its almost impossible to regulate it honestly.

macluvin wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
The Legends thing might work.

Other aspects . . . good luck.

There's quite a difference between letting models take weapons that already have stats and point costs, and homebrewing rules for models that haven't existed for four editions. It would be hard enough with just a couple of people trying to agree on rules, without trying to do it democratically and let everyone at the tournament have a say.

(FWIF I do agree with your overall message, I just think trying to get 40k players to agree on homebrew rules is akin to trying to heard cats).

Would a committee consisting of a panel of players across all factions work? I mean a primarily tau player, primarily chaos daemon player, drukhari player, etc etc? That way each side is fairly represented. I would also say that a 50% vote should be enough to warrant testing the rules and afterwards a 60% vote should be enough to pass them. There are a kajillion different ways to do it. Or even just have the TO approve rules or reject them with notes for recommended changes. I wouldn’t measure the rules based on competitive outcomes as much as how much fun both players had. There even could be stipulations that experimental rules are in their own category and not subject to winning the actual tournament. Since we lack the rosources for actual play testing. And if someone breaks the faction or finds an interaction it can be patched for the next tournament.

I still think you'd struggle, honestly, but could always give it a go regardless.

That said, where exactly do you draw the line with regard to factions? Are you going to have a Ultramarine player and a Blood Angels player and a Space Wolf player and a Grey Knight player etc.? Because those are all factions and so should theoretically get a voice, but you'll likely end up with a core of Marine players who can largely or wholly control the vote.

Again, feel free to ignore my cinisism, I'm just... not optimistic when it comes to this sort of thing.

I’m alright with tossing the notion of regulation aside. This should be a test bench to see how we can get things like corsairs renegade and heretics and squats on the tabletop and both players have fun. I think corsairs and renegade and heretics would happily play a slightly nerfed equivalent of a similar army if it meant putting their minis on the table and playing what they want to play.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

macluvin wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
The Legends thing might work.

Other aspects . . . good luck.

There's quite a difference between letting models take weapons that already have stats and point costs, and homebrewing rules for models that haven't existed for four editions. It would be hard enough with just a couple of people trying to agree on rules, without trying to do it democratically and let everyone at the tournament have a say.

(FWIF I do agree with your overall message, I just think trying to get 40k players to agree on homebrew rules is akin to trying to heard cats).

Would a committee consisting of a panel of players across all factions work? I mean a primarily tau player, primarily chaos daemon player, drukhari player, etc etc? That way each side is fairly represented. I would also say that a 50% vote should be enough to warrant testing the rules and afterwards a 60% vote should be enough to pass them. There are a kajillion different ways to do it. Or even just have the TO approve rules or reject them with notes for recommended changes. I wouldn’t measure the rules based on competitive outcomes as much as how much fun both players had. There even could be stipulations that experimental rules are in their own category and not subject to winning the actual tournament. Since we lack the rosources for actual play testing. And if someone breaks the faction or finds an interaction it can be patched for the next tournament.

I still think you'd struggle, honestly, but could always give it a go regardless.

That said, where exactly do you draw the line with regard to factions? Are you going to have a Ultramarine player and a Blood Angels player and a Space Wolf player and a Grey Knight player etc.? Because those are all factions and so should theoretically get a voice, but you'll likely end up with a core of Marine players who can largely or wholly control the vote.

Again, feel free to ignore my cinisism, I'm just... not optimistic when it comes to this sort of thing.

I think cynics like you are just as necessary in these discussions as whackaloons such as myself that think we can make a game system that will be widely adopted enough that a squat player will consistently find an opponent that will let them put their minis on the table for a game. I think the panel should be close to a dozen players so no, I don’t think it’s a good idea to get subfactions. I think it should be stressed that it is important to consider the complaints of players from sub faction different to your own but within the same faction; for example we should be willing to hear out a black Templar player if they are having issues fighting ultramarines for example based on stratagems and sub faction rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Assuming an ultramarine space marine player in this example is on the panel of course. It will help that people from outside the faction can also give their input as well.

I think you'd struggle to find a large number of people who'd be willing to use the bin-fire that was the 8th Ed R&H Index. It was such a cursed hodgepodge of units and keywords that it was just easier to use the Guard Codex and get over the fact that you couldn't use Hounds of Xaphan.

That’s why I want R&H players to use the guard codex as a baseline for their own codex and find a way to make themselves unique from the guard.

I mean it sounds interesting in theory but as the scale increases so do the problems. You're inevitably going to get people trying to make broken rules, either because they're not good at recognizing power levels, or they think since their faction is cool it should be strong, or just straight up TFG. People are notoriously bad at coming up with homebrew stuff that is actually balanced, that's why so many people are hesitant to play against homebrew. And as you go up in scale there's ever more people trying to make homebrew stuff, and it becomes progressively harder to regulate all the rules. A homebrew codex plays 3 games where they stomp one, tie one, and get stomped another; do you nerf, buff, or leave their rules the same? How do you figure out if they're actually balanced, or if the game they lost they were just up against an even more broken army?

How do players keep track of all the rules? It's already hard enough knowing what the armies in the game right now can do, now double or triple the number of rules that I need to know, or have games slowed down by constantly having to check with your opponent what their stuff does.

Like I said, sounds interesting, but trying to keep everything well regulated is going to be next to impossible.

Like trading orders for either better leadership mechanics, or better melee combat capabilities (+1s and +1a on infantry for example) or +1T and -1 ld debuff on their infantry, or the ability to gain cp from vehicles and heavy weapons killing enemies. Something to offset the loss of that sort of infrastructural support. And that’s just my vision. Imagine what someone that actually plays the army can come up with. And once something gets proposed as a baseline then others can start proposing other visions for what they can do different from the guard via sub faction recommendations. Infantry heavy r&h and artillery and tank and other vehicle r&h and mechanized infantry r&h and all kinds of other r&h should be viable and unique.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Commissar Yarrork wrote:
I mean it sounds interesting in theory but as the scale increases so do the problems. You're inevitably going to get people trying to make broken rules, either because they're not good at recognizing power levels, or they think since their faction is cool it should be strong, or just straight up TFG. People are notoriously bad at coming up with homebrew stuff that is actually balanced, that's why so many people are hesitant to play against homebrew. And as you go up in scale there's ever more people trying to make homebrew stuff, and it becomes progressively harder to regulate all the rules. A homebrew codex plays 3 games where they stomp one, tie one, and get stomped another; do you nerf, buff, or leave their rules the same? How do you figure out if they're actually balanced, or if the game they lost they were just up against an even more broken army?

How do players keep track of all the rules? It's already hard enough knowing what the armies in the game right now can do, now double or triple the number of rules that I need to know, or have games slowed down by constantly having to check with your opponent what their stuff does.

Like I said, sounds interesting, but trying to keep everything well regulated is going to be next to impossible.

A huge part of bringing an experimental army is feedback from opponents. Was it engaging or interesting to play that home brew? Did it feel like certain aspects were OP? Was there a busted combo? In fact once you get approved to test your fan dex the next step is making it something others would like to play. And understanding that nerfs may be made to your codex with justification but against your will. “Why can’t I keep my double tap strat?” Because it’s too difficult to balance. The point is to have an evolving rule set that slowly makes its way to being more fun and engaging to the whole spectra of players out there.

Also, as a more casual game mode, regulations should be thought of as a journey, not a destination. Bad army designs will be tested, be they terribad and nonfunctional at all to being practically auto-win. And sometimes it will be hilarious. This is basically garagehammer the tournament. Winning the tournament will be based mostly on feedback from your opponents, as much as actually winning the game. Did your opponents army feel overpowered or underpowered? Did it feel like it actually represented a force? Was it coherent? Did you notice things that may synergize with other things in the codex more efficiently that throws balance out of wack? Would you enjoy playing against this fandex again?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I think getting a significant playerbase to democratically approve stuff is going to be awkward and difficult; speaking as someone who does homebrewing in their spare time I find writing for 8th/9th much more complicated than writing for older editions simply because of the amount of synergy you have to take into account and the fact that there aren't really good stat benchmarks. You might have more luck setting up a committee to back-port newer models to an older edition of the core rules.

Indeed, seeing as now certain people think it is now anathema to play 40k on different board sizes anything else is akin to pissing into the wind...

The problem would arise if some waac type came along and thought it was a great chance to play some boring power army thinking they would take home the trophy.

Otherwise it sounds like a great idea!

You are over thinking this.

You want to run such a tourney? Write up your rules, post them, get a venue & see how many sign up. Take feedback afterwards & (maybe) implement some least crazy crap from it the next time.

Yeah I think the best idea for this is just to throw it out to your local community and see what they come up with. Though I'd probably market it as a "games day" with lots of games rather than a tournament. With something like this you probably want to subtly discourage people from trying to "break" the lack of system. You could lay that out light heartedly at the start - highlighting that there's really nothing to be gained from "breaking" something like this.

I think you could have a lot of fun, however I also think the possibility of different ideas about what fun is could cause clashes in such an open setting.

I think trying to organise it more than that will be pretty difficult and will likely produce an unsatisfactory result in any case, so you may as well drop that effort and accept that any event like this will have some janky elements.

Best of luck, I hope you do it and have a great time!

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah I think the best idea for this is just to throw it out to your local community and see what they come up with. Though I'd probably market it as a "games day" with lots of games rather than a tournament. With something like this you probably want to subtly discourage people from trying to "break" the lack of system. You could lay that out light heartedly at the start - highlighting that there's really nothing to be gained from "breaking" something like this.

I think you could have a lot of fun, however I also think the possibility of different ideas about what fun is could cause clashes in such an open setting.

I think trying to organise it more than that will be pretty difficult and will likely produce an unsatisfactory result in any case, so you may as well drop that effort and accept that any event like this will have some janky elements.

Best of luck, I hope you do it and have a great time!

This, a games day would be better, a fun narrative event with 1-2 custom units might be cool too.

macluvin wrote:
Admittedly, this idea came from looking at the chaplains that black Templar are getting, seeing some modeled with plasma pistols. I thought to myself, why don’t chaos dark apostles have plasma pistols as an option too? Then I thought about how funny it would be if a significant portion of tournament players were to unanimously put their favorite legends in their tournament lists or even use illegal configurations not supported by legends or current rules, like the plasma pistol dark apostle.
Then I figured wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a tournament that allowed legends and house ruled armies to be up to date with each other... basically run a fun tournament where people could run what they want. Have democratic processes for approving house rules and even fandexes. I would love to give squat fans and renegade and heretics players a way to play the game in a centralized way, and for everyone to have functioning codices.
Let’s see those warbosses on bikes, the variety in HQ slots that dark elder miss, the entire renegade and heretics range, and everything else you wish you could still run!

This is similar to something i did back when there was a section of the fan base that thought anything FW was forbidden because it wasn't the main line game collection and thus should not be used in normal games.

We called it the segmentum tournament- all non- superheavy FW units/characters were allowed within the FOC slots they belonged including full FW armies.

We also did the same with a mini kill team/combat patrol level tourney-250 points 5-12 models with one leader, no vehicles with combined AV above 33-no named characters monsterous creatures or flyers. both were loads of fun and led to seeing some fun and interesting armies on the table. one of my favorites was the grot tank company with a killa kan and like 3 or 4 of the grot mini tanks.

It also let me make up some really off the wall scenarios

Y’all are awesome. Thank you for the encouragement and feedback! I think I will take the “game day” approach. I am getting a lot of good ideas that I haven’t thought of.

Shame it’s probably a bit far for me to attend.

Misleading title

Not particularly. OP isn't responsible for whatever associations the title prompted for you.

 Da Boss wrote:
Not particularly. OP isn't responsible for whatever associations the title prompted for you.

Yeah life is hard when a word is a verb that is also at the same time a noun which significantly changes the meaning of a sentence.

So, instead of constructing sentences with consideration to how the language functions, let's form the sentence in a manner most commonly associated with the verb when you're actually using it as a noun.

Well not everybody makes lifejob as complaining.

macluvin wrote:
Other strats actively gimp your army as well; flak missile allowing you to shoot ah flak missile as a strategem does very little to help you fight flyers for example; at this point they could conceivably be 5ppm and be significantly more helpful because all your missile launchers have potentially the ability to be antiaircraft weapons.

Gear stratagems should just be 0 CP. That way they couldn't be spammed but would be always there when you need them. I hate 7th edition idea of paying extra points for flak missiles and such, because in 99% of the cases it's wasted points but you regret not buying them in that 1% of cases where it could be useful. Also, 'invisible' upgrades promote list tailoring and thatguys moving them around or miraculously having them when needed, something we need less, not more of.

 aphyon wrote:
This is similar to something i did back when there was a section of the fan base that thought anything FW was forbidden because it wasn't the main line game collection and thus should not be used in normal games.

Or maybe, just maybe, they hated playing FW because it was horrifically broken gak that was in 95% unfun to play for both sides, either because it was really weak or gamebreakingly OP? Yes, there were fun rules like some SM chapters from Badab War, but majority of it belonged either in softest possible narrative games or banned outright for costing less than half of what it should.

I still remember jokers complaining about 8th edition SM 'broken' codex when WAAAC lists didn't even look at units from it, it was all same-same FW leviathan/contemptor/deredeo spam. Complete with clowns shouting SM book should be nerfed on the basis of units that weren't even in it (and what's worse, GW listening to that nonsense, Iron Hands were okay with their rules affecting normal dreads, they only become disgustingly OP with FW gak yet instead of banning it GW choose to nerf IH rules ruining them for people who didn't spam recast to WAAAC)...

I think a tournament as the op is envisioning could be a fair bit of fun.
Form my pov I see using power levels to create a blanket cost for units and upgrades as well as wysiwyg rules so that an event like this would be built around creativity or pay to win and those pay to win types would have to spend and may be less inclined to really game the system.
I'd hope for several layers of comp score, painting and modeling as I'd hope everything was very thematic. I agree a sort of big games day event would probably be easier all around. I don't specifically know how I would want to see army structure but an event foc of some kind to create some small balance might help. I'd be all for restrictive but flavorful rules for stratagems that support a thematic game as well. And of course special missions for each game during the event. I guess this might be like one of those campaign in a day events in a way.
I've run small club events years ago where it was simply bring any two or three units you want and a character then divided the players up into two teams and have at it, "team bad guys" vs "team good guys". Made for a really fun afternoon. It never truly matter which side won the game, every one just had a good time. I have no idea if that would translate to 9th edition or not. I think we did that in 4th.

 GoldenHorde wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Not particularly. OP isn't responsible for whatever associations the title prompted for you.

Yeah life is hard when a word is a verb that is also at the same time a noun which significantly changes the meaning of a sentence.

So, instead of constructing sentences with consideration to how the language functions, let's form the sentence in a manner most commonly associated with the verb when you're actually using it as a noun.

Perhaps you should look up what a garden path sentence is before calling out someone's grammar...

Or maybe, just maybe, they hated playing FW because it was horrifically broken gak that was in 95% unfun to play for both sides, either because it was really weak or gamebreakingly OP? Yes, there were fun rules like some SM chapters from Badab War, but majority of it belonged either in softest possible narrative games or banned outright for costing less than half of what it should.

I still remember jokers complaining about 8th edition SM 'broken' codex when WAAAC lists didn't even look at units from it, it was all same-same FW leviathan/contemptor/deredeo spam. Complete with clowns shouting SM book should be nerfed on the basis of units that weren't even in it (and what's worse, GW listening to that nonsense, Iron Hands were okay with their rules affecting normal dreads, they only become disgustingly OP with FW gak yet instead of banning it GW choose to nerf IH rules ruining them for people who didn't spam recast to WAAAC)...

Or perhaps you are speaking from inexperience or ignorance of previous editions and the common use of FW models.

The great space marine book of cheating AKA 7th edition supplement was far more broken than anything ever made by FW, in fact before 8th edition except for a few things in the entire FW line that stand out like infurnace shells (that were easy to spot and got erratta'd fairly quickly) almost everything FW made was variants of existing vehicles. they tended to be overall sometimes underperforming or just average for premium points cost and model cost, but they looked cool and added flavor to the armies. In fact, at times, it appeared the FW design team made a better effort than the core game design team.

Unless you think a land raider Prometheus with nothing but heavy bolters an auspex and improved comms (re-roll 1 reserve roll per turn) that costs more than a normal land raider was going to break the game for you. or a command rhino with improved comms. or a crisis suit commander with a shield and an assault 2 plasma rifle. hell, even the old rules for titans when they were designed for normal games pre-apocalypse were actually not game breaking. being fine centerpiece models that were super expensive but were not very scary performance wise as D/macro weapons were not a thing.