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If the 'tourney' attitude is bringing out the worst in people or turning off a lot of the playerbase... and there seems to be a need to try to balance things to keep people happy, why not run a different kind of event?

Lots of people simply want a day of organized play and the tourney format provides that. I would say a large chunk of people who attend tourneys have no illusions of being at the top table and just find it as a way to get back-to-back good games.

Instead of comping the meta... change the event. Do a single-day campaign or narrative event where players can get 3-4 games in, there can be winners and losers and even the sealclubbers can participate. Having formats where individuals can do missions to win battle or even ETC parings where you can nominate people to 'battle' the other faction and people of comparable skills can be matched up.

If the goal is organized play where non-meta list people can have fun, then change the event type. I don't think everyone will get butthurt because it isn't a tourney format. I would rather a narrative or campaign than a comped tourney.

 Mannahnin wrote:
The problem there is that one person's "d bag list" is frequently another person's "competitive but reasonable" list.

While I've been a long time supporter of composition scoring and restrictions, they need to be used carefully, and if I judge other players as being bad people because they have different tastes in list-building than I do, that just makes ME a dick.

Agreed!

And agreed with nkelsch about a narrative / campaign being preferable to a comped tourney... or, at least, a comped tourney that is singling out one type of list so severely as to say an entire type of unit can't be used...

I think if you really must limit flyers then limit 2 is way more reasonable than none allowed at all. Also, people honestly Cannot complain that a list with only 2 flyers is unbalancing. Every single codex can find a way to deal with that.

I would not like it at all.
My main lisst has a flyer, and its balanced to fit around it.
Now if you banned other things aswell for balance, Like no special characters, nothing above AV 13 or anything that disrupts balance then maybe. But Banning one thing because so few armies have them is kinda asinine.
10 out of 14 armies have flyers, or monstrous creatures that fly.
Only 4 do not, and very few of them are played.

Bad idea. Almost every list can field a flyer or flying monster now. Adapt and overcome don't ban what you don't like. If people are taking tons of flyers the counter flyer armies should start showing up... or more flyers.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

10 out of 14 armies have flyers, or monstrous creatures that fly.
Only 4 do not, and very few of them are played.

Of course, the lack of flyers might be one reason why they aren't played.

I doubt SoB, DAs, BTs, and Eldar arn't being played because they don't have Flyers. Its because their codices are old/bad. Totally not related to having no Flyers.

And guess what?

They do have Flyers if you allow Forge World.

Once again, I screwed up with the nomenclature. Really, any type of organized day-long event should be called a 'tournament', but I forgot that to many people that automatically means a competitive environment. Yes, I run narrative based events, but just don't refer to them as such because I've found in the past that interest is low for a 'Day of fun with toy soldiers and other dudes'.

I think a nice compromise may be 3 or less flyers. That will allow lists to take a full allotment of heavy support flyers if that is their theme. I think the problem really stems from transport vehicles that are flyers, not flyers in general. I believe that the new reserves rules (only allowing half your units to be placed in reserve) are meant to prevent a player from having a lack of targets on the board that could occur in fifth edition. But by placing all your models in flyer transports, it allows you to circumvent the spirit of the new reserves rules and remove targets from the board.

Hopefully, once the new edition has been out for 6+ months everyone will be able to adapt to the changes, but these first few months are definitely rough for anyone who simply wants to use their 5th edition army with the new rules. The argument that preventing someone who paid $$$ from using 9 new flyer models can easily be used for the opposite group- those that don't have the $$$ to purchase the necessary counters.

Oaka, I think you are overvaluing flyers in this current edition. Please do not take offense at this but it honestly sounds like you got the short end of a battle because you did not know the flyer rules fully, and therefore suffered in game for it. Your comment on the first few months being rough for people who want to use their 5th edition armies in the new rules is another troubling point that I'll address later.

Your argument in the most recent post that "Some folks don't have the $$$ to purchase necessary counters" is a poor one at best. That would be like saying I couldn't use hive tyrants or tervigons unless I know my opponent has the models to deal with them. You also mention transports that are flyers being the large issue. So keep in mind that you're including Stormraven's and Valkyries. There is an extreme difference between restriction for fair play, banning for fair play, or either of the former simply because I personally feel things aren't balanced/fair. To also complicate the money argument, the aegis defense line is ridiculously cheap both points and dollar wise, and is very good anti flyer for any army. Another argument is that new player who just started out would not be able to play because he bought his models, with flyers, and cannot afford other models to replace the ones that would not be restricted/banned. Using money as a balancing factor never works.

Your other example of the last tournament having two Necron lists battling it out may also stem from the fact the Necron book is very, very good, even without its flyers. We had a Necron air cav list at a tournament here in the area, and while it was dangerous it actually did not place very well. If that was due to player skill or opponents I can't comment on, but those were the end results. Restrictions don't balance armies, they simply punish those who have certain options.

Now, as has been said, this discussion would be much more valued in your group of players than here, but ultimately you don't need 6+ months to adapt. If you are saying that, it sounds more like you are refusing to adapt to the new changes, rather than needing time for change. Feeling that you should be able to go from edition to edition without making proper adjustments to your list is, frankly, unrealistic, even in the most optimistic light possible.

As the TO this is your call and you shouldn't feel afraid of discriminating against the types of players that might ruin your tourney. I wouldn't think limiting flyers would alienate many players, just a minority of types you probably don't want at your tourney in any case. My tuppence.

 Marrak wrote:
Oaka, I think you are overvaluing flyers in this current edition. Please do not take offense at this but it honestly sounds like you got the short end of a battle because you did not know the flyer rules fully, and therefore suffered in game for it. Your comment on the first few months being rough for people who want to use their 5th edition armies in the new rules is another troubling point that I'll address later.

No offense taken, mate. In fact, I'm very thankful for your well-thought out response, and I certainly respect it while disagreeing with parts of it. I actually agree with you about the $$$ argument, I was using a different example to show that it is not a good argument (one poster mentioned it hurts players that just spend money buying flyer models). I also agree that six months is too long to expect most people to adjust to a new rules set, but I was actually throwing out there that six months should be long enough for every army to get necessary updates to adequately respond to flyers. Unfortunately, that will probably not happen. GW has famously said that they are a model company and not a rules company, so the rules obviously are written in order to sell new models. I personally have an issue with this when the rules are written in a certain way to almost punish someone who may not want to buy new models.

It hit me as odd that flyers were immune to assaults, but you are right that it caught me off guard because I wasn't familiar with the new rules. Fortunately I learned this in friendly play before taking my models to a tournament! I had always thought that the game allows you to do damage either by ranged weapons or swords and claws. Eliminating one of those options seems quite unusual to me. Here is a hypothetical, but what if the new Tau codex allowed battle suits to take a wargear upgrade worded like, "This Tau suit uses a plasma impact field for defense, and as such is immune to all ranged weapons. This model may only be wounded in assaults." I think that would upset some people that build gunline-style armies. That's how a lot of us local players feel, we don't want to be forced to buy new models (flyers and aegis lines) just to have a chance in a tournament setting. It looks like from the various responses my opinion is in the minority, but that's why I started the thread, to figure out how others feel.

the problem with this, as all of these discussions, is that it is a slippery slope.

Here's another example: Psyker Powers. The new Chaos Codex just gave Chaos...and only Chaos...cool, specialized-to-the-army powers. Is that fair? Do you ban psyker powers until all codexes have their own list? Or just ban Chaos players from using their cool new powers?

I don't have answers, just an observation: GW designed 6th edition to be narrative and fluffy. And until ALL the Codexii are updated, people are just going to have to do the best they can.

I also think Jervis' column in this month's White Dwarf may have some insight into the GW thought process as well. Jervis advocates for many tournaments with their own house rules.

 Oaka wrote:
I think a nice compromise may be 3 or less flyers. That will allow lists to take a full allotment of heavy support flyers if that is their theme. I think the problem really stems from transport vehicles that are flyers, not flyers in general. I believe that the new reserves rules (only allowing half your units to be placed in reserve) are meant to prevent a player from having a lack of targets on the board that could occur in fifth edition. But by placing all your models in flyer transports, it allows you to circumvent the spirit of the new reserves rules and remove targets from the board.

This would be a lot better. If your OP title had been "What do you think of this comp?" limiting flyers and maybe a few other things, you'd have gotten a lot less dramatic a response than "No Flyers Allowed" which, imo, is a very large over-reaction.

Limit it to 2 or 3 if you must, try it out, and see how it goes!

I don't condone banning.

I advocate limiting. Maybe 1 per FOC slot max or just a strict 2-flyer max if you are really having problems with flyers in your area.

Players need to move forward in 6th. Don't keep them trapped in the past. Move them forwards slowly.

 jy2 wrote:
I don't condone banning.

I advocate limiting. Maybe 1 per FOC slot max or just a strict 2-flyer max if you are really having problems with flyers in your area.

Players need to move forward in 6th. Don't keep them trapped in the past. Move them forwards slowly.

I like this suggestion. Flyers are going to be part of the game from now on, so you shouldn't just stick your head in the sand and hope they'll go away, but if people aren't acclimated to the existence of flyers yet it might be reasonable to restrict them and give people a chance to build up first.

I agree with the limiting to 2-3 flyers, sounds fair to me.

It is a double-edged sword for tournament organizers. To use myself as an example, I am a modeller and a gamer... I don't focus all my energy on competitive play, but I enjoy tournaments. So before I look at joining a tournament and throwing down the money and time to play it helps to feel confident that my games will be fun to play... playing against a list of nine flyers just doesn't do it for me. I won't refuse to play those games, it's just that I won't go out of my way to play them.

Any decision is likely to piss off somebody, somewhere. So the question is are there more people wielding nine flyer lists that you will piss off, or are there more people such as myself that begin on the fence about tournaments, and just get turned off by the lists.

But there are some other good points raised.... mass flyer lists aren't the only scariest list out there. Now you have Tzeentch Daemon spam that can be incredibly annoying to play against... do you comp that too? At a certain point it gets ridiculous.

 jy2 wrote:
I don't condone banning.

I advocate limiting. Maybe 1 per FOC slot max or just a strict 2-flyer max if you are really having problems with flyers in your area.

Players need to move forward in 6th. Don't keep them trapped in the past. Move them forwards slowly.

Agree

Flyers are a new dimension of the game to go with tanks and infantry, you need to include them as they are now are part of the game.

Limiting to 2 will prevent necron flyer spam, but still allow people to use flyers effectively in the game

As the TO this is your call and you shouldn't feel afraid of discriminating against the types of players that might ruin your tourney. I wouldn't think limiting flyers would alienate many players, just a minority of types you probably don't want at your tourney in any case. My tuppence.

Agreed overall, however, just be aware of limiting (read: in some players eyes discriminating against!) a certain style/army build/ideology and hence not having those players come to your tournaments in the future.

If you feel limiting Flyers will help your local community/interest/groups, go for it, but just be wary of the above caveat.

Having said all that! - everyone should have a chance to try out their army, even if others percieve it to be "cheesey".
GW made a 6th ruleset (hell it aint perfect!) but should a TO preclude others from trying out their ideas/theme/playstyle?

I wont comment on that but just bear it in mind

You have to make a judgement call within your local group and remember, maybe some of that group (if handicapped by non-flyers) might not come back (or maybe even need to fight Flyers for experience).

Tough call

Instead of limiting flyers cut down the points. Flier lists don't do so well at 1500 points.

Boss GreenNutz wrote:
Instead of limiting flyers cut down the points. Flier lists don't do so well at 1500 points.

I'm a fan of that too. I hate it when there's not enough time for a game... makes for less horde armies and reserve armies... or penalizes you if that's what you have to work with.

Why be a martyr for GW by not allowing flyers (or allies)as well?

Lets face it, it's a tournament. It's meant to be competitive. Telling someone they can't use their legal army is a slap in the face. Almost every army can use allies, so therefore everyone in a way has access to anti-flyer/flyers of their own.

Adapt and overcome, or be left in the dust of the past.

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
Lets face it, it's a tournament. It's meant to be competitive. Telling someone they can't use their legal army is a slap in the face. Almost every army can use allies, so therefore everyone in a way has access to anti-flyer/flyers of their own.

Adapt and overcome, or be left in the dust of the past.

Except for the codexes which can't adapt and overcome to due gross imbalance and unbalanced and unfair allies matrix... Those codexes are already in the dust of the path with 2-edition old codexes.

Telling someone you beat them with 'skill' in a 'competitive game' in such a fundamentally broken gaming system like 40k is a slap in the face to a lot of people.

Perhaps I missed its mention in this thread, but isn't there an objective piece that gives skyfire? IIRC its random, but insted you could have each player place two objectives inside of their deployment zone or place an objective in the center of each table quarter that gives skyfire to whatever controls it.

Indeed, one of the random objectives is Skyfire. But only for the unit that controls it.

Thats actually a great idea.


Have one objective on each table side be a Skyfire Nexus automatically. Or say a player may choose to make an objective be a Skyfire Nexus instead rolling normally.

That would be like running a 'No psychic powers' tourneyment, or a no plasma weapon tourneyment.

Flyers aren't anymore broken than psychic powers or plasma weapons. You just need to learn how to take them into account in your game plan. You can mitigate much of their effectiveness (shooting) with smart movement.

Limiting their number by rule is also pretty dumb, IMHO. Would you also limit an army to 2 psychers or 2 plasma weapons?

If you playtest flyers a lot, and still find them overpowered for your missions... you can cut the points down or modify your missions.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Indeed, one of the random objectives is Skyfire. But only for the unit that controls it.

Thats actually a great idea.


Have one objective on each table side be a Skyfire Nexus automatically. Or say a player may choose to make an objective be a Skyfire Nexus instead rolling normally.

I though so too. Least the way I see it if you have one or two units with Skyfire it would help even things out greatly, and that would make it so if you wanted to limit flyers you could still allow 4-5. Personally I hate banning/ limiting anything that is in the book. Its one thing if its an obscurity they are taking advantage of, but its another to just have a good unit. To counteract these in our games, least tourney level, we use missions to limit their effectiveness.

 Oaka wrote:
Our last tournament was filled with local players, and we had to all witness the disaster that was the final game from two out-of-towners.

Make it a closed tournament. If your local group is unwilling to embrace the new facet flyers bring to the game in 6ed. Don't invite "out-of-towners" that have. That being said, fortifications, allies, scenario's, not to mention tactics, are all parts of 6ed that can equal the playing field when it comes to flyer based armies.

 Oaka wrote:
Yes, I run narrative based events, but just don't refer to them as such because I've found in the past that interest is low for a 'Day of fun with toy soldiers and other dudes'.

If thats the case, then why would two "out-of-towners" facing off on the last table be any form of "horror"? If the spirit of "Day of fun with toy soldiers and other dudes" is the spirit of your events. Getting to meet two new players who showed you what 6ed has to offer is a good thing, isn't it?

 Oaka wrote:
I believe that the new reserves rules (only allowing half your units to be placed in reserve) are meant to prevent a player from having a lack of targets on the board that could occur in fifth edition. But by placing all your models in flyer transports, it allows you to circumvent the spirit of the new reserves rules and remove targets from the board.

In 6ed a player will lose if they end ANY turn with ZERO models on the table. Reserve Units in Flyer transports cannot arrive until the 2nd Turn. If they want to get to the 2nd turn, they have to start with something that starts on the table. The less there is, the easier it is to Table the player on turn one.

I wouldn't favor banning any units. If you don't want "out-of-towners" rolling in to your event and walking off with whatever loot is up for grabs, ban the "out-of-towners". That way nobody gets their feelings hurt. If you're worried about flyers, 6ed allows flyers to every army in the game through allies except for Tyranids, who have FMC to deal with them. Allowing flyers and not the "out-of-towners" who play outside your local meta will encourage your players to embrace the new rules. You'll probably see a few flyers show up. Players will learn what they can do, what they need to deal with them, and things will be fine.

Having fliers doesn't instantly equate to being able to counter flyers. Also having allies doesn't instantly equate to balance as some armies completely lack battle brothers. And ADL lines are unfairly slanted to higher BS armies as well.

Some armies can counter flyers easily, others do so with great difficulty and have to sacrifice a lot of its core functionality to compensate which makes them useless against other builds.

To ignore some codexes are simply under equipped to fight the psychic/flyer spam/allies doesn't do anyone a favor. It ends up telling people "adapt or die" means buying the new top meta codex and army or line up to be meat for the meat grinder.

That's a good point, nkelsch, but points to why this tourney is imo a bad idea- it addresses Only flyers by outright banning, and doesn't address any of the other top builds.

A flyer restriction, rather than an outright ban, is a much better solution and a good compromise, I think.

At the 6E events I've attended so far, I found the majority of flyers being included were there either because they were abuseable (necron airshows, vendettas, etc) or provide some sort of defense against said abuseable flyers, not really because most people found them "cool" or whatnot.

I've yet to see the Ork or Dark Eldar flyers at any event yet, nor really any of those offered via Imperial Armor when allowed, aside from one blight drone.

That, to me at least, implies a problem.

I like the idea of flyers, however their execution in 6th edition has been very poor, and ultimately the ones you end up seeing are those that fulfill the role of battle tanks (but are much harder to destroy and have a great deal of mitigation to the HP system 6th added that makes vehicles so fragile), or those that are good at fighting other flyers, or both.

While tournaments are ultimately, tournaments and you go to bring the best stuff and fight the toughest battles, a no-flyer tournament would be interesting to attend just to see how much that changes the game without them.