Tournament house-rule restrictions ideas (no arguing!)

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**Elric Greywolf**

So I've been hearing lots of ideas for comp and house rules, and I'm wanting to take a run at it. The objective is to have a more balanced tournament scene that doesn't favor a given build exclusively.

This thread is intended to be a collection of ideas about fair tournament comp and fair tournament house rules. I don't want to know about why you dislike someone else's idea(s)--I just want to know why you think yours is good! Please don't respond to other folks' posts unless you see an obvious rules problem with their comp, or if you really think you could improve the wording of the proposed rule.
If you think your idea is specifically aimed at reducing the viability of an OP build, let me know! For example, my #1 is targeted at Tzeentch Daemons (even though I play them).

Here's my ideas:

1. The Divination power Forewarning will be treated as a set modifier, as defined in “Multiple Modifiers” in the 40k rulebook. [This will, for example, disallow the Grimoire to stack onto Forewarning. Daemons can still get a 3++, and Tzeentch can still re-roll 1's...it just tones it down a tiny bit.]

2. Any army may take 1) a maximum of 4 Dedicated Transports or 2) a maximum of 400 points of Dedicated Transports. For example, a Space Marine player may follow #1 and take 2 Land Raiders and 2 Drop Pods that total any amount of points; alternatively, he may follow #2 and take any amount of Rhinos, Razorbacks, Drop Pods, and Land Raiders that total 400 points or less. [This will prevent more than 4 Wave Serpents from being in a single list.]

3. No D Weapons. 'nuff said.

4. No spam: any army may have no more than 2 units of the same name in an Elite, Fast Attack, or Heavy choice, and no more than 5 units of the same name in a Troop choice. This includes Allied and Formation contingents of your army. HQ is unaffected. [This will prevent RIP Tide, as they'll only be able to take two Rips max.]

5. A maximum of three Codices, Supplements, and Formations may be in your army. (What counts toward this limit: All codices and their supplements; a Lord of War choice from the Escalation Supplement; a Fortification Network from the Stronghold Assault Supplement; all formations.) For example, a Primary Detachment Space Marine may take an Inquisitorial Detachment and a Tau Firebase Support Cadre Formation; or a Primary Detachment Tau may take a Fortification Network and an Eldar Ally; or a Primary Detachment Chaos Marine may take a Black Legion Ally and a Lord of War.

Joke1: Any Warlock may split off and join another Eldar unit. Any unit that contains 2 or more Warlocks may not be joined by an IC. [This would solve SeerStar! But it's too targetted.]

**Peregrine**

Elric Greywolf wrote:
2. Any army may take 1) a maximum of 4 Dedicated Transports or 2) a maximum of 400 points of Dedicated Transports. For example, a Space Marine player may follow #1 and take 2 Land Raiders and 2 Drop Pods that total any amount of points; alternatively, he may follow #2 and take any amount of Rhinos, Razorbacks, Drop Pods, and Land Raiders that total 400 points or less. [This will prevent more than 4 Wave Serpents from being in a single list.]

4. No spam: any army may have no more than 2 units of the same name in an Elite, Fast Attack, or Heavy choice, and no more than 5 units of the same name in a Troop choice. This includes Allied and Formation contingents of your army. HQ is unaffected. [This will prevent RIP Tide, as they'll only be able to take two Rips max.]

These two utterly fail at accomplishing your desired goal. Blanket bans like this do little more than support the "comp is bad" attitude because they are questionably effective at solving the intended balance issue (if a balance issue even exists at all) while also banning a lot of lists that aren't a problem at all. For example, why shouldn't I be able to take three units of IG rough riders (a very weak unit) if I want? Why do C:SM transports need to be limited at all? Do you have any credible argument that these lists are actually so bad for the game that they need to be banned, or is this just a case of "you're not playing the game the way I want you to play it"?

**Elric Greywolf**

Peregrine wrote:
Elric Greywolf wrote:
blah blah blah!

blah blah blah >:\

Please read the red part of the OP. If you don't like my proposed crap, then start your own thread. PM me to alert me, and I'll happily join in the discussion. Otherwise, I'd like if you were respectful of what I'm trying to do: collect ideas that TOs have to try and create some sort of balance. Feel free to contribute your own ideas.

**Peregrine**

Elric Greywolf wrote:
Please read the red part of the OP. If you don't like my proposed crap, then start your own thread. PM me to alert me, and I'll happily join in the discussion. Otherwise, I'd like if you were respectful of what I'm trying to do: collect ideas that TOs have to try and create some sort of balance. Feel free to contribute your own ideas.

The whole point of a forum is to discuss things, not just post and leave. If you don't want your ideas to be discussed then don't post them.

Also, replacing someone's post with "blah blah blah" is pretty rude and violates the forum rules.

**Brothererekose**

Elric Greywolf wrote:
4. No spam: any army may have no more than 2 units of the same name in an Elite, Fast Attack, or Heavy choice, and no more than 5 units of the same name in a Troop choice. This includes Allied and Formation contingents of your army. HQ is unaffected. [This will prevent RIP Tide, as they'll only be able to take two Rips max.]

I flew this in a thread not so long ago. 2 units max for E/FA/HS is a good hobble on spam.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Peregrine wrote:
Elric Greywolf wrote:
Please read the red part of the OP. If you don't like my proposed crap, then start your own thread. PM me to alert me, and I'll happily join in the discussion. Otherwise, I'd like if you were respectful of what I'm trying to do: collect ideas that TOs have to try and create some sort of balance. Feel free to contribute your own ideas.
The whole point of a forum is to discuss things, not just post and leave. If you don't want your ideas to be discussed then don't post them.

You know, Peregrin, you're right. ElricGW can't expect other posters to respect his couple of ground rules, even though he clearly establishes them from the start.

So, you go right ahead and be negative and tear down ideas aimed at being constructive.

It's not like you *could* walk away from a discussion that is supposed to go only in an upward direction.

Peregrine wrote:
Also, replacing someone's post with "blah blah blah" is pretty rude and violates the forum rules.

Which rules violated? Also, one could argue that the original rudeness is you ignoring the "positive only" intent clearly stated at the beginning.

**Voidwraith**

I'd like it if "Ignores Cover" only meant that the enemy's cover save was reduced by 1. For example, if a unit was going to get a 4+ cover save, then he would instead get a 5+ if rolling against wounds that ignored cover.

The idea that absolutely no cover can be had against an incoming attack is kind of silly to me, and now that ANY weapon can have ignores cover because of psychic help or markerlights, it's become somewhat of a joke. If anything has killed the "fun factor" of game play, it's having to pick up models without getting to roll defensive dice for more frequently than in the past.

**Alpharius**

Every effort should be made to stay on topic in a thread.

And just as important - every effort must be made to stay polite - Rule #1.

**Brothererekose**

One of the things I casually forget is that the Warhammer Fantasy players regularly adhere to codex and unit specific bans, for tourneys. So, everything you are proposing, ElricGW, is pretty much in line with what is an already established approach to GamesWorkshop ... gaps? Insufficiencies? Holes? Lapses?

**Krellnus**

Elric Greywolf wrote:
1. The Divination power Forewarning will be treated as a set modifier, as defined in “Multiple Modifiers” in the 40k rulebook. [This will, for example, disallow the Grimoire to stack onto Forewarning. Daemons can still get a 3++, and Tzeentch can still re-roll 1's...it just tones it down a tiny bit.]

I like this one, but it does have the problem of negating the the +-1 invul results on the chart thingy they roll on since you apply forewarning after the +-1 takes effect.

2. Any army may take 1) a maximum of 4 Dedicated Transports or 2) a maximum of 400 points of Dedicated Transports. For example, a Space Marine player may follow #1 and take 2 Land Raiders and 2 Drop Pods that total any amount of points; alternatively, he may follow #2 and take any amount of Rhinos, Razorbacks, Drop Pods, and Land Raiders that total 400 points or less. [This will prevent more than 4 Wave Serpents from being in a single list.]

As has been said, too blankety without fixing much, especially the first one in regards to serpent spam, because, since they can be spammed with DA in them, they'll just put wraith in there instead, not changing much. The second one can be negated pretty easily by land raiders, since only termies can take them as DTs, every body else just buys them out of HS and deploys in it, similarly for Nobz and BWs.

4. No spam: any army may have no more than 2 units of the same name in an Elite, Fast Attack, or Heavy choice, and no more than 5 units of the same name in a Troop choice. This includes Allied and Formation contingents of your army. HQ is unaffected. [This will prevent RIP Tide, as they'll only be able to take two Rips max.]

Does nothing at all to effect the O'Vesastar builds out there.

5. A maximum of three Codices, Supplements, and Formations may be in your army. (What counts toward this limit: All codices and their supplements; a Lord of War choice from the Escalation Supplement; a Fortification Network from the Stronghold Assault Supplement; all formations.) For example, a Primary Detachment Space Marine may take an Inquisitorial Detachment and a Tau Firebase Support Cadre Formation; or a Primary Detachment Tau may take a Fortification Network and an Eldar Ally; or a Primary Detachment Chaos Marine may take a Black Legion Ally and a Lord of War.

We'll need an easier way to word that, maybe saying that these X books are allowed and you may take from them any combination (being allowed to ally obviously a given) with a maximum of 3 books per army.

Joke1: Any Warlock may split off and join another Eldar unit. Any unit that contains 2 or more Warlocks may not be joined by an IC. [This would solve SeerStar! But it's too targetted.]

No such thing as too targetted when talking about comp, if you want to get rid of certain power builds, then you need to cut them out with a scalpel, not bludgeon the neighbourhood with a hammer.

**schadenfreude**

Elric Greywolf wrote:
So I've been hearing lots of ideas for comp and house rules, and I'm wanting to take a run at it. The objective is to have a more balanced tournament scene that doesn't favor a given build exclusively.

This thread is intended to be a collection of ideas about fair tournament comp and fair tournament house rules. I don't want to know about why you dislike someone else's idea(s)--I just want to know why you think yours is good! Please don't respond to other folks' posts unless you see an obvious rules problem with their comp, or if you really think you could improve the wording of the proposed rule.
If you think your idea is specifically aimed at reducing the viability of an OP build, let me know! For example, my #1 is targeted at Tzeentch Daemons (even though I play them).

Here's my ideas:

1. The Divination power Forewarning will be treated as a set modifier, as defined in “Multiple Modifiers” in the 40k rulebook. [This will, for example, disallow the Grimoire to stack onto Forewarning. Daemons can still get a 3++, and Tzeentch can still re-roll 1's...it just tones it down a tiny bit.]

2. Any army may take 1) a maximum of 4 Dedicated Transports or 2) a maximum of 400 points of Dedicated Transports. For example, a Space Marine player may follow #1 and take 2 Land Raiders and 2 Drop Pods that total any amount of points; alternatively, he may follow #2 and take any amount of Rhinos, Razorbacks, Drop Pods, and Land Raiders that total 400 points or less. [This will prevent more than 4 Wave Serpents from being in a single list.]

3. No D Weapons. 'nuff said.

4. No spam: any army may have no more than 2 units of the same name in an Elite, Fast Attack, or Heavy choice, and no more than 5 units of the same name in a Troop choice. This includes Allied and Formation contingents of your army. HQ is unaffected. [This will prevent RIP Tide, as they'll only be able to take two Rips max.]

5. A maximum of three Codices, Supplements, and Formations may be in your army. (What counts toward this limit: All codices and their supplements; a Lord of War choice from the Escalation Supplement; a Fortification Network from the Stronghold Assault Supplement; all formations.) For example, a Primary Detachment Space Marine may take an Inquisitorial Detachment and a Tau Firebase Support Cadre Formation; or a Primary Detachment Tau may take a Fortification Network and an Eldar Ally; or a Primary Detachment Chaos Marine may take a Black Legion Ally and a Lord of War.

Joke1: Any Warlock may split off and join another Eldar unit. Any unit that contains 2 or more Warlocks may not be joined by an IC. [This would solve SeerStar! But it's too targetted.]

1 Good idea

2 People are not complaining about 5 chimeras or 2 land raiders breaking the meta. The hardest hit will be orks, dark eldar, AS, and IG.

3 Good idea.

4 Is comp by another name. Sisters and Inquisition only have 1 troop choice.

5 Nobody can agree on this so do whatever.

**DarthDiggler**

I like rule number 4. I don't see a problem with it. Even armies with only one troop choice can take 5 of them without penalty, but the benefits of limiting to only 2 Riptides or 2 daemon heralds of Tzeentch, etc... is good. The benefits outweigh the negatives.

**arinnoor**

I myself found two easy ways to stop both the Daemon and Eldar re-roll nonsense.

1) Like in warmachine a unit can only have a single blessing and ,malediction on it. This prevents a lot of shenanigans I've found and makes player choice a lot more important.

2) The Grimoire of True Names (Daemon Version) can only effect the invulnerable save from the Daemon Special Rule. Now this doesn't prevent Screamers from getting a 2+ Reroll completely. If they get the book off and roll the +1 invuln warp storm they would have it, but that shouldn't happen all that often even with Kairos.

For transports i am unsure of what to do without a method such as the one you bring up, but I hate those. I like to not change as much as possible from the rules.

As for ignoring cover I don't feel its wrong for Tau to have that given they pay for those markerlights. What I do feel wrong about them is their stupid specialist system setup. I would have these count toward the systems a suit can take normally at least. Makes it so if you want batman you'll have to skimp on some gear.

**JoeSkiLove**

Number 1 I'm ok with. Reroll able 2++ is ridiculous by any standards. I don't even feel that there is an argument that it's not broken. At least, I haven't heard a good argument.

Number two, not so much, although I'm a little biased. My 1850 and 2000 point lists generally contain between 9 and 11 Chimeras. Might sound really powerful, but Str9 ord blasts from Riptides make short work of them since they are usually bunched up. I suffer from mobility problems, so I kind of nerf myself.

No. 3: agreed

No.4: eh. As an IG player that doesn't hurt me, I just take two platoons with 2-5 infantry squads and I'm good to go.

No. 5: personally I feel escalation, and stronghold don't really belong at all. More so escalation.

I've been saying this for a long while. Comp should be included, but not to ban anything. Make it a point system like it was back in third edition I believe. I forget how it worked exactly, but basically in order to win overall at a tourney you needed to really work on this. I believe if your army had 50%+ points spent on troops you got points. If it was less than 50% you lost points. If you had any doubles in your army, maybe triple, I forget honestly, you lost points. I think you can get the gist of it. But basically, if your comp score was low then you really need to win every game and have a high paint and sportsmanship score to win a tournament.

Also, if more tournaments scored like Mechanicon, it would shift things around a bit. Instead of scoring everything just straight win loss, force people to play for objectives, instead of just playing to table someone.

**Therion**

It's funny when you google about the Seer Council, all the older posts are saying it's an absolute points sink and not worth it. All of a sudden it's so overpowered you have to make weird house rules to ban it completely. What changed? Someone allied Baron and grisly trophies with it. Personally I hope armies get some more psychic defence bubbles (like sotw) and the issue fixes itself like flyers did (sort of).

**ArbitorIan**

Elric Greywolf wrote:

5. A maximum of three Codices, Supplements, and Formations may be in your army. (What counts toward this limit: All codices and their supplements; a Lord of War choice from the Escalation Supplement; a Fortification Network from the Stronghold Assault Supplement; all formations.) For example, a Primary Detachment Space Marine may take an Inquisitorial Detachment and a Tau Firebase Support Cadre Formation; or a Primary Detachment Tau may take a Fortification Network and an Eldar Ally; or a Primary Detachment Chaos Marine may take a Black Legion Ally and a Lord of

I think this is the best idea that's been popping up recently, though I'd go further and say (like others have said) TWO publications maximum.

Codex & Supplement OR Codex & Allied Supplement OR Codex & Allied Codex OR Codex & Escalation OR Codex & Dataslate Formation

You could even expand to FW with the same rules.

**stormboy97**

Just say no to D-WEAPONS is the only real thing.

If you have ever felt the power of the Eldar Revanant you understand why.

The rest, who cares really.

Spam, why limit it at all, let someone make a one dementional army if they want to.

I have no idea why everyone is anti inqusition codex. Dose it not have its own special slot and codex rules. What is everyone scared of ?????

Multi Part Fortifications is what is going to save the game and let every army have a chance of competing.

**Peregrine**

JoeSkiLove wrote:
I've been saying this for a long while. Comp should be included, but not to ban anything. Make it a point system like it was back in third edition I believe. I forget how it worked exactly, but basically in order to win overall at a tourney you needed to really work on this. I believe if your army had 50%+ points spent on troops you got points. If it was less than 50% you lost points. If you had any doubles in your army, maybe triple, I forget honestly, you lost points. I think you can get the gist of it. But basically, if your comp score was low then you really need to win every game and have a high paint and sportsmanship score to win a tournament.

And, once again, this doesn't work because it punishes lists that aren't overpowered along with the problem lists. You are not going to have a fair game when you punish the guy who brings three squads each of rough riders and ratlings more than you punish the guy who brought a pair of Vendettas and an allied Helldrake.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

stormboy97 wrote:
I have no idea why everyone is anti inqusition codex.

Because it's an allied army that doesn't take up an allies slot, has no troops requirements, and is battle brothers with every imperial army. So now every imperial army can take 55 point divination inquisitors, which is so obviously powerful that pretty much every imperial army will take those inquisitors. Allies should be about making interesting choices, not just making all of your best guns twin-linked for dirt cheap.

**endlesswaltz123**

Draw up a hitlist of problem units that are especially potent when spammed and just ban spamming of those.

Example, max two riptides, wave serpants, land raiders etc etc.

**Shandara**

Problem with 2 wave serpents only is that they are the transports for the army. It's like saying Marines can only take 2 Rhinos...

**BladeWalker**

Just give me back the ability to go full reserve if I need to. I play elite reserve/assault based armies (Stormraven GK and DOA Blood Angels) and being forced to deploy half of my army in front of guns that can shoot my models without seeing them and/or deny them cover gives me little answer to gunlines. I think being able to go full reserve would change 6th quite a bit for the better.

**thejughead**

The problem is the Wave Serpents Shield. Instead of setting a limit on transports why not limit the shield use? Say, it can't be used as a weapon for a turn once it used as a shield to modify a penetrating hit into a glancing hit.