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.

A previous post got me thinking about a tourney I played in a few years ago that was just broken beyond belief. The TO was trying to be orginal and "mix things" up. It ended up being a train wreck with a lot of people upset about the outcome. Especially given no one was told of the scenarios before hand, and the crazy rules really hurt and armies and had no effect on others. They also had little to no logical reasoning.

Scenario one:
Battle in a vaccum.
Every model now moves like jump infantry or fast vehicles. If already jump or fast no effect.
All wounds inflicted are instant death - regardless of EW (because in a vaccum a breach of "containment = dead)
- people playing nids, necrons etc all very confused as fluff indicates they live fine in vaccums - unlike humans. This ended up really hurting speed armies, or units with multiple wounds or characters - like hive tyrants being one shotted by a bolt pistol. (Wich happened)


Scenario two:
Unstable terrain

Each table had 10 pieces of terrain numbered 1-10. Each game turn a random piece was rolled on a d10 and removed. Any models in or touching it are destroyed with no save. (Fortifications were not a part of the game yet)

This wacky craziness prevented anyone from going close to terrain, but all the objectives were in or close. Not to mention pieces close to each other made certain parts of the board a no go zone for obvious reasons. I think only 2 people lost a unit this way - but only because everyone else stayed really far away from any terrain features - completely negating cover and hurting armies relying on it. Not to mention restricting board movement wich hurt armies relying on speed or mobility.

Scenario three:
Traitors!

Your most expensive troop unit changes sides! You give your most expensive troop unit to the other guy and get his.

Talk about broken! For me it meant losing a full unit of nob bikers + pain boy - close to 400 pts in exchange for a gakky unit of termagaunts. It left my biker war boss (who made the nobs troops) all alone with no escort (wich was the literal hammer and death star in my army )
So the nids got an awsome unit to throw around while I got bugs that due to no synapse hid In terrain all game. Other examples had a guy lose a 10 man dark angel termie squad and get back a 5 man firewarrior team. Alot of people complained - but it was justified with "a good General can win regardless of surprise situations"

That was the tourney. No other games. Talk about messed up. And it had a rather large entry fee (about 50$) but the prizes were not worth it. 1st place best general got a 10$ cheapo second hand trophy and a 10$ gift card. Considering the 15+ people in the event many of us felt the TO was pocketing the cash to finance his next army.

To my knowledge the guy has not been asked to run another tourney and if he has - it hasent been advertised or mentioned at any local stores.

Has anyone else had a gak filled tournament like this?

Back in late 3rd edition my friend and I played in a tournament. There was random board assignment for every game. 3 of the 4 games he got stuck at the same board. The problem? He played Nids, and the board was a "ravine" style. A river running from one corner to the other, through a deep ravine with deployment areas on the other two corners. Absolutely no cover, everything was difficult terrain. all three times he played on that table he played against Iron Warriors with the 3.5 Chaos Codex, and he went second.

PLayed a team tourny on a Daemon World for the second scenario. Think this was 4th edition. Table was divided into quarters with team mates in opposite diagonal corners. High gravity world, all vehicles treated all terrain as difficult, skimmers were immobilized on a 1 or 2. Every unit had to roll a leadership at the beginning of every turn to represent Khorne inspiring them. Failing the leadership check caused the unit to move as far as possible and charge the nearest opponent. We were playing against two nid-zilla lists. First round, my commander and his body guard ended up charging a carnifex and my devilfish and hammerhead were both immobilized. My teammate was only slightly luckier. It was a quick game. Oh and my girlfriend at the time broke up with me in the middle of the game through a text message.

Worst was a TFG TO who decided to make his own missions and surprise everyone with them on the day of the tournament instead of taking feedback. Well, the final mission used modified kill points with a bonus for killing stuff in melee, with no cap on how many points you could score with that mission. Well, a guy with a melee-heavy army played a game against an MSU opponent and scored so many VP that he went from 0-2 to winning the whole tournament. Oops. The TO ended up having to give a special prize to the second-place guy as an apology for the scoring system.

Oh man, just about any of the 4E "Back of the book" missions, but especially the "Breakthrough" missions and "Meat Grinder".

Meat Grinder: equal point armies, identical deployment zones, one side has to completely table the other to win.

Rearguard: much the same thing as Meat Grinder except the attacker needs to keep all enemy models 12" away from any table edge by the end of the game, and the defender goes 2nd...

Blitz: Attacker has to get from one short board edge to the other, starting within 6" of one short table edge and must get within 24" of the opposing short table edge. For IG? impossible (quite literally so for most units, particularly when there were no Run moves). Eldar? Incredibly easy, turn 2 or 3 you'd have everything over there.

Breakout: Attacker must get as many units off the board as they can, if they get half or more of their units off of either short board edge or 12" from any corner along the long board edges, they win. Attacker starts in the middle of the board and gets first turn on a 2+. Mechanized Eldar auto-won this mission on turn 1.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Oh man, just about any of the 4E "Back of the book" missions, but especially the "Breakthrough" missions and "Meat Grinder".

Meat Grinder: equal point armies, identical deployment zones, one side has to completely table the other to win.

Rearguard: much the same thing as Meat Grinder except the attacker needs to keep all enemy models 12" away from any table edge by the end of the game, and the defender goes 2nd...

Blitz: Attacker has to get from one short board edge to the other, starting within 6" of one short table edge and must get within 24" of the opposing short table edge. For IG? impossible (quite literally so for most units, particularly when there were no Run moves). Eldar? Incredibly easy, turn 2 or 3 you'd have everything over there.

Breakout: Attacker must get as many units off the board as they can, if they get half or more of their units off of either short board edge or 12" from any corner along the long board edges, they win. Attacker starts in the middle of the board and gets first turn on a 2+. Mechanized Eldar auto-won this mission on turn 1.

I remember the Blitz mission. Necron had it almost as bad. It was also the mission that made my opponent rage-quit, only I was the attacker. At the end of the first turn his Tau had failed to cause any real damage to my necron. All he did was knock down two warriors and an Immortal. He totally missed with 4 Railguns when shooting at my monolith. On my turn, between veil of darkness and jetbikes, I was able to wipe out over 30% of his army, including all of his vehicles, all of his broadsides, and his commander. I was a bit confused why he was putting away models I didn't kill. He didn't say two words to me as he stormed out of the store.

I went to one just after I had moved to the area and really didn't know any of the close knit group that made up the rest of the players. TO was using some custom scenarios ripped from one of the bigger tournaments.

I made it to the table that would determine 1st and 2nd place, my foot guard vs necrons. I wasn't feeling any good about the matchup even before I saw the deployments. The attacker deployed within 6" of one of the short table edges and the defender deployed anywhere in the middle, more than 12" from the board edge.

Ended up with me crammed into the edge with all of the necrons crammed together 6" away. Including that god figure that caused morale checks. about 70% of my army had been shot to death, assaulted to death, or ran off the board edge by the end of turn 1.

Two home made scenarios, I can't remember that well. One was lava slowly moving from one side of the bored which destoyed all no flyers and no skimers. And the other one was a sand storm coming from one of the corners of the table doing str 3 flashbane hits to anything in non sealed armor and limiting vehicles movment to 3" per turn, unless they were using a grav engine.

Both scenarios in the same tournament, and had the store owners and TO sons in them playing identical eldar armies.

Its not to bad here in San Diego since we generally use the ITC packet but we've had one or two tourneys that did some custom missions. The worse one off the top of my head was a play on wack a mole. Basically there were 9 objectives (3 on each deployment zone and 3 in no-man's land) but instead of scoring them they were Av9 2 hp immobile vehicles that you had to destroy to score points (1 pt for your deployment zone, 2 for no mans, 3pts for your opponent's deployment zone). But they respawned at the start of each player turn so what you could do was just assault them (and almost guaranteed to kill it because its immobile) but because you'd still be in b2b in your opponents turn you'd get to swing again in your opponents thus scoring points in their turn as well. It would be so bad except going first basically meant getting a free 9+ points since you got to start getting points for a turn before your opponent did. Worst was that this mission got used in two tournaments.