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 friend of mine is running his first FoW tournament shortly, and we were discussing his plans for another, and started discussing balance.

Now in general I find FoW well balanced, but there is a definite difference (we felt anyway) between some LW books and some others.

So we wondered that instead of having a LW tournament maybe it's better to have a 'Normandy' tournament where you use only Turning Tide, Earth and Steel and appropriate PDF's, or similar - with maybe always having fortress Europe open too

Just wondered what people's opinions were

Turning Tide and Earth & Steel should complement each other quite well in terms of balance. Furthermore, I imagine most people play Late War Normandy, particularly with the release of Open Fire...

...though for this reason, armies could start to look a bit samey.

I can see this. Running things like that makes things pretty balanced, as im sure the two Normandy books that were made at about the same time are balanced for each other as complements. I can also see that for other books too, but thats another conversation.

Only thing I can say that would start to suck, is that if you don't have the army for that tournament (what ever that may be) you lose out on that gaming chance (which, for some people who can play rarely and that was there one chance for the next few months, sucks a lot). But, that won't effect a lot of people since Late-War Normandy seems to be one of the most common eras.

Well I think it would be one of those situations where if the first tournament was 'Italy', the second 'Eastern Front' etc then yes there would be some people who may not have lists - unless you were germans where most 'standard' lists (panzer grens for instance) are found in all theaters of war.

 Reaver83 wrote:
Well I think it would be one of those situations where if the first tournament was 'Italy', the second 'Eastern Front' etc then yes there would be some people who may not have lists - unless you were germans where most 'standard' lists (panzer grens for instance) are found in all theaters of war.

I guess it all kind of depends on how inclusive you wish to make the tournament. From a quick look on the tournament circuit in the UK there are a lot of LW tournaments, a few EW one, and hardly any MW ones (which, to be fair, probably reflects the numbers of players of each). There are a few tourneys which get round that with a specific theme, such as Monte Cassino, or Normandy breakout, or so on.

One way I have seen is to make the tournament open to teams of three, one playing EW, one MW, one LW.

Personally, I'd LOVE to do an open MW tournament.

I think there is a certain amount of pragmatism that's needed, many tournaments need to achieve a certain amount of critical mass to make back the expense of putting on the Tournament. A problem with regards to this is that no prudent tournament organiser is going to restrict or limit the number of armies or types that can attend from the most popular periods or lines. You need the maximum number of ticket sales, and the maximum amount of participation to generate the Buzz or the Ranking Requirements.

Imagine a 40k Tournament with a ban on Space marines? (EDIT - Actually on second thoughts this could be very popular!!!)

LW is popular so in the interest generated is greater and the risk of the tournament failing is reduced. It's just a fact of life really...