I finally decided to try playing a GT tourney myself and set aside all of my pre-comceptions. The winner of it all was playing an army that is illegal according to normal rules. He played an Empire list with 4 Dogs of War units in it. The new Empire book does not allow Dogs of War. I finished in 36th place out of 46 people.

Here is the numbers breakdown:
14th place for game score: 2 wins by major victory, 2 draws and 1 lose by major lose.

45th place for sportsmanship even though I got one vote for best sportsmanship in the tourney.

tied for 33rd place for paint. John Winters painted most of my army. Some of you have seen my Dark Elves and can verify the quality.

3 way tie for second to last on army comp. I beat out one Dark Elf army and tied with another and a Lizardman army. there were only 2 other Dark Elf players and they scored mid-range on comp.

Overall, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot win with a competitive Dark Elf army. There were 2 Dark Elf list that got higher comp scores and placed higher than me, I did not face them, so I can't say what they had in them, so it could just be my playstyle.
I had fun and encourage people to try tourneys and see if they are a fit for them, but I don't think I will be spending $150.00 to go play in another tourney that I can't place in much less win.

Please excuse the misspellings. I was talking to my wife and trying to hurry the post at the time.

Cro, did you run the same list as you did at ACME?

no, it would have been considered OTT. I ran with 2 units of 20 corsairs, one had the sea serpent banner. A unit of 17 Warriors with shields, 3 Assassins, 2 lvl 2 sorcs and a lord on a dragon. I considered replacing one of the assassins with a death hag battle standard bearer with the banner that allows the whole unit to always strike first. I would lose the assassins killing blow and re-roll ones to wound, but the Death hag gets just as many attacks and besides the entire unit always striking first, her unit would ignore outnumbering, side and rear combat rez bonuses. I felt that was too powerful for this type of tourney and decided not to. I also decided against dropping one of the units of corsairs to add a unit of 10 crossbowmen and 16 more warriors to bring the warriors up to 34 strong. I felt it was over the top too because I would have wanted to change one of the assassins to rending stars with the venom that is one strength higher than your toughness up to 6 giving me 3 ranged attacks that always wound on 2+ unless you are toughness 6, then I would wound on 3s. That means I could throw strength 7 ranged shots against toughness 5 or better units. Way over the top in my opinion. I settled on the list I did because I thought it was competitive without being over the top.

Forgot, I did have 1 War Hydra.

I've played Jon's army before. Its a legal empire list. He just proxies some dogs of war themed entries into it to give it a DOW theme.

He had DoW units, I fought leadbelchers and pikemen. Under the latest codex, The Empire no longer has the option to bring DoW. Look it up yourself if you would like. None of the new codex's are allowing DoW.