1500 Point 40K Tournament @ Epic Loot Sunday 28 Sept. 2014

1500 Point Tournament at Epic Loot on Sunday 28 September 2014 start time 12:00
$10 entry fee all money goes to prizes.
3 Rounds
1.5 hours each.
7th Edition Warhammer 40K rules
All units must be 40K legal
Proxy models are acceptable but must be of the same size as the current model and on the same sized base.
You must have 3 copies of your list.
Have digital or hard copies of all codex, supplement, etc. material for the TO and opponents.
All units must be at LEAST minimum size per the codex. (i.e. if you filed an unbound army you can’t field 1 Orc Boy and call it a unit.)

There will be some slight rules modifications to the missions using maelstrom of war to make things flow quickly and to help people get the games finished within the time limit.
Games will not go beyond 4 rounds.
No codex cards will be used and the number of mission cards will be greatly reduced. So for example there is only one "hold objective 1" per player.
The player with the most points on round 4 wins so even if you get tabled you might still win.
Secondary points are still being worked out.

Games will be four rounds? So 4 matches, or 4 turn games?

Three games
Each game will go a maximum of four turns or until you run out of time if you don't get that far.

What's the restrictions on force org? Unlimited detachments? Dataslates A+? Self Ally? Unbound is legal?

What's the restrictions on force org?
Must be legal units.  If any are Unbound then your army is.
Following all of the core rules.

Unlimited detachments?
Well there are only 1500 points so if you want to make many detachments feel free to do so, but if any are Unbound then your army is.

Dataslates A+?
It would be INCREDIBLY dickish to ban Dataslates.  All entries in the Spacwolf Codex and Grey Kights Codex are presented and defined by GW as Dataslates.  It is the term they are using for single page unit entries.  I don't have the Ork codex but I think it also does so.
To ban all new books would be wrong.

Self Ally?

No that is not legal in the core rules.  

Unbound is legal?

Yes.  Following all rules with the additional rule below.  This is because the Unbound rules would allow you to field a single Ork boy (from what I can tell) since it lets you play with whatever models you have.
Modified rul was
"All units must be at LEAST minimum size per the codex. (i.e. if you filed an unbound army you can’t field 1 Orc Boy and call it a unit.)"

Thanks for the quick reply, hoping to see a good turnout.
Also, thanks for hosting

Sure

What's up with really short games and a 4 round max? My 40k army is based on assaulting things and on turn 3-4 I'm just getting started... so I guess I'm just screwed?

Not really screwed just have to adjust your usual tactics.

To be honest here are the exact reasons.
#1: There were complaints that players did not have enough time to finish 5-7 rounds in the past events even when we went over 2 hours.

#2: I have not run a 7th edition tournament yet. So this is a bit of a test run for future tournaments. It seems like most Maelstrom Missions take a bit longer to play and the psychic phase made the game turn a bit longer. (I’ve been in a lot of tournaments in the past editions and been stuck at round 3 after 1.5 to 2 hours. I’ve even seen a game end on round 2 once at CincyCon.)

#3: Fixed game length is far fairer to the competition in Maelstrom of War missions because if you play for 1.5 hours and only get 5 rounds in but your next table has small armies and get in 7 they will score more points.

#4: In my tournament experience it is pretty rare to be unsure of who is going to win by round 4. Remember this is not Eternal War where you can just sit back and shoot till round 5 and then go rush to hold an objective.

As to playing an assault army, well I can’t think of any assault army other than Tyranids that lack assault vehicles and they all have very fast assault units. Most assault based armies I see can get in combat on round 1 (if they go second) or 2 in the majority of games. So modify your list.

Maelstrom missions take a bit longer to play because they're new but from what I can tell after 5-6 games players become experienced enough that maelstrom doesn't slow them down. The new psychic phase slows things down when an army is heavily psychic but most armies aren't like that.

I disagree though that it's safe to assume that matches are decided by round 4. Some are, sure. But many are very close and just about to arrive at a key place in the game. In my last tournament for instance two of my matches were 8-7, and 4-3 in five or six turns. It would have been pretty disappointing to have had to end those great and really fun games prematurely.

Lastly I'll say that a large concern I have for this format is that it makes drop pod lists completely overpowered. Someone running 7+ drop pods can blanket the objectives in them with the knowledge that their opponent will never be able to clear them due to the short game length, let alone the (often objective secured) units inside them. It's a win button in this format.

Drop Pod lists are now quite powerful since the Drop Pods are themselves Objective Securing Troop Units.
7 Only allows for 3-4 on round one.
If you have 12 to make sure that on round one you have every objective it will score a high number of points.

I've not seen it tested out yet. If you want to bring a drop pod heavy list to see how it does please do so. I'd like to see how it fares overall.

I strongly suspect most armies will kill the drop pods in their deployment zone but some will have trouble breaking the AV12.

40Kwill wrote:

Drop Pod lists are now quite powerful since the Drop Pods are themselves Objective Securing Troop Units.
7 Only allows for 3-4 on round one.
If you have 12 to make sure that on round one you have every objective it will score a high number of points.

I've not seen it tested out yet.  If you want to bring a drop pod heavy list to see how it does please do so.  I'd like to see how it fares overall.

I strongly suspect most armies will kill the drop pods in their deployment zone but some will have trouble breaking the AV12.

Nine pods is only 315 points, gives you nine AV 12, 3 HP hulls, and leaves you 1,535 points for all your other vehicles and units.  And 7-9 are more than enough to make sure almost all objectives are taken.  It's just way too much to clear out in four turns, especially given the facts that another objective secured unit can come out of them...  And you kind of need to shoot at the Vindicators, Centurions, and all the lascannons that are blowing up your army, not embark on the futile task of hacking into 27 hull points of pods (lol) that aren't a threat to kill anything.

Is someone supposed to rush and use their four turns to hack into the pod spam while Cents with grav guns are laying waste to their army?  

And if the Drop Pod army goes second then they successfully deny their opponent a turn of shooting pods when their force is at its largest, leaving only three turns to clear everything out.  It's virtually impossible to do with only three or four rounds to do it in.  It's a quick and easy victory for pod lists with virtually no counter in this abbreviated battle format.

You are right that it is annoying and can be done... But the question is will it be done? Just because they can does not mean they will. Maelstrom with drop pods does not guarantee victory or even an ease of victory. My suggestion is to come to the tournament and give a try in this new format. After playing see what happens and then talk with the players and the T.O. this way with an informed decision you can say it works or does not work.
I am not saying you do not have any valid points but i think it should be tried instead of coming up with a what if scenario. Those can be brought up in any format.

Overall the results of this event were telling. At 1.5 hours I think only 2 or so games were done by the time call. Several were still on round 2-3. That is quite typical from my experience.
The hard limit of 4 turns did not really hamper the event from what I saw.
The top three armies really pulled ahead and they were all very different. One was highly mobile, one was incredibly good at killing anything it wanted, and one was mobile and hard to hit without skyfire.
Concerns about drop pods were probably unfounded. An all drop pod list did not make an appearance and I think having seen the armies it would have had a hard time.
There were several all close combat armies and these did fine. One played only two rounds because of an uneven number of players and almost tied for 4th.
Turnout was great and the final scores had Nathan Gould winning with 34 points overall playing Eldar with Imperial Allies.
Greg’s unbound Necron Annihilation Force and Chris’s Eldar Corsair Army tied for second with 28 points.
The Necrons had a Tessaract Vault and nothing but Annihilation Barges and Command Barges.
The Eldar Corsairs had a Lynx.
A Necron flyer list took 3rd.
The rest of the armies did remarkably well with Chaos Daemons, Orks, Dark Eldar/Eldar, Tau, and Tyranids doing pretty well.

I'm not accusing the guy who won of willfully cheating or anything and maybe I'm reading something wrong, however I think his Knight he was using as a warlord was illegal. You can't take a Knight as a warlord unless you're running 3+ knights or you're playing unbound and have no other characters and neither of those things were the case. So he was getting warlord trait buffs and a 3++ when he shouldn't have. I might be misreading this though so I could be confused?

I had fun will thanks for organizing. Couple things for feedback regarding the structure.

- All three of my games were tight and very interesting (and fun!) on turn four when we had to stop. They all felt abbreviated and unfinished to me, especially one of them when my strategy was just about to payoff we had to quit. We actually played quickly and still had time left but couldn't keep going. I'm not looking forward to playing another four turn cap tournament but was happy to have tested it out. Also I have a Dark Eldar army and in the new Codex (according to the leaks) they get army-wide buffs the larger the match goes on. They're most powerful on turn five.

- The thing with getting warlord/LB/FB seemed sorta odd to me.

Again, thanks I had fun.

I think if I run another similar tournament I will award points for winner, tie, looser and that will allow people to just play out as many or as few rounds as they get to. Overall score will not matter. Otherwise the poor opponent of an Ork player or Chaos will just get to round 2-3.

I agree with your assessment but I think it was more that various players do not really read their codex and FAQ. So they are not willfully cheating they just don't know all the rules. Being that there are options galore even in the old codecs I don't think any one TO will know them all. In future however it would be good to ask for clarification during the game instead of waiting for after. A lone Imp. Knight can be a warlord and basically becomes a character if there are NO other characters in the army (not even a Sgt) but I'm sure that was not the case. It was more a failure to read the rules/FAQ in the codex.

Yeah thanks for hosting Will