Cool e-mail I got this morning and my response.

Hi Lachlan,

I am going to try and answer your questions to the best of my ability's. I will put my responses in bold to make it easier to follow.


I saw that you're running a 40k escalation tournament - good work! and wondered if you could spare me an opinion on escalation rules?

Other then two troop choices and a HQ I do not have any other special rules. So I just up the value of the points in this case in each round of the tournament, But Im running a league with these points jumps every 3 weeks leading up to the tournament as well.


I help run a ladder series at my local hobby shop, and I'm an experienced club tournament admin., but new to 40k, and some players are able to exploit that and spoil the experience a bit.

Not quite sure what you mean. If you are referring to them running competitive lists then I can not really help you as I will go into details on this later. But if it is in reference to them trying to exploit rules out of the main rule book or there individual codex's then I have a few suggestions.

First I recommend getting a three ring binder and downloading All the FAQ's and All the army refranence sheets from Games workshops main web page. This will go a long way in not letting people abuse your self proclaimed lack of experience.

Second thing to do is get on Dakka Dakka or bell of lost souls and find there tournament rules. Or the Adepticon rules. They normally have a print out on there sites of how they rule on the things that the FAQ's leave out. And if those ultra competitive people complain about the rules from these sites then you know they are just chowder-heads and will not have to feel bad about being firm with them on these ruling's as these are how the general tournament scene runs at the high end.

I would not stick to these rule's in casual games where the people are getting on well. I would only go to these when the players are doing things like you are mentioning or they call you over to make a call. Normally at my Club the players are pretty good about figuring these things out for themselves.

We currently require each list to be present in each later list with only upgrades between each, and this was the idea of a difficult player who wants every upgrade to be present also; I presume this is allowing him to play a spam list that's boring us all to death!

This is good I do not require the lists at the league because I do not charge to play in the league itself But I will require this at the tournament proper. Again my club and metta we have had no problems with people cheating or even being accused of cheating. But this would be the a good way to look back and check up on to make sure they did not get away with anything.

I also do not require people to play with the same list from week to week or that they have the elements from the first list in there higher point list. This is due to playing alot of Warmachine and Hordes tournament's and also because some army's have a vary vary hard time at the lower points level just getting thing's int here list to satisfy this requirement. I will specifically reference Grey knights here as they have some vary expensive points wise.

I understand that some of these lists can be un-fun to play though but I do not want to exclude anyone from playing. And from a hobby store managers perspective those lists make me a decent amount of money as razorbacks are not cheap. I think the best thing that can be done here though is just make sure that you play a non-spam list and beat them with it. I do this on a fairly regular basis. Lead by example. But keep in mind you will have to have duplicates of some units on the table.

Id say if you have more then two of anything in your list you are totting that line of spam vs just staying in the game. IE space marine tactical squads, Grey hunter squads ect. A lot of lists only have one or two good options for troop choices so you have to run them more then twice in your list if you really want to go for the win. But you can put them in your list in vastly different configurations. Like mounting one unit in a drop pod one in a rhino and two in razorbacks. This way there is no real spam and you have a few different options to play with.

An example from my list is that I am running at 2000 points two tricked out units of grey hunters in land raiders. Now I know using two of the same unit is not really spam but I took it a step further and am running one as a land raider and the other is a redeemer. Also I took great paints to dress up my squads so they look really different as well. and other then those two units I have no other repeating units in my list.

When other players see a list like this beating spam lists and you having a ton of fun playing with all the different things in your army it inspires others in your club to try it as well and you end up with less spam lists at your meta with out having to put in a rule about it to prevent such a thing. This is just How I have done it in the past.

On a side note My clubs when they go to the state tournament with these types of list overall my club dose vary well for themselves so I disagree with alot of the internet yammering about how if you are not running a spam list or a internet list you are not playing at the tournament level. I think you can do this by just knowing your list and the other army books out there. Player skill has more to do with it in my book then a list to be honest.

Can you think of a way of changing the rules so that spam lists are effectively neutralised?

Answered to the best of my ability above.

Best Regards


Lachlan

Thanks again for contacting me I hope some of my suggestions have help you and that you do not think I am a crazy loon!

If you ever have any other questions do not hesitate to contact me!




I think it is a cool testament to our club that we do not have any real problems like this and that everyone really gets along well. And I just wanted to share this with everyone because I felt we could all give ourselves a apt on the pack!