Thirty-four pages of rules on a tournament? Interesting. I feel that I need to give as much attention to this document as I do to the other forcebooks. In all seriousness, it is a little daunting the amount of work that goes into a tournament. For instance, the tournament demands three army lists (each with a different caster) and they specify what kind of appendix list they'll use by stating that it will be "divide and conquer." Well, let's take a look at what that means:
"Divide and Conquer – The TO will announce the expected number of rounds to be played at the beginning of the tournament. Divide the number of rounds to be played by the required number of lists for each player. The result (rounded down) is the number of times each list must be played during the tournament. Such events should also use the X-Round Event variant, so players know the number of rounds they have to use each list.
For example, if a tournament requires that each player brings two army lists and has four rounds, then each player would have to play each list twice (4 divided by 2). In this variant a player must inform the opponent if he has no choice of which warcaster or warlock he must play prior to the match." (Steam Roller 2011, pg. 29)
As you can see, I'll need the practice. Now why do I find this strange? Well, I've never been involved in a tournament that tries to balance out the odds so much. Now this is a good thing, and fits in with Privateer's ethos of creating balanced games that award the highest skill but it does feel a bit like I'm preparing for something that's way over my head.
On the other side of the coin, Games Workshop tournaments that I've been to have been very straightforward: Warhammer 40,000 tournament. 1500pts. These are the lists you can choose from. No special characters. No Forge World. Here's the scenarios we'll be playing. Go.
Now, again, don't get me wrong, I relish the chance to compete in the Master's Tournament at Lock and Load, and I think such a detailed tournament document is fully in line with Privateer Press' style. It just means that I'll have to work harder to prep for this tournament than I've ever had to before.
Friday I'll go into my initial lists for the tournament. I'll need three of 'em, and with three different casters. Here's hoping I can get all this done by June.
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4 comments:
If you're thinking of the Hardcore tournament, there is only one list required. The Masters tournament requires... 4? That cannot be reused. Which tournament are you entering?
I be entering the Masters'.
It all came down to time convenience for me. The Hardcore tournament was during all this cool stuff I wanted to do, while the Masters' was during this 5-hour time block that I didn't have anything scheduled.
Perhaps next year, provided I like the Masters' Tournament and get some regular gaming in, I'll do the Hardcore tournament.
The Lock and Load events listing says they only require 3 army lists, which is still a lot for me. I'm gonna try and get three honest lists painted, but it might just amount to the same stuff with three different warcasters.
We've had some discussions in our local group about Divide and conquer.
In my opinion, the original reason for PP to allow multiple lists was to give you some options to avoid bad matchups. In an indirect way, this encouraged unbalanced lists since you could always go to your other list the 10% of the time that the matchup was bad, and play your one dimensional list the rest of the time.
Now, with D&C it encourages you to make sure that each list you have is more capable of taking on all comers and master more than one caster. D&C is common for 'masters' type events for this reason
I've always liked the idea of multiple lists in tournaments (provided you choose your list after you know who your opponent is and not what he/she's got in it). I look forward to the challenge of designing different lists.
My previous comment was more in relation to having three different lists' worth of stuff painted in time! I know the Master's tournaments don't require painted models, but I'm one of those guys that would rather play with painted figures than not.
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