It's a Knockout

I'm considering running a bit of a knockout tournament over several Monday nights. By running it on Mondays it will be open to everyone, including those who would struggle to make it down on a weekend.

The competition would be open to everyone, and we'd do straight knockout. The first round would probably have to be two heats on two weeks, but after that we should be able to play all required games on a Monday night. Eventually the winner, undefeated throughout their games, would be crowned champion.

I would have to come up with a tiebreaker so that draws didn't halt the tournament, I'm thinking the old VPs system may be useful in this regard. And in the first round there is also the possibility that anyone eliminated from Heat 1 in a tiebreaker could get a second bite of the cherry if we need a wildcard player for an uneven number of entrants in Heat 2, however some people may consider this an unfair advantage for those drawn in heat 1 (though it is completely randomly drawn and a very narrow selection of criteria for it to occur, but I'm open to debate on this point.)

The final point to consider is whether to run a BLIND tournament, in that everyone puts their lists in beforehand and there are to be no changes from one game to the next; or to run a PREPARED tournament, where I draw the next weeks games at the end of each week so people know what army they are facing next and can prepare accordingly. There's things to be said for both systems and as long as everyone is playing by the same rulebook I'm happy to go either way.

So tell me, what are your thoughts? I'll be mentioning this down the club tonight also to see what people think...

Sounds fun.

I'd prefer the pick one list and roll with it approach. Makes life more interesting and that way theres no hassle over making sure you play a specific person, as you can just names in a hat it on the game night. This also covers no shows to!

yeah sounds great i'm in and I agree with rich just pick one army and go with that. not that I would have a choice anyway! lol

Cracking idea. i also think pick 1 list and have to run it for the whole tourney that way people will run much more balanced list. hopefully!!!

Sounds good. The one list would be my pref but I do think atm this puts some armies at huge disadvantage

I prefer the one list too, gives it more of a "dropping into a warzone, enemies numbers unkown" feel, which I much prefer!
What points or game system we looking at running?

As there seem to be more 40k-ers about right now I'd go with 40k and run it at 2000 points same as our normal games. There'd be no need to do anything other than a regular Monday night, except for as logn as you're in it you have to bring the same list, and your opponent would be decided for you.

We can always run a fantasy one in the future if this goes well.

The other benefit to this is while it'll involve everyone for a couple of weeks it will tail off as people get knocked out - meaning casual gamers will still have people to play throughout.

As for the one list bringing a disadvantage, I'm not sure who would be more punished by that. Changing lists would give an advantage to those of us who have been in the hobby longer and have a larger arsenal to select from (If I could glare at myself right now I would be doing so, I promise) I can also see how Eldar, with their aspects geared for different tasks, might be better in a well prepared environment over a take all comers environment... however most people play marines, who are good at dealing with everything. SO I'm not sure who you think will be at a disadvantage Rich... unless you're thinking of the players who can just about scrape 2000 points together so will therefore have to use what they have rather than create a well balanced list...

So far I have some interest in this, not quite at the minimum interest I need to run it yet, but I think in a couple weeks we'll have everyone signed up for it... still working out details right now anyway.

So far the consensus seems to be set list at the start of the tournament and stick to it throughout.

There has also been some interest from some of the people I have spoken to for having some sort of entry fee/prize pot. Would this entice more of us to take part, or put people off? Your feedback would be appreciated.

im in, my work commitments are back to normal now, just about!

As discussed at club and proven by our game the single list will put everyone at a disadvantage against you mainly. If anyone has a list that can beat that many fliers it has to be super tailored (or tau) meaning they would struggle against anyone else. I have nothing in either of my armies that can take down fliers without super jammy shots. Thats nothing to do with my collection or the way I play its to do with gw thinking fliers was a good dynamic to introduce without giving armies a half decent way to deal with them

well I've only got so much as you know but i'm getting something every week so my army is getting bigger every week. so i'd prefer one list throughout but I would be ok doing it the other way. don't know what other people think of having like a substitute list of something like 500 points so there is a bit of diversity depending on who your playing? bit like football tournaments where you have your starting 11 but your allowed to name subs before the tournament. I'm also up for putting some money into the pot for a prize at the end, maybe winner and runner up prize. If it's ok I can make a little trophy which would be fun.

Hell Rich I figured fixed list would HELP everyone against me, god knows I can bring a different army every week for a year with my guard. The fact that I've announced before we've even decided a date for the tournament what I'd use gives people time to come up with some ideas that might stop it and still be able to deal with other armies. I figured giving me license to tailor my list against every opponent would give me a distinctly unfair advantage over some of the players that have less of a total army to choose their 2000 points from...

Im all up for the single iist all im saying is that with the exception of tau or another flyer heavy army noone can really deal with your army and even then you have probably the best ground based anti air in hudras. The chaos book which was the 1st 6th ed book has flak missles and only on havocs. Thats a 10pt missile per model on top of the 10pt missile launcher, the squad comes in at about 200pts, they are S7, not twin linked and dont ignore your jink save. They dont have interceptor either so they'll just get mown down before they fire Fliers are too powerful against most armies. I dont blame you for using them, they look cool and your army is arguablely a perfect build its got a bit of everything and those bits are very good at what they do. In a knockout tourney with single lists its a winner, at least in a proper tourney you would eventually meet your match meaning the people you beat still have a shot if they do well in the rest of their games. Also this isnt an attack on you or your army as such its just my feelings as to why fliers are ruining 40k atm. At the very least they should have made fliers arm 11 max while zooming to represent the added effect of hitting anti air at speed or usuing your bigger more vunerable air intakes to at least make S7 better at taking them out or allowing heavy weapons to use sky fire if they dont shoot next turn to represent the added effort in aiming or firing off multiple shots to get a hit.

Why not just put couple of limit on lists, something like :

Max 1/2 flyers
No special characters

That way everyone has the same advantage/disadvantage and also removes the powerhouse units which a lot of people struggle with.

Not sure how normal tournements play, but I'd imagine there are restrictions in most? This also gives new players a good chance to progress.

I'm loathe to include limitations, as they are very subjective. Most tournaments don't include limitations for that very reason. Remember when legion wanted to do that inter club tournament, but their house-rule restrictions completely gimped Richs Salamanders, while leaving their own Tomb King Queen Khalifa horde list unopposed.

I mean, we could start by saying only 1-2 flyers... but that means one army gets 2 stormravens (the best flyer in my opinion, but also the most expensive, though for good reason) while another gets 2 dakkajets? One of the advantages of the cheaper flyers is that they can swarm the better, more expensive flyers. Without that ability to do that, the more expensive your flyer is, the better it becomes, beyond the normal balance of it's points cost.

Still on the 1-2 flyers... is that 2 flyer hulls? 2 flyer Force Org slots? My flyers only take 3 FOC slots, as two pairs are grouped together as wingmen. The evil flying circus necron list that's doing the rounds may have a few heavy support as flyers, but given the night scythe is better and is a dedicated transport it doesn't need ANY force org slots to bring it's flyers. So assuming you definitely mean two flyer hulls... why the hell would you ever squadron them? So really all you are doing is taking away a rule of their codex.

You've also got the fact that any unexpected spamming of units can catch anyone off guard. If I were to turn up with 9 Leman Russ people would probably struggle with it, hell at 2000 points dual force org I could squeaze in about 11 in 6 different HS slots and blast most armies off the table. You say you don't have enough weapons in a typical army to deal with a lot of flyers, but how many armies have much to deal with lot's of armour 14? My own army has quite a strong showing with 5 units capable of taking that on, but two of those are very short range melta units - great against a land raider, not much good against something that's going to sit on it's back line and decimate me. I would seriously struggle against an army like that - my flyers may show up, but only the vendettas can do anything. The rest would be swooping around going "Right, what the f*@k do we do then?"

What about other restrictions? I don't like terminators. I only have 13 weapons in my entire army that will ignore their armour save, split between 4 squads (and one of those is the shoot once then die Marbo) Should we place a restriction on how many units of those you can bring? Most people would say no, but if I said Grey Knight terminators or Paladins suddenly people would be more keen to bring in a restriction.

I definitely wouldn't want to ban special characters, as a lot of the new codexes require special characters to unlock the army builds. My speed freaks ork bikers list would not work without Wazzdakka, as he moves the bikes to troops, freeing up my FA slots for other quick units.

Rich your theory of a regular tournament (as opposed to knockout) being more likely to throw up an army that could stop a particularly strong flyer army is flawed. The number of games we play will be the same, in a proper tournament other people still fight for second, third, not last, etc. But it's still the stronger armies that end up playing off against each other. The one trick pony army designed just to kill the flyer army would probably struggle against a regular army and therefore be nowhere near the top tables towards the end of the day. You'd just have to hope the spoiler army drew that army in the first round, but the odds of that are slim. The only way for them to "eventually meet" as you put it would be in the old "everyone plays everyone else" tourneys we used to do... but they don't work if you have more than 6 entrants, and even that takes all weekend. If it's something that interests you we could do a league, with fixed lists, where everyone plays everyone, but i'll save that for another time another topic...

I agree that adding flyers to the game was the biggest change of sixth edition, I don't think it is flyers themselves that are broken - it's just that people still haven't figured out how best to deal with them. It's like any new codex there is some settling in time, people need time and more importantly experience to deal with these. You're struggling with my flyers cos i'm the only one that has them. If you faced them week after week you'd figure out some things to do about them. With smart maneuvering you can make sure flyers only have targets on turns they arrive from reserve... which means they have to fly off every other turn, making each flyers effectively double in points cost (it only has half the game time as other units to make the same impact) Kill what's on the table, and those flyers will be zooming into corners rather than fly off and concede the game.

I think we should just keep it simple, people just make a 2000 point army with what they've got and the person with the best army ( and luck!) wins. end of the day if it's in your codex then you can use it otherwise whats the point of having a codex telling us what we are allowed. space wolves don't have fliers and don't deep strike which puts them at a disadvantage in those respects but they have strengths in other areas, it's just a case of learning to play with your army (which i'm struggling with but i'll get there!). we've all been building our armies to what we think is a good army to play with which is balanced and you'll always come up to an army that's better than yours, you've just got to learn to adapt your tactics to deal with your superior opponent. If someone gets hammered then they will just have to learn from it and they'll hopefully be more prepared next time, that's what the games all about. there's only going to be one winner and the rest will lose, if you don't think your army is good enough or your not up for the challenge then don't play, it's just a fun and friendly game.  

I still dont agree its a case of noone knows how best to deal with them its purely a case of GW didnt give armies enough ways to deal with them. The only anti air in chaos daemons is a soulgrinders harvester cannon, hes bs 3 and its only S7. In chaos marines its missile launcher havocs with an expensive upgrade and if your lucky a heldrake can swipe one assuming he came in 2nd and wasnt shot down. It just wasnt well thought out introducing such a game changing dynamic. Its typical GW mentality atm, if you want to deal with the new stuff you have to buy some new stuff.

you even said yourself that stormravens are the daddys atm. In a normal tourney set up you could come up against one or two or even stormtalons which are good anti air if a bit more squishy. Plus if your oppo dug in and held on for a draw and that happened in a couple of games then would even out the points across the board.

Anyways we shall do it the way you want as its still the most suitable for what we can manage atm but im not looking forward to playing you esp as youve beaten me twice in a row and thats not happened for a long time

Valid points.

With the choices open to people, you could field a tank heavy list or a flyer list. The assumption is you use one or the other, but if you didn't play a set game list, you could just change anyway and you'd be in the same situation of not being able to handle your opponents list.

Also, there's nothing stopping someone taking a ton of fliers as allies.

Personally I don't care what list I face as its luck of the draw. Some lists I'm likely to walk through, others get owned.

I still vote for the take one list the whole tournement as its gona make it more challenging.

Rich those two victories in a row you talk about hardly illustrate your point... the first was with my no vehicles Star Wars Guard army. You can't say I have too many flyers in THAT list  

Besides, I just checked my running tally... you tend to kick my arse in fantasy, I had to go back to July 2011 to find the last time you beat me in a one on one game of 40k... Your only recent 40k victories against me have been down to Abaddon clinging on for the win in a team game... twice!

All this could be a moot point, as sods law I'll draw Ben and his Tau in round 1 and go straight out...

I am of course happy, if time allows, to swap sides and play an immediate match against whoever I beat with this army to see if just using different tactics it can be defeated. I am sure that the success of flyers is just down to being overfaced by them. At least in a list like mine anyway. Against a full cron air list you may have more of a point, but even then while it'd be a difficult match I believe there must be ways around it.

So, consensus seems to be settled on set lists, and I won't run a tournament with restrictions (due to the subjective nature of the person applying the restrictions, if anyone else wishes to run a tournament and apply restrictions, I am happy to either participate or sit out as your restrictions appeal to me or not... just let me run this one first, don't want to cause fixture congestion  )

That just leaves the question of do we want to do a prize for this? With entry fee? Or just do it for the pride?

I say prize money but I've also sorted out stuff to make a cool little trophy (nothing expensive) for the winner least then if other people don't want to put money in, the winner gets something and I think if it's a success then we should give the tournament a name and maybe do it once a year and same with other tournaments cause I think it will be fun to be able to say for example " my army is the winner of the dark vengeance tournament 2013 or my army has won the dark vengeance tournament 2 years running". I think it would be a bit of continuity and something to look forward to and aim for. we could do the same for fantasy and do a couple of other types of competitions throughout the year rather than just having loads of friendly games (which are fun and has helped me personally a lot). what does everyone think? I don't mind organising or help organise as i'm only new to it and i'm happy to sort out little trophies etc for the competitions so won't cost anyone anything.  

Pgiverize or trophy would be good. Ive still got mine from the Dan days, 1st place for first tourney we did and Qst runner up for the fantasy one. Prize money would come out of club funds but would have to be a reasonable amount not the silly amounts Dan used to give out.

Oh and the defeats vs u in 40k were largely due to me using my chaos a lot and them not bein very good unless you ran nurgles. I lost count of how many times your orks first turn killed my daemon prince, dont think that would happen now in cc but they'd probly just shoot him now as your orks hit more than your bloody necrons

ok i'll make a trophy and see what you and everyone thinks and if nothing else it will be fun to make. yeah I agree don't think the prize should be too big maybe if everyone who plays puts £2 in and the money gets shared between the winner and runner-up, 3/4 to the winner and 1/4 to the runner up then that way 2 people get something plus if you keep the prize low then it will keep the games friendly rather than people getting a bit funny cause there's money involved.

How would prize money work?

Something like (based on say 10 players being involved and the prize being based on the entry fees):

Winner = £10
Second = £5
Third = £2 (or w/e the entry fee was back?)

Or are you talking bigger amounts? Just wondering as it could end up costing the club a lot.

I say keep the prize money low, play for honour and keep it friendly. After all every battle tells a story and should be enjoyable without the need to feel a win all the time. I'm new to the club and have lost many a game so far but if I'm up against that mighty guard army then so be it as there are winners, and there are losers and then there are people who have not yet learned how to win. I'm in for a fixed list with no restrictions and to learn my army's week points.