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How do you hold a tournament?


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Exactly how many serious tournament players ( who have apparently never attended one) could there be? 

That cannot be answered by anyone here.  Which is why I suggested he post a poll in his region's facebook or whatever he is using to communicate with them to get their expectations.  

Would your local  highly competitive gamers be worried about someone using 25 mm rounds instead of 32 mm rounds?

Yes.  A person using 25mm rounds instead of 32mm rounds where the basing guidelines state 32 mm round would not be allowed to play in any event, and would likely not find games outside of events since we use outside event play as tuning events.

How about someone using an original metal Blood Thirster that is around the height of a current SCE Decimator they've got it  on the current round sized base but  with true line of sight they can hide it behind a 2.5  inch tall hill quite unlike the current thirster.  

We use the big tournament guidelines for that, which I stated in a reply above.  

Again the square vs round is an oddly specific  competitive modeling and basing concern to primarly focus on given that there are a lot of potential serious competitive concerns that can come up in a toy soldiers game that has had a lot of changes in the  pieces over the last 30 years.    In a large tournament  that dates back to the start of AoS the only real issue we've run across is wrong size round.  Our rules pack is specific for how to deal with that and squares.  

Thats your area and largely influenced likely by you and what you have established as legacy.  Here since the inception of AOS tournaments (2016) that would not fly and you would have a lot of flak over trying to allow that to happen (allowing squares).

Which is why I suggest again to the OP to post a poll asking what the expectation of his community is and to go with that.

 

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I guess we'll just have to assume there may indeed be a cadre of very serious tournament players who would rather have less folks show up at their first event ever!

 

A) 2015 we had AoS Grand Tournaments tournaments :) I know  I ran one that was roughly the first or second in the US.   There were plenty in the UK in that first year.  Just because AoS didn't have official rules for points didn't mean we couldn't and didn't figure out ways to have competitive (and fun) tournaments!

B) While some rules packs have gotten specific about rounds in the last 1-2 years  I don't know of any that has a specific comment about which era of model you should use or what to do in case of using an older model with a different height profile then currently.  I.e. here's the Adepticon AoS pack which appears silent on the issue 

https://www.adepticon.org/wpfiles/2019/2019aoschamp.pdf

While certainly in my event we've left the door open for square bases the number has dropped over the years.  I don't think we had any last year and possibly the year before.     But that's in a highly developed tournament scene  attracting highly committed players throughout the country the exact opposite of what the OP has going on.  Regionally however  outside of my events  folks don't seem to care at the small one day event level - even for stores that have no connection to my event or direct experience with the  rules set.   Particularly as there are mechanisms to deal with the competitive imbalances that other issues (like height) aren't easily addressed.     Certainly whether or not to require painting is a bigger point of concern that folks weigh in on at the local one day event level.  

The standard at serious high level competitive events across the globe is to require painting - why aren't you defaulting to that for your advice to the OP? Probably for the same reason I'm saying not to obsess over rounds vs   squares.  Not requiring painting or rounds gets more folks in the door which is the most important hurdle for a first time event. 

 

Edited by gjnoronh
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Its a balancing act.  Getting people in the door only to have the majority be put off by what they consider a non standard tournament rule will damage any future attempts you want to be involved in.

The era of the models has not yet been attempted to be reigned in.  It would be considered by most common tournament players that a 1990s era blood thirster be legit so long as it was on a 2019 blood thirster base.  It does allow for modeling for advantage.  

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I'm seeing a lot of good suggestions here. Dead Scribe's points are dead on. A couple of points I'll add for consideration:

Basing is very important. A lot of legacy models went up in size too when they moved to rounds. I'll say from personal experience there is a significant difference in the offensive capability of Plaguebearers  on 25mm squares vs 32mm rounds, especially with the buffs Nurgle can put on them.

Sloppy isn't friendly or laid back, its just sloppy. If you want people to have fun have a clear, concise, set of rules that are widely available and consistently enforced. Letting that one guy bring a bunch of bloodletters on 25mm bases and another guy go 20 points over the limit (There was seriously another thread where a guy was saying he'll go over the points limit in tournaments) or letting the lunch break run an hour over time isn't going to lead to more people having fun.

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If people run square bases, kindly ask then to put the corresponding round base size with blue tack under the square base during the tournament.

Therefore, no need to change the original base and no need for whining. This works as square bases have an equivalent size which a tiny bit smaller than rounds, usually. Not always though, such as edges being more prominent on sqaures. Sometimes it's an advantage, sometimes not. Personally, I find the impact on overall game mostly irrelevant, besides very specific cases (I use a lot with squares, so there's empirical evidence). 

Problem solved. Everyone happy.

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10 hours ago, gjnoronh said:

The standard at serious high level competitive events across the globe is to require painting - why aren't you defaulting to that for your advice to the OP? Probably for the same reason I'm saying not to obsess over rounds vs   squares.  Not requiring painting or rounds gets more folks in the door which is the most important hurdle for a first time event.  


Cannot be understated in this context I think: if it's a first time event you can save the tryharding for when people actually have experience to tryhard. Inclusive action is deadly important to take for establishing a scene.

If people are loud enough to actually make a stink about squares being a thing, then the TO can look at it for future stuff. 

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