Howdy everyone.
So yes, I have been delaying information about the con rules. This 100% has to do with the rapidly changing 40K landscape and nothing to do with being disorganized. And the first year we didn't even know we were having a convention until 3 months out and that came off fantastically, so even if nothing had been done, we would be very able to pull this off without breaking a sweat. And we've been working on the 40K GT plans since Saturday of last year.
So, here's the scoop on 40K Grand Tournaments:
When we started doing 40K tournaments 6 years ago, no one in the US was doing anything terribly competitive with a very competitive ruleset. Tournaments were often 3 to 5 games, and not much was done to look for Swiss or even solid evaluative methods for the whole field. Now there are many fine competitive events available, with up to 8 games played to find the winner, so competitive is pretty well represented. That said, the ruleset has made a drastic shift in the other direction - codex power is not done justice with the term creep, 6th edition and airpower mean that games are much more complex and the possibility of walking up to a table with an near-automatic win or loss is very present. TOs are playing editor with portions of rules, expansions, and dataslates being modified for play balance or what have you. I have never been a fan of partial rules sources or rewriting rules that were not obviously unclear for my own nefarious purposes (though I know others have read this otherwise).
So, how do we respond to the madness of 6th edition, dataslates, escalation, breakthrough, and gross imbalance between books?
Like this:
The 40K Limited Grand Tournament: 1500 points, all lists MUST BE submitted and approved.
Codexs ONLY - no Escalation, Breakthrough, or online-only content (current exceptions include codices only released online). On what criteria are approvals given? If I would walk up to the table and play against your army without thinking "lame netlist, I'd rather play against something else," which roughly equates to a list most people would scream and curse about. Some examples - Screamerstar, Seer Council Shennanigans, a fistful of Wave Serpents, some Flying Circuses, and very little else. Really it's hard to give an all-inclusive list, but the goal here is to have a tournament that allows casual players to play the game, not scoop up models.
The 40K Unlimited Grand Tournament: 2000 points, no list submission, all add-ons allowed except Forgeworld. Yes, you can shoot people with D weapons from your crazy fortress of doom. Yes, this is double force organization. Expect to walk up to the table having essentially won or lost the game before it starts.
Both of these tournaments run 4 games Saturday, 2 games Sunday, identical timing. Both have sign-up limits and similar prize support.
So there's the story. I apologize for the appearance of ignoring you all - I've been busy, and the landscape has changed so dramatically and rapidly that I am very glad that we held off on announcing anything specific for so long. Last year we announced very far in advance and the game shifted significantly between the time we announced and the tournament, leading to some rather ugly incidents with Forgeworld rules and new codices.
See you at Bolscon / Wargamescon / Texasgamescon / Yournameherecon in 3 months!