Organising the SELWG wfb Competition – Part 4 – Army and List Restrictions

Out of all the parts of the competition pack, this section was going to be the one that would make or break it and would be the deciding factor on who would want to enter.

Last year’s pack contained quite a few hard restrictions, blocking you from taking certain choices. I kept this for some of the items (e.g. no end times/special characters/allies etc. – see first set of bullet points below). However I wanted to change the slant of the list building making it more open but penalising entrants for taking certain combinations. As with life, you are self determining but your actions can have consequences! This is where the difficulty lay, what would make up these restrictions and how would I make these decisions (whilst not favouring any army I may choose to take).

Having a multitude of previous GT and other tournament packs available to look at really helped and gave me a good understanding of what combos most tournament organisers thought to be overpowered. Most of them seemed to be similar no matter what part of the world the pack originated. Different tournaments did however choose to implement restrictions in different ways, normally via a scoring system, if you take xx unit you add so many points to your ‘score’, whilst others reduce points. This ‘score’ is then added/deducted from your total tournament score.

With our format this approach wouldn’t quite work so instead I opted for two distinct restriction sections. The first was a general section, which incorporated many of the previous tournaments restrictions but instead of the outright ban, it penalised a player if they took 3 or more choices from the section. The second section was army specific and again penalised a player if they took certain choices from their army book.

For each of the sections, if they breached the restrictions, they would be deducted 20 points (and it was cumulative so it could be 40pts in total, 20 per section and could mean you started with a negative score). Each points ‘fine’ was roughly the equivalent of winning a game so entrants could choose to ignore the restrictions but would have to be confident of their ability to get results to offset this.

Random stock photo added to break up the wall of text

I do wonder if this makes it overly complicated but it was one of the few ways I could think of to incorporate many of the restrictions fed back without banning everything.

The army building section of the comp pack, in its current iteration (v1.4 at present) is below.

Having gone through this process I have a lot of respect for individuals who do this every year for tournaments. It takes a lot of effort and is easy to make mistakes (I made a number that club members were kind enough to point out – hence I am up to v1.4 at present – though the latest version only contains rules clarifications and as such i’ve not released it yet).

Army Lists

• Each Army must be no more than 2500 points. These lists will be checked and cleared by an adjudicator and will be open to all once cleared.
• No End Times Rules or Armies.
• No Allies may be taken.
• Wizards must use the same magic lore that they started the competition with throughout the competition. However, wizards that are allowed to generate spells from multiple magic lore’s are allowed to do so. For example, Skaven wizards that are allowed to generate spells from either Plague & Ruin before each game will be allowed to.
• No Special characters are allowed.
• No Forge World rules/stat lines apart from Chaos Dwarfs.

Army lists will be as follows:

Standard army                        2500 points

The following composition restrictions apply:

Army section	Percentage	Restrictions
Lords and Heroes	Up to 50%	No Triples and a maximum total Wizard level of 5 in an army (e.g. one level 4 lord and one level 1 wizard or one level 3 and one level 2. This level cap includes items that specify they have magic levels (such as the wizarding hat) or that increase a user’s magic level but excludes items with bound spells such as the fireball ring. Note: this cap includes units with magic levels, such as Warlocks). No flying Wizards (unless the wizard/unit has an innate fly ability. If you have to buy the fly upgrade, whether it be wings or a mount etc., then it may not be taken).
Core	At least 25%
Special	Up to 50%	No Triples
Rare	Up to 25%	No Doubles*

2016 Semi-finalists and finalists only:

Lords                                       Up to 25%               No doubles

Heroes                                    Up to 25%               No doubles

The above restrictions are fixed. The next 2 sections list a number of optional restrictions. You can choose to go over them but if you do Victory Points will be deducted. This could result in starting the competition with a negative score. 

General Restrictions:

Armies meeting 3 or more of the following general restrictions will be deducted 20 VP’s from the Group stage.

Level 4 Wizard who selects Death Magic (“excluding know all signatures” abilities and rules such as Wandering Deliberations),

Level 4 Wizard who can selects Life Magic (“excluding know all signatures” abilities and rules such as Wandering Deliberations),

Crown of Command,

Banner of Discipline,

Folding Fortress.

Light Council (at least 3 wizards in the army with lore of light),

3+ units and/or characters classified as Monster

3+ units and/or Characters with 1+ armour save.

3+ units and/or characters with the Flyer special rule

Characters over 425pts in cost (after any upgrades/items)

Any Unit exceeding 450pts (after any upgrades/items)

5 Warmachines* Includes, Steam tank, chariots and models with war machine weapons such as Ironblasters, Gyrocopters, Hellcannons. (Engineers count as 1 warmachine choice. Each Dwarf Rune counts as ½ a warmachine, so 2 Runes count as 1 warmachine choice, even if the runes are split between machines).

* Certain army books allow you to take double the normal amount of warmachines in your list than is normally allowed (e.g. Elf bolt throwers, Dwarf Gyrocoptors, Goblin Spearchuckers, Pump Wagons etc). In the above restrictions, taking 2 of these count as 1 selection (so you could take 2 Elf Bolt throwers from the rare section and they would also only count as a single warmachine out of your 5 warmachine limit).

Army Specific Restrictions.

Armies meeting the following restrictions will be deducted 20 VP’s from the Group stage (this is cumulative with the above deduction so the maximum deduction could be 40pts)

Beastmen: 2 choices from; Herdstone with 3 wizards, Doombull.

Bretonnian: None

Chaos Dwarves: 4 or more choices from; K’daii Destroyer, Lvl 4 with Hasut, Magma Cannon, Iron Daemon, Death Shreiker, Hell Cannon.
Daemons of Chaos: 3 or more choices from; skullcannon, Great Unclean One, 3 or more Beasts, taking units aligned to a chaos god who hate another unit aligned to a different chaos god in the army. E.g. Tzeentch hate Nurgle. (Note, no matter how many opposing aligned units you take, it only counts as one ‘choice’. E.g. you could take 2 units of pink horrors and 2 units of bloodletters and this is only 1 of the 3 restrictions, not 2 of them).
Dark Elves: 3 or more choices from; 2 Bolt Throwers; 1 unit of Warlocks, more than 2 units of Dark Riders, 2 or more characters mounted on Dark Pegasus’, Cloak of Twilight.

Dwarves: 2 or more choices from; 20+ Irondrakes, 2 or more Gyrocoptors, Having 3+ runes of spellbreaking in any combination.

High Elves: 3 or more choices from; BOTWD, Book of Hoeth, 2 Bolt Throwers, Unmounted Frost Heart Phoenix, more than 2 units of Ellyrian Reavers.

Empire: 3 choices from; Two Great Cannons, Steam Tank, 5 or more Demi-Gryph knights.

Lizardmen: 2 or more choices from; 2 or more Scar vets or old ones on Cold ones, 3 Skink skirmishers, Slann Priest with channelling staff and Harmonic Convergence.

Ogre Kingdoms: 3 or more choices from; Iron Blasters, Hellheart, Mournfang, 2 individual sabretusks.

Orc & Goblin: 4 choices from; Mangler squig, doom diver, rock lobba, 25+ Savage Orcs big Un’s.

Skaven:  3 or more choices from; Hellpit Abomination, storm banner, 50+ Skaven slaves, Warp Lightning Cannon

Tomb Kings: None

Vampire Counts: 2 or more choices from; Terrorgheist, Red Fury on Vampire Lord, 2+ Vampire lords

Warriors of Chaos: 4 or more choices from; Daemon Prince, Hero on Disc, Hellcannon, Skullcrushers, 2+ Chimeras, Character with 3++ ward.

Wood elves: 4 or more choices from; Waywatchers, Acorn of Ages, Moonstone of Hidden ways, Each unit with Trueflight after the 2^nd, Each unit with Hagbane after the 2^nd, Each unit of Wildriders/SotT (combined) after the 2^nd, 70+ models with 30” range shooting.