Recap of Running a 40k League and Tournament, and Plans for the Future

For most of this past year, from early March until its conclusion on the 1st of December, I have been running a 40k ladder campaign at The Outpost in Sheffield.

The rules for this ladder campaign were taken from pages 117-118 of Chapter Approved 2017.

The system is very simple. Players get added to the ladder as they play their first games. A win causes the winning player to swap places with their opponent if they are below them in the ladder, or to move up one space if they are above them. A draw leaves players where they are. That's it!

The ladder would function perfectly well as just a list of names, but I decided that to give it a bit more of a proper league feel I'd include win, loss, and draw records for the players, as well as statistics for current and best winning streaks.

This is how the ladder looked at close of play at the end of November:

Overall I think it went pretty well. I was pleased with the inclusion of win, loss and draw, as well as the recording of winning streaks. Without these I think the ladder would come across as a little flavourless.

Interest did tail off quite a bit towards the end. That's probably down to a number of factors.

Firstly, familiarity. With anything like this you're bound to see an upsurge of participation at the start. Then, as people become familiar (bored, even) with it participation will tend to wane.

Secondly, an aversion amongst some players towards competitive play in general. A lot of people, myself included, have limited time to get games in and not everyone - again, myself included - wants to make the games that they do manage to be one-sided boredom fests (on either side of the table).

Lastly, there may have been some dissatisfaction with the system in general.

I'll go into how I intend to improve the league for next year shortly. But first I'll do a brief recap of the tournament that was (loosely) linked to the league.

From the start I thought it would be a cool idea to have a tournament at the the end of the year to bring the league to a close, much like an Apocalypse game is a good end to a campaign.

My idea was that league performance should reflect the sort of match-up that you would get for your first game - so the player who finished first in the league would play the player who finished bottom of the league, second would play second bottom, and so on. I felt that this seeding system would provide players with a good incentive to improve their rank throughout the year, as the opportunity to avoid a tough first round match-up would improve their chances at winning the tournament.

I myself wasn't going to take part in the tournament unless there were an odd number of players. This would avoid anyone having to take a bye. As it was, there were eleven players total, so I made myself number twelve.

As I was going to have to do the tournament admin, as well as deal with player queries/fist fights, I decided that if I did have to play I would have to bring a list that was very quick. This was not a time for three thousand Boyz.

This was my list:

Dark Angels Batallion

Sammael in Sableclaw

Talonmaster with Heavenfall Blade

Five man Scout Squad with boltguns (x3)

Six man Devastator Squad with heavy bolter, missile launcher and Cherub.

Imperial Knights Super Heavy Detachment (Terryn)

Knight Gallant (Warlord: Ion Bulwark and Ravager)

Knight Gallant (Landstrider and The Paragon Gauntlet)

Knight Gallant

1749 points

That's it! It was basically there to run at the enemy and kill or be killed.

I could see all of my games going quickly with this list. My aim was to get my turns done in ten minutes, tops. Then, even if my opponent was taking his time, I'd get done well before the end of the round time and I could go round collecting scores and preparing for the following round.

My first round saw me play Mark and his nasty looking Alaitoc army. Mark is a very good player and likes to use strong lists - a nasty combination! From memory, Mark's army consisted of a Farseer, a Warlock, three squads of Dire Avengers, a ten man squad of Dark Reapers, three Wave Serpents, two Hemlock Wraithfighters and a Crimson Hunter. Apologies to Mark if I've missed anything!

Game 1 deployment.

At the start of this game I gave myself a pretty decent chance of getting something out of it. I felt that the Gallants could have a good go at taking out the main ground (or hover) forces. And if Sammael and his mate could remove a flyer in melee the whole thing would become a lot more manageable.

How foolish I was.

In the event I conceded by Turn 2. Mark had first turn but didn't get a particularly explosive start. In fact, I think the sum total may have been a dead scout squad and a Gallant down to six wounds.

But if Mark's turn was bad, mine was absolutely atrocious. In fact, Mark killed more points worth of stuff on my opening turn than he had on his own, as his Hemlock managed to take out both Sammael and the Talonmaster in overwatch. Elsewhere, the Gallants largely whiffed, failing charges and doing little in combat. After a much better following turn from Mark, I extended the hand.

In truth, it's not certain I would have come out with anything in this game even if I had had a better first turn. As Mark rightly pointed out, I had no real way of getting to his Dark Reapers, and, combined with the Crimson Hunter and psychic pieces, they were sure to remove my Knights and everything else over the following few turns anyway. Oh Eldar, how I love you.

Here are some pictures from some of the other tables in Round 1:

Yes, this table is ridiculous and I should have set up another one. I love me a bit of 40k medieval world though.

Typical Ynnari table, featuring only Ynnari.

Because Knights struggle for line of sight.

My second game saw me go up against David and his Dark Angels. Now as a primarily Dark Angels player myself I didn't want to see them lose. Then again, I felt that if I did beat them I could then validate my own constant losses and complaints about how overpriced/underpowered my beloved boys in green are. Confusing!

Some warp-buggery was afoot in this game as Sammael and a Talonmaster made an appearance on both sides. The rest of David's army consisted of three Scout Squads, three Black Knights, two Devastator Squads with lascannons, a Darkshroud and three Dark Talons. Apologies if I've missed anything, David!

This is a pic after deployment:

In this game I gambled on being able to kill all of David's army besides the Dark Talons, and thus take it on the flyer rule (the name escapes me) which says that flyers don't count as models on the table for the purposes of Sudden Death.

In the end, I just managed it. By end of game I had two Gallants left, while David had his three Dark Talons.

I think that this was a lot closer than that appears and that David made out, however. If Sammael - who the Gallants needed to kill to win the game - had made every 4++ but one against the Knights, he would have survived to provide some buffs in shooting for the Talons against the two Knights, and then he could have charged into the one which survived. They were not on a great deal of wounds, so I think killing both was manageable.

As it happened, I just (!) took the 20-0.

Here are some other pics from around the tables:

Ork movement phase, the easy way.

Ynnari vs Alaitoc. The smell of five-year-aged Gouda coming from this table was absolutely unbearable. But neither Mark nor Mikey ventured an apology.

In my last game I took on my old sparring partner Rich and an army that was about as imaginative as mine. Rich had three House Raven Knights - a Castellan, a Warden and a Gallant - and a detachment of one of each of the assassins.

With six Knights on the table, this would be a true game of dumbass 40k. He shoot. I run. I chop. He shoot. I run. I chop. etc….

That was about the long and short of it. Rich was atrociously unlucky and I probably made it worse by being concerned (is there anything worse than when you're losing at 40k and your opponent's being nice to you?).

That being said, Rich had no business taking a Raven Castellan without being able to properly abuse the Order of Companions stratagem.

With the assassins doing precisely zilch in contributing to the CP pool, the Castellan got one, perhaps two turns of rerolling ones for everything. And the Castellan showed itself to be pretty average when the CP dried up.

Even with the Castellan firing at full effect, Rich just couldn't kill a Gallant. It is probably this that won me the game. Even with one wound remaining a Gallant is hitting on fours and is thus still a very tough customer. Quicker than you'd think, these wounded but tough Knights made it into his lines and through his stuff.

The highlight (for me) was when my Landstrider Gallant made it into combat with his Gallant from 28” away and chopped it to pieces. With help from the Terryn trait and Warlord trait, he advanced 20”. I then used the Full Tilt stratagem to charge after advancing, and, again with help from the two traits, easily made the effective 6” charge. This is a good thing to keep on mind when facing Landstrider Knights (especially Terryn) - 35” is the mathematically safe distance to set up your good stuff away from them. They are very capable of reaching anything inside this!

So that was that. Firstly, I have to say how fantastic it is to play in a tournament without my having any real stake in it. Not worrying about my record or every little decision, but simply getting my games finished and making sure they were as enjoyable as possible was very relaxing and probably positively affected my tournament standing. Of course, perhaps that's complete rubbish and taking three Knights was the biggest factor. Regardless, I'll definitely try to carry my relaxed frame of mind here into my next tournament.

These were the final standings:

Aside from awkwardly having to hand myself a prize for third place, I feel that the event went very well. Every game reached a satisfactory number of turns and there were no player issues (or, at least, none that I was made aware of). I made sure to print out scoresheets with brief descriptions of the missions and deployments on them, so maybe this sped things along a bit. Or maybe most players are up to speed well enough with the edition to make games quick when they need to be.

For next year, I'd love to run the league tournament again. A two dayer would be the dream, but we'll see where we are. There is space at the Outpost for up to thirty players so filling it would be fantastic.

As for the league, I'll be looking to change a few things for next year.

As well as it worked, I think that there were a few issues with the ladder.

Firstly, it was quite static. This was partly down to the way we amended it. A few months in, we changed the mechanic from the winning player swapping places with the losing player to the winning player taking the losing player's place, and the losing player moving down a place. This would also move every player below that player down a place. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of making players in the top positions much safer in those positions, as they would no longer swap with someone who had defeated them, no matter how far down they were, and there was less likelihood of players above them losing and bumping them down.

I think that the second main problem was with competitive play in general. I believe that this is the main reason that participation tailed off towards the end. In a tournament, players, quite rightly, bring as competitive a list as they can. The same applies to a league. The difference between the two, however, is that in a tournament you always have more games to play. Yes, you may suffer a heavy defeat (such as mine to Mark), but you're safe in the knowledge that you'll find your level and get some more games in. A league game, however, may represent the only game a player can get in in a week, two weeks, maybe a month, and if they're completely one-sided, that's not the best or most fun use of your recreation time.

It'll probably be difficult to get rid of this latter aspect completely - 8th is pretty brutal and competitive units and builds are not going to go away. But if I do a league again I'll look for ways to keep players interested no matter what level they're at.

I think, first, that moving to a points system will be pretty essential. This will probably be the classic football system of three points for a win, one for a draw, and nothing for a loss.

In addition, players will score extra points depending on how well they have done in their games, say, a bonus league point for every five mission points scored. To prevent any cricket scores, this will be capped at two achievable bonus points. Crucially, players will be able to gain these points even if they've been tabled. I believe that this may keep players interested even when things aren't going their way.

Anyway, I look forward to implementing these changes and seeing how people respond. I'll make sure to let you all know.

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