The Running Gagg 2014

I've been busy these past couple of weeks helping to put together an event that will be held this weekend at the Running Gagg. What is the Running Gagg you ask? The Running Gagg is a gaming club in SUNY Geneseo and every year they hold a gaming convention at the college. In the past years the host of the 40k tournament has run a 1850 point, three round tournament. While this format was fun for getting out and playing, it is pretty much typical of any event/tournament held at any game store across the country. So Paul (aka Golden Eagle) and myself decided to approach the TO and asked if he would be willing to allow us to run a different type of format and he graciously agreed to give it a try.



Before I get into details about the event, let me give you a brief rundown on how all of this came to fruition. Paul is a long time member of the Da Boyz and over the past 5 years or so I have gotten to become pretty good friends with him. Paul is a long time player of Warhammer 40k and over the past few years he has grown fond of games ran on a larger scale and set to a story or theme. Last year you may remember we posted a 8k point battle report about my forces of chaos facing his Grey Knights forces. We built up a cool story and wrote an extensive battle report of the game. (Shame on you if you forgot about the Incident on Nadine Prime.) You can read the exploits of the battle here. A month or so later we got together with blog authors Hyv3Mynd and Crimanth for a 2 vs 2 game and over the summer we played another 2 vs 2 game at Paul's place.

Picture of our 8k point game

You can see a trend here... Paul likes big games. So when we got together and started throwing around ideas for the tournament, Paul suggested a large Bring and Battle format in place of the standard 1850 point tournament. Depending on the number of participants, we plan on setting up a couple of 10 foot by 4 foot tables and forming teams of 2-3 players per side at 2500 points per player. So the average game should have about 15 thousand points on the table. If we have more numbers then we will plan on 4 vs 4 format for 10k per side.

The biggest challenge was what to allow or not allow in regards to rules. The internet of late has been ablaze with different ways to handle new releases from GW on how tournaments and events should be run. Should Forgeworld be included or excluded? Should books like Stronghold and Escalation be allowed? How should events handle d-weapons and other such rules. Paul's response was pretty simple, let players bring and play what they want. So here is what we came up with for the event format.

When:
Saturday, February 1st at Running GAGG game convention held at SUNY Geneseo.

Time:
Registration starts at 9:00am
Event Starts at 10:00am and runs until 5:30 P.M.

Cost:
$10 Event Fee (This covers the Running GAGG entry fee and the 40k event fee)

Format

• The format for this event is not the typical 1 vs. 1 tournament. Instead, the format will involve 2-4 players on a team facing off against 2-4 other players on larger than normal tables covered with cool terrain. The number of players in attendance will determine the number of teams and the size of the tables which will be set up.
• The goal is a day filled with fun, blowing stuff up, and laughing about it with your friends!
• Teams will be determined based on the armies brought to make this a narrative driven event.
• Teams will be given 30 minutes to discuss and determine their table placement. Deployment will commence at 10:30am and game play to start around 11:00am
• Although we will play a scenario from the Escalation book, rounds will not be timed. We want to make this a day-long event where players and teams will fight for bragging rights and prizes.

Bring a 2500 point 40k army list

• Double Force Org is allowed
• Allies are allowed
• All new Supplements, Codices, and data slates are allowed
• Forgeworld units are allowed (just no 30k troop formations or Primarchs. This means tanks, dreadnoughts, vehicles, etc... are allowed)
• Units and rules from the Stronghold and Escalation books will be allowed as will units on the Forge World Lords of War choices for Warhammer 40,000 Escalation list (www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/L/lordsofwar.pdf.)
• All such units will be 0-1 choices (i.e. your army may include 1 Lord of War choice and/or 1 Stronghold choice regardless of whether or not you used a double force org).

Rules Restrictions and FAQs (note, if warranted, these may be updated prior to the event)

• D-weapons will be treated as Strength 10, Ap 1, ignores cover.
• Weapons using Hellstorm templates in their profiles will be treated as twin-linked torrent weapons using normal flame templates instead.
• All weapons using the 10” Apocalypse blast templates in their profiles will use the 7” templates instead. All weapons that use the 7" templates in their profiles will use the 5" templates instead.
• Chaos Daemons Warp Storm: Any warp storm results that would normally affect all enemy units on the table instead will only affect 1 enemy faction, chosen by the Daemon player.
• Armies on the same team are considered Battle Brothers for this event.

As you can see, pretty much everything is allowed and with a few tweaks to d-weapons and some other rules but most of the rules are pretty much as written. So far there has been a favorable reaction from the locals and we are anticipating somewhere around 15+ players.

Shot of an Apocalypse game I played in this summer.

One other thing that we did not want to take away from the event was prize support, but how do you give out prizes in a team format? What we came up with is pretty cool idea. At the end of the day, each table will vote on the MVP of the table. This can be for the player who killed the most models, held the most objectives, or just made the day fun for everyone involved. This does not have to be someone from your team. We are also going to be awarding a prize for the best painted army brought to the event. As with the MVP award, this will be decided by the players, not by a judge as went want everyome to be involved in this day of toy soldier genocide.But to make the day fun for everyone we are also going to be awarding random prizes throughout the day. While teams are being formed, Paul and I are going to secretly note specific units/terrain/objects, etc... that when destroyed, captured, or held by a player than that player will be able to pick from a prize pool of neat hobby related materials such as paints, dice cubes, models, templates, and other cool items. This way everyone who plays has a chance to walk away with prizes.

So if you live in the Western NY region and don't have any plans this coming Saturday, join us for a fun day of blowing up stuff and having fun. Full rules and details about the event can be found at our forums at:
http://thegrandstrategery.proboards.com/thread/244/running-gagg-2014?page=1

Look for pictures and a recap of the event in next week's post!