tournament interest

hey guys, i was wondering how many people would be interested in participating in a tournament that focuses on Zone Mortalis play. this is an expansion that builds on the Boarding Action rules originally released in the badab war books that fixes some of the flaws B.A. had, and further built up the rules to include fighting in large complexes and underground tunnel systems. if there's enough interest in this kind of a tournament, i'll try to set one up for the fall/winter this year and come up with some table designs. how many we'd need will be based on how many show interest.
to make list building simple, i'd have everyone follow the FOC for 'combatant' on page 4; 1-2 HQ, 1-3 Troop, 0-2 Elite, 0-2 Fast, 0-1 Heavy.
page 7 has some table design examples to show how the boards could be made to look. we'd probably go with 4'x4' tables due to the limitations on vehicles and the fact that making layouts that size will be cheaper.

if anyone has questions on how things are played or anything, feel free to ask in here.

EDIT: here's the rules the tournament will use:

I didn't play that much in the BADAB war games, but I did a few boarding action games and LOVED IT!

What I want to know is if my Scarabs can crawl through the vents due to their ability to ignore terrain (being beasts and all).

Planes wrote:What I want to know is if my Scarabs can crawl through the vents due to their ability to ignore terrain (being beasts and all).

as I understand it, they ignore the effects of difficult and dangerous terrain, so sadly no :p nice effort though lol

The imagery would be epic, though.

"Did you hear somethin', Sarge?"

"Somethin' russlin' in that there air duct."

"I don't like the sounds of that, Sarge."

"Poke it with your Las, maybe it will go away."

*Scarabs burst out, swarming over the squad*

if at least 10 people say they'd like to try it out, i'll invest in the supplies to make 5 tables up. because foam board isnt cheap when making that many tables, i need to know beforehand if this will be something people want to try out.

so far, my idea is to buy, or order, enough foam board to lay down like the space hulk tiles are laid out, but i'll be cutting out the hallways so they're recessed into the foam board. this way when you place your models, if you cant fit the base between the 'walls', you cant deploy the squad in that formation. i figure that method will give the easiest results in letting people deploy and treat the tables like they're in hallways/corridors/tunnels. the halls will vary from 2" to 4" in width, some areas being wider still.

I'd make a suggestion. I checked into having .jpgs printed (from the Tilemapper, you know the one) at scale. Roughly $30-70, laminated and in color. How does that compare with foamboard?

If you want to make the boards, knock yourself our, but if you have 12 people interested that enough tiles for 8' x 12'. If 24 your arms will fall off:)

well atm, i'm thinking of buying 3/16" thick foam board, which locally only sells in 20"x30" at Michael's. so 4 sheets for 1 table, that's a 5' foot long board that's 8" shy of being 4 feet wide. or if i go to walmart, they sell sheets in 22"x28". that would make a 44"x56" table. that stacked in the back of the truck, that's only...*thinks*... 3&3/4" thick of a stack of 20"x30" sections. then they just get placed beside each other and place a piece of tape on the undersides at the corners to prevent sliding about on game day. at around, oh, say $5 a board, that's $20 a table give or take. so $100 would get me 5 tables. and if it becomes popular enough that people would like this kind of tournament twice a year, then i can always buy more foam to make the 'walls' taller. i doubt that would take more than 1 or 2 20"x30" sheets of 1/2" or 5/8" thick foam per table to make the walls taller. so another $10 investment down the line per table.

and the best part is, they still store away easily until next tournament day.

i did think of that idea we had before on the laminated table sheets, since then its all predesigned and purdy. i'm gonna look around for pricing on the foam and see which is the better deal; 20 sheets of board, or 5 print outs. i think if i stick to white foam it'll be cheaper that way, cause the colored stuff is pretty pricey.

I will keep an eye out for any decent foam sheets at work.

How have 6th rules impacted the boarding missions?

I can think of a few things that'll make pretty big impacts.. Just curious if anyone has had a few boarding missions played yet?

thats a good question. i havent played any yet, and looking at it, i can see some changes to how the game will flow. some of the optional rules wont matter anymore since 6th sort of implemented them in a more watered down way (reaction fire became overwatch).

i think this optional rule might be fun, but i dunno if people would like having to make "blip counters" or not. i think a 25mm base with a number painted on it would be good enough.:

ENEMY UNKNOWN (OPTIONAL)
Each side requires a set of numbered counters (or blips) sufficient for the number of units it has in its force. Each number must correspond to a particular unit within their force, and which this is must be noted down before the game begins. (write on your army lists) It is these counters that are deployed rather than the units on the table.

As the game progresses, the ‘blip’ counters are moved in place of units until they move within LOS of an enemy unit. At this time the unit is revealed and the counter is then replaced with the corresponding unit, which is deployed in coherency with its centre where the counter was when revealed.

If on subsequent turns a unit that has revealed itself passes out of line of sight of the opposing force’s models, it is once more replaced with its corresponding numbered counter (and it’s up to the enemy to remember what it was until it becomes visible again!).

Independent characters which join units do not have a ‘blip’ counter of their own while they are with a unit, but this fact must always be noted down to avoid confusion.

I can see an issue with teh actual deployment of the squad being sketchy for assault distances.

Blip 1 gains LoS on Blip 2 at 12" apart, how far from the blips can models be depoyed? could you chain (like a 20 man unit) right up to 1" away from your enemy blip?

the way it works out, as i understand it, is the squad has to be deployed base-to-base working out from the blip counter like you would deploy a squad that deep striked. and you can't have squads more than 10 models in size (not included attached ICs) due to the confined size of the hallways. this was a change they made in Zone Mortalis after seeing problems in Boarding Action with 20-30-man units of chaos and xeno races running on the board.

but since the blips would have to be made/bought by the players, i dont think i'd use them in the first tournament unless those interested in playing want them there.

they do add a cool element of surprise since you never know if you're creeping up on 5 scouts with sniper rifles, or 10 assault terminators. we'll see what people think. i might just make it that if you and your opponent happen to have blip tokens, you can use them in your game if you wish to. if not, play as normal. that way people arent forced to make blip tokens.

Which leads me to another issue.

Blip A (1 Obliterator) rounds the corner to find blip B (10 man tactical squad)

So they group up and eat a plasma cannon shot... 5/6 of the squad is now dead?

I do however like the idea, I am just thinking about potential issues.

this is very true Adam. which i think is the goal the game designers were going for; you don't know what you're going up against until it's too late.
but i know people might not like that, so it will be an optional thing for the 2 players at that table to decide if they want to do it or not. it wont be mandatory for the tournament to play it that way.
my goal is for it to be fun and enjoyable for everyone to try, and encourage people to try out this expansion. like you said earlier, its a very fun expansion to play and you see units that are normally passed over in normal games become a lot better in this expansion. in my army for example, i would never bother with vanguard veterans; too expensive after all those weapons and the jump packs. but toss them in a hallway, where everyone's walking, then taking 5 walking guys tooled up with swords and claws and fists and plasma, etc, play a lot better.

I wonder how Warbikers would perform...

Also, is 4" wide enough for 12 buna Boyz in a Trukk?

"maybe". but the halls will vary in width along the board, so your trukk might only have a 12" strip of straight hallways he can drive forwards and backwards in. plus dedicated transports arent allowed in Zone Mortalis; isnt a trukk one of those?

to keep people from wasting points on something that cant move freely throughout the board, i might just say dont take vehicles. bikes, cavalry, artillery, walkers, skimmers are all okay though as they'd be skinny enough to fit and turn in the halls.

as for bikers, i believe they treat any difficult terrain as dangerous terrain as well, skimmers treat the entire board as difficult/dangerous terrain cause of the tight quarters, and anything turbo boosting treats the entire board as dangerous when it turbo boosts, again because of tight quarters.

Trukks are transports and vehicles. I don't believe they are allowed in ZM.

Wouldnt Bikers have to make difficult/dangerous terrain tests all the live long day?

Can I change my vote? There's lots of crazy rulez.

i'll be simplifying the rules for the tournament mark; kind of like a starter set rules to ZM. i got the rules i'll keep already made into a pdf, i just gotta upload it here for people to read.

First Post has screenshots of the rule pages i made up for the tournament. if i go ahead with this, that's what rules we'll use.

on the end is the random 2D6 chart of "bad things happen". this im willing to leave out the day of the tournament if players don't want to use it. when you play your game, if either or both players at the table dont like this chart, ignore it and just play without rolling for this chart.

i think that should be simple enough for everyone to have an easy time of it. if you guys think something could be changed or altered, let me know.

I wouldnt be opposed to it.. I just question how confusing it might be.in terms of learning 6th edition and having to the boarding rules straight.

Im really interested in seeing some regular tournies pop up.. Boarding mission might be a bit much to now.. However a few months away who knows. A lot of work to go through for a tourney though.. Building all those boards.

System Commander wrote:I wouldnt be opposed to it.. I just question how confusing it might be.in terms of learning 6th edition and having to the boarding rules straight.

Im really interested in seeing some regular tournies pop up.. Boarding mission might be a bit much to now.. However a few months away who knows. A lot of work to go through for a tourney though.. Building all those boards.

Fair enough; you do have more experience in it than I do. My first idea is to do this around the dec-feb area. So 4-6 months from now. And simplifying the rules for the first few times should make it easy on folks; just stating no vehicles, no models on bases over 60mm, and keep infantry down to 10 man units should be plenty. After that the tables make themselves unique enough on their own.

The tables could become a bit of work if I over complicate them. Originally I was gonna make my own foam board version of the FW tiles to scale; I got 1 tile done. Lol. This time I'll just lay the sheets down with the hallways trimmed out so its just the underside cardstock. The foam and topside cardstock will represent the walls.

Oh yeah.. That should be alot of time for people to get comfortable.

I personally would really like to participate in something like this. Close quarter action is an awesome part of 40k that should get more game time.

The only thing I would like to point out is that a lot of the "optional" stuff with blips and the table should either be in or out for the whole tournament. I would hate for someone to place second because they used "optional" rules to make their games more fun while the person who placed first didn't because it would give him an edge. I think you should make a choice as TO to include them, not include them (you are running the thing after all), or put it to a vote before the tournament gets under way. Some people might not like that, but they are not forced to play either. Personally I would like to play with all the optional rules because the point is to play a very different scenario of 40k. If i wanted to play 40k just a little different i would set up some house rules for regular games to satisfy that.