FluffyCon 2011 - Restrictions?

By their very nature gamers are devious little animals, many of whom will seek any potential advantage they can over their opponents by pushing the absolute boundaries of acceptability when it comes to building a tournament list. It's an almost recognised art form - how hard to push without getting an equivalent veto. I don't much like this attitude but it's an ingrained part of tournament gaming and looks like something we have to live with. I think my problem with it is that it reflects the general distrust of humanity - that if I don't tool up I won't be competitive with all the raving cheese-mongers and I can't trust the TO to provide a platform of well-intentioned moderation to ensure all lists will be on an even playing field.

So that got me thinking about FluffyCon and the tournament system I'll need to implement to attempt even a modicum of appropriateness from the lists that will be submitted.

In the past Nick has presented a pack with a long list of hard caps - 'x' amounts of shooting, magic, movement types, unit types, magic items etc - that basically put a dampener on the worst excesses of your average tournament player. So for example, everyone knows there is no chances of them seeing a Dragon or Greater Daemon at FluffyCon. Ergo the Empire players feel less inclined to field 2 Great Cannons (which there is probably a hard cap on anyway). In essence I feel that this worked very well - everyone was clear on what they wouldn't see. On the flip side it meant that you could also build right to the edge of acceptability and quite naturally this is where some players went straight away.

It was also difficult to see where the inspiration was for trying something really out of the box - taking items from your army book that were never used in tournament games, units that were extremely sub-optimal etc and trying to make them work on the pitch.


My thoughts at the moment are a REALLY strong opening statement about the unique nature of the event. Most tournaments preface their players packs with a blurb about having a good time and playing nicely with an appropriate list - I'm looking at spelling out what I expect more finely. The wording isn't exact yet but I'm thinking:

" Welcome to FluffyCon! This tournament is unique on the tournament calendar and should be recognised for promoting the use of armies and list builds that are much much softer than the standard tournamant list. Of all the events you could attend this year - this is the one to be trying something really different. Get far away from the net-listed omptimisation of your units and characters, forget the the equipment and items you always see from the army/race in question - take things we NEVER see in a tournament army! Units that are supposedly terrible in this edition of Warhammer. Magic items you normally ignore when looking for the most competitive selections. Get into the spirit of the tournament itself - celebrating our wonderful game with strategic thinking and tactical brilliance with clever play instead of relying upon scary toys/monsters/magic/shooting. It's time to get soft. It's time to tone it down. It's time to get fluffy!"


Or words to that effect.

Next up would be a list of red flags or "what's hot" both generically and for each army race. Basically the same old boring predictable things you always see in tournaments. Level 4s with "those" Lores of Magic, template death, monsters like the Hydra, Abomination, and Ancient Stegadons. The usually toys and kit that everyone always takes. The reason why you aren't the least bit surprised to be facing a Lizardman army across the table in a virtual mirror-match :)

For each race I'll be asking players who specialise and are well-known for their use of those races in tournaments to share the best their lists can offer. This might be something like (but not necessarily limited to):

Skaven - Doomrocket, Abomination, Grey Seer, Brass Orb, Furnace, double Gutter Runners, lots of templates et al.

Lizards - Slaan, Rumination/bulk powers, Salamanders, double Saurus with spears, a BSB!

Vampires - big magic, Helm, not just Ghouls in Core, Barrows Grave Guard, Coach.


And other stuff besides. Obviously the idea here is to encourage players into getting stuck into the rarely seen units and options, try something different, maybe surprise themselves (and each other!) with some hitherto "inefficient/sub-optimal" units.