New to being a Runner of Leagues, Help wanted

[Lyraeus]

So I am looking to run the Crusade League for Ordo but have never ran such a thing. 

 

I am hoping that you who is  reading this can give me some ideas, show me some blogs you may have seen or articles that you have liked in managing some events like this. Pretty much anything you think can be of help in making this a fun experience for those involved.

[Ish]

Goonhammer recently had an article on this very topic.

I’d suggest embracing their idea for removing the Increase Supply Limit requisition and then having it “automatically” be awarded to all players every couple of weeks.

Start the campaign with everyone having a 50 PL / 1,000 Points Order of Battle. But have everyone play up to three 500 Point missions for the first month; In month two, everyone adds +15 PL / 250 Points to their Order of Battle and plays up to three 750 Point missions; and so on and so forth. Maybe something like this:

• Month One: 1,000pts Order of / 500pts Missions

• Month Two: 1,250pts Order of Battle / 750pts Missions

• Month Three: 1,500pts Order of Battle / 1,000pts Missions

• Month Four: 2,000pts Order of Battle / 1,500pts Missions

For the question of randomly rolling versus players choosing their own battle scars and upgrades, my vote is to split the difference between choice and roll. Instead of just rolling one die or just picking, everyone should roll 2d6 and keep whichever one they like. If you roll “doubles,” so be it, the Dice Gods hath spoken. Ideally these rolls would be done in front of someone else from the league, but we can just rely on the honor system I think.

 

[Lyraeus]

2 hours ago, Ish said:

Goonhammer recently had an article on this very topic.

I’d suggest embracing their idea for removing the Increase Supply Limit requisition and then having it “automatically” be awarded to all players every couple of weeks.

Start the campaign with everyone having a 50 PL / 1,000 Points Order of Battle. But have everyone play up to three 500 Point missions for the first month; In month two, everyone adds +15 PL / 250 Points to their Order of Battle and plays up to three 750 Point missions; and so on and so forth. Maybe something like this:

• Month One: 1,000pts Order of / 500pts Missions

• Month Two: 1,250pts Order of Battle / 750pts Missions

• Month Three: 1,500pts Order of Battle / 1,000pts Missions

• Month Four: 2,000pts Order of Battle / 1,500pts Missions

For the question of randomly rolling versus players choosing their own battle scars and upgrades, my vote is to split the difference between choice and roll. Instead of just rolling one die or just picking, everyone should roll 2d6 and keep whichever one they like. If you roll “doubles,” so be it, the Dice Gods hath spoken. Ideally these rolls would be done in front of someone else from the league, but we can just rely on the honor system I think.

 

Having read that article I agree with a lot of what they say. Especially after the fact that I was looking at the CA 2018 upgrade list... Yea.

 

So Points is going to be the way to go for me. Dont want to see a 50 PL list that has 1500 points (I think my Ork list hits that so I will have to check)

2d6 for Advancement Rolls is a good idea. No Picking or at least none base. There might be mile stones where people can get the chance to pick. I might also allow for more upgrade chances but they will increase the Crusade Points by double and be a lot more to get that next upgrade. 

I am looking at a multi month campaign so that works and we can use your idea for monthly point limits. Gives me the ability to look at Necrons and go from there.

I will be allowing people to Respec their Order of Battles when a New Codex comes out. If they have a Unit with EXP that they remove then the new unit gets half the EXP and also half the Battle Scars if any so be ware of that. 

I did like their idea for killing Legendary units but I think if a unit kills a tougher unit but I think there is a better way to do it. Lets say a Blooded kills a Legendary they would get the difference in the number of levels. There are 3 levels difference so the Blooded would get this counted as 3 kills for the purposes of EXP, while if a Heroic kills a Legendary then it only counts as 1 kill for EXP. A bit more book keeping but it allows for a bit of reward for that amazing deed.

As for rules from Match Play... I think I might at a new Requisition Points purchase that allows people to have a "side pool" for Summoned units. lets say 2 RP for 100 points of summoning ability that you can use as free points in any game to summon things with or anything that would require Points bring in more models than you started, so Pox Walkers, Tervigon Spawning more Gaunts, etc. 

Deep Striking Turn 2 will be a thing and there will be no rule of 3 so you could have 12 Tau Commanders.... its expensive but meh?

 

Any other ideas?

[Brother Glacius]

What is the purpose of your league? The hardest thing about running a league is making sure it addresses the goal as opposed to personal preferences. For example, by going points, you could easily be leaving a bunch of players out who don't like to play that way. If people abusing the PL is an issue, then those are people you might not want to have in a friendly league. But if you are looking for competitive then that could be the way to go.

I have run several leagues within ordo and there is always something I didn't think of and have to address. So my advice is to be flexible regardless.

So is this open to new players? are you going to provide help for having them dive into the deep end of 40K right from the start? And if this league is for Ordo as opposed to a specific game store or area, then make sure you talk to the Chaplain to make sure it conforms with ordo's standards for events.

 

[Lyraeus]

This is open to new Players, players can play at LGS's but with the whole covid thing that is a bit harder to facilitate. It also makes it difficult for me to keep track of whats going on so I may have people post their game results here or PM to me and I will log that all. 

As for the intent of the league, this is an all comers league. It is or people to use their narrative that they want to create for their army but while trying to prevent people from just going Hulk mode on everyone. 

I am hoping people can police themselves as well but will be watching for things where I can. 

[Brother Glacius]

My suggestion would be not to shoot for the moon the first time. Since this is the first Crusade format for everyone, I would keep it simple, and keep it short. I'd go for no longer than two months. I might keep it to PL just so that it is more open for players, but stress that optimizing should be kept to a minimum. Think of it as a nice test run in order to gather some data and feedback from the community.

I'd go with the standard 50PL throughout the entire crusade. I'd also require participants to post their Order of Battle (with upgrades) online (assuming you use the forum for signup and tracking). This way you can do the points for each army and if you feel someone's list is taking advantage of PL, then you can ask them to remove certain upgrades. Conversely, if someone's list falls below the average of the participants, then you could suggest a few upgrades to make them more competitive.

After the Crusade, you can poll players for opinions and suggestions and thus tweak it for next time.

[Tamwulf]

Just keep it simple. Either go with all PL, or points, but not both. Isn't the original Crusade Rules built around Power Level? And allowing a "pool" of models for players to create a list from just rewards the players that already have an army as they'll just pick the best units right off the bat. Allowing players, especially new players, a Power Level army makes army creation much, much easier, and allows limited customization for a unit from game to game. It's always a nightmare trying to "validate" an army list. The player used an out of date publication, they didn't check the FAQ/Errata, they used BattleScribe or some other software... It is so much easier to say "This is my squad, it has these guns and these grenades, PL 5" instead of "OK, five base models, 10 points each, where are the points for the guns? Here they are, 3 each, and 10 for that special gun. The Leader has a close combat weapon, that costs 5, but he loses the gun, so subtract 3, and the grenades 1 for that type of grenade, 0 for that type, and the unit has that one unit option that costs an extra 15 points. So 74 points."  Another player looks at the list and says "Oh, hey! The Errata says these models are 11 point each, that special weapon is 15 points, and that unit option went down to 8."

The Crusade has it's own detachment, right? Make everyone use that detachment? Or how about limit the number of detachments to 1 detachment per 50 PL?

Four months is a long time for a league, especially a new format type and a new edition of the game. Things will be very dynamic and fluid the first couple months as people will want to try out new things and new army lists each game. Within four months, we'll probably have at least two new codexes released. Two months would probably be better. Even at one game a week, that's 8-9 games.

Reward hobby/painting. Sure, you can play the Grey Plastic Tide, but fully painted? Here ya go. Stagger it though. The first couple weeks, no bonuses for fully painted (give people time to paint armies). Mark the unpainted units/models at the start, and as they get painted, reward the player with League points. Make an incentive for players to start a new army or try new units/models. If you already have a fully painted army, that's OK. Starting week 3, you'll get points for being fully painted, while the player that is making a new army won't be fully painted, but will score an equal amount of points for painting an unpainted unit. Don't want to paint anymore models? OK, donate a piece of terrain that WORKS FOR THE GAME. Talking a 6" long ruined wall, or smaller ruined building on a 6"x6" base. Ordo has a ton of terrain, but most of it needs a lot of TLC, or is just plain impractical for 50% of the games played at the clubhouse.  

I love to play, but the thing that ALWAYS turns me off in Leagues like this is week two or three, you play that guy with three pages of special rules that built his army around a loop hole in the league, and suddenly I'm facing an army that curb stomps, with a billion command points, strategems from books I don't have (and they don't either, but they read about it online, so must be true, right?), and they just walk all over me. If it's a fun league league, then I want to have fun playing, not face some WAC list and player who has zero empathy for how I'm feeling during the game with the curb stomp, kill everything list. God damn, it would be nice just ONE TIME to face an army that isn't maxed out on elites or heavy support, or every unit can cause d6 mortal wounds, or everything has a 3+/4++/5+ reroll everything. I hate the mindset of "Oh, you should have been ready for this Imperial Knight I brought at 500 points."  If it's a friendly League, then I should NEVER have to face two Greater Plauge Deamons and Mortarion. That kinda crap should be "Hey! I'm thinking of taking Morty's and his two friends, want to make a list to play against it?" I guarantee you someone is going to try and do something like that right off the bat at PL 50, like bring an Imperial Night and enough chaff to fill out 50 PL and curb stomp everyone else that didn't do the same thing. That is not "fun" unless everyone agrees to it, or can tailor a list for it.

One of the things that I love about Warmachine and Hordes- you create two lists, and after you see the scenario and both players have looked at both lists, you decide on which list to play. That was a fantastic way of getting around a lot of "Power Lists", and later, more rules were added to list creation such as named characters can't be in both lists, or you must play both lists during this tournament. I always thought that was a fantastic way to play the game, and often wondered why GW never adopted it. Or the idea of reserves- units you can swap out after the scenario is generated and right before armies are selected. Upto 20% of your force can be changed in this way. At PL 50,  10 PL worth of models/units could be swapped out for reserve units. This kind of stuff complicates things, but really helps vs. that Blood Thirster or Imperial Knight at 50 PL in one game, but in another game of a wave of Ork Hordes, you swap out for units with blast weapons or more close combat.

week 1: 50 PL, no painting

Week 2: 50 PL, no painting, reserves (10 PL), but you have to purchase them with League Points, so you really have a PL 60 army but playing PL 50

Week 3: 50 PL, painting scores, 10 PL reserves

Week 4: PL 70, painting, now 15 PL reserves (rounded up from 14)

Week 5: PL 80, painting, 15 PL reserves

Week 6: PL 90, etc. etc. you get the picture.

PL 100 in 9th is going to be like a 1500 point game of 8th, give or take. The new points/PL will change the amount of models on the table (fewer models). I wouldn't go much further then PL 100 at the beginning of the edition, as no  one knows what the tournament scene or "standard army size" is going to look like. It's a lot easier to build up to a standard that will shake out after 6 months, then it is to make a PL 150 army, but never play that size of a game. How many players have 4,000 points worth of armies but never play beyond 1,850? Units in the bag that never see the light of day or sitting on the back of the shelf gathering dust? Also, new edition, means new codexes means some units will fall out of favor while others will suddenly be "must take".

Wall of text, sorry. Thanks for stepping up to run a Crusade League! I look forward to getting involved/playing again! Especially at the beginning of a new edition where everyone is experimenting and trying new things and not "net decking"- downloading a list from online or some tournament.

[Lyraeus]

5 hours ago, Tamwulf said:

Just keep it simple. Either go with all PL, or points, but not both. Isn't the original Crusade Rules built around Power Level? And allowing a "pool" of models for players to create a list from just rewards the players that already have an army as they'll just pick the best units right off the bat. Allowing players, especially new players, a Power Level army makes army creation much, much easier, and allows limited customization for a unit from game to game. It's always a nightmare trying to "validate" an army list. The player used an out of date publication, they didn't check the FAQ/Errata, they used BattleScribe or some other software... It is so much easier to say "This is my squad, it has these guns and these grenades, PL 5" instead of "OK, five base models, 10 points each, where are the points for the guns? Here they are, 3 each, and 10 for that special gun. The Leader has a close combat weapon, that costs 5, but he loses the gun, so subtract 3, and the grenades 1 for that type of grenade, 0 for that type, and the unit has that one unit option that costs an extra 15 points. So 74 points."  Another player looks at the list and says "Oh, hey! The Errata says these models are 11 point each, that special weapon is 15 points, and that unit option went down to 8."

The Crusade has it's own detachment, right? Make everyone use that detachment? Or how about limit the number of detachments to 1 detachment per 50 PL?

Four months is a long time for a league, especially a new format type and a new edition of the game. Things will be very dynamic and fluid the first couple months as people will want to try out new things and new army lists each game. Within four months, we'll probably have at least two new codexes released. Two months would probably be better. Even at one game a week, that's 8-9 games.

Reward hobby/painting. Sure, you can play the Grey Plastic Tide, but fully painted? Here ya go. Stagger it though. The first couple weeks, no bonuses for fully painted (give people time to paint armies). Mark the unpainted units/models at the start, and as they get painted, reward the player with League points. Make an incentive for players to start a new army or try new units/models. If you already have a fully painted army, that's OK. Starting week 3, you'll get points for being fully painted, while the player that is making a new army won't be fully painted, but will score an equal amount of points for painting an unpainted unit. Don't want to paint anymore models? OK, donate a piece of terrain that WORKS FOR THE GAME. Talking a 6" long ruined wall, or smaller ruined building on a 6"x6" base. Ordo has a ton of terrain, but most of it needs a lot of TLC, or is just plain impractical for 50% of the games played at the clubhouse.  

I love to play, but the thing that ALWAYS turns me off in Leagues like this is week two or three, you play that guy with three pages of special rules that built his army around a loop hole in the league, and suddenly I'm facing an army that curb stomps, with a billion command points, strategems from books I don't have (and they don't either, but they read about it online, so must be true, right?), and they just walk all over me. If it's a fun league league, then I want to have fun playing, not face some WAC list and player who has zero empathy for how I'm feeling during the game with the curb stomp, kill everything list. God damn, it would be nice just ONE TIME to face an army that isn't maxed out on elites or heavy support, or every unit can cause d6 mortal wounds, or everything has a 3+/4++/5+ reroll everything. I hate the mindset of "Oh, you should have been ready for this Imperial Knight I brought at 500 points."  If it's a friendly League, then I should NEVER have to face two Greater Plauge Deamons and Mortarion. That kinda crap should be "Hey! I'm thinking of taking Morty's and his two friends, want to make a list to play against it?" I guarantee you someone is going to try and do something like that right off the bat at PL 50, like bring an Imperial Night and enough chaff to fill out 50 PL and curb stomp everyone else that didn't do the same thing. That is not "fun" unless everyone agrees to it, or can tailor a list for it.

One of the things that I love about Warmachine and Hordes- you create two lists, and after you see the scenario and both players have looked at both lists, you decide on which list to play. That was a fantastic way of getting around a lot of "Power Lists", and later, more rules were added to list creation such as named characters can't be in both lists, or you must play both lists during this tournament. I always thought that was a fantastic way to play the game, and often wondered why GW never adopted it. Or the idea of reserves- units you can swap out after the scenario is generated and right before armies are selected. Upto 20% of your force can be changed in this way. At PL 50,  10 PL worth of models/units could be swapped out for reserve units. This kind of stuff complicates things, but really helps vs. that Blood Thirster or Imperial Knight at 50 PL in one game, but in another game of a wave of Ork Hordes, you swap out for units with blast weapons or more close combat.

week 1: 50 PL, no painting

Week 2: 50 PL, no painting, reserves (10 PL), but you have to purchase them with League Points, so you really have a PL 60 army but playing PL 50

Week 3: 50 PL, painting scores, 10 PL reserves

Week 4: PL 70, painting, now 15 PL reserves (rounded up from 14)

Week 5: PL 80, painting, 15 PL reserves

Week 6: PL 90, etc. etc. you get the picture.

PL 100 in 9th is going to be like a 1500 point game of 8th, give or take. The new points/PL will change the amount of models on the table (fewer models). I wouldn't go much further then PL 100 at the beginning of the edition, as no  one knows what the tournament scene or "standard army size" is going to look like. It's a lot easier to build up to a standard that will shake out after 6 months, then it is to make a PL 150 army, but never play that size of a game. How many players have 4,000 points worth of armies but never play beyond 1,850? Units in the bag that never see the light of day or sitting on the back of the shelf gathering dust? Also, new edition, means new codexes means some units will fall out of favor while others will suddenly be "must take".

Wall of text, sorry. Thanks for stepping up to run a Crusade League! I look forward to getting involved/playing again! Especially at the beginning of a new edition where everyone is experimenting and trying new things and not "net decking"- downloading a list from online or some tournament.

So Its based on PL for creating your Order of Battle which is your pool of units to use. So like Kill Team in that regards. There are no special detachments for Crusade so you are using basic detachments to build your forces.

 

The interesting of Crusade is that people could keep their Order of Battle from one campaign to another campaign since it takes a long time just to get anything fully leveled up and that is if they don't just die and lose all the xp every time so people have to be cautious. 

This leads to an interesting concept that players might not want their units being killed off as often. This is due to the unit maintaining their status as long as that player is playing a Crusade. In a small 2 month campaign where the stats don't transfer over, does one really care?

Crusade does have a balancing mechanic for when an opponent has a more experienced Army. You will end up getting more command points and as each army codex is released there is SUPPOSEDLY going to be personalized Crusade based things in them. So for the Orks we could have personalized upgrades and relics and such.. which would be nice.

This can also lead to the potential of an Apocalypse level game where many players get together.

 

Personally I would have fun with someone who brought a Knight to a 25 PL game. My orks could win that by not killing the knight... it would be difficult but entertaining but that is me. I like the challenge and not everyone likes that sort of disparity.

 

Hmmmm Painting rewards and such would be interesting. Could do the Tournament level of things where people get awards for best kit bashing and such.  

[Lyraeus]

7 hours ago, Brother Glacius said:

My suggestion would be not to shoot for the moon the first time. Since this is the first Crusade format for everyone, I would keep it simple, and keep it short. I'd go for no longer than two months. I might keep it to PL just so that it is more open for players, but stress that optimizing should be kept to a minimum. Think of it as a nice test run in order to gather some data and feedback from the community.

I'd go with the standard 50PL throughout the entire crusade. I'd also require participants to post their Order of Battle (with upgrades) online (assuming you use the forum for signup and tracking). This way you can do the points for each army and if you feel someone's list is taking advantage of PL, then you can ask them to remove certain upgrades. Conversely, if someone's list falls below the average of the participants, then you could suggest a few upgrades to make them more competitive.

After the Crusade, you can poll players for opinions and suggestions and thus tweak it for next time.

Valid points. Yea. I need to get more info on who would be interested and how we would be able to do this due to the gaming area limitations 

[Brother Glacius]

Not having the actual rules in my hand, but I don't think you need to inflate the PL during the Crusade. There seem to be rules to allow people to spend some form of currency in order to grow the PL total of the Crusade. Also, you are not expected to play full Crusade level PL games the entire time. The Warhammer community has a little 5 part Crusade blog going which had some nice info on it.

[Lyraeus]

Just now, Brother Glacius said:

Not having the actual rules in my hand, but I don't think you need to inflate the PL during the Crusade. There seem to be rules to allow people to spend some form of currency in order to grow the PL total of the Crusade. Also, you are not expected to play full Crusade level PL games the entire time. The Warhammer community has a little 5 part Crusade blog going which had some nice info on it.

Yup but game sizes are not fixed so one week we can say "Play 50 PL" and the next do 100 PL each is about 20 points a PL but not always the case. 

[Brother Glacius]

I thought the intent was to have a Crusade with a specific list to start with. You can then draw from that list for games, but it is not the intent to play that full list each time. As the crusade continues, that list can start to grow based on points you decide to spend for it. For example, the WarCom blog showed the sisters increase some unit sizes and also adding a new unit to the crusade army. However, that list is not really changing each week. Again, since this is new to everyone, keeping it short and simple would be best.

Another thing to consider, you could post up the missions ahead of time. Make sure they are diverse so that people can review and figure out how their army could handle them. The more info up front, then the better chance people have to create a crusade list that can meet all challenges by being diverse.

[Lyraeus]

4 minutes ago, Brother Glacius said:

I thought the intent was to have a Crusade with a specific list to start with. You can then draw from that list for games, but it is not the intent to play that full list each time. As the crusade continues, that list can start to grow based on points you decide to spend for it. For example, the WarCom blog showed the sisters increase some unit sizes and also adding a new unit to the crusade army. However, that list is not really changing each week. Again, since this is new to everyone, keeping it short and simple would be best.

Another thing to consider, you could post up the missions ahead of time. Make sure they are diverse so that people can review and figure out how their army could handle them. The more info up front, then the better chance people have to create a crusade list that can meet all challenges by being diverse.

Crusade is a mixture of Kill Team and normal narrative play. 

 

You create an Order of Battle which are the units you are allowed to build lists from. You cant go outside of that list of models. 

You have Requisition Points that do let you purchase various types of upgrades. One of which allows you 5 more PL in your Order of Battle. You start with 5 of these points and can never go above 5 so you get to spend the initial batch to customize your Order of Battle. 

 

For instance I can use an one of these Requisition Points to take my Squad of Boyz and turn them into 'Ard Boyz permanently instead of having  to pay a Command point every game for it. The down side to this is that they are now worth 2 Crusade Points (The balancing mechanic of Crusade). When the players meet up they compare the number of Crusade Points they have. The player who has the most  gets nothing for this as they are deemed the better upgraded one. The player with the least gets a number of Command Points equal to half the Difference in Crusade Points. 

So for the 'Ard Boyz, if I play with them against a player who has no Crusade Points they get a Free Command Point to start. Doesn't seem like much but when you are playing under under 500 points you only get 3 CP so it can be helpful early on.

 

I am planning on doing a 2 month stint at best so no more than 9 games and seeing what people liked and did not like and by then we should see what the first Codex will have so that we can tell what to expect for future releases for Crusade.