Jervis: The new GT rules pack has caused some healthy debate, which I have to say I am very pleased to see. What I'm less happy about is that the UK Events team is taking the heat for decisions that have been made by the Games Workshop Design Studio, and specifically by myself, Alessio Cavatore, Gavin Thorpe, and Rick Priestley. So, if you feel the rules are not up to standard, you now know the right people to blame.

In the rest of this article I'll go through some of the points I've seen raised about the new GT rules pack, in order to explain why the rules are the way they are.

SCORING SYSTEM

There has been some confusion about how players will be ranked at the tournament (ie, how we will tell who is in 1st place, who in 2nd , etc). I'll go through the procedure we'll be using to make things as clear as possible.

1. You play a game using the latest edition of the rules.
2. You receive 3 points for a win of any level, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss.
3. If you are tied, your position will be decided by your net victory point total (ie, the number of VPs you have scored so far in the tournament, minus the number of VPs you have suffered so far).

The important bit is step 3. If scores are tied then your tournament rank is decided by your VP differential. This means, in a nutshell, that in order to win the GT you must score as many VPs as possible while conceding as few as possible, which seems a pretty fair way of picking a winner to us!

The massed ranks of the dead rise once more to defend their tombs against troops of the Empire.

PERMITTED ARMY LISTS

A number of people have asked why certain army lists are not permitted in the tournament. The answer to this is simple; we're moving towards a system for our tournaments where the only lists that are permitted are those that are currently in print. Having a situation where a player can bring along an old out of print list that an opponent may never have seen before is clearly unfair, and not really something we want to continue. We felt it better to start acting now, as the situation will only get worse the longer the list remains unavailable. This will be an ongoing process, as we still need to resolve some issues to do with army list variants that were printed in White Dwarf or which can be downloaded from our websites. However, in the long run our official tournaments will only permit armies based on army list that are currently available as printed books.

I know, I know, what about players whose armyies are no longer 'legal?' Well, we were worried about this too, and to make sure that they could still enter the tournament we have included the 'Counts As' rule in this year's rules pack. The Counts As rule allows players to use old Citadel miniatures no longer covered by the current army lists at our tournaments. The Count As rule has been included in each of the new tournament packs, now available to download, so that you can see how it works. The important thing, though, is that it means that it's very easy, with just a little tiny bit of imagination, to use an army designed for one of the out-of-print lists.

SPECIAL CHARACTERS

Several players have written in to say they are worried that 'special characters' may unbalance the event. All I can really say in reply to this is that we've studied the special characters that can be taken very carefully, and do not consider any of them to be any more 'game-breaking' than numerous other units that have been cheerfully used in tournaments for years. I also think it's important to remember that in our army books and codexes most special characters may be used without an opponent's consent. The principle we've followed at the official Grand Tournaments is that you should be playing with the published rules and army lists. The current rules pack reflects this straightforward philosophy, and one of its outcomes is that special characters that do no require an opponent's consent may be used at the official GTs.

While on this subject, I should warn players that changes in the 7th edition Warhammer rules and some of the subtleties of the new scoring system will make some Warhammer special characters much less effective than they have been in the past. I can't go into detail on what these changes are right now as the 7th edition rules are not yet in print, so suffice to say that I recommend against basing your tournament strategy on using a special character, or at least, waiting until after you've seen the 7th edition rules before you decide to do so!

CONCLUSION

Hopefully these notes will have answered most of the concerns over the new rules, or at least moved the debate on a bit. The UK Events team have promised to keep us abreast of any further developments, and I'll be more than happy to write more design notes if they are needed.

We've also asked the Events team to arrange seminars at each of the GT heats and finals, where you'll be able to ask us about our future plans for GTs, or anything else for that matter. So, if you feel strongly about the direction that we're going with our tournaments, one way you can do something about it is to turn up and tell us about it in person.

Until then, have fun, and may all your dice rolls be 6s...

Jervis Johnson

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