Thanks for all of the responses guys, this has really helped out and caught some of the mistakes I made. One thing I should have clarified is that this is being based off of the program that the LGS uses for running their tournaments, so I don't have a lot of information in how they run the back end of things.
1. Come up with a rule for determining win/draw in case of time running out + what the sudden death condition will be. In my experience there's always someone that didn't know that the time has run out or will be complaining that his opponent has taken most of the play time etc. Something like "Finish the current turn + 1 more if applicable (dice roll after 5th turn and current turn is not 7) is what I have in mind. This is the first thing MTG tournaments in my area specify after the tournament structure - it always happens and there are always unhappy players.
2. Establish rules for army list presentation and army list checking.
3. State how many judges there will be and cite their names if possible. P.S. Ok, it is kind of unclear why I am posting this. There may be players(more than one) that would disagree on the judges choice - grudges against the person, notoriety etc. This has happened...
4. Give a prize at random. There are players that doubt their skill, but they'll participate if there's the chance of winning something (it doesn't need to be big - the idea's what is important). It's a nice touch. P.S. This could be it : A 50/50 draw will be held with tickets being $5. I'm not aware what a 50/50 draw is so I'm writing about the random prize just to be sure.
5. Will it be a point tournament (points awarded by game) or a sweden W/L/D match-up? In both cases you need rules for breaking draws.
1) How about adding this: "Within the last ten minutes of a game round, only start a turn if you can guarantee both players can play their half within the time left, or finish within a few minutes."
I've found that tournaments that run a "Time's up, dice down" kind of set up will favour the player with the top of the turn because they can convince their opponent to start a turn and then slow play it so they run out of time to finish their turn.
2) I have to get the checklist for painting from the LGS owner, but Best Painted will be determined by player voting for their favourite army.
3) It isn't going to be a large tournament, around 10 - 16 players I am guessing, so the judge is going to be fairly obvious. And the people that play in this area are, for the most part, tournament veterans. They know and accept that the judge's final decision stands for the game, so I don't think I need to add anything in for that.
4) A 50/50 draw is where people buy tickets and the money goes into a pot. 50% of the money goes to the tournament, and the other 50% goes to the person who has the winning ticket.
5) It will be a point based system, but that is something I need to get from the store owner before I can add it.
1. As alreydy stated a timetable helps the players to determine how fast they have to play and if its a good idea to field that 200+ model army.
2. Related to the above, a couple of more words on the "food" topic and when the lunchbreaks are.
3. An Email Adress to where the armylists can be send in for checking (which i strongly advice you to do, usually i found mistakes in over 30% of the armylists i checked) including a send in deadline. You might want to give those who send their lists in some kind of bonus. You should also specify which data formates are accepted (sometimes i received file formates i had never heard of before). If a list is correct or needs to be corrected you should mail the player back.
4. A short overview over the situations that can lead to punishing a player (can save lenghty discussion while the games are running), like for example playing for time, not sending in an armylist in advance and playing with an incorrect one etc, and how the penalty looks like.
1 & 2) That is already included. I have "
Schedule:" listed, but it is listed as TBD because I would have to work out with the store owner what kind of schedule works for him.
3) Added: "Players can submit their army lists to <email address> ahead of time to ensure their list is correct. Army lists submitted by <date> will receive a 5 point bonus to their final score."
4) Yeah, I guess I should have something listed in there. I want the tournament to be a more friendly environment; it is for charity, after all. But, I guess I have to have something in place. The common penalty for slow play in the local tournaments is that if 3 full turns are not completed by the end of the game, both players receive 0 points. Anything else will probably be a 10% penalty to the scores for each infraction.
The only add I would put in, we're doing it at our next local tourney, is no allies. All units/formations must come from the same dex. I don't know if this would help but good luck to you.
That is already handled. Armies can draw units from 3 sources, so that will allow allies. Part of the reason for me organizing this is that I want to embrace the fact that we are playing 7th edition. One part of 7th that people should be used to dealing with now is that an army is rarely comprised of a single codex. To keep things simple for me, I don't want to have to reference 8 different sources to see if a list is legal.
1) Lunch is either in or out. Based on experience don't provide it! I'm allergic to this, I'm allergic to that. i don't like xyz ... I'm vegetarian and all the vegetarian pizza is gone before I got to the table.
2) You need to have some FAQs, which you know are open to interpretation, but GW haven't answered. For example if a Stormraven uses POTMS to shoot a ground target (when skyfiring the other weapons) is it a snap shot or not? It's not really clear in the rules. Similarly do skimmers deep strike mishap when scattering ontop of models? Like them or loathe them, amend them as you will, at least ITC has made a decision one way or the other on several grey areas in the GW rules. At least you know when you are building your lists which way the rule goes.
3) Why aren't pdf's of rules acceptable? Are you saying I can't use the Skyhammer annihilation force just because I didn't pay GW $400 to duplicate units I already had? If it's a copy of an official rule then there's no reason why it shouldn't be acceptable. It has all the information on it and I have the models. Are you going to ask for a receipt for every forgeworld model to check it wasn't knocked off from China?
4) How are the secondary objectives going to be tracked. Are they out of the rule book or are they modified like ITC?
5) How many tactical objectives can they discard a turn? We house rule it's 1 like that a turn. So if you draw a second undoable one you have to discard that at the end of your turn as per the rules.
6) I think you need to push for 2.5 hours for an 1850 game.
7) With monetary prizes, you will probably want to check lists beforehand. Also the store owner would be more appreciative if rather than give money out as prizes you gave him the money and gave out store vouchers as prizes. He may even be willing to put a bit more into the prize fund then as he knows the money has to come back to be spent in his shop.
8 ) How is best sportsman decided?
9)Who judges the painting and how is it scored? On the little friendly tournaments I have organised (less than 10 players) we each put forward one model and then we each voted for our favourite (you couldn't vote for your own). The one with the most votes got the kitty. On a draw those at the top who drew selected a different model and everyone voted again until we had a winner.
1) Lunch is being provided
if players want to buy in to it. Every tournament I have been at locally has followed this and we have never run into an issue. If we do have a vegetarian player, the crowd of people tend to hear us when we are asking and so far have been good by giving them first crack at the veggie pizza.
2) This is going to be a small, fundraising tournament. If the answers can not be found in the rules presented in books or FAQs, then the judge will have the final say. As I mentioned before, this is not meant to be a super competitive tournament. If people are trying to bend the rules to their advantage, such as trying to use POTMS to not fire snap shots (which it can't), then that is why there is a judge.
3) Because this tournament is being held at a local game store, and on principle I do not support piracy of rules at all. If you have a legitimate copy of the rules, whether it came from a hard copy or digital, then that is great. But downloading an illegal copy of the rules so you can play a formation, in my mind, is the same as downloading a codex so you can play an army without having to pony up the dough. Everyone else paid for their rules, why can't you?
4) The scenarios will be Maelstrom missions, so I think that leaves it pretty clear that they will be the secondary missions from the rulebook.
5) If there is a possibility that you can claim the objective at some point in the game, then you must keep the objective (ex: you must take objective 3, but your whole opponent's army is sitting on top of it). If you generate an objective that is impossible to achieve, then you can redraw until you get an objective you have a chance of doing (ex: Draw kill a flyer against an army with no flyers. Redraw and get kill an enemy building on a table with no buildings. Redraw again, etc).
6) For standard tournaments not using Maelstrom missions, we run 1850 tournaments at 2 hour rounds and it works well. With Maelstrom, it all depends on what works for the store owner.
7) Prizes are listed as gift certificates to the store we are playing at.
8 ) Sportsmanship as a score is a simple yes or no question that will be printed on the results sheet: "Would you play this person again?" Beyond that, after the last round players will fill out their favourite opponent on the back of the result sheet.
9) If I am not mistaken, the LGS has something like a 10 point check list for the painting score. And as mentioned earlier, best painted is a player vote.
I have made amendments to the original post, with new content being added in green.