Sergio's blog: hints, ideas, pictures and news about SDS (and more) from the author

Monday, March 8, 2010

Tournament Rules Main Facts

Now that the Rules are "solid", I want to give you some general information, before the english translation becomes available. 99,9% of the basic rules are in effect but something had to be modified to reflect the competitive nature of a Tourney.
1) The Morale test for losses is after you loose more than 1/3 of your figures (instead than more than half) this comes from the need to reduce the playing time and squeeze a game in 1 hour. There is a table for those lazy people who don't want to make calculations :)
2) There are 2 Groups of Nations (the French Group and the Allied Group)made following historical alliances. Each player has to bring 2 squads to the Tournament: 1 Main and 1 Secondary. They must be taken from different Groups, so that you have 1 Main squad and 1 which is an enemy of the first. This guarantees that no a-historical engagements take place. While asking a bit more to players, I felt that this solution was better than the "anyone vs. anyone" of other competitive sets.
3) I wrote several pages of clarifications, with diagrams, to explain some of the rules that come out quite often in the Forums (LOS, Group Orders, Fleeing moves and the like). Very little new rules have been added.
4) The official base size is 2cm diameter (if round) and 2 cm side (if square) for infantry and 2 cm frontage and "enough to arrange the base" depth for cavalry (therefore a rectangle). Tolerance is restricted to 0,5 cm from the soldier's foot. In any case tournament Organizers have the ultimate word on this matter.
5) Standard scale is 25/28 mm, but you can organize a tournament for 20 or 15mm, changing table size and measurement sticks.
6) In order to be valid for the records I'll keep (and for the Italian Championship) a Tourney must be on 4 rounds and with 8 players (minimum).
7) All the lists in SDS, MDS and Free Hack e-zine are valid tournament lists. Plus, we'll publish new lists as separate free add on. Next in the pipeline are French Marines of the Guard and British Marines.

Any comment is welcomed, as is any question.......

10 comments:

  1. hi. in tournment will you play a mission or the generic encounter?
    Alessandro

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  2. A generic encounter. I forgot to say that there is a new "table generator", less random than the basic rules and hopefully more balanced...
    Sergio

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  3. have you thought about a mission sistem similar to the one used in Flames of War?
    I think it's the big thing of that rule system; it let every game be different and makes the difference and balance problems between the various list a lot less important.
    I say this because we have tryed something similar for Flying Lead and we had good Games.
    Alessandro

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  4. No doubt a "mission" system is interesting. We included a sort of it in the Optional rules for tournament organizers. It's worth some points and it is also a tie breaker.
    Sergio

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  5. Being a Flames of War tournament organiser myself I had to cope with the "blue on blue" risk.
    I settled the matter organising double tournaments: each team must consist of an Axis and Allied player. In SDS terms, this translates as having a Coalition player and a French Empire one. If you don't have a team mate, the organiser will provide you with one ;) . It's really more straightforward than you think.

    Stefano

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  6. I agree with Stefano's comment and it could be a good idea to have a shoulder's mate on which crying in the case of defeat!
    Cry

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  7. 2 players Team competition is already in the pipeline :). But as we say, let's start from the basement, then we'll build the roof. I'd like to see what will be the response of italian individual players (in terms of participation to Tourneys) then we'll go for team play.
    Anyway, thanks for the hint!

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  8. I've finally managed to sign up :P. What are your expectations about player numbers? I think we could get at least 6 people from my gaming group alone, but then I don't know about other players.

    Stefano

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  9. It is all a work-in-progress.
    First date will be Arezzo may 9th, then we plan one tourney in Terni (early june), then 1 near Modena (july 4th), and one is planned in Lodi/Milano in september.
    Your group is quite big! Now it all depends on how long would you travel for a SDS Tournament :)
    For Arezzo we should have at least 10 players.
    Cheers
    Sergio

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  10. The number of participants aren't so relevant, the quality would be the difference! In any case, it would be a big pleasure if we can avoid to launch more dice for the rule of mixed nationality list... is it possible at least for the list in which all the soldiers speak the same language? I mean british/indian colonies or canadians are always the same...
    Cry

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