The Hammer and Anvil Summer CompetitionIntroductionGreetings, fellow members of warhammer-empire
.
The Hammer and Anvil, founded nearly two years ago by Ricold
[insert history which has been posted here before, round about here...Ahem].Anyway, this summer, H&A is running an open competition to
create a regiment of renown.
The competition is being advertised on as many WHFB sites as possible and we hope to attract a large variety of entries. Before giving the rules, to answer the question - why a regiment of renown?
The staff collectively decided that we were now a big enough site to run a proper competition; the question then arose, what should the competition be about? Well, rulebook changes seemed rather a bad choice given the upcoming new 7th edition rulebook; units for existing lists would bring up too many multiples of the same unit; and complete army lists are of limited value to the majority of players, besides being far too hard to develop from scratch in less than 3 months (no list on H&A has yet been finished satisfactorily, and some have been running since before the site was created).
Now, regiments of renown are fun; can be made up as interesting conversions; may cover new and existing fluff; lend themselves to creativity in story writing and rules creation; and can be used by the greatest number of players.
So onto the rules.
Competition RulesEntries must be submitted by 5th August - three weeks from tomorrow. The sooner the better please, but we'll accept units right to the deadline (timed GMT).
H&A staff members shall enter a separate staff competition, which will be up for judging by H&A members by poll vote.
Bribing the judges is not allowed. Blackmailing the judges is not allowed. Inviting the judges to stay on your ranch to discuss matters even
wholly unrelated to the issue (ie the competition) isn't permissible til the competition is over and the entries are judged. e-mailing opinions and comments on the rules to judges is allowed, but they probably won't reply. You just might point out something that someone missed, or reinforce a wavering conviction. No spamming though.
Your rules should appear in the following format - if you're really stumped on the coding, we'll do it for you. You must include fluff - but this is a rules writing competition, not a story competition, and the fluff must be between 50 and 500 words long.
[b][u]-REGIMENT NAME-[/b][/u]
[i]by - _________ (your name here)[/i]
-Narrative style fluff-
[b]THE REGIMENT[/b]
[b]Captain:[/b]
[b]Motto:[/b]
[b]Battle-cry:[/b]
[b]For Hire:[/b]
[b]Points:[/b] -Captain- and -number of people- may be hired for -n- points. Additional -people- may be hired for -x- points each, up to a total of -y- models.
Include a code block with statistics here
[b]Equipment:[/b] List the basic weaponry soldiers carry here, and then list magical items carried by the regiment and/or captain.
[b]Armour Save:[/b] The armour save for the entire regiment. If there is a different armour save for some members, list that second.
[b]SPECIAL RULES[/b]
[b]Header[/b]:
[b]MAGIC ITEMS[/b]
[b]Header[/b]:
Use as many headers as are needed.For example:
Bertrand the Brigand and the Bowmen of Bergerac by BenedictusA great deal of fluff, cut for readability for this example.
THE REGIMENTCaptain: Bertrand the Brigand.
Motto: Equality for all men. Particularly us.
Battle-cry: "Loose!"
For Hire: The following armies may hire Bertrand the Brigand and the Bowmen of Bergerac as a Rare choice: Empire, Dwarfs, High Elves, Wood Elves, Dogs of War, Hordes of Chaos and Bretonnians.
Note: As Bretonnians are not normally allowed Dogs of War, you must have your opponents permission to take the Bowmen in a Bretonnian army.Points: Bertrand plus nine Brigands including Hugo le Petit and Gui le Gros, cost a total of 170 points. This is the minimum unit you can hire. Additional Brigands may be increased at a cost of +9 points per additional model, up to a maximum unit size of 20.
M WS BS S T W I A LD
Bertrand 4 3 5 4 4 2 3 2 8
Hugo le Petit 4 3 4 4 3 1 3 1 6
Gui le Gros 4 2 4 3 3 1 3 1 6
Brigand 4 2 4 3 3 1 3 1 6(AL - preferably with accurate coding - I'm no good at it on w-e)Equipment: Hand weapons, longbows. Hugo le Petit carries his quarterstaff, which counts as a great weapon. Bertrand carries the Black Arrow.
Armour Save: None.
SPECIAL RULESHeroic Companions: Hugo le Petit and Gui le Gros are both treated as champions, and may therefore accept and decline challenges as normal.
Hugo le Petit: Hugo le Petit is Betrand's right hand man and trusted lieutenant. Hugo is an imposing man who carries a stout oak quarterstaff and a massive longbow into battle.
When he fires his longbow, it hits at a strength of 4. His quarterstaff counts as a great weapon.
Gui le Gros: Gui le Gros was the monk in charge of sweeping the Grail chapel of Bergerac. He now serves as Bertrand's spiritual advisor. He carries around a cask of stolen sacramental wine, which he shares amongst the men if they start to look shaky on their feet.
Once per game, at the beginning of the turn, Gui le Gros may share out his wine. For the remainder of the game the Bowmen, including Betrand, Gui and Hugo, are immune to panic. However, they suffer a -1 to hit when shooting for the remainder of the game as well. If Gui le Gros is slain then the cask of stolen wine is assumed to be broken and lost. If it has not been used yet, then it may not be used this battle.
MAGIC ITEMSThe Black Arrow: The Black Arrow is tipped with a Dragon's tooth and has black feather flights from a carrion crow. Bertrand used it to slay the Great Flapping Monster with a single shot.One use only. Wounds automatically, no armour save.
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Entries will be judged by the active Hammer and Anvil staff - Ricold, AldebrandLudenhof, Benedictus, RGB, and Firedrake - of whome Rick is probably familiar to those who remember CoL, and myself, Benedictus and RGB are warhammer-empire members and sometime active posters.
You don't even need to join the site to submit your entry - if you're not a member, you can e-mail competition@lightalliance.co.uk, and your entry will be posted onto the competition board. The competition board will take entries from members, but will not allow replies. We have a board for competition discussion and queries running alongside the "Entrants" board, though this requires registration on H&A to post on. You are not allowed to take comments on your unit before it appears, and we'll be looking over sites across the community to ensure no entries have been posted previously on an open board. Joint entries are, however, permissible, though joint entrants will obviously have to split the prize (see later).
You may like to include an explanation of the thinking behind your unit - what it's meant to do, what inspired it, references hidden in it, etc. This is entirely up to you, and may be e-mailed to us after you've submitted your unit, though not after the entry deadline.
Results will be announced on the 12th of August, four weeks from today, one week after the closing date for accepting entries falls.
What You Will Be Judged OnThe judges will be looking at all aspects of your work; the following areas are important when judging most rules development work, and we hope the guidance and advice given will help you understand what we're looking for.
Balance - Would this unit unbalance the game? Units that specifically patch up an armies weaknesses (for example, a unit of Ws4, T5, A2 Empire troops) or that are simply too powerful (for example, a wizard with a 2+ ward save who generates 6 power dice per turn) or that are unbalancing to the game for any other reason (for example, a wizard lord you can take as a rare choice, enabling you to take two wizard lords in a 2000pts battle) will not be looked favourably upon.
Costing - Is your unit of an appropriate points cost? Try to compare to costs of units currently available in army lists, and remember that no item of equipment necessarily has the same value to every unit in the game. The H&A staff recommend
Avian's 'design a unit' system as a good guide.
Fluff - This category comes in three parts - does the unit fit with GW official fluff, is the units background and history plausible, and is the fluff written well? Remember this isn't a writing competition, but a high standard of English will certainly gain you bonus marks and make a good impression on the judges, whilst failure to make appropriate use of spelling, punctuation and grammar will be frowned upon.
Originality - A unit of dishonourable money grabbing men drawn from Bretonnia and the Empire, armed with barded steeds, lances, heavy armour and shields, led by a charismatic and even greedier man - bad idea for a unit. Why? Because it already exists. Anyone for Voland's Venators? Whilst making another heavy cavalry, pike, crossbow, ogre unit, is perfectly acceptable, if your unit resembles the fluff and fighting style of a current Regiment of Renown too closely, you'll be marked down, whilst a really interesting and unexpected idea is likely to be marked up. Having said that, don't go too crazy, or you'll end up marked down on fluff.
How Fun Is It? - Not every unit in the game needs to have you rolling in the aisles of your local GW whenever it takes to the field, but basically, we play warhammer for fun, and we want to enjoy using your unit. Regiments of Renown are meant to be special, and they're meant to stand out - so if your unit is boring, or frustrating for your opponent, or fails to capture either players imagination, it won't do well.
Other - The judges will look at various other aspects of your work. Is it too complicated to use in a battle? Are there loopholes in the rules writing which could be exploited? If you've converted the unit and sent in pictures, that's a big bonus, but we aren't necessarily expecting anyone to do that. If the humour is any good, if the historical or literary references you may (or may not) include are good and clever, anything like that will get you bonus points. Remember to think carefully about which races are allowed to pick your regiment too, and think carefully about what slot/s it should take up in army lists. Everything will be taken into account.
Do your best to model your rules on existing GW rules, and you'll be able to remain succinct and loophole free in your rules (hopefully). We recognise that not everyone is as expert on rules as a queek; but demonstrating a good understanding of this sort of thing can only help you.
Prizes What's a competition without prizes, eh? Well, we don't know for sure what we'll award and how many awards will be given, since we have no idea how much interest we'll get - however, prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and a list of highly commended entries, is most probable.
If there are no more than 16 entrants, no prizes besides the honour of victory and your place in the gallery of sealed works on H&A will be awarded. However, we would be disappointed despite strong conservatism of estimate if we don't get a good 30 entrants from H&A itself alone.
We have staff members in the UK, Canada, Australia, and Poland, so we should be able to get something to you wherever you live. It seems to make sense to negotiate an appropriate prize with winners individually.
Legal InfoTo submit to the competition, you must agree to the normal posting rules of Hammer and Anvil, with a few modifications:
The copyright of all submissions that does not belong to Games Workshop Ltd must belong to the person or persons submitting. The submitter will maintain all copyrights on their work, except that Hammer and Anvil reserves the right to re-produce, in any form, any information submitted to this site in any form, including e-mails to admin in an official capacity. Copyright will be attributed to it's owner where it does not belong to the site.
Hammer and Anvil reserves the right to remove any submission, in part or in whole, or to edit any submission for any reason without prior warning.
Submissions will be accepted up to midnight GMT at the end of the day listed as the deadline. Work may be submitted by posting it to the Hammer and Anvil forums at
http://www.hammer-anvil.com or by e-mail to competition@lightalliance.co.uk. E-mail submissions to this address will receive an automatic reply once they have been received. E-mails to the H+A admin privately are an acceptable means of submission, however they must still be received by the deadline. You are advised to read the post guidelines in the Entrants board and the FAQ in Competition Discussion before submitting your entry.
And finally...Good luck! May Vaul bless the hammer and may Grungni bless the anvil of your craft.
Wow...and that wasn't pretentious for a rules development site with 350 members running a 3 week competition...blame me, I wrote most of it, I can't help it, I guess it's compulsive, something like Tourettes 
