Tournament Rules?

[rapier1642]

Is there a set of formalized rule for Tournaments yet? Would love to see those and a set of formalized campaign rules released.

[Oberst Hajj]

There are no official rules for tournaments or campaigns yet. Andrea said in the interview that he would like to do some campaign rules, but they are not on his short list of things to do.

About the only official word on tournament play is to remove the explosion card... but even in the rule books it says that is optional.

There are lots of campaign rules out there. Some are quite thin on details while others, like the Knights of the Air rules I've written up and uploaded to the File System here on the site, are quite detailed with clarification on how to work out issues as well as providing a complete set of missions to play during the campaign.

[rapier1642]

well hopefully both systems will be formalised soon, as the player base is growing, and I know a lot of the local players in my area have asked about tournament rules, especially after seeing the golden plane awards for tournaments in italy.

[Oberst Hajj]

Tournaments are pretty easy. Just pick a set of missions to play with any special rules clearly stated and printed out. Figure out if you want to run a standard bracket tourny or some thing more interesting. Remove the explosion card and have them go at it. Have a look here for a tourny ran by Kiwi Ace.

[Kiwi_Ace]

I agree there is a need for formal tournament rules. its really cool how people are designing their own imo. not just me but loads of players are coming up with interesting optional rules for this game. tournament play is one example of this development.

for easy reference here is the main info from my tournament which i ran over a month ago...

My goal was to have 16 players, paired off into 2-person teams complete in a series of standardized missions. I had to go out on my own as there was nothing out there to base it on other than Keith's KotA campaign rules.

Mission One "Burning Drachens"
Mission Type: Balloon Busting
Set Up: Each player selects any one fighter from 1917.
Both teams have two A machine gun cards and one observation balloon placed anywhere on their side.
No additional observation balloons or random ground targets.
After 12 turns the observation balloons are pulled down and no more respawning of planes is allowed.
Objective: Destroy the enemy observation balloon and all enemy aircraft.

Mission Two "Watch your Back"
Mission Type: Reconnaissance
Set Up: Each team selects two fighters and one two-seater plane. All aircraft must be from 1916 or 1917.
Both teams have one anti-aircraft gun and two trench cards placed anywhere on their side.
No random ground targets or observation balloons.
Each aircraft can respawn once this mission.
Objectives:
(1) Destroy enemy AA Gun
(2) Photograph both trenches and return safely to your edge of the playing surface.

Mission Three "Famous Aces"
Mission Type: Dogfight
Set Up: Each team selects two 1917 fighters and two 1918 fighters. Collisions with friendly aircraft of the same type are ignored.
No random ground targets or observation balloons.
Each team selects one pilot to be the Squadron Leader. This pilot gains one Single Ace ability of their choice. +1 Pilot Point for each kill on a Squadron Leader.
Each team can respawn two aircraft this mission.
Objective: Destroy all enemy aircraft.

Campaign rules will be used and pilot points from these missions will determine which two teams, the best from each side (Axis versus Allies) will go into the grand final. The top two teams will play the following mission...

Mission Four "Fokker Scourge"
Dogfight
Set Up: Each pilot selects three fighter planes: one from each era (1916 — 1917 — 1918).
Pilots start the mission with the 1916 aircraft and then respawn into the next era aircraft. Once the 1918 aircraft is destroyed, that pilot takes no further part in the mission.
+1 Pilot Point for destroying an enemy aircraft which has more advanced technology (One year newer).
+2 Pilot Points for destroying an enemy aircraft which has far more advanced technology (Two years newer).
Objective: Destroy all enemy aircraft.

In the final mission "Fokker Scourge" teams will have access to specific aircraft. These will be:
Axis
(1) Albatros DIII
(2) Fokker triplane
(3) Fokker DVII
Allies
(1) Neuport 17
(2) Sopwith Camel
(3) Sopwith Snipe

the tournament was very busy to run but fun. we only had 13 players in the end, with 3 preregistered guys pulling out earlier in the week so we shuffled the teams around a little and had 3 single-player teams and 5 two-player teams. the guys flying solo were at a sizeable disadvantage having to manouvre, 2, 3 and then 4 planes on their own but this task was given to the more experienced pilots where possible.

Mission 1 and Mission 3 were very cool. The mission 3 dogfight was the most interesting for me as i was piloting 4 camels flying in formation on my own. for a while it looked like i was gonna win the sortie but my respawning ace pilot getting exploded in the same turn he re-entered the game swung things back towards the axis players i was fighting.

Mission 2 recon was too hard. None completed the mission, the nest group managed to photograph one of two ground targets, many 2-seaters were shot down after taking the photo but before they could safely return to their end of the board. Nest time i would just use one target as the recon and have one team defending (with just fighters, probably 3). Attacking or defending sides would be decided by a roll of the dice or perhaps let the team with the most mission points from mission 1 chooses to recon or defend the recon mission.

The grand final played out very well. The top axis and allied teams after 3 missions facing off using staggered upgrading of technology. As i was playing for the allies all weekend i was really hoping they would pull it out. The axis team in the final was the only "Out of town" team in the tournament so for them to win the final was going to really hurt our local pride!
The allies lost the first plane and lots of strategic manouvering later found themselves with a snipe and camel versus 2 mid-war albatross, not a good sign as the snipe getting shot down meant the allies would be left with just one plane on the board!

Soon after the game balanced out and swung back to the allies with just one virtually undamaged snipe versus one heavily damaged FokkerDVII. This was going to be close. A real finals match. After trading damage for a bit the German plane found itself on 4 armour points getting shot at close range, im sure the allies tactic was to just get into a close combat trade-off and let the armour take it. This worked and the Fokker went down leaving a single snipe on the table. HORAY!!! a victory for the allies!!! this certainly went against the trend of the weekend with the axis players generally doing better that the allies head to head.

we used an exel spreadsheet to record all mission and ace points. this was a good idea as there were 32 individual pilots to keep track of. Whew! i need a rest from organizing the next tourney but thankfully another player in our group has volunteered to do the next one.