Warhammer 40K: Army List Errors – Who’s at Fault?
A player builds an army that they think is legal, starts playing in an event, and discovers it’s not. Now what?
Looks like things are getting somewhat back to normal. A quick scan and it seems that there are more grand tournaments happening. Now the new edition of 40K has a lot of rules, as much as we would like to think that it has been streamlined. Other than the official codexes, Games Workshop is also adding new armies in the monthly White Dwarf and new ways to build armies in campaign books. This can make it difficult to keep track of what you can and cannot do when building your army.
Recently we had a grand tournament with a player whose list had an issue. While this is something that happens, unfortunately, it actually brought up a question may organizers and judges have to face when something like this happens. The problem we see is that a player builds an army that they think is legal, starts playing in the tournament then it is discovered that the list is actually illegal in one way or another. Many times there is an easy fix and the mistake is not intentional but sometimes it becomes trickier when the player is in a position to win or has won a tournament.
The Issue
So we had a player bring an Aeldari Soup list to a tournament. The list included a unit of one base of Razorwing Flocks. At the end of the tournament, it was discovered that in the Points adjustment it was listed as needed a minimum of 3 models for the unit. As a result, many people were saying that the list was illegal and should not have placed. The wrinkle in all this is that in the Power Level adjustment FAQ it shows the unit as being a choice of 1-3 models for the unit.
You might think that the power level part doesn’t matter because “who uses power level in matched play?” but we do use it when figuring out what units go into reserve and the command point cost to do so. Now both documents are official Games Workshops documents but they say two different things, so which one is correct, and ultimately whose responsibility is it to make sure it is correct?
Player’s Responsibility
Many will say that the onus is on the player to be sure that the army list is correct and legal. They should be intimately familiar with the army and codex to begin with. I am sure they have the friends from their club at least look at the list, if not actually help them build it. The judges and the community at large should not be doing the job that should have been done already. Having a legal list is not that difficult, especially with the availability of online army builder applications that can check for you if a list is legal and if not, why it is illegal. You shouldn’t have to rely on the judges, or the internet, to check your lists for you in order to play in a tournament.
The Tournament’s Responsibility
Yes, the player should be aware of what is legal and what is not for their list but it ultimately falls to the tournament organizers to be sure that a list is legal. By accepting a list and allowing it to be played in the event you are basically giving the okay to the list, whether it is legal or not. It is understandable that sometimes there are simply too many lists to go over in a short amount of time, especially when Games Workshop has a quick release schedule.
This is why you place the lists open to be viewed by the general public. This gives the lists hundreds, if not thousands, of additional pairs of eyes to look them over and see if anything is amiss. This assumes that people are looking at all the lists and not just the known players at the tournament because when you do that you will miss that dark horse list then it does well and people are then surprised that it has issues.
Whose Fault?
So then who is responsible for the illegal list? I think in the case I mentioned it is a bit of everyone. Games Workshop for a bad FAQ, the player for not looking at the power level FAQ, trusting the list building programs to be correct, and the organizers for apparently also not checking the power level FAQ. One thing we do for our tournaments, and I don’t know if they did it, is that we check the undefeated lists to make sure they are legal the night before the final day. This usually lets us get ahead of any list issues that may come up or to correct or replace that player, if needed.
Because of the 2 different FAQs that say 2 different things, it was decided to not penalize the player. I agree with the decision as he shouldn’t be punished for the game company’s misstep, just maybe a little more due diligence and an email to the TO asking for clarification about this would have helped greatly. As always each issue really depends on the circumstances of the issue in question and at what point of the tournament you are in, mainly when you need to decide on what sanctions to dole out.
~That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed the article. let me know what you thin, and how you would resolve list issues during a tournament, in the comments section below.
