Choosing pre-game options for tournaments

Hi,
I'm just starting to go to a few local tournaments and I've noticed a typical trend of organisers making you select things like combat drugs, Alliance of Agony, Relics of the Dark City in advance of your games, and those being recorded on your army list and fixed for the tournament.
For example a +1S drug on my hellions is wasted if I'm against guardsmen, but useful against marines. The additional relic stratagem to take Helm of Spite would be handy against 1K Sons but wasted against Ad Mech.
Is this pretty standard, because it seems like a handicap to anyone who's army is meant to have some pre-game flexibility. I suppose I just have to pipe down and get on with it, but there we go.

It generally depends on the reglament of the organizers and also on inherent human laziness. For example, if your TOs use Battlescribe, you'll have the Warlord traits, Psychic powers and Relics set in stone simply because the program allows to do that. For the TO it just makes things easier.

You can have a talk with your TOs of course, but in general these kinds of rules and customs are highly gaming group dependant.

You need to ask your TO, Drugs, Powers, etc.. are SUPPOSED to be play before battle and not during list building, but many TO's are lazy and want this information before any games.

Some do, some dont. You need to ask.

As mu clubs TO, I do say that things have to be decided beforehand and explicitly stated on the army list handed in for approval.
Pretty much every small tournament in my area does the same (maybe five or six groups with their own events).

The bgeneral reason usually given in "fairness".
To say that everyone is bringing one army and one army only, in one configuration. So that if person A plays against an army, player B will play against the same army. And so on.

A little awkward if you choose the roll option for Combat Drugs.

I like the flexibility of minor tweaks pre-game, but whichever way it is done it is the same for everyone.

Everyone operates to the same rules, but that doesn't make it the same for everyone. Not every army has those pregame options built in. To use hyperbole, it would be like banning psykers. Both Dark Eldar and Grey Knights would play to the same rules, but one army would be screwed whilst the other would be unaffected.
I personally feel those options are part of the strategy and tactics made in an individual game like movements or target selection, not decisions and choices settled upon during list building.

That is ridiculous. Do they make you pre-choose the stratagems too?

Technically, they should only be able to force you to lock in the first free relic.  The extras are a pre-game stratagem like screaming jets or webway. To force you to select anything and everything out of some misplaced sense of fairness sounds pretty bad, I would not play in a club like that, and slash that TO's tires out of petty spite.

I don't like it and it removes some of the tactical flexibility that is supposed to be inherent in those rules. Right up there with chess clocks.

If you look at the GT primer for Warhammer World they required a lot of the pre-game stuff to be set for the entire tournament.

For people that are noting that setting relics or drugs for the tournament, how is it different than a side-board?

Its different because the whole idea is that you bring one army to a tournament.
One army, with one set of rules only.

A side board would allow you to change your army in some way.

The concept is based on fairness so that everyone at the tournament plays against the same army.

Fairness is a funny concept in a gaming context. This is one of those cases where all that really matters are the rules that the TO decides to apply. I see it equally fair whether you get to swap all the pre-battle items around or whether they are all fixed.

Squidmaster - how far would you take the same army requirements as a TO? I'm assuming you would have relics / drugs / psychic powers chosen before the start of the tournament from your comments. What about other before the battle decisions? For example, spending a command point for another relic, or choosing to Webway Portal or use Screaming Jets for a unit, or Alliance of Agony?

Kantalla wrote:

Squidmaster - how far would you take the same army requirements as a TO? I'm assuming you would have relics / drugs / psychic powers chosen before the start of the tournament from your comments. What about other before the battle decisions? For example, spending a command point for another relic, or choosing to Webway Portal or use Screaming Jets for a unit, or Alliance of Agony?

I take it as a lot of other TOs in my area take it.
Army lists should include everything that a model is equipped with, including Relics, Abilities, Combat Drugs, Psychic Powers. Basically everything about what is in the army, and on or associated with the models. This would include spending the points for additional Relics, and Alliance Of Agony, because you need to make a note of the Traits on the army list.
Basically, all pre-game stuff.

But NOT deployment stuff like Webway and Screaming Jets. Just the stuff that should be decided before the game starts.

I like Squids approach. It is interesting to look at psychic powers from third. You had to pay for specific powers at that point, so they were basically wargear options anyway.

Well, as for drugs i actually like randomly determining my drugs, so having that demand from a TO kinda takes some of the flair of the mechanic away for me, not that it's a huuuge deal. I do get the fact that it is better to choose, but it's more fun for me to not know before i deploy my army

I prefer the flexibility, but it's fine either way as long as it's advertised that way in advance.