Welcome to Galactic Escalation Fall 2024! V-set 26 will be legal for play and we will be playing on the restricted map list. Last Spring we tried a new change to the format and it worked great, so we are going to continue the use of Divisions to encourage more people to join and for the tournament to go a little quicker. Open to suggestions as always for ways to improve this format!

Hope you all can join!

Rules: Each participant makes a initial 100pt team following normal squad building rules. For returning players from our previous GE tournament (Spring 2024), you must build a 100pt squad from a different faction than in the those other tournaments. Rounds 1-4 will consist of matchups between all participants in round robin in your division and a random matchup with a player (or players) from the other division. The 100pt team used will be built upon in subsequent rounds.

Important note: If you use a Reinforcements piece, you must submit your up to 10 separate lists of preferred reinforcements prior to the start of a rounds matchups.

Important note: If you use a piece with Rapport, you don't get to benefit from it in reverse. It only applies to mini's added in the current round and in the future rounds. If you don't have someone with Rapport in round 1, but add one in latter in round 2, Rapport doesn't apply to any mini's from the previous round's build. For example: Round 1 you have a 100pt squad of 25pt ERC's Sev, Fixer, and Scorch with 25pt Republic commando Atin. If you add in 26pt ERC Boss in and 24pt (because he does get rapport from Atin) Republic commando Fi for round 2, you don't get Rapport -2 for ERC's Sev, Fixer, or Scorch because ERC Boss wasn't present when they were a squad build. Likewise, Atin doesn't benefit from Rapport -1 since RC Fi wasn't in the squad at the time he was included. Any further ERC's and Omega Squad RC's would benefit from Rapport -2 or -1 in future rounds 3 and 4. So in conclusion, if you want to benefit from Rapport, add in the character with rapport as early as you can to fully benefit from it when escalating from round 1-4.

Maps: Restricted list for 2024:

Commander's Office aka Ravaged Base(#16)
Remote Listening Post (#79)
Frigid Outpost (#165)
Great Library (#103)
Starport District (#102)
Pirate's Moon SW (#126)

Banned list: Tulak Horde

Important Rule exception for subsequent round squad building: If you wish to bank points, you may carry over up to 10pt into the next rounds build total. This is the only exception to adding 50pts in round 2 & 3, giving you up to 60pts instead if either Round 1 build total is 90-99pt and Round 2 build total is 140-149pts.

Time per game in rounds 1-3 is 75 minutes. Round 4 is 90 minutes. You will have 1 week after posting matchups to get your game in against your opponent.

Start date: October 9th (Wednesday). Please sign up/submit squads by midnight on October 8th (Tuesday).

Participants:

Mando
UrbanShmi
spryguy1981
N3rdSl4y3r
thereisnotry
Overley28
DarthMaim
Hi-Fives
gandalf
urbanjedi
NoffyD (pending?)
Lightsaber

If anyone else is interested in joining, please post below! This is a tournament that will take place over about a 1 month period. We are using divisions of groups of 5 players each again this year, so hopefully we can get at least 10 players to sign up (if its less we can do more cross division matchups). The tournament will take place over 4 rounds. Each player will usually have 1 week to get their game in against their opponent. Rounds 1-3 will consist of 1 game each, and round 4 will be 2 games. Round Robin format will be used for pairings. The top 2 players of each division after all 4 rounds are completed, will progress to the playoffs. The rounds will happen in this order:

Round 1: 100pts
Round 2: 150pts (use exact team from round 1 + 50pts of new miniatures. You may choose to upgrade 1 unique character from the previous round to one that has a higher cost and counts as the same character, following faction rules, to be a part of the 50 additional points)
Round 3: 200pts (use exact same team from round 2 + 50pts of new miniatures. You may choose to upgrade 1 unique character from the previous round to one that has a higher cost and counts as the same character, following faction rules, to be a part of the 50 additional points)
Round 4: Challenger approaching! 200pts + 150pts (this 150pts is for 2 to 3 regular non-epic minis totaling up to 150pts). You use exact same team from round 3 + whatever 2-3 miniatures you use for the 150 additional points. You may choose to upgrade 1 unique character from the previous round to one that has a higher cost and counts as the same character, following faction rules, to be a part of the 150 additional points. The combination of 2-3 regular non-epic additional mini's must be from your squads faction or be allowed into your faction/squad via CE/SA (Fringe 100pt Revan and regular Fringe characters can be used in any faction).

The goal is to encourage more participation with the lower time frame needed to complete the tournament. With just 1 game being played in rounds 1-3 and 2 games in round 4, we should be able to determine an overall winner in half the time compared to previous seasons. If you have never tried this format before, this is a good time to try it out! For people who had joined before and felt it was too much of a time commitment (previously took about 3 months to complete initially), I hope this format of scheduling will be something you'd like to try again.

I'm in!

I'm in

Nightsister hunters and Tulak were too dominant and not fun to play against in this format. Tulak is uber tanky and in 100pt or 150pt, he is quite difficult to play against. Nightsister Hunters are just too powerful in a Mother Talzin Nightsister squad, so they have been banned for a while in this format. A lot players wanted them off the table to encourage more different squad builds. If a majority really want to have one or both available tho, we can have them. I'll leave that up to all the players tho if they feel the game is in a good enough state to have counters for them at all point levels.

I'm in! I will be very busy in the end of October so I may have to end up forfeiting a match, but oh well, I still get to play most of it.

I am in. I am open to having all characters available to play....as much as I would hate to play Tulak

In

I'm with Mando on this one. We're playing for fun and with this format, it gets abusive in the early rounds and at 350. Please take Mando's advice as he's been doing an excellent job for a few years now

I'm easy going either way on it. I wasn't planning to play Tulak anyway.

I'll post when I have my squad submitted and then people can send me their squads. Have to figure out still what I want to run