At long last, the results of the annual review have arrived. The new documents are in process however once completed they will be available at:
https://www.thenaf.net/tournaments/nafdocs/
As expected the process was delayed a bit as we waited for the biannual FAQ from Games Workshop. As GW will continue to publish these clarifications in November, a December release for the NAF review is likely to become a fixture.
These will be in effect for all tournaments from January 1, 2023. If organizers wish to change their rules to reflect these changes, they may do so but must formally notify the tournament approval staff (or their local RTO if they’re unsure of their tournament staffer. See the NAF’s staff page for all of the above.)
Takeaways and related notes:
- The biggest change is that organizers may now choose to selectively ban Star Players for their events. This means you can allow everyone except Morg’n’Thorg, only Morg’n’Thorg, only stars under 100k, only stars with the Secret Weapon trait, etc. As Games Workshop is continuing to introduce more and more stars, the NAF wanted to give organizers the tools to balance tournaments as they see fit. We would like to request that they be thoughtful about the impact of selectively allowing certain stars, however.
- This does not mean that there are no rules regarding stars. Organizers may not modify or remove star players’ stats, special abilities, or availability. Doing so would mean that their tournaments either could not be approved or would be classified as “Specialist” (a relatively new designation that allows tournaments to be tracked outside of the usual ranking system).
- NAF-approved tournament series will return for 2023. We need to revisit the rules for these, so series organizers should wait before formalizing their plans for next year.
- Those variants not (yet?) published by GW will be updated for BB20/Second Season. While the NAF doesn’t want to interfere with any plans that GW may have, there was been an increase in Street and Deathbowl tournaments and they could use some consistency.
- The NAF will not create “official” or alternative tiers but may include some examples in next year’s revised sanctioning document. Organizers seem to have their own strong ideas on the subject and this creates some variety.
- There are no plans to remove Slann from the NAF’s list of supported team types, and all current members of the committee hope that this will never happen.
- The qualifications for hosting a National tournament (100 active members, at least one tournament with 50+ participants, no pre-existing Major) will not change, as the program seems to be working as intended with 5 nations having qualified so far. Deeper consideration of the National/Major system is expected next year.
- The 24+2 program and patches will be discontinued at the end of the year as planned. While it was one of the organization’s most beloved and successful programs, it no longer has much relationship to the modern game. One final shout out to the concept’s creator, Bill “fnord23” Murphy, for entrusting it to the NAF.
As ever, thanks to Acting TD Alexander “Stimme” Weiss for running this process and to all of the NAF staffers that assisted with it.