The judge at my venue is great. He has really drummed up numbers for the events and runs a lot of fun scenarios.

He's been judging other games forever, and he recently saved Clix from destruction at that store. He runs tournies by the book, and doesn't troll the boards much. For instance, he wasn't judging when retirement became house-rulable (if that's even a word.) If you've ever looked at the comprehensive tourney rules, it's not worded clearly, at all, and I'm having trouble convincing him that it is. (Not that I care on a personal level. I usually play with my newer figures, so retiurement hasn't hit me all that hard. It just sux when a kid can't play or has to borrow some figs he doesn't even know because half of his team is retired.)

Anyway, can some of you judges, or hair10, if he sees this, help me confirm that house rules can govern retirement?

The Comprehensive Tournament Rules, dated June 23, 2006, states this about House Rules on page 3:

For those without this document, the sections that House Rules cannot override are:

1.1 Sanctioned Events
1.6 HeroClix Universes
1.8 House Rules
8.0 Marquee Special Format Rules
9.0 Wizard World HeroClix Invitationals

By looking at the What House Rules Cannot Do section, you see that the "Retirement" section (which I believe is 1.7, but I can't get to the document right now) is NOT listed in that section... so by default, you CAN House Rule out the Retirement requirement.

Hope this helps.

WolvieFan9 is correct.

But do these sentances:
"House rules cannot alter the format of an event, substantially alter the core mechanics of the game, or alter any program rules as presented in the WizKids Approved Play Comprehensive Rules. House Rules also cannot change the tournament type—for instance, a Sealed event cannot be run as Constructed or vice versa."
not cover this topic. If you change the sets that are retired then you change it from a restricted format to an unrestricted format don't you?
Maybe I am wrong on this and if I am that is ok but it seems pretty cut and dry to me.

hair10, thanks for your input here.


This is the part that is confusing me, as well. Can you clarify this a little?

Just have the judge go online and make it unrestricted

No big deal, as long as it's one week in advance

The short answer is that since section 1.7 is not specifically called out as something that cannot be house ruled, it can be (section 1.7 is the section dealing with retired figures). Previous versions of the document (when retirement could not be house ruled) called out section 1.7 in section 1.8.1.

For example, this is from the FEb 1, 2005 Approved Play document...
Essentially, when I changed the document to remove section 1.7 from 1.8.1, I simply modified the first sentance and left the rest alone. I could probably clear up the wording a bit more but the intent is clear... retirement can be "house ruled away".

IIRC, we've also been given (more-or-less unofficial) permission to change the type (i.e. constructed into sealed), despite the wording of the comprehensive play document...modulo the standard requirement that the official Approved Play listing has that detail.

Since the Approved Play system has effectively eliminated "sealed events" (except for the non-changeable Marquee events), I'd really like to see this part of the document overhauled.