Thanks to the lack of new stuff from ffg to discuss, I was left with my own thoughts. Dangerous thing thoughts.

Three round tourney. Every one plays every round, maybe 8 players? Standard 400 pt rules and scoring just to keep it from getting too stupid.

Round 1 - must take a minimum of 4 small base ships, any other combo beyond that is fine.

Round 2 - must take a minimum of 3 medium base ships plus whatever else you can squeeze in.

Round 3 - must take 2 large base ships, you get the point.

Goal is to force people to fly lists that might not be meta or in their comfort zone, make the lists a little different from what you always see locally, and maybe have some fun trying different stuff.

What lists would you take? And.... go.

Well, the Rebels only have 1 option for Round 2.

That's harsh.

Thanks for responding. No one said you had to keep the same faction all the way. I just hear all the whining about "ohhh I see too many ___________. They dominate everything." This setup forces people to break from that even if just a little bit.

I love the general idea of forcing people to mix it up, but those specific restrictions are rough for exactly the reason Dras pointed out. Just because you're not requiring people to stick with one faction doesn't mean they won't: there are plenty of people who only play one side or the other for a host of different reasons. And because of that, round 2 will have half the tourney running triple-AF2s, and round 3 will have the other half running dual ISDs. If the idea is to mix it up, that's kind of counter-productive.

What you might try is implementing some of the rules people suggest that specifically target some of the things people are complaining about to see how they work. Some such ideas off the top of my head, each more half-baked than the last:

Flotillas don't count against tabling
The out-activated player always goes last
You may not activate the same ship last in one turn and first in the subsequent round
Only a certain subset of objectives (either core or CC) is legal
A flotilla may not be used as the Most Wanted objective ship
You must have at least twice as many generic squadrons as uniques

Note that I don't necessarily think most of these are good ideas, but hey, most are untested on any large scale, so maybe one is great. Maybe you could try one such rule per round and see how it goes?

Another option is what we're doing in a league locally right now: each player brings three different lists, each with a different admiral. At the start of each round, each player hands his lists to his opponent and players choose which of their opponents' lists to face, and then reveal them at the same time. After each list has been played once, it is removed from the pool (so you eventually have to use all of the lists you brought). It encourages players to try new things, though it may not quite get at what you're after if you're trying to remove specific elements from play.

What about a luck of the draw tournament?

Put a bunch of oddball build requirements into a hat and everyone draws one each round and has 15 minutes to build a fleet to play.

No fighters, only small ships, 1 ship of each size minimum, no small ships, 130+ points of fighters, no titles, no unique fighters, no unique officers, only unique fighters, no upgrades on ships, etc.

Keep in mind that some people may only have one faction or a collection that isn't as extensive as your own, so make sure you don't put something in that forces people to have 3 of one ship (only mediums for someone that is a rebel player). Also, give everyone a mulligan. If they pull something they can't build or simply don't want to, they can mulligan and pull again, but they are stuck with the 2nd draw.

It would be interesting to see the different builds and see how they perform. If you make everyone play to the same build requirements you are going to have a lot of mirror matches which isn't all that interesting.