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Kallbrand wrote:

mikhaila wrote:I did a couple tournaments this month.
120 pts max score. 30 painting, 30 comp, 20 for each of 3 games.

Painting and comp are judged by me, so there is no comp system to game. My comp is 0-20pts based on how good/hard/efficient your army is, plus another 0-10 pts for how fun/interesting/fair it is to play against.

Godzilla style nids with 8 MCs, or a Thorek gunline in fantasy, come in around 1/30 on this system. So far it's working fairly well.

So you actually get to choose who wins? That seems fair. Your friends know what kind of things you think is fair and get max score and those who have no clue and bring the wrong thing is bumped off the top.. and that is if you judge it fairly. Some people just max out their friends.. Sounds like the worst possible system.

Given that I'm one of the guys who played in said tournaments (and got the 3rd Worst comp there 2/30) you're reading it wrong.

mikhaila owns a shop (two actually) and runs events. Most of the people who come to these things know him pretty well enough to know that he can discern BS army lists from good comp lists.

Honestly, it's probably the most fair system there is. No player's screwing up comp by not grading it at all and giving the max, or people chipmunking you because you won. What you've got is an objective guy who's been in the business for ages, probably knows all the players except for the random dudes who showed up for the first time that day, and know's what is currently a bunch of BS in either 40k or WHFB.

And FYI, the person who got the second lowest comp in the event (1/30) won the WHFB tourney cause he won all his games.

Being a long time Ancient tourny gamer I can testify to that last comment.

All armies are NOT created equal and some have much less chance of being competative than others. For example in WRG 6th and 7th editions Late Imperial Roman and Seleucid armies often dominated the tourny scene due to their good mix of powerful troop types and extreme flexibility due to large numbers of choices and low minimum requirments. On the other hand an army like "Early Lybian" which consists almost entirely of shieldless javelin skirmishers is never going with do well in an open tourny enviorment. Likewise in the current Ancient tourny game of choice, Field of Glory, the Middle Eastern horse archer armies are racking up the wins....much to the irritation of a player like me who prefers hard hitting knight and warband armies.

The whole "some armies are more equal than others" phenomenon is nothing new and still is an issue even in games that ARE designed with competative play in mind, like the afore mentioned Field of Glory. Losing comp scores in 40k will not change this.

TR

Blackmoor wrote:So to do that I have to leave comp behind, and play the hard lists to be up with the big boys. So goodbye comp, we had several good years together, and now it is time to take the big bite out of the cheese plate….comp you will be missed.

I'm sorry to hear that you've decided to turn to the Dark Side.

There another option if you don't like to play "no comp", and you don't like to play WAAC lists, then don't - just ease out of the Tournament scene and move to casual gaming where Comp just isn't an issue...

Florida has some comp friendly tournaments while others are no comp. I used to be all for comp but comp in 3rd edition made for many Rhino Rush lists that were perfect comp while others suffered. It made all the armys much of the same with a difference in the army itself.

Now im not going to shed any tears if a tournament has no comp but if I know there is a comp tournament I will take one of my friendlier armies (Sam-Hain Eldar).

mikhaila wrote:Painting and comp are judged by me, so there is no comp system to game. My comp is 0-20pts based on how good/hard/efficient your army is, plus another 0-10 pts for how fun/interesting/fair it is to play against.

Nothing wrong with this, but it's only one opinion... I'd recommend multiple independent judges.
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Hulksmash wrote:90% of the time it's totally subjective

Personally I prefer the checklist system where it is very hard to lose more than a point out of 10-12 points based on your army.

I think that *theme* should be subjectively rated, and wouldn't mind a point or two on how "competitive" your opponent believes your list to be. More than that is probably excessive.

I htink that *comp* should be a mechanical checklist.
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Hellfury wrote:Honestly, I think 40K isn't meant for a tournament environment

For example, why do you not see a comp scores at a M:tG tourney?

Completely agreed, that tournament 40k is taking the game outside the design.

MtG is apples and oranges because all players have access to all of the cards. There are no limits on blending or mixing or other restrictions. If MtG had a 40k-like approach, you would be expected to play a mono deck, with an expectation of some amount of Creatures and limits on Instants. If 40k were one big list of stuff, then it would only exacerbate things. For example, SM Tacticals would compete directly with DA Tacticals, so DA Tacticals would never see play. It would be a quick system of winnowing things down even further than they are today. The 40k Codex system and FOC are designed to increase variety from the RT-"take anything" approach, and the vast reduction of Allies is closing down the old 25% Allies allowance.
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Blackmoor wrote:#1. I traveled to Sacramento for a 5 game “GT like” event that had a long list of comp restrictions.

#2. I was playing at an RTT in Salem, OR with my Eldar just a couple of years ago, and they had a very detailed list of what was penalized as comp. So I carefully made my army (I learned from my mistake above) and followed all of the comp rules, and then in round #2 I played against a guy who did not care about the comp, and brought the hardest army he could. The downside is that he blew my comp friendly army off of the table.

So noted, and sorry to hear that. Clearly, the comp didn't have sufficient impact so that your overall friendly comp made up for the difference in battle. That's a scoring fault that overly-rewards battle.
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ArbitorIan wrote:i think comp should stay. I haven't played tournaments for a couple of years, and prefer to play friendlies, but a SUBJECTIVE comp score seems the only way to fill certain cracks in game design.

First, and foremost, 40k is NOT a balanced game for competitive play.

The problem is that as soon as you introduce a comp 'structure' or checklist, then it becomes possible for people to game THAT.

The only way to do a comp score is to have a small group of impartial people judge the armies.

Generally agreed with all of the above, though, again, a bit of both - subjective and objective would be fair.

For the Night Lords example, max-Fast should have a small comp penalty, tut the NL would get a theme point (or two) to roughly balance things out.

The only thing I've started to bemoan recently at tournies is the unfinished/unpainted armies. Those are the ones that really get to me.

Otherwise I don't ding people's armies even if there is a comp scoring w/1 exception. Dual Nob Bikers get dinged and their total depends on what other units they brought in the list. Stormboyz or trukk boyz, not such a bad ding. 2 units of gretchen and a 30 man foot mob, much worse ding. And even then if they didn't make more than 6 models different for wound allocation I don't really ding the bikers. Call me crazy but I've long since adopted if it's legal in the codex it's legal to play and I've yet to run into a "top-tier" army I couldn't give a run with any of mine.

Oh, and i'm still glad comp is dead. It was a weasely way to ding non-marine players. Heck, my Iron Warriors scored full comp points back in the day

ArbitorIan wrote:
A comp score is intended to be a way of judging both the list building AND the fluffiness of an army, and reduce the incidence of broken or beardy or exploitative lists.

Incorrect.

You can make many a fluffy armies that are VERY hard, and doesnt do squad to reduce brokeness.

I can make say a fluffy mechanized sisters list thats hard as nails and easily passes a fluff test.

This whole comp problem is unfixable. Killkrazy's third point hits the nail on the head: comp is used to make up for deficiencies in the codeces.

If GW would actually put 100% into their codex and putting them out in a timely matter, and were able to make it so most armies had more than 1-2 competitive set-ups (where as some have none) that way you would find lists that are considered "cheese" instead it would just be personal preference combined with smart list making and variety. Take orks for example, their lists are condemned to either be largely powerful and get cried cheese at, or they tend to be comically terrible and get their asses handed to them. This is because of shoddy codex writing, with huge imbalances in force organization and point-costs for specialist troops.

Another option is making a scaled force organization chart more similar to fantasy battle. Being able to take the same amount of elites/FA/HS in 500 points as 10,000 points just screams to being taken advantage of right from the get-go. If they did a better job of scaling troops-to-specialist unitsj AND did a better job of making codeces with some variety in their competitiveness, we would have an awesome game here where we wouldn't need to worry about comp at all.

carmachu wrote:

ArbitorIan wrote:
A comp score is intended to be a way of judging both the list building AND the fluffiness of an army, and reduce the incidence of broken or beardy or exploitative lists.

Incorrect.

You can make many a fluffy armies that are VERY hard, and doesnt do squad to reduce brokeness.

I can make say a fluffy mechanized sisters list thats hard as nails and easily passes a fluff test.

What about armies where the only way to match the hardness is to break fluff? Witch hunters tend to score very well overall in GTs, maybe it's because they can get solid comp scores for fluff while still making a power list? Not all armies can do this, and not all armies can do this to the same degree. Armies weren't balanced (not that they were balanced all the well to begin with) with the fluff and accompanying comp scores they are likely to receive at tournaments, that's BS.

Comp is a way for bad players to blame other people for their own failings and the failings of the Games Dev studio.

Any comp system essentially fails, is fundamentally unfair to some players, and provides a false veneer of fairness.

Well, in fairness, objective comp with a checklist is always "fair", the same way that any rules are fair. The TO makes the rules, and you play by them. Even if it neuters some lists or even whole armies, it's as fair as any other setup where the rules are available to anyone ahead of time to evaluate their army against.

Subjective comp on the other hand is never fair, even if you have 10 judges, drop the highest/lowest, blah blah. But then again subjective judging doesn't stop people from competing in figure skating and gymnastics either.

As for the false veneer of fairness, I agree that subjective scoring does just that. heck there's another thread right now with someone ranting about how certain specific armies are too strong. Like any comp system doesn't end up with some army that's strongest.

The Green Git wrote: Where it's more important to ensure your opponent is having fun too than to make sure your list is top tier?

I hate people bringing up this...Quite frankly, if my opponent doesn't have fun because my list is too powerful, then they are being the bad sports and the one too focused on winning the game.

I've played games where I was outmatched, and I knew this from the start...And I still had fun...

We can seperate, for the purposes of discussion, comp into two flavors.

Call them fluffcomp and playcomp, or better names if you think of any.

You lose fluffcomp points if you make armies that are different from those described in the codex.

You lose playcomp points if you make armies that are extremely strong.

Sound like a good description of the meta-concept that is comp? Can anyone think of other categories, or further subdivide these two?

40kenthusiast wrote:Sound like a good description of the meta-concept that is comp? Can anyone think of other categories, or further subdivide these two?

Sounds pretty good to me.

The problem with fluffcomp is that the fluff has changed over the years, and some armies don't have as well defined 'fluff' armies as Space Marines (hurr!).

40kenthusiast wrote:We can seperate, for the purposes of discussion, comp into two flavors.

Call them fluffcomp and playcomp, or better names if you think of any.

You lose fluffcomp points if you make armies that are different from those described in the codex.

You lose playcomp points if you make armies that are extremely strong.

Sound like a good description of the meta-concept that is comp? Can anyone think of other categories, or further subdivide these two?

Except that the codexes rarely give an "example" force, and if they do, those examples are either just people's personal armies, or some nebulous paper roster. Nowhere do they say that any examples they give are how the game is supposed to be played...that was the big flaw in John's argument a few weeks ago.

And objective comp is less unfair than subjective comp, but what it does is essentially take something that's completely legal, and declare that someone should be penalized for it. In other words, you're penalizing the player, because GW wrote rules for something that are good.

SmoovKriminal wrote:This whole comp problem is unfixable.

comp is used to make up for deficiencies in the codeces.

If GW would actually put 100% into their codex and putting them out in a timely matter, and were able to make it so most armies had more than 1-2 competitive set-ups
This is because of shoddy codex writing, with huge imbalances in force organization and point-costs for specialist troops.

Another option is making a scaled force organization chart more similar to fantasy battle. Being able to take the same amount of elites/FA/HS in 500 points as 10,000 points just screams to being taken advantage of right from the get-go.

IMO, you don't really "get" how 40k works.

First, Comp isn't supposed to be "fixable", because that presumes that something even needs fixing, and I'm not convinced that this is the case.

That is, IMO, the problem lies not with the Codices, but with the players. The Codices give the player a lot of freedom to make a list, with the understanding that players should field well-themed armies. Many players choose not to do this, by choice or design. That isn't GW's fault, as otherwise, the Codices would become overly restrictive and potentially stifling.

The idea that GW's Cocides are "shoddy" is strange - GW Codices are screwdrivers, so stop trying to drive nails with them!

But you are correct that GW does bias costs and options for thematic flavor purposes. For reference, MtG does this, too. For example, Green nearly always has the biggest, baddest creatures and there generally isn't anything even close comparable in blue. White nearly always has the best healing and damage prevention, again at vastly reduced costs compared to any other color, assuming it's available. So why should GW not bias their costs and availability in their Codices?

The scaled FOC follows from the flawed presumption that that 40k armies must fit into neat little boxes. 40k does away with that notion entirely by throwing the FOC out the window in Apocalypse, doing away with the entire notion of comp in favor of Datasheets that allow players to theme their forces.

The idea that WFB scales nicely doesn't work at the extremes, and you'd be hard-pressed to have a 10k WFB army that works "right": up to 20 Characters (max 9 Lords), max 10 Rare, max 12 Special. With only 11 Core required, that can be filled with well under 1k pts. Proportionally, you have 2.5x the Lords, 40% more Rares, and only give up 20% of your Specials. You think that's not going to be totally broken?

For example, High Elves would take 1k worth of Archers and fill the remaining 9k points with lv.4 Archmages on Moon Dragons, supported by a chorus of lv.2 Dragon Mages. Yay?

SmoovKriminal wrote:

What about armies where the only way to match the hardness is to break fluff? Witch hunters tend to score very well overall in GTs, maybe it's because they can get solid comp scores for fluff while still making a power list? Not all armies can do this, and not all armies can do this to the same degree. Armies weren't balanced (not that they were balanced all the well to begin with) with the fluff and accompanying comp scores they are likely to receive at tournaments, that's BS.

Examples?

Ork nob biker armyis fluffy as a speed freak army. Drop pod marines are fluffy(although I dont know exactly if their as effective). I can go on and on and on.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

That is, IMO, the problem lies not with the Codices, but with the players. The Codices give the player a lot of freedom to make a list, with the understanding that players should field well-themed armies. Many players choose not to do this, by choice or design. That isn't GW's fault, as otherwise, the Codices would become overly restrictive and potentially stifling.

In what universe do you live in? No thats not the understanding at all.

If you but out an army book, and say "you have 3 HS slots" and say....4 choices, there is NOTHING in the game or book, that means you cant put in3 of the same. There is nothing to say you have to have a theme. The only guiding light is...the force chart and points limits.

Your delusional to think thats what should happen. Can it? Sure. Do folks have to? No.

JohnHwangDD wrote:There another option if you don't like to play "no comp", and you don't like to play WAAC lists, then don't - just ease out of the Tournament scene and move to casual gaming where Comp just isn't an issue...

Why is it a sin to play competitive tourney games?

carmachu wrote:Ork nob biker armyis fluffy as a speed freak army.

Is it?

Or would a "proper" Speed Freekz army have Biker Boyz and Trukk Boyz and so on, rather than *just* Nob Bikers?

JohnHwangDD wrote:
IMO, you don't really "get" how 40k works.

First, Comp isn't supposed to be "fixable", because that presumes that something even needs fixing, and I'm not convinced that this is the case.

That is, IMO, the problem lies not with the Codices, but with the players. The Codices give the player a lot of freedom to make a list, with the understanding that players should field well-themed armies. Many players choose not to do this, by choice or design. That isn't GW's fault, as otherwise, the Codices would become overly restrictive and potentially stifling.

What? Seriously? People who think "hmm, three squads of bloodcrushers/lootas/obliterators/whatever sure looks powerful, I think I'll take them" just don't understand how the game works? Seriously? This argument is nonsense. The game rules are clear. The only people who don't understand what armies you should expect to see are people who have deluded themselves into thinking there is some kind of extra rules in the book other than Unit cost and FOC. The real problem is when units in the same FOC chart for the same army are not even close to the same power level/balance. Or when one whole codex is worse at everything than another codex. Or when one or two units in a codex are significantly broken, either on their own or due to a change in the rules. It isn't the fault of the players for thinking 'man, thats pretty good, i'll use it'. Especially not in a TOURNAMENT.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

The idea that GW's Cocides are "shoddy" is strange - GW Codices are screwdrivers, so stop trying to drive nails with them!

No one is driving nails with them. It's more like the codices are power screwdrivers, and GW and the happy fluffy crowd leave the batteries out and use it like a regular screwdriver most of the time, and then complain when you use the power.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

But you are correct that GW does bias costs and options for thematic flavor purposes. For reference, MtG does this, too. For example, Green nearly always has the biggest, baddest creatures and there generally isn't anything even close comparable in blue. White nearly always has the best healing and damage prevention, again at vastly reduced costs compared to any other color, assuming it's available. So why should GW not bias their costs and availability in their Codices?

This has nothing to do with the issue. This is like saying that Tau should have close combat units and that daemons need more railguns. No one is saying that. They're saying things would be better if the codexes were actually balanced, not that they were identical. The differences between white and blue and green are no different than the differences between tau or chaos space marines or eldar. The real difference is that in MtG, they actually admit when they screw up and ban or restrict cards.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
The scaled FOC follows from the flawed presumption that that 40k armies must fit into neat little boxes. 40k does away with that notion entirely by throwing the FOC out the window in Apocalypse, doing away with the entire notion of comp in favor of Datasheets that allow players to theme their forces.

Apocalypse is not regular 40k. Bringing it up all the time is meaningless. Imagine what people would abuse if someone had an apocalypse tournament, or what the comp rules might be.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
The idea that WFB scales nicely doesn't work at the extremes, and you'd be hard-pressed to have a 10k WFB army that works "right": up to 20 Characters (max 9 Lords), max 10 Rare, max 12 Special. With only 11 Core required, that can be filled with well under 1k pts. Proportionally, you have 2.5x the Lords, 40% more Rares, and only give up 20% of your Specials. You think that's not going to be totally broken?

For example, High Elves would take 1k worth of Archers and fill the remaining 9k points with lv.4 Archmages on Moon Dragons, supported by a chorus of lv.2 Dragon Mages. Yay?

Again, no one is talking about huge armies, just normal size armies (say up to 2500 points in either game). He wants it to scale within that, not up to 10k points. Who cares if it breaks down at a large scale, you don't tend to have 10k point no comp WFB tournaments. It's a discussion about comp, and therefore a discussion about tournaments. Not about whatever random thing you want to bring up that has nothing to do with it.

You can fit two full squads of Nob bikers and two trukks full of boyz in a 1750 army. Is that army fluffy enough for you? We've done this a million times...there are overpowered armies that are still plenty fluffy, and weak ass armies that don't fit anyones definition of fluff, and arguments about what counts as fluffy anyway.

whitedragon wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:just ease out of the Tournament scene and move to casual gaming where Comp just isn't an issue...

Why is it a sin to play competitive tourney games?

Where did I say it was a sin?

He said he didn't want to play a WAAC list, and I agreed, giving him an alternative (casual play).
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carmachu wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:That is, IMO, the problem lies not with the Codices, but with the players. The Codices give the player a lot of freedom to make a list, with the understanding that players should field well-themed armies.

If you but out an army book, and say "you have 3 HS slots" and say....4 choices, there is NOTHING in the game or book, that means you cant put in3 of the same. There is nothing to say you have to have a theme. The only guiding light is...the force chart and points limits.

Thanks for giving the WAAC POV.

What John doesn't seem to understand is that theme and comp don't go hand-in-hand. A thematic army can also be one that is a strong, sometimes extremely strong build.

I have no problems with people trying for thematic armies. But to argue that weak armies are more thematic, or that strong armies aren't thematic, is simply the height of silliness.

Modquisition on:

Gentlemen, Dakka rule #1: first be polite. That is a requirement. Please do so or the thread will be closed and offenders violated.

Modquisition off.

Centurian99 wrote:What John doesn't seem to understand is that theme and comp don't go hand-in-hand. A thematic army can also be one that is a strong, sometimes extremely strong build.

Please re-read my initial comment on Theme and Comp.

I believe I'm pretty clear that Theme and Comp are unrelated, different topics, and that Theme is purely subjective, while Comp can be more objective (i.e. checkbox).

To each their own i guess. I enjoy making fluffy balanced lists more than powerhouses but thats just me. I wish the game were more balanced as a whole so everyone could do their thing with more overall play strategy being relied upon rather than beardy lists.

That said i mainly have enjoyed the few tourneys i have gone to and look forward to the ones the future to have fun and show off my army that i worked on.

skyth wrote:

The Green Git wrote: Where it's more important to ensure your opponent is having fun too than to make sure your list is top tier?

Quite frankly, if my opponent doesn't have fun because my list is too powerful, then they are being the bad sports and the one too focused on winning the game.

Riiiiiiiight.... "You should have fun no matter what kind of list I bring because that's how *I* have fun and if you don't like it then you're a bad sport."

You clearly missed the entire point of my post. If you like going to a tournament where beat down lists are encouraged, then don't go to a Hobbyist Tourney if it's billed as such. Or at least, don't be surprised when you win every game in battle points but lose the overall to a guy with a nicely painted, nicely converted, themeatic and fluff consistent army.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:What John doesn't seem to understand is that theme and comp don't go hand-in-hand. A thematic army can also be one that is a strong, sometimes extremely strong build.

Please re-read my initial comment on Theme and Comp.

I believe I'm pretty clear that Theme and Comp are unrelated, different topics, and that Theme is purely subjective, while Comp can be more objective (i.e. checkbox).

But the problem is that any checklist for comp is inherently biased and abuseable. Even with that, however, you've said things like this:

That is, IMO, the problem lies not with the Codices, but with the players. The Codices give the player a lot of freedom to make a list, with the understanding that players should field well-themed armies. Many players choose not to do this, by choice or design. That isn't GW's fault, as otherwise, the Codices would become overly restrictive and potentially stifling.

Well,

I am really torn on this one.

On the one hand, I have personally observed you (Blackmoor) game soft scores (hell, we still call chipmunking 'Getting Hernandezed' around here) and bring armies that are completely off the chain, dating back to the early days of 4th edition. Does the 18 model Tzeench list with a hald dozen bolts of change AND winds of chaos ring any bells? I have observed you quietly hop on every power trend with gleeful enthusiasm and bail on tournaments after losing one game. Granted, you have improved you have improved that attitude in the last year or so, but the reality is that you are personally one of those who contributed to the very problem you are soapboxing on.

On the other hand, you are exactly correct, which is one of the main reasons I made Fantasy my main game about four years ago (but the take no prisoners attitude has infected that game to a degree now, too), because my choices boiled down to: Play Stealth Cheese (Sisters of Battle, Guardian Heavy Eldar, ect), Play an army that I liked but was too good due to the current metagame (Eldar), or play a fluff list so that the competitive people could score easy round one wins against me. The problem has existed since about halfway through 4th, but the current wacky codexes and mission rules (kill points=worst design implementation ever) are just amplifying a pre-existing issue. For better or worse, the competitive game is dick punching adepticon levels of assclownery and ther simply is no going back without a major reset of all of the army books. A minor tweak (ala what 4th was to 3rd) could arrest a lot of the damage, but GW has all but buried its head in the sand to the competitive balance of the game.

No comp system will ever fix this, because as you know personally (both good and bad), comp systems can always be gamed and are nearly always subjective hitlists designed to gimp armies the TO does not personally like. So, let comp die. If everyone agress that cockwallet lists are the acceptable norm at tournaments (and only there), then the focus can move to where it should be, which is the rules balance. Sportsmanship needs to stay, however. I don't mind getting tabled in three turns by someone, but I really don't need them being a douche while they are doing it.