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Guys,

To make sense of things ...

First, competitive score = 10xWinRate + Goal1Rate + Goal2Rate + Goal3Rate
Second, appearance score = ((Army At a Glance Judging #1 + Army At a Glance Judging #2)/200 + .3((Single Mini #1 + Single Mini#2)/200) + .3((Single Converted #1 + Single Converted #2)/200))
Third, sports score = Cumulative Scoring by Opponents / 16

Ren Man = (Competitive Score / 13) + Appearance Score + Sports Score (equal weight to each)

These are the rankings at the end of day 1. I've created a file sorted by Tournament Champion, and a file sorted by Renaissance (Overall). So the first file is Best General sorted, and the second is Best Overall sorted, for those who haven't kept up with our terminology.

Competitive Sort - http://novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Finals-40k.pdf

Renaissance Sort - http://novaopen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Finals-Ren-sorted-40k.pdf

On Day 2, the top 8 competitive players were all participant, with the exception that Chris Shriner declined to compete, resulting in Nick Nanavati (#9 competitive) advancing.

The final results at the end of Day 2 resorted the Top 8 to:
Tony Kopach (6-0) - SW
Mark Ferek (5-1) - BA
Andrew Sutton (5-1) - SW
Justin Hilderbrandt (6-1) - Ork
Samuel Penson (5-2) - SW
Jeremy Chamblee (4-2) - SW
Joe Trueblood (4-2) - BA
Nick Nanavati (3-3) - DoC

For posterity's sake, Chris Shriner was playing mono-Nurgle CSM

Any plans to submit a spreadsheet to Rankingshq?

Yeah, hoping the fact that we don't do battle points won't screw with their interpretation.

Thanks for the posting Mike, awesome to see how everyone did in both formats!

Woot, 4th in Ren. man, that might be my highest GT finish I think...

I'd like to motion for a bi-annual nova open...I'm jonesing

Wow, kudos to the Renaissance man also being the one with the highest sports score! I only see one other 0.94 in that category from glancing down the page. Is the Danny Internets that we all know and all?? Way to go!

Maybe I need to resort to PM, but Mike, is there any chance of getting a link to the blog or anywhere that might have some info about the fantasy side of things?

Yay me

RiTides, I'm working through the Fantasy sheet right now; the way the spreadsheets are, they're super complicated b/c they're functionally designed to properly calculate scores / etc. on the fly with us just spam entering data .... so they aren't really fieldable "raw" ... I need to snag out all the final scores and put them in a new spreadsheet, and that's while I'm taking care of real life.

So, I'll get it out ASAP, hopefully by end of today.

- Mike

What does .04 difference come out to in actual points off the painting sheet? I'm just curious

Man, I'm an average sport 10/16 My last opponent gave me a 4 which means my earlier opponents weren't so nice It does make sportsmanship a heavier weight though which works.

You scored a 68/100, 45/100, 65/100 in At a Glance, Single mini, and Single Converted mini respectively.

Dash scored 55/100, 80/100, 50/100 in each.

Eric Furman's top army scored 92.5/100, 100/100, 87.5/100

(the halves are because we combined the two separate judgings and averaged them)

I'm not really up on the competitive gaming circuit.... do the SW's dominate all tourney's in such a fashion, or is this an exceptional showing? (I know they're competitive, but 4 of the top 6 is impressive.)

Well, I'm not sure how indicative it is or isn't ...

For example, there were 3 Demons of Chaos, and 1 made the Top 8

There were 4 Orks, and 1 made the top 8

There were 11 SW, and 4 made the top 8

There were 14 BA, and 2 made the top 8

There were 11 IG, and 0 made the top 8

4/11 is not far off the proportion of 1/4 (orks), and basically the same as the proportion of 1/3 (demons)

What I think is more telling is the ABSENCE of IG from the top, and the fact that the BA were a much lower percentage than orks, sw, demons

Interesting stuff

Well, I doubt they do this well in tournaments that use kill points. Any codex that can utilize MSUs (like Space Wolves) benefits greatly when the MSU-balancer of Killpoints is taken out of the equation.

Thanks for the analysis Brandt & Redbeard... that does put things in context. Interesting indeed.

Eh, that's one heck of a big discussion. I, like most others who have already spoken up, never optimize for KP. You rarely see KP-optimized armies like SW go to the top of a tourney that goes enough rounds, barring an unfortunate match-up with some whacky low army that they can't simply table.



I'd also like to point out BA is all about MSU (with more expensive troops by a little who are benefitted beyond their cost and squad size by FNP and FC auras), and so is guard, yet neither of them did particularly well (barring Mark Ferek, and he's an exceptionally good player).

I'm not really sure that MSU ruled the day, anymore than it already does in other tourneys, where people take MSU-ish approaches to slaughter people in objective based missions, and simply table opponents that have too few KP in those missions.

To fast Mike!

Thanks for the info. Not having a display board hurt a little. Best tourney I've attended since GW Vegas

MVBrandt wrote:Eh, that's one heck of a big discussion. I, like most others who have already spoken up, never optimize for KP.

What is optimizing for KP? Taking as few as possible, or as many?

You rarely see KP-optimized armies like SW go to the top of a tourney that goes enough rounds, barring an unfortunate match-up with some whacky low army that they can't simply table.

I can't comment on this, I don't know what you're referring to by KP-optimized.

I'm not really sure that MSU ruled the day, anymore than it already does in other tourneys, where people take MSU-ish approaches to slaughter people in objective based missions, and simply table opponents that have too few KP in those missions.

It's hard to table really good opponents. And I'm not saying that MSU ruled the day, but looking at the stats, it does look like not having KP missions does have an impact. KP, while they make little sense in a real-world sense, are part of the game balanced designed into costs of things in the codexes.

Without the gamey KP construct, MSU is always superior. Even in the the real-world. WWI - charge 20,000 men over a field. Afghanistan - squads are eight guys, and usually split into two four-man fire teams.

MVBrandt wrote:Eh, that's one heck of a big discussion. I, like most others who have already spoken up, never optimize for KP. You rarely see KP-optimized armies like SW go to the top of a tourney that goes enough rounds, barring an unfortunate match-up with some whacky low army that they can't simply table.

It is interesting that both the Nova Open and BolsCon did not use KPs and SW dominated them, and armies like IG and Eldar were less successful than they have been at past tournaments. I know that there are a lot of factors at play here, but it is something to think about.

I'd also like to point out BA is all about MSU (with more expensive troops by a little who are benefitted beyond their cost and squad size by FNP and FC auras), and so is guard, yet neither of them did particularly well (barring Mark Ferek, and he's an exceptionally good player).

I would like to point out the differences between MSU and SU armies. BA and some other armies out there are SU (Small Units, but not a lot of them) armies. They have very expensive units and are small (and tough). Mech Eldar plays the same way by playing a small elite army. It seems like these armies are hurt by the exclusion on KP missions.

I'm not really sure that MSU ruled the day, anymore than it already does in other tourneys, where people take MSU-ish approaches to slaughter people in objective based missions, and simply table opponents that have too few KP in those missions.

MSU is certainly the best way to go and the superior army build in objective based missions.

So my question would be, do KP missions even the playing field if you are playing a SU armiy vs. a MSU army?

re: Redbeard
Aye; by KP-optimized, I mean to some degree limiting the MSU you otherwise take to best improve your shots at winning any mission that ISN'T kill points.

I don't think it actively balances the game, b/c I think all of the armies that compete routinely and effectively do so with or without the"gamey KP construct." That's to say, their best builds are taken, and win, and don't show signs of limiting the inclusion of any kind of KP-consideration in the list build.

I can reference the commentary of ticket-holders like Dash, Hulk, etc., or my own experiences, but this argument often becomes one of those difficult and subjective ones.

- Mike


re: Blackmoor

To your question, I don't think they actually do. It's more likely that you'll see odd situations such as in Stelek's first game at the Open. He went against a list that was openly inferior / "bad," even by the admission of the guy who played it. Like three land raiders with 1k sons squads in them, and a few other things. If he didn't table the guy *and I don't think he quite did* were the mission KP instead of VP, he'd have lost, instead of winning by around 1,000 vp. In this situation, the "gamey" construct creates a BAD result, in almost anyone's book - an inferior list piloted by an inexperienced player beating a superior list piloted by a veteran player? Just take the inferior/superior list component out of that question and it still is "wrong." Better players should win, period.

Take it to the next level, of the average situation, and unless someone is explicitly stripping KP out of his list, he's going to be roughly the same regardless of his thoughts on KP. Very few top qualitiy SW lists take fewer than a pretty high # of KP ... Tony Kopach (winner of the Open) hardly was running MSU at all, for example ... 17 KP isn't really MSU, and 3 of his Rhinos had 9+ guys in them. He took down Stelek's 24-KP "true" MSU, and Mark Ferek's 19-KP BA.

That's where the rubber hits the road, in truth. VERY few space wolf lists that most people would attribute any merit to ever really run lighter than 12+ KP, and at that point it's still just anybody's game ... but instead of it being determined off actual value killed, it becomes a situation where people are firing downrange at immobilized and weaponless rhinos on the bottom of the last turn, instead of gunning points-saturated units apart at point blank range.

While always arguable due to the dearth of material statistics collated into one place, MSU is not necessarily the "best" way to win, but any kind of AVOIDANCE of taking more units / more transports just b/c you're afraid of KP is a sure way to have a WORSE list, and that's why KP doesn't actually have an impact on list-build and tournament winnings ... only occasionally on the net # of MSU type lists that rise, when the experience of Stelek v. Daemon-Archon above occurs ... namely, while across a tournament many high-KP armies draw other high-KP armies, some random dude with a bunch of KP's gets unlucky and draws whacky list with almost none, and loses even if he crushes the life out of his opponent's army.

It's not a "balancer" to have simply weird or bad results inserted into a tournament system because of KP. It's just ... weird or bad. If you bracketed matches based upon KP total, it'd be fine, but the fact that some of the higher KP people will draw other high KP for the KP round, while others have low KP vs low KP and some have high KP vs low KP ... KP becomes inherently UNBALANCED, and can punish just about anyone at pure random. VP becomes superior not because it can't be "gamed," (because anything can be ... it's a game lol), but because everyone is guaranteed to have the same number of score-able points.

Can you define SU vs. MSU please? I'm a lost. MSU = many small units? If so, how many is "many"?

Thanks.

Yeah, it probably is a subjective difficult question, I'll agree there.

But, my thought would be that, in the absence of conclusive evidence to prove that they have no balancing effect, you should assume that their design was intentional, and include them in roughly the same percentages of tournament missions as they occur in the BRB (33%, for those keeping track at home), or, as some others have said in the past, you're not playing Warhammer 40k, you're playing a game that somewhat resembles Warhammer 40k.

If tabling in 1/3rd of the games and winning out in the other 2/3rds is a legit strategy, so be it (I don't think it is, but I'm willing concede the possibility). But at least force them to have to get that tabling.

Red, more of my reply is up there, but at the heart of it that 33% is the problem.

2/3 of the missions in the book strongly benefit people who take MSU and lots of scoring units / contesting units. I think the draw mission is pretty bad, most people seem to, but on the subject of KP you run into the fact that everyone takes very different armies at a tournament, and BECAUSE of that the KP inclusion makes a tournament situation inherently imbalanced.

Were we running a league, it would be fine - no one loss really hurts you that badly, and you invariably will have to play most or all of the lists present. In a tournament, the fact that it's only 1/3 of the missions and the bigger fields almost guarantee that only a few people (and not everyone) will be involved in matches with a wide KP disparity, it's a net DETRACTOR from balance/fairness/competition.

In short, VP is not the "Best" way to do it for a number of reasons (and is part of why we're considering dropping it from a primary mission inclusion next year), but it can't harm someone on the issue of RANDOMNESS.

Every army that is competitive to begin with CAN take an objective-optimized list, and everybody has the same number of VP ... so as long as they know KP aren't included ahead of time, the field IS balanced by nature, whereas EVEN if they know about KP when it IS included ... the field can never be balanced, due to the inherent random draw nature of whether you'll go up against a low or high KP opponent when that round comes up.



Basically, I can guarantee that in the objective mission, both players have to battle over 5 objectives.
In the Quarters mission, I can guarantee that both players have to battle over 4 quarters.
In the VP mission, I can guarantee that both players have to battle for a maximum of 2,000 VP.

In the KP mission, you can't guarantee anything. One player may have as many as 22 to score, another may only have 5.
It's the same reason the "kill all troops" back-up mission at Adepticon last year was so ill-received, and anything similar applies.

Gitsplitta wrote:Can you define SU vs. MSU please? I'm a lost. MSU = many small units? If so, how many is "many"?

Thanks.

Michigan state university?

MVBrandt wrote:Every army that is competitive to begin with CAN take an objective-optimized list, and everybody has the same number of VP ... so as long as they know KP aren't included ahead of time, the field IS balanced by nature, whereas EVEN if they know about KP when it IS included ... the field can never be balanced, due to the inherent random draw nature of whether you'll go up against a low or high KP opponent when that round comes up.

Your first sentence is part of what disturbs me about the "no KP" approach - I think excluding KP from a tournament changes what a "competitive" army is.

Matchups are always going to matter, almost irrespective of mission. If you're playing a 5 objective mission, almost any list is going to have a more difficult time against, say, fully-meched Space Wolves (or a similarly-mobile force with a lot of scoring units), than you will against Tau.

I've followed your conversations on this topic with interest for months, but it sometimes sounds like a rationalization - (some) competitive players don't optimize for KPs, therefore there is no reason to include KPs, because the competitive players aren't going to optimize for them anyway. But if those competitive players are making the choice to risk a bad matchup in a KP mission, shouldn't you allow them to face that risk? Put the KP mission late in the day, and if their choice to bring MSU-style lists pays off across the board, there shouldn't be any < 10KP opponents left for them to draw in the "winner" bracket.

It's the same reason the "kill all troops" back-up mission at Adepticon last year was so ill-received, and anything similar applies.

My problem with that mission was mostly that it was the same mission across all three "objectives" - kill stuff. The value in a multi-objective mission is supposed to reward superior game play while completing multiple objectives.

I think the issue with it was that some people would go up against an army with 10 troops choices, and some would go up against an army with 2, making it easier for some opponents to score much higher in a tournament where battle points determined who ultimately won.

It's not really about rationalization, but about normalization of a field.

As stated in the above edit, if one of the missions is 5 objectives, everyone knows they need to battle over 5 objectives when that mission comes around.

Kill points, however, does not permit that kind of guarantee of fairness from the organizer. It's simply not possible.

hey mike can you post my paint scores, I can PM you my name if you dont recall who I was, I was using Eldar though. I saw the 0.64 but not sure how that translates into the 3 categories. Thanks

Heh, put it in the other thread just now but ...

65/100 Overall, 72.5/100 Single Mini, 50/100 Single Conversion

MVBrandt wrote:
To your question, I don't think they actually do. It's more likely that you'll see odd situations such as in Stelek's first game at the Open. He went against a list that was openly inferior / "bad," even by the admission of the guy who played it. Like three land raiders with 1k sons squads in them, and a few other things. If he didn't table the guy *and I don't think he quite did* were the mission KP instead of VP, he'd have lost, instead of winning by around 1,000 vp. In this situation, the "gamey" construct creates a BAD result, in almost anyone's book - an inferior list piloted by an inexperienced player beating a superior list piloted by a veteran player? Just take the inferior/superior list component out of that question and it still is "wrong." Better players should win, period.

I disagree. It is an opinion that the thousand sons list was "bad". In 1/3rd of the book missions it is good. Steleks list was not superior to the thousand sons list in 1/3rd of the book missions. Some people think this is 'unfair' and want the 24 Kp monster to win in all missions instead of forcing Stelek's 24kp list to evolve into something that has a better chance at beating the thousand sons in kp and have a slightly lesser chance of winning in the other 2/3rd missions. You see the KP mission forces the 24 kp SW list to change or lose. Now if everyone played the same MSU style lists - what the internet thinks of as techie lists - then the KP mission is moot, however it's those people who want to explore the rich variety the 40k army lists can bring, those people throw the monkey wrench into the situation.

Good players will have to take into account a KP denial army list and factor that into their list building. This brings balance to list design and hampers the MSU list. It's absolutely fair to have to take this into account and be subject to a lose if you refuse to accept that a newbie can bring a list no one would bring, but it beats you. Phil Hellmuth always complains when someone plays a hand wrong in Poker. Some guy will play a hand all wrong and beat Phil because Phil expected him to play the hand correctly, but the kicker is he is more likely to lose to someone who doesn't play it correctly because he assumes everyone should. Someone who brings the uber MSU lists expect everyone else to play army lists from a narrow construct - only the good lists.

Here's another example, but using 'good' lists. Let's say Stelek's 24 KP list ran into a tricked out double Seer Council list. Something along the lines that almost every European team had at the ETC. In a VP game the Seer's would have been scrambling to make up VP's from left to right. Maybe one squad of Seer's get's taken down and the Eldar player lost 800vp right there. How many units of 80pts grey hunters or 40pt razorbacks would they have needed to catch and wipe out, not reduce to 1 model or immobilise, but wipe out to make up the VP difference? Now change the game to KP and the Seer Councils will most likely wipe out 4 razorbacks and 3 min-sized squads. Those are only 400pts of VP, but 7pts of KP. It might have been as much KP as the Eldar player brought and theMSU army list is toast. However in a VP mission 400pts of VP can be made up and then some by getting one Seer Council wiped out. This entire scenario - where 2 'good' lists have competed is completly impossible at the Nova Open because of the change in core rules concerning KP. It hampers one type of army list design and takes away one of the only weaknesses of the uber MSU style list.

MVBrandt wrote:RiTides, I'm working through the Fantasy sheet right now; the way the spreadsheets are, they're super complicated b/c they're functionally designed to properly calculate scores / etc. on the fly with us just spam entering data .... so they aren't really fieldable "raw" ... I need to snag out all the final scores and put them in a new spreadsheet, and that's while I'm taking care of real life.

So, I'll get it out ASAP, hopefully by end of today.

- Mike

Sweet, no rush, just wanted to know where it was at . I don't mind waiting!

MVBrandt wrote:Every army that is competitive to begin with CAN take an objective-optimized list, and everybody has the same number of VP ... so as long as they know KP aren't included ahead of time, the field IS balanced by nature, whereas EVEN if they know about KP when it IS included ... the field can never be balanced, due to the inherent random draw nature of whether you'll go up against a low or high KP opponent when that round comes up.

VP is never balanced. An MSU army where every possible unit is under 120pts will always be superior in a VP game against an army with just one Land Raider at 250pts. It takes one Lascannon to knock out a Land Raider and get 250 VP, but against the MSU list there is no way to get 250pts from one lascannon shot, everything is so cheap. A player would need to target multiple units across the board and get destroyed results from all of them. The MSU list is to spread out and can mitigate the lose of a few 75pt razorbacks here or there, by knocking out one Land Raider. There is no balance in that.

DarthDiggler wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:
To your question, I don't think they actually do. It's more likely that you'll see odd situations such as in Stelek's first game at the Open. He went against a list that was openly inferior / "bad," even by the admission of the guy who played it. Like three land raiders with 1k sons squads in them, and a few other things. If he didn't table the guy *and I don't think he quite did* were the mission KP instead of VP, he'd have lost, instead of winning by around 1,000 vp. In this situation, the "gamey" construct creates a BAD result, in almost anyone's book - an inferior list piloted by an inexperienced player beating a superior list piloted by a veteran player? Just take the inferior/superior list component out of that question and it still is "wrong." Better players should win, period.

I disagree. It is an opinion that the thousand sons list was "bad". In 1/3rd of the book missions it is good. Steleks list was not superior to the thousand sons list in 1/3rd of the book missions. Some people think this is 'unfair' and want the 24 Kp monster to win in all missions instead of forcing Stelek's 24kp list to evolve into something that has a better chance at beating the thousand sons in kp and have a slightly lesser chance of winning in the other 2/3rd missions. You see the KP mission forces the 24 kp SW list to change or lose. Now if everyone played the same MSU style lists - what the internet thinks of as techie lists - then the KP mission is moot, however it's those people who want to explore the rich variety the 40k army lists can bring, those people throw the monkey wrench into the situation.

Good players will have to take into account a KP denial army list and factor that into their list building. This brings balance to list design and hampers the MSU list. It's absolutely fair to have to take this into account and be subject to a lose if you refuse to accept that a newbie can bring a list no one would bring, but it beats you. Phil Hellmuth always complains when someone plays a hand wrong in Poker. Some guy will play a hand all wrong and beat Phil because Phil expected him to play the hand correctly, but the kicker is he is more likely to lose to someone who doesn't play it correctly because he assumes everyone should. Someone who brings the uber MSU lists expect everyone else to play army lists from a narrow construct - only the good lists.

Here's another example, but using 'good' lists. Let's say Stelek's 24 KP list ran into a tricked out double Seer Council list. Something along the lines that almost every European team had at the ETC. In a VP game the Seer's would have been scrambling to make up VP's from left to right. Maybe one squad of Seer's get's taken down and the Eldar player lost 800vp right there. How many units of 80pts grey hunters or 40pt razorbacks would they have needed to catch and wipe out, not reduce to 1 model or immobilise, but wipe out to make up the VP difference? Now change the game to KP and the Seer Councils will most likely wipe out 4 razorbacks and 3 min-sized squads. Those are only 400pts of VP, but 7pts of KP. It might have been as much KP as the Eldar player brought and theMSU army list is toast. However in a VP mission 400pts of VP can be made up and then some by getting one Seer Council wiped out. This entire scenario - where 2 'good' lists have competed is completly impossible at the Nova Open because of the change in core rules concerning KP. It hampers one type of army list design and takes away one of the only weaknesses of the uber MSU style list.

Look, your intelligence is clear in your writing, and your opinion is just as valid as mine.

The bigger issue that leaves me revolving around here relates to the random draw of opponent for the mission, and the inability of the tournament organizer to present it as a mission that will be fair on the MISSION side for everyone, regardless of match-up.

That's to say, that you can't take randomness of the match-up out of the equation, but you can take the mission out as a component of that issue.

Discussions about what a good list is, who experienced players are, whether the missions in the back of the book are the "core" rules or not, etc., all comes down to opinion, and it comes down further to an impasse when two people are passionate and on different sides, yet equally intelligent. I don't want to over-burden a thread on the results of the topic with a discussion between two such people (you and me, for example) that could devolve into potential negativity when we passionately realize the other is uninterested in budging.

Do note, however, that I completely respect your stance on this - it's not wrong, it's just different from my own. We spent hours setting the terrain nicely to ensure every table had the same terrain format; we adjusted the rules so that there were no buildings or impassable terrain, so that every table had roughly the same style of terrain to play around and in; similarly, we ensured that the MISSION would not contribute to the issue that arises from randomness of pairing and sub-optimal army match-ups. It's a choice of style in terms of the presentation of the tournament, and it's one we think went off well.