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Speaking as a non-tournament going UK player (UK tournaments don't score sports) the list of rules and points to score is so long it would take away from my enjoyment of playing.

A simpler way of stopping sports nobbling is not to score sports.

So you can be a complete dick to everyone, bring a cheesy ass army AND win the tournament? No thanks. If I wanted bs scoring and unoriginal, powergaming armies I'd go to an indy.

The problem is that you don't have to be a 'complete dick' to get dumped in sports or comp. Sometimes you just have to want to play by the rules and win.

How rampant is "chipmunking"? Is this really one of those problems that is plaguing the tournament scene or is it an annoyance that is the exception rather than the rule. I've seen a lot of anecdotes but nothing solid.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Ozy, I'd guess that chipmunking is fairly rare, to the point that nobody really cares, except when it happens to you.

What I dont understand is your talking about just a few points. Other than that you should always be getting about a seven at least unless your did not show up on time? System seems pretty straight forward in that if you complete each step you collect a point. The last few points are the key points that allow you to have a greater score. If your so worried about getting dinged because your army is full of chz then bring something else. Really just tired of hearing people cry because they recieve such a low mark on sports. If this is happening all the time then maybe you should look at the mirrow.

There are a few points that I would at least skip and or ask the other player. Who know most of us travel to event and sometime you think you have everything and then forget your frigging dice. Or your templates found themseves to be in onther box you had around the house. Then again rules are rules so find yourself some cheap templates.

Hell you might even beable to make a few bucks xtra just showing up with a few templates,,,

Dakkaladd wrote:So you can be a complete dick to everyone, bring a cheesy ass army AND win the tournament? No thanks. If I wanted bs scoring and unoriginal, powergaming armies I'd go to an indy.

It works in the UK and a lot of the rest of Europe.

I think there must be cultural differences between British and American players.

Dakkaladd wrote:So you can be a complete dick to everyone, bring a cheesy ass army AND win the tournament? No thanks. If I wanted bs scoring and unoriginal, powergaming armies I'd go to an indy.

Do you have experience in both systems? I've played in the UK and US and the UK sportsmanship system is far more superior than the US systems. It actually takes a lot of the pressure off and allows people to simply play the game without having to worry about doing a little dance for their opponent. All of our games (mine and Mike Mutscheller's) were great. I believe we each had one major rules issue, but in my opinion that is to be expected over 24 total games. The key to it's success is enforcement. If a judge sees someone getting out of hand, then they have to be willing to act.

Killkrazy - I believe it is more from the fact that people here in the states believe players can't be good sports without having an opponent scored system. This is something that GW US pushed back in the 2000 and at that time it was a needed based on the way some players were acting. At this point though, we need to advance beyond this type of a system. Note though, I have to give AdeptiCon and the GT staff credit for doing the best they can with a flawed system. The interesting thing is we have the 'ard Boyz events and the Gladiator, which don't have sportsmanship scores. Yet, those events ran well.

Gladiators and 'Ard Boys are different though.

It's one thing to say, "Bring the nastiest list you can" and another to say "bring balanced armies".

At 'ard boyz and gladiators, you know what you're getting into when you sign up. There's no need to have this scored constraint on what's "too good".

Despite the stated rules of Gladiator (there is no cheese, life is not fair, no whining), you still get players who whine and complain.

After every UK GT, when I read the after-action reports from players I see (usually polite and understated) references to opponents who were argumentative or shady. If you have the staffing to have enough roving judges to look at every table during every game and see if yellow cards need to be handed out, that's excellent. Personally I think if you're at that staffing level, you could also have a scored sports system run with nary a hitch.

Inquisitor_Malice wrote:

...

Killkrazy - I believe it is more from the fact that people here in the states believe players can't be good sports without having an opponent scored system. This is something that GW US pushed back in the 2000 and at that time it was a needed based on the way some players were acting. At this point though, we need to advance beyond this type of a system. Note though, I have to give AdeptiCon and the GT staff credit for doing the best they can with a flawed system. The interesting thing is we have the 'ard Boyz events and the Gladiator, which don't have sportsmanship scores. Yet, those events ran well.

The message I get from reading reports (bear in mind I haven't played in a tournament or in the USA) is that once sports is scored, some (unsporting) players "game" it to win. Which kind of defeats the point.

Kilkrazy wrote:The message I get from reading reports (bear in mind I haven't played in a tournament or in the USA) is that once sports is scored, some (unsporting) players "game" it to win. Which kind of defeats the point.

That is exactly how it goes. Almost (if not all) upper echelon players "game" it to win. It becomes more of a political battle on the sportsmanship side to see who can actually "massage" their opponents the most. With the existing system, if two higher tier players play - it is almost a given that perfects on sports and comp are given.

I'm not sure that's really a bad thing, though. If the best players also make a conscious effort to be great sports and enjoyable to play against, to the extent that they can make sure an opponent has a good time even while being crushed, is that skill not worth rewarding?

Mannahnin wrote:After every UK GT, when I read the after-action reports from players I see (usually polite and understated) references to opponents who were argumentative or shady. If you have the staffing to have enough roving judges to look at every table during every game and see if yellow cards need to be handed out, that's excellent. Personally I think if you're at that staffing level, you could also have a scored sports system run with nary a hitch.

Again, these references come without experience. Have you been there? The UK GT has the same number of judges (or less) than our GTs in the US. We found the same distribution of player types in the UK as here in the states. Comp was nearly identical (with the exception of IW builds). You have your argumentative or shady players in the US. Don't kid yourself if you think otherwise.

In no other event (sports, gaming or otherwise) have I ever seen sportsmanship affect so much to the point of where overall places are determined based on politicing and manuevering. Are you saying that everyone else (all other types of events) are so much better behaved that we need a sportsmanship score to keep us in line. I call that BS. We are just the same as everyone else. You will have your trash talkers, your passive agressive types, your underhanded tacticians and such. However, you will also have your upstanding players, your fun/corny oppenents and more. I would be willing to bet that the distribution of personalities follows closely to general population statistical distributions. What this then says - you don't need it.

Actually there is a large body of social science research data that indicates that US people are more individualistic than UK people, who are in turn more individualistic than (for example) French people, who themselves are more individualistic than Japanese.

Whether this affects sportsmanship at GW events I have no idea.

I do like the idea of a checklist sportsmanship score. I think it removes some of the subjectivity involved. This is what they used at adepticon. I thought it worked well.

Inquisitor_Malice wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:After every UK GT, when I read the after-action reports from players I see (usually polite and understated) references to opponents who were argumentative or shady. If you have the staffing to have enough roving judges to look at every table during every game and see if yellow cards need to be handed out, that's excellent. Personally I think if you're at that staffing level, you could also have a scored sports system run with nary a hitch.

Again, these references come without experience. Have you been there? The UK GT has the same number of judges (or less) than our GTs in the US. We found the same distribution of player types in the UK as here in the states. Comp was nearly identical (with the exception of IW builds). You have your argumentative or shady players in the US. Don't kid yourself if you think otherwise.

I haven’t played in a UK GT, and you have. I have played in enough US GTs, RTs, and other local tournaments (GW and independent) to have some decent experience in this country.

We do know that both events run smoothly. We can see from people’s tournament reports from the UK events that they still experience friction and conflicts. So clearly the UK system isn’t perfect, though obviously no system is perfect or will completely prevent misbehavior.

I completely agree that the personality mix (some regional and cultural variances aside) is going to be similar. I strongly suspect that Dave’s team could switch to using the UK system next year and it would work fine in most cases. Off the top of my head I see three big areas to consider:

1. Which system does a better job controlling inappropriate behavior?
2. What general effect does each system have on the tourney group’s behavior as a whole? What message does it convey, and how does it impact their tournament experience?
3. How much training does each system require and what demands does it place on staff?

Regarding point 1: I don’t think we have enough data. From my reading tournament after action reports and battle reports every chance I get (mostly here on Dakka and on warhammer.org.uk), I can see that people have problems in both places. From my completely unscientific, no doubt biased recollection, I would say that the number of complaints seems pretty similar, with UK players mentioning additional issues and complications arising related to language barriers and different play expectations from foreign visitors. Also a lot of complaints and comments about facing unpleasant and unfun armies.

This is something that GW definitely COULD try to record and compare. How many times is a judge called over? How many times do they have to talk to a player about unsportsmanlike behavior? How many yellow and red cards are given? How many complaints do the judges receive directly about unpleasant players? Unfortunately I rather doubt that GW has the staff available to really assemble these numbers, and I suspect that the separate organizational structures in the US and UK make cooperation of this kind a bit of a trick. I think we’d have to hope that a) the UK events team is fortunate enough to have someone as dedicated to feedback and improvement as Dave Taylor running things, and b) that said hypothetical and unlikely person and Dave both have time to do it. And that they agree it’s worth the time and work, of course.

Regarding point 2: My personal opinion, based on my experiences, is that putting sportsmanship scoring directly into the numeric calculations for who wins sends an extremely strong message about the importance of sportsmanship. More than preventing jerks and cheaters from winning, it gives every player at the tournament a tangible incentive to play nice and try to provide a fun experience for his opponent. It’s both a carrot and a stick. There are people I’ve played who I could clearly detect were trying to game the system for the best Sports score. One or two of these guys actually also cheated or played what I saw as shady interpretations of the rules, to the point that I was kind of glad the Sportsmanship score was encouraging them to at least fake a decent attitude.

Regarding point 3: I think a player-judged sports system does require some work on the part of the judges. They need to be alert for collusion and chipmunking, and if they see scoring anomalies they should ideally be able to spend some time in the next round hanging around the tables of the players involved and watching out for signs that the people involved are colluding (if the scores are unusually high) or are genuinely acting like jerks (if a score is unusually low). To try to confirm the basis of the score and hopefully make some corrections if needed. The yellow card/red card system places a different kind of demand. It requires some conflict management skills and some training in how to politely and professionally deal with a confrontation. Because when you hand out a yellow card, or particularly a red card, you are setting yourself up for some negative reactions and arguments from players. GW has historically been very reluctant to throw players out of a paid event. The staff under that system are under a more stressful burden in terms of being able to defuse arguments and hand out penalties while trying to not start them, and of bearing responsibility for throwing people the heck out of the event if they reach that level.

Instead of turning this thread into a flame war why dont you guys get back on track. As it is its a very simple system that cuts out some of the bs. If a player wants to move his modules 13" instead of 12" then just deal with it folks. There is a spot to dock him a point because he is trying to cheat you. I dont know how many people I have played that cheat and or attempt to cheat to win. Its not a matter of how things have been but this thread is about the new point system so stay on track of find a new thread flamers!

Tarval - That's the thing. The system that is in place (while an improvement on the previous one), does not cut out all of the BS that does and will continue to go on. It is common knowledge to all of the upper tier players.

Who's flaming? We're having a polite, constructive discussion on the merits of the US system and how it compares to the UK system.

I still think the evidence shows the UK system is better.

Mannahnin wrote:I'm not sure that's really a bad thing, though. If the best players also make a conscious effort to be great sports and enjoyable to play against, to the extent that they can make sure an opponent has a good time even while being crushed, is that skill not worth rewarding?

In a perfect world where the opponents can't apply subjective opinions, then yes. However, too many factors can affect this including.

1. Losing a game.
2. Losing a rules discussion.
3. Being tired and cranky.
4. Not liking to play against a certain army.
5. Not liking certain legal tactics.
6. Not liking certain army builds.
7. Not liking certain units.
8. Not liking certain wargear.
9. Not liking your face.
10. Not liking your kilt with no undies.

I've seen players say "I hate playing against space wolves" with a scowl on their face right away before the game starts. I wanted to laugh at a "Kommando" at Baltimore 2007 when he stated in a disgusted manner - 'Your army was totally built for tournaments'. Yeah - right after having 10 man CSM units and an "ever so powerful demon prince of Khorne" under the new codex.

Even one to two points difference is enough to put someone out of the winners circle.

Hell - figure skating and gymnastics don't have a sportsmanship score. Would you name another event where sportsmanship is scored by opponents and effects the final outcome? And don't include any French or French Canadian created sports.


Tarval - I agree with Mannahnin - Who's flaming?

Let me help you all get back on track ok....

1. Did your opponent show up on time or early? How hard is it to get a point for showing up on time so I think this question is mute because we all know if you dont show up on time you fail to get a point. SHOW UP ON TIME...

2. Did your opponent have all the materials they needed to play the game etc etc etc. Bring your gear or get docked a point.

3. Did your opponent play their turn in a reasonbale amount of time... etc etc..

Three easy points guys so just.

4. Did your opponent measure accurately for both models moves and shooting distance. Another simple task but could be chipmunked to death.

5. Did your opponent sovle rules disputes by showing your the relevant passage etc etc,,, easy point that is if you have a rules dispute. Guy parks a falcon over a squad, cant do it see faq... easy point to get.

6. Was your oppenents army WYSWIG etc etc,, very easy to get this point and with some of the new rules for GT then everybody should get this point. If I had to play somebody that was not painted or WYSWIG I would demand my money back after the tourny. I am not flying at this cost to play a junk army.

7. Do you think your opponent built an army based off the theme of the relevant gaming universe and supplied background for that army, as opposed to a force built purely for winning games. Like one of the comments a few back, if you have to explain your army over the course of the game then your not likely to get this point. It should be easy to see what your trying to bring to the table.

8. Was your opponent of good humor and amicable when not concentrating on strategy etc etc. If your upset because your dice are bad will I dock you a point, nope. If you made because you just lost your left flank will I dock you a point, nope. If your venting because your HT died to a lowly tactical power weapon guy then ya I might dock you a point. I rolled a six not only once but twice so ya...

9. Was your opponent helpful in explaining correct rules, explaining how their army works. This is almost a given point as well so there is not much room to chat about on this topic.

10. Win or Lose, was this person the type of opponent you look forward to playing again. Another simple question of which should be an easy point.

If your talking it should be about these point, take a point and then inform everybody that your talking about that point. We are here to make the rules better and GW is showing that they are listening so rant off and discuss on...

Personally you should be able to see the other person score card that way you can get a better understand if they mis marked you because it does happen.

My point still stands. It is the best of a bad system. Why? Points 3-10 are all opponent based subjective assessments. Remove the oppenent based subjectivity completely and then you have a good system.

Since you are promoting discussion of a bad system - I have proposed the use of another system that removes the opponent based subjectivity. Therefore, the merits of the UK vs US system discussion belongs in this thread. If you are not open to this, then you are not open to real improvement of the system and just want to attempt bandaid over the problems with more creative wording.

If you plan on attending a GT then bring a GT army. Number seven is in place so that people dont show up with six man las/plas x6 of them. You going to a GT not an RTT or a T but a GT of which would require or should require a GT army not a crap list just because you want to win. If I am going to take the time to show up with a GT army ie not a slop army then I would think others should follow suite. If you want to show up with a gak list then do so at your own risk of lost points. Stelek talked about how he cleans people off the boards on the first day then has to deal with the harder oppt the following day.

Even now they have upped it so that you have to show up with a painted army at a GT. Even Stelek talked about how he hated playing a un painted army at GT.

I have taken the time to build an entire Inq ret ie lord and 12 guys of which ya, it might be a waste but its a GT guys. Now if somebody brings an RTT list vs my GT list then ya im going to dock him that point. If that person wants to play a game latter on then ya I can bust out my RTT 1850 marines that has never lost a game ever and I mean ever that will kill any army no matter what!

4. I had a BA player move the entire board on one turn, could this happen? No but did I allow it ya because I new what he had to offer and it was a matter of mins before I was cleaning his army off the board. Dock a point for improper movement let along his fast dice roll pick up five hits out of five dice when i know I saw one's.

3. I have never ever been slow played before until I played an RTT awhile back. I was really shocked seeing it played on me but I did not say anything about it. Dock a point but I will say something in a GT though because its about the game not about being a dirk.

Inquisitor_Malice wrote:1. Losing a game.
2. Losing a rules discussion.
3. Being tired and cranky.
4. Not liking to play against a certain army.
5. Not liking certain legal tactics.
6. Not liking certain army builds.
7. Not liking certain units.
8. Not liking certain wargear.
9. Not liking your face.
10. Not liking your kilt with no undies.

You know, if you started each opponent with 10 points and subtracted 1 for each of the above, that'd make for a decent Anti-Sports Scoring system.

Hell - figure skating and gymnastics don't have a sportsmanship score.

Correct. Figure Skaters are measured by objective technical merit *and* subjective artistic merit.

JohnHwangDD wrote: You know, if you started each opponent with 10 points and subtracted 1 for each of the above, that'd make for a decent Anti-Sports Scoring system.

I like that - an anti-sports system.

JohnHwangDD wrote: Correct. Figure Skaters are measured by objective technical merit *and* subjective artistic merit.

40K technical merit - battle
Figure Skating technical merit - well skating of course

40K artistic merit - painting
Figure Skating technical merit - artistic expression

40K opponent rated scoring - comp and sportsmanship
Figure Skating opponent rated scoring - hmmmmmmmm

Looks like we are a bigger bunch of pansies than figure skaters.

Tarval wrote:Now if somebody brings an RTT list vs my GT list then ya im going to dock him that point. If that person wants to play a game latter on then ya I can bust out my RTT 1850 marines that has never lost a game ever and I mean ever that will kill any army no matter what!

And that folks is what would be considered your first mistake. Any of the top tier players in battle at a GT have lost a game with their most "uber" army. Otherwise you are not playing in a very challenging field. There are many good players across the nation. Bring your RTT list to several GTs. Why don't you see what you are really made of? I would rather see a person such as yourself bring your best army. Then we can have a really good game.

davetaylor wrote:
I don't understand why on earth you would want to come to one of our GTs. You obviously don't like any of the systems we use (or have used), you feel that you will need to lie about your army (or who painted it at least), and you feel you have to so drastically modify your behavior that you must play like an automaton. You have publicly ridiculed our rules on a regular basis, yet you keep coming back (or asking what other events we'll be running). What is the point you are trying to make?

Nothing like getting a polite, but not very subtle "GTFO" from