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Post by: Black Blow Fly
I would love to see this as a very civilized discussion about scoring for large events. I will state my take on the situ at hand then read the responses. Please try your best to treat this thread as a sanctuary. A sanctuary is where enemies can meet and set aside differences and enjoy each others' company. There is a story about WWII... There was one day recognized as a holiday by both sides and some enemies somehow ended up playing a game of soccer/football. The next day it was all about killing again and back to business as usual but that one day stands out for what it was.
So onto the main subject- scoring for a tournament can be broken into the following categories:
• Battlepoints - This is based solely how well you accomplish the goals set out by the mission rules. A tournament such as Ard Boyz or a Gladiator falls solely under this category. There are no soft scores. It's all about bringing the hardest list and crushing your opponents. There are two possible major drawbacks - a mission could have rules that favor one particular style of army... Shooty versus close combat comes to mind. Say for instance a mission has the Night Fight rules in effect for the entire game, close combat oriented armies will have a huge advantage. The organizers can ideally come up with a set of missions that balance out each other and if there are enough rounds then you might be able to lose one game and still win. The other drawback is if there are no soft scores then there is no penalty for cheating other than bringing it to the attention of the judges for rectification; good luck with that.
The other categories all fall under the heading of soft scores.
Appearance - This is subjective but if a clear set of guidelines are established then everyone should know what to expect. Keep in mind that if you have the funds available you can commission a third party to both build and paint your army so it's quite possible to literally buy these points.
Sportsmanship - A player is judged by their opponents on these points and it should be simply about playing fairly. Unfortunately some people use this as a means to punish other players when they lose.
Theme/Composition - This is the most subjective category and it's very hard if not impossible to come up with a set of criteria that is fair for all armies. You have one side that says if an army is legal then it should suffer no penalty. On the other hand you have gamers that abhor WAAC lists. Like I said this is the most subjective category, you can't make everyone happy.
So I have touched on the main categories. The TOs can select from these and choose how they wish to distribute the overall points. There is no perfect system. Personally I feel that battlepoints should outweigh the soft scores. It's important to realize that gamers can manipulate the soft scores but also the soft scores can hold players in check.
I would like to hear what others think is the best way to distribute the points. If you think that a particular category should be eliminated explain why and provide examples to state your case.
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Post by: Major Malfunction
I guess to tell you how I'd like things split I have to wax eloquent on what these things mean to me.
Battle point is the easiest to enumerate. I mean if you have a unit in the other guy's deployment zone, that's easy to enumerate. On the other hand, if you ONLY count Battle points or emphasize them to the point of dominance then ass-hattery ensues. I've actually heard people say "Well I know I'm screwed for Sports/Theme/Whatever so I have to make it up in Battle Points". Guess what these players do? Hint: It's not be gracious or offer the benefit of the doubt on close calls.
Appearance: I don't think people should get credit towards prizes for armies they don't build and paint. I guess it's fine to buy your way over the entrance requirement of painted and based, but something just sticks in my craw about events where the "Best Overall" brought an army someone else painted and assembled. They aren't the Best Overall... they're the Best General that spent the most money on outsourced painting. If I can pay someone to paint for me, why can't I pay someone to coach me through the game? Or hire a Hooters waitress to bring us beers and load Best Sportsman?
Sportsmanship: I've seen a lot of attempts to enumerate sportsmanship. Did the other player have their own templates? Were they on time? Did they play slow? These aren't sportsmanship attributes, frankly; they are competency tests. I see sportsmanship as being pleasant whether the game is going your way or not; not sulking, not gloating, and above all giving the opponent the benefit of the doubt. Is that charge range 5.99" or 6.01"? A good sport will give you the charge. A power gamer will get out the micrometer and want to deny it.
Comp/Theme: Not my favorite. Any legal army is, well legal. I guess a mix of Nurgle, Khorne and Slaanesh isn't thematic but it's a winning list so I expect it. Comp is dead in my book.
So what's a good mix?
I certainly don't like Ard Boy style events that only emphasize Battle points. I see enough grey legions thank you.
Why not have an event where you simply offer a prize for the Best General, Best Painted and Best Sport? Do that and you don't have to worry about the Best Overall. A tournament doesn't need a last man standing like a Gladiator event, because let's face it: You're usually handing it to the guy with the most Battle Points anyway. Soft scores are the "tie breaker" points. This will also allow you to do some other prizes like runners up, boobie prizes, or worst loser.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
If we eliminated best overall it could possibly bring about a new era of gaming but for certain events you really can't get around it, such as qualifying to play in the Vegas GT next year.
I used to be against pro painted armies but now not having as much free time to paint I can understand why some people are willing to pay to have their armies painted. Some people would simply prefer to see all armies painted to a certain level versus playing against the grey legions.
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Post by: skyth
By the way, comp and theme are different things...Are you scoring for how powerful the list is or for how the list fits the background. I've always been in favor of 'theme' points being part of the appearance category and the power level being part of the comp.
I second the thing about NOT having a best overall...With the current tourney circuit, this is not possible though.
Comp shouldn't be part of the overall score, but should only be involved in the pairings. Also, comp should NEVER be opponent scored. I'm a big fan of a pre-published non-subjective comp system (IE WPS)
If you are going to put comp in for battle, you should put it in for painting and sports too...For instance, if you use older models, you should get a comp bonus to your painting score...If you paint in dark colors, you should get a bonus, if you wear glasses, you should get a penalty because you are artificailly increasing your natural abilities. Sports comp scoring should put in a bonus/penalty based on relative attractiveness, with a huge penalty if you are female. Also, a penalty if you lose and a bonus if you win should be included.
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Post by: Kirasu
The problem with comp to me is that you really need comp rules for each army due to how wildly different each codex can be
However, I do think comp in theory is a great thing as it promotes variation rather than people bring 8 chimeras + artillery every game
Another idea if the tournament is large enough you could have different "classes" of competitiveness.. If you ever watched the 24 hour road races you'll notice that the faster cars tend to win :p but they're also not directly competing against the slower cars even if all cars are on the same track
Most people (excluding the dillusional) know they arent going to win if they bring very average yet fluffy lists and it could be cool to use comp as a way to put people into different brackets
So youd have the winner of the WAAC people.. and then youd have the more comp friendly lists..
I really dont think there is ever going to be a way to balance out WAAC lists with average lists.. its like varsity vs junior varsity.. Almost every time varsity wins
I think there is a huge misconception that ONLy WAAC lists are competitive.. Anything can be just as competitive as long the power scale remains even among lists
Basically GBF.. If you wanna include comp youre going to have to do a lot of micromanaging which may not be all that fun .. good comp requires a lot of oversight just like a good apoc game!. Would take someone with a lot of knowledge about each army and how they win.
EXAMPLE OF COMP
Lets take IG and score comp based on a 0 sum system where 0 = average comp and negative comp = more power gamey
Most units would be 0 comp and say if you take over 4 chimeras youd lose a comp for each one, etc.. Same deal for spamming artillery
However, you could balance it out with say taking Ogryn which are not bad but arent great either and theyd give +1 comp. Or you could take commissar yarrick and hed give like +50 comp because hes that horrible and id love to see him in a tournament
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Post by: Deadshane1
Battlepoints and Appearance only.
Everyone behaves perfectly.
Of course this is a perfect world.
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Post by: Darkness
battle, sport, apperance, and maybe theme since them has nothing to do with comp.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
The last bit was funny skyth and you made your point well.
About comp and theme, I think you broke them up reasonably but still to me they are interrelated. Theme is about your army adhering to it's background but comp also comes into play in my opinion. A lot of people use troops as an example so let's take a look at the more common troop choices we often tend to see. I'll try to start off with the better choices and work my way down.
Chaos Space Marines
Berzerkers and Plague Marines are hands down some of the best with Plague Marines at the top. Noise Marines are also solid with the high initiative, doom siren and ranged noise weapons but you don't see them nearly as often. Thousand Sons you rarely ever see.
Imperial Guard
Mechanized veterans are very strong, cheap for the points and are very popular. You will also see your fair share of platoons but not as much so, probably due to the strength of mech.
Space Marines
Some people list tactical Marines as the best all around choice due to their versatility but they are expensive. Scouts have their advantages but die quickly to stuff like templates.
Space Wolves
I would probably choose Grey Hunters as the best troop choice. They are fairly cheap and excel in close combat plus there are a lot of options. Blood Claws on the other hand no one seems to be fielding for competitive play.
Battle Sisters
Again another solid choice, you can either go for burninate or massive flaming plus they can be mechanized. I think this is a very good choice but the army must be played by a skilled tactician to be competive.
Orks
Wow... You have the option to field nobs! I should have mentioned Wolfguard in the Space Wolf category. Boys are cheap plus you can choose from either Shoota Boyz or Slugga Boyz. Some people say that orks in general have passed their nadith but in fact you still see them at a lot of the top tables.
Eldar
Mechanized eldar are still very strong and in my mind Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent are a great troop choice. Guardians are kind of meh.
Specialist Marines
You can't pass over Dark Angels (bikes & terminators), and I should have mentioned bikes as a troop choice for vanilla SM. Blood Angels have access to assault Marines. These are all expensive units but can be fun to play and have their strengths. I don't rate any of them as top tiered but on the other hand recognize that biker Marines have done well under ideal conditions.
Dark Eldar
Warriors are cheap, can spam lances and be mechanized. Again this is another specialist army.
Grey Knights
Grey Knights are expensive. I don't remember this army ever winning a major event but I think they are fun to play and as an allied troop choice they can be strong.
Necrons
No love for the Warriors! 
I have chosen not to touch on the new Nidz yet but they definitely have a lot of great choices and are extremely balanced to say the least.
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Post by: fullheadofhair
I am with Skyth. No best over all. Don't see the point. I am one of those irritating people who places for fun and uses "bad" units coz they look cool.
However, in a tournie, you bring your hardest list and you duke it out until a stand still. If you are entering the realm of tournie players you owe it to them to bring your best list and your best game.To do any less is disrespectful. I do however expect the same treatment back for a friendly game.
Being a WAAC or hard tournie player doesn't make you a dick. Being a dick is what makes you a dick. Casual gamers have a lot of screaming asses amongst them to.
so what has this got to do with the post. No comp - if it is legal it is OK in tournie. That's what rules are for. No sportsmanship - judges do your job. If someone is a dork fine them points of their battle score. No painting scores - but if army isn't painted to standard 3 colors dock them battle points.
It is like tennis. A fun game on a sunday with a beer is not the same as a tournie game. you have standards of dress (painting) and behavior (sportsmanship) and you can lose a match by having points given to your opponent if you are a dick. One of the Williams sisters will tell you all about it.
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Post by: chaplaingrabthar
I like having a Best Overall.
I do think That battle, sports and appearance have their place. I like the earlier suggested idea of including theme in the appearance category. Particularly as there's a thread over in 40K General about a Tzeentch E-bay army and whether it has theme or not.
Comp is a tricky one. I'm generally against having a comps score, but then I like to build fluffy armies anyway.
I think in any tournament setting, Battle Points and Appearance should be the most important, with the other soft scores as a lower overall percentage, so if I were to run a tournament, the breakdown would be something like this:
Battle Points: 75%
Appearance: 20%
Sportsmanship: 5%
So I guess, I'd encourage TFG's. I'd have the proviso that anyone who doesn't have at least a painted army is ineligible for all prizes, so Best General would go to the est general who bothered painting their army.
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Post by: Sarigar
Fair enough regarding discussion of scoring in a tourney. I definitely didn't insinuate running a Ard Boyz type event; not to my liking. Here's just my humble opinion of what it should really break down to that balances hobby/tourney. I've not run a GT level event, but have handled several tourneys ranging from 14 - 30 players over the years.
-Battlepoints; this is the majority of points. Mission developement and playtesting is where you can really ensure balanced armies have the best chance to win.
-Have to bring a fully painted army (not an option), judges can award additional points for fantastic armies/displays etc... By this point, you can tell the stand out armies in a tourney. Up to 5%-10% in total points. I am a big advocate of great looking armies on great looking tables. The game draws most folks in on it's visual appeal and should be recognized.
-Drop Sportsmanship. Institute a system in which a judge can deduct points for poor sportsmanship. There's nothing more frustrating than winning a game and get chipmunked b/c my opponent didn't enjoy the game simply b/c he lost.
-Theme- It is a part of the painting scored by judges.
-Comp- If it is legal by the codex, let it be played.
Even when GW dropped army comp from their GT's, I did not see any real significant changes in what armies folks were building. If you are looking to try to have folks bring a balanced army, I think the missions is where you can accomplish this.
Basically, no matter what comp/theme score you institute, some folks will still bring whatever they want and accept losing comp points from their opponent. If they show up with a great looking army, act like and adult and table each opponent, they typically will still have a very good chance at winning. So, what did a comp score really accomplish?
Award System:
1st place overall
2nd place overall
Best Painted award
Favorite Opponent Award
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Post by: Hulksmash
Comp should only be used for a first game or first 2 games match up. It shouldn't have any effect on the tournament as an overall score. If you decide to include comp it should be a simple checklist that is very, very clear and that will make it easy to see if someone is chipmunking. It's not about making everyone happy but I can guarantee you more people will be happy with a shift to no comp than will complain when it doesn't appear in the scoring. Comp is dead.
Theme is also to me far to subjective. Theme would have to be based on current codexes and fluff but honestly how many people buy all the codexes every edition? So what you get is people hitting other people's comp for something that doesn't exist anymore. Great example would be people that started playing chaos this edition. They know nothing of "rivalries" or anything like that. Also something almost no tournament players would bemoan not seeing in the overall scoring. Theme to me is also dead.
Appearance is extremely important to me. Nothing is worse than playing against grey legions. That being said I could really care less if they painted it themselves. Should they win best painted? No. But I do prefer to see fully painted and pretty armies and not everyone is talented enough. I'm only middle of the road talented and am very tempted to be honest to get an army of mine when I find one I truly love for tournies, professionally painted. A solid checklist should also be used here to let people know approximately where they stand before entering the tournament. Appearance, if theme and comp are left out should be 20% of the total points.
Sportsmanship. Also something that is extremely important but also something that can be gamed. 20% of the overall points but for the love of god not just a 1-whatever scale. Checklists help this (i.e. it's easier to spot chipmunking). No one except the best sport should every score perfectly on sports but I feel it is an important part of the tournament itself.
Battlepoints. It's a damn tournament. I know people call them a hobby event but really your there to play games and win against other people. Minimum 60% of the overall total should be battle points. It is a tournament....Someone should not win it if they don't end up in the top for actual battle points.
That's the way I look at it as well as almost everyone I've talked to recently.
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Post by: JohnHwangDD
Theme isn't Comp. Comp is *what* you take out of the FOC. Theme is *why* you take it.
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Post by: Nicorex
Well I have played in quite a few Tournys over the years, both locals and national. But one Tourny I attended really sticks with me, They used all the same rules as a standerd GW National tourny(at the time, this was a few years ago) with one major change. All armys have to have 50% or more dedicated to Troops. I think this solves the comp prob all together. No more minimum troops units so you can max out on Heavys or fast attacks or sternguard or what ever. Even those special characters who make other units into troops isnt really effected because they still pay high points cost for those units. WAAC players can still make hard lists, theme/fluffy players(like me I admit) can do our thing, and everyone can have a good time, which is the point after all.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Lots of great feedback here! Keep it up please.
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Post by: vonjankmon
I think comp can be used but should be very specifically explained before hand. If a tournament wants to use comp that is fine but it needs to be very clearly outlined how to score those points. Such as +1 for over 4 troops units, -1 for two, -1 for more than 10 tanks in the army, etc. Everyone may not agree or like it but at least everyone is on an equal playing field with a setup like that, you know what you are getting into when you sign up and can tailor your army accordingly.
I think Appearance should be included but I think it should be a small part of the over all scoring. There are painting competitions like Golden Daemon for the artist that wants to compete. You go to a tournament to play the game, not paint. It always strikes me as odd that people will complain if painting scores are either not included or are in their opinion to small in a tournament but would cry bloody murder if someone wanted to include game scores in a Golden Daemon contest. Good for the goose, good for the gander.
Sportsmanship is a tough one. In my opinion the best way to handle this at a large tournament where you are more than likely playing 5-6 games over all is to keep the scale for rating, smaller, 1-5 for instance labeling out what the event organizer views for each level and then at the end of it toss out each players highest and lowest sportsmanship scores. You play that jerk of a player every once in a while that will tank your sportsmanship score just to be a jerk but the odds of playing two of them in the same tournament are hopefully slim. Same holds true for the people that will just give you a top score as long as you are not spitting at them the whole time.
My personal preference for tournaments is battlescore, with small painting scoring, average sportsmanship scoring, and no comp.
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Post by: mikhaila
Another possible point of discussion would be about the purpose of a tournament. People argue about the point of sports, comp, painting, etc at a tournament, without every agreeing on why they are coming to a tournament.
I had one person argue with me, (quite heavily, and for days), that he didn't like my tournaments, and I was running them wrong. His veiw was that a tournament was a no holds barred, fight for supremacy, to decide the best player in the room. For him, a tournament is the competition, and that's it. Battle points all the way.
His arguements made me realize that we saw touraments in different ways. When I talk try to encourage someone to come play in a tournament, I never say "Come battle it out, and prove your better!!". If that was my focus, I'd have the majority of players in the area walk away, as they don't expect to win the tournament. All they want is 5 games of warhammer, and a fun enviorment.
With different people having different veiws on what a Tournament is, it's no wonder that we also have different veiws on how to score one.
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Post by: Danny Internets
Do college basketball teams get bonus points for having pretty uniforms at the NCAA tournament?
Do Olympic athletes get a few seconds shaved off their times if they say "good game" to and shake hands with their opponents?
Frankly, if painting, sportsmanship, comp, etc. are being included in the overall results then you're not talking about a "tournament" at all--you're talking about a hobby competition. The difference is important yet apparently lost on the Warhammer community.
I'm not advocating having unpainted armies and giving license for douchebaggery, but to include soft scores and still call the event a "tournament" is laughable. The winner isn't the best player, he's the best hobbyist.
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Post by: chaplaingrabthar
Some would argue that the point of a hobby tournament would eb to find the best hobbyist...
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Post by: WvLopp
I have not been in many tourneys but here is my thought on sportsmanship. Couldn't you require that the person doing the scoring document what he is docking the other player for? Then if the judges see something "funny" they could throw it out or investigate it. The only real time I docked someone was in the last tourney I was in. I thought I was playing an 8 year old. He did not think things where going well for him. He picked up his IG and literally threw them into a box before the game was over. He claimed he had a head ache and had to pick up his girl friend. In the process he spilt his soda all over the floor and left without cleaning it up. So it is a little obvious why he got docked.
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Post by: Bunker
Danny Internets wrote:Do college basketball teams get bonus points for having pretty uniforms at the NCAA tournament?
Do Olympic athletes get a few seconds shaved off their times if they say "good game" to and shake hands with their opponents?
Frankly, if painting, sportsmanship, comp, etc. are being included in the overall results then you're not talking about a "tournament" at all--you're talking about a hobby competition. The difference is important yet apparently lost on the Warhammer community.
I'm not advocating having unpainted armies and giving license for douchebaggery, but to include soft scores and still call the event a "tournament" is laughable. The winner isn't the best player, he's the best hobbyist.
This. A tournament should be about who plays the game the best, not who is the nicest and has the prettiest models. You can have separate events for those if you;d like, but they should not, in any way, affect the outcome of the actual game results.
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Post by: dietrich
Cheaters should be removed from the tourney, whether there are soft scores or not. It doesn't matter if it's Ard Boyz or not. This isn't Nascar ("If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying!").
What it comes down to, is how much do you want to weigh the soft scores? Everyone agrees that the best tactical mind, with the best paint score, who fields a fluffy-not min/maxed army, and is a great guy, deserves to win. Beyond that, does the best general who is a jerk and has a legion of pewter deserve to win over an average general with a great-looking army? From that, you need to establish how much of an effect each soft score can have. If someone maxes all the soft scores, but is middle of the pack in battle points, can they win the tourney (and you may or may not want them to)?
Personally, I prefer a checklist style system like Adepticon uses. Even if it's as simple as:
Comp:
Army represents background of the race. +3 points
Army doesn't represent background, but wasn't built to WAAC either. 0 points
Army is OTT and built to WAAC. -3 points
I don't like using a "1-10" scale. Some people use 5 as a default, and some use 10. Giving a checklist-style at least forces people to give a more consistent scoring method.
I'm not a huge fan of player-judged Theme. Not everyone knows 40k background very well. I can see someone showing up with 'count as' Eldar Exodite army and newer players going 'WTF? Eldar on lizards as Jetbikes?' and docking the army. Comp is OK, but not everyone is up on the current 'best' lists and they may confuse their poor play with the other army's dominance.
I think that Sportsmanship has a place. Even as simple as:
This guy was fun to play. +5 points
This guy wasn't fun to play. 0 points.
I need to see a Judge, because this guy should be kicked out of the tourney.
Soft scores, being subjective, are always a difficult item to balance. As long as the judging criteria is well-established beforehand, it puts everyone on a level playing field.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Hmmmm... In basketball if you foul the other team and the referee blows the whistle then the other team gets to shoot free throws. If you double dribble then you must turn the ball over to the other team. There lots of penalties that apply in sports so I don't think those are good examples. Maybe chess would have been a better example...
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Post by: Danny Internets
chaplaingrabthar wrote:Some would argue that the point of a hobby tournament would eb to find the best hobbyist...
I don't know about you, but when I think of a tournament I think of a competition. How do sportsmanship and comp scores fit into that? Are we competing to see who is the best sportsman? Are we competing to see who can bring the an army least suited to the event?
Painting is similarly problematic. Would it be appropriate to label a pure painting contest as a "tournament"? One can quote definitions from Webster all day long, but I think most people would regard that labeling as more than a little silly. People spend up to two full days playing Warhammer at a "tournament" in which the outcomes are in no small part determined by things that didn't happen at said tournament. In fact, people might be using the same models painted years before and using them to score points in any number of "tournaments". Paint an army well once and score max points for life (or at least until the next edition). Worse still, cheating is rampant in this scoring category because people know they can have their armies professionally painted (or simply have a friend do it) to get max points. Wasn't there an instance of this at a recent GT?
While I respect that others like these kinds of events, I just find calling them "tournaments" to be wholly inappropriate. Automatically Appended Next Post: Green Blow Fly wrote:Hmmmm... In basketball if you foul the other team and the referee blows the whistle then the other team gets to shoot free throws. If you double dribble then you must turn the ball over to the other team. There lots of penalties that apply in sports so I don't think those are good examples. Maybe chess would have been a better example...
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Basketball is a perfectly suitable example.
Why do you get to shoot free throws when the other team fouls? Because the rules explicitly say that you do. Why do you turn the ball over if you double dribble? Because the rules explicitly say that you do.
Why does your Space Marine get removed when he fails his armor save? Because the rules explicitly say that you do.
Penalties are part of the rules of basketball. Just because the games have different rules doesn't mean they are incommensurable. By that logic, no two games can ever be compared unless they have identical rules (and are therefore the same game). However, even with chess as an example the arguments are unchanged. You don't get extra points for what you wear to a chess match, nor do you get an edge over your opponent for being voted a nicer guy.
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Post by: ArbitorIan
It depends if you want a tournament that emphasis just WINNING or more of a 'hobby' event. I'd always prefer a hobby event, in which you have to assume that everyone's take on the 'hobby' is equally valid.
So, some people mainly play. Some people mainly paint. Some people mainly convert. Some people enjoy theming their army most of all. Some people play 'for fun' but aren't that competitive. You have to take into account that each of these people is right, and their view is valid.
In this case, I'd scrap overall, and have battle points, painting and all the rest. I'd certainly keep sportsmanship (I'd MUCH rather compete against sportsmanly opponents than ones who have amazing tactics, for example) and I'd also keep theme in. Comp wouldn't be needed, or controversial, as it wouldn't affect battle points. I think three paint minimum would be acceptable.
Most importantly, though, you have to recognise that each area is considered AS IMPORTANT by some players. (I personally consider Sportsmanship and Theme the most interesting but YMMV.) This means prizes must be equal, or the amount of recognition equal, since different people consider them equal.
So my preference would be for
Best General (Barttle points)
Best Painter
Best Converted
Best Themed
Sportsmanship
And have five equal prizes. No best overall, though if you DO want a best overall it has to be an equal split.
And of course, if you want to run an even that just concentrates on one area of the hobby (for example, gaming) you're welcome to.... 
EDIT - Furthermore, the one tournament I would completely expenct to be a 'Hobby Event' like this is the Grand Tournament. I couldn't see GW promoting an event where gaming is promoted as 'more important' than other areas of the hobby.
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Post by: Maelstrom808
I have to agree, we are talking about two completely different animals. Personally, for me a tournament is all about the game itself as opposed to the hobby. I want to test my ability to stomp face directly against someone else's ability to stomp face. That's not to say you have throw everything else out the window. Establish minimum painting standards, have entirely seperate painting competitions, have refs that are more proactive and heavy handed against cheating and general bad sportsmanship. Comp is just entirely rediculous and can never be balanced to give all races an equal shot unless you micromanage it to the point of impracticality. The hobbyist side of it is when you are just hanging out at the FLGS and playing some pickup games while chatting it up. Just my opinion though, and not everybody shares it.
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Post by: Danny Internets
ArbitorIan wrote:
Most importantly, though, you have to recognise that each area is considered AS IMPORTANT by some players. Ipersonally consider Sportsmanship and Theme the most imteresting but YMMV. This means prizes must be equal, or the amount of recognition equal, since different people consider them equal.
So my preference would be for
Best General (Barttle points)
Best Painter
Best Converted
Best Themed
Sportsmanship
And have five equal prizes. No best overall, though if you DO want a best overall it has to be an equal split.
And of course, if you want to run an even that just concentrates on one area of the hobby (for example, gaming) you're welcome to....
I think eliminating best overall is a very elegant way to deal with the situation. I still wouldn't refer to it as a tournament, but it's certainly the best way I've seen of being equally respectful to each of the ways in which people enjoy the hobby.
People can go and "compete" in whichever aspects they like without being forced to take part in all aspects if they want to take home the top prize. This is done to some extent at existing tournaments, but having a Best Overall position compromises the legitimacy of the others, since often the person receiving Best Overall would often have qualified for at least one of the other Best awards, but instead they are given out to the second highest scorer (rather than give multiple prizes to one person).
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Post by: generalgrog
mikhaila wrote:Another possible point of discussion would be about the purpose of a tournament. People argue about the point of sports, comp, painting, etc at a tournament, without every agreeing on why they are coming to a tournament........
......With different people having different veiws on what a Tournament is, it's no wonder that we also have different veiws on how to score one.
This point is well taken. Maybe we should look at how we go about classifying tournements?
Tourneys that use a lot of soft scores mght be called a " 40K Hobby Tournament".
Tourneys that use minimal or no soft scores might be called a " 40K Battle Tournament" (best I could come up with quickly  )
I personally would enjoy both formats, but people that have more extreme views on the matter can now make more informed decisions without resorting to the uber critisism that has permeated the GT scene the last few years.
For example.."Hey I'm going to a 40k hobby tournament, man there is to much reliance on soft scores, comp is dead!!" "Well then why did you sign up when there is Battle tournament next month?"
Just totally drop the " GT" handle.
GG
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Post by: ArbitorIan
generalgrog wrote:Stuff about naming
I'd call each specialised tournament by it's area of the hobby. So, 40k Painting Tournament, 40k Gaming Tournament, etc.
But a GRAND Tournament is where you can compete in everything, in as many or as few categories as you like.
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Post by: Kirasu
Equal prizes is a very good way to also quietly discourage super competitive people from attending.. Im not saying being competitive is bad (I like to place top 3 in every tournament) But its more the mentality
Large battle prizes promotes MORE WAACers showing up and it also encourages more anti-social behavior during the event due to money being involved. Honestly I think any GW game is a HORRIBLE place for WAACers given the unbalanced nature and spotty rules
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Post by: Hulksmash
Have to say I haven't run into to any crazy horrible WAACers in the last 2-3 GT's I've played at and I'm normally around the top tables on the second day (i.e. people still in the running for winning something). I think people let the fear of a single bad egg keep them from running a tournament that many of the tournament goers would actually prefer.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
If people are competing for a golden ticket to Vegas it's the responsibility of the TOs to fairly determine who are the top two players which boils down to best overall and 2nd best overall. It's also important to recognize there is the vocal minority that posts a lot on forums and blogs while there is also the silent majority. Dakka may at anytime have up to around 20,000 viewers but only a couple thousand at most are registered.
G
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Post by: Fiercegoldfish
Not sure if anyone picked up on this but the story you are talking about in the original post happened in WWI not WWII ;P
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Post by: skyth
One problem with soft scoring, specifically in sportsmanship, is that the scores don't vary much...People automatically mark full points sometimes, sometimes they don't...But there is little variance in the scores in general.
A possible way to fix this is to have a ranking given rather than a rating...IE rank the players that you fought against.
On another point, someone mentioned giving negative scores. Negative scores tend to drive people away and are exclusionary rather than inclusive. Unless you are intentionally tyring to drive people away from your tournament (I know of some that do).
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Post by: dietrich
I think the newer Codexes have resulted in less of the min-max that occured 5 to 10 years ago. The 6-man las/ plas 'mauleed' marines are gone. The troops choices are, in general, better than previously. Point costs for troops has, in general, dropped (Orks and SW at least), making them more attractive. Plus, you know that you'll need more than 2x 5-man scout units in objective based games. There's still some extremes out there, but in general, it seems better than it was. Automatically Appended Next Post: skyth wrote:A possible way to fix this is to have a ranking given rather than a rating...IE rank the players that you fought against.
Adepticon did this a few years ago (well, maybe more than a few) in the Sunday tourney. I thought it was a solid way to do it, but it has it's flaws as well. If you play three jerks, one of them has to be the 'least jerkiest' and if you play three beautiful armies, one has to be the ugly duckling. If it's over 5 or 6 games, that will help reduce the effect, but if it's only 3 games, it can happen.
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Post by: Pika_power
Battlepoints should be the bread and butter of your tournament. If you're playing a game competitively, the victory conditions overall should always be a matter of winning the games.
Composition should definitely be in, no exceptions. The system I would use is something along the lines of "Build your army within the rules for a specific codex and only use up to the allotted number of points".
Painting is a simple check of three or more colours.
I define sportsmanship as not cheating or not hindering the game. If the opponent does so, get a judge as opposed to stabbing them after the game so you can stroke your epeen over how you got such good revenge.
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Post by: don_mondo
OK, my turn.
Ratios:
Battle 50-65%, set high enough against the others so that you have to win a majority of your games to win overall.
They're fairly self explanatory, no argument agmongst us as to what they are. All kinds of dfifferent ways to run these, from VPs to VP ratio to set amount for a win to primary/secondary/tertiary (p/s/t) objectives each worth a different amount. Seen all of them and probably some I've forgotten over the years. I've come to enjoy that last one (p/s/t) over the last couple of years. But ultimately, as everyone in the tourney is being held to the same scoring system and (hopefully) knows what it is going in, all good. It's no fun being surprised towards the end of the first game by an announcement that losses are worth more points than a draw........... Yeah, it really happened. And yeah, players threw close games in the 2nd and 3rd rounds to score more points. I finished with one win and two draws, cause I don't throw games.
Appearance 20-25% Painting and Theme (if used) combined here. At least that way all the subjective army scoring is lumped together.
Now I'm a bit of an oddball here, I suppose. I'm not going to ban an unpainted army. But he's going to know going in that the only thing he can win is Best Sport. No Best General, no Overall. I'd much prefer to see painted armies on the table. Scoring here is far more subjective than other categories. I've seen the same exact army scored at two GTs in the same year and receive scores that varied by a large margin. And that was with the checklist scoring they used the last couple of years they ran GTs............. Before that, some of the systems were far more subjective and on at least one occasion, the judge and player awarded painting bonus points allowed a player with a non-winning record to win the Baltimore GT.
Theme has nothing to do with what units you took (ie how hard the army is). Again, this is a very subjective category, and people will have varying ideas as to what is or is not a themed army. To me, it's whether or not there is a coherent "story" that ties the army and it's units together. One of my IG, all RT era models, the Arkiv'l (archival) Regiment, or my 1st Lustrian IG (lizardmen IG) army. I think those are themed, regardless of how "hard" they are or are not.
Pro-painted armies. IMO, you didn't paint it, then the points you receive for someone else's work don't get counted towards your overall score. Can't win Overall, can't win Best Painted.
Sportsmanship. 20-25% This is a hard quantity to nail down. But I do think it needs to be included in the scoring. There have been many long threads on what this is, and I'm not going to dig too deeply into it. Suffice it to say, very few players should max out, judges should be able to give penalty points (yellow cards, if you will, with red cards meaning you're outta here), and it should be tracked by the judges for possible chipmunking. And this should be the only category that the players have a significant voice in. I'll touch more on who scores what at the bottom.
Comp. If included in scoring, no more than 10%, just enough to make a difference. I've seen a whole lot of different systems over the years, from checklists (40% Troops, two maxed Troops units, less than 10% wargear, fewer non-Troops than Troops-per category, not overall, etc etc) to pure subjective to mixed. Doesn't matter to me. I only ask one thing. If there's going to be a Comp system. It has to be advertised, laid out in advance so that all players know what it is. If it's a pure/partial subjective, post sample lists as to what the judge thinks hard/soft lists consist of. That way players new to the venue/tourney are not at a disadvantage to players that have attended that same tourney/venue before. Experience in the system does equate to an advantage.
Who scores what.
Already mentioned Sports, this should be player's scoring, with the judges only weighing in for penjalties and in some rare cases, awards.
Battle points, based on scenarios, pure and simple.
Pinting/Theme. Judges only for the points. However, one thing I do like to do is have the players as a whole cast votes for the Best Army. These votes are not worth any points and do not affect the final standings. But they sure come in handy as a tiebreaker for that Best painted award. Or alternatively, you can let each vote count as one point but those points are only used in the Best Painted category, again, never affecting the final standings. Drawback to this is the possibility of a group voting as a bloc for one of their members. heh, there's a reason I include club/group affiliations as part of registration info. Well, also to try and keep them from having to play each other in the early rounds as much as possible.
Comp, if used, judges only, no player input.
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Post by: ArbitorIan
Green Blow Fly wrote:If people are competing for a golden ticket to Vegas it's the responsibility of the TOs to fairly determine who are the top two players which boils down to best overall and 2nd best overall. It's also important to recognize there is the vocal minority that posts a lot on forums and blogs while there is also the silent majority. Dakka may at anytime have up to around 20,000 viewers but only a couple thousand at most are registered.
G
But if we're talking about a Games Workshop event, promoting all areas of their ' GW Hobby' you're not looking for the top PLAYERS, you're looking for the top ' GW hobbyist'. Anything else promotes the idea that people who like playing games somehow have a better hobby than people who like painting and converting. Since GW promotes all areas of their hobby, their biggest event of the year should reflect this.
If they want to do this via overall scores, that's fine, but the score has to be fairly balanced between all the areas of the hobby. Otherwise you're penalising painters, converters, 'themed' hobbyists, who can only get a paltry 5% in their chosen field compared to competitive 'players'. Automatically Appended Next Post: Pika_power wrote:Battlepoints should be the bread and butter of your tournament. If you're playing a game competitively, the victory conditions overall should always be a matter of winning the games.
Composition should definitely be in, no exceptions. The system I would use is something along the lines of "Build your army within the rules for a specific codex and only use up to the allotted number of points".
Painting is a simple check of three or more colours.
I define sportsmanship as not cheating or not hindering the game. If the opponent does so, get a judge as opposed to stabbing them after the game so you can stroke your epeen over how you got such good revenge.
What you've described there to me sounds like the perfect ' 40k Gaming Tournament'. Where the focus of the event is on 'gaming' and everything else is discounted. That's fine, but it obviously excludes a lot of people who participate in 40k....
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Post by: Fiercegoldfish
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Post by: ArbitorIan
Fiercegoldfish wrote:Agreed.
If someone wants to get kudos for painting, have a separate competition or something for them. have a winner for gaming and then hold another competition for painting etc.
best thing I can think of for comparison is the following: When two teams play in the superbowl, it's all about the points. There are no good sportsmanship points or extra points for being flashy or having nice uniforms. Sure it helps the ratings that the cheerleaders look nice, but when they want to judge the cheerleaders they have cheer-leading competitions (football game=the game, cheerleaders=paint).
Yes, and a tournament can be about just gaming.
The thing is, in the Superbowl, the only thing that matters is who wins. In 40k, we all admit that LOTS of things are equally important. Games Workshop even promotes this, and plenty of people specialise in areas other than playing. It's not 'just' a game you play where everything else is secondary (like in Superbowl), the painting and converting is considered by a large part of the community to be MORE important than playing.
At the end of the day, do you run an event for the whole hobby community, or just for one section of it? Either are equally valid...
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Post by: Fiercegoldfish
ArbitorIan wrote:Fiercegoldfish wrote:Agreed.
If someone wants to get kudos for painting, have a separate competition or something for them. have a winner for gaming and then hold another competition for painting etc.
best thing I can think of for comparison is the following: When two teams play in the superbowl, it's all about the points. There are no good sportsmanship points or extra points for being flashy or having nice uniforms. Sure it helps the ratings that the cheerleaders look nice, but when they want to judge the cheerleaders they have cheer-leading competitions (football game=the game, cheerleaders=paint).
Yes, and a tournament can be about just gaming.
The thing is, in the Superbowl, the only thing that matters is who wins. In 40k, we all admit that LOTS of things are equally important. Games Workshop even promotes this, and plenty of people specialise in areas other than playing. It's not 'just' a game you play where everything else is secondary (like in Superbowl), the painting and converting is considered by a large part of the community to be MORE important than playing.
At the end of the day, do you run an event for the whole hobby community, or just for one section of it? Either are equally valid...
I agree that both sides of the hobby are great and should be prodded along but what is wrong with having a gaming winner and then a modeling winner at the same competition?
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Post by: ArbitorIan
Fiercegoldfish wrote:
I agree that both sides of the hobby are great and should be prodded along but what is wrong with having a gaming winner and then a modeling winner at the same competition?
Absolutely nothing
That's why a lot of people are advocating that we have a 'Best General', 'Best Painter', 'Best Sportsman' etc etc and give them all prizes, and don't have a 'Overall' winner at all. Everyone can enter the competition they want and win in the area they consider important. Nobody is 'better' because of which area they want to specialise in....
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
You hace to have overall for GW events so you can hand out the golden tickets to Vegas.
G
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Post by: Hulksmash
Not totally true actually GBF. It is up to the discretion of the TO to decide what winning section gets the Tickets (i.e. Best Overall and Best General). Granted every tournament is going to have a best overall but the second ticket can go to the winner of another category. Just a heads up
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Post by: Cruentus
don_mondo wrote:Comp, if used, judges only, no player input.
I agree with just about everything Mondo said.
And, to add to his last point, at no time should someone who is participating in running the tournament (i.e. by judging comp, theme, helping decide pairings, etc.) be allowed to actually play in the tournament. Judges who are judging as an impartial party (typically painting, comp) should remain impartial.
I wholeheartedly agree also with the idea that comp scoring, painting rubrics, processes to decide pairings for first or subsequent rounds of the tourny should also be transparent before and during the tournament.
I used to be big on comp, but have come to realize that there is no system that can't be gamed. If you use a checklist, then the lists are customized to the checklists. If its a 40% troops thing, then the lists are maximized for that. I'm fine as long as I know the system up front, but have also been having fun without worrying about comp at all.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Hulksmash I think it's best to give the second ticket to the player with the second best overall score. As a TO that seems the most fair to me and maybe more importantly not controversial.
So far I have not seen much of a homogeneous consensus in regards to scoring other than most people appear to agree that the majority of the points should be drawn from battlepoints. I have also seen a good number of people say the rules for comp should be very clear. All in all I think this is a good discussion and hope that more people will join in with us here.
G
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Post by: Hulksmash
Why is that more fair? To be honest some of us paint for crap. If i painted super well I'd actually have won the last GT I attended. But I can't paint like a superstar which will normally keep me out of the overall. I think as long as you post where the tickets are going before the event it is fair. As for controversial how does that work. The guy who won the most gets a ticket to Vegas. It is still a tournament. I actually find it silly that someone who doesn't place in the top 4 of any category can walk away with a ticket to Vegas. Especially in a tournament with 15 swing points at the end for "favorite" votes (i.e. opponent, army, theme).
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Post by: Da Boss
My take on it is as follows:
Get rid of Best Overall.
Best General:
0 points for being massacred. 5 for a minor loss. 10 for a draw. 15 for a major win. 20 for massacring you opponent. Person with most battle points is Best General.
Best Painted:
Using a checklist, and more than one judge, pick the best painted.
Best Sport:
I can take or leave this award. But if you have it, it should be based on player observation. Ie. people vote for their most sporting opponent at the end of the tourney (secretly, because otherwise it'd be a bit awkward) and the guy who gets the most gets the spot.
That's just what I'd prefer. I don't think doing it the other way is incredibly terrible, but I much prefer seperating out and recognising the different aspects of the game, and rewarding all of them.
Also, it's vital that whatever scoring system you're using, it's known about beforehand, and well advertised. If you are using comp, players NEED to know. Same goes for painting scores- if there's gonna be a checklist, publish the checklist! This way, people can see what you're going for, and decide whether to attend or not based on that.
I'm pretty happy to see that most people are in favour of splitting the three categories out.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Hulksmash I bet if you had more time to paint you could improve your appearance scores. Maybe though that is not a big priority for you.
G
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Post by: mikhaila
Bunker wrote:Danny Internets wrote:Do college basketball teams get bonus points for having pretty uniforms at the NCAA tournament?
Do Olympic athletes get a few seconds shaved off their times if they say "good game" to and shake hands with their opponents?
Frankly, if painting, sportsmanship, comp, etc. are being included in the overall results then you're not talking about a "tournament" at all--you're talking about a hobby competition. The difference is important yet apparently lost on the Warhammer community.
I'm not advocating having unpainted armies and giving license for douchebaggery, but to include soft scores and still call the event a "tournament" is laughable. The winner isn't the best player, he's the best hobbyist.
This. A tournament should be about who plays the game the best, not who is the nicest and has the prettiest models. You can have separate events for those if you;d like, but they should not, in any way, affect the outcome of the actual game results.
And yet the overwhelming majority of tournaments seem to have scoring that involves something other than just winning games. 
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Post by: don_mondo
ArbitorIan wrote:Green Blow Fly wrote:If people are competing for a golden ticket to Vegas it's the responsibility of the TOs to fairly determine who are the top two players which boils down to best overall and 2nd best overall. It's also important to recognize there is the vocal minority that posts a lot on forums and blogs while there is also the silent majority. Dakka may at anytime have up to around 20,000 viewers but only a couple thousand at most are registered.
G
But if we're talking about a Games Workshop event, promoting all areas of their ' GW Hobby' you're not looking for the top PLAYERS, you're looking for the top ' GW hobbyist'. Anything else promotes the idea that people who like playing games somehow have a better hobby than people who like painting and converting. Since GW promotes all areas of their hobby, their biggest event of the year should reflect this.
If they want to do this via overall scores, that's fine, but the score has to be fairly balanced between all the areas of the hobby. Otherwise you're penalising painters, converters, 'themed' hobbyists, who can only get a paltry 5% in their chosen field compared to competitive 'players'.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Pika_power wrote:Battlepoints should be the bread and butter of your tournament. If you're playing a game competitively, the victory conditions overall should always be a matter of winning the games.
Composition should definitely be in, no exceptions. The system I would use is something along the lines of "Build your army within the rules for a specific codex and only use up to the allotted number of points".
Painting is a simple check of three or more colours.
I define sportsmanship as not cheating or not hindering the game. If the opponent does so, get a judge as opposed to stabbing them after the game so you can stroke your epeen over how you got such good revenge.
What you've described there to me sounds like the perfect ' 40k Gaming Tournament'. Where the focus of the event is on 'gaming' and everything else is discounted. That's fine, but it obviously excludes a lot of people who participate in 40k....
Yep, just like Golden Daemon excludes those of us who prefer to play instead of paint.................
Point being, a tourney should be focused on the gaming element, and the 'soft scores' are an adjunct. That's why the Battle Points element should be strong enough so that you cannot win overall without winning a majority of your games.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hulksmash wrote:Why is that more fair? To be honest some of us paint for crap. If i painted super well I'd actually have won the last GT I attended. But I can't paint like a superstar which will normally keep me out of the overall. I think as long as you post where the tickets are going before the event it is fair. As for controversial how does that work. The guy who won the most gets a ticket to Vegas. It is still a tournament. I actually find it silly that someone who doesn't place in the top 4 of any category can walk away with a ticket to Vegas. Especially in a tournament with 15 swing points at the end for "favorite" votes (i.e. opponent, army, theme).
I'm in the same boat and have resigned myself to it. Course, I'm usually comparing myself to other IFL members that have won GT Best Painted, GT Player's Choice, Golden Daemons, etc etc. I paint fair-to-middling, not worried about excelling at it. Maybe I could improve if I sat down and really worked at it, but that's time could be gaming.......... I enter the GTs knowing there's no way I'm going to win overall due to that. Yet I've been in 20 or so GW GTs, cause I enjoy them and the friends I've made at them over the years. And I've finished as high as 5th overall, several times in the top 10, and second for Best General once (when it was combined Battle and Sports). I guess my point is that I choose to focus on the gaming aspect of the game and accept that I'll be middle of the road on apinting. So be it. Maybe that slants my opinion that most of the tourney score should come from battle points. But seriously, can you really say that giving Best Overall to a player with a 2-3 record is right, just because he has a beautiful army? If Battle Points aren't balanced properly, it can happen.
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Post by: Pika_power
ArbitorIan wrote:
Pika_power wrote:Battlepoints should be the bread and butter of your tournament. If you're playing a game competitively, the victory conditions overall should always be a matter of winning the games.
Composition should definitely be in, no exceptions. The system I would use is something along the lines of "Build your army within the rules for a specific codex and only use up to the allotted number of points".
Painting is a simple check of three or more colours.
I define sportsmanship as not cheating or not hindering the game. If the opponent does so, get a judge as opposed to stabbing them after the game so you can stroke your epeen over how you got such good revenge.
What you've described there to me sounds like the perfect ' 40k Gaming Tournament'. Where the focus of the event is on 'gaming' and everything else is discounted. That's fine, but it obviously excludes a lot of people who participate in 40k....
A tournament implies competition in a game. For fluff, many Games Workshop stores run campaigns. For painters, they run fluff. For kids who play to yell "WAAAAGH!!!" there're Game Nights. For those who like to play to win, there should be an event specifically for them, as opposed to an event sort of directed towards them, but with a hodgepodge of attributes from other aspects of the game such as painting and narrative, causing the competitive players to moan about the comp scores, the painters to moan about the grey armies of doom and the fluffy players to moan about the WAAC players, meaning no one has a good time. The best thing to do is separate the aspects out. It's been done for everything except the tournament scene.
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Post by: Hulksmash
@GBF
I paint for other people too. I paint pretty well. But pretty well isn't enough to compete in overalls on the west coast. Add in that painting is subjective. I paint to a generally middling to high middling level. I just think that to heavy a of weight in soft scores is silly. I'm just not willing to put 20-30 hours per squad in my army which is the only place I really could have improved my score at the last GT I was at. It isn't reasonable. And since this hobby isn't all about painting I shouldn't have to.
@Topic
I also hate the subjective point swings at the end of the tournament voting. They should only be used as tie breakers for any specific spot not count towards overall points.
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Post by: Sidstyler
I'm of a mind that a tournament should only be about battle points. Appearance, theme, and comp are all too subjective, and I'm not sure I see why it matters if you paint real pretty at a tournament, that's what painting competitions are for. Sportsmanship scores sound like a good idea but it's been so horribly implemented that I'm not partial to them, either...way too easy to dick people out of points. "I didn't have fun because he beat me so he gets a big fat zero!", that kind of bs.
I'm also very strongly opposed to the idea of comp scoring. Not only do I find the idea that I can be penalized for taking a legal army insulting, but comp often doesn't achieve what the organizers think it does. I don't see how most people can say with a straight face that they're encouraging people to use a "variety" of armies, when they're imposing pointless restrictions and telling you what you can and can't bring (and yes, that's exactly what they're doing, saying "Oh you can bring whatever you want, you just won't win the tournament because your score will get tanked" doesn't change anything).
The only way comp works, and the only way you'll get ME to play in a comped tournament, is if the organizers write army lists for each of the armies, and actually provide you with your army for the day. I'm not about to waste my time and money building and painting an army I'll never field outside of said tournament, and I also don't feel like trying to figure out what the organizers like and what they don't. It's easier if they just say "Here, use this list".
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Post by: Sarigar
Pika_power wrote:ArbitorIan wrote:
Pika_power wrote:Battlepoints should be the bread and butter of your tournament. If you're playing a game competitively, the victory conditions overall should always be a matter of winning the games.
Composition should definitely be in, no exceptions. The system I would use is something along the lines of "Build your army within the rules for a specific codex and only use up to the allotted number of points".
Painting is a simple check of three or more colours.
I define sportsmanship as not cheating or not hindering the game. If the opponent does so, get a judge as opposed to stabbing them after the game so you can stroke your epeen over how you got such good revenge.
What you've described there to me sounds like the perfect ' 40k Gaming Tournament'. Where the focus of the event is on 'gaming' and everything else is discounted. That's fine, but it obviously excludes a lot of people who participate in 40k....
A tournament implies competition in a game. For fluff, many Games Workshop stores run campaigns. For painters, they run fluff. For kids who play to yell "WAAAAGH!!!" there're Game Nights. For those who like to play to win, there should be an event specifically for them, as opposed to an event sort of directed towards them, but with a hodgepodge of attributes from other aspects of the game such as painting and narrative, causing the competitive players to moan about the comp scores, the painters to moan about the grey armies of doom and the fluffy players to moan about the WAAC players, meaning no one has a good time. The best thing to do is separate the aspects out. It's been done for everything except the tournament scene.
In the U.S. it is already being accomplished. GW sponsors the Ard Boyz for all 3 game systems. Only battlepoints are scored and it's encouraged to bring the hardest army you can bring to the table.
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Post by: Pika_power
GW does? Interesting. So what's the GT doing around?
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Post by: Sarigar
Different strokes for different folks. This year in the U.S. there are no GW GTs, only Indy GTs. The top two finishers in each Indy GT get slot to go to the Las Vegas GW GT in 2011. The Ard Boyz (IIRC) finals top two finishers get slots for the Vegas GT.
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Post by: Aldonis
I think it's cool to have specialized events for specific things. Examples - 'ard Boyz - pure gaming event - you win or you lose, Golden Demon - painting and converting only. But for the Grand Tournaments - I suggest the following:
I think the issue about comp rears its head because of one category - Overall Champion - and the fact that it has the most loot attached to it. All the other categories feed into "overall" - and thus if you have a Comp category - it pisses people off towards overall. I suggest that for a GT type tournament that you eliminate Overall from the categories.
Have a Best General, Best Painted, Best Themed, Funnest Opponent etc category. You could even break it down by Codex if you wanted - or a 1, 2, 3rd place for each. Split the prize support evenly across those. Yeah - there may be less prize support for winning a category because you spread stuff out more. But at the end of the day, do people really play in tourneys for the loot - or for the fun of competing and maybe getting their 10 seconds of fame for winning something? I think most people do the latter. The more people who get their name called and get to come up front - even if it's just for a trinket - the better.
I'm actually not in favor so much in regards to Comp. It's the big thing that makes me think you have to scrap the Overall category. Comp is subjective - no way around that - and it does create an imbalance in the game. What I think should replace it - and maybe appeal more to people is a Theme category. yeah - I know it's still subjective as well, but you don't limit people on what they can take army wise. Theme would be about the fluff, display, modeling, storyline, etc. The people that really get into writing a background, naming characters, etc. They could use anything in the codex to do this - which is where I think the improvement comes from.
This way everyone has their "thing" they can go for. I'm a helluva guy and love just to play and have fun - so I go for funnest player. xxxx is a top shelf player - he guns for best General. xxxxx..well gak - he wins all the painting stuff. Etc, etc...overall - I think more people have fun - get less bent out of shape about "cheating" and "broken lists" - are less tempted to cheat for the big prize - and you get more positive feedback on your tournaments.
You also have in effect - Four or five separate events going on simultaneously. And they all speak to different aspects of the tournament scene. People have more - or multiple niches to compete for - and overall it's a lot better thing.
As to the Golden Ticket mess that GW has created this year. I guess you could take the two people who did the best across the board on all categories. Weigh them equally. Give them the Golden Tickets. No prize or loot - just the ticket to Vegas. Then hopefully at the end - you've got the top people across everything in the hobby being represented in Vegas - which is what I think GW wants to have happen.
Respectfully submitted for the discussion.....
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Post by: mikhaila
The best thing in my opinion, is that there is no one best way to do things. Different styles of tournaments with different scoring, scenarios, scenery, etc. There's no reason to do it the same way all the time.
And anyone that feels strongly about how a tournament should be run, can always organize their own.
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Post by: don_mondo
Pika_power wrote:GW does? Interesting. So what's the GT doing around?
We don't have those in the US anymore..................
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Post by: Pika_power
I see, I see.
So the GW scene reinforced my viewpoint, correct?
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Post by: don_mondo
Pika_power wrote:I see, I see.
So the GW scene reinforced my viewpoint, correct?
I don't know. What is your viewpoint?
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Post by: kartofelkopf
The biggest issues I have with Comp scoring are that it is too subjective and it creates an imbalance in scoring. What does a WAAC/OTT/OP list look like?
Is Landraider spam WAAC/OTT/OP?
Is Terminator spam WAAC/OTT/OP?
Is Dreadnought spam WAAC/OTT/OP?
Black Templar have LRC as a standard option for their Troops choice-- does taking 4 or 5 Troops choices in a standard dedicated transport make a list unfluffy or WAAC/OTT/OP?
Dark Angels can take Terminators as Troops-- does taking 3 or 4 Troops choices make their list unfluffy or WAAC/OTT/OP?
Orks can field 2 Deff Dreads as Troops choices-- does taking several dreads make their list unfluffy or WAAC/OTT/OP?
All three of those lists are codex legal, have a basis on the fluff, and meet the blindly objective Comp rubrics some people propose (40% Troops, etc...).
There's no way to create a useful, objective Comp standard, short of going Codex by Codex and weighing the values of things or imposing penalties for taking different units-- on the plus side, someone has done this for us already!
It's called points values and FOC. Any other Comp system is going to just introduce an additional, artificial, and inherently biased/unfair points skewing.
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Sportsmanship should certainly be scored each round by the opponent (with judge oversight)- but should not exceed 10% of total scoring. Painting... eh. There should DEFINITELY be a standard for playing-- we don't let people play with proxies or unassembled models. Requiring a minimum paint job (3 colors, e.g.) for fielding a model should be par for the course. If you must have points scored for this category, use a standard rubric, and judge scored to avoid as much bias as possible.
I agree with many of the above posters that playing the game is the reason people go to tourneys. It's disingenuous to claim otherwise. I can paint my models and play friendly games without having to pay an entry fee. People are paying for the chance to compete. People shouldn't be penalized for not being great painters-- if there's an effort made, and I don't have to play the grey legion, then all is right in the world.
Edit for spelling[i]
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Post by: Pika_power
Comp scores are silly for a clear reason. Consider the tournament scene to be a pond. Now consider each list to be a fish, with the strength of the list determining their size. We now have a pond with various sized fish, with the bigger ones preying on the smaller. If we remove all the big fish, the medium sized fish begin to dominate, and all we've achieved is lessening the variety in the pond.
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Post by: Sidstyler
I'm not sure I see how comp creates more "varied" armies. If you're not allowed to duplicate (or "spam") units then everyone's going to be running a list that looks pretty much the same anyway, with one of everything except troops.
I just don't get it I guess. And maybe I don't want to. :\
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Post by: skyth
I've gone to a couple comp-heavy tournaments, and all my opponents just blurred together (Marines with little variation...)
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Post by: olympia
Three quick comments:
1. Comp. Just get rid of it outright. It has no place in a competitive tournament.
2. Sport. Get rid of it but read the riot act at the beginning of the tournament and have judges that are EXTREMELY proactive in
watchinig games. Have a yellow/red card system. A yellow card is a warning and a red card means you are out. Yellow card people for declaring that they can pop smoke in the wrong turn phase, failing to roll for reserves, etc...or even for arguing about rules and being wrong. Fire off a few yellow cards in the first round and people will get the message quickly.
3. Painting etc. Give a tropy for best painted but do not award any points for it. Treat as a non-competitive, completely unrelated prize. Rather demand that all armies be painted and based and again have the judges be proactive and remove unpainted models. In many tournaments judges just sit on their asses or chat with a friend. They need to on the floor going from table to table.
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Post by: Black Antelope
In my opinon:
Painting scores:
Should be min 3 colours, based etc to be allowed to play.
Should be scored by a judge for a smaller prize, but is seperate from the main games
Sports:
Rank opponants in order. Either seperate prize or ~10% of overall.
Comp:
Not sold on this. If you can get a system that works, use it for ~10% OR to place 1st round opponants.
On a slightly different track, what do you think the best method of scoring battle points is?
Win/Draw/Lose
Massicare/Major/Minor/Draw
Points for Primary, Secondry, Tertery
I probably lean more towards the PST method, with something like 15/8/4 and 3 one point objectives.
This allows you to have a wide range of possible scores (to allow clear differences between the places) and means the entire battle isnt fought over 1 central objective. One part of the PST would always be objectives/table quaters and one KP/VP. This encorages more balanced lists and discorages deathstars, as you need to forfill more missions at once. I alos think it makes for more varied, interesting and balanced missions. The 3x1point parts allow a minor peice of psudio-comp (ie Kill all the enemies FA) and can be a bit of (nearly harmless) fun.
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Post by: winterman
I have played the full gamut of scoring styles, with only the proposed 'no overall' being one I have yet to play (that will change in 2 weeks, as a FLGS is doing just that - no overall and one award for each of Battle, Sports and Appearance -- same prize).
For the most part I have fun and attend tournaments regardless of scoring systems. I think the only thing I really don't care for is subjectively scored comp and theme and any tournament that has Battle way below 50% of overall (eg I would not spend money to attend Broadside bash or a similar event)
For the common categories:
--Battle should be 50% or more of an overall score.
I prefer missions that differ from the book ones. Ones that have a story or theme to them are the best in my opinion.
I dislike single objective missions that rank points by massacre, major, minor etc (eg late 3ed most of 4ed GT style). Also many of the ard boy missions were horrible and marketing guys should not be writing missions.
--In my opinion comp is uneccesary in 5ed.
However I do attend and love astronomicon, which uses a pretty simple math comp score. I don't think their method rates armies effectively but it plays a part in the meta, determines matchups, is less the 10% of overall -- so it makes the tournament interesting but doesn't overly screw people and their armies.
--In my opinion theme should be limited in its effect on scoring.
Favorite army is the best place for it -- if you really like a theme you can vote them your fav army. Happens all the time.
Another place you could place theme scoring is in points for creative army lists (not comp but in how the army list is presented, looks, creativity, theme, etc).
Astronomicon has a small score and a prize for the best army list. This allows for alot of theme to be displayed clearly and effectively without subjective scoring of the army selections themeselves.
--Sportsmanship is kind of a silly thing to rank, rate and score. Prizes for them are even more strange to me.
That said most of my tourney awards are best sportsmanship That might be why the idea of a sports score is so strange to me -- because I am not the type of person the system is geared toward. I don't need a carrot to behave in a sporting fashion.
If you are gonna score it though, I think the voting and or ranking of your oppents from most fav to least is the best way to do it. Hard on a TO at a large tournament but is the best, least controverial way to score it and does away with the all points problem and limits chimpmunking for the most part.
--Appearance. Combination player judged and TO judged checklist, normalized and with highest and lowest score tossed out would be the most ideal way to do it. If that isn't possible then just 3 TO judges normalized would work ok. Pure player scored doesn't work in my experience.
Big events should have a 3 color minimum policy -- only exceptions are for emergencies and things of that nature. I don't pay a large entree fee, travel and hotel expenses to play unpainted armies.
--Overall I think should be a prize but should have equal weighting with other categories if at all possible. Meaning the prize should be the same all around. Impossible to do if on the circuit though. If I were running a circuit event I would make overall 1st, 2nd and 3rd a trophy and 1st and 2nd getting the golden ticket. Those 3 would then be eligible for the category awards should they earn them (and any monetary prizes would reside there)
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Post by: don_mondo
Black Antelope wrote:Sports:
Rank opponants in order. Either seperate prize or ~10% of overall.
On a slightly different track, what do you think the best method of scoring battle points is?
Win/Draw/Lose
Massicare/Major/Minor/Draw
Points for Primary, Secondry, Tertery
Only problem with the "rank opponents" method is that you are forced to ping someone. I can have 5 good games over two days, all highly enjoyable. But I would have to give one of my opponent's the bottom score for 1 point (assuming 5-1 scale). Now if someoen deserves to be docked points, I'll dock them. And usually not too bashful about telling the judges why, either.
I've grown to like the P/S/T system. Makes it harder, especially for my gunline IG, but that's OK.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
don_mondo wrote:
I've grown to like the P/S/T system. .
P/S/T?
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Post by: don_mondo
Sorry, I was referencing the quoted text from Black Antelope's post, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary objectives.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
Ah, gotcha.
Yeah, I've been a fan of that for Battle Points, too. Helps to spread the field out a bit in 1-day 3 rounders.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
On Sportsmanship...
Let me throw this out, I like to have the highest score for sportsmanship awarded based upon the criteria was this your most favorite game ever. How many opponents deserve the "best game ever" mark? Honestly, one possibly every few tourneys. This not only prevents ties but helps to avoid chipmunking... that one guy who always tanks everyones scores. I also feel its a good way for gamers to know how good of a sport they are. In the old RTT way I always got full scores. Now if we someone hand out five best games ever we know something is up.
The old systems were pure politics... now we have to consider what is a good sportsmen and to what level - fair play, courtesy.....if you're straight OWNing your opponent then maybe in the spirit of being a good sport you show them some courtesy of backing off a notch later in the game to ensure they have a chance to also enjoy the game. Exhibit a level of fair play and an attitude considered as befitting both participants.
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Post by: Mannahnin
Sportsmanship is tough. I often see “best game ever” listed as the top mark, but then in the results I can often see that it is apparently being given away like candy. So people clearly often don’t even read the sheets.
One system I think is pretty good is what Adepticon (and some other events; like tournaments I’ve run) use, which is to give a list of check marks of specific good or bad behaviors or qualities. It’s easier to give a yes or no answer to stuff like “did the guy stall” or “was he cursing or whining about his dice luck” than to differentiate between an abstract 3 or 4 on a sliding scale of 1-5, much less a 7 or 8 on a ten point scale.
Another one I’ve heard good things about is a simple Pass/Fail, or one question “Was this guy a jerk?” system. You can either do it on a straight scale (like -2pts per opponent who checks it), or a progressive scale- like 1 check = 1pt off; anyone can have a bad game. 2 checks = 3pts off; not looking good. 3 checks = 9pts off; good chances this guy is really a jerk. You can also say that anyone getting more than “x” number of checks is ineligible to win any prizes, and anyone getting ALL checks is invited not to come back to the event. In this kind of a system it’s a good idea to ask players to explain the downcheck to a judge, and/or for judges to keep an eye on the table of anyone who’s gotten “Bad Sportman” marks, to see how bad the problem really is.
Either of the above systems can also be accompanied by requiring every player to award a “favorite opponent” vote at the end of the event, and giving a bonus point (or more, depending on the total scoring scale) for each vote you get.
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Post by: Major Malfunction
don_mondo wrote:Only problem with the "rank opponents" method is that you are forced to ping someone. I can have 5 good games over two days, all highly enjoyable. But I would have to give one of my opponent's the bottom score for 1 point (assuming 5-1 scale). Now if someoen deserves to be docked points, I'll dock them. And usually not too bashful about telling the judges why, either.
This. Why should any of my opponents get low marks if they were all great sports? A player should only get bad marks for sports if they were a BAD sport.
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Post by: gardeth
@GBF what the hell are you doing starting a meaningful insightful thread? Can't you just post more about stelek trolls?
Seriously though. I agree that sportsmanship is kinda broken. I also think it should be an only positive thing, as in "I had such a great time playing this person that they should get recognition for it." And that would make a great tie breaker and maybe warrant a special shout-out if one person gets that comment from all his opponents (As happened last year at Battle For Stones River).
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
The Green Git wrote:don_mondo wrote:Only problem with the "rank opponents" method is that you are forced to ping someone. I can have 5 good games over two days, all highly enjoyable. But I would have to give one of my opponent's the bottom score for 1 point (assuming 5-1 scale). Now if someoen deserves to be docked points, I'll dock them. And usually not too bashful about telling the judges why, either.
This. Why should any of my opponents get low marks if they were all great sports? A player should only get bad marks for sports if they were a BAD sport.
Agreed completely! I used this system at my last GT and found it is not fair to outsiders.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
The Green Git wrote:
This. Why should any of my opponents get low marks if they were all great sports? A player should only get bad marks for sports if they were a BAD sport.
This type system is usually not tallied into Overall Points, but is used to determine Best Sportsman. I really like it, as it means you can still determine who was the best/worst sports, as someone consistently ranked last will obviously have been a less-than-great game.
In a perfect world with everyone in attendance being a great sport, the scores are likely to be muddled... but that's a problem I'd invite with aplomb. For most tourneys, it works out well-- you know who people enjoyed playing against the most, and you know who people enjoyed playing against least.
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Post by: Cannerus_The_Unbearable
The next painting contest I go to better have a "how competitive is this unit" score to completely undermine it's purpose too
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Post by: Mannahnin
That's circular reasoning, I think. You're assuming your preferred definition of a tournament as being what a GW tournament should be. Of course you're perfectly welcome to run or attend events which only reward the Battles part of the game, but that doesn't automatically make it the standard.
It happens to turn out that most players want painting to be recognized and factored in too, and a good percentage like Sports and Comp to matter as well, because the GW hobby is about all of these things, and we'd prefer to recognize and reward people who embody all of these qualities, not just guys who crush on the table regardless of their painting skills or their attitude toward their opponent.
I had a good time at 'Ard Boyz last year. Most of my opponents were good guys and fun to play against, even without any Sports scoring. But I still saw more shadiness and attempted shananigans there than at any three or four normal events with Sports scoring.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
Mannahnin wrote:, and a good percentage like Sports and Comp to matter as well, because the GW hobby is about all of these things,
I don't know that the GW hobby has anything to do with Comp...
The rest of your points are well taken, though. I think paint should be scored separately, but that it should also be required, i.e., no paint, no play.
I had a great time at 'ard boyz, too. Only one guy, in the semis, was douchey, and he was (luckily!) at a different table. The finals were great-- mostly painted lists, everyone was friendly, even going into the final round (lost to the guy that took 3rd).
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Post by: WC_Brian
skyth wrote:One problem with soft scoring, specifically in sportsmanship, is that the scores don't vary much...People automatically mark full points sometimes, sometimes they don't...But there is little variance in the scores in general.
A possible way to fix this is to have a ranking given rather than a rating...IE rank the players that you fought against.
I agree completely, among competitive players it is customary to simply mark full points. The competitive player doesn't mind if his opponent isn't a great guy to play and doesn't want to get chipmunked so often marks full points in view of his opponent. I've only played 2-3 people who forced me to take a look at the sheet and score them honestly. Even then the best I could do was give them a 7-8 out of 10. It's very rare to find someone who is actually unpleasant enough that they need to be scored. Generally I don't really care because they have to live their life and I feel that is punishment enough.
Most of the soft scoring in tournaments is arbitrary or in the case of judges painting mistakes can be made by judges who are short on time. If you spend some time with the judge going over your figures you are almost guaranteed to get a higher score than if he looks at them alone. And there is nothing much good to be said about scoring for theme, comp and sports.
I really like a ranking system for all soft scores(like you have a 1,2,3,4 and 5 to give to each of your 5 opponents). Every local tournament where we ranked opponents for sports worked very well. Now you are competing and it should bring out the best in people. This system is still problematic though because you would have to have it done at the end of the tournament and not all or even half of the people will stick around to do it.
However it would work very well for non-opponents walking around and using these numbers to vote for their favorite armies in multiple categories like theme, painting, and even composition.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Hulksmash wrote:I actually find it silly that someone who doesn't place in the top 4 of any category can walk away with a ticket to Vegas. Especially in a tournament with 15 swing points at the end for "favorite" votes (i.e. opponent, army, theme).
Yeah I don't know, if it was like Willy Wonka and we were going to the design studio and going to get to ride in a Titan than ok 2 tickets per tournament. As it stands it is a ridiculously small amount of people. Why limit the number of people if you aren't flying them to the event, you aren't putting them up and you are going to rent an entire ballroom anyways? Need some more terrain? Go ahead and make some them. You are a multi-million dollar corporation you can afford it. Automatically Appended Next Post: Kirasu wrote:Equal prizes is a very good way to also quietly discourage super competitive people from attending..
Prizes aren't much of a factor in 40k tournaments. There aren't many prizes, and often times the kits are for factions you might not even play. There are also very few money prizes.
Competitive players play simply for the sake of competing. They aren't licking their chops over undisclosed types and amounts of loot.
Nicorex wrote: But one Tourny I attended really sticks with me, They used all the same rules as a standerd GW National tourny(at the time, this was a few years ago) with one major change. All armys have to have 50% or more dedicated to Troops.
This still screws Necrons and it probably changes the viability of certain armies. Like if you play Dark Eldar or Tau you might need to seriously add or alter your list just to make it legal.
If there is some change to the FoC for a tournament I would prefer that all non-troop units are unique. This would also satisfy alot of the hobbyists and fluff lovers. At this point you no longer really need theme or comp.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
@ WC_Brian
I wish I was lucky as you. I have played my share of arseholes at big events. They have it coming.
About Necrons... do you really see someone winning best overall or best general with Necrons at a big competitive event? I mean be really honest about it. Anyone bringing Crons are self-gimping.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
So, why not alter Comp to put Necrons at an even playing level?
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Adjusting the scores amounts to cooking the books. It's not cool.
The thing about Necrons is except possibly for Walter in ATL nobody that is a competitive player is going to bring them to a GT. So complaining about how the Necrons get the shaft due to comp is not a sound argument when you take a wider view of winning at a GT.
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Post by: Mannahnin
Some people might feel that one cool thing for a tournament to do is to give a reason for people to bring the "weaker" armies, as this will make the play experience more varied and interesting, and therefore more fun!
If you know that a given army sucks out loud, adjusting scoring ahead of time to give them a handicap is not an unreasonable response.
"Cooking the books" means manipulating numbers in a deceptive way to achieve a dishonest/fraudulent result.
As long as you publish the rules ahead of time and the players understand what's happening, no deception and no fraud is taking place.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
But I thought the whole thing with embracing all aspects of the hobby was to discourage the pure-competition crowd. If Necrons, out of the gate, have no chance of winning, shouldn't a full-hobby scoring system take this into account, to encourage all parts of the hobby to be expressed?
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
I am hoping that the new Necron codex they get Green Lantern as a stargod... it's just so darn fluffy...
But seriously 5th edition wrecked their shat...
Mannahnin wrote:Some people might feel that one cool thing for a tournament to do is to give a reason for people to bring the "weaker" armies, as this will make the play experience more varied and interesting, and therefore more fun!
If you know that a given army sucks out loud, adjusting scoring ahead of time to give them a handicap is not an unreasonable response.
"Cooking the books" means manipulating numbers in a deceptive way to achieve a dishonest/fraudulent result.
As long as you publish the rules ahead of time and the players understand what's happening, no deception and no fraud is taking place.
The problem with this is if someone does bring an actually competive list (Necrons for example) and then you would be giving them an unfair advantage. Damned if you do and damned if you dont...
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Post by: WC_Brian
Green Blow Fly wrote:Adjusting the scores amounts to cooking the books. It's not cool.
The thing about Necrons is except possibly for Walter in ATL nobody that is a competitive player is going to bring them to a GT. So complaining about how the Necrons get the shaft due to comp is not a sound argument when you take a wider view of winning at a GT.
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A) I'm not complaining. I'm going to point out the flaws in any proposal so people can see what the pros and cons are. I'm trying to help the conversation you started.
B) What is the point of trying to make a good system for tournaments when your perspective is Necrons are just bad anyways. I guess you just aren't trying.
I find your statement to simply lack merit. You often respond to statements as if you are defending your way of doing things when we aren't talking about your tournament. Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think a poll on the main page would be very helpful. If there are really 20k lurkers to 1k posters than I would like to see what the people think. Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think a TO can do anything and it be fair as long as all the rules are spelled out months in advance before tickets go on sale.
If the TO recognizes this I don't see why they can't subsidize themed or weak lists with a comp system. The problem in practice is that alot willing to run an event aren't necessarily the kind of people who actually understand the power levels. For example at Necro in Orlando they would put the popular lists like Nidzilla and Tri Falcon against each other at the top tables and then pair up strong lists like 3 Gargantuan Squigoth with 3 Cannons each, 80 Str 5 Orks with Choppas and the original Nob Squad on Cyber boardz at the bottom tables against random space marine armies. This is obivously unbalanced. I think their is a big disconnect between what people think is good and what is. For example Dual Lash is no longer Tier 1 and yet you will probably see alot of TOs(who frequently are casual players) who think it is "cheesey".
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
I was responding to the comments about Necrons getting boned becuase someone posted on a Florida Yahoo! Group how my comp system totally shafted his army... then he took it over to YTTH. So in this case I am being particular. But in general I dont ever remember Necrons ever winning any GW GT... well except maybe for Tulio.  But anyways some are now saying that Necrons deserve a little help... that is not a good thing IMO. You tell people you are helping one army then other people are going to start wanting some help for GKs. Basically there is a reason you dont see many short people in the NBA but that is not to say they are bad people.
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Post by: WC_Brian
I think it would be a good idea for people to run non tournament events(like an Apocalypse or Mega Battle game, or narrative tournament/campaign like BoLS is does at their convention) where painting, sportsmanship, and theme are what prizes are given for. For example in Apocalypse it doesn't matter which side wins or loses because the winning team doesn't get prizes. The glory and honor of victory is their only prize(or maybe something like a standard or trophy in the store, etc). This would be completely in the spirit of the game because the losers aren't losing anything and the chance they lose their enjoyment of the game itself is much lower. Then key players get picked out for prizes like best painted, best theme, and best sportsmanship. Now if someone brings an overpowered/cheesy/boring army they aren't penalized and it doesn't help them win much of anything at all.
What aspects of 40K are we trying to accentuate at an event? That is the question the Event Organizer should ask himself. Then plan an event for those elements of the hobby.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
Green Blow Fly wrote:I was responding to the comments about Necrons getting boned becuase someone posted on a Florida Yahoo! Group how my comp system totally shafted his army... then he took it over to YTTH. So in this case I am being particular. But in general I dont ever remember Necrons ever winning any GW GT... well except maybe for Tulio. But anyways some are now saying that Necrons deserve a little help... that is not a good thing IMO. You tell people you are helping one army then other people are going to start wanting some help for GKs. Basically there is a reason you dont see many short people in the NBA but that is not to say they are bad people.
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I agree 100%-- and that's what's so jolting about seeing the Comp systems some TOs put forth.
Given the impossibility of redressing the problems inherent in 40k (i.e., Necrons and GKs not being competitive), why would a TO shift the blame from GW to themselves by implementing a flawed Comp system?
People who come to play in a competitive environment are already accepting of the imbalances inherent in 40k. If they're still okay with playing competitively, then so be it.
I do like WC_B's idea of running a non-competitive event at tourneys/cons. I love participating in/running narrative campaigns/scenarios.
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Post by: WC_Brian
Lets talk about where comp came from. I did not play in 2nd edition but apparently it was a mess. I've heard of horror stories of armies like all Grey Knight Lvl 4 Psychers casting a power that lets them take another turn repeatedly until your army is destoryed, all IG tanks coming on at the bottom of the last turn from reserves and then shooting you right before the game ends, all jetbike armies that you need 6s to hit in shooting and cannot even hit in HtH, all Warp Spider armies that basically kill anything they point their web spinners at. These kind of things and crazy wargear and psychic powers affected the design of 3rd edition and the current editions followed the same trend. So the need for comp is gone. And yet it remains. I think part of this is due to Fantasy players because there game system has 3 busted books where as in 40k I can not think of a single super overpowered book except for maybe the previous Chaos book and Tyranids from the rulebook before they got their codex in 3rd edition. Comp is a relic of the past, it is no longer needed in 40k.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Comp is also really big in fantasy and there can be cross overs.
I really wish Necrons were better, it would help shift the meta away from mech a bit. That is true and not shifting blame, it is what it is.
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Post by: WC_Brian
Comp is big in Fantasy because your army build is like a 2nd Edition 40k build. Tons of points spent on Characters, Special and Rare just like in 2nd edition you barely needed any normal stuff. Also Fantasy has multiple books that are very overpowered where as 40k has one at most, most of the junky books in 40k are only underpowered because they were written before the 5th edition rules set and even then they have advantages from old equipment like old smoke launchers and DH force weapons.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
I think the biggest thing TOs can do to balance lists in 5e 40k, without the need for comp scoring, is to take full advantage of Objective missions.
It forces players to construct lists with sufficient Troops to hold at least 2 objectives.
And comments re: Fantasy's hero-hammer are spot-on.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Missions shouldn't be designed to help any army as that would be clearly biased. Everyone knows you need to take lots of troops in 5th edition.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
Oh, agreed. But just the presence of Objective heavy mission forces players to incorporate more Troops choices.
In 3 and 4e, people did min troops and loaded up on the killy in their E/FA/H/HQ. That seems to happen much less often on 5e.
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Post by: Mannahnin
Yup. Mission-based objectives are the best way to make rounded lists necessary. 40k 5th has gone a long way toward making comp / army handicapping less necessary.
As noted, WH does not have this going for it, and presently has greater army book imbalances, so it's tough to have a good event for WH without comp.
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Post by: sirisaacnuton
The Green Git wrote:Appearance: I don't think people should get credit towards prizes for armies they don't build and paint. I guess it's fine to buy your way over the entrance requirement of painted and based, but something just sticks in my craw about events where the "Best Overall" brought an army someone else painted and assembled. They aren't the Best Overall... they're the Best General that spent the most money on outsourced painting. If I can pay someone to paint for me, why can't I pay someone to coach me through the game? Or hire a Hooters waitress to bring us beers and load Best Sportsman?
Danny Internets wrote:Worse still, cheating is rampant in this scoring category (painting) because people know they can have their armies professionally painted (or simply have a friend do it) to get max points.
don_mondo wrote:Pro-painted armies. IMO, you didn't paint it, then the points you receive for someone else's work don't get counted towards your overall score. Can't win Overall, can't win Best Painted.
I have a big problem with this line of thought. Many tournaments (at least in the Southeast, where I go to the majority of my tournaments) have done away with best General altogether. I play the game for the sake of the game, not the hobby aspect. I think the models look very cool, but I hate assembling them. I love great-looking armies, but I'm a terrible painter and don't have the time or patience for all the practice to get better. So my purpose for going to a tournament is to get in games against people and armies outside of my typical local gaming group, and maybe try to win. Best General is totally a win in my book, and I'm happy to concede Best Overall to an army that is better than mine overall, even if I were to end up with more battle points.
HOWEVER, if there is no option for Best General, as is the case at a good many tournaments I've attended in the last year or two, the ideas that you guys are proposing pretty much takes away my goal for a tournament. Either my army is poorly painted (meaning I'm not likely to win Best Overall because of low appearance scores) or my army is painted by someone else (meaning I'm ineligible to even be considered for Best Overall if the people above run the tournaments). I'm certainly out of the running for Best Painted or Best Appearance. And I'm not likely to win Best Sportsman either. Not because I'm an a-hole, but because I'm competitive. Therefore I bring strong armies, try to win by the biggest possible margin (i.e. massacre), I'm a stickler on rules points and don't let things slide. That means that even if I'm nice about everything, I'm not winning Best Sport. Which leaves me completely ineligible to win any recognition in a tournament after paying to enter, play all day, mostly likely driving a considerable distance there and back, plus all the work that went into building and testing and learning the army. Defeats the point of going for me.
Some people (here and elsewhere) don't use things like Best General, possibly because of the notion that it'll bring a bunch of WAAC/ TFG types out, and make the tournament less fun to the masses. That's perfectly fine by me, unless the proposals above are in place...if having someone else paint my army negates everything I did playing the game at the tournament, there's no point. There should either be a Best General award that has equal standing with Best Painted and Best Sportsman, OR the appearance part of the score for Best Overall should not take into account whether the player actually painted the army. But as the former seems to be disappearing from a lot of places, so I absolutely can't get behind the "no Overall for a commissioned paint job army" idea. It makes perfect sense to exclude those armies for Best Appearance, but to exclude them from Best Overall handicaps some players just as much as a comp system would handicap others.
Automatically Appended Next Post: kartofelkopf wrote:I think the biggest thing TOs can do to balance lists in 5e 40k, without the need for comp scoring, is to take full advantage of Objective missions.
It forces players to construct lists with sufficient Troops to hold at least 2 objectives.
And comments re: Fantasy's hero-hammer are spot-on.
At a local tournament I went to recently, two rounds were objective-based missions, and in both cases the number of battle points earned depended on how many objectives were controlled. In each case it was necessary to control 4 out of 5 objectives to get max battle points for the round. In one of those rounds a scoring unit could only control one objective. In the other, a unit could control more than one, but they were fixed and were very far apart, so you almost certainly needed one scoring unit per objective. These were known ahead of time to people attending the tournament, and it essentially acted as a little in-game comp system. A buddy of mine who went runs a Terminator spam list with almost min Troops (10-man scout and 5-man scout) with all the rest in TH/ SS, LR's, Shrike and Lysander. He had a list that most comp scores (and certainly most opponent-scored comp) would have penalized. But thanks to the missions, there was no need for that...the missions themselves penalized his list. He had to weigh the pros and cons of altering his list to take more scoring units, or just taking the battle points hit. He took the 2nd choice. Come to think of it, the 3rd round in Adepticon did its objectives like that last year...5 battle points per objective controlled. Little bit of a comp requirement right there.
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Post by: Eilif
Please forgive me for not reading the entire thread. I've never been in a tournament, but I hope to try one this summer when I finish my guard. Two questions for experienced tourney folks and organizers.
1)Why don't the scoring systems for sportsmanship simply require that you write down a reason for every point after the first point you dock someone. I figure one point is subjective, but beyond that you should at least have a reason. It wouldn't cure all folks from docking sportsmanship soft scores out of spite, but it might help.
2) For painting, couldn't there just be a painting standard that everyone can get full points on if they meet that standard. Then there could be additional points that are only applied toward the "best painted" award, and only available to those who paint the models themselves. This way, someone who paid to have thier models painted, and someone who painted them to good standard both have the same shot at best overall, but only those who paint themselves and achieve a very high standard can get best painted.
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Post by: Mannahnin
1. Probably just because it slows things down (especially if you have to track people down/decipher their handwriting), and it's difficult to enforce. That said, some events do require an explanation/specific complaint to a judge for the lowest scores. TIME is the biggest logistical crunch during a tournament.
2. This is exactly how many events do it.
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Post by: Bubbalicious
Comp should be used to put armiess in 3-4 differnet "power" brackets and the armies in these brackets should only fight armies within its own bracket throughout the entire turny.
This will make it so there will be no easy winns because your WAAC amry gewts matched to an average army,the fighting will on equal terms and be more about the players skill since you are more or less fighting
on an equal power basis.
Comp should be done in a giving units/warger +/- to comp, giving a bigger - for the first vehicle in a vehicle squadron and the second in the same squadron gets a lesser - to comp, giving a - to comp if you take more than
one of the same type depending on vehicles, giving a larg - to comp if you take more than for example a predetermined number of dedicated transports of the same type.
That and have have limmits were an army will be illegal if It drops/rises above a certain level comp.
The effect of this is that it takes a little more thought process into creating an army were a smart player cancreat powerfull armies but still be in the "average" bracket by using the comp system effectively in army creation.
A comprehending list of what gives -/+ to comp should be readily available a month or so before amy lists has to be ready, and preferably be openly discussed on an open forum to let players get involved and help spot
and discuss things that seems wrong.
And KP missions should be removed entierly and only mission based objectiv should be used
as even a sight impaired lobotomised baboon could play a kill point mission well with the right army.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
I have heard Sweden has a very strict comp scoring system that is applied nationally.
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Post by: sirisaacnuton
Bubbalicious wrote:Comp should be used to put armiess in 3-4 differnet "power" brackets and the armies in these brackets should only fight armies within its own bracket throughout the entire turny.
This will make it so there will be no easy winns because your WAAC amry gewts matched to an average army,the fighting will on equal terms and be more about the players skill since you are more or less fighting
on an equal power basis.
Comp should be done in a giving units/warger +/- to comp, giving a bigger - for the first vehicle in a vehicle squadron and the second in the same squadron gets a lesser - to comp, giving a - to comp if you take more than
one of the same type depending on vehicles, giving a larg - to comp if you take more than for example a predetermined number of dedicated transports of the same type.
That and have have limmits were an army will be illegal if It drops/rises above a certain level comp.
The effect of this is that it takes a little more thought process into creating an army were a smart player cancreat powerfull armies but still be in the "average" bracket by using the comp system effectively in army creation.
A comprehending list of what gives -/+ to comp should be readily available a month or so before amy lists has to be ready, and preferably be openly discussed on an open forum to let players get involved and help spot
and discuss things that seems wrong.
Who comes up with these brackets and points, though? Opinions can (and do) vary wildly about what is over the top or broken, what is weak, what is average. I know in 4th edition there were 2 players in Atlanta who rocked disgustingly nasty Necron armies, who rarely lost in tournament games and routinely walked away from tournaments with one at Best Overall and the other at Best General. And yet the overwhelming opinion of the armies (from people who didn't play against them anyway) was that they were weak. Wouldn't be in the top power bracket. And that's the problem with any kind of comp scoring. Unless a person has played with and against every army, and has seen and used all the different options in a large number of combinations, they can't make a totally informed decision about comp. Some people have biases for or against certain armies or units, whether conscious or not, some people know certain armies intimately but have much less experience with others. And if put up for any kind of debate or vote, no one will be able to convince others of their viewpoint, because one person's biases make another person seem wrong about the rankings, and vice versa.
A system could certainly be put in place, and all it would do is change which armies are the broken, power armies. The competitive players will game the system, find out what builds of armies are the strongest relative to other armies in the same "power bracket," and will use those. The result will still be the strongest armies preying on the weaker ones, with the exception that some codices may not even be able to answer the strong armies without the comp system kicking them into a different bracket. It may actually do more to decrease the parity than to increase it.
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Post by: Bubbalicious
Strict com system yes.
It is usualy between 0 - 20 and gives you bonus point depending on the difference in comp that both players get where the one who has the higher comp gets points and the one with lower comp gets points subtracted from his battle score.
This is an extraction from a turney that takes place in a month were you get half of the points difference between comp
Ex. Player A has a comp score of 8 while player B has a comp score of 12. Player A wins a game by 15-5, the difference in comp is 4 so player A gets 2 point subtracted from his overal score and player B gets 2 bonus points
Stuff that usaly are rather lots of minus to for standard marines are all the Land raider variants and vulkan in lists that take advantage of his special rules.
Fore chaos its stuff like tha Land raiders, Demon prince with wings, and stuff like the Lash gets severly hammerd
Minor minus to comp is usaly from exsecive use of stuff like storm shields, lascannons, powerfists, vehicles and certain units that are good.
Every army has its own list for +/- on comp
Painting score is mostly that the army has to be at least 3 colors and look sensible, the models have the equipement modeld on them WSIWYG (even grenades and small stuff), armies are besed with som kind of texture on it and that every model is based the same way, having two easy to read army list with you.
This usaly gives you 2/3 of your painting score with the rest getting added as extras for nicle shading, highlithing, conversions and details.
All of this is alike for the major turnys.
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Post by: Irdiumstern
I don't think I would ever play in a tournament that gave someone points for taking certain units. If you find certain things unbalanced/unfair, fine. Ban them outright, or give suitable guidelines before the tourney begins on what is acceptable and what isn't.
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Post by: jbunny
Irdiumstern wrote:I don't think I would ever play in a tournament that gave someone points for taking certain units. If you find certain things unbalanced/unfair, fine. Ban them outright, or give suitable guidelines before the tourney begins on what is acceptable and what isn't.
Or how about the TO's just write up a list for every army and thats what they have to play. Solves the whole problem. I am sure most people will say thats a stupid idea, but that is what you are basicly doing when you have strick Comp rules.
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Post by: Mannahnin
Irdiumstern wrote:I don't think I would ever play in a tournament that gave someone points for taking certain units. If you find certain things unbalanced/unfair, fine. Ban them outright, or give suitable guidelines before the tourney begins on what is acceptable and what isn't.
Hang on, you're against giving bonus points if someone fields a cruddy unit, but you'd FAVOR banning units outright? Personally I'd favor the former over the latter. Everyone gets to field the stuff they want, but the guys fielding less-powerful stuff get a slight benefit from a points handicap.
I note that the new Warmachine supplements actually give you more points in your army if you stick to certain strict theme requirements (which often involve using less-powerful units). So Privateer, who are often lauded for designing their games better for a competitive format, have adopted this technique. Automatically Appended Next Post: jbunny wrote:Or how about the TO's just write up a list for every army and thats what they have to play. Solves the whole problem. I am sure most people will say thats a stupid idea, but that is what you are basicly doing when you have strick Comp rules.
Oh, you mean like The Generals' Challenge?
http://www.oldfartsofwarhammer.com/wfb_files/GenChall.htm
Yeah, that actually does sound like a pretty awesome event. I'd love to try it.
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Post by: deFl0
I have very strong feelings about this, but I'll keep my answer short.
• Battlepoints - I think apdepticon does a great job at this, from a scoring perspective. They ahve enough points to truly even out a large field and come out with true winners and losers. That said, I do believe that you need a couple games before true swiss matches up opponents well. I think you could go crazy comping lists in 40k and putting similar strength list up against each other, but really if you know the game you should be able to look at a list and know if it's hard, medium or easy. Break the lists into those groups and have those groups play each other the first two rounds. Sure that means 3rd roudn there will be mismatches, but 4 and 5 will equal out the playing field.
Soft scores:
Appearance - This is something that should really be published ahead of time. Be careful about what you include, and keep the criteria simple. Start with a check list and add scales of 3. Amazing/average/bad. It's really easy to do that way. Are the bases a 1, 2, or 3. Are the conversions a 1, 2, or 3. Is the display board...etc. It's also something that I think is better judged by organizers, and should have a blended score of 3 organizers. Player's choice should factor in but as bonus points.
Sportsmanship - Should be player judged. I think this is very dangerous to create too large of gap in points. Again Amazing/average/bad. Then players favorite opponent at the end should count for a lot. It's kind of a tough category. But really I find the favorite players really jump out at the end.
Theme/Composition - Ok, so I touched up how this should be incorporated in swiss above. That said, are there top builds? Yes. do I think that bringing a strong army should impact you overall score? No. What's the best list in 40K? I promise we can come up with a list to beat it... Every list is beatable. Missions are the ultimate equalizer. It's up to the organizer to level the playing field. That said, I do think it makes sense to try and match hard armies against each other early. Hopefully this means they draw which equalizes out the points. If a top list rolls through the toughest lists in the non comp rounds, then through the swiss rounds, it's likely you are dealing with a damn good general too and he should be in the overall run.
In general, 40k event that have a comp score in the total based on non disclosed criteria often have a winner because of a failed comp score given by the judges... And that sucks more than anything because you lost faith in the event and don't return. It's honestly the only reason I every stop going to a good tourney.
Pete
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Post by: warboss
do they post the adepticon missions and scoring criteria on their website ahead of time?
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Post by: Mannahnin
They post all the rules and scoring system in advance. They don't give you the actual missions, but post sample missions which are very similar, and use the same general structure.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
http://www.adepticon.org/10rules/201040Kchamp.pdf
Full breakdown of points for different categories, including scoring guidelines for painting and sportsmanship.
Not sure when/if missions get posted.
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Post by: jbunny
So they dock you points if you don't convert any models? Really. that is as lame as it gets, but I have no desire to play in one of their tournaments.
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Post by: Janthkin
jbunny wrote:So they dock you points if you don't convert any models? Really. that is as lame as it gets, but I have no desire to play in one of their tournaments.
The Adepticon scoring guidelines are both harsh and an ideal. Remember they're trying to pick "best appearance" out of 120 or so armies.
Last year, for the "Championship" (standard RTT format), max appearance was 40 (17% of total available points in the event). There were 148 participants; a single individual got a perfect 40 (he finished 59th overall). Most people fell comfortably in the 18-27 range, provided they brought a tournament-ready army; it mattered far more to your success in the tournament that you were able to pick up the tertiary objectives (10 pts/mission, no draws), than whether your army was full of conversions (4 pts total, if you had extreme conversions).
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
I like the Adepticon scoring system. They have years of experience.
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Post by: don_mondo
sirisaacnuton wrote:don_mondo wrote:Pro-painted armies. IMO, you didn't paint it, then the points you receive for someone else's work don't get counted towards your overall score. Can't win Overall, can't win Best Painted.
I have a big problem with this line of thought. Many tournaments (at least in the Southeast, where I go to the majority of my tournaments) have done away with best General altogether. I play the game for the sake of the game, not the hobby aspect. I think the models look very cool, but I hate assembling them. I love great-looking armies, but I'm a terrible painter and don't have the time or patience for all the practice to get better. So my purpose for going to a tournament is to get in games against people and armies outside of my typical local gaming group, and maybe try to win. Best General is totally a win in my book, and I'm happy to concede Best Overall to an army that is better than mine overall, even if I were to end up with more battle points.
HOWEVER, if there is no option for Best General, as is the case at a good many tournaments I've attended in the last year or two, the ideas that you guys are proposing pretty much takes away my goal for a tournament. <SNIP> Defeats the point of going for me.
Hmmm, you did notice that I include myself in the same category you've put yourself into, a fair-to-middling painter who would rather play than paint, right? Sorry that your local tournies don't have Best General, BUT!! the reason for going to a tourney is not to win a prize. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone to 18+ of the 20+ US/Canadian GTs I've been to. There were a couple times I went in thinking I had a decent chance to win something, but only a couple. Hell, I took an all-Scout Space Marine army once. I attended them knowing I wasn't gonna win anything. Yet, I went. Why? Cause it's FUN!!!! That's the point of going. A day of good gaming, hopefully against people you have never (or at least seldom) played against. And if I can do well also, that's a bonus.
Bubbalicious wrote:Comp should be used to put armiess in 3-4 differnet "power" brackets and the armies in these brackets should only fight armies within its own bracket throughout the entire turny.
This will make it so there will be no easy winns because your WAAC amry gewts matched to an average army,the fighting will on equal terms and be more about the players skill since you are more or less fighting
on an equal power basis.
OR........... it ensures that a "soft" comp army wins because he never had to face a good army or player...........................
Bubbalicious wrote:Strict com system yes.
It is usualy between 0 - 20 and gives you bonus point depending on the difference in comp that both players get where the one who has the higher comp gets points and the one with lower comp gets points subtracted from his battle score.
This is an extraction from a turney that takes place in a month were you get half of the points difference between comp
Ex. Player A has a comp score of 8 while player B has a comp score of 12. Player A wins a game by 15-5, the difference in comp is 4 so player A gets 2 point subtracted from his overal score and player B gets 2 bonus points
Stuff that usaly are rather lots of minus to for standard marines are all the Land raider variants and vulkan in lists that take advantage of his special rules.
Fore chaos its stuff like tha Land raiders, Demon prince with wings, and stuff like the Lash gets severly hammerd
Minor minus to comp is usaly from exsecive use of stuff like storm shields, lascannons, powerfists, vehicles and certain units that are good.
Every army has its own list for +/- on comp
So, another comp system that penalizes a player for taking a legal army........? And what happens if player B wins, does player A get bonus points for losing?
OK, tried twice now to fix the improper quote box, hope y'all can fidure out who said what.
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Post by: Bubbalicious
don_mondo wrote:sirisaacnuton wrote:don_mondo wrote:Pro-painted armies. IMO, you didn't paint it, then the points you receive for someone else's work don't get counted towards your overall score. Can't win Overall, can't win Best Painted.
I have a big problem with this line of thought. Many tournaments (at least in the Southeast, where I go to the majority of my tournaments) have done away with best General altogether. I play the game for the sake of the game, not the hobby aspect. I think the models look very cool, but I hate assembling them. I love great-looking armies, but I'm a terrible painter and don't have the time or patience for all the practice to get better. So my purpose for going to a tournament is to get in games against people and armies outside of my typical local gaming group, and maybe try to win. Best General is totally a win in my book, and I'm happy to concede Best Overall to an army that is better than mine overall, even if I were to end up with more battle points.
HOWEVER, if there is no option for Best General, as is the case at a good many tournaments I've attended in the last year or two, the ideas that you guys are proposing pretty much takes away my goal for a tournament. <SNIP> Defeats the point of going for me.
Hmmm, you did notice that I include myself in the same category you've put yourself into, a fair-to-middling painter who would rather play than paint, right? Sorry that your local tournies don't have Best General, BUT!! the reason for going to a tourney is not to win a prize. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone to 18+ of the 20+ US/Canadian GTs I've been to. There were a couple times I went in thinking I had a decent chance to win something, but only a couple. Hell, I took an all-Scout Space Marine army once. I attended them knowing I wasn't gonna win anything. Yet, I went. Why? Cause it's FUN!!!! That's the point of going. A day of good gaming, hopefully against people you have never (or at least seldom) played against. And if I can do well also, that's a bonus.
Bubbalicious wrote:Comp should be used to put armiess in 3-4 differnet "power" brackets and the armies in these brackets should only fight armies within its own bracket throughout the entire turny.
This will make it so there will be no easy winns because your WAAC amry gewts matched to an average army,the fighting will on equal terms and be more about the players skill since you are more or less fighting
on an equal power basis.
OR........... it ensures that a "soft" comp army wins because he never had to face a good army or player...........................
Yaaa..... Thats a great way of generelazing a whole group of people saying that "soft" comps armies are played by bad players...
Bubbalicious wrote:Strict com system yes.
It is usualy between 0 - 20 and gives you bonus point depending on the difference in comp that both players get where the one who has the higher comp gets points and the one with lower comp gets points subtracted from his battle score.
This is an extraction from a turney that takes place in a month were you get half of the points difference between comp
Ex. Player A has a comp score of 8 while player B has a comp score of 12. Player A wins a game by 15-5, the difference in comp is 4 so player A gets 2 point subtracted from his overal score and player B gets 2 bonus points
Stuff that usaly are rather lots of minus to for standard marines are all the Land raider variants and vulkan in lists that take advantage of his special rules.
Fore chaos its stuff like tha Land raiders, Demon prince with wings, and stuff like the Lash gets severly hammerd
Minor minus to comp is usaly from exsecive use of stuff like storm shields, lascannons, powerfists, vehicles and certain units that are good.
Every army has its own list for +/- on comp
So, another comp system that penalizes a player for taking a legal army........? And what happens if player B wins, does player A get bonus points for losing?
What happens if player B wins? If you tried not to selectively read you could figure that one out on your own.
OK, tried twice now to fix the improper quote box, hope y'all can fidure out who said what.
Comp or not, both have their drawbacks. If you dont whant to play a game that has comp or not dont go to that turny, its as easy as that.
And winning a turny means absolutely squat, it doesent mean that your the best player, it doesent even mean you have the best army since everything is relative. Table layouts differ from table to table and promotes some armies over others, you might not even face a "good" player during the entire turney, or you face a "good" player but the table layout dosent suit him/her.
All the armies arent even balanced properly to each other.
The only way of geting a true skills test in 40k is if you both play identical armies on a mirrored table, even then it wouldent be a true skills test becaues its a dice game...
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Post by: kartofelkopf
Bubbalicious wrote:
And winning a turny means absolutely squat, it doesent mean that your the best player, it doesent even mean you have the best army since everything is relative. Table layouts differ from table to table and promotes some armies over others, you might not even face a "good" player during the entire turney, or you face a "good" player but the table layout dosent suit him/her.
All the armies arent even balanced properly to each other.
The only way of geting a true skills test in 40k is if you both play identical armies on a mirrored table, even then it wouldent be a true skills test becaues its a dice game...
This is a patently false line of reasoning. Your same logic could be applied to Poker. Some rounds you get crappy cards, bad flops, etc... If your argument were true, we would see a random assortment of players at the top tables every year. However, there are players who consistently make it to the top tables.
The same is true of 40k (to a lesser degree-- unfortunately the lack of a national tournament structure makes it difficult to gauge). Good players can overcome cold dice, crap terrain, and playing in an unbalanced setting. Half of winning a tournament is designing a list that is flexible enough to deal with a variety of armies, a variety of scenarios, and a variety of terrain setups.
-------
Oh, and for everyone-- how difficult is it to trim your quote boxes? Really, it makes it easier to read and looks less crappy.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Taterhead this just proves that not everyone thinks the same way as you. Sweden uses a very strict comp system nationwide.
G
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Post by: Danny Internets
If Sweden jumped off a bridge would you jump too?
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Post by: Bubbalicious
This is a patently false line of reasoning. Your same logic could be applied to Poker. Some rounds you get crappy cards, bad flops, etc... If your argument were true, we would see a random assortment of players at the top tables every year. However, there are players who consistently make it to the top tables.
The same is true of 40k (to a lesser degree-- unfortunately the lack of a national tournament structure makes it difficult to gauge). Good players can overcome cold dice, crap terrain, and playing in an unbalanced setting. Half of winning a tournament is designing a list that is flexible enough to deal with a variety of armies, a variety of scenarios, and a variety of terrain setups.
-------
Oh, and for everyone-- how difficult is it to trim your quote boxes? Really, it makes it easier to read and looks less crappy.
Poker and this are two entierly differnent things. In poker you can chose to play a hand or not, if you get a bad hand you just dont play it, you have more control over what you do. It would be like if you roled your to hit dice hidden and because they werent good enough you discard them and skip the entire turn, removing 2 - 3 models as a penalty for doing it.
Butt realy, they are two entierly different games and poker is alot about psychology to.
While i will agree whit you in some extents on your second part you still cant overcome crap dice. If you consistently role bad while your opponent roles statistical correct then hi is going to were you down and you cant do anything about it.
For reference i have won the the Swedish nationals in 40k back when it existed and when the comp wasn't what it is now, it has evolved a lot since then. Got a trophy thats in the closet some were.
And fore the quote boxes. I edited in the last part and it didnt work to have it outside of the qoute box even though there were no qoute signs aroud it. I might have don it wrong. If so i would like to know what i did wrong. Automatically Appended Next Post: Danny Internets wrote:If Sweden jumped off a bridge would you jump too?
That's a little uncalled for dont you think?
He inst stating that its a good thing or a bad thing, just that everyone dosent think alike and do the same thing...
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Post by: niceas
I have issue with comp judged by the opponent. I would rather see composition scores determined by a judge. It still allows for abuse, but at least that way your opponent can't decide to trash you on scores because you beat him.
With regards to scoring systems, etc, I would love to see a system set up where the prizes were set up equally - so a prize for best general, best painted, best sport. I realise that this isn't necessarily realistic - especially when you are dealing with a smaller player base - but I find that a lot of people will down-rank you based on how the game went, when that isn't necessarily justified.
Maybe set up a system where you have two pools - the "hard" pool, where there are prizes for the top 3 generals, and a "fun" pool where there are prizes for top three combined scores. Then finally have a couple of judges determine what the best painted army is across the whole board?
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Post by: kartofelkopf
Green Blow Fly wrote:Taterhead this just proves that not everyone thinks the same way as you. Sweden uses a very strict comp system nationwide.
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??? Didn't address comp at all (much less the Swedish variety!). Post was about the (patently false) claim that cold dice and poor terrain were guaranteed to result in losses.
If you consistently role bad
That sounds very similar to poker... if you consistently draw poor hands, etc...
The fact of the matter, though, is that no one rolls consistently poorly (protestations and stand-out games notwithstanding). Sure, everyone gets bad rolls occasionally... but, unless you have (poorly) loaded dice, no one gets consistent bad rolls.
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Post by: jbunny
Janthkin wrote:jbunny wrote:So they dock you points if you don't convert any models? Really. that is as lame as it gets, but I have no desire to play in one of their tournaments.
The Adepticon scoring guidelines are both harsh and an ideal. Remember they're trying to pick "best appearance" out of 120 or so armies.
Last year, for the "Championship" (standard RTT format), max appearance was 40 (17% of total available points in the event). There were 148 participants; a single individual got a perfect 40 (he finished 59th overall). Most people fell comfortably in the 18-27 range, provided they brought a tournament-ready army; it mattered far more to your success in the tournament that you were able to pick up the tertiary objectives (10 pts/mission, no draws), than whether your army was full of conversions (4 pts total, if you had extreme conversions).
My point is why should I be penalized because my army is able to be fielded right out of the box and does not need to be converted?
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Post by: Mannahnin
You're not being penalized. The best modelers and painters are being given the opportunity to earn extra points by displaying their skills, going above and beyond. People unwilling to do so can still get a good, respectable score, and win the event.
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Post by: warboss
Mannahnin wrote:You're not being penalized. The best modelers and painters are being given the opportunity to earn extra points by displaying their skills, going above and beyond. People unwilling to do so can still get a good, respectable score, and win the event.
exactly. there are alo several people that posted "why CAN'T i take my favorite unit??" (my emphasis). you can and no one can stop you; you just don't get the bonus points for your army if other players find it particularly broken or overpowered.
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Post by: kartofelkopf
But who determines what is broken or OP?
Can you identify any units in 40k that are OP right now?
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Post by: sirisaacnuton
don_mondo wrote:Hmmm, you did notice that I include myself in the same category you've put yourself into, a fair-to-middling painter who would rather play than paint, right? Sorry that your local tournies don't have Best General, BUT!! the reason for going to a tourney is not to win a prize. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone to 18+ of the 20+ US/Canadian GTs I've been to. There were a couple times I went in thinking I had a decent chance to win something, but only a couple. Hell, I took an all-Scout Space Marine army once. I attended them knowing I wasn't gonna win anything. Yet, I went. Why? Cause it's FUN!!!! That's the point of going. A day of good gaming, hopefully against people you have never (or at least seldom) played against. And if I can do well also, that's a bonus.
There's a very big difference here though. I'm not saying I show up at a tournament expecting to win, or that I'm dissatisfied if I don't win a prize. BUT, not having an expectation of winning is a world away from not being allowed to win a prize. That's what I'm getting at. If I were to show up at a GT just wanting to do my best, get some good games in, and have fun with the day, but then somehow the stars align and I roll a 6 on every single die roll all day and win all rounds with max points, I would be pretty disappointed if I didn't get any recognition at all because someone else painted my army.
I'm making the 12-14ish hour drive up to Adepticon for an awesome weekend of gaming. I'm not expecting to walk away with any prizes. However, if I knew going in that there's no possible way I would even be in contention for any prize because of painting, I might reconsider investing the considerable time and expense.
And the biggest problem with DQing pro-painted armies is that it's basically an honesty tax. More unscrupulous people will simply claim that yes, they painted their own army. It would be hard to prove otherwise unless someone narc'ed on him.
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Post by: jbunny
Mannahnin wrote:You're not being penalized. The best modelers and painters are being given the opportunity to earn extra points by displaying their skills, going above and beyond. People unwilling to do so can still get a good, respectable score, and win the event.
All things equal, would I get less points because I did not convert my models? If so then I got penalized.
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Post by: sirisaacnuton
jbunny wrote:Mannahnin wrote:You're not being penalized. The best modelers and painters are being given the opportunity to earn extra points by displaying their skills, going above and beyond. People unwilling to do so can still get a good, respectable score, and win the event.
All things equal, would I get less points because I did not convert my models? If so then I got penalized.
But if, as a lot of people are putting forth, Best Overall is the best total package hobbyist, then yes. If every other thing (like sports, battle points, etc) are equal, then the person who did conversions took the hobbying to an extra step. Which is very reasonable for an award that is supposed to find the best hobbyist. Because after all, your models were not ready to go out of the box. They came out of the box unassembled and attached to sprues. There was a degree of hobbying required already to get them modeled and painted. Some people just take it the extra step to do conversions too. Just like it takes some work to win a game, but some people also manage to get the minor little bonus victory points.
Now I'm just playing devil's advocate for a position where Overall doesn't place emphasis over playing vs. modeling vs. painting vs. sportsmanship. That's not the way it is a lot of times in my experience (and not the way I'd like it...I prefer the tournaments who have tie breakers based on things like results in the round than conversions or number of player's favorite votes, but I don't get a say). But you have to at least concede that from the point of view of finding the person in the room who is to be declared the best overall all around participant, they ought to weigh every aspect of the hobby. Not all with equal weight (as was pointed out, conversions were a very small percentage) but still taken into account. At the Adepticon tournament in question, there was even a quiz that tested knowledge of rules and codices, which factored into overall. The argument can be made that being familiar with the game's rules and components is part of being the all-around best there. And with 240 people participating in a 3-round tournament, any way to differentiate them is big, even with small tweaks.
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Post by: Mannahnin
kartofelkopf wrote:But who determines what is broken or OP?
The organizers decide. Bearing in mind that not all scoring systems consider anything "broken", but that most recognize that some army lists are CLEARLY more powerful than others. One of the problems with Comp is that there are multiple different definitions thereof and purposes served by different people's takes on it.
jbunny wrote:Mannahnin wrote:You're not being penalized. The best modelers and painters are being given the opportunity to earn extra points by displaying their skills, going above and beyond. People unwilling to do so can still get a good, respectable score, and win the event.
All things equal, would I get less points because I did not convert my models? If so then I got penalized.
If a Biathlete hits with fewer of his shots than one of his competitors, is he being penalized by not scoring as many points as they do? Or is the superior shot being rewarded?
As practiced in tournaments, Warhammer and 40k are usually games in which you receive points in multiple scoring categories. Now, in order to fairly reward great achievement in a given category, you often want to set a high bar for maximum points. Something very few people can legitimately expect to reach. We have people who win Golden Demons competing in these events. If painting is something we want to reward and appreciate, is it fair to limit their score to something that ANYONE can do?
As noted earlier, for Adepticon specifically, in a tournament with 150+ attending, you ALSO want each category of scoring to have space for differentiation, to limit the number of ties.
sirisaacnuton wrote:don_mondo wrote:Hmmm, you did notice that I include myself in the same category you've put yourself into, a fair-to-middling painter who would rather play than paint, right? Sorry that your local tournies don't have Best General, BUT!! the reason for going to a tourney is not to win a prize. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone to 18+ of the 20+ US/Canadian GTs I've been to. There were a couple times I went in thinking I had a decent chance to win something, but only a couple. Hell, I took an all-Scout Space Marine army once. I attended them knowing I wasn't gonna win anything. Yet, I went. Why? Cause it's FUN!!!! That's the point of going. A day of good gaming, hopefully against people you have never (or at least seldom) played against. And if I can do well also, that's a bonus.
There's a very big difference here though. I'm not saying I show up at a tournament expecting to win, or that I'm dissatisfied if I don't win a prize. BUT, not having an expectation of winning is a world away from not being allowed to win a prize.
That's what I'm getting at. If I were to show up at a GT just wanting to do my best, get some good games in, and have fun with the day, but then somehow the stars align and I roll a 6 on every single die roll all day and win all rounds with max points, I would be pretty disappointed if I didn't get any recognition at all because someone else painted my army.
I'm making the 12-14ish hour drive up to Adepticon for an awesome weekend of gaming. I'm not expecting to walk away with any prizes. However, if I knew going in that there's no possible way I would even be in contention for any prize because of painting, I might reconsider investing the considerable time and expense.
If Canada or the US are always going to get the gold in Hockey, does that mean that other countries shouldn't bother to compete? When you step up to the big stage (a large GT or Adepticon), the competition is going to include a huge number of people, some of whom are extraordinarily good at one or more facets of the hobby. All of the folks I've ever met who've won a GT have been humble about it, and recognized that luck is always a factor, because at that size event, even if you put in the work and have the talent to get top scores in all categories, sometimes you'll tie a game, or a judge will reward someone else's paint scheme 1pt better, or in round 5 you'll get paired up againt your list's antithesis, or something else. You should/can never expect to win.
sirisaacnuton wrote:And the biggest problem with DQing pro-painted armies is that it's basically an honesty tax. More unscrupulous people will simply claim that yes, they painted their own army. It would be hard to prove otherwise unless someone narc'ed on him.
It’s happened. GTs have wound up having to take someone’s title away.
It’s a tough call, where to best draw the line so as to reward people who paint their own, but still allow people who get a nice pro-painted army (which is still going to be a nice thing to have at the event, and for their opponents to get to look at) to compete.
Right now the most common place to draw the line is to allow the person to score full points, but just be ineligible to win a prize of which painting is a facet. Usually including Overall. I know that this disappoints some folks, but I for one like the fact that most of the best players I know or have met at GTs, the guys who hope to win it all, are also guys who put in the brush work to get good at that too. I’m mostly a competitive gamer, and I know I never would have gotten as good at painting as I have if painting hadn’t been a requirement.
The vast majority of GTs I've attended also keep the painting score a small enough component of the total points that being a master painter isn't required in order to win. As Janthkin pointed out, even the maximum possible painting score at last year's Adepticon 40k Championship (basically an uber-3 round RT-style tournament) was only 17% of the total scorable points. And only one guy got that score. Most competitors were clustered within a roughly 9pt band. If most competitors are within that 9pt middle range, and picking up the TERTIARY objective for a SINGLE mission is worth 10pts, then clearly painting isn't all that important within the larger picture. I know the guy who won Overall in that tournament last year; he's a friend of mine. And his army looks okay, but certainly won't win any painting prizes.
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Post by: Matthias
jbunny wrote:Mannahnin wrote:You're not being penalized. The best modelers and painters are being given the opportunity to earn extra points by displaying their skills, going above and beyond. People unwilling to do so can still get a good, respectable score, and win the event.
All things equal, would I get less points because I did not convert my models? If so then I got penalized.
Not you didn't. You got judged. All things shouldn't be equal. That is the point of an appearance scoring system.
Other people are rewarded with bonus points for effort above and beyond just taking models out of the box. Being 'docked' or 'penalized' implies points were subtracted from your overall score, that is not the case here.
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Post by: Danny Internets
That's a little uncalled for dont you think?
He inst stating that its a good thing or a bad thing, just that everyone dosent think alike and do the same thing...
Ratchet down the sensitivity meter a few hundred notches. I think it's pretty obvious by the discussion so far that not everyone thinks alike.
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Post by: CrazyThang
Danny Internets wrote:That's a little uncalled for dont you think?
He inst stating that its a good thing or a bad thing, just that everyone dosent think alike and do the same thing...
Ratchet down the sensitivity meter a few hundred notches. I think it's pretty obvious by the discussion so far that not everyone thinks alike.
I think the problem is he doesn't get/know the "If X jumped off a bridge would you?" saying.
GTs aside, "normal" tournies should really be about winning. I mean, if the guy who placed overall wasn't even in the top tables and I came in second or third I would feel... cheated isn't the right word really, but I feel like the best player should win, not the best hobbyist (and I love painting and modelling). Now for some reason I can't even explain to myself I feel like GTs should include everything. /shrug
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Post by: Mannahnin
At every GT I've ever attended the winner has been one of the guys with top Battle scores. The way Battles is usually made the lion's share of the points, and how the functional spread of the other scores often makes them less important, almost always ensures this.
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Post by: CrazyThang
Well that's good. I don't know much about the GT scene really, I was jsut talking about tournaments in a more general sense.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
Danny Internets wrote:If Sweden jumped off a bridge would you jump too?
nope, but I'd certainly push you off though¡
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Post by: don_mondo
Mannahnin wrote:At every GT I've ever attended the winner has been one of the guys with top Battle scores. The way Battles is usually made the lion's share of the points, and how the functional spread of the other scores often makes them less important, almost always ensures this.
And yet, it has happened. One of the early Baltimore GTs, they made the painting score possible points so high that a player with a non-winning record (2-2-2 IIRC) won overall, based on all the bonus points he was awarded for appearance. Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful army. But did he deserve Overall? No.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
That's just your opinion though. The old GTs are still considered by many to be the best. The 2007 GW GT circuit actually awarded the army with best appearance the equivalent of 2+ massacres in battlepoints plus the same Ultramarine army won this award at every GW GT that year, winning best overall (3,wayvtie) in Vegas with two losses.
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Post by: Shinkaze
don_mondo wrote:Mannahnin wrote:At every GT I've ever attended the winner has been one of the guys with top Battle scores. The way Battles is usually made the lion's share of the points, and how the functional spread of the other scores often makes them less important, almost always ensures this.
And yet, it has happened. One of the early Baltimore GTs, they made the painting score possible points so high that a player with a non-winning record (2-2-2 IIRC) won overall, based on all the bonus points he was awarded for appearance. Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful army. But did he deserve Overall? No.
It happened more than once that year. That was Year of the Painter when the top painted armies would score more painting points than the total amount of battle points. A true fiasco, there was no max points and paint judges were going crazy giving out points like candy. Automatically Appended Next Post: Green Blow Fly wrote:That's just your opinion though. The old GTs are still considered by many to be the best. The 2007 GW GT circuit actually awarded the army with best appearance the equivalent of 2+ massacres in battlepoints plus the same Ultramarine army won this award at every GW GT that year, winning best overall (3,wayvtie) in Vegas with two losses.
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I think that anyone who thinks that a 2-2-2 record deserves best overall must be insane.
I think most people would feel a 2-2-2 record does not deserve Overall unless they think all soft scores combined should be worth more points that battle scores.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
It used to not be all about hte WAAC.
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Post by: don_mondo
It's not about the WAAC, but how can you say someone is the best hobbiest (which uncludes playing the game) if they don't even win half their games or more. Sorry, taht was a fail on GWs part. That would be like me showing up with a half painted army but still winning the Best Painted award......
Basically, IF you're going to have an Overall, the winner should have to score at least average, if not better than average, in all categories, not ride one to the prize. That's the balancing act that we, as judges, have always had to work out. How many points to give per category so that it balances out? Which is why the general formula rates Battle Points so strongly and the combined soft scores for 50% or less. You can't weight them evenly, or you really do wind up running the risk of having a losing record winning the top spot.
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Post by: Mannahnin
Yes, there was a year when the scoring was really out of whack. Actually, was that the same year in which your number of battle points was determined by your total vps scored, regardless of vps scored against you? People were just slaughtering one another, and BOTH were getting high battle points.
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Post by: Danny Internets
Green Blow Fly wrote:It used to not be all about hte WAAC.
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And it still isn't. This is a perfect example of confusion between people who genuinely enjoy competition and people who will do anything to win. From my experience in a number of clubs on the East coast the former greatly outnumber the latter. People genuinely interested in competitive events play to win but aren't overly concerned with it, they simply care that tournament performance dictates the outcome of a tournament. It's a simple concept that is somehow lost on the Warhammer community, or at least on the tournament organizers.
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Post by: Black Blow Fly
It is the smaller group that often ruins it for everyone else.
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Post by: Chaoslord
From WHFB perspective, hard restrictions and pure armypoint handicaps have worked reasonably well in making a relatively neat tournament enviroment (in the troll wastes I live in, that is). The former is implemented so there would be some balance between the horribly unbalanced armybooks. It doesn't do too much in regards of people bringing fluffy/soft/hard/whatever lists into tournies, but I guess it's the name of the game here (no sportsmanship/comp scores, just battle and appearance).
Kinda funny to see 2600 pts worth of ogres struggling vs 2000 pts daemon army (and the point handicap is just a start for the daemons, there's extra restrictions too), but at least the fatties have a decent change there... I have a hard time figuring out no-comp 40k having as much trouble balancewise as the worst of vanilla whfb matchups, so in that sense 40k crowd has it easier nowadays. That's not to say that there isn't balance issues in 40k, altough I don't have good answers what to do to help out necrons for example, in order to bring them into the top tier army league.
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Post by: don_mondo
Bubbalicious wrote:don_mondo wrote:
OR........... it ensures that a "soft" comp army wins because he never had to face a good army or player...........................
Yaaa..... Thats a great way of generelazing a whole group of people saying that "soft" comps armies are played by bad players...
Hmm, poorly phrased on my part, you're right. Not what I intended to say. How's this instead?
Or it's a 'soft' army played by a very good player who knows that by building a soft army, he'll have an easier time of it, as he will never have to face a 'hard' army and likely, not have to face any WAAC players.
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