Army composition scores generally are a subjective based evaluation of the overall "feel" of an army. And as we all have varying viewpoints on what this could mean, you can see how the subjectivity of the score comes into play. To give you some background, I recently attended the WHFB SooiePalooza game in Fayetteville, AR. It was a 2500 point game with high stakes on the line. The top 2 finishers got their way paid to the 2011 GW National Championship in Las Vegas next year. So you can imagine that in order to be in contention you needed all the points you could get. The composition score at the tournament was roughly 25% of your overall score. The interesting thing about the scoring though was that it was NOT done by the judges for the tournament. Instead, it was done by the players. Before the tournament started, each player was handed a random folder with 5 army lists in it. The judges had them numbered to ensure that no one received their own list. Then each player had about 20 minutes to rate each army on its composition. 0 being the worst, and 5 being the best. Thus each player had an opportunity to score a total of 25 points for composition.

I had never played in a tournament which emphasized composition so much. 25% of your overall score is really big and not having played in a tournament with comp score before, I didn't really know or understand what was expected of me. There were NO instructions on what to look for or base your grade on. Thus each score was completely subjective.

How do you grade someone on composition? Do you dock them points for playing with all "cheesy" units? What about if they are being "true" to their army book? Maybe playing with multiples of the same unit is bad - not being diverse enough within the codex? Just because a person is playing with the best unit in his/her codex, does that mean they should only use one of those units? If any of you are students of war, you will note that generals rarely take only one unit of their best troops. If they have the resources available, they will always go for the sure fire win condition. This often means overwhelming their adversary with the most powerful units. You can easily see how this kind of evaluation can be very argumentative and challenging.

On the one hand, I will say that composition can be a very useful tool for evaluating the flavor and use of an army's codex. However, I do not agree with the players providing the composition score. Since, as previously noted, these scores are subjectively based on a person's ephemeral ideas of what makes an army viable, and not on an actual grade scale, then the score is purely left to chance.

Having said that I would have been fine with one or a small select group grading the armies for composition. With a smaller focus group, the odds of varying ideologies are greatly diminished. Consistency has weight again, and the scores do not suffer from the "luck of the draw" (at least as far as comp score is concerned).

On the flip side of that coin, however, I will also say that in a tournament environment where money is on the line (cash, prize support, etc), you could argue that there is no room for composition scoring. The ideology here is that you are competing for the top spot and thus should be allowed to bring any and all means necessary to win. People refer to this as the Win At All Costs (WAAC) approach to gaming. This approach is often criticized since it can take away from the overall enjoyment of the game (another ephemeral experience) because you and/or your opponent are playing with things that are supremely overpowered.

To view the argument in a different way, take a look at other competitive games. Modern team sports could definitely be accused of the WAAC mentality. You don't see the Yankees trying to offset their roster since they have A-Rod and Jeter (tier 1 players) by bringing Yunievsky Bettencourt to their team. Instead you see them, year in and year out, trying to bring the very best talent available to the table to win a championship every year. And for those of you are saying, "you can't compare sports to war gaming," let me ask you this…do you really thin that George Steinbrenner is really in this for the "love of the game?" If you believe that, then I've got a bridge over the Missouri river, I'd like to sell you. No way. He's in it for the all mighty dollar. Sure he probably loves baseball, but winning championships will get you a lot of money.

Closer to home, you could also take a look at Magic the Gathering. Here is a game that has been around in the competitive world since the early 90's. For those of you who never played the game competitively, the deck styles are basically broken down into 3 types. Tier 1 decks, these usually consist of the current "broken" combination of cards from the current block and are usually fairly expensive to put together. Tier 2 decks, these are still good but aren't usually as expensive to build. And lastly, the rest of the decks out there. Each block (3 sets) will have it's own tier 1 decks, of which there are only about 2 or 3, that will generally win just about all of the major tournaments for the year. Plain and simple, if you want to do well competitively in Magic, then you had better play with the "cheese."

So why shouldn't this be true for war gaming at the tournament level? I would say that it shouldn't be. Composition has a place in the environment, but I believe it's better suited at the non-competitive level. Even MTG has Friday Night Magic which is typically a low cost or free event held by shops for players to test new ideas, and allow them to take a step back from the competitive grind. The non-competetative level for war gaming, in my opinion, would be any game where money is not on the line. League games are probably the exception, because they are tailored to camaraderie rather then the WAAC mentality, but are paid to add a level of competition, all be it small.

Opponents to this idea would probably argue that the war game is, at its heart, a game centered in "friendly" competition. And I would agree that the game is, for the most part, a great outlet for feeding the creative whimsy that many of us are subject too. However, as the game does have a competitive element to it and that element is greatly enhanced when placed in a tournament environment, I would argue that the tournament becomes the great divider between the game as a hobby to the game as a sport. And before any of you get your panties in a wad, I am not arguing that the game is an actual sport, but instead using the sport as a comparison to the competitive tournament environment.

Composition scoring does have it's place in the world of war gaming, but I believe that place is better suited to non-competitive games.

Composition scoring only happens in some GW tournaments.

It isn't needed in other games like WRG Ancients.

Kilkrazy wrote:Composition scoring only happens in some GW tournaments.

It isn't needed in other games like WRG Ancients.

I agree, however, I was curious if anyone had any thoughts about the necessesity of it at all

I’ve known people who’ve admitted to tanking their opponent’s soft scores for no other reason than to boost themselves in the rankings. I’ve also known tournament judges, suffering from accusations of bias from previous tournaments, to unfairly dock their friends because they wanted to avoid the appearance of holding biases. We don’t live in an ideal world and it’s naïve to implement a system that’s ripe with potential for exploitation and expect the results of such a system to be remotely fair.

By what standard should I judge the “composition” of an army? Why is composition relevant? Why should a player be penalized for incorporating units that are perceived to be powerful and why should a player be rewarded for building an army list that is perceived to be sub-optimal?

I don't use Comp in my tournaments. I have played in tournies that each opponent scored your comp after the game. I tabled a guy and got low comp cause he was made I beat him so bad. I also got low comp in a tie because the guy needed the edge to beat me.

Keep in mind this was a 1500pt game back in early 4th with Blood Angels I had 2 tacts, Chaplin (Non-named), Furry Dred, and a basic Pred, nad 1 Assault squad. Hardly a broken list. Since no one went undefeated, the Comp scores keep me from having a chance at the win.
Comp was 0-10 per game with Max Battle points 25/game and paint 0-10/game

I also don't think players should have a huge say in paint. In a differnt tournament I faced 2 Pro-painters. By that I mean their main source of income was painting figs for people. They judged my painting skills to theirs and of course was found wanting, so they tanked my paint. Not saying I should ever win apainting contest, but to be given a 3 out of 10 when every model is painted to three colors, no over paint, and things are clean is a bit much.

The only score your opponent should decide is Sportsmanship, and I allow them to vote for their favorite paint army and the most votes gets a small bonus to their score. The main paint I score and I have a check list that I use.

Comp is for the weak.

We’ve had a number of these threads over the years.

Personally I think Comp is a nice idea for handicapping tournaments a bit, taking into account the unavoidable fact that GW doesn’t really balance their army books very well against one another, or playtest for extreme builds. And assuming that players in general prefer to see a variety of interesting armies appear at tournaments, as opposed to the 2-3 Tier 1 builds you see at M:tG events.

Currently I think using a council of experienced tournament players, who personally all own and play a variety of armies, to score pre-submitted lists, is the best system out there.

I have seen one good opponent-scored one, though, which I got from Adepticon- Marty (aka Mr. Clean)’s Escalation tournament used the following system at least a couple of times: At the start of the game, players exchange lists, and mark their scoresheet as follows: 0) this list appears to be abusive and unfun to play against; 3) this is a pretty normal tournament army; 5)this list has clearly been handicapped either to be made deliberately weaker or to fit a theme. After the game, you then checked one additional box, to modify the score: 0) Army pretty much what I thought it was; -1) Army harder than it looked; or +1) Army softer than it looked. This is pretty easy, and reduces the impact of sour grapes. You can always tweak the numbers a bit, too, to make it either have more or less of an impact, depending on your preferred points scaling.

Comp and other soft scores were introduced by GW US and are also used in Australia and some European countries.

The UK and some other European countries do not use soft scores.

The problem with soft scores is that they are subjective at best and at worst open to abuse by unscrupulous players.

I understand the idea that soft scores are intended to encourage positive behaviour such as painting your models and being a good sport, however it seems that legislating for these things often brings out the worst in people and is counter productive.

The specific issue of comp scoring arises because army books are badly written, or rather they are not written for competition play. Lists in historical games are limited by the real life composition of armies and can be balanced by points values. 40K is only limited by the 'one size fits all' force org chart.

Subjective does not necessarily = bad, though. Especially given how much interpretation and negotiation can be involved in simply resolving an unclear rule!

People have been tinkering with these scoring systems for a while, and there are some systems which are less open to abuse than others. I’ve cited a couple of examples in this thread and in the other one going right now.

Mannahnin wrote:Subjective does not necessarily = bad, though. Especially given how much interpretation and negotiation can be involved in simply resolving an unclear rule!

People have been tinkering with these scoring systems for a while, and there are some systems which are less open to abuse than others. I’ve cited a couple of examples in this thread and in the other one going right now.

Your check the box, and readjust after the fact can still be used to tank someone. I Mark it's abusive, and then Just what I thought regardless of whats in the list, simply because it gives me a scoring advantage, esp in the case of ties.

Players can always cheat and be douches. Aiming your score sheet to best cater to the lowest common denominator, IMO, is giving in to the worst elements in the hobby.

If I were using that scoring system, I'd take a peek at the lists of anyone who got a zero. If the score didn't seem warranted, and I saw the same thing happen two or three times from the same opponent, I'd boot Mr. Chipmunk.

I'm not a big fan of this sort of "Everybodys a Winner" mentality.

All it does is adds a variable into an unvariable situation.
1. You either win or you don't. If you don't you now got another excuse as to why you got tagged with the cheese, when you play with your listed army. I/E someone else is bagging you points because they have a way to bag points.

2. It is a proven fact that if you give someone a way to take advantage of a system that they will and in fact do it without a thought in the world when theres serious prize on the line.

3. After the last conversation on the subject, I found it an outright distraction to the next tourny when we start seeing and overhereing discussions on D baggery to the point where I just stopped playing and watching the same "Chosen Few" take turns winning around the local area, and actually see this system almost lead to violence.

It is not subjective, its an unintended loophole.

Scoring should be on playing alone. You want an army contest, that should be seperate. You want a painting contest, that should be second, you want to dog a guy out because he wants to play with a tank army, and your running a infantry gunline? that's too bad.
The bottom line it comes down to is that 1. How many points got wiped off the table? How much is left at the end of the game? Did he wipe out any vehicles or characters and what was the overall score? standard, run of the mill SImple scoring that leaves no room for outside discussion on winning and losing.

I've seen the so called "Box's" and even having them in there has no bearing on the overall tourny.

If I bring my paper cardboard cutouts, have my list presubmitted, then that right there tells me that I'm good to go to play in the tourney, paper cutouts and all.
Why do I need any other competitors approval or judgements on what I come to the table with?

I was allowed to play, so what gives an opponent, I/E someone else who benefits from dogging my points... A say is my list, army, painted units, paint jobs, composition, or whatever else?

Torny participants should have no say in scoring, other then killing units, taking objectives, and playing a game. There outright should be a disinterested 3d party judge/ referee for things of that nature.

Its almost like telling you that you set the speed limits on the roads, and give yourselves tickets if you go too fast.

Mannahnin wrote:Subjective does not necessarily = bad, though. Especially given how much interpretation and negotiation can be involved in simply resolving an unclear rule!

People have been tinkering with these scoring systems for a while, and there are some systems which are less open to abuse than others. I’ve cited a couple of examples in this thread and in the other one going right now.

There's a difference between agreeing together to play a game with each other, and the subjectivity involved in awarding scoring points to an opponent on the basis of the fluffiness of their army or how sporting they are.

We all know there are frequent abuses involved in soft scores, and there are none in hard scores. (Barring actual cheating.)

Is the game better off with or without? I don't know. There isn't a reliable method for measuring, so it's impossible to tell.

Comp is always bad. Unless 1 TO thinks he can balance the game better than an entire company...then its still bad.

Lets look at the current games

40k
Besides Necrons and GK being slightly lower tier, pretty much everything else is competitive if built right.

Fantasy
Besides Daemons being slightly OTT and a couple armies being non competitive, pretty much everything is competitive.

So basically all comp is doing is going to great lengths to pull 1-2 armies in each system up to the rest. Punishing everyone so 1 or 2 armies can be on par (note they can still compete, they just need better players) is ridiculous.

I'm opposed to comp, for the usual reasons. Folks should get to use whatever they buy.

Is the game better off with or without? I don't know. There isn't a reliable method for measuring, so it's impossible to tell.

I measure by how many people show up to play in tournaments. In the NE, there are several 80-100 person tournaments using comp, and thriving. I'm getting far more people for tournaments involving painting and comp than I am for 'Ardboyz.

These threads always go the same way. Over time, anyone that isn't against comp quits posting. At best, you get beat on. At the worst, you're told 'you're an asshat that only uses comp to cheat and let the locals win'. This comment was made after I posted a tournament announcement, by someone who'd never been to one of my tournaments, or even knew me.

One thing to keep in mind, while having your discussions of "why I hate comp", is to refrain from beating on TO's, or critisizing events that many people spend a lot of time putting on, just because they use comp. It won't change peoples minds, it will just result in burnt out TO's, and less events.

Tau are seriously gakked right now. What you are saying is very idealistic at best. A good TO watches over the tourney very closely, reviewing the scores at the end of each round and walking around the tables during the games. Comp can be a tool for a good TO.

G

Timmah wrote:Comp is always bad. Unless 1 TO thinks he can balance the game better than an entire company...then its still bad.

Lets look at the current games

40k
Besides Necrons and GK being slightly lower tier, pretty much everything else is competitive if built right.

Fantasy
Besides Daemons being slightly OTT and a couple armies being non competitive, pretty much everything is competitive.

So basically all comp is doing is going to great lengths to pull 1-2 armies in each system up to the rest. Punishing everyone so 1 or 2 armies can be on par (note they can still compete, they just need better players) is ridiculous.

Mikhaila, as usual, speaks the truth from experience.

mikhaila wrote:Is the game better off with or without? I don't know. There isn't a reliable method for measuring, so it's impossible to tell.

I measure by how many people show up to play in tournaments. In the NE, there are several 80-100 person tournaments using comp, and thriving. I'm getting far more people for tournaments involving painting and comp than I am for 'Ardboyz.

These threads always go the same way. Over time, anyone that isn't against comp quits posting. At best, you get beat on. At the worst, you're told 'you're an asshat that only uses comp to cheat and let the locals win'. This comment was made after I posted a tournament announcement, by someone who'd never been to one of my tournaments, or even knew me.

One thing to keep in mind, while having your discussions of "why I hate comp", is to refrain from beating on TO's, or critisizing events that many people spend a lot of time putting on, just because they use comp. It won't change peoples minds, it will just result in burnt out TO's, and less events.

I think that other factors are in play here. 'Ard Boyz is FLGS supported. I don't have to drive 7 hours to participate in 'Ard Boyz. There are no GTs in the SE (except for a new one....) so getting any gaming in aside from FLGS 6-10 person tournies requires a drive. I'd come to your GT regardless of what the points looked like. Composition, sportsmanship, battlepoints - it doesn't matter. I'm driving 7 hours for a weekend of 40k gaming in a bigger venue than I've had before.

I think if you did a GT without all the softscores, you'd still get as many people. Its a GT - that's the distinguishing factor.

I am very interested in playing in tournament with my wood elves... but not in playing in tournaments with no comp at all.

I like a system I saw mikhaila mention somewhere about a panel reviewing the lists and matching up similarly "powered" ones for the first few rounds. It gives people who didn't max out a puncher's chance of having an exciting game, imho!

There's definitely a place for no-comp style tournies, and 'Ard Boyz has definitely shown that. But it's definitely not how every tournament should be run! There's a reason why comp scores have been around for so long, and will continue to do so- to cut down on people taking what are perceived as unfair or unbalanced armies that take advantage of loopholes in the rules, and the like.

That's also a good point about the TOs, mikhaila- I guess people don't think about that before posting in a knee-jerk reaction to comp discussions. If an event is run well by a TO, comp should somewhat fade into the background imho. I think you have a good system set up for it for your events, from what I've read about them (and hoping to attend one soon, since you're so close by).

Cheers,
Steve / RiTides

To continue on my earlier thoughts...

I would add that, while I don't think comp is ALL bad, I just think it's an outdated system. This game has been around a long time, and hopefully a long time to come. But the difference between then and now is that this game used to be about the "game." Meaning that tournaments were nothing more then people getting together and commenting on the new cool conversions they made and what not.

Today the game continues to have many of those same elements at your FLGS. But it has also has a larger, more competitive following. Just look at the increase in large tournaments over the years. In fact the biggest tell tale sign of the competitive increase is the fact that the game's manufacturer, GW, has introduced the 'Ard Boyz tournaments. Where being D bag is not encouraged, but bringing the cheese is.

Miklila point was great. Typically a childish person will constantly post derivise remark against a TO to the point of hyperbole.


G

natedawgg wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Composition scoring only happens in some GW tournaments.

It isn't needed in other games like WRG Ancients.

I agree, however, I was curious if anyone had any thoughts about the necessesity of it at all

It is very "necessary" so as to ensure that the organizers friends advance or that those they wish not to advance don't...

The tourney you played in had 25% of the score tied to a popularity contest.

The game rules (via Field allowance, points systems, etc.) and army lists( by what they give access to within the bounds of field allowance and points system) should be the tools by which a company purposes army balance and composition.

Once a game system has been released to the public and a codex has been released for it, the horse has already left he gate as far as I'm concerned.

If a list is legal by the standards of the army list and rules of the game in question then it should be allowed and playable. Tourney comp. is a forced, biased and artificial means of doing what the game company whould have done in the first place.

I'm thoroughly opposed to "Comp". I should never lose points in a competitive environment for taking a legal army list.
And, if used, there's no way in Hades taht the player's should be invlolved in scoring it. That SooiePlaooza system sounds extremely gakked. Each player received five random army lists and was expected to score all five of them for Comp in 20 minutes? Did they provide codexes, etc to each player as well? I'm willing to bet taht well over half of them had no clue as to what the units in the lists they were grading could do, etc etc.

Now "Theme", ie the "overall feel of the army" can be included as part of the appearance scores an I have no problems with that. But to say that a list is "too hard" so you lose points? No, I totally disagree. Still play in events that have it, cause I like to play.

Dashofpepper wrote:

mikhaila wrote:Is the game better off with or without? I don't know. There isn't a reliable method for measuring, so it's impossible to tell.

I measure by how many people show up to play in tournaments. In the NE, there are several 80-100 person tournaments using comp, and thriving. I'm getting far more people for tournaments involving painting and comp than I am for 'Ardboyz.

These threads always go the same way. Over time, anyone that isn't against comp quits posting. At best, you get beat on. At the worst, you're told 'you're an asshat that only uses comp to cheat and let the locals win'. This comment was made after I posted a tournament announcement, by someone who'd never been to one of my tournaments, or even knew me.

One thing to keep in mind, while having your discussions of "why I hate comp", is to refrain from beating on TO's, or critisizing events that many people spend a lot of time putting on, just because they use comp. It won't change peoples minds, it will just result in burnt out TO's, and less events.

I think that other factors are in play here. 'Ard Boyz is FLGS supported. I don't have to drive 7 hours to participate in 'Ard Boyz. There are no GTs in the SE (except for a new one....) so getting any gaming in aside from FLGS 6-10 person tournies requires a drive. I'd come to your GT regardless of what the points looked like. Composition, sportsmanship, battlepoints - it doesn't matter. I'm driving 7 hours for a weekend of 40k gaming in a bigger venue than I've had before.

I think if you did a GT without all the softscores, you'd still get as many people. Its a GT - that's the distinguishing factor.

Quite possibly true. Might even get more.

I run a GT essentially the same way I run our monthly tournaments. ( I say 'I' a lot, but the tournaments I'm running now involve about a half dozen people doing a lot of work, along witht he help of about a dozen more when it's crunch time.) Partly this is because it's what people have come to expect. Partly because I like the format. I really wish there was a way to test it, but data points are thin, and every year it seems the experiment changes.

I have a WFB GT scheduled for July, and I'm thinking about renting more space, and attatching a 30-40 person 40k GT to the event as well. We're talking about running it quite different than the rules set we have for the SVDM. Not because we think one is essentially better, but because we are going to be running over 30 tournaments this year, and it's an opportunity to run a lot of formats. Most likely will have no comp element to it at all. March 20th we made our 'normal monthly' tournament into an Adepticon style Gladiotor event. No comp, obviously).

Yeah, Mike, I still plan on getting up there someday. You want to go ahead and mark my army as a "hard" one now or wait until I actually send the list........

People who don't play with their toy soldiers the way I play with my toy soldiers are not playing with their toy soldiers correctly, and are therefore bad people.



If you don't like comp score tournaments, don't go to those. If you don't like non-comp score tournaments, don't go to those. The fact that both are popular should tell everyone something about how clear this issue is.

I don't have a particular problem with 'comp' as a concept but it is usually a band-aid for a problem with the gaming system.

3rd and 4th edition had big problems which comp tried to cover for. Even the worst armies in 5th edition are not as bad as some of the cheese seen in 3rd. Some of the cheese seen in 3rd made the game unplayable. Going to a GT around 2003-2004 when they were doing 250 people really showed these lists and how wrong they were.

I'm not sure comp is needed in 5th, but if people want to do it then so be it. Tournaments are not competitive gaming events to all organizers, to many it is a 'hobby' competition which includes appearance, pub trivia and designing fluff and comp of armies. If they want to advertise and run thier tourney as a hobby competition, so be it. If someone wants to advertise and run a tourney as a purely metagame competition with nothing but battle points, that's cool to.

CT GAMER wrote:

natedawgg wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Composition scoring only happens in some GW tournaments.

It isn't needed in other games like WRG Ancients.

I agree, however, I was curious if anyone had any thoughts about the necessesity of it at all

It is very "necessary" so as to ensure that the organizers friends advance or that those they wish not to advance don't...

Right after Mikhaila just got done explaining about ignorant people insulting tournament organizers whom they've never met...

Mannahnin wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:

natedawgg wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Composition scoring only happens in some GW tournaments.

It isn't needed in other games like WRG Ancients.

I agree, however, I was curious if anyone had any thoughts about the necessesity of it at all

It is very "necessary" so as to ensure that the organizers friends advance or that those they wish not to advance don't...

Right after Mikhaila just got done explaining about ignorant people insulting tournament organizers whom they've never met...

Right, cause someone posted their OPINION on the internet before you, it completely invalidates yours. Duh...

No, his primary fail was slandering tournament organizers as fixing events to favor their friends/locals. IME such morons are rare, and are sufficiently stupid and offensive that they screw up a lot of other stuff, have generally bad customer relations, and drive off players in other ways.

Any reputable and competent tournament organizer, especially a store owner, is going to do his best to make the event honest and on the up and up. It's shooting themselves in the foot to do otherwise, because rigging things sabotages all their future events, and for a store owner, hurts their business.

Now, you may disagree with the way someone runs a tournament, or their priorities in scoring, or give critical feedback if you see problems. But you can do all of those while remaining courteous and constructive.

The fact that CT Gamer chose to crap his smear on organizers in this particular thread, when Mikhaila (pretty much the model store owner/event organizer for the United States) had already made this point, is what made it an Epic Fail.

I attended Sooiepalooza this year and I saw the good and bad of the Comp judging. I've always believed that there is a place for Composition Scoring, but I think that it needs to be based on very minimal guidelines (50% in characters you get docked, only minimum sized required Core choices you get docked, etc...) and it should not affect more than 10% of the final points. Having completely subjective Comp judging led to guys like Mark Burr only scoring 17/25 with a Brettonian army that had 3 big blocks of Men-At-Arms and half the number of knight units he usually runs. Of course Daemon players got docked and the lone Dual-Stank & War-Alter list got lowest comp, but it feels like if there were minimal guidelines then the scores would have been different.

I think that in an Indy-GT/GT enviroment that soft-scores should be a part of it and expected by all involved. 50-70% of the final points should be battle points, but that other 50-30% (or whatever you want to do) should be up to the TO. Our local store is going to have a good old fashioned Fantasy RTT next month. After having so many Ard Boyz style tournaments it's going to be interesting to see what kind of crowd shows up.

I agree completely that if you're going to have a group of people handling any score, they need to have consistent and clearly-explained guidelines for doing it.

Mannahnin wrote:No, his primary fail was slandering tournament organizers as fixing events to favor their friends/locals. IME such morons are rare, and are sufficiently stupid and offensive that they screw up a lot of other stuff, have generally bad customer relations, and drive off players in other ways.

Ok, think about it this way. Your friends are going to influence your opinion of certain armies the most. If the people you play with constantly complain about Nidzilla, Jetseer councils and Double Lash. What do you think this TO is going to think is OP?

Most of the time Comp is completely subjective to what the locals think is OP. Them knowing this gives them a better chance of bringing something under the radar and winning because they get full comp marks with a army anyone else would say is OTT.

I am not saying that it is intentional, but it does happen.

RiTides wrote:I am very interested in playing in tournament with my wood elves... but not in playing in tournaments with no comp at all.

I like a system I saw mikhaila mention somewhere about a panel reviewing the lists and matching up similarly "powered" ones for the first few rounds. It gives people who didn't max out a puncher's chance of having an exciting game, imho!

There's definitely a place for no-comp style tournies, and 'Ard Boyz has definitely shown that. But it's definitely not how every tournament should be run! There's a reason why comp scores have been around for so long, and will continue to do so- to cut down on people taking what are perceived as unfair or unbalanced armies that take advantage of loopholes in the rules, and the like.

That's also a good point about the TOs, mikhaila- I guess people don't think about that before posting in a knee-jerk reaction to comp discussions. If an event is run well by a TO, comp should somewhat fade into the background imho. I think you have a good system set up for it for your events, from what I've read about them (and hoping to attend one soon, since you're so close by).

Cheers,
Steve / RiTides

I agree here.

Painting and comp should always be judged equally, by a panel of judges (or a single judge) - its the only way to insure fairness. Players should definitely *not* be involved. I like how Mike has set up the SVDM for scoring, mostly because I know I'm being scored fairly, and on comparison with other armies, not subjective round by round to opponents. If you ask me to score a Tyranid army, or a space marine army, and I don't know much about either one, how can I possibly give a fair score?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

JOHIRA wrote:People who don't play with their toy soldiers the way I play with my toy soldiers are not playing with their toy soldiers correctly, and are therefore bad people.



If you don't like comp score tournaments, don't go to those. If you don't like non-comp score tournaments, don't go to those. The fact that both are popular should tell everyone something about how clear this issue is.

That's a terrible solution.

Since I don't see any GTs without comp scoring, that pretty much leaves me playing in just 'Ard Boyz, or getting in one big event a year. Yeah...that's a good answer.


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Mannahnin wrote:
Mikhaila (pretty much the model store owner/event organizer for the United States)

You know, that's a recurring theme that I keep hearing everywhere. Apparently someone is doing it right. =p

Comp scores are a double edged sword. The idea is sound, but the practice is subjective. Not to mention those who like them vs. those who loath them will never see eye to eye.

Mannahnin wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:

natedawgg wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Composition scoring only happens in some GW tournaments.

It isn't needed in other games like WRG Ancients.

I agree, however, I was curious if anyone had any thoughts about the necessesity of it at all

It is very "necessary" so as to ensure that the organizers friends advance or that those they wish not to advance don't...

Right after Mikhaila just got done explaining about ignorant people insulting tournament organizers whom they've never met...

Last i checked I don't need Mikhalia's permission to post my opinion. Thanks anyways.

+1 to mikhalia's comments. i usually don't post in these threads because the anti-comp people simply attack those who express an opposing opinion. comp scores exist in tournies because people think they need to, regardless of how loud an opinion (and that's all it is folks no matter how loud it is) on dakka is. there will always be people out there that take a broken unit or GW-brainfart broken rules interaction to the max simply because they can and because it will help them win. comp scores exist to give those types of people some small reprecussion. are they perfect? no. can they be abused by a group of players carpooling to the same tourney to advance their group? sure. do they achieve their original purpose? yes. i do however think that they should be scored by judges OR by players you are not competing against in a tourney... at a bare minimum, it should be open and done before a game if your opponent is the one doing it.

warboss wrote:+1 to mikhalia's comments. i usually don't post in these threads because the anti-comp people simply attack those who express an opposing opinion. comp scores exist in tournies because people think they need to, regardless of how loud an opinion (and that's all it is folks no matter how loud it is) on dakka is. there will always be people out there that take a broken unit or GW-brainfart broken rules interaction to the max simply because they can and because it will help them win. comp scores exist to give those types of people some small reprecussion. are they perfect? no. can they be abused by a group of players carpooling to the same tourney to advance their group? sure. do they achieve their original purpose? yes. i do however think that they should be scored by judges OR by players you are not competing against in a tourney... at a bare minimum, it should be open and done before a game if your opponent is the one doing it.

Which continues to ignore/band-aid the larger issue: 40K as a game should not be played in an ultra-competitive format because it has a documented and regular history on the part of it's creators (GW) of being imbalanced, open to abuse, and ambiguous. How can you even pretend to have a balanced/fair competition when the system itself is broken from he get-go?

People want to continue to try to make 40k "serious business". Problem is it isn't a sport no matter how many patches people want to try to put onto it. You can try to hide the bleeding with lots of fancy comp rules and so forth, but the fact is it isn't designed from the ground up by the parent to be played fairly that way.

Yet people persist in wanting to fit a square peg into a round hole, and so we get comp rules and so forth that are open to bias, and further unbalancing/favoritism (intentional or otherwise).

IF a game is going to be considered "balanced for competitive play" it needs to be made so by the creators fromt he ground up and designed to be played that way. 40K isn't nor will it ever most likely achieve that status. I as a player should be able to buy a rulebook and an army book and using those alone be able to field any list they allow without random strangers playing thought police and deeming my list "unfair/broken/cheesy.unfluffy/etc. ,etc. and docking my score. This is the stuff of madness and the furthest from the objectivity and balance that anyone with half a an ounce of common sense would expect in a competitive endeavor...

I would just like to point out that so-called "pro comp" people calling so-called "anti-comp" people simply attackers, blah blah blah, is an incorrect generalisation. And the reverse is also true.

There is a spectrum of opinion from totally pro to totally anti.

Whether comp is worthwhile is a moot point. Some countries use it, other countries don't. Players at the non-comp tournaments seem to enjoy themselves as much as the players at the comp tournaments.

Seriously, please tell me what 40k army is completely overpowered at the moment.

Oh right, you can't do it because the game system is actually pretty well balanced. So why would you ever need comp in a balanced game system?

Oh right, cause someone wants to play their Ogryns, swooping hawks ect and thinks everyone should be brought down to their level.

...comp should always be judged equally, by a panel of judges (or a single judge) - its the only way to insure fairness. Players should definitely *not* be involved.

This is very idealistic. If the TO judges comp then it lends itself to favoritism and helping the home team crowd.

G

CT GAMER wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:

natedawgg wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Composition scoring only happens in some GW tournaments.

It isn't needed in other games like WRG Ancients.

I agree, however, I was curious if anyone had any thoughts about the necessesity of it at all

It is very "necessary" so as to ensure that the organizers friends advance or that those they wish not to advance don't...

Right after Mikhaila just got done explaining about ignorant people insulting tournament organizers whom they've never met...

Last i checked I don't need Mikhalia's permission to post my opinion. Thanks anyways.

And I would hate to ever be have it that way, or to be responsible. It's your opinion, your welcome to it.

All I tried to point out was that people can have a discussion on comp, without throwing garbage at either TO's or events, accuse them of cheating, or other ethical failings. You proved pretty immediately, that you can't actually do that.

It's probably easiest if I just put you on ignore at this point, as I have no interest in reading what you have to say about anything.

Have a wonderful life, and look into some anger managemant classes.

mikhaila wrote:
Have a wonderful life, and look into some anger managemant classes.

Ah, taking a parting shot. Maybe its not him who needs anger management classes.

Since his post wasn't all that angry. (unlike yours)

Oh and TO's usually get blamed the most because they are the ones implementing the comp system...

The only thing I complain about the TO's who use Comp is when they let the opponents grade it. I have been at Tournaments where your opponent after the match scored your Paint, Comp, and Sportsmanship. All together 30 points, with a possible 25 points for battle.

Notice that I never mentioned Mikhalia nor attacked him.

Last i checked It is well within my rights to voice my own opinion regardless of if it pleases sensitive types like Mikhalia and his fanboys or not.

Good riddance...


Now back OT: I stand beside my points about applying comp to a game that is inherently flawed being a waste of time. Some things are not meant nor designed to be "sport" and 40K is definitely one of those things.

Pretending otherwise is a recipe for heartache...

Timmah wrote:

mikhaila wrote:
Have a wonderful life, and look into some anger managemant classes.

Ah, taking a parting shot. Maybe its not him who needs anger management classes.

Since his post wasn't all that angry. (unlike yours)

Oh and TO's usually get blamed the most because they are the ones implementing the comp system...

Yes, it was a parting shot. Absolutely.

And I think you miss the point. Blame a TO if you like, it is their system. (Or might be the system used by a large group of people putting on the event, but sure, he's in charge.) But really, do we need to keep inplying that TO's are adding a composition score to a tournament just so they can cheat and favor their friends? Really?! CT Gamer is the second person I've had say that. Possibly he read the earlier post and decided to throw it out because I mentioned it. You don't think that's going to make someone angry a bit, to be accused of blatantly cheating a tournament full of people so you can give prizes to friends? There are a lot of easier ways to give stuff to your friends, than putting in a huge amount of work, and cheating people, and then taking well deserved crap about it forever.

I don't like my friends that much. Not worth going through it. Rather just had them boxes off the wall.

Kilkrazy wrote:Whether comp is worthwhile is a moot point. Some countries use it, other countries don't.

And some countries, like the US and UK, have both kinds of events.

@mikhaila

Maybe I misread/misinterpreted what CT Gamer said.

My stance is while the TO may not do it intentionally, most of the time if he implements a comp system its going to favor his friends. (see my earlier post where I talked about the TO's friends being a big influence on how he thinks the game should be played and what is OP)

Sorry if I came across as implying TO's just hold tournaments to get their friends prizes.

CT GAMER wrote:Which continues to ignore/band-aid the larger issue: 40K as a game should not be played in an ultra-competitive format because it has a documented and regular history on the part of it's creators (GW) of being imbalanced, open to abuse, and ambiguous. How can you even pretend to have a balanced/fair competition when the system itself is broken from he get-go?

I don't want to play it in an "ultra-competitive format", just a competitive one. Perfect balance is impossible, regardless. Even Chess is unbalanced in favor of white.

CT GAMER wrote:Notice that I never mentioned Mikhalia nor attacked him....

Of course not; you just said that comp is necessary so that organizers can cheat and favor their friends. Not at all the same thing.

CT GAMER wrote:Last i checked It is well within my rights to voice my own opinion regardless of if it pleases sensitive types like Mikhalia and his fanboys or not.

It is your perfect right to insert your foot into your mouth whenever you want. However when you make comments questioning the integrity of and insulting to valued members of the community, I hope you can expect to be called on it.

Timmah wrote:@mikhaila

Maybe I misread/misinterpreted what CT Gamer said.

My stance is while the TO may not do it intentionally, most of the time if he implements a comp system its going to favor his friends. (see my earlier post where I talked about the TO's friends being a big influence on how he thinks the game should be played and what is OP)

Sorry if I came across as implying TO's just hold tournaments to get their friends prizes.

Can I offer you a suggestion?

Host a GT. I'd prefer not to play with comp scores (among other things). I have serious reservations about some of the GTs being held around the country this year. If there was a comp-less GT anywhere on the east coast, I'd attend. As it is, there are already very few GTs on the east coast, and I'm attending pretty much all of them - because there are no GTs that don't invest heavily in comp scores.

If the GT and major tournament scene were saturated enough that I could pick and choose among them based on my preferences, I would prefer to go to events that don't artificially gimp people. I'm not a great painter - not a talent I have. I don't think its fair that I go to a tournament and get fewer points for the TOURNAMENT because someone else paints better than I do. Let them go to a painting tournament, or a painting contest, or golden demon. Yet, I don't have a choice. Having a painting requirement (3 color + basing completed, or you don't get to play) can be a barrier to entry and people who don't meet those requirements don't get to play, but I don't think painting skill should factor into who wins a farking gaming competition.

But the only GTs use systems that I don't find ideal. And yet they are the only GTs, so my choices are such:
1. Suck it up and go because I want to get in some 40k action.
2. Don't go because I don't agree with the scoring.
3. Host my own GT and provide an example of how to do it right.

I'm not pro or anti comp score camp - I'm just a realist. I will deal with them because other people are running events and I'd like to participate. Instead of arguing with TOs or people about why comp is good or bad, or how people are playing favorites...give us an example! Host a GT. I will be there, and I have no doubt that many others will too.

Dash: Be sure to check out Mechanicon in November. Good hotel, great scenery, bar in the gaming room. No comp. Run by a good bunch of guys. Indy GT event. It's held in Westchester Pa. Tony Spino (Tironum on these boards) and his guys put on a good show.

Outside chance we attatch a 30 person, 40k GT to The Big Show, in July. If so, this will be a no comp event.

So two more times this year you can drive up to PA and visit.)

Timma: NP, understood.

Mannahnin wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:Which continues to ignore/band-aid the larger issue: 40K as a game should not be played in an ultra-competitive format because it has a documented and regular history on the part of it's creators (GW) of being imbalanced, open to abuse, and ambiguous. How can you even pretend to have a balanced/fair competition when the system itself is broken from he get-go?

I don't want to play it in an "ultra-competitive format", just a competitive one. Perfect balance is impossible, regardless. Even Chess is unbalanced in favor of white.

CT GAMER wrote:Notice that I never mentioned Mikhalia nor attacked him....

Of course not; you just said that comp is necessary so that organizers can cheat and favor their friends. Not at all the same thing.

The point being made was that comp as an institution is flawed because it both requires players to trust that such things are not happening and allows for it to happen if a TO or comp judge was so inclined.

Those two flaws alone make such a system totally unacceptable to use in what is supposed to be an unbiased competitive endeavor. A "game" should be judged based upon who won and lost using armies legally defined by the official rules/army lists and all relevant scores based solely on those facts. A system in which a TO/Judge has a mechanism to in effect "fix" the results of what is supposed to be a heads up competitive challenge seems odd int he extreme to me.

This fact combined with 40k/GW's inherint and historical track record of being unable to balance said game and the constant rotation of army lists and releases that constantly push and pull said balance are likewise evidence that 40K is not designed nor in any shape to be played in a competetive format that can be considered fair and balanced.

The fact that people feel the need to have and enforce a comp system at all speaks volumes about the shortcomings of 40k as a competitive activity.

Mikhaila may be a fair/unbiased TO, to be honest I don't really care. Even if we accept as fact that he never abuses his power as TO/judge, the fact that others are given the mechanism and power to potentially do so and that people report it happening is proof enough to question the validity of such a system.

This discussion isn't about him. It is about a far larger issue, so his fanboys need to dial back the drama and have some perspective...

CT GAMER wrote:
This discussion isn't about him. It is about a far larger issue, so his fanboys need to dial back the drama and have some perspective...

I consider myself outside this discussion in terms of sides because I don't care about the issue. =p

So with that in mind, why don't you host a GT? There's few enough of them as it is; give us a comp-less Vegas qualifier. If someone would give us decent action remotely close to me in the southeast, I'd break my back to see it succeed.

Dashofpepper wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:
This discussion isn't about him. It is about a far larger issue, so his fanboys need to dial back the drama and have some perspective...

I consider myself outside this discussion in terms of sides because I don't care about the issue. =p

So with that in mind, why don't you host a GT? There's few enough of them as it is; give us a comp-less Vegas qualifier. If someone would give us decent action remotely close to me in the southeast, I'd break my back to see it succeed.

You haven't been reading my posts. I have stated multiple times that I think 40K is not an appropriate game to play in a competitive format. It has too many loopholes, vagaries, rules imbalances, etc. ,etc. When you have a rotating schedule of army lists that are designed by different people at different times, sometimes for different editions of the rules you can'y hope to have balance.

A competitive event requires balance to be fair imho. this is impossible w/ 40K as the never ending threads over the years have attested to. Look just on the front page of this section of dakka alone...

That is the first issue (a big one in my book).

the second main problem: the potential for abuse of comp systems to skew results.

Some people insist on playing it this way regardless.

Some people are determined to make 40k serious business and a sport. Given the nature of the game and the improper use of comp to try to fix an unfix-able problem...

I have zero interest.

Personally I think that GW has been getting gradually better over the (closing in on) eleven years I've been playing, and that the rules sets have continued to evolve and improve and better-support competitive play.

It is true that they will never be perfectly balanced, and that even carefully designed systems (like Warmachine, or Chess) still have issues. For me, factoring in elements like comp and painting and sportsmanship keeps the "ultra-competitive" or "over competitive" element in check and in balance, and ensures that the hobby game remains a fun hobby game, while still having a significant competitive aspect.

It's been a pretty great hobby while I've been in it. I really like tournaments and GTs. Clearly GW's at-times unclear and unbalanced rules can be an obstacle, but I do think they've gotten better over time, and IME they're not incompatible with an enjoyable competitive tournament experience.

AHH comp my most favorite subject. Having played competative 40K for years now I can say that I prefer going to comp based tournaments that allow for the TO to promote a fun, fair and balanced gaming environment. Comp scoring used right works. Having said that unfortuantely I have not been to that many tournaments that can actually say that. We also need to take in mind the current Meta game in 5th. I am beginning to re-evalute my position on comp. Mind you I still feel it is necessary for the enjoyment of the game but currently there are too many Luck of the dice wins thanks to 5th edition environment which can allow for comp to actually be problematic.

Comp scoring used right works.

"Comp scoring" and "used right" is an oxymoron. If you need comp scores to enjoy tournaments then perhaps it's time to think about whether or not competitive gaming is for you.

Or perhaps we should extend comp scoring to other parts of the hobby, like sportsmanship or painting:

Have lots of friends in real life? -5 points to you! Less social people deserve a handicap.

Good at painting? Let's dock your painting scores so that those who aren't artistically inclined have a shot at winning.

Be sure to check out Mechanicon in November. Good hotel, great scenery, bar in the gaming room. No comp.

Unfortunately this "tournament" (hobby competition) is a bonanza of soft scores, worse so than any other I've seen, east cost or otherwise. Only 48% battlepoints.

Mannahnin wrote:No, his primary fail was slandering tournament organizers as fixing events to favor their friends/locals. IME such morons are rare, and are sufficiently stupid and offensive that they screw up a lot of other stuff, have generally bad customer relations, and drive off players in other ways.

And yet, it happens. Has happened, to me personally. I had a Games Workshop Store Manager tell me flat out that it didn't matter if I won all my games with max scores, received top sportsmanship marks, etc. He would make sure that I never won anything in any tournament he was scoring. Odd how most of the prizes were won over and over by his fellow GW employees. Especially the ones taht involved judges soft scores. Happened years ago, he's no longer with the company, got canned, from what I heard.

And Mike and I have discussed his comp extensively, (Shoot, how long have we known each other?) and I truly believe that he is trying to be as fair and balanced with it as possible. However, I do believe that it has an inherent flaw, and that has already been mentioned. Players who have attended his tournies in the past know the comp system, and can game thier lists to it, getting that 'soft' score while keeping a 'hard' army. Players from outside the area or first timers do not know the system, so they're just stuck with the score for whatever they bring. No real way for him to fix it tho. So be it, and I will get my A$$ up there to play, one of these days!!

Danny Internets wrote:

Have lots of friends in real life? -5 points to you! Less social people deserve a handicap.

Good at painting? Let's dock your painting scores so that those who aren't artistically inclined have a shot at winning.

Be sure to check out Mechanicon in November. Good hotel, great scenery, bar in the gaming room. No comp.

Unfortunately this "tournament" (hobby competition) is a bonanza of soft scores, worse so than any other I've seen, east cost or otherwise. Only 48% battlepoints.

I hadn't thought about this before, but I have to say that I agree.

If I'm going to get docked points because I can assemble and play a list better than someone else for a tournament, they should get docked painting for being able to paint and sculpt better than me.

It's sad... the only comment/question I have is "Was the event in Fayetteville, Arkansas (AR) or Fayetteville, Alaska (AK)?"

Personally, I'm not a fan of comp as it is way too subjective and can be prone to abuse. Same with sportsmanship. However, I think painting is a great softscore and adds a great component to an event.

don_mondo wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:No, his primary fail was slandering tournament organizers as fixing events to favor their friends/locals. IME such morons are rare, and are sufficiently stupid and offensive that they screw up a lot of other stuff, have generally bad customer relations, and drive off players in other ways.

And yet, it happens. Has happened, to me personally. I had a Games Workshop Store Manager tell me flat out that it didn't matter if I won all my games with max scores, received top sportsmanship marks, etc. He would make sure that I never won anything in any tournament he was scoring. Odd how most of the prizes were won over and over by his fellow GW employees. Especially the ones taht involved judges soft scores. Happened years ago, he's no longer with the company, got canned, from what I heard.

And Mike and I have discussed his comp extensively, (Shoot, how long have we known each other?) and I truly believe that he is trying to be as fair and balanced with it as possible. However, I do believe that it has an inherent flaw, and that has already been mentioned. Players who have attended his tournies in the past know the comp system, and can game thier lists to it, getting that 'soft' score while keeping a 'hard' army. Players from outside the area or first timers do not know the system, so they're just stuck with the score for whatever they bring. No real way for him to fix it tho. So be it, and I will get my A$$ up there to play, one of these days!!

That would be exceedingly frustrating. Especially that the guy had the balls to actuallly say that. Glad he got canned. That's not a good person to have running a store. Hmm, or bagging groceries for that matter. And you do need to come up at some point. Beer is just as good at little events as at big ones. And I'm down all weekend again for Games Day. We'll be coming in Friday afternoon to set up our tables, then doing our best to earn a hangover for the next day, and hitting it hard on Saturday night. Whatever the Warf Rat is calling itself this year, we'll be there.

Beer beer beer said the Sergeant.............. (and yes, I is a Sgt, SFC, US Army, Retired)

Not sure what's happening as far as Games Day. But if I'm there, we'll get a group together and take over the patio at whatever-it's-new-name-is (formerly Wharf Rat). Who are the UK guests this year? We'll have to see if they'd like to join us, they like beer jsut as much as the rest of us


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dashofpepper wrote:
If I'm going to get docked points because I can assemble and play a list better than someone else for a tournament, they should get docked painting for being able to paint and sculpt better than me.

Heh, that means my 10-year old granddaughter would get docked points against me..................

Hi all.
Shouldnt the thread title be 'composition scoring in WH and 40k.'?

Because ,( apart from GWs core games), most gamers use games written for competative play in tournaments.(So comp scores are not needed, or used.)

As pointed out earlier, a rule set that has been developed to '... inspire people to have fun with Citadel Minatures...' (cynical view to sell Citadel Minatures, )is probably NOT the best choice to use for competative play.

Why do people feel they have to try to make an unsuitable game ,fit thier ideal.
Rather than use a rule set that is closer to thier requirments?

I suppose the wide range of rule sets available to non GW gamers, means they CAN just pick the rule set thats most appropiate for them.
SOME WH and 40k gamers seem to be 'stuck' using rules that are far thier ideal gameplay reqirements.

If any one is generous enough to organise an event , I belive the people attending should respect the effort put in on thier behalf.

Lanrak wrote:Hi all.
Shouldnt the thread title be 'composition scoring in WH and 40k.'?

Because ,( apart from GWs core games), most gamers use games written for competative play in tournaments.(So comp scores are not needed, or used.)

As pointed out earlier, a rule set that has been developed to '... inspire people to have fun with Citadel Minatures...' (cynical view to sell Citadel Minatures, )is probably NOT the best choice to use for competative play.

Why do people feel they have to try to make an unsuitable game ,fit thier ideal.
Rather than use a rule set that is closer to thier requirments?

Which is a line of thought which makes the recent addition of "tiered" theme lists to Warmachine particularly interesting. Anyone who plays WM knows that some units even in that more-tightly designed game are unbalanced. PP has been very reluctant to straight-up "fix" units, but has done it a few times (Sorscha, Bile Thralls), and has come up with alternate ways of fixing stuff, like releasing Unit Attachments to make them better, or the revision in Mk2 to let Jacks stand up for free by spending a focus. Now PP is going father, and actually allowing less-attractive units to be purchased for a discount withint the context of a themed list. So even this game, designed from the ground up to be competitive, and written using the aid of technical writing and good editing, is seeing the need to correct imbalances by giving bonus point.

Dashofpepper wrote:

JOHIRA wrote:People who don't play with their toy soldiers the way I play with my toy soldiers are not playing with their toy soldiers correctly, and are therefore bad people.



If you don't like comp score tournaments, don't go to those. If you don't like non-comp score tournaments, don't go to those. The fact that both are popular should tell everyone something about how clear this issue is.

That's a terrible solution.

Since I don't see any GTs without comp scoring, that pretty much leaves me playing in just 'Ard Boyz, or getting in one big event a year.

And the problem with that is...?

I don't have a tournament in my area that plays exactly the way I want them to. Should I criticise everyone who plays differently from me?
If you want more tournaments without comp scores, organize your own!

Well, I don't think it's criticizing; he's just lamenting a little, and hoping someone will start something closer to him.

Mannahnin wrote:Well, I don't think it's criticizing; he's just lamenting a little, and hoping someone will start something closer to him.

Yep. The man just drove 7 hours through not great weather, brought me presents, and is here to play tomorrow. He may not like comp, but it sure isn't stopping him playing. ) We're going to compare Ork stories over beer tomorrow night.)

Presents eh?? Justin had better bring some grits wif him when he comes down here!

j/k !

G

I became opposed to comp score in the days of Codex Kraftworlds. It became immediately obvious to me that comp is insane as a balancer when you have armies which flat out break the rules. Even to this day I remain opposed to the use of comp scoring.

Mannahnin wrote:which makes the recent addition of "tiered" theme lists to Warmachine particularly interesting. Anyone who plays WM knows that some units even in that more-tightly designed game are unbalanced. PP has been very reluctant to straight-up "fix" units, but has done it a few times (Sorscha, Bile Thralls), and has come up with alternate ways of fixing stuff, like releasing Unit Attachments to make them better, or the revision in Mk2 to let Jacks stand up for free by spending a focus. Now PP is going father, and actually allowing less-attractive units to be purchased for a discount withint the context of a themed list. So even this game, designed from the ground up to be competitive, and written using the aid of technical writing and good editing, is seeing the need to correct imbalances by giving bonus point.

Tier lists in WM are officially part of the game rules and are presented in the army books in black and white or all to see, prepare for and utilize. Nor are they optional or only usable by opponent consent.

How do these official parts of an armies list design rules compare to a comp system implemented outside of official rules by organizers to control what gets fielded and to punish those who play a list that while perfectly legal they fell is "inappropriate"?

Comp systems are still external to official rules/army list options and allow a To to pass judgement on what are fully legal lists and dock points on a participants score based upon factors outside of the game/army list.

Apples and oranges isn't it?

Let's look at two CSM armies and compare them based on their composition as an example. One army is designed to be fluffy while the other takes advantage of fielding multiple identical units known to be effective.

1st List - Fluffy
•Chaos sorceror - Mark of Slaanesh, Lash, terminator armor
•6x Chaos terminator, Mark of Slaanesh, reaper autocannon, 2x combi plasma, 2x chainfist
•6x Noise Marine (incl. champion), doom siren, power weapon, 4x sonic blaster, blast master - rhino, extra armor
•6x Possessed, Mark of Slaanesh - rhino, extra armor
•6x Noise Marine - same as above
•6x Noise Marine - same as above
•Vindicator, possessed
•Predator, all las

2nd List, Competitive
•Daemon Prince, Mark of Slaanesh, lash, wings
•Daemon Prince - same as above
•5x Plague Marine (incl. champion), combi melta, power fist, 2x meltagun - rhino, extra armor
•5x Plague Marine - same as above
•5x Plague Marine - same as above
•Defiler
•3x Oblit
•3x Oblit
•3x Oblit


The first army is designed to resemble an Emperor's Children army while the second army is the well known lash spam. Is the first army uncompetive, could it beat the second army consistently? There are some players that would inherently like the theme of the first army. There are some players that would look at the second army and mumble "Gheeze, just what we need... Another lash spam army!"

I go to lots of events and I always enjoy playing against armies that took some imagination. What if GW decided to make 6th edition such that you could only play fixed army lists? I know you laugh and say that's just crazy but think about how so many people are completely fixated on the metagame. To me it can be boring playing against only mech IG, Vulkan Marines, lash spam, double seer councils and Loganwing. I am okay with any army that is legal but to me people that can design an effective army that is outside the meta should be rewarded for their efforts. On the other hand as a competitive player I love knowing I'll face the same meta lists every time. My daemon army for example perfectly counters lash spam and SM in general. So what I see people saying is that they want to play a meta list because they feel secure it's competitive and they don't want to see people with imaginative lists be rewarded for doing something different.

G

That second list is illegal. That really undermines the credibilty of your statements. You have been playing BA too long. You don't even understand the FoC for this underpowered behind the times list. I know you hate Lash Spam so you mention it when in reality it is not very good at all these days with all the Mech, IG, and Psycher defense. Basically having a comp score that is variable and judged by your opponent is like letting people chipmunk other people for playing "cheesy Lash Spam". I hope these kind of 40k players can at least grow up if they can't play the game competitively(which would be fine if they didn't hate to lose like everyone else).

I have always given high marks for comp myself and never used it to chipmunk opponents. If I did I would be in the same boat.

If you look at the popular meta lists that span the Internet you'll find many of them don't win big events. some of The best lists are the ones you rarely hear about that are developed over time and through lots of playtesting. You yerself said lash spam is not competitive. I was simply using it as example as one of the more popular Internet spam lists. A lot of people say it is CSM only competitive build. If there is an error in the list it as unintentional and I have not played the new CSM... Not once.

Peoples opinions about what is competitive is very fickle... Used to be nob bikers were auto win now people say they are auto loss. Really it's somewhere in the middle. I've only lost to lash spam once. That doesn't mean I think they suck or aren't competitive, in fact I think you have to play a very good game to beat them because their tricks can hurt you really fast in a big way. The thing is whenever a new book is released it changes the metagame.

Don't get caught up on this is good, this is bad. Remember people first laughed at dark eldar, feral orks and speed freaks? That's what I'm talking about. Coming up with something no one could have imagined and doing really good. It's not gonna happen if you just simply play Internet lists that are touted as top tier. Take comp and twist it inside out. You don't have to spam to win big.

The Internet is partially part of the WAAC mentality cause you can go online and look up army lists rather than playtesting. Sure that's okay! But I dont think it's the best approach and most especially so for competitive players. Sorry but the Internet is no substitute for real experience. We all know what is popular and that we have to be able to beat it but we don't have to copy it either.

G


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Shinkaze wrote:
You have been playing BA too long. You don't even understand the FoC for this underpowered behind the times list.

About BA...

FYI the last time I played BA was last August. What are you talking about? I've been playing daemons prior to last August and since then plus have started playtesting the new Nidz. I am taking a break from power armor until April rolls around.

Anyways my point was another way to view comp it it can reward players who field unconventional armies... Which you glossed over and started right back up with how comp punishes 'competitive' players. Are you saying it's necessary to spam in order to be competitive? Sure a lot of top tier armies have lots of spam and while it might definitely be a general trend it is by no means absolute.

G

CT GAMER wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:which makes the recent addition of "tiered" theme lists to Warmachine particularly interesting. Anyone who plays WM knows that some units even in that more-tightly designed game are unbalanced. PP has been very reluctant to straight-up "fix" units, but has done it a few times (Sorscha, Bile Thralls), and has come up with alternate ways of fixing stuff, like releasing Unit Attachments to make them better, or the revision in Mk2 to let Jacks stand up for free by spending a focus. Now PP is going father, and actually allowing less-attractive units to be purchased for a discount withint the context of a themed list. So even this game, designed from the ground up to be competitive, and written using the aid of technical writing and good editing, is seeing the need to correct imbalances by giving bonus point.

Tier lists in WM are officially part of the game rules and are presented in the army books in black and white or all to see, prepare for and utilize. Nor are they optional or only usable by opponent consent.

How do these official parts of an armies list design rules compare to a comp system implemented outside of official rules by organizers to control what gets fielded and to punish those who play a list that while perfectly legal they fell is "inappropriate"?

Comp systems are still external to official rules/army list options and allow a To to pass judgement on what are fully legal lists and dock points on a participants score based upon factors outside of the game/army list.

Apples and oranges isn't it?

You made an argument about how 40k is not suitable for competive play, because it hasn't been designed from the ground up to be used so. I made the counter point that even games which are designed to be as balanced as possible (chess, Warmachine), turn out not to be truly balanced, despite the designers' best efforts.

I maintain that Comp is basically (when done right, IMO) a handicapping system, giving bonus points to less-efficient, less-effective armies to give them a leg up in the overall standings at a tournament, compensating somewhat for their being harder to use to score high battle points. And I noted that Privateer Press has now incorporated into their core rules a way of giving bonus army list points to armies which fit certain themes/weaker combinations of units. It's bonus points either way. Yes, there is a difference between the bonus points being given by the company publishing the rules, vs. an independent person running an event, but in the effect is not so different, nor is the need prompting it.

Anyways my point was another way to view comp it it can reward players who field unconventional armies... Which you glossed over and started right back up with how comp punishes 'competitive' players. Are you saying it's necessary to spam in order to be competitive? Sure a lot of top tier armies have lots of spam and while it might definitely be a general trend it is by no means absolute.

In a competition where having the most points wins any time you reward some players and not others it is the equivalent of punishing those who don't.

It's not necessary to spam to be competitive, but why should players be coerced into playing the game in one particular way? Some people *like* spamming units and having the most optimized lists of which they can conceive. By enforcing comp scores you're saying that if they want to compete for the top spots in the tournament they must conform to the TO's playstyle rather than their own, even if their own is more fun for them. It's just as arbitrarily and ridiculous as rewarding people for spamming units and conversely penalizing those who do not.

See what Ragnar (Mannahimn) said above. I think he summed it up well.

G

Danny Internets wrote:

Anyways my point was another way to view comp it it can reward players who field unconventional armies... Which you glossed over and started right back up with how comp punishes 'competitive' players. Are you saying it's necessary to spam in order to be competitive? Sure a lot of top tier armies have lots of spam and while it might definitely be a general trend it is by no means absolute.

In a competition where having the most points wins any time you reward some players and not others it is the equivalent of punishing those who don't.

You can keep on repeating this claim, but that doesn't make it true. How about responding to my Biathalon example? Biathalon requires the competitors to BOTH shoot well and ski quickly. If you don't shoot as well, you don't earn as many points, simple as that. If you don't paint as well in most GTs, you don't earn as many points for that as does someone who paints their army like a Golden Daemon winner. You're not being penalized for not painting as well. He is being rewarded more, for displaying more skill. If you, using a "GW battlebox army" can beat me, using one of (e.g) Shep's optimized IG shooting galleries, than you have probably displayed more skill in the game at the table.

Danny Internets wrote:It's not necessary to spam to be competitive, but why should players be coerced into playing the game in one particular way? Some people *like* spamming units and having the most optimized lists of which they can conceive. By enforcing comp scores you're saying that if they want to compete for the top spots in the tournament they must conform to the TO's playstyle rather than their own, even if their own is more fun for them.

This is a straw man argument, and if you had more GT experience, you'd know it. Events where the comp score "coerces" folks into playing one particular way are rare. And I've almost never seen one where the comp scoring kept a strong list with a strong player from competing for a top spot.

Danny Internets wrote:It's just as arbitrarily and ridiculous as rewarding people for spamming units and conversely penalizing those who do not.

Again, you're not reading or responding to my points. If a spam list (like mech IG chimera goodness) is stronger than a non-spam list, then handicapping the strong list (whether or not it uses spam) is neither arbitrary nor ridiculous.

Well said Ragnar. Sadly I think Danny will keep repeating his strawman arguments as that's all he's got to run with it.

G

I'm with CT Gamer on this one. If you want competitive events, do yourself a favor and pick a game that is intentionally suited to that kind of thing. 40k shouldn't really be played competitively; it's a narrative game and good at what it intends to do.

I'd like to see a GT someday that doesn't do best general or battle points at all. Instead make it a campaign style event where people make teams (based on their fluffy allegiances) and try to accomplish objectives in one on one games. Team that accomplishes their objectives gets rewarded, guy who is most fun to play against gets rewarded, best painted army gets rewarded. That's an event that is in line with what 40k tries to accomplish.

If you want to reward players for just winning games, then don't get soft scores mixed into that for anything but tie breakers.

I know it will sound odd, but I always looked at comp scoring as the Geneva Conventions Rules of War of GW tournament gaming. Alot of whats in the geneva articles makes perfect sense to those with even a shred of a human soul, but they are still required to be there to deter atrocities by TFG.

I'm fairly new to tournament play, but I can say I've never seen comp scoring be abused. I believe most folks just read about a comp score horror story and base their assumptions on that, or just make it up completely, as I never see specific details. If I were one to be vindictive, I'd blast that TO on as many forums as I could, but I'm not that kind of person. If I did see comp abuse, I'd chalk it up to human nature and move on, every system in every facet of life gets abused. Its not worth getting heated over, nor does it impede my hobby fun. Its toy soldiers.

But what good does composition scoring do if an average player with a "hard" list is able to crush an above average player with a "soft" list?

That's a totally subjective question. For example a lot of people think BA are mid tiered but I have beaten a lot of players with harder lists that have less experience.

G

If you want to avoid composition scoring, then hand out army lists before the competition: Everyone with a Space Marine army plays the same list. It also makes painting easier to score as everyone with the same army brings the same models. It also makes the missions easier to design and easier to make more interesting. By all means keep the "freestyle" army-list sort of event, but if you want to compete and show you're the better player, then bring a standardized army list.

That would be popular.

G

I think the biggest problem most people have with comp is that it is used (Or seen) as a penalty for people who don't 'play right'. With the groupthink that is sometimes encouraged that if someone 'plays wrong' they are a bad person and should get all thier soft scores tanked, this is understandable.

I've been at or around a couple GT's where the intention of the comp score was to keep people who play powerful lists (accompanied with the denigration of the moral character of the people who play those lists) from winning anything at all.

If comp was approached as only a balancing agent without all the excess baggage attached to it, I believe it would be recieved better.

That's the problem with composition scores alright, that either you assume that all armies are on a level playing, you put all armies on a level playing field. Anywhere in between invites too much whining about "subjectivity" and other bullshiat.

My local club is having an 'all day event' next month, which is basically a mini tournament/campaign with a twist. The guy hosting it has pretty much said that any 'deathstar' units are going to suffer an unfortunate meteor strike.

Mind you, I think the last battle of the day is going to be something like Warhammer Fantasy and 40k on the same battlefield....

I remember playing a league where you could field one elite, fast attack or heavy support for each troop choice up to a total of two. I learned a lot about building effective army list using those guidelines/restrictions and to this day it has stayed with me in my own personal approach to building solid armies. To me spamming non troop units has always been a sign of weakness.

G

You can keep on repeating this claim, but that doesn't make it true. How about responding to my Biathalon example? Biathalon requires the competitors to BOTH shoot well and ski quickly. If you don't shoot as well, you don't earn as many points, simple as that. If you don't paint as well in most GTs, you don't earn as many points for that as does someone who paints their army like a Golden Daemon winner. You're not being penalized for not painting as well. He is being rewarded more, for displaying more skill. If you, using a "GW battlebox army" can beat me, using one of (e.g) Shep's optimized IG shooting galleries, than you have probably displayed more skill in the game at the table.

A Biathalon doesn't allow you to buy one half of the competition's points. A painting score does.

List-building is a very important part of competitive play. To borrow your own phrasing, a game of warhammer requires competitors to BOTH bring a good army and to play it well. Green Blow Fly made a very important comment to this effect, noting that internet lists may perform well, but it's rare to see a cookie-cutter actually win a major competitive tournament (hobby events not included). If anything, bringing a powerful list should be rewarded because it is best suited to the event, which is a competition. However, this would result in the same problem with paint scores where participants will take credit for others' work, and therefore it has no place in scoring at all.

Furthermore, penalizing someone for building a competitive list is the same as penalizing the paint score of someone who brings a beautiful army because they have professional art training or because they used high quality brushes and paints. Should participants without professional training get comp points? How would that be any different from penalizing those who actually do have the training and means to best satisfy the conditions for winning the contest?

Regarding language, you can call it "rewarding" some rather than "penalizing" others, but the end result is the same. Just because a "bad" army beats a "good" army in *one game* doesn't mean the "good" army was outplayed and the "bad" army deserves bonus points. Small sample sizes greatly increase the chances that luck is a factor. Given the lack of TO omniscience (or even guarantee of minimal metagame comprehension), it would be just as reasonable to conclude that the "good" army wasn't very good at all, or that the "bad" army was better than previously thought. Granted, if a battleforce army really did go five for five on massacres that would probably be a sign of unparalleled skill, but real tournaments don't play out like this.

Instead, you typically see various shades of gray amongst the armies with top battlepoints. How can anyone say with confidence that an IG army with a comp score of 3/20 is only 5% more effective than a mechanized Space Wolf army with a score of 4/20? Qualitative comparisons appear simple when you set up a straw man example like mech IG versus a battleforce, but they are much more muddied in real life. Quantitative comparisons are even more problematic. Exactly how much more powerful is the IG list than the battleforce list? Enough to warrant a 5% handicap? What about 10%? 30%? How about 60%? Where you draw the line is completely arbitrary and therefore without meaning. Might as well award players random points via the dice. And even when the handicap is small that extra point often makes the difference between who takes first place and who takes second. Any tournament that uses comp scoring and has a tight finish is evidence of this.

This is a straw man argument, and if you had more GT experience, you'd know it. Events where the comp score "coerces" folks into playing one particular way are rare. And I've almost never seen one where the comp scoring kept a strong list with a strong player from competing for a top spot.

You're right about not having GT experience. I'm not a self-proclaimed hobbyist and therefore I don't have any desire to attend hobby competitions. I do, however, regularly attend local tournaments that are the same size as many of the indie GTs, including this year's Vegas qualifiers.

Regarding my "straw man argument", you've missed the point. I'm aware that comp requirements are largely ignored and people just suck it up and take the penalities imposed on them (or, if you prefer, the rewards given to others). The point is not that players are actually coerced, but that the tournament organizers are attempting to coerce them into conforming to their view of how 40k should be enjoyed. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the view of 40k that supports having comp scoring is completely at odds with the spirit of what a tournament is, which is a competition. Comp scores don't prevent anyone from competing for a top spot; you could tell many players that they have exactly 0% of winning the tournament and they would come and play anyway. All they do is arbitrarily assign bonus points, reducing the likelihood that the results of the tournament genuinely reflect how well the armies were played.

Comp scores nullify the legitimacy of any competition's results. Do players or teams receive handicaps in professional sporting events? No? Why do you think that is?

Again, you're not reading or responding to my points. If a spam list (like mech IG chimera goodness) is stronger than a non-spam list, then handicapping the strong list (whether or not it uses spam) is neither arbitrary nor ridiculous.

(1) Perhaps that's because I wasn't responding to you at all. I was responding to GBF, hence why I quoted him. However, you did take the time to respond to me directly so I will return the courtesy.

(2) By this logic, if a professional artist is a better painter than the layman, then handicapping the professional artist's army (whether or not it is well-painted) is neither arbitrary nor ridiculous.

Or is it?

Comp scores nullify the legitimacy of any competition's results. Do players or teams receive handicaps in professional sporting events? No? Why do you think that is?

Horse Racing, Car Racing, Wrestling. Boxing. Salary caps. (Not 'Professional Wrestling', which is defined as entertainment, not sport, since they script it).

Plus, your arguement falls apart fromt the beginning. Warhammer isn't a sport, and the players are not professional. The existance, or lack of, handicaps in professional sports doesn't mean a thing.

I'm not totally against the idea, if it can be made to work objectively instead of subjectively. But it can't. For example, I play Daemons, both 40K and Fantasy. Now if in a fantasy tourney using comp, I bring a all Tzeentch list, fateweaver, bluescribes, a couple other heralds, a unit of flamers, and as many horrors as I can fit in, do you call that themed and therefor good comp, or cheesy, as I've now got 3-4 4th level mages, a smattering of 2nd level mages, a ton of dice to use in the magic phase (and can generate more), cause fear, immune to morale effects of any sort, and have good ward saves across the board? Which is it?

Yep, Mike, all those you mention have objective 'handicaps' or rules. Weight classes in wrestling and boxing, strictly defined. Weight allowances in horse racing, defined. Salary caps, defined. Car racing, huge lists of allowed, non-allowed, stock, this taht and the other. But all objectively defined. Notive the trend. Objectively defined, a set standard that is known in advance.

I have less of an objection to a known objective standard laid out in advance............ May still not like it, but I don't object to it (as much).

dancingcricket wrote:I'm not totally against the idea, if it can be made to work objectively instead of subjectively. But it can't. For example, I play Daemons, both 40K and Fantasy. Now if in a fantasy tourney using comp, I bring a all Tzeentch list, fateweaver, bluescribes, a couple other heralds, a unit of flamers, and as many horrors as I can fit in, do you call that themed and therefor good comp, or cheesy, as I've now got 3-4 4th level mages, a smattering of 2nd level mages, a ton of dice to use in the magic phase (and can generate more), cause fear, immune to morale effects of any sort, and have good ward saves across the board? Which is it?

As it stands now in many of the large WFB tournaments in the northeast US, theme isn't considered as part of comp. Demons of Chaos are generally accepted as one of the 3 best army books in the game, if not the best. The build you have would be seen in any tournament that judges comp as a lower comp army, mainly for the reasons you quoted. 40k has different rules, and that build isn't anywhere near as powerful in 40k as in wfb.


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don_mondo wrote:Yep, Mike, all those you mention have objective 'handicaps' or rules. Weight classes in wrestling and boxing, strictly defined. Weight allowances in horse racing, defined. Salary caps, defined. Car racing, huge lists of allowed, non-allowed, stock, this taht and the other. But all objectively defined. Notive the trend. Objectively defined, a set standard that is known in advance.

I have less of an objection to a known objective standard laid out in advance............ May still not like it, but I don't object to it (as much).

Was just anwering the man's question Don. He asked if sports had handicaps. Some do. And doesn't matter, I just don't think professional sports have anything to do with Warhammer.

I agree, they don't BTW, what's your next event? I'm looking at some free weekends coming up in April and later...................

don_mondo wrote:I agree, they don't BTW, what's your next event? I'm looking at some free weekends coming up in April and later...................

Here's what's currently on the calendar. I also may slot in an event on April 17th, probably either no comp 1850 40k, or another WFB ETC tournament. The one we have coming up this weekend is just silly.) Ed and I wanted to run it, thought we'd get 12 people. Slotted it in and it's sold out at 24 spots. Opened it up to 36, sold out in less than a 3 days. Might add more spaces, if we don't have many WOTR players for regionals. Snow wreaked havoc on the first round of WOTR in this area.

Let me know if your coming up, I'll keep the beer cold.

March 6th War of the Ring Forging of Fates Round 2 (semi-finals)
March 5th "Blame Ed Maul" ETC style WFB tournament.
March 20th Big Gunz 40k Tournament (Gladiator style using Adepticon rules. 2250 40k, 1 superheavy.)
March 26th-28th Nothing! go to ADEPTICON!

and check July 24/25. We are going to probably add 40k to the The Big Show, and just rent more space in the mall. If so, we'll run it different than the SVDM. 75-80% battle, the rest in paint. No comp.

April 4th Easter-Closed
April 10th East Coast War of the Ring Forging of Fates, East Coast Finals
April 24th and 25th Philly Phrakus Blood Bowl Tournament. Two one day tourneys.

May 1st and 2nd Flames of War 1750 Late War, National Qualifier, First event in the US ranking system. Run by Battlefront Miniatures.
May 15th 40k 'Ardboyz Round 1
May 22nd Maryland-Jerseyvania WFB Challenge Cup

mikhaila wrote:
Let me know if your coming up, I'll keep the beer cold.

March 20th Big Gunz 40k Tournament (Gladiator style using Adepticon rules. 2250 40k, 1 superheavy.)
March 26th-28th Nothing! go to ADEPTICON!

and check July 24/25. We are going to probably add 40k to the The Big Show, and just rent more space in the mall. If so, we'll run it different than the SVDM. 75-80% battle, the rest in paint. No comp.

Hmmm, looks like July then. March 20, Save The Ta-Tas tournamanet aka Charity tourney benefitting Race For The Cure.

But I'll see you at Adepticon, looks like. I'm in the 40K Team tourney and then the Necromunda event on Sunday.

mikhaila wrote:Plus, your arguement falls apart fromt the beginning. Warhammer isn't a sport, and the players are not professional. The existance, or lack of, handicaps in professional sports doesn't mean a thing.

Sadly, you have missed the point entirely.

What is a tournament about? By definition, it is about competition. In order to see if that end is being served by the design of said tournament we turn to professional sports because professional sports are likewise concerned with competition. Warhammer doesn't have to be a sport to benefit from comparisons to competitive events--it benefits from the analogy merely by having a competitive aspect

Wow someone really struck a nerve; majorly delayed response.

G

Danny Internets wrote:

mikhaila wrote:Plus, your arguement falls apart fromt the beginning. Warhammer isn't a sport, and the players are not professional. The existance, or lack of, handicaps in professional sports doesn't mean a thing.

Sadly, you have missed the point entirely.

What is a tournament about? By definition, it is about competition. In order to see if that end is being served by the design of said tournament we turn to professional sports because professional sports are likewise concerned with competition. Warhammer doesn't have to be a sport to benefit from comparisons to competitive events--it benefits from the analogy merely by having a competitive aspect

Wow, really? You don't understand that professional sports are all about selling tickets, advertising space, promotional fees, and getting to live a movie star lifestyle? Competitions are just what's held to see who gets how much of each. Without money as a driving force, you don't have professional sports. The Olympics is closer to true competition, but still driven to a large extent by money, since no one just trains by themselves and walks on to the Olympics. National pride is on the line, along with huge promotional bonuses for the new superstars. Still lots of competition in sports, but that's not what it's about.)

AH-HA! I figured it out. We aren't talking about the same thing! It's amazing in the days of RAW that no one bothered to define what "tournament" means. (Then again, no ones ever given me a good definition of RAW, that all the people arguing will stick to, either.) If you don't 'define' a word first, you can't use terms like 'by definition'. Hmmm, actually, I guess you can, since you did. Let's change it to, "Shouldn't use them, if trying to use them correctly".

And sarcasm aside, I think it's important for all TO's running any type of gaming event, to define what the event is about, and how they are setting it up to meet those expectations.


You think 'tournament' means some type of competition where we only care about figuring out who the best player of the day is.
'Ardboys style, crappy scenery ok, crappy tables ok, doesn't matter how the guy across the table acts, and screw prizes. We only care about about who the winner is. Design things to go that way. (I'm obviously guessing, btw, since I don't have telepathy, and can only go on the assumption that you care about Competition, and don't care about anything else).

I think of a 'tournament' as a gathering of like minded individuals, that wish to compete with each other while having a good time, talk, tell stories, drink beer, and enjoy other parts of the hobby, such as painting and modeling. To that end I have some rules and scoring that tries to make reality match design.

-I require painted and based models and have a painting component to scoring. The painting criteria include conversions, and a couple points for a nice display board. Some people will paint no matter what, some need a bit of encouragement.
-We require WYSIWYG, since it's a pain to play the game if you don't know what the other guy has.
-We ask that you bring copies of your list for your opponent, as many players like to see the other guys list, and many like to collect them for battle reports later.
-I try to limit arguements, since that's generally though of as a bad thing.
-I try to give out as many prizes as I can.

These are pretty obvious at many tournaments. They aren't done for competition, but to run a good event. There's probably a hundred other things a TO could do, or screw up. Do as much as you can right, and people have a good time.

In the end, that's my goal: Players get together for gaming, and have a good time. All of them, or as many as I can keep happy. Not just the ones that came for a competition.


Ok, I'm done arguing comp for another 6 months. It worked out about how I thought it would. A little beating, one guy accusing me of cheating to let the locals win, and eventually I get tired and go away and leave you all alone to rant.)

One major thing that people are forgetting. There is a large amount of skill required in list building. A comp totally takes this aspect out of the game.

Because you are suddenly "encouraged" to take stupid units and add incoherency to your list.

I have noticed most people who believe in comp, think there is no skill to list building and they can throw whatever on the table. Then when they get stomped, it must be because your codex is OP!


Also, I still have yet to get an answer, what 40k codex is so broken or so terrible that we need a comp system to balance it out?

That is BS as many gamers copy net lists. Spam lists dont take much skill to build.

so, I still have yet to get an answer, what 40k codex is so broken or so terrible that we need a comp system to balance it out?

Questions such as these are purely an exercise in rhetoric and merit no response.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:That is BS as many gamers copy net lists. Spam lists dont take much skill to build.

Oh, where to these people copy lists from? Its not like there is any "best list" for each army. Heck, where is this magical website where you can get a copy of all the tournament winning lists broken down for you?

Green Blow Fly wrote:

so, I still have yet to get an answer, what 40k codex is so broken or so terrible that we need a comp system to balance it out?

Questions such as these are purely an exercise in rhetoric and merit no response.

G

And I don't understand why its a bad idea to make sure something is broken before people try and fix it

solkan wrote:But what good does composition scoring do if an average player with a "hard" list is able to crush an above average player with a "soft" list?

That is a supposition which would need to be substantiated by research findings before we can rely on it as facts which need to be addressed.

Even given the imbalances in 40K, good experienced players have a tendency to come out on top.

Comp systems can actually work for them by giving them a second way of scoring by optimising 'hardness' against the maximum possible comp score.

Timmah wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:
That is BS as many gamers copy net lists. Spam lists dont take much skill to build.

Oh, where to these people copy lists from? Its not like there is any "best list" for each army. Heck, where is this magical website where you can get a copy of all the tournament winning lists broken down for you?

http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/

You post there everyday so it should not be a mystery to you.

Now in my opinion a lot of the lists posted up there are crap and I havent quite a few of them. That is just my opinion though Timmah.

Green Blow Fly wrote:

so, I still have yet to get an answer, what 40k codex is so broken or so terrible that we need a comp system to balance it out?

Questions such as these are purely an exercise in rhetoric and merit no response.

G

And I don't understand why its a bad idea to make sure something is broken before people try and fix it

Sounds like something from the Reagan years...

Kilkrazy wrote:

Even given the imbalances in 40K, good experienced players have a tendency to come out on top.

Seriously, where are these imbalances that everyone keeps mentioning?



I didn't know YTTH was the end all, be all of list building. I guess I should have known since those are the only lists we ever see at non-comped tournaments... oh wait

Timmah wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Even given the imbalances in 40K, good experienced players have a tendency to come out on top.

Seriously, where are these imbalances that everyone keeps mentioning?



I didn't know YTTH was the end all, be all of list building. I guess I should have known since those are the only lists we ever see at non-comped tournaments... oh wait

If you haven't figured it out yet your only allowed to have an opinion in this thread if it is in lock-step w/ Mikhaila's...

Best to let it die.

NELS1031 wrote:I'm fairly new to tournament play, but I can say I've never seen comp scoring be abused. I believe most folks just read about a comp score horror story and base their assumptions on that, or just make it up completely, as I never see specific details. If I were one to be vindictive, I'd blast that TO on as many forums as I could, but I'm not that kind of person. If I did see comp abuse, I'd chalk it up to human nature and move on, every system in every facet of life gets abused. Its not worth getting heated over, nor does it impede my hobby fun. Its toy soldiers.

Well, the below list just scored a 4/20, 3 points BELOW triple Monolith/Deceiver.

Hive Tyrant — Bonesword & Lashwhip, Stranglethorn Cannon, Adrenal Glands, Hive Commander, Old Adversary, Paroxysm, Leech Essence
2 Tyrant Guards — Lashwhips
3 Hive Guards
3 Hive Guards
2 Zoanthropes — Mycetic spore
Tervigon — Adrenal Glands (10), Toxin Sacs (10), Catalyst (15)
17 Termagants
10 Genestealers
18 Hormagaunts — Toxin sacs
18 Hormagaunts — Toxin sacs
Trygon — Adrenal glands
2 Biovores

I'm not claiming comp abuse, just that weirdness does happen when comp guidelines aren't made available. No one likes to feel blindsided, and some guys did.

Timmah wrote:
I didn't know YTTH was the end all, be all of list building. I guess I should have known since those are the only lists we ever see at non-comped tournaments... oh wait

It's not. In fact no one there has won any big comp/non-comped events as far as I know of.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:

Timmah wrote:
I didn't know YTTH was the end all, be all of list building. I guess I should have known since those are the only lists we ever see at non-comped tournaments... oh wait

It's not. In fact no one there has won any big comp/non-comped events as far as I know of.

G

So there is no place we can just copy the best list from? Meaning list building for events is actually a skill?



(also, still waiting on finding out 40k's imbalances.)

My main objections are twofold. . In a perfect world, Comp scores offset list strength, right?

IE: The more likely my list is to win, the lower my comp score is. The less likely my list is to win the higher my comp score is.

1. Getting an accurate list -> score rating seems impossible. 40k is too complicated of a win/lose matrix to get this to work.

2. If the Comp was perfect, it would still not improve the tourney scene. Currently we are incented to build the best listsr. This would replace that with taking the best lists with comp considered in. What's the advantage?

So there are my objections to comp. Not trying to flame anybody, just saying why I, as a tourney player, always sigh in irritation when I see that a major tourney has comp.

Timmah wrote:
So there is no place we can just copy the best list from? Meaning list building for events is actually a skill?

You can copy a list. But you has to know where to look.

Timmah wrote:
(also, still waiting on finding out 40k's imbalances.)

Please stop with the rhetorical questions... its very snarky and make you look like an @ss. If you want to learn about the unbalance then get off your lazy duff and figure it out for yourself. Is that asking too much??

G

They aren't rhetorical. Your the one that said you can just copy a list and there is no skill in list building.

So I am trying to find out where you think everyone is going to copy there lists for non-comped events.



And I am also trying to figure out the imbalances in 40k. I haven't noticed anything significant since 5th ed started, so I am a bit confused by comp.

If you cant figure it out yourself there is no reason to waste time trying to explain it to ya. You have already discredited your rep.

G

Hi all.
Just a thought.
As PV are allocated arbitarily, using totaly subjective methods in 40k and WH.

Then any attempt to 'correct ' percieved inballance can ONLY be arrived at subjectively.

Is this why many are against comp scores?
The original PV and lists in WH and 40k are subjective BUT everyone has acess to these, well in advance.

And no matter how well intensioned no alterations to the original PV and lists can be PROVEN to be more ballanced.
As any decisions can only be based on the original subjective values, therfore can only be subjective!

TTFN
Lanrak.

Green Blow Fly wrote:If you cant figure it out yourself there is no reason to waste time trying to explain it to ya. You have already discredited your rep.

G

Oh, good one. You realize you have no argument so you tell me I'm not worth your time.

You know what I think would be cool for a GT....

Comp score - every list is judged by a comp score determined by a checklist, and it is used to determine initial pairings. Mike used this strategy. However, the comp score that you get has no bearing on tournament points. I'd like that one.

Painting score - painting score is judged by the same judge/panel across the board. The tournament "requirements" still set forth painted, 3 color, based, etc just to be able to play so that no one shows up with primer armies...but the painting scores are for a parallel prize structure. IE, it wouldn't factor into winning the tournament, but winning the painting event running inside the tournament.

Sportsmanship - this is *really* touchy, and most stories I hear are about people abusing sportsmanship when they get beaten. This would have to be a very clear checklist, of say....10 questions.
1. Did your opponent pick up misses when rolling dice and leave the hits for inspection?
2. Did your opponent put their measuring device on the table to ensure precise measurements?
3. Did your opponent exhibit sufficient knowledge of their codex?
4. Did your opponent exhibit sufficient knowledge of the 40k rule system?
5. Did you and your opponent finish the game?

Stuff like that. Whether sportsmanship should be included in the total point allocation for the main event...hard to say. I've only been to one GT, it didn't have a sportsmanship category, and from what I saw...it didn't need it. People were nice, there were only a few things needing judges to intervene, and those were over unclear rules based on how people from different areas interpret the same rule, and neither knowing what INAT FAQ had to say about it.

Battlepoints: This is the meat of everything.


I guess I'm advocating doing away with best overall. At the tournament where we all go to beat on each other, I want to know who was the bestest. 1st, 2nd, 3rd based on the elements of the competition. Then a second tier of prizes for painting.

And at the end of the tournament, everyone knows who won the tournament, and who did the best painting at the tournament.

If reducing prizes by three spots (best overall, etc) is an issue, toss in player's choice, or favorite theme or something.

I was never a fan of comp scoring. The entire competition should be between list building and actual play with nothing else playing a role. I do say this as a former 40k player.

don_mondo wrote: I do believe that it has an inherent flaw, and that has already been mentioned. Players who have attended his tournies in the past know the comp system, and can game thier lists to it, getting that 'soft' score while keeping a 'hard' army. Players from outside the area or first timers do not know the system, so they're just stuck with the score for whatever they bring.

And Timmah said thins on page 2

"Ok, think about it this way. Your friends are going to influence your opinion of certain armies the most. If the people you play with constantly complain about Nidzilla, Jetseer councils and Double Lash. What do you think this TO is going to think is OP?

Most of the time Comp is completely subjective to what the locals think is OP. Them knowing this gives them a better chance of bringing something under the radar and winning because they get full comp marks with a army anyone else would say is OTT.

I am not saying that it is intentional, but it does happen."


Both of these are excellent points which I have not seen a reply to. They both point out the inherent flaws in the non-published comp system. It would make an extremely frustrating experince for new people who were not 'in the know'.

Dashofpepper wrote:You know what I think would be cool for a GT....

Comp score - every list is judged by a comp score determined by a checklist, and it is used to determine initial pairings. Mike used this strategy. However, the comp score that you get has no bearing on tournament points. I'd like that one.

Painting score - painting score is judged by the same judge/panel across the board. The tournament "requirements" still set forth painted, 3 color, based, etc just to be able to play so that no one shows up with primer armies...but the painting scores are for a parallel prize structure. IE, it wouldn't factor into winning the tournament, but winning the painting event running inside the tournament.

Sportsmanship - this is *really* touchy, and most stories I hear are about people abusing sportsmanship when they get beaten. This would have to be a very clear checklist, of say....10 questions.

Stuff like that. Whether sportsmanship should be included in the total point allocation for the main event...hard to say. I've only been to one GT, it didn't have a sportsmanship category, and from what I saw...it didn't need it. People were nice, there were only a few things needing judges to intervene, and those were over unclear rules based on how people from different areas interpret the same rule, and neither knowing what INAT FAQ had to say about it.

Battlepoints: This is the meat of everything.

I guess I'm advocating doing away with best overall. At the tournament where we all go to beat on each other, I want to know who was the bestest. 1st, 2nd, 3rd based on the elements of the competition. Then a second tier of prizes for painting.

And at the end of the tournament, everyone knows who won the tournament, and who did the best painting at the tournament.

If reducing prizes by three spots (best overall, etc) is an issue, toss in player's choice, or favorite theme or something.

Edited a little to take up less space...

Your idea is close to what I would like to see:

Hardest general - this part of the event has no comp, no painting, no sportsmanship.
Best combined - this would be a seperate tournament based on painting, comp, battlepoints.
Best painted - best painted army (overall) in the tournament.
Best sportsman - best sporstmanship scores overall in the tournament, voted for at the end of the tournament.

Basically, split the tournament into two - one designed for the people who want to play the ultracompetitive lists, and one for the people who want to have a good time and play with their fluffier lists. You'd need to have a fairly large crowd to make it work over the course of a weekend, but given some of the numbers of players, I don't think that it would be impossible. Have players sign up ahead of time indicating whether they want to participate in the combined event or the hardest general event. Have the best painted and best sports awarded at the end of the tournament, but not factor into the combined or the hardest general portions of the event. Finally, publish what the comp criteria are ahead of the event to ensure that people playing in the combined scores know what they are getting themselves into and can tailor their lists appropriately.

Timmah wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Even given the imbalances in 40K, good experienced players have a tendency to come out on top.

Seriously, where are these imbalances that everyone keeps mentioning?

[...]

You can hardly look at the tournament scene, even as a spectator, or the spin off metagame in non-tournament gaming without being aware of the numerous 'spam' lists over the years such as Drop Pod Spam, Eldar Holofield Falcon Spam, Double Lash Prince Spam, Nob Biker Spam, and so on. Next will probably be Triple Deff Rolla Spam and Tyranid Mawloc Spam.

There was once even someone complaining about Tau SMS Spam though that never got off the ground, I don't know why. Neither has Necron Warrior Spam under 5e, etc.

Spam lists are notorious. They don't last forever because (a) some other spam always comes along, (b) people usually manage to work out a counter and (c) the nature of spam changes depending on the core rules too.

Comparing the Running/Shooting event to 40k is laughable at best. When they shoot you either hit or miss. You don't have ten different people with ten different opinions of wheither or not they hit the target. You also know who crossed the line first.

In 40k you only know who won the game. Paint, even when laid out is determined by the person scoring and you can have ten people score the same army ten different ways. It might be things like "I don't like the color combos compared to this army so I scored it lower". The same is with Comp. One personmight think an army is not powerful and yet they win every game

Danny Internets wrote:

mikhaila wrote:Plus, your arguement falls apart fromt the beginning. Warhammer isn't a sport, and the players are not professional. The existance, or lack of, handicaps in professional sports doesn't mean a thing.

Sadly, you have missed the point entirely.

What is a tournament about? By definition, it is about competition. In order to see if that end is being served by the design of said tournament we turn to professional sports because professional sports are likewise concerned with competition. Warhammer doesn't have to be a sport to benefit from comparisons to competitive events--it benefits from the analogy merely by having a competitive aspect

But Danny you yourself have said many times that while you have never played in a big GT environment there is nothing that meets your high standard of competition... you are a classic armchair quarterback.

G

Fantasy
Besides Daemons being slightly OTT and a couple armies being non competitive, pretty much everything is competitive.

Pretty hilarious. Unrestricted WHFB is totally broken and if you're looking for serious competion totally unplayable. The biggest European events spend the most part of a year trying to figure out how to balance it all. Their goal isn't 'balance' but 'better balance', and they have succeeded. Seriously, it's not even funny how bad WHFB army books are, and anything short of sweeping game changes in the upcoming new edition won't be able to fix the game.

What some people are talking about in this thread seem more about soft scores like sportsmanship, which doesn't necessary have to do anything with army composition and restrictions. Unrestricted tournaments might have sports scores, and restricted tournaments might not, etc.

Therion has it right about unrestricted WHFB. It isn't even remotely balanced. You can choose between Daemons, Anti-Daemons, or Prey.

Since I have red-green colour vision deficit I'm not sure I should be allowed to judge Paint.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Timmah wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Even given the imbalances in 40K, good experienced players have a tendency to come out on top.

Seriously, where are these imbalances that everyone keeps mentioning?

[...]

You can hardly look at the tournament scene, even as a spectator, or the spin off metagame in non-tournament gaming without being aware of the numerous 'spam' lists over the years such as Drop Pod Spam, Eldar Holofield Falcon Spam, Double Lash Prince Spam, Nob Biker Spam, and so on. Next will probably be Triple Deff Rolla Spam and Tyranid Mawloc Spam.

There was once even someone complaining about Tau SMS Spam though that never got off the ground, I don't know why. Neither has Necron Warrior Spam under 5e, etc.

Spam lists are notorious. They don't last forever because (a) some other spam always comes along, (b) people usually manage to work out a counter and (c) the nature of spam changes depending on the core rules too.

One word. Redundancy.

You try and label it spam so it sounds like something bad. But its not. Redundancy is a good thing. The above lists all made it to power because they were redudant. Meaning you couldn't kill off 3 things and wreck the list.

Lists like the ones you mentioned above is a good thing for competitive 40k. It builds archtypes. When building your army you need to take into account these archtypes. Rock armies (nob bikers, TH termies), Deepstriking armies (pods, daemons ect) Mobile Mech (eldar, DE, ect) Gunline (tau, guard)

Being optimized is not a bad thing. Being optimized and redundant is a good thing. Its a good idea not to bring 1 of each anti tank weapon. Why? Because you don't want your opponent killing off your 1-2 lascannons and you being totally unable to deal with his army.

None of the armies you mentioned are overpowered. They all could be dealt with, using a balanced force.


@therion
I ask you, how did Brets get 2nd at Ard boyz despite all the daemon armies, and them being 2nd rate? Maybe daemons aren't as OTT as the internets portray them.

Redundancy is a good thing but what you are really getting at is taking the best units from the codex as much as possible so in fact your list building skills are quite poor. Sad but true.

G

^^What he said.

I am quite familiar with the concept of redundancy, however it does not explain why those particular lists as opposed to the all Grot List or the All Daemon Host List or All Guardian List did not achieve equal prominence with an equal amount of redundancy.

Some lists are better than others because some units in every codex are better than others.

Then you have the imbalance between codexes.

If you think of army lists as balancing redundancy, flexibility, and synergy then it's easy to explain how spam lists like Nob Biker Spam and whatever other two-dimensional list is more successful than one-dimensional lists like Grot Spam or Guardian Spam.

Redundancy is simply one dimension. That means not all spam is equal. Demolisher Cannons are more flexible than Lasguns, for example, and have better synergy with the Lash of Submission than Lascannons.

The particular spam lists that people worry about pick a unit that has good flexibility and synergy, and then spam that to maximize redundancy. The problem of course is that in 40k there's no free lunch, so that there's no super-flexible unit, so even if you pick a unit with good flexibility and synergy it'll have some vast glaring weakness that some other unit was necessary to cover.

Take Nob Bikers for example: they can shoot well, they can fight well, they have anti-tank power, anti-infantry power, they're fast, they absorb damage well but... They have Ld7, Ld10 if the unit is maxed out, and while they're resistant to quality, they're not resistant to quantity.

Take Dual Lash/Plague Marines/Obliterators, for example. They're anti-tank bait. If you're playing a horde of riflemen on foot, you're dead. If you're playing with mechanized troops with plenty of anti-tank weapons, they're dead.

Take the Imperial Guard Parking Lot. They're cute until a Mawloc starts eating them, or a detachment of Dreadnoughts lands amongst them, or what have you.

The nice thing about tournaments is that you'll face a variety of opponents, and while a Spam List may do well against some, it will get tabled by others, so simply by having to face an unknown element of foes the player is forced to take a balanced force (unless people are clueless idiots who haven't adapted to the changing game rules, as was the case for the first couple of years of 5th edition).

I mean, go look at what people took to the tournaments down in the Battle Report Forum. Look at DevianID's army in particular, but also look at the opponents that tabled DashofPepper (IG Infantry horde and Salamanders SM).

Green Blow Fly wrote:Redundancy is a good thing but what you are really getting at is taking the best units from the codex as much as possible so in fact your list building skills are quite poor. Sad but true.

G

Wrong.

Especially with the new codices, there are multiple good choices from each spot. It takes a quality list builder to decide the correct one depending on the rest of their army.

For example in the space wolf codex:

Dakka Pred or 3x Longfangs w/2x ML and a rhino

Both are about the same cost. Both do very well for their points cost and considered good choices. However, which is optimal? They both do similar yet different tasks and depending on the army you are fielding, one will perform much better then the other.

So Timmah its very interesting to see you flip flop on the subject of spam.



G

How so?

I never said there was only 1 way to make a redundant list out of each army book...

(unless you meant something else)

/continues to fail to understand what GBF is getting at

Moz wrote:I'd like to see a GT someday that doesn't do best general or battle points at all. Instead make it a campaign style event where people make teams (based on their fluffy allegiances) and try to accomplish objectives in one on one games. Team that accomplishes their objectives gets rewarded, guy who is most fun to play against gets rewarded, best painted army gets rewarded. That's an event that is in line with what 40k tries to accomplish.

Didn't the Tempus Fugitives club in the UK organize the Sabbat Crusade event that operated kind of like that? I always thought that would make for a very interesting and fun event. I'll have to bring that up with my club prez. Might be something to think about for future Mechanicons.

Why is that not surprising?

* shrugs *

I really think you misinterpreted something I said or you believe I said something that I didn't.

Otherwise, why don't you just tell me?

Why should I even care?

G

Timmah wrote:

Oh, good one. You realize you have no argument so you tell me I'm not worth your time.

Green Blow Fly wrote:Redundancy is a good thing but what you are really getting at is taking the best units from the codex as much as possible so in fact your list building skills are quite poor. Sad but true.

G

As a competitive WH40k player I'm willing to take this statement to task. Armies that can quite clearly take "the best unit" in the codex often come from either a poor codex or are not nearly the auto-win army that internet tough guy hype depicts them as.

Let's look at some of the 'spam' examples thrown out earlier:

You can hardly look at the tournament scene, even as a spectator, or the spin off metagame in non-tournament gaming without being aware of the numerous 'spam' lists over the years such as Drop Pod Spam, Eldar Holofield Falcon Spam, Double Lash Prince Spam, Nob Biker Spam, and so on. Next will probably be Triple Deff Rolla Spam and Tyranid Mawloc Spam.

Of these, which is active in competitive 40k, or regarded as a 'top tier uberlist'?

Drop Pod spam: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead since the advent of voluntary reserves. Some drop pod builds are competitive but this is a one-trick pony and if your opponent can out-trick you you're boned.

Eldar Holofield Falcon Spam: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead since holo falcons are fething expensive and burn Eldar heavy slots that could be used on the very effective and very killy Prisms and Walkers. New LOS and cover rules mean they simply get shot too many times to be nearly as resilient as they were in 4th ed. The loss of effectiveness of th Harlequins in 5th ed rending rules makes the Flying Circus decidedly sub-par compared to what the codex can put out.

Double Lash Prince Spam: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead since the advent of mech and the newly-found ability of armies to pack in enough heavy weapons to kill 8 T5 wounds outright with relative ease. This list certainly stomps on 4th ed footslogging armies without psychic protection, which nobody competitive plays anymore, but has significantly faded to the background.

Nob Biker Spam: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead since people began to finally stop taking 4th edition lists, and are now packing in as much S8 as possible in the form of melta or melta-equivalents. The better Ork lists may feature a Nob Biker unit as an aspect of the overall list, but spending 1500 points on 22 models that die horribly to melta, battlecannons, dreadnoughts, TH/SS terminators, the Psyker Battle Squad, and Thunderwulf Wolf Lords is a great way to lose a tournament. These guys had their day in the sun, it lasted for about 4 months, and then the IG codex nailed the coffin shut.

Predicted Triple Deffrolla: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead. Actually, triple Rollawagon lists may well be very effective, but in the context of this thread, it's not going to be 3 Deffrolla BWs, it'll be 5+ at 2k. But seriously, these things do actually cost points, have enormous side profiles, are open-topped, and don't do much of anything versus skimmers. Mobile armies will get side armor shots, even through the KFF, and DoG melta shots are going to be surprisingly reliable at wrecking the wagons. MEQ armies don't really care about taking 2d6S10 hits because they'll save the majority of the wounds. The Deffrolla makes certain Ork builds slightly more viable. It is not an instant-win button.

Predicted Triple Mawloc OMNOMNOM: Competitive Uberstatus -- Dead on arrival. The Mawloc + Spod + immovable terrain death from below strike Land Raider instagib is a total gimmick, and competitive lists aren't worried because they don't sink 1/3 of their list points into one Land Raider. It's a Paper list that counters certain Rock lists... and not even that well. A Marine player can safely leave his Big Rock in reserve because what's the downfall? 600 points worth of MCs with 9 attacks in total will run around... and get punched down by meltaguns and power fists? Nobody is scared of this, except for bad or inexperienced generals.

I find it HUGELY amusing that the people are throwing out spam lists as examples of how the hobby is ruined by ultracompetitiveness. The spam lists aren't even that competitive!!!

Competitive lists, real competitive lists, are probably going to incorporate a degree of "spam", likely due to transports like Razorbacks and Chimeras and Dark Elf Raiders because they're hugely efficient options. But where the 'Composition! Good!!!' player base goes wrong is in labeling one dimensional gimmick lists as spam lists and then extending that umbrella to encompass purely competitive lists. My IG list has 7 chimeras, but only two of them carry duplicate units (line IG squads and melta Vet squads). My Space Wolf List has 3 squads of Long Fangs, and also two Rune Priests and two Thunderwulf Cav squads and Grey Hunters in rhinos and Inquisitional Stormtroopers. My Ork list does have nine Killa Kans. It also has battlewagon Nobz, Lootas, Big Meks, Shoota Boyz, and a Deff Dread. If I had enough points I'd have Koptas in there as well.

Seriously, competitive lists are quite diverse because the main goal is to cover all of your weaknesses, which often isn't possible taking the 'spam' lists.

sourclams wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:Redundancy is a good thing but what you are really getting at is taking the best units from the codex as much as possible so in fact your list building skills are quite poor. Sad but true.

G

As a competitive WH40k player I'm willing to take this statement to task. Armies that can quite clearly take "the best unit" in the codex often come from either a poor codex or are not nearly the auto-win army that internet tough guy hype depicts them as.

Let's look at some of the 'spam' examples thrown out earlier:

You can hardly look at the tournament scene, even as a spectator, or the spin off metagame in non-tournament gaming without being aware of the numerous 'spam' lists over the years such as Drop Pod Spam, Eldar Holofield Falcon Spam, Double Lash Prince Spam, Nob Biker Spam, and so on. Next will probably be Triple Deff Rolla Spam and Tyranid Mawloc Spam.

Of these, which is active in competitive 40k, or regarded as a 'top tier uberlist'?

Drop Pod spam: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead since the advent of voluntary reserves. Some drop pod builds are competitive but this is a one-trick pony and if your opponent can out-trick you you're boned.

Eldar Holofield Falcon Spam: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead since holo falcons are fething expensive and burn Eldar heavy slots that could be used on the very effective and very killy Prisms and Walkers. New LOS and cover rules mean they simply get shot too many times to be nearly as resilient as they were in 4th ed. The loss of effectiveness of th Harlequins in 5th ed rending rules makes the Flying Circus decidedly sub-par compared to what the codex can put out.

Double Lash Prince Spam: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead since the advent of mech and the newly-found ability of armies to pack in enough heavy weapons to kill 8 T5 wounds outright with relative ease. This list certainly stomps on 4th ed footslogging armies without psychic protection, which nobody competitive plays anymore, but has significantly faded to the background.

Nob Biker Spam: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead since people began to finally stop taking 4th edition lists, and are now packing in as much S8 as possible in the form of melta or melta-equivalents. The better Ork lists may feature a Nob Biker unit as an aspect of the overall list, but spending 1500 points on 22 models that die horribly to melta, battlecannons, dreadnoughts, TH/SS terminators, the Psyker Battle Squad, and Thunderwulf Wolf Lords is a great way to lose a tournament. These guys had their day in the sun, it lasted for about 4 months, and then the IG codex nailed the coffin shut.

Predicted Triple Deffrolla: Competitive UBERSTATUS -- Dead. Actually, triple Rollawagon lists may well be very effective, but in the context of this thread, it's not going to be 3 Deffrolla BWs, it'll be 5+ at 2k. But seriously, these things do actually cost points, have enormous side profiles, are open-topped, and don't do much of anything versus skimmers. Mobile armies will get side armor shots, even through the KFF, and DoG melta shots are going to be surprisingly reliable at wrecking the wagons. MEQ armies don't really care about taking 2d6S10 hits because they'll save the majority of the wounds. The Deffrolla makes certain Ork builds slightly more viable. It is not an instant-win button.

Predicted Triple Mawloc OMNOMNOM: Competitive Uberstatus -- Dead on arrival. The Mawloc + Spod + immovable terrain death from below strike Land Raider instagib is a total gimmick, and competitive lists aren't worried because they don't sink 1/3 of their list points into one Land Raider. It's a Paper list that counters certain Rock lists... and not even that well. A Marine player can safely leave his Big Rock in reserve because what's the downfall? 600 points worth of MCs with 9 attacks in total will run around... and get punched down by meltaguns and power fists? Nobody is scared of this, except for bad or inexperienced generals.

I find it HUGELY amusing that the people are throwing out spam lists as examples of how the hobby is ruined by ultracompetitiveness. The spam lists aren't even that competitive!!!

Competitive lists, real competitive lists, are probably going to incorporate a degree of "spam", likely due to transports like Razorbacks and Chimeras and Dark Elf Raiders because they're hugely efficient options. But where the 'Composition! Good!!!' player base goes wrong is in labeling one dimensional gimmick lists as spam lists and then extending that umbrella to encompass purely competitive lists. My IG list has 7 chimeras, but only two of them carry duplicate units (line IG squads and melta Vet squads). My Space Wolf List has 3 squads of Long Fangs, and also two Rune Priests and two Thunderwulf Cav squads and Grey Hunters in rhinos and Inquisitional Stormtroopers. My Ork list does have nine Killa Kans. It also has battlewagon Nobz, Lootas, Big Meks, Shoota Boyz, and a Deff Dread. If I had enough points I'd have Koptas in there as well.

Seriously, competitive lists are quite diverse because the main goal is to cover all of your weaknesses, which often isn't possible taking the 'spam' lists.

It bears repeating. You need flexibility and synergy as well as redundancy.

First off, thanks to Danny for making a much better and more detailed argument overall this time. I appreciate the dialogue, and I feel more like you’re engaging in a constructive manner now. Cheers for that.

Danny Internets wrote:

You can keep on repeating this claim, but that doesn't make it true. How about responding to my Biathalon example?...You're not being penalized for not painting as well. He is being rewarded more, for displaying more skill. If you, using a "GW battlebox army" can beat me, using one of (e.g) Shep's optimized IG shooting galleries, than you have probably displayed more skill in the game at the table.

A Biathalon doesn't allow you to buy one half of the competition's points. A painting score does.

Separate argument. We could debate pro-painting in another thread if you want, but we’ve gone around and around it on Dakka already. Basically, it comes down to the fact that it’s nice to have nice-looking painted armies at tournaments. It makes everyone’s experience better. And you can’t stop it. Some people will just lie if you penalize scores for it. The more workable compromise I’ve seen is to just disallow people from winning Overall or Best Painted if they didn’t paint their own army. There’s no perfect solution, but this at least reduces the number of people likely to lie, and incentivizes the really competitive people to learn to paint well themselves. It’s sure helped me.

Danny Internets wrote:List-building is a very important part of competitive play. To borrow your own phrasing, a game of warhammer requires competitors to BOTH bring a good army and to play it well. Green Blow Fly made a very important comment to this effect, noting that internet lists may perform well, but it's rare to see a cookie-cutter actually win a major competitive tournament (hobby events not included).

IMO, the reason the cookie-cutter lists don’t seem to win that often at big tournaments is that many of the experienced competitive players don’t use them, or tweak them significantly. I suspect that there are multiple reasons for this- pride, prior experience in Comped environments, getting practice games at local stores where opponents get sick of facing cookie-cutter lists, and the desire to bring something unexpected are all likely factors.

Danny Internets wrote:If anything, bringing a powerful list should be rewarded because it is best suited to the event, which is a competition. However, this would result in the same problem with paint scores where participants will take credit for others' work, and therefore it has no place in scoring at all.

You’re making a circular argument, building your conclusions into your premises. Please note that not all of us agree with your definition of “competition” or “competitive” as being strictly based on battles scores. IME the competition for most events (or at least most of the best big ones) is a competition of hobbyists, factoring game playing as the most important component, but also including army appearance, sportsmanship, and composition. Seeking to reward (with recognition and prizes) players who excel in multiple areas, and grant the Overall victory to someone who excels in all. Maybe my perspective is shaped a bit by having started in 1999, when Comp was a big deal at GW's US GTs and in RTs, and having a lot of my formative tournament experiences then and in the following few years, when I was probably most passionate in the hobby, and this was the dominant definition of a GW tournament within the US. But I still think it’s one of the best, and it’s part of why (IME) Indy Warhammer events are so much fun despite the terrible imbalances in Warhammer army books.

Danny Internets wrote:Furthermore, penalizing someone for building a competitive list is the same as penalizing the paint score of someone who brings a beautiful army because they have professional art training or because they used high quality brushes and paints. Should participants without professional training get comp points? How would that be any different from penalizing those who actually do have the training and means to best satisfy the conditions for winning the contest?

I disagree entirely. The two are not similar. For one thing, because well-painted armies improve everyone ELSE’S experience. They make the GT as a whole more impressive, fun, and satisfying, and make their opponents’ games more enjoyable even if/when they get crushed. For another, as I said before, the idea of a comp score is to handicap inherently stronger lists. If you can at-all accurately handicap armies, then doing so is actually a way of rewarding superior generalship. If two players both get all massacres at an event, and have identical Battles scores, but one did so with a weaker army, then it is likely that he is the superior player. Now handicapping armies is FAR from a science, and match-ups and unique table setups can help an inferior list do better than it should expect to as well, but that’s the idea. And matchups and lucky table draws are always a factor, whether you have comp or not.

Danny Internets wrote:Regarding language, you can call it "rewarding" some rather than "penalizing" others, but the end result is the same.

And no matter whether an arsonist burns your house down, or you do it for the insurance money, you get a burned down house, so the two are the same thing? Sorry, I’m still not buying it. You’re using “penalize” as a loaded term to try to get additional sympathy for your argument by making yourself out to be a victim. Giving a better painter a better appearance score is not penalizing anyone else. It’s rewarding the guy who is bringing superior skills to the table, which we have chosen to encourage by the nature of the scoring system we set up for our tournament. Other people are of course free to put on tournaments where paint scoring is irrelevant to the outcome, but don’t be surprised if you see fewer painted, and generally worse-looking armies at those events. Like ‘Ard Boyz.

Danny Internets wrote:Just because a "bad" army beats a "good" army in *one game* doesn't mean the "good" army was outplayed and the "bad" army deserves bonus points. Small sample sizes greatly increase the chances that luck is a factor. Given the lack of TO omniscience (or even guarantee of minimal metagame comprehension), it would be just as reasonable to conclude that the "good" army wasn't very good at all, or that the "bad" army was better than previously thought.

This is a valid point, but given the number of rounds in a typical large 40k or WH event when compared to its attendance, you can’t get away from the issues of small sample size and luck in matchups, no matter what your scoring system.

Danny Internets wrote:Granted, if a battleforce army really did go five for five on massacres that would probably be a sign of unparalleled skill, but real tournaments don't play out like this.

Thanks for the concession. Okay, so you can accept the concept in its most extreme expression. As for whether “real tournaments” play out like this, IME when Comp scoring is a factor, you do see some “worse” lists doing well. The winner of the SVDM did not have a BAD army, but he did utilize the contents of Assault on Black Reach boxes for the core of his list, and made some unusual choices- like Pedro without Sternguard, and Venerable Dreads over Ironclads. Well done by him.

Danny Internets wrote:Instead, you typically see various shades of gray amongst the armies with top battlepoints. How can anyone say with confidence that an IG army with a comp score of 3/20 is only 5% more effective than a mechanized Space Wolf army with a score of 4/20? Qualitative comparisons appear simple when you set up a straw man example like mech IG versus a battleforce, but they are much more muddied in real life. Quantitative comparisons are even more problematic. Exactly how much more powerful is the IG list than the battleforce list? Enough to warrant a 5% handicap? What about 10%? 30%? How about 60%? Where you draw the line is completely arbitrary and therefore without meaning. Might as well award players random points via the dice. And even when the handicap is small that extra point often makes the difference between who takes first place and who takes second. Any tournament that uses comp scoring and has a tight finish is evidence of this.

This is a better argument than most you’ve made. Thanks. I agree wholeheartedly that it’s difficult to make clear distinctions, especially on a 20pt scale. Especially when you get into the luck factor- if that IG list happens to get an objective mission at the right time vs an opponent better at KPs, that lucky mission/opponent draw is very likely to outweigh the one point it gave up to the SW player in Comp. That said, however, the fact that Battles almost always has such a large percentage of the scoring apportioned to it often means that inaccuracies or inequalities of a point or two in Comp are thrown out in the wash, and become irrelevant. I disagree that comp is at all the same as awarding random points by rolling dice, though I can certainly see that it sometimes feels that way if the organizer is not consistent in their judgments, and/or not open about their methodology.

Danny Internets wrote:

This is a straw man argument, and if you had more GT experience, you'd know it. Events where the comp score "coerces" folks into playing one particular way are rare. And I've almost never seen one where the comp scoring kept a strong list with a strong player from competing for a top spot.

You're right about not having GT experience. I'm not a self-proclaimed hobbyist and therefore I don't have any desire to attend hobby competitions. I do, however, regularly attend local tournaments that are the same size as many of the indie GTs, including this year's Vegas qualifiers.

Okay. Thanks for not coming back in a hostile fashion at what (in retrospect) comes off a bit like me trying to make it an e-peen measuring contest based on GT experience. Not my intent. What I’m saying is that I believe your perspective would be different if you had more experience with the thing you advocate so strongly against.

Danny Internets wrote: Comp scores nullify the legitimacy of any competition's results. Do players or teams receive handicaps in professional sporting events? No? Why do you think that is?

As noted, there’s handicapping and artificial limiting of “pure” competition of MANY varieties in LOTS of professional sports. Salary caps are probably the biggest factor in the NFL overtaking MLB as the most popular sports league in the US. Enforcing more parity on the teams has made the league better, and the individual games more exciting. This has remarkable parallels to comp, when you think about it. That said, professional sports (about money) and wargaming (about a fun hobby game between players) have different goals, and are tough to compare directly.



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Timmah wrote:One major thing that people are forgetting. There is a large amount of skill required in list building. A comp totally takes this aspect out of the game.

Nope. When playing within the comp metagame, MORE army building skill comes into play- sometimes joked about as “stealth cheese”, competitive players within a comped environment are actually encouraged to try to innovate, making competitive armies without relying on the known best combinations of units. Anyone can copy a list from the internet; in a non-comped environment, many will. But in a comped environment, the best players will be self-handicapping their lists and trying to find alternate and new combinations of units which don’t fit the profile of the known and feared army builds.

Timmah wrote:I have noticed most people who believe in comp, think there is no skill to list building and they can throw whatever on the table. Then when they get stomped, it must be because your codex is OP!

I took 8th in last year’s ‘Ardboyz finals. I got a Major against GBF, a Massacre against Centurian99 (though that took some luck), and a Draw against an Ork Battlewagon/trukks/lootas list which Reserved everything. But thanks for playing!

40kenthusiast wrote:My main objections are twofold. . In a perfect world, Comp scores offset list strength, right?

IE: The more likely my list is to win, the lower my comp score is. The less likely my list is to win the higher my comp score is.

1. Getting an accurate list -> score rating seems impossible. 40k is too complicated of a win/lose matrix to get this to work.

Good argument. You’re right; there’s no chance of perfect accuracy. IMO we can get close enough to improve the tournament experience, though.

40kenthusiast wrote:2. If the Comp was perfect, it would still not improve the tourney scene. Currently we are incented to build the best listsr. This would replace that with taking the best lists with comp considered in. What's the advantage?

That’s the way it always was when Comp was part of the GT scene previously, and all through the Rogue Trader tournament years. The competitive players built their lists with an eye to carefully balancing strength on the table against maximizing their Comp score. The advantages are that a) you see fewer cookie-cutter lists, list the “big three” Magic decks someone talked about earlier, and b) that since you’re not just metagaming against two or three “best builds”, you see more depth and variety of armies at the top. Oh, and c) the watered-down good lists don't tend to Massacre weak/average lists/players at much. They tend to have somewhat closer games, which generally makes those games more enjoyable for the guy on the losing end.

Dashofpepper wrote:Sportsmanship - this is *really* touchy, and most stories I hear are about people abusing sportsmanship when they get beaten. This would have to be a very clear checklist, of say....10 questions.

This is how Adepticon does it, how I’ve done it at tournaments I‘ve run, and how some other events I’ve seen do it. It’s pretty good.

sourclams I agree that spam is not really all that it is cracked up to be and that was the intent of the prior statement.

G

Timmah wrote:

Green Blow Fly wrote:Redundancy is a good thing but what you are really getting at is taking the best units from the codex as much as possible so in fact your list building skills are quite poor. Sad but true.

G

Wrong.

Especially with the new codices, there are multiple good choices from each spot. It takes a quality list builder to decide the correct one depending on the rest of their army.

For example in the space wolf codex:

Dakka Pred or 3x Longfangs w/2x ML and a rhino

Both are about the same cost. Both do very well for their points cost and considered good choices. However, which is optimal? They both do similar yet different tasks and depending on the army you are fielding, one will perform much better then the other.

We're not talking about the past codex or two. We're talking about an environment stretching back some years and containing what is it, 11 or 12 codexes most of which aren't new.

Mannahnin wrote:For another, as I said before, the idea of a comp score is to handicap inherently stronger lists.

Depends on who you ask. Quite a few comp systems take into account how the list fits the background, how 'fun' it is to play against, and the amount of duplicate units/upgrades. None of which (really) has any effect on the actual strength of the list.

The competitive players built their lists with an eye to carefully balancing strength on the table against maximizing their Comp score. The advantages are that a) you see fewer cookie-cutter lists

Not in my experience. You see a lot more marine lists that look a lot like one another.

skyth wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:For another, as I said before, the idea of a comp score is to handicap inherently stronger lists.

Depends on who you ask. Quite a few comp systems take into account how the list fits the background, how 'fun' it is to play against, and the amount of duplicate units/upgrades. None of which (really) has any effect on the actual strength of the list.

Fair point. I don't think theme should be included. "Fun" factor is very much on the subjective side, though I think it usually means "did I have a chance against it". Duplicate units/upgrades are a shorthand way of preventing people from loading up on a clearly-superior choice in a given category. And just to encourage variety for its own sake.

skyth wrote:

The competitive players built their lists with an eye to carefully balancing strength on the table against maximizing their Comp score. The advantages are that a) you see fewer cookie-cutter lists

Not in my experience. You see a lot more marine lists that look a lot like one another.

I used to do pretty well with my Eldar. But there is certainly a danger in 40k that the judges will not be as familiar with non-SM armies, and thus less able to judge the others well, due to the predominance of MEQ armies.

While MEQ is always popular a lot of players hate them for whatever reason.

G

I think they just get frustrated by lack of variety, and some folks get angry over the lesser product support to other armies. It's one of the virtues Warhammer has, that no one particular type/statline of army/model makes up such a large percentage of what you see on the table, so you get a more varied play experience in that respect. Of course, 40k has it all over WH in terms of missions. In WH playing Pitched Battle over and over gets old after a while.

Mannahnin wrote:

skyth wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:For another, as I said before, the idea of a comp score is to handicap inherently stronger lists.

Depends on who you ask. Quite a few comp systems take into account how the list fits the background, how 'fun' it is to play against, and the amount of duplicate units/upgrades. None of which (really) has any effect on the actual strength of the list.

Duplicate units/upgrades are a shorthand way of preventing people from loading up on a clearly-superior choice in a given category. And just to encourage variety for its own sake.

Unless you happen to play Necrons, with their 1 viable troop choice, or Tau, with their 2 viable troop choices, or "pure" Grey Knights, who have a grand total of 2 different model types that are not a Dreadnought or Land Raider.

Unintended consequences. The comp proponents who feel that they "must enforce diversity" or else weaker lists won't have fun actually end up gutting certain codices' comp scores or penalizing already-weak lists.

I want to throw my hat into the ring:

Comp scores generally are a poor way to level the playing field. I have built and taken my fair share of spam armies in an attempt to "theme" my army. For instance I ran a LR spam list for a while. Not only was this themed with a compliment of Grey Knights, it was overpowering (spam, low sportsmanship scores) against some armies, and really really bad (themed, high sportsmanship scores) against others. Now was the fact that I wanted to think that my Grey Knights were important enough to take Land Raiders a good enough reason to justify the fact that I had 4 land raiders on the field?

Because of the subjectivity of comp scores, it really is a bad thing. You might argue (and many have) that subjectivity does not equal bad. While I would agree that subjectivity is a great thing in some cases, in the cases of judging the intentions of another person (the inherent side effect of scoring someones army) and their thought process is rather bad. For instance, I am currently selling my SM pure biker list. Tell me, is this a themed army or is it spam? Should I get a high comp or a low comp? A nob biker list? A Battlewagon list? any list with spam is inherently themed. As other people have mentioned, spam only works some of the time. Trick armies only work some of the time. I dare anyone to put a list on dakka and declare it unbeatable, someone will place a list that would beat the crap out of it. inherently in a tournament, armies should fix themselves. What i mean by this is that the one trick ponies are going to get tabled and beaten, and the balanced armies are going to get beaten by the spam.

But saying that my army is overpowered, when i only wanted to provide a good theme to my army is wrong. who are you to tell me that when I built the army I thought optimization over theme? You don't/can't. That is why a subjective system to level the playing field fails. That is why Composition Scoring in War Gaming is not a usable system the way the game is currently played.

You touch on this a bit in your post, but I think what you're really getting at is:

Bad lists can spam just as much as good lists, but just do it badly.

"Spam" as a derogatory term seems to be used most commonly with people who want to play battleforce-style lists and be competitive. In which case, your list-building ability is not competitive and you should stop being a hypocrite.

No.

I mean a beats b and b beats c and c beats a. That is not overpowered. Getting lucky by rolling well is not overpowered. Themeing an army is not overpowered.

Every army has inherent weaknesses and strengths. Themeing an army (by spam or whatever) will allow you to roll some enemies (because you ARE overpowered) and get tabled by others (because you ARE NOT overpowered). This doesnt mean you have a bad list. It just means that some things beat some armies easier. Should you the player get docked points because it inherently is stronger than some other ones? No. Should you get more points because you are inherently weaker? No. Should you get docked because you are not "themeing" your army to someone elses specifications? no.

Alternately, it could be said that players who don't have the skill to play with flexible lists call those lists "battleforce-style lists"...

What would you call DevianID's list in this thread?

Nurglitch wrote:Alternately, it could be said that players who don't have the skill to play with flexible lists call those lists "battleforce-style lists"...

Or maybe they do, but they are smart enough to bring a good army.

Nurglitch wrote:What would you call DevianID's list in this thread?

Bad

(Ooo he won some comped tournament that people brought terrible lists too, his list must be good. Oh and before it starts, no I didn't fly to philly to play in this, but that doesn't make me wrong)



Oh btw, for you people who think the last 2 codices are the only 2 that can field multiple strong and different builds, here are the ones that can do multiple.

Sisters,
Space Marines
Space Wolves
Dark Angels
Tyranids
Eldar
Orks
Blood angels (soon)

Here are the ones that can field 1 really strong build or 2+ decent ones:

Chaos space marines
Tau
Dark Eldar
Daemonhunters (depending on points level)

And the uncompetitive ones:

Daemons
Necrons


So the majority of codices can build a very competitive army in a variety of ways.

I would have liked to reply with this sooner, but unfortunately Dakka is blocked at work. Interesting thread though and I'm glad the dialogue is continuing despite some posters' attempts to stimy it. Anyways--

AH-HA! I figured it out. We aren't talking about the same thing! It's amazing in the days of RAW that no one bothered to define what "tournament" means. (Then again, no ones ever given me a good definition of RAW, that all the people arguing will stick to, either.) If you don't 'define' a word first, you can't use terms like 'by definition'. Hmmm, actually, I guess you can, since you did. Let's change it to, "Shouldn't use them, if trying to use them correctly".

I prefer to let the dictionary handle definitions of words. It facilitates communication. Your mileage may vary.

And sarcasm aside, I think it's important for all TO's running any type of gaming event, to define what the event is about, and how they are setting it up to meet those expectations.

The mere act of billing an event as "tournament" creates (defines) a large set of expectations based on what the word "tournament" means and its obvious sporting event connotation.

You think 'tournament' means some type of competition where we only care about figuring out who the best player of the day is.
'Ardboys style, crappy scenery ok, crappy tables ok, doesn't matter how the guy across the table acts, and screw prizes. We only care about about who the winner is. Design things to go that way. (I'm obviously guessing, btw, since I don't have telepathy, and can only go on the assumption that you care about Competition, and don't care about anything else).

Lots of assumptions. Unfortunately, most of them are wrong. I give you a C+ or effort. Since you've taken such a keen interest in dissecting what you think my personal version of an ideal tournament is feel free to check my Dakka post history and my blog (baldandscreaming.com). You'll find them present in both, and in great detail.

I think of a 'tournament' as a gathering of like minded individuals, that wish to compete with each other while having a good time, talk, tell stories, drink beer, and enjoy other parts of the hobby, such as painting and modeling. To that end I have some rules and scoring that tries to make reality match design.

I think of a tournament as "a series of contests in which a number of contestants compete and the one that prevails through the final round or that finishes with the best record is declared the winner" (American Heritage Dictionary). The word "series" is vital here, because in the context of a Warhammer "tournament" this refers to the 3-5 serially played rounds. A tournament doesn't preclude having a good time, talking, telling stories, drinking beer, painting, or modeling--but it doesn't include them either. If that's your bag then there's nothing stopping you from enjoying these parts of the hobby at a tournament. However, when you make any of these mandatory then you've ventured outside of tournament territory and into something else entirely, which I refer to as a hobby competition.

These are pretty obvious at many tournaments. They aren't done for competition, but to run a good event. There's probably a hundred other things a TO could do, or screw up. Do as much as you can right, and people have a good time.

They're obvious at hobby contests. Just because you call it a tournament doesn't make it so. However, people have a good time at tournaments too, you know. Many claim that things like comp scores are needed to run a good or even enjoyable event, but this is misguided as best, and delusional at worst. The local tournaments here don't run them (or paint scoring, or even sportsmanship scoring) and they see turn-outs in excess of 40 people on a bi-monthly basis. We all manage to have a great time.

In the end, that's my goal: Players get together for gaming, and have a good time. All of them, or as many as I can keep happy. Not just the ones that came for a competition.

Textbook example of the Warhammer community's favorite false dichotomy as described here. Playing competitively is not distinct from having a good time (playing for fun). In fact, for any genuinely competitive player they are one in the same, and with complete disregard for who wins or loses.

Thought i'd give my opinion on all this. To start off i'll say i'm new to the game and have never been in an actual GW tournament, but i like the idea of comp scores.
It seems that they're supposed to reward those who paint well and play nicely in both an army build and sportsman wise, but i don't think that comp score should be anything more than i tie breaker.
I want there to be incentive for player to be actually nice to each other and not build full cheese lists because they want to win because i feel that without that the game would be less fun.
On the other hand a jerk giving me crap comp scores ruining my chances to place tops is why they shouldn't be worth much in tournaments.
I say if 2 people are tied for first in a tournament, the nice guy, who didn't bring a beardy list and painted his models nicely should win.

That’s the way it always was when Comp was part of the GT scene previously, and all through the Rogue Trader tournament years. The competitive players built their lists with an eye to carefully balancing strength on the table against maximizing their Comp score. The advantages are that a) you see fewer cookie-cutter lists, list the “big three” Magic decks someone talked about earlier, and b) that since you’re not just metagaming against two or three “best builds”, you see more depth and variety of armies at the top. Oh, and c) the watered-down good lists don't tend to Massacre weak/average lists/players at much. They tend to have somewhat closer games, which generally makes those games more enjoyable for the guy on the losing end.

Those comp systems didn't work all that well though IMO (especially the ubiquitous 40% troops, % this and that style comp systems). My most hated tournament experiences used that comp system and gave certain armies advantages and took the tools that other armies had to deal with hard as nails troop heavy armies out of the equation. Just one mans opinion though.

Clearly the GT event Comp system worked very well, evidenced by the existence of Comp in GT events that also exist... oh wait....


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Nurglitch wrote:Alternately, it could be said that players who don't have the skill to play with flexible lists call those lists "battleforce-style lists"...

What would you call DevianID's list in this thread?

It's a bad list that won a tournament against a bunch of other bad lists.

Shrike + Vanguard

1k Sons squads

Chaos Bikes

Definitely not the cream of the competitive crop.

Please note that not all of us agree with your definition of “competition” or “competitive” as being strictly based on battles scores. IME the competition for most events (or at least most of the best big ones) is a competition of hobbyists, factoring game playing as the most important component, but also including army appearance, sportsmanship, and composition. Seeking to reward (with recognition and prizes) players who excel in multiple areas, and grant the Overall victory to someone who excels in all.

I think your definition of what constitutes the competition is flawed within the context of any Warhammer event specifically billed as a "tournament." A tournament, by definition, is determined by the outcome of a series of events. The series is clearly the games which are played back-to-back, each of which directly influenced by the outcome of the games previous. The painting and comp scoring parts of the event exist totally outside of that series of competitions, which is why I find it inappropriate that they are used in determining who wins the series as a whole.

Note, this is not to say that I'm against hobby events. I played in many Rogue Trader tournaments back when GW still supported them and they were scored more or less the same as GT's at the time. I've also attended a couple of GW Games Day events in Baltimore and they're fun. They're just different is all, and they're not for everyone.

I disagree entirely. The two are not similar. For one thing, because well-painted armies improve everyone ELSE’S experience. They make the GT as a whole more impressive, fun, and satisfying, and make their opponents’ games more enjoyable even if/when they get crushed. For another, as I said before, the idea of a comp score is to handicap inherently stronger lists. If you can at-all accurately handicap armies, then doing so is actually a way of rewarding superior generalship.

This is an assumption that is incorrect. Whether or not my opponent brings a painted army to the table has absolutely no bearing on my enjoyment of the game. Perhaps it improves the experiences of hobbyist players, but I'm not one of them. Conversely, an opponent who bring a competitive army always makes my game more enjoyable. I recognize that this is because I'm a competitive player, and this won't necessarily hold true for a hobbyist. Why discourage one way of enjoying the game and not the other?

If two players both get all massacres at an event, and have identical Battles scores, but one did so with a weaker army, then it is likely that he is the superior player. Now handicapping armies is FAR from a science, and match-ups and unique table setups can help an inferior list do better than it should expect to as well, but that’s the idea. And matchups and lucky table draws are always a factor, whether you have comp or not.

As stated before, this is a straw man example that doesn't tend to happen in real life. The unfortunate reality is that there is no way to accurately handicap armies, which makes it even less tolerable. What happens when two players have the same battle points but differ only by 1 point in comp? I'd hardly call it fair to award the less handicapped player with first place by using an admittedly inaccurate scoring system when they both performed equally well and scored well within any perceived margin of error.

This is a valid point, but given the number of rounds in a typical large 40k or WH event when compared to its attendance, you can’t get away from the issues of small sample size and luck in matchups, no matter what your scoring system.

...which is all the more reason not to use the sample as the basis for rationalizing comp scoring.

As noted, there’s handicapping and artificial limiting of “pure” competition of MANY varieties in LOTS of professional sports. Salary caps are probably the biggest factor in the NFL overtaking MLB as the most popular sports league in the US. Enforcing more parity on the teams has made the league better, and the individual games more exciting. This has remarkable parallels to comp, when you think about it. That said, professional sports (about money) and wargaming (about a fun hobby game between players) have different goals, and are tough to compare directly.

I admit, I phrased that poorly. You and the other poster are indeed correct that handicapping does exist in the NFL, horse racing, etc. I was more referring to events like the Olympics, which is a much "purer" competitive venue. Football and baseball are more entertainment than real sporting competitions, especially considering the competitive nature of the events is compromised simply to make the games more exciting for viewers.

There were some good and different lists there. It is easy to not play in a GT then say everyone there sucked... I have to call BS on that poor attitude. There was a good number of vets there with proven records. DevianID is definitely a very good player as is yermom.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:There were some good and different lists there. It is easy to not play in a GT then say everyone there sucked... I have to call BS on that poor attitude. There was a good number of vets there with proven records. DevianID is definitely a very good player as is yermom.

G

There may have been good players there (I know several who attended), but the lists that the winner played against were indeed trash. Maybe the generals were spectacular, but the lists certainly weren't. I mean, it's kind of hard not to massacre a Necron or Tzeentch list.

Danny Internets wrote:I mean, it's kind of hard not to massacre a Necron or Tzeentch list.

I must disagree some people do play necrons quite well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl5kFzg2gS0&feature=related
Check it out its blogger "Fritz" playing 2k pts of Necrons at the November 21, 2009 Battle For Salvation Tournament. He did quiet well in the end as recall

Case in point.

Joetaco wrote:

Danny Internets wrote:I mean, it's kind of hard not to massacre a Necron or Tzeentch list.

I must disagree some people do play necrons quite well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl5kFzg2gS0&feature=related
Check it out its blogger "Fritz" playing 2k pts of Necrons at the November 21, 2009 Battle For Salvation Tournament. He did quiet well in the end as recall

Fritz and I play in the same club. I was one point out of first place in that tournament with my IG.

Danny Internets wrote:

Joetaco wrote:

Danny Internets wrote:I mean, it's kind of hard not to massacre a Necron or Tzeentch list.

I must disagree some people do play necrons quite well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl5kFzg2gS0&feature=related
Check it out its blogger "Fritz" playing 2k pts of Necrons at the November 21, 2009 Battle For Salvation Tournament. He did quiet well in the end as recall

Fritz and I play in the same club. I was one point out of first place in that tournament with my IG.

just goes to show, small world after all, but as a whole i'd have to agree with your orginal "kind of hard not to massacre a necron or Tzeentch list"
PS: thank Fritz for me I love his tactics and his videos were one of the reasons i originally got into 40k.

He's a good gamer with valuable insights and I always recommend his site to new players. If you ever find yourself in the NY area feel free to stop by!

TBH, I think DevianID's list is pretty interesting. However, as he mentioned, the comp did have an effect on the metagame there. Whether people like his list or not, he realized the implications of the comp environment and used his skills in both playing and list building given those constraints to his advantage. List building still remains a skill in a comped environment... you just have additional constraints applied.

My problem with comp is both in its goals and implementation. Is the goal of comp to "even the playing field", "discourage spam", or "encourage themed armies? Each of those has to be setup and scored a different way. If you want to even the playing field you have to penalize certain codicies or builds. If you want to discourage spam, you place restraints on replicating units. Theme is a mess because what one person considers a theme, another person might consider abusive.

Implementation-wise, how do you do it consistently and in such a way that everyone can have an idea of how their army will be scored beforehand and so "locals" (or prior attenders) won't have a better idea of how it works. If you're going to do a comp system, I really think it should be as objective and open as possible.

.I personally prefer no-comp because the less subjectivity the better. (The small number of games in most tournaments means there is already a large amount of luck such as terrain, matchups, and scenarios already inherent in the system.) I also think that a legal army list is a legal army list, so people shouldn't be penalized for running something the codex says is okay. However, it's one of those things where if I know about it going in and don't get blindsided, it's not a big deal. I have to understand that tournaments with high percentage of soft scores are more about the "hobby" aspect and set my expectations accordingly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Danny Internets wrote:He's a good gamer with valuable insights and I always recommend his site to new players. If you ever find yourself in the NY area feel free to stop by!

What part of NY? I'm relocating up to Rome, NY this month, and I'm trying to find some sort of 40k group up there.

Gornall, NY is really short on hobby stores, except in NYC. The closest place to me is The Dragons Den, which is several hours away. Does anyone know of a closer gaming club in the Ulster county area?

What part of NY? I'm relocating up to Rome, NY this month, and I'm trying to find some sort of 40k group up there.

It's about 15 miles or so north of NYC (White Plains, to be specific). I remember that there used to be a ton of Rogue Trader tournaments in Syracuse, might still be a scene there.

Gornall, NY is really short on hobby stores, except in NYC. The closest place to me is The Dragons Den, which is several hours away. Does anyone know of a closer gaming club in the Ulster county area?

Wow, I didn't know any of the Dragons Den stores still existed. I bought my first 40k mini from the one that was in Greenwich, CT like 20 years ago. Thought they all closed up shop!

Your baseball agrument is dead on. The yankees do try to pad their roster full of all the best players that money can buy. But is it right?? Is that what you want your team, ie army, to be?? Anybody can buy all the great expensive models, players, they want but is that in the spirit of the game? I'd rather play real gamers then "power" gamers tourny or no tourny

Gornall wrote:Implementation-wise, how do you do it consistently and in such a way that everyone can have an idea of how their army will be scored beforehand and so "locals" (or prior attenders) won't have a better idea of how it works. If you're going to do a comp system, I really think it should be as objective and open as possible.

And that is the $50,000 question. To which I don't think there is an answer.

Earlier in the thread, the definition of "tournament" was debated. Games Workshop was the one who 'defined' their Grand Tournaments (originally) as 'Hobby Tournaments' and included battle points, comp, sports, and painting. So when someone says '40k tournament', that is the first thing that pops into my mind (my first GT being around 1998 or so, the last of the 2nd ed tournies). The nature of GT's has clearly changed (from hobby events, to Ard Boyz, to the current circuit, to the UK comp-less system) over the years.

How comp was done went through several iterations, from 'judge based' comp scores, to percentages, to rubrics. And every one of them could be 'gamed' to gain some kind of advantage either through the list, or for a particular army. Once the structure is out there, people will work within the structure for greatest advantage. That's the nature of the competitive event. And since we're now playing for Vegas tickets, or huge amounts of stuff, it has become competitive (the old GTs gave you a statue and bragging rights).

I used to love Comp in tournies, and wouldn't play if it wasn't there. I've now changed my tune, and prefer non-comp tournies. It allows me to bring what I want, and I don't have to sweat it. I'm a decent enough player, but I'm not deluding myself to think I'm winning a GT, so I play, do okay, and end up on the middle tables, with like powered (or like generaled) armies. And when I go in with the 'I'll play games to play, and if I do well, that's great' kind of attitude, I have more fun.

I think that the emphasis on loot for the tournaments, Vegas tickets, and the "circuit" have almost led to a professionalisation of the tournies, around a system not really designed to support it. Because the system is inherently unbalanced, comp tries to redress it. And I think that all it does it moves the "cheese" target from one army, or build, to another, unseen or unforseen army or build. So its basically a lot of work for no real benefit.

My 3 cents.

Yeah, that's why composition that's wholly objective requires pre-written lists that players can subscribe to, because there's no other practical way of stating that one legal army from the same list is the same as another. Otherwise you just need to realize that composition is subjective, and therefore bunk, and therefore should be left out of competition.

Danny Internets wrote:

What part of NY? I'm relocating up to Rome, NY this month, and I'm trying to find some sort of 40k group up there.

It's about 15 miles or so north of NYC (White Plains, to be specific). I remember that there used to be a ton of Rogue Trader tournaments in Syracuse, might still be a scene there.

Gornall, NY is really short on hobby stores, except in NYC. The closest place to me is The Dragons Den, which is several hours away. Does anyone know of a closer gaming club in the Ulster county area?

Wow, I didn't know any of the Dragons Den stores still existed. I bought my first 40k mini from the one that was in Greenwich, CT like 20 years ago. Thought they all closed up shop!

Nope, still one in Poughkeepsie. Nice place, but has a VERY small GW section.

It's very disrepectful to not play in a tourney and say the lists were trash. Personally I don't think you could consistently beat the top 5 players (battle points). That is why you sound like a punk to many people following this thread. Sure comp can be a pain but top players deal with it rather than crying like a little baby that needs to be burped by momma. If I remember correctly Ard Boyz was pure battlepoints but the armchair quarterbacks dissed it last year... Even when anybody with half a lick of sense can realize and respect that mech IG is a very tough list. Compare mech IG to hte new Nidz. Mech IG is all about moar win while the new Nidz are overly balanced. To me if I read both codices without knowing they were both written by the same developer I would never guess that. I have seen my share of local tournies where half of the armies are mech IG and guess what... They don't cry about comp they cry about kill points. Yeah they want EVERYTHING in their favor with no obstacles. Sometimes I joke around and say mech IG should roll 1d6 on a 3+ they auto win. From my experience I have won my share of games even when I automatically lost some points due to any particular comp system. As long as battlepoints are greater than the sum of the soft scores you can win with a good build otherwise 'soft' tournies would just boil down to who brought the most pretty armies. That's a fact and you can't get around it. If you are that strongly opposed then try to run your own big tourney and set the record straight. Anybody can sit back and say what is wrong with the world today but very few can offer a real solution.

G

Green Blow Fly:

Who are you addressing?

Wow, in the same breath GBF managed to whine about people whining, and then whine about IG being overpowered. Bravo! Either a masterpiece in trolling or disorganized thinking, I cannot tell which.

Pst, GBF, I know I said this in an earlier post. But some people can't go to all these tournaments located all over the country.

You know, some of us would have to drive 8+ hrs to the closest one.


I know you think peoples opinions only matter dependent on there geographic location and how easily they can attend "major" events.


/waits for post saying this thread isn't worth your time...

I was whining about IG whining about KPs. Not the same thing you tried to allude to and gloss over. Not by any means Danny. Go back, read what I said, be honest with yourself about it. You'll be a better person if you can learn to honestly accept criticism... Glossy Boy

G

mikhaila wrote:And I think you miss the point. Blame a TO if you like, it is their system. (Or might be the system used by a large group of people putting on the event, but sure, he's in charge.) But really, do we need to keep inplying that TO's are adding a composition score to a tournament just so they can cheat and favor their friends? Really?! CT Gamer is the second person I've had say that. Possibly he read the earlier post and decided to throw it out because I mentioned it. You don't think that's going to make someone angry a bit, to be accused of blatantly cheating a tournament full of people so you can give prizes to friends? There are a lot of easier ways to give stuff to your friends, than putting in a huge amount of work, and cheating people, and then taking well deserved crap about it forever.

I don't like my friends that much. Not worth going through it. Rather just had them boxes off the wall.

Please tell me why else would someone put in an arbitrary, subjective system in place?

To be fair?

Timmah wrote:Pst, GBF, I know I said this in an earlier post. But some people can't go to all these tournaments located all over the country.

You know, some of us would have to drive 8+ hrs to the closest one.


I know you think peoples opinions only matter dependent on there geographic location and how easily they can attend "major" events.


/waits for post saying this thread isn't worth your time...

Personally, I think he has a point. If you were not there, simply stating "Those armies sucked!" is basically akin to taking a big dump on that event's (and the person that worked hard to win it) parade. You might have a point that the armies weren't the most competitive in a non-comp environment, but the event in question WAS comped, and the armies were designed with that constraint in mind. The fact that they looked "different" than what you would see in a non-comped event doesn't mean that the designers weren't very methodical and intentional in their choices. It's about context. In any case, a little tact goes a long way.

I understand that not everyone (including me) can't travel to GTs for whatever reason. But unless you did in fact go to it, trashing the competitivenes of the event seems pretty rude to me. Yeah, you can talk about how maybe you disagree with comp or having painting scores in best overall or other things, but to say or imply that "they're doing it wrong" or "I would thrash them" is out of line IMO.

EDIT: Look at how Dash has changed his tune over the past few weeks as he's been exposed to a wider world of GTs/Vassal with other players. It's one thing to harp on stuff from the sidelines... it's another thing entirely to go out and experience it for yourself.

And I want to add for Mikahala (sorry about spelling) that I think very few people would imply that locals receive better comp scores intentionally. It's more about knowing "how it's done here." Personally, I know how rules issues get ruled at the different FLGS in my area, or which stores use LOTS of terrain on their tables, so I can plan accordingly. For example, one store allows PotMS with smoke, but another does not. Another store uses 50%+ terrain on tables, and by knowing that, I can design my list to use that to my advantage. It's the same thing with comp. The locals probably have a better idea of what's kosher and can design their list with a little better knowledge of how not to get dinged.

Green Blow Fly wrote:I was whining about IG whining about KPs. Not the same thing you tried to allude to and gloss over. Not by any means Danny. Go back, read what I said, be honest with yourself about it. You'll be a better person if you can learn to honestly accept criticism... Glossy Boy

G

Ah, so it was the latter then.

imweasel wrote:

mikhaila wrote:And I think you miss the point. Blame a TO if you like, it is their system. (Or might be the system used by a large group of people putting on the event, but sure, he's in charge.) But really, do we need to keep inplying that TO's are adding a composition score to a tournament just so they can cheat and favor their friends? Really?! CT Gamer is the second person I've had say that. Possibly he read the earlier post and decided to throw it out because I mentioned it. You don't think that's going to make someone angry a bit, to be accused of blatantly cheating a tournament full of people so you can give prizes to friends? There are a lot of easier ways to give stuff to your friends, than putting in a huge amount of work, and cheating people, and then taking well deserved crap about it forever.

I don't like my friends that much. Not worth going through it. Rather just had them boxes off the wall.

Please tell me why else would someone put in an arbitrary, subjective system in place?

To be fair?

No need to read seven pages of this thread; imweasel just vivisected the argument.

On a side note, the history of comp. scoring is interesting. Seemingly it arose so that young gamers who live at home and don't have much money to spend on their armies would have a chance at winning. A two-tiered system would be preferable. An 'open' non-comp category, and a 'sesame street' category for comp. The latter would not have a winner; instead everyone would receive a prize and a few stickers.

At Timmah & Danny

Maybe if you nicely ask your parents they will spring the dough so ya can play in a big GT. yermom is also a teenager and it is working out for him.

: )

G

Obviously because if your not a teenager (I assure you I am not) and you have a job, you get to do whatever you want...

Nice with the personal attacks though.
Can you really not have a discussion without getting all upset?

Green Blow Fly wrote:At Timmah & Danny

Maybe if you nicely ask your parents they will spring the dough so ya can play in a big GT. yermom is also a teenager and it is working out for him.

: )

G

I began playing 40k about 2.5 years ago. I've finished first place in 1st round 'Ard Boyz locally for the past 2 years running. Last year I decided to "up my game" and carpooled with 4 other guys from the area to the semifinals, which was an 8 hour drive from Kansas to mid-Texas, both ways.

In the semifinals I massacred my first game, massacred my second game as well, and was well on my way to massacre the third game on Table 1 when the TO announced that the game was going to end prematurely 1.5 hours into the round and this had to be our last turn. I had just finished my movement phase.

So I'm forced to Run the majority of my army to try to claim center objective, my opponent is able to take his full turn and contest everything / claim a Minor win due to table quarters, and I drop from 1st with max points to 4th overall.

It was a long 8 hour drive back, and $150 in gas, meals, and hotel poorly spent.

In my experience, there's a lot of viable reasons why people don't go to GW tournaments. First is time commitment, second is cost, and third is they appear to be run on an amateurish level.

I'm a young, modestly successful Risk Analyst with disposable income and a Frequent Flyer club membership. I choose not to travel to GW tournaments for a number of valid reasons, reasons which your assinine comments do nothing to address or counter. That fluff Pedro list did fight against poorly built lists and, if indicative of the overall scene, that was not a very competitively-focused event. This doesn't mean it was a bad event or a non-fun event, but effectiveness of a list/option is lagely quantifiable in 40k and those lists posted were lacking.

sourclams wrote:
I began playing 40k about 2.5 years ago. I've finished first place in 1st round 'Ard Boyz locally for the past 2 years running. Last year I decided to "up my game" and carpooled with 4 other guys from the area to the semifinals, which was an 8 hour drive from Kansas to mid-Texas, both ways.

In the semifinals I massacred my first game, massacred my second game as well, and was well on my way to massacre the third game on Table 1 when the TO announced that the game was going to end prematurely 1.5 hours into the round and this had to be our last turn. I had just finished my movement phase.

So I'm forced to Run the majority of my army to try to claim center objective, my opponent is able to take his full turn and contest everything / claim a Minor win due to table quarters, and I drop from 1st with max points to 4th overall.

It was a long 8 hour drive back, and $150 in gas, meals, and hotel poorly spent.

In my experience, there's a lot of viable reasons why people don't go to GW tournaments. First is time commitment, second is cost, and third is they appear to be run on an amateurish level.

I'm a young, modestly successful Risk Analyst with disposable income and a Frequent Flyer club membership. I choose not to travel to GW tournaments for a number of valid reasons, reasons which your assinine comments do nothing to address or counter. That fluff Pedro list did fight against poorly built lists and, if indicative of the overall scene, that was not a very competitively-focused event. This doesn't mean it was a bad event or a non-fun event, but effectiveness of a list/option is lagely quantifiable in 40k and those lists posted were lacking.

Are you sure your not 12 and that's the reason you don't attend?

Damn, you refuted my entire anecdote!

@ sourclams

I thought you hung out in meat lockers (aka butcher)... well at least taht is what you said on the phone when I was talking to ya. Dead meat is popular in the midwest apparently. Also the area where your Ard Boyz were held are widely considered easy pickings. I'm not flaming you... just telling it like it is. : )

You dont seem like the yuppie type and I mean that as a compliment to you. Everyone says how much they like your avatar too.

G

I was never a butcher, although I did manage the supply chain for a mid-sized abattoir in Iowa. Merit-based promotions later, I became a risk analyst for a privately-owned agricultural supergiant's meat platform.

Unrelated rambling aside, central Texas is considered "easy pickings" for 'ard boyz pairings? Because I massacred my way through round 1 and 2 and I can say that most of the lists there were indeed bad lists, even in the 'most competitive' 40k event nationally.

Lists aside, how did you find the players? It's interesting reading the St. Valentine's Day Massacre battle reports to see the mistakes people make, the sort of mistakes that if raised in the Tactics forums earn the reproach "Oh, well, a smart player wouldn't do that..."

Maybe's it's just a matter of self-reporting. Maybe it's the bottle of rum DashofPepper apparently drank during the first three rounds, but DevianID certainly seemed to have a much better grasp of the game rules and nuances of play than DashofPepper did and I believe that skill is what wins the game rather than lists.

After all, if everyone at that tournament was playing bad lists, as sourclams and others assure us, then clearly it wasn't playing bad lists with good that gave DevianID the win, but being a better player.

That's one reason why I think that buying into pre-designed lists (i.e.: if you play Space Marines, you'll need to bring this particular list to the tournament to compete) is a better idea than simply abandoning the notion of composition altogether, because there's still people out there that put the list before the player.

Back when I started playing 40k in 3rd edition (Dark Eldar) I played a lot with my brother who went on to be a Canadian Grand Tournament winner with his Eldar, and I almost always lost. Around the beginning of 4th edition, before I got it into my head that I could design a better Warhammer, I was winning maybe a quarter of the games we would play and it was because I had developed the skills to know exactly how far I should move, and in which order to begin shooting.

Once my project to design a better Warhammer failed (or succeeded, depending on how you look at it), I came back to 40k after falling in love with the latest Chaos Space Marine Codex. This time I took it more serious and made sure that I learned the rules (it turned out they weren't as bad as everyone, including myself, had proclaimed), and that I practiced moving and measuring to take advantage of the target clipping tactics available in that era.

But not everyone has my experience of reverse-engineering Warhammer 40k to see how it works, or my experience of playing back-to-basics games, and they're still hung up on the "Build a super-army and demolish everyone" mentality that I used to have back when I started in 3rd edition, where I spent all my time building lists rather than, say, familiarizing myself with the game rules, or learning how to translate the ideas I had about lists into actual game play, and so on.

If you want to judge someone's skill, you start with the basics and you start with a common metric, and then see what happens when the chips are down - skill means you have the basics down pat even when conditions aren't optimal (or even satisfactory). Fancy freestyle tournaments with non-standard scenarios, armies, or terrain won't give you an accurate reading of who the best player actually is, although I think the partial-composition at the SVDM and other tournaments goes some distance towards a common metric. The spirit is there if the execution isn't.

If it went all the way, then we could start competitive gaming.

We can be very creative about our job titles and Im cool with that!

G

I will freely admit that my stance on composition scores is purely based on WHFB - a game which others have already admitted is currently broken.

That being said, my experiences in 40k are largely based in 3rd edition, during the Eye of Terror Campaign. I played extensively in that campaign, and played a total of 60 games - 54 wins, 4 draws, 2 losses. I played an Iron Warriors themed army (re: paint scheme, playstyle) but did not utilize the Iron Warriors special rules.

I did not think that my list was all that OP - Winged Demon Prince, 1 unit of Obliterators, two units of CSM, two Predator tanks - and I posted a fantastic record, never losing to the same player twice. By the time the EOT campaign started, I had played 40k, Fantasy, and Space Marine since 1989, so I had considerable experience at executing the types of strategies I needed to be successful.

Most of my opponents lost either because they brought armies that were poorly built (no synergy), they did not understand what they needed to do to be successful, or they mentally surrendered before the game was even played. I won, not because I was an amazing general or the vanilla CSM list was O/P, but rather because they failed to understand key aspects of the game.

I can say without a doubt that the current 40k system is better balanced than WHFB. While I wouldn't consider attending a WHFB tournament without Composition, I WOULD consider a 40k tournament without Comp scores. I recently picked up 'Nids and Tau, and although I haven't fielded my Tau, I have been having fun with my 'Nids. I have to say that I vastly prefer 5th ed over 3rd, and unlike Fantasy, I feel that regardless of what army list I bring, I can bring a competitive game to the table.

To bring this post back on-topic, objective composition scoring can help make an unbalanced game system more balanced, and it is why it exists. Should it be used in a system like WHFB? I would say definately - otherwise, you would only see 5 or 6 races at tournaments - and even then you would only likely see DoC at the top the majority of the time. Is it needed in WH40K? No, I don't believe that it is.

As has been previously mentioned, Games Workshop established that their GTs were 'hobby' tournaments and as such painting, sportsmanship and composition contributed towards determining the overall victor at the tournament. For the people who are complaining about how composition is ruining their experiences, composition list design is merely another facet of the game. I agree, without a doubt, that subjectively based composition scoring should be tossed out - I've lost a tournament because one opponent tanked my composition scores (I came second as a result) - but published composition criteria, judged impartially - can still have a place in the hobby.

To Timmah, you complain that you do not have a choice as to where to play - instead due to a lack of tournaments in your area you are forced to attend a comp tournament or not at all. Previously you asked about what o/p lists exist - and later you acknowledged that some armies are virtually unplayable (admittedly 2). GW does not have a good record of producing balanced, well thought out codices - and the next one that emerges could be an absolute disaster for the relatively balanced meta-game right now. If the BA emerge as being a horribly broken list (please see DoC in WHFB), would you be happy to play whatever it is you play against them, when in the hands of a competent general you would have a horribly uphill battle to win? Would you then turn around and play BA yourself, to gain competitive advantage? You say that you want to be able to play with whatever you own - to be able to bring whatever units you want. I suspect the Necron players are thinking the same thing. I hope that non-comp scored tournaments show up in your area, because I would like to see you have the option to attend the type of tournament you wish to attend. But turning around and saying that anyone who disagrees is wrong for prefering comp-scored tournaments is equally wrong.

Anyways, apologies for the wall of text. Sorry for singling you out Timmah - this commentary is not directed just at you, but at anyone who generalises that composition has no place in competitive war gaming. I'll be the first to say that subjective scoring of your opponent should be eliminated and replaced with an objective, published scoring system so that everyone has an equal chance of participating. Perhaps the relative value of Comp should be decreased as well - that way a player who brings a 'good' list has an equal shot at winning the whole thing, same as the person who brings a list gamed for composition scores.

My two cents:

I do have a problem with the whole "comp score figuring into your overrall tournament score", where as I like tournaments where they screen lists beforehand and kick ones back that are WOTT for changes. Some of the ones I've seen have you fill in your opponent's comp score AFTER you play them - you end up steamrolling them or have some lucky rolls, then they mark you down on comp. I forget which tournament it was (think Bayou Battle last year), but one guy had something like 98 or 99 out of 100 for battlepoints, had his army decently painted, and didn't win 1st overrall because several players (whom he massacred) marked him bad games for comp. Sportsmanship - he wasn't annoying or obnoxious or anything, but it came down to people thinking his army was WOTT because it beat them badly.

With the meta-gaming combinations in some of the newer codexes, I don't think your going to get away with open list tournaments that much anymore. If tournaments have a set guideline, such as no more than 9 power dice in your army, or no duplicate rare choices - so be it - thats their tournament rules. But submit them beforehand and let the tournament organizers sort out whats broken and whats a soft list. Use the swiss system and match up hard lists with hard lists - that way the people who play "soft" lists can still enjoy themselves against like people. Tournaments should be really be about battle points, painting and (maybe) sportsmanship, although I still think sportsmanship should be simply negative modifiers to your overrall score if your opponent's all say your a douche.

As well, painting and sportsmanship should be weighted accordingly in tournaments compared to battlepoints. I've seen some where BPs are 100, Sportsmanship and Painting are both 75, while comp is 25. Sure your army may be horrible on the competitive side, but boy if it's painted well and your a nice guy, you've got a chance at winning overrall. Doesn't seem right in my book.

Nurglitch wrote:
After all, if everyone at that tournament was playing bad lists, as sourclams and others assure us, then clearly it wasn't playing bad lists with good that gave DevianID the win, but being a better player.

Quite possible that he is a better player, and also quite possible that many people intentionally handicapped 'good' lists in order to score at a comp event. Certainly a good player with a bad list is going to beat not-as-good players who also have bad lists. And equally certain that a good player with a good list beats good players with bad lists -- this is exactly what you see in WHFB tournaments all the time.

I'm quite sure that DevianID could have built a more competitive list; he practically says as much himself. It's the idea of handicapping people in their competitive abilities and then holding a "competition" that competitive players, including myself, rail against.

That's one reason why I think that buying into pre-designed lists (i.e.: if you play Space Marines, you'll need to bring this particular list to the tournament to compete) is a better idea than simply abandoning the notion of composition altogether, because there's still people out there that put the list before the player.

Nobody has been able to show how composition actually does this. At their best, comp systems "penalize" more diverse codices (IG, Marines, Wolves) less than more homogenous ones (Necrons, Grey Knights, Tau). At their wosrt, comp systems reward ultracompetitive players willing to find a competitive list that also fits the comp restrictions while penalizing the non-ultracompetitive players who are simply bringing what they have, in which case comp fails as both a balancing factor and a handicap.

To take it a step further, and give players mirror-match type lists, which heuristics would say should be the "purest" form of competition since it takes all intercodex balance issues and list building out of the equation, simply weights the dice results more. If Player A rolls a 1 and Player B rolls a 6, Player B should have a distinct advantage even if Player A is 10% better. The sample size is simply too small to properly measure competitiveness between very closely-ranked players. Whomever the dice skew towards will have a greater advantage than "skill" would offset for.

It's the idea of handicapping people in their competitive abilities and then holding a "competition" that competitive players, including myself, rail against.

This happens all the time in real life. First you have to be honest and ask yourself was/is everybody really handicapped? You have said spam sucks so if comp encourages people not to spam then what have you really got? Some people got 1 for comp but still did well overall... IMO I would have liked to have seen an open comp system so everyone was on an even playing field. Anyways nothing is perfect and if you expect it to be that is just crazy. I'm not saying STFU and go away but try to be a little more realistic about it.

G

sourclams:

I understand that you might rail against restrictions beyond those of the ordinary game, such as composition restrictions. Something similar happened in the history of competitive swimming. Back in the day most people swam the breast-stroke, which is frankly one of the worst strokes in terms of efficiency and speed, but also has a pleasing element of grace and symmetry and requires a lot of skill to move fast ('fast' here understood as less than 2m/s...).

However, when people started innovating, such as the Hawaiians with their flutter kicking and alternating over-arm recovery, the breast-stroke simply wasn't competitive. But instead of advocating that breast-stroke was an offense to competitive swimmers, the powers that be decided to have two events: one for any kind of swimming (called "freestyle", but really front-crawl), and one for breast-stroke.

Similarly the style of swimming on one's back in a breast-stroke style was replaced by a more efficient alternating stroke called "back-crawl", but breast-stroke style back-crawl wasn't particularly graceful and so it was phased out in favour of back-crawl.

More recently some clever buggers (the Japanese I think) found an exploitable loop-hole in the breast-stroke rules to innovate a a symmetrical over-arm recovery and a dolphin-kick instead of the slower whip-kick of breast-stroke. That also got spun-off as Butterfly.

Even more recently it was discovered that a dolphin kick underwater was faster than a flutter-kick or even a crawl on the surface, but rather than being spun off into its own competition new restrictions were brought in to limit such underwater kicking to 15m rather than discarding established disciplines of backstroke, butterfly, and freestyle (especially in the sprint events, because lack of oxygen dealth with this strategy in anything over 200m).

Basically the sport of swimming diversified over a variety of stroke and distances until they were over-whelmed with the number of events (Michael Phelps being notorious for winning an overwhelming number of gold medals not because he was a great all-around athlete, but because his skills applied to a wide range of swimming events, or ~12 in total depending on how you count them), and then they started implementing essentially arbitrary rules, and especially to the more stylised events.

My point is that even established and highly competitive sports such as sprint swimming continue to produce the highest levels of competition (I topped out at 24 hours a week in training for the Canadian National level, which is pretty weak compared to American and Australian pools), and far beyond the level of competition achieved by Warhammer.

If people want to have a competition where they're all handi-capped in the same way, then why not? The problem you seem to have with composition is not that they institute arbitrary restrictions, but that the composition is not fairly applied to everyone (like it is in swimming), not as strictly enforced (as it is in swimming), and much harder to judge (as it is not in swimming). But you don't seem interested in the alternative, which would be adopting the preset list approach I've proposed.

If composition could be enforced so that players were on an objectively equal basis, at least in terms of equipment, wouldn't you be in favour of it? After all, Warhammer 40k already has composition rules in the form of points values and the force organization chart. After all, these restrictions don't limit people's competitive abilities, so why should any others unless they're not applied equally?

That's why I'm in favour of preset lists for Warhammer 40k tournaments, because I come from a sporting background where you picked your races (equivalent to lists since they combined size and style, or points-values and choice of units) from a set of established options.

And the fact is that in swimming, at least, that resulted in people being able to develop a style and a specialization: often people who were good at asymmetrial strokes weren't so good at symmetrical strokes, and specialized in particular distances with particular strokes since each event required a different set of skills despite all being swimming. Michael Phelps, to pick on him again, like all the best swimmings was excellent in all skills-sets (mainly thanks to his physical advantages, but there's been plenty of people with those advantages who haven't trained as well as he did and didn't have the mental skills or racing skills to eke out winning over just breaking records).

To recap: If a good player with a good list trumps a good player with a bad list, then isn't allowing that difference in the value or utility of different lists bad whether it's a open or freestyle competition as it is when it's a competition involving unfairly applied composition rules?

Unless you count list-building as a skill, in which case it's not a good player with a good list beating a good player with a bad list, it's a good player beating a bad player.

If additional composition rules cannot be made objectively, then the established composition rules are not objective. The only way to promote fair composition then is to have people choose to compete with a pre-balanced lists in pre-determined missions and terrain.

Nurglitch wrote:Unless you count list-building as a skill, in which case it's not a good player with a good list beating a good player with a bad list, it's a good player beating a bad player.

Personally, I think list-building is a skill. And I'm not just talking from a netlist standpoint. I'm talking about a building a list that fits your playstyle best and that you're comfortable with.

Gornall:

Yeah, but if we consider skill to be the range of a player's ability, their ability to win outside of their comfort zone, then building a list that you're comfortable with is beside the point.

I don't agree with the notion that there are playstyles that you should adapt your army to: I think that you need to adapt to the situation and the material at hand. I think that's the skill in wargaming and generalship, making do with what you have rather than tweaking conditions where you can work in your comfort zone.

By my notion the tournament lists would be known well before hand so that people can learn and adapt, and that the tournament lists themselves would be designed so that players would have to solve problems as well as avoid them through list-building.

Nurglitch: There are so many things wrong with the "preset list" model that it just won't ever happen. How many people want to attend an event where the TO tells them how they're supposed to play their codex? I mean what additional insight does that TO have that allows him to design a list from every single codex that is perfectly balanced against all the others? Also, why should I have to go out and buy models that I might possibly never use just so I can field the list the TO has specified? What if I want to run Biker Marines but that's not the approved list? What if my Libby doesn't have a SS modeled on it? The list goes on and on. I can't speak for anyone else, but any event that wants to go to that extreme is NOT getting my time or money.

If you want to get people outside their comfort zone, you do that with terrain and scenarios... not by telling them they can't play their army.

Gornall wrote:How many people want to attend an event where the TO tells them how they're supposed to play their codex? I mean what additional insight does that TO have that allows him to design a list from every single codex that is perfectly balanced against all the others?

Yup, pretty much. The first fallacy of "pre-set list building" is that the TO is able to create more balanced/more fun to play lists than the players are themselves capable of doing. The second fallacy is that people would actually want to play in this context, on a greater scale than a single one-off event every blue moon.

This happens all the time in real life. First you have to be honest and ask yourself was/is everybody really handicapped? You have said spam sucks so if comp encourages people not to spam then what have you really got? Some people got 1 for comp but still did well overall... IMO I would have liked to have seen an open comp system so everyone was on an even playing field. Anyways nothing is perfect and if you expect it to be that is just crazy. I'm not saying STFU and go away but try to be a little more realistic about it.

My viewpoint is that it's not going to be perfectly balanced anyways, so leave the system as pure and unaltered as possible (GW codices, GW rules, GW FAQs) and let the playerbase sort itself out. The opportunity for participation is perfectly level, (everybody can download an Internet list, everybody can play any army, or the same army, everybody is free within the constraints to the system).

Everybody knows the system isn't perfect, but throwing more arbitrary constraints into an imperfect system isn't going to improve anything. It's the difference between an unbalanced system and the freedom of choice versus an unbalanced system without the freedom of choice.

First off I hate comp...

BUT, If you add it to the battle points... why not also....

have comp for painting?

seriously! my necrons are at a disadvantage... look how play the models are... and my dark eldar too.. . they are soo old... i think they need extra points... (/sarcasm)

think about how absurd it sounds when you apply comp to painting....

how about to sportsman ship?

seriously... i am tfg... i don't stand a chance in sportsmanship... i need extra points (/sarcasm)

hmm doesn't work here too...

why penalize people there to play competitive games?

I absolutely agree with you. Having Comp and Sportsmanship scores during the Painting event makes just as much sense to me as during Playing.

I suggested comp for painting and sports in another thread (Maybe even this one)

You could always divide total points scored by a player in each category by the total points scored in other categories to look for trends. For example, divide paint by battle... If dividend is low then you the player doesn't put much effort into painting but is a good general while on the other hand if the dividend was high you know that said player tends to be a better painter than general. It might seem obvious but consider sportsmanship versus battlepoints. If on average the dividend is high then that could clearly indicate sportsmanship was a nonfactor while on the other hand if the dividend was low then this could clearly indicate that the better generals were taking hits on their sportsmanship. To me it's interesting to run these types of exercises to see if certain scoring categories follow trends.

G

I am still waiting for an answer to my question.

How can an arbitrary, subjective system be fair?

Gornall:

Except that no one is telling you how to play the army. You demonstrate skill at the game by using an army more successfully than other people, must like the first person past the line wins the 100m freestyle: No one tells you what style of swimming you have to do; how you get from the starting blocks to the finish line is your own business. But rather than letting people choose the distance they want to swim, everyone swims 100m and takes their comparative ability to finish this distance in the shortest time as determining the overall winner. Nobody is forcing you to compete and disgrace yourself with an army you can't handle.

But you ask how many people want to attend a competitive Warhammer event? Apparently nearly everyone here. I would like to attend one someday.

The neat thing about the system I have proposed is that it doesn't matter who writes the armies because everyone who plays Space Marines plays the same army, and if they want a different style of play, then they choose the army that they want to play that best matches that style. The organizer merely has to decide on something, and the players automatically select fair lists. If Space Marines are the only competitive army/list available, then the tournament will be entirely composed of the most competitive army.

The lists don't need to be set for anyone's idea of "fun" or "balance" as those are subjective, and I think it's established that a subjective judgment of value is what's wrong with composition rules. The lists merely have to be the same within armies, and the same points between armies.

But why should the tournament organizer waste brain cells writing lists? Throw the army design open to the public, and post lists and missions to be voted on (rated 1-10 and have the number of votes cast weighted by rating). Each voter or competitor gets to vote for which list they want to see representing each army, and which particular missions will be played at the tournament. Forums such as this one are almost ideal for vetting lists and missions. Likewise the missions and terrain for them will be decided by weighted proportional poll (A rating of 10 multiplies all votes by 10, for example) of the competitors.

It's interesting that the main objection to this proposal seems to be that designing an army that you find "fun" or "balanced" is what people want. After all, what people object to about composition is that it substitutes an army someone else wants to play for the army you want to play: it forces someone's opinion on others. I suppose it's natural that it carries over to one of the alternatives, of regimenting the army lists and missions so that people are all playing according to the same metric, since they didn't get to choose that metric.

But you can: it's just that your vote counts as much as anyone else's. After all, the goal is to win the tournament and demonstrate that you are objectively better at Warhammer for those five games.

After all, isn't that generalship? Your ability to make do with the logistics at hand? Would Rommel have been a better commander if he hadn't constantly been short of equipment and supplies? Would Guderian have won France if they had been prepared for him to circumvent the Maginot Line? Wargaming is often about these last two questions, but that's just testing scenarios. If you want to see how you measure up to Rommel and Guderian then you try to win under the same conditions. That goes for any competition: you have to compete on a level playing field.

I should note the difference between a level playing field and a "fair" or "balanced" playing field is that if a competition is fair or balanced, then it's a toss-up if anyone can even win. A level playing field just means you can tell who won, without any excuses for losing except that the opponent either couldn't or wouldn't win.

Something worth reiterating is the point that I'm proposing composing missions and terrain and army lists by regimenting them rather than trying to impose my idea of fair or balanced on the community. Instead, the community itself choose the lists that are available, and which it wants to play.

That the thing about 40k that many people don't notice: the players govern their own conduct. Players don't have to let an outside force conduct their games for them, they decide how it is played as much as that it is played. Players consent to playing by tournament rules because those common rules provide a standard by which everyone can be measured.

If the tournament doesn't include an army that you want to play, then don't play. I haven't played in a tournament since the Canadian GT at the end of 5th edition WFB (nick-named "Hero-Hammer"). I can play friendly games with my friends, so why pay money to play friendly games in a tournament?

I honestly don't know whether you're trolling or not, Nurglitch. You honestly think that the best way to have "competitive" 40k is by directly specifying what lists can be played? What you are proposing is basically reduce everything to a net list. What's worse, if the lists aren't "balanced" between the codicies, you will soon find that everyone will be playing whatever the "best" list is. Voting system or not, it's a horrible idea, IMO. I could be off-base in saying that, but I bet if you put a Dakka poll up, it'd come back that very few people would be interested in such a system.

So yeah, in a perfect world if everyone played the exact same lists, you'd find out who the "best player" is... but if I wanted that system, I'd just go play Chess.

You're whole argument of "Rommel wasn't supplied" doesn't hold any weight with me personally. Yeah, he was a great general, but he still lost... because he didn't have the right tools for the job. I think 40k should be the same way. You might be a great tactician, but if you can't put together a coherent army without someone holding your hand, are you really a good player? To me, being a good 40k player starts with making a good list and ends with using it well. Unless you do both of those, you're going to have a hard time winning against those who can.

Nurglitch wrote:Lists aside, how did you find the players? It's interesting reading the St. Valentine's Day Massacre battle reports to see the mistakes people make, the sort of mistakes that if raised in the Tactics forums earn the reproach "Oh, well, a smart player wouldn't do that..."

Maybe's it's just a matter of self-reporting. Maybe it's the bottle of rum DashofPepper apparently drank during the first three rounds, but DevianID certainly seemed to have a much better grasp of the game rules and nuances of play than DashofPepper did and I believe that skill is what wins the game rather than lists.

I'll not have you slandering my booze!!!!

The reason I didn't win had nothing to do with me drinking - it was because I faced two difficult lists that I was unfamiliar with and made incorrect decisions about how to react to them. Experience will fix that.

Gornal:

I just work from the assumption that you're not trolling, because the objection that my position is unpopular has nothing to do with whether it's the right way to conduct a competition.

The fact is that tournaments without a level playing field are bunk when it comes to competition.

But a level playing field doesn't mean making up for player's natural deficits. It simply means letting the best man win. So the point is not to hold players' hands by making sure that they have "balanced" or "fair" lists. The point is to make the competition decided on objective terms of skill.

that skill includes list selection. After all, I'm proposing players themselves chose their armies from a short list defined by one army per list. If they're dumb enough to handicap themselves by choosing the least competitive army/list, then they've shown a lack of skill in army selection. People already bring Necrons to tournaments.

So like you say, 40k starts with choosing the best list and using it well. My proposal would not change that.

Gornall wrote:Voting system or not, it's a horrible idea, IMO. I could be off-base in saying that, but I bet if you put a Dakka poll up, it'd come back that very few people would be interested in such a system.

Free Market versus highly regulated. At the level of individual participants, they're always going to vote for as little regulation as possible.

Nurglitch wrote:Gornal:

I just work from the assumption that you're not trolling, because the objection that my position is unpopular has nothing to do with whether it's the right way to conduct a competition.

The fact is that tournaments without a level playing field are bunk when it comes to competition.

But a level playing field doesn't mean making up for player's natural deficits. It simply means letting the best man win. So the point is not to hold players' hands by making sure that they have "balanced" or "fair" lists. The point is to make the competition decided on objective terms of skill.

that skill includes list selection. After all, I'm proposing players themselves chose their armies from a short list defined by one army per list. If they're dumb enough to handicap themselves by choosing the least competitive army/list, then they've shown a lack of skill in army selection. People already bring Necrons to tournaments.

So like you say, 40k starts with choosing the best list and using it well. My proposal would not change that.

One list to rule them all....

I don't understand your argument. If you say that list selection is a skill that should be measured in a competition, then how does reducing the choice of lists improve the level of competition? Wouldn't the better measure of that skill be to let the players choose and design whatever legal army list they want, rather than a few preselected ones? If you aren't going to balance all the armies against each other, then you're still allowing imbalances in the armies, so your format doesn't change anything. Why go to all that trouble if you still have the same problems as an open format tournament?

Gornal:

I suppose that if we could say that 2000pts of Imperial Guard was equal to any other 2000pts of Imperial Guard, let alone 2000pts of Space Marines, then clearly it would be a better measure of skill to let players choose whatever 2000pts they wanted.

But we can't. Balance and fairness are subjective concepts that have no place in legitimate competition, so my proposal doesn't bother to address them.

More to the point, if picking an army is a skill, then any imbalance caused by picking the right army is good, because it helps you win. We don't want a competition that is so balanced and fair that anyone can win: we want a competition that favours skill over luck.

So instead of trying to satisfy everyone's own personal idea of balance and fairness, what we can do is give players a level playing field: the same set of options; apples to apples.

This improves the level of competition by giving us an objective standard by which to judge the level of competition. In other words, it improves the level of competition by giving us levels of competition...

Before you can have a measure of skill, you need a measure. That means you have to homogenize the conditions you are not measuring.

So no, you would not have the same problems as an open format tournament. Balance and fairness is a non-issue: you still get to choose the best army available, and it's your ability to play the game that gets you to the winner's table.


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sourclams:

All markets are regulated. Fortunately not all regulation is the same, and I can assure you that there are more competitive swimmers in the world than there are GW fans: the fact is that some regulation promotes competition, and part of that is standardizing competition so everyone is playing the same game by the same rules.

Nurglitch wrote:Gornall:
I suppose that if we could say that 2000pts of Imperial Guard was equal to any other 2000pts of Imperial Guard, let alone 2000pts of Space Marines, then clearly it would be a better measure of skill to let players choose whatever 2000pts they wanted.

But we can't. Balance and fairness are subjective concepts that have no place in legitimate competition, so my proposal doesn't bother to address them.

You lost me on this one... You say that because IG and Marines aren't balanced, then it's not a good judge of skill to allow people to design their own armies. You then go on to say that balance and fairness do not belong in a legitimate competition... and that your proposal doesn't address them. Exactly what does your proposal attempt to address then?

Nurglitch wrote:
More to the point, if picking an army is a skill, then any imbalance caused by picking the right army is good, because it helps you win. We don't want a competition that is so balanced and fair that anyone can win: we want a competition that favours skill over luck.

I agree that picking an army is a skill. That's why I think allowing everyone to make their own army is better than your solution.

Nurglitch wrote:
So instead of trying to satisfy everyone's own personal idea of balance and fairness, what we can do is give players a level playing field: the same set of options; apples to apples.

You give everyone the same army lists... but those lists are not necessarily balanced between them, so some lists are inherently better than others. Aka not apples to apples. You argue that this is okay because it also measures the skill of the player in picking the best army list. How is that different than an open format (no comp)? You still have power lists and non-power lists. You've just defined them rather than letting the players develop them at the individual level.

Nurglitch wrote:
This improves the level of competition by giving us an objective standard by which to judge the level of competition. In other words, it improves the level of competition by giving us levels of competition...

Before you can have a measure of skill, you need a measure. That means you have to homogenize the conditions you are not measuring.

What are you homogenizing? If you were to successfully homogenize the armies (where all are balanced) than you've eliminated list selection/creation as a skill and are only measuring the ability to play the game. If you can't balance the armies, then all you've done is reduced the available armies and had no real effect on "leveling" the playing field... you've just changed the playing field for no reason.

Nurglitch wrote:
So no, you would not have the same problems as an open format tournament. Balance and fairness is a non-issue: you still get to choose the best army available, and it's your ability to play the game that gets you to the winner's table.

How is that different than an open format? Allow people to make whatever lists they want and play them against each other. Then you are measuring both tactical skill and the ability to choose/construct good armies.... without all the overhead and loss of variety your format would cause.

Gornal:

I guess if you don't get it, then nothing else I can do will explain it to you. I'm sorry to have failed you.

Nurglitch wrote:Gornal:

I guess if you don't get it, then nothing else I can do will explain it to you. I'm sorry to have failed you.

Guess not. The only thing I can think of is that your idea would allow you to compare multiple tournaments against one another and eliminate the "Oh it looks like everyone there were playing crappy lists." Your proposal would at least take care of that. What it does NOT do is provide a better measure of skill at the individual tournament level. It eliminates choice and pigeonholes people into predictable armies. If you know the approved tournament lists, its a simple matter to practice against only those lists. How is that a better measure of skill than walking into a tournament and not knowing what you will face? You might have been expecting full Mech IG but instead run into foot-slogging Eldar...

FYI: It's GornaLL.

Throwing my opinion out to the wolves: as a youngun I played a min/maxed blood angel list (back in the good old days of sweeping advance and voluntary death company) and wiped the floor at most tourneys I went to... At the time it was the one trick that beat all others... But I always got poor composition which would regularly drop me to thirdish. Even at the time I was ok with that. Now I play primarily fantasy, which I feel requires you to distribute the 'heavy lifting' more evenly throughout yur army. However the idea of composition is skewed a bit more than 40k... This is because of the variety of unit types (infantry, cavalry, monster, flyer, warmachine, skirmisher ...etc) and addition of a potentially powerful magic phase. It is easy to simplify the game(s) into an abstract of paper-rock-scissors, but in reality you have 9-10 variables, and many units/lists that outperform all but one or two of those. So you are given a choice: beat the powergamers at their own game or be a losing statistic.
Another tidbit to throw away: most spam/minmax/unrealistic armies are some gamers twisted attempt at fluff... "my army fluff is an all tz demon army" or "my fluff is that a vampire raised a dragon, enslaved some bloodknights and a Varg, then had a lot of ghouls flock to him"

I feel that the new comp score is made up of two things inherent in the current 40k game.

Scoring units.

Kill points.

As long as your tournament has some mission that has either one of those two or both then comp is pretty much included by default in a way.

Kiwidru wrote:
Another tidbit to throw away: most spam/minmax/unrealistic armies

I find (at least in 40k) that spam armies are more realistic. Having lots of the same equipment makes logisitcs a lot easier, and makes the force look like an army instead of a hodge-podge of units.

And having nothing but the best possible units makes life easier too. Of course in real life (and in compelling fiction) most of the time commanders don't have exactly what they want, and make do with what they have.

Mannahnin wrote:And having nothing but the best possible units makes life easier too. Of course in real life (and in compelling fiction) most of the time commanders don't have exactly what they want, and make do with what they have.

True. But in real life/fiction, you don't expect your opponent to take it easy on you if you don't have the stuff you want, but he does.

Nope. That may be part of why I play war games, as opposed to enlisting in an actual army. That whole "fun" thing.

Mannahnin wrote:Nope. That may be part of why I play war games, as opposed to enlisting in an actual army. That whole "fun" thing.

That's not allowed in tournaments, don't you know?

In all seriousness, I think Comp is a nice idea, but I have yet to see any sort of good implementation of it. I just think that most of the time it causes more issues than it really solves.

And here I am, still waiting for an answer from the 'pro-comp' folks for the answer to my question...

Nurglitch wrote:Gornal:

I guess if you don't get it, then nothing else I can do will explain it to you. I'm sorry to have failed you.

Don't you see that all of your swimming examples have no relevance to what the discussion is? You keep talking about HOW people chose to swim, and innovate. That would be more akin to making a rule such as 'Only a max of one scoring unit can be in a Valkyrie because it is too easy to do a last minute objective grab'.

On the flip side, a real comparison of composition scoring to swimming would be to give the shortest swimmer a time advantage because he will tend to not be able to produce the best time due to his height.

People who build lists want to be rewarded for how optimized and brutally powerful they are, ergo no composition. People who build armies want to be rewarded for how coherent they are, by comp score rewards to compensate for the efficiency they forfieted in the name of unifying theme. Those that want to climb to the top of the faux wargaming food chain, against those that would rather enjoy the spectical. On and on, so it goes.

Kiwidru wrote:People who build lists want to be rewarded for how optimized and brutally powerful they are, ergo no composition. People who build armies want to be rewarded for how coherent they are, by comp score rewards to compensate for the efficiency they forfieted in the name of unifying theme. Those that want to climb to the top of the faux wargaming food chain, against those that would rather enjoy the spectical. On and on, so it goes.

1) Who gets to define what a 'unifying theme' is? You?

2) The biggest problem with setting up composition is that it will make a new codex or list overpowered, thus undoing the original intent of the comp (e.g. heavily favouring troops will catapault Orks to the top codex).

Kiwidru wrote:People who build lists want to be rewarded for how optimized and brutally powerful they are, ergo no composition. People who build armies want to be rewarded for how coherent they are, by comp score rewards to compensate for the efficiency they forfieted in the name of unifying theme. Those that want to climb to the top of the faux wargaming food chain, against those that would rather enjoy the spectical. On and on, so it goes.

Two problems with your statement:

1. Oftentimes there are no criteria, or the criteria are at the mercy of a single person's judgment call. In such cases Pedro Kantor and Sternguard squads, while a fully comprehensive and coherent army based on background material, can be docked for being cheesey-superpowered.

2. Specific pre-set criteria allow the 'ueber comp-hating powergamers' to simply maximize their army within the constraints of the event. The casual player shows up with his army of 3 Tactical Squads and 4 attack bikes (which are the only models that he has) and gets nailed on Comp because he has duplicates of FA choices and only one type of identically-equipped Troops in his list.

In both cases, Comp utterly fails in its intended purpose. In the former, due to lack of structure, and in the latter, due to the non-competitive player that comp is supposed to "protect" not being able to adapt to the comp restrictions due either to lack of models or unwillingness to 'game' this aspect of the system.

If you really want to find out who's the best player, have a tournament where everybody has to use exactly the same army. Then you'll find out who's the best player. Anything else introduces too many random variables/strengths/weaknesses to make a fair comparison.


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If you want to reduce the impact of uber killy elite units on a tournament, make the tournament a campaign. Have replacements for casualties be lots slower for things that are not 'troops' or 'core', and no replacements for anything that is named/unique. That will cause players to be more conservative with their forces, just like real commanders in a campaign have to be. Tne you'll see. after a couple games, whether players are able to cope with 'you got what you got' as forces like real commanders do.

Actually in my experience, Campaign-style play tends to reward the winners, who then go on to keep on winning.

For example, in a 2k campaign scenario Ueber person plays Casual person. Ueber person loses 400 pts worth, Casual person loses 1300 pts worth and the match. "Reinforcements" or whatever the special reward is pour in, and now Ueber person has 1800 pts against Casual person's 900 points....

If you really want to find out who's the best player, have a tournament where everybody has to use exactly the same army. Then you'll find out who's the best player. Anything else introduces too many random variables/strengths/weaknesses to make a fair comparison.

Part of the game is building an capable army. All players have access to the same GW resources and army books. It is not necessary to require everyone to have the same army in order to keep the competition fair--free access already accomplishes this.

Sure, but anybody can build a capable army. Good players are like good generals, in that they work with the resources that they have, not the resources that they wish they had.

I wish people would stop writing about any military as if they actually understood it.

The point is that a general would bring with them what is most synergistic, not random volunteers just because they are available.

You have failed to have this make any sense with random swimming analogies and now by likening yourself to a military officer based on your skill at playing plastic men. What is next? Bobsledding? Professional hopscotchers?

Fearspect:

My point has been simply about competition: if you want a competition that says anything about skill, then you need a level playing field. That's how it's done in swimming, that's how it's done in any competitive sport or endeavor.

If you want to be judged on skill, then you play the same game. It's as simple as that.

I suspect that's too complicated for you though.

What is the level playing field of swimming? The weight categories? Must be age brackets?

I don't want to be judged on your strange definition of skill. I want to show that I am the best at taking in a complex set of variables and can produce top results. Giving less choices is like playing on easymode through life.

Fearspect:

The level playing field in swimming is the event. In the 200m Freestyle, for example, everyone starts when the gun goes off, and the first person to cover 200m wins. Everyone swims the same distance in the same pool, using the same stroke.

While you may find this "definition" of skill to be strange, it's how things work in competitive sports.

If you want to show that you're the best at taking a complex set of variables and producing the best results, then you're going to need to do it on a level playing field: same board, same armies, same missions.

In other words, the same complex set of variables.

I see what you're saying. We should ban all the codices other than the newest one, and remove all the choices for each FOC slot but one.

Better yet, we should show up with the TO's only approved list and play with that.

Wait... that's chess.

Sure, but anybody can build a capable army.

You don't attend many tournaments, do you?

That's not a dig at you by any means, but most of the armies people bring for competitive play are actually pretty terrible. That's find in and of itself, but when you talk to them they actually think that the lists are competitive. Look at Warseer, for example, and the thousands of topics where people try to justify why their god-awful lists are supposedly dominating.

Indeed. Everyone (mostly in the pro-comp camp) says it's "easy" to build good lists, but when you see the average forumite's idea of a "good list"...it doesn't really look like it.

Another reason swimming is a horrible example... the super suits.

The last few months' worth of posts in the Tactics forum would say that the average forumite has no clue what is and isn't competitive.

On the other hand, I appreciate what the vocal majority are doing for my personal benefit. When somebody asks 'Is X Any Good?' and all the bandwagoners pile on with their banalities surrounding synergy and tactics and dynamic ueber player skill and convince somebody that 'X' is actually good, I only stand to profit when I'm in a tournament fighting a bunch of lists with Possessed, Ogryn, and Striking Scorpions.


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Gornall wrote:Another reason swimming is a horrible example... the super suits.

Every sports analogy is going to fall horribly short because they're all standardized to such a great extent. A better real-world/40k comparison would be small-business startup in highly competitve markets where success is based not only on personal ability, but also startup capital, business model, and ability to harness volatility.

Danny Internets & Sidstyler:

Alternately you can go to our own Army List forum or Battle Report forum, or Tactics forum and read the advice and army lists of actual tournament winners. Take Chaos Space Marines, for example. The general consensus seems to be that the only competitive build is Dual-Lash, and only dissenters like me suggest otherwise. But it's not a secret that it's popularly considered the only competitive build, and it's not a secret. Any idiot can copy-paste it off the forums, paint it up, and apparently win with ease.

Fearspect:

No, that's not what I'm saying, although I do advocate symmetrical armies for people learning the game. Two identical Imperial Guard armies are the best learning tool for new players, in my opinion. If you think that's Chess, then there's this game you should try (it's called Warhammer 40k!).

What I am saying is that real competition requires a level playing field.

I brought up the 200m Freestyle for a reason: it's the swimming equivalent to a comp-less tournament. All that matters is that the race course is the same. How you cover those 200m is your own business. However, if you want to compete in the 200m Freestyle the fact of the matter is that you'll default to front-crawl as your stroke of choice.

This is just like what happens in a tournament with no composition scores, wherein players choose to homogenize their armies for the most competitive builds.

Nurglitch wrote:

Alternately you can go to our own Army List forum or Battle Report forum, or Tactics forum and read the advice and army lists of actual tournament winners. Take Chaos Space Marines, for example. The general consensus seems to be that the only competitive build is Dual-Lash, and only dissenters like me suggest otherwise. But it's not a secret that it's popularly considered the only competitive build, and it's not a secret. Any idiot can copy-paste it off the forums, paint it up, and apparently win with ease.

No, many suggest that Chaos Space Marines actually aren't competitive relative to the 'new' codices, but largely agree that the old Lash/PM/Oblit/Termicide list is certainly on the upper edge of competitiveness that the Chaos dex is capable of. It's hard as hell to win with Lash-Oblits if you're playing against a modern mech list.

"Dissenters like you" actually seem to advise people to take weird amalgamations including some of the worst units in the codex by far (possessed, 1k Sons) and suggest that it's easily as/more competitive than Lash+Oblits+Rhino Rush. That's where all the eye-rolling appears.

I agree that new players should focus on a very comp style of list building (heavy troops) in order to better develop their skills. I also happen to believe that a new player has no business entering a tournament and certainly should not be rewarded for lack of preparation/knowledge/skill.

Having the three standard missions combined with the FOC is all the comp that's needed.

Alternately you can go to our own Army List forum or Battle Report forum, or Tactics forum and read the advice and army lists of actual tournament winners. Take Chaos Space Marines, for example. The general consensus seems to be that the only competitive build is Dual-Lash, and only dissenters like me suggest otherwise. But it's not a secret that it's popularly considered the only competitive build, and it's not a secret. Any idiot can copy-paste it off the forums, paint it up, and apparently win with ease.

First of all, if you're referring to GT's then you're not talking about tournaments but hobby competitions. I don't really care what the guy who scored 5th but won overall took in his list. I also don't care about the guy who scored 1st but massacred nothing but Necrons, Dark Angels, and Thousand Suns to get there.

If anyone can copy paste an army list from the forums and win then why aren't people doing this? I see lots of people who take crap because they think it's good, not because they choose to dissent. Furthermoe, being able to differentiate between crap and non-crap on the internet is not a skill everyone has.

Danny Internets:

Yes, Grand Tournaments are currently arranged as hobby competitions. Part of the notion of having pre-set armies is so that the ranking reflect player skill, rather than whether they got lucky with the opposing army lists, board set-up, or missions. Remember I'm also advocating regimenting the board set-up and missions as well. After all, I agree with you: why should we care about someone's 1st place finish if they're not actually any good at the game?

Speaking to copy-pasting army lists from the forums, I hope you are aware that people taking what you consider crap because they think it's good is choosing to dissent from your opinion. That's just it: people have their own opinions about what's good, and some people dissent from the popular opinion of what's good.

Though from the way you phrase it, I take it you're one of the elect whose opinion of what is "crap" and "non-crap" is the also the truth, and result of your incredible list-building skills.