Hey fellas,

So I was thinking, with all the tournaments that we already have on the west coast, and with more sprouting up, what do you guys think about organizing a California or West Coast Cup? Maybe even a Western States Cup or something?

Essentially, we would tally up tournament wins on a point scale and at the end of the year, whoever has the most points wins the title of best player on the west coast (or whatever region we define it as).

It would be cool to have an actual cup/trophy that the winner sent to the next winner every year. They could display it at their store for the year while they had it. But really, we could even do it as just a bragging rights thing with an E-Trophy.

Anyway, I thought it would be pretty cool and was wondering what others thought. All we would really need to do would be to come up with a scoring system as to how to rate tournaments on a points scale and then make a simple website to track the points (or even do it here on Dakka).

So, what do you guys think? I think it is a cool idea and would add a little bit of prestige to winning the most tournaments on the West Coast.

I am not certain how I could help, but it sounds like fun to me.

It'd be pretty easy to do really, just assign a points value for placement in each tournament, keep track of the points, then award a trophy/cup to the winner at the end of the year. I think it's be cool to be able to have the cup/trophy up on display at your FLGS. Give a sense of pride to the store and your game club!

It's nice to have regional stuff like that... I know around here they have a club rivalry anually (the NEWCC- Northeast Warhammer Club Championship). I was actually at mikhaila's store where they held it this year over the weekend, it looked like a great time . Might have to get in on it next year!

Here's a link to a thread I found about it, I'm sure mikhaila/scooter/someone else involved could fill people in more.

http://icgc.users-board.net/tournaments-f11/newcc-t784.htm

Anyway, just thinking out loud, obviously this has to do with clubs and not individuals, and is a single event (but has carryover from the previous year... I think basically the winning club gets to hold the next year's event at their "home" store?) rather than counting all of your results from that year. But maybe something from it will give you an idea

Thanks for the input. Yeah, something like that but instead of for a team, for an individual who was the best player at the most tournaments. It also encourages people to go to multiple events so that they can grab the prize.

Reecius I've been looking for ways to expand on our ELO tracking. I'm already doing it at our site for our tourneys. Maybe we could look into ways to increase the tracking. Kinda like a Rankings HQ but only for tourneys without soft scores.

Ideally we expand the Sprue Posse system and run those tourneys elsewhere and track accordingly but I'm open to other ideas if they are solid enough.

Let me know if you want to discuss further.

Yeah, that sounds great!

Are there enough no-soft score tournaments on the west coast to build this up?


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Or, we could go nation-wide, but I think it is easier for people to go for the cup if it is a regional thing, that way they don't have to travel far to stay competitive.

Also, you can use just the Battle scores in all tournaments. That way all tournaments played in will be usable and those tournaments can still have soft scores.

You should also think about minimum requirements. Examples: Minimum 50 player tournament must be 5 games, etc…

Sounds like fun so far.

Doc

Also, you can use just the Battle scores in all tournaments. That way all tournaments played in will be usable and those tournaments can still have soft scores.

You should also think about minimum requirements. Examples: Minimum 50 player tournament must be 5 games, etc…

Sounds like fun so far.

Doc

Also, you can use just the Battle scores in all tournaments. That way all tournaments played in will be usable and those tournaments can still have soft scores.

You should also think about minimum requirements. Examples: Minimum 50 player tournament must be 5 games, etc…

Sounds like fun so far.

Doc

I think Doc likes this idea

But seriously I'm a fan of it. It'd be nice for bragging rights and though it would contribute to me playing the same army all year instead of switching to a silly one once I've achieved my golden ticket like I did this year

Hmmm.... 3 post's...OK, Sorry for the spam, don't know how I did that but sorry anyway.

Now if I could just get my 3 winning lotto tickets..

Reecius wrote:Yeah, that sounds great!

Are there enough no-soft score tournaments on the west coast to build this up?


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Or, we could go nation-wide, but I think it is easier for people to go for the cup if it is a regional thing, that way they don't have to travel far to stay competitive.

I'm not sure how many soft score free tourney circuits exist. Maybe the best thing to do is start one up?

If you're interesting in starting something up locally I think that's the easiest thing to do.

Essentially I'd recommend the following:

1) Locate a store near you that is interested in running RTT's or switching over to our format.
2) Help facilitate them using our system.

That doesn't mean you need to TO them but you need to "walk it in" and see if they are interested and capable of running them in that way.

3) If someone set's up a tourney like this I'll do the following:

a) Promote it on my blog
b) Post results as they are presented to me
c) Post pictures from the events
d) Track all ELO scores

I don't want just anyone doing this because I need someone to vet the scores and results I'm getting are legitimate. It's a lot of lift on the other side so I realize it's much easier said than done. But that's the best way I can support without being there (and I can't be there I'm running my own setup down here).

However if someone does want to do this at their FLGS it would be a great start, I just need to make sure I know who I'm talking to.

I know that's not exactly what you had in mind but if you're interested in doing something like this I think it could be a cool statewide setup that could really generate some cool results.

I meant locally relatively. As in, the west coast, not all of the USA and Canada.

I think weighting the results based on size of the tournament would be a good idea, too. How exactly that would be done will take a little thought.

I think if we just build it on the existing tournament infrastructure that would be easiest. I mean already we have:

SoCal Slaughter
SoCal Smackdown
Broadside Bash
Gathering in the desert (it's in AZ, but close)
Da Grand WAGGH!
The Bay Area Open (the GT we're organizing up here)
And a few in Seattle

Are there any in Oregon? I would think Portland would have one?

Doc Dragon has a good idea. Just take the Battle Points from each tournament, that eliminates soft scores, and add them up. We would need some way to account for larger and smaller tournaments.

But, at year's end, we see who racked up the most points, or take the best of 3 or 5 tournament results and announce the winner and the runners up.

I think it would be pretty easy and cool.

I say sticking it at 3 best performances is generally for the best. At 5 your requiring people to travel more than a fair distance and giving an insanse advantage to those of us in here in SoCal who can make 3-4 locally and then just head up once to another. We'll max out much, much faster which isn't cool. I like the pure BP's aspect. I'd say only count tournies with 40+ players. Things would need to worked out but I like the idea.

40 may be a bit high, a lot of tournaments only draw 30.

I'll work on some numbers but I think a 30 player minimum would suffice as RTT's don't draw that many. 5 games, 30 players, top 3 performances of the year. That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Will there be a list of all the tournies that will be counted towards this "e-cup" ?

Yeah, for sure. We could shoot for an inaugural 2011 season. In the meantime, we can hammer out the details and get the information about it out there into the net community.

Just make sure to hit up the TO's. I recommend coming up with a flyer/website/exerp so that the TO's can also promote it and really feel involved. I don't know how hard a site like RankingsHQ but just for the west coast would be but it could be very cool. I just dont' know anything about building website that aren't blogs

It doesn't need to be anything fancy, we can use a blog at first and if it catches on we'll get more into it.

That is a good idea to make like an e-flier or something to help tournaments promote themselves. They can say, this is a golden ticket event, X amount of money in prize support and it is a qualifier for the West Coast Cup or something. It might help to drive up attendance.

I think a blog would be fine for starters.

Lovely idea. It would be great to contest with folks whom one is likely to have met frequently.

Really hoping that you take doc's suggestion to include tourneys with soft scores, but only count their battle points scores.

Looking forward to seeing where this goes. Please let us all know if there's anything that volunteers can assist with.

I think the BP's only of the softer events should totally be included. As long as they make the bare minimum for number of attendees and rounds I think this is a great idea assuming the TO's would want to be involved. It could be a lot of fun and a silly little thing.

Yes, the BP for soft score events ia a great idea as it eliminates the subjective variability of those events but doesn't penalize people for attending them.

@Savnock
Yes exactly! By keeping it relatively local, it is more fun as the bragging rights mean something! It is your friends and rivals you are competing against and as such, it is cool to earn the title. I will start contacting some TO's to see if they would like to be included in this idea.

Is this just going to be 40K or are y'all also going to track Fantasy tournaments?

I would also consider limiting the number of events used in the score...otherwise it boils down to who can buy a trophy by going to alot of events. Who is geographically positioned to easilly attend numerous events with minimal travel/hotel/food expenses.
Something along the lines of best scores from 2 GT events, 3 RTTs, and 1 "wild card" event; an out of area tourny (Adepticon, Games Day, etc) or a one-off event like the 'Games-I-Play Double Trouble), or an extra GT/RTT score.

You could also make it a pay-to-play system where each participant buys in for a nominal fee (like $5). The proceeds go towards the purchase of the trophy. In addition a smaller "keeper trophy" could be presented year to year so the past winners get to keep some bling on their shelf at home (the same way the World series/Super Bowl Trophy is presented to the Team, but the individual players also get a ring to keep).

Yeah, we will definitely limit the amount of events that are included. I think 3 is a nice number.

@Doc
We should do Fantasy, too. I just don't follow Fantasy at all these days. I suppose it could be easy enough to do.

Maybe the few larger tournaments in Vegas could be involved as well? I think there is only Neoncon and Ironman but that adds a few more larger events to the pool. If you're going to AZ you gotta stop off in Vegas too! Cool idea, looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Yeah, Vegas isn't too far, I know a lot of us go out there for events. Plus that allows you guys who come out here for events to get in on the fun too.

I will start making a website this weekend. Er wait, it's Halloween, I will make a site next week and see what you guys think.

This is a cool idea. I would include Western USA...so like AZ, NV, CO and the like.

It would be nice to make this an actual tournament. Take like the top 16 in 40k and WFB and do a 1 day tournament somewhere.

Hey, that's not a bad idea! I wonder how many people would be willing to travel for something like that?

Or better yet, we could open it up to all the USA. As we are just going to count battle points maybe you should give it a name, something hard and like a tought guy....

No, really, I would think you should keep it just California. We are a big enough state as it is with-out adding more area to travel in.

Of course I don't have any say in this, just an outsider's 2 cents.

Enjoy!

California is definitely big enough, but Arizona and Nevada are close enough that for some it is easier to go to Vegas or such than it is to go to NorCal.

Maybe the southwest cup? I think that is a pretty reasonable geographic area.

Put it in Vegas, and I'd highly doubt you'll have any issue...

Yeah, no kidding! Who needs an excuse to go to Vegas?

I'd keep it to the western states...honestly there is enough that you could likely limit it to the southwest and still fill it.

Make it invitational with the rankings so the top 16 in each system get invites...if some cannot make it, then the invites drop down to the next couple of spots.

This could then be a lead into more of a national cup type of thing, but if you keep it regional for now, it will be much easier to organize.

Yeah true, we could eventually have regional cups with a battle for the National Cup.

That is all very far out in the future, of course, but it is a real possibility.

Reecius wrote:I meant locally relatively. As in, the west coast, not all of the USA and Canada.

I think weighting the results based on size of the tournament would be a good idea, too. How exactly that would be done will take a little thought.

I think if we just build it on the existing tournament infrastructure that would be easiest. I mean already we have:

SoCal Slaughter
SoCal Smackdown
Broadside Bash
Gathering in the desert (it's in AZ, but close)
Da Grand WAGGH!
The Bay Area Open (the GT we're organizing up here)
And a few in Seattle

Are there any in Oregon? I would think Portland would have one?

Doc Dragon has a good idea. Just take the Battle Points from each tournament, that eliminates soft scores, and add them up. We would need some way to account for larger and smaller tournaments.

But, at year's end, we see who racked up the most points, or take the best of 3 or 5 tournament results and announce the winner and the runners up.

I think it would be pretty easy and cool.

TOURNAMENTS!?! SEATTLE!?!? WHERE?!?!

Its all GW clubs up her, so if there is a yearly tournament that contributes to this west coast thing in Seattle sign me up!

Ah, I heard there were a few up that way. That is too bad, if not. I have a buddy from Seattle, I will contact him and see what he knows about the tournament scene up there.

Reecius wrote:Ah, I heard there were a few up that way. That is too bad, if not. I have a buddy from Seattle, I will contact him and see what he knows about the tournament scene up there.

*Psst* I will save you the trouble. It dosent exists. The first one IN MONTHS is this Saturday, and its 1750 at a local GW.

Ah, that stinks. Maybe you guys should look into organizing one?

For Seattle there's TSHFT. They do two a year (usually mid march and labor day weekend for 40k, dunno when their fanatasy ones are held). It sounds like it has as many people as some of the socal events and its growing. That is about it beyond the sketchy ConQuest stuff.

Spokane Washington hosts SpoCon which has a circuit qualifying 40k and fantasy tournament. There were 28 attendees this year (4-6 no shows) on the 40k side. I am hoping to grow this number for 2011.

Not much in Oregon as far as GT style events. There's OFCC but its invitational and club based. So a different animal all together.

There's a couple of events in Vancouver Canada also (Astronomi-con, Gotta-Con and some others), but that may be out of scope for this type of thing.

Thing is unlike the California tournaments there's not a ton of travel between Washington and Cali for 40k. Maybe a handfull if that? Would love to see a bit more of that going on though!

Yeah that is true, I only know a few guys who go up to Seattle for events. I have never been up that way and would love to go check it out. My buddy Alex is from Seattle and he said the 40K scene there is pretty good.

I can't imagine it costs much to fly up to Seattle, plus it's a cool city, I'd like to check it out.

I went to Seattle the last couple years, but Mondo Vega pretty much killed it for our group. Shame too, because I enjoyed that con and got to get drunk with some local relatives and friends.

As for the idea of a cup, I am all for it. I think most of the TOs would support it, but I think you should limit it to a drivable area. My suggestion would be to include AZ, CA, and NV and call it the "Desert Cup" or some such. The major gaming groups from those areas would probably all be willing to converge in one area. I know we looked at the idea of having a GT in one of the cheaper side towns near Vegas, so its definately feasable there.

The only thing I would want to see is a minimum paint standard being adhered to and the organizers taking scenarios from the qualifying events in equal amounts, so that everyone is on equal footing.


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ps- This sort of thing has been talked about on a limited basis in the background on the Fantasy side, but it never really got past the idea stage.

Phazael wrote:
As for the idea of a cup, I am all for it. I think most of the TOs would support it, but I think you should limit it to a drivable area. My suggestion would be to include AZ, CA, and NV and call it the "Desert Cup" or some such. The major gaming groups from those areas would probably all be willing to converge in one area. I know we looked at the idea of having a GT in one of the cheaper side towns near Vegas, so its definately feasable there.

Like San Diego, LA/OC/Riverside, over to Vegas and Phoenix...that sort of area. That still represents LOTs of gamers and close to a dozen tournaments. Should be plenty to make a "masters" sort of tournament.

That is a good idea, especially to begin with. If it catches on, we could easily expand it.

They do the masters in Australia, I will research their structure a bit to see how they run it.

I think we have enough tournaments now that it would be pretty easy to set it all up.

Seriously Happy Grunt, TSHFT has been kicking butt for years now in Seattle, and it is one of the best run tournaments I've been to.

I think a Southwest cup would be pretty cool. Though I think it should be set up with some Celeb's getting auto invites. I mean, what is a Championship without Doc Dragon, Hulksmash, or Touradj?

Maybe set it up that 4 or 5 spots can be selected for "lifetime achievment." But that is just me.

asugradinwa wrote:I think it should be set up with some Celeb's getting auto invites. I mean, what is a Championship without Doc Dragon, Hulksmash, or Touradj?

Maybe set it up that 4 or 5 spots can be selected for "lifetime achievment." But that is just me.

Hell no...make them bitches work for their supper!

All joking aside, that would be a terrible idea...simply because it would discourage some people and promote at least some feeling of favoritism.

For full disclosure...I am not interested in, nor would I participate as a player. I am looking at this purely from an organizational standpoint. I would certainly be willing to assist in any way that I can from a TO perspective. As much as I am a hobbiest first and foremost, I do love the idea of a west coast regional championship...in this case, I am in favor of a more battle oriented type of game.

I'll work my way in at some point. No freebies for me.

Yeah I agree with Captkurt on this one. That is a good idea, asurgardinwa and the input is appreciated but I think it would undermine the concept to play favorites. Hulks is my buddy and I think like DocDragon, he would only want to go if he earned his spot. I don't know Touradj well but from the few times we have met, I think he would say the same thing.

Well seeing how luck can be a factor I'd think extending invitations to the top 3 finishers in each event would be good. That way if dice crap out on someone or the judges forget to add paint scores to Best Overall (yes, I'm still a little sore about that) they'll still get an invite.

Reecius, this sounds like a great idea to me. I would be willing to help out, and promote it using Capture and Control. PM and let me know if you need/want help.

Awesome, thanks brotha! I need to get the website going but I have been buy with work. I will contact you though to get some ideas/input.

Definitely a neat idea. We ( Games i Play ) run a doubles series all around SoCal. In our first season we had 6 events, and this year we're up to 7. We have also run a single player event ("No Quarter!" back in August) and intend to do more of those.

I suppose it does get a little tricky with the Double Trouble events though - the size of the tournament varies quite a bit from location to location, and of course it's a doubles event whereas you're talking about an individual award. Still worth thinking about of course

Reece,

The way to do it is *definitely* to run a separate 'masters' event. You don't want to just tally up points for the year from each event to award some 'winner' of the west coast because no matter how you tweak the system you never know if the best guy from one store is really better than the guy from another score because you ulimately don't know what the competition is like in each area.

Besides, just crowning someone the 'west coast champ' without them actually playing in a final tournie to decide it just kinds of smacks of pointlessness...who can really care, because any points-based ranking system will always be flawed. Does the BCS college non-playoff system ring a bell?

Now on the other hand, if the system is used to organize a 'best of the best' west coast tourney once a year, well then its actually helping to facilitate another great event, and therefore its a win-win for everyone in the community.


So I would model it kind of off of the Golden Ticket system. The winner(s) of identified events get an invite to the west coast masters event. The bigger the event the more spots are up for grabs. And if someone has already won their golden ticket from a previous event then the invite is passed down to the next place finisher.

You can start out hosting this tourney, but in later years you could theoretically rotate out the location of the masters event to other participating locations if they're interested. If they're not, then you just keep hosting 'the west coast masters' at the same place.


And what's really cool is if you use some sort of points-based tracking system going into the event (like the Sprue Posse's ELO, for example) you could even have the tournament 'seeded' ahead of time to have players set up in brackets right form the start!

I apologize in advance if this sounds harsh, not trying to trample on anyone, but personally this doesn't sound like something the game needs. It feels like turning a hobby into a sport, in a game that inherently isn't very good for competitive play. There are armies that are clearly better than others along with builds that are clearly better than others or that are better at certain matchups.


I could almost guarantee that whatever champion is crowned, would probably not remain the champion if you ran the event again with the same participants and re-arranged all the matchups. Winning an event is all about not only how *well* you play, but *which* army and *which* build you play, how *well* one rolls (sometimes the dice just won't roll well, I've won and lost games in events with very stilted dice rolls that had they been more average wound have gone another way), what missions are being used, and what armies/builds/players you are matched against. For instance, Mech IG or Mech Eldar may do amazing if it's thrown against nothing but Tyranids and Dark Eldar in Objective missions, but will probably not do so well if it's forced to fight Deathstar armies over and over in KP missions, and vice versa. So trying to crown a single "champion" in that light just doesn't seem like it means much unfortunately.

My 2 cents anyway.

@Vaktathi

First off I don't take it as harsh man but let's think about it. The game as a whole is far more balanced than it's ever been and at this point is pretty solid rules wise in comparison to other editions. I think you'll find a lot of the more recognized tournament players(not the best, just the loudest ) out there don't think that there are clearly better books/builds either. That tends to be something that gets handed out and reinforced by people who can't win with their respective army. Most of the major tourney winners this year don't think that certain armies are totally dominating.

Let's look at your second point. To get invited to the "masters" event you'd have to perform consistantly over a period of several events. So there is your consistancy in regards to all your variables. It's not perfect but neither are sports. And luck plays just as huge of a part in sports as it does in our gaming. One wrong hit or landing and your team is out of the playoffs. A gakky schedule and poor timing match-ups can keep you out of the winners circle too. It's no different but we attach meaning to sports champions.

I'm not saying that this is a sport or that anyone in it is in any way an athlete but just because the idea doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean it doesn't resonate with others. Most males are inherently competitive and it's natural for us to find a way bring that into our hobbies. How many hobbies that men do with other men aren't competitive? I mean even fishing with friends can get competitive because you don't wanna be that guy who comes back empty The term loser buys drinks comes up a lot when golfing/bowling. It's natural for people to make things a little more competitive.

I think anything that grows the hobby and helps shine light on it is good. And competitive is good, look at MtG and the money it brings in. I want my hobby around for the next 20 years like magic is likely to be.

Vaktathi wrote:I apologize in advance if this sounds harsh, not trying to trample on anyone, but personally this doesn't sound like something the game needs. It feels like turning a hobby into a sport, in a game that inherently isn't very good for competitive play. There are armies that are clearly better than others along with builds that are clearly better than others or that are better at certain matchups.


I could almost guarantee that whatever champion is crowned, would probably not remain the champion if you ran the event again with the same participants and re-arranged all the matchups. Winning an event is all about not only how *well* you play, but *which* army and *which* build you play, how *well* one rolls (sometimes the dice just won't roll well, I've won and lost games in events with very stilted dice rolls that had they been more average wound have gone another way), what missions are being used, and what armies/builds/players you are matched against. For instance, Mech IG or Mech Eldar may do amazing if it's thrown against nothing but Tyranids and Dark Eldar in Objective missions, but will probably not do so well if it's forced to fight Deathstar armies over and over in KP missions, and vice versa. So trying to crown a single "champion" in that light just doesn't seem like it means much unfortunately.

My 2 cents anyway.

I totally agree with every point you made. But I differ on a philosophical point: not meaning much, and not worth doing, are two entirely different things. I don't think the superbowl means much. One group of guys is a lot better at running around carrying a ball than another group of guys? Good for them. But it's something people enjoy, and it's something for people to strive for, no matter how arbitrary it may be.

While I can see your point in regards to consistency and whatnot, I still think very much there are clear distinctions between armies and builds. I don't think I've ever lost to Daemonhunters, I don't think I've lost to Necrons since 5E came out (I think I beat them maybe twice or thrice before that?) or to Tyranids in almost two years. My Tau very certainly aren't as capable as my Imperial Guard despite being rather similar relative to many other armies, my W/L with Tau is about 50/50 and with IG is...well lets say that playing on a weekly basis that long stretches of months go by between losses.

I've got 6 armies (2 IG armies, enough CSM stuff for two armies, an Eldar army, a Tau army, and an WIP Tyranid army) . I've played against every army out there multiple times in 5E, and it very much feels like there are weaker/stronger armies and builds (e.g. it's hard to see an army with IG penal legion units for troops is going to perform as well as one with Mechvets or blob platoons). Good playing and dice can mitigate this, but I don't think it's fair to say that Necrons are just as capable in 5th edition as Space Wolves or Imperial Guard for instance assuming two equally skilled players. With that, I think it means crowning a champion will have a large part to do with army choice rather than player skill.

40k may be more balanced than ever, and certainly more than Fantasy has been, no question, but that still doesn't mean it's really a game that you can bring any army to with any reasonable build and expect to do well with at a competitive event on a consistent basis.

That said I agree that anything that helps grow the game is good, but if it's an invite only event for people who already are neck deep in the hobby (and have been for years most likely) I'm not sure how well it's going to do that if that makes sense?

Not trying to hate-parade all over this, just trying to point out what I see as problems is all.

@Vaktathi
I, and I am sure everyone else here, respects your opinion, but what's the point? I am not trying to be rude but what does it matter? If this is an event you aren't interested in, then don't participate, seems simple enough. You make some valid points but there are a lot of us who do like to play the game competitively. We accept the fact that the game is not nor ever will be perfect, that luck, pairings and missions play a huge part of the game and are OK with that. We accept the variable and enjoy the competitive fun of tournaments. How does that hurt anyone not involved?

As I always say, if the game were truly random, the same people wouldn't consistently win events, over and over, year after year which is exactly what happen. If it really were about lists and armies, we would see nothing but wolves, IG and blood angels winning events, which quite simply isn't true if you follow tournament results the way we do. The stats are not in line with conventional thinking. I actually wrote an article about this for BoLS and put up a large amount of tournament data to support the argument. Good players win over armies more often than not.

So you are welcome to your point of view for sure, but your contributions are pretty much just raining on the parade. You are essentially saying we shouldn't, or should consider not doing something we think would be fun because you don't think the event would be valid. The community gains nothing by not doing it, it gains more fun to those who enjoy this type of thing if we do put it on. No one i hurt by it, and a lot of people gain enjoyment. I don't see any downside, really.

A for it being an invite only event, it gives something for people to aspire to. For those who are not competitive gamers they won't care, for those who are, it is something to shoot for during the year that is a lot more exciting than the daily grind. It make the game more engaging. Do the masters hurt the game of golf? The olympics hurt their sports? I'm not seeing your point. Are you afraid people will get their feelings hurt if they don't make it or something?

And again, don't take this the wrong way, just stating a counter point to your argument.

@Ozendorf
Yeah, I have been following your events, my friends Dave and Marc jut won your last tournament at Game Empire in SD, my old store. We will definitely have to try and get some cross pollination going on.

@Yakface
You make good points, it would be more fun to have a tournament of champions than just to award a trophy. And this would be a legit tournament of champs, not the silly throne of skulls event. This would actually mean something.

Logistics of organizing the event would be the only sticking point. Having seeded tournaments would be super cool though and would help to add prestige and hopefully boost attendance to exiting events the way Golden Tickets do.

well, you did ask

So I was thinking, with all the tournaments that we already have on the west coast, and with more sprouting up, what do you guys think about organizing a California or West Coast Cup? Maybe even a Western States Cup or something?

So, what do you guys think? I think it is a cool idea and would add a little bit of prestige to winning the most tournaments on the West Coast.

And thus I gave my thoughts on it, my apologies if it wasn't what you were looking for.

As to the other bit, I honestly don't have the data for most large tournament results so I can't comment, I can only go off my own play experience at various events (lately mostly in the PacNW, have been mainly just doing pickup games the last few months since I moved back to San Diego) ranging from store/club tournaments to large 40 person+ venues. I don't mind playing competitively, I've played in lots of competitive events, I'm not saying that playing competitively is a bad thing, only that a closed invite-only event that seeks to proclaim a definitive "40k champion" (as opposed to a champion for a single event) doesn't seem (to me at least) like it would really bring much to the hobby at large given vagueries of the game.

I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time, it may be a great thing, all I'm doing is expressing my viewpoint on the matter given that it was an open question on an internet message board.

A for it being an invite only event, it gives something for people to aspire to. For those who are not competitive gamers they won't care, for those who are, it is something to shoot for during the year that is a lot more exciting than the daily grind. It make the game more engaging. Do the masters hurt the game of golf? The olympics hurt their sports? I'm not seeing your point. Are you afraid people will get their feelings hurt if they don't make it or something?

Well, if we were talking about an event with an audience and actively watching games with an element of suspense (and tons of revenue generation through advertising ), which is primarily what drives those events you mentioned, there might be something to it (which may be something that could be interesting? Streaming games or something?), unlike an invite only thing where just about anyone who didn't go are only going to know likely know player names, their faction, and overall results, if that.

Vaktathi wrote:I apologize in advance if this sounds harsh, not trying to trample on anyone, but personally this doesn't sound like something the game needs. It feels like turning a hobby into a sport, in a game that inherently isn't very good for competitive play. There are armies that are clearly better than others along with builds that are clearly better than others or that are better at certain matchups.


I could almost guarantee that whatever champion is crowned, would probably not remain the champion if you ran the event again with the same participants and re-arranged all the matchups. Winning an event is all about not only how *well* you play, but *which* army and *which* build you play, how *well* one rolls (sometimes the dice just won't roll well, I've won and lost games in events with very stilted dice rolls that had they been more average wound have gone another way), what missions are being used, and what armies/builds/players you are matched against. For instance, Mech IG or Mech Eldar may do amazing if it's thrown against nothing but Tyranids and Dark Eldar in Objective missions, but will probably not do so well if it's forced to fight Deathstar armies over and over in KP missions, and vice versa. So trying to crown a single "champion" in that light just doesn't seem like it means much unfortunately.

My 2 cents anyway.

While I respect what you're saying, those same arguments are essentially similar to those who think *all* 40K tournaments are pointless. I've never quite understood why some people (not you) think that tournaments in general might somehow hurt the hobby, which is kind of a similar sentiment to what you're putting forth for a 'finals' style tournament. At the end of the day if a player doesn't like playing in tournaments (or a 'finals' style tournament) then he doesn't play in it. But for those who are interested in such a thing, holding an event helps to enrich their hobby so I don't quite see how it isn't a positive thing.

Sure, if you ran a the same tournament again and mixed up all the variables then the outcome might change, but that's true of any game or sport that has any sort of variables to it. The Giants winning the World Series may have failed if they had ended up playing different opponents in each round of the playoffs instead of the teams they ended up being matched up against. But we'll never, know because that's just how tournaments tend to work.

The 'best' on any given day is only best given the circumstances that they were able to achieve victory on that day.

I think Reece's original concept of awarding a 'champion' based on overall performance during the year would be closer to highlighting overall consistency of players, but that always has the horrible issue of dealing with players who play in separate events and never face each other or possibly even similar competition, something that Golf or Nascar (who do similar things) don't face.

That's why I think holding a single 'masters' tournament is a better alternative. Regardless of whether some people think that the winner of this tournament is 'the best', it is still a great idea because it gives incentive to some players to play in more tournaments or travel to said 'masters' tournament when they normally would not have bothered...and anything that gets players to play in more/different tournaments can only ever be a good thing!


For example, I won one of the 'Sprue Posse' tournaments at Aero Hobbies, so later this year in December they're holding a 'finals' invite only tournie. Since I qualified I'll definitely be playing in it because I feel like I earned my spot. Whereas if it were just another standard tournament I might just skip it. So by having this special event it has spurred at least one person (me) to play more 40K.

Also they've been doing something exactly like this in Australia for years now, having an annual 'ultimates' tournament where only winners (or other high place finishers) of other tournaments are invited.


So if we could have something like this for the Western states or even just California I definitely think it would be a great idea.

@Yakface

Sorry I'm going to miss you in the Sprue Posse Invitational. Work called and I'm gonna be out of state but good luck dude.

Oh, and I agree with pretty much everything you said there. I think the idea of a "Masters" would be great

Vaktathi wrote:well, you did ask

So I was thinking, with all the tournaments that we already have on the west coast, and with more sprouting up, what do you guys think about organizing a California or West Coast Cup? Maybe even a Western States Cup or something?

So, what do you guys think? I think it is a cool idea and would add a little bit of prestige to winning the most tournaments on the West Coast.

And thus I gave my thoughts on it, my apologies if it wasn't what you were looking for.

Hahaha, touche! You got me there.

Of course your opinion is valid and hey, I did ask for it!

Everything Yak said I agree with, and I have been following the Oz maters off and on for several years. While it doesn't generate revenue (and all games start out small and then build to generating money although that isn't really the point of this, this is for love of the game) it would be fun.

Your points about the inequity of the game are all true, but we know and accept it. All game are uneven, even chess. That is fine, it doesn't invalidate the event.

LOL...kind of sucks when someone who would not come to your event, just pisses all over your event for the sake of pissing on it. Ohh do I know the feeling.

Constructive criticism is good, participation in the events is even better!

Haha, too true! This is a battle you know all to well!

Ya, I have to say I like Yak's idea of a "masters" at the conclusion of the tournament "season". I have been kicking this idea around for a while too and have drawn up preliminary ideas for what it would look like. If you're interested in seeing it Reecius PM me with your e-mail and I can send it over. It is a little big/incomplete to post up here.

The only real difficulty I see is getting the TO's on board to report winners in a timely manner. It would be important that TOs and not just participants let you know the winner(s) from an event so that it is official and not just hearsay. Not that any of the up standing members of our beloved game would ever lie or exaggerate their personal performances!

OverwatchCNC wrote:The only real difficulty I see is getting the TO's on board to report winners in a timely manner. It would be important that TOs and not just participants let you know the winner(s) from an event so that it is official and not just hearsay. Not that any of the up standing members of our beloved game would ever lie or exaggerate their personal performances!

I would say that to start with you select a group of TOs who are willing to help out and participate and simply run the "masters" list off of their results. By doing so you would be sure to get the results in the timely manner, and could more easily coordinate the scoring. This can also insure that you are selecting representative tournaments, and not just a random collection of who happened to submit.

As time goes on, you could expand the roster of certifying tournaments.

Yeah, I agree Kurt, it would be easiest to just elect events for the first year.

@Overwatch
Haha, of course no one in this hobby exaggerates anything! And I sent you a PM.

I think the easiest way to do things would be to adopt the scoring system that the Sprue Possie already use as that system has been up and running for a year. We could then apply it to those tournament that are in our roster and from that select the top 16 players from the calendar year.

We could then have a single day, 4 round single elimination master's tournament that uses missions right out of the book with bonus points or VP's for tie breakers.

That way I can shoot for a January 1st launch date of the system and hopefully implement it for an inaugural 2011 season.

Logistically, a one day, 16 man tournament is a lot easier to put on and attend than a 2 day GT as well.

How doe that sound?

Personally I like the one day 16 man invitational event to choose the winner. It would be good, imo, if that event took the form of an 'Ard Boyz event. 2500 points, no Soft Scores, 3 rounds . But I really enjoy the Ard Boyz format and I know not everyone likes games of that size...

I like ard boyz, too. I think 2,500 points opens the field too, and makes a lot of armies competitive that aren't normally.

Time may be an issue though and 2K may be more realistic for a single day 4 round tournament.

Thanks for sending me that information you had written up, there is some great ideas in there that I will definitely be using.

Reecius wrote:I like ard boyz, too. I think 2,500 points opens the field too, and makes a lot of armies competitive that aren't normally.

Time may be an issue though and 2K may be more realistic for a single day 4 round tournament.

Thanks for sending me that information you had written up, there is some great ideas in there that I will definitely be using.

No problem. Again, if you need additional help getting this off the ground let me know.

Now that Hulksmash is gone from the West Coast, everyone else has a chance of winning! =D

Reecius wrote:I like ard boyz, too. I think 2,500 points opens the field too, and makes a lot of armies competitive that aren't normally.

Time may be an issue though and 2K may be more realistic for a single day 4 round tournament.

Thanks for sending me that information you had written up, there is some great ideas in there that I will definitely be using.

Please do not fuel the anti-horde army fire by making a tourney at 2,500 pts. Four rounds in a day at 2,000 pts will already be hard enough if someone wants to try to bing a pure horde army. I know it will be the 'masters' and all, but still...everybody keeps trying to push the points limits of tournament games, but if even a single game of an 'utlimates' tournament doesn't finish due to time contraints then I think you've done a disservice to the concept.

You should strive to make a tournament where every game gets finished to its completion regardless of whether it is a mech vs. mech battle or horde IG vs. Tyranid horde.


At least that's my opinion.

yakface wrote:

Reecius wrote:I like ard boyz, too. I think 2,500 points opens the field too, and makes a lot of armies competitive that aren't normally.

Time may be an issue though and 2K may be more realistic for a single day 4 round tournament.

Thanks for sending me that information you had written up, there is some great ideas in there that I will definitely be using.

Please do not fuel the anti-horde army fire by making a tourney at 2,500 pts. Four rounds in a day at 2,000 pts will already be hard enough if someone wants to try to bing a pure horde army. I know it will be the 'masters' and all, but still...everybody keeps trying to push the points limits of tournament games, but if even a single game of an 'utlimates' tournament doesn't finish due to time contraints then I think you've done a disservice to the concept.

You should strive to make a tournament where every game gets finished to its completion regardless of whether it is a mech vs. mech battle or horde IG vs. Tyranid horde.


At least that's my opinion.

yakface brings up a decent point. I know I advocated the 2500 point level but the need for 3 rounds and completion of games in the final series would seem to trump my need for larger point games Although I would like to note that my wanting to play at 2500 isn't to negate horde armies. On the contrary I wouldn't mind playing a huge SW horde at 2500 points, not competitive but it would be fun.

Yeah, 4 games at 2k is the most that it should be. 2.25 hour games should be fine to keep the day under control. 2,500pts in my opinion just isn't doable with anything that isn't a 5th edition codex. at least not well.

You know, since we're ramping up an invitational ... and ya'll are ramping up a cup ... /brain churns.

@yak, overwatch and Hulk

I prefer larger games too, but I agree that 2K is going to be the most realistic figure for a four round, single day tournament.

@Mike

I see great synergy here! Although this event would take place at either the end of the year in 2011 or beginning of the year 2012 to allow for an entire year of events. o, it would probably tie into NOVA for the 2012 iteration.

You could organize an East Coast cup or something similar, see if we can get some regional masters events going.

@thread
I think a single elimination event suits this best, but what do you guys think about having everyone play 4 games for ranking purposes. Like, the guys who lose their first games play to rank 9-16, the guys who lose their second game play to rank 5-8, the guys who lose game three 3-4 and the guys who go to the finals obviously play for 1-2.

That way everyone has incentive to stay and doesn't feel like they traveled for nothing.

Reecius wrote:@yak, overwatch and Hulk

I prefer larger games too, but I agree that 2K is going to be the most realistic figure for a four round, single day tournament.

I mean, I personally believe that tournaments should generally be held at lower point values with plenty of time for each round to ensure that every game is finished regardless of army types, but I know I'm in the minority...oh wait, no I'm not.

Well, I think I'm probably in the minority here in the US...

Ah, go drink some tea and serve crumpets at your 1,500 point tournaments! This here is Amurika!

Reecius wrote:@yak, overwatch and Hulk

I prefer larger games too, but I agree that 2K is going to be the most realistic figure for a four round, single day tournament.

An observation: why a single-day event? Consider: anyone who is traveling a non-trivial distance (say, greater than 3 hours) is not going to do a 4-round tournament as a single-day: they'll likely have to arrive the night before (as start time is probably early), and aren't going to get home that night (as end time is going to be pretty late).

Assume 2:15 rounds (though 2:30 is more reasonable for 2k pts), with 30 minute breaks, 1 hour lunch (no dedicated dinner, though), and 1 hour after the last game for results compilation & awards: we've got a 12 hour event, if everything runs precisely on schedule. If you start at 9 AM, you're finished (at best!) at 9 PM. If this is happening down in SoCal, and a player is driving from the Bay, that's almost certainly means 2 hotel nights.

Spread your 4 games over 2 days, and suddenly it's a single-night event: drive down the morning of, start game 1 around 3 pm, finish for the day by 8:30, pick up the next day at 9, finish by 3:30, and drive home.

And before it comes up: venue is meaningless for a 16-man event. You can have it at pretty much any FLGS with decent terrain, or at the Bunker - you don't need to rent convention space or tables for 16 players.

You're not in SoCal anymore, Reece - you have to think larger scale!

yakface wrote:

Reecius wrote:@yak, overwatch and Hulk

I prefer larger games too, but I agree that 2K is going to be the most realistic figure for a four round, single day tournament.

I mean, I personally believe that tournaments should generally be held at lower point values with plenty of time for each round to ensure that every game is finished regardless of army types, but I know I'm in the minority...oh wait, no I'm not.

Well, I think I'm probably in the minority here in the US...

@Yak
But how am I supposed to take 18 ML equipped LF, 9 Las Plas Razorbacks, A Wolf Lord on TWM, and a full kit TWC squad at 1500?! How am I supposed to win with out all of my toys Yakface!? HOW!?

I don't hate smaller tournaments necessarily. At the beginning of 5th ed we ran 1850 tournaments at Game Empire and I was fine with that point level. Do I prefer 2k? Yes. Will I refuse to play 1000-1850 point games? No. I like variety in my lists. I can get more variety at higher point levels, that's all. You know I was talking to Darrian the other day and he pointed out that we probably have played each other in tournaments before and didn't realize who we were. The wonders of the internet never cease.

@Janthkin
That makes a lot of sense, logistically. I think that is a much better format for people who have to travel.

And I may live in NorCal now but I still think of myself as a SoCal guy!

You can always try an escalation tournament.

Round 1 - 1500 pts
Round 2 - 1750 pts
Round 3 - 2000 pts
Round 4 - 2250 pts

A little more army checking before the tournament, but it gives folks a chance to show they can win no matter what the points are.

That is a cool idea but the only issue with that is that you would have to play each opponent at multiple points levels. The reason being that some armies are a lot better at certain points levels than others and as such pairings would be even more important than normal. If you pull the CSM player at 1500 it is a lot tougher of a game than at 2250, etc. I think keeping the games a uniform points level keeps things as even as possible.

Now in a one off series playing a single opponent at multiple points levels, that would be cool! Like best 3 out of 5 at 1500, 1750, 2000, 2250, 2500 with the options for different armies at different points levels.

That would certainly be cool and would help to mitigate luck and also prove skill with multiple armies at different points levels. But that is obviously a bit too time intensive for what we are discussing here.

Reecius wrote:....with the options for different armies at different points levels.

I wouldn't allow different armies. You are either a great player with your army at any level or your not.

Having enough money to buy different armies based on tournament size isn't really a way to show you are the best out there.

This comming from a player with 6 different 40K armies.

Just my thoughts.

Something that I think would be cool for a 2-day event would be to change things up a bit on the 2nd day...

For instance, you could do a big, competitive 4-round tournament on Saturday. Then on Sunday you could do a mega-battle with 1000 point armies for each player. The idea would be that nobody goes home with a bad experience. After a long, competitive day of tourney playing on Sat, players would be able to relax and play in a fun game with everyone. Say the mega battle starts at 9AM and goes till 4PM, then do a big award ceremony to cover everything on Sunday afternoon. In addition to the mega battle on Sunday, you could also hold a painting contest, terrain building, gamer's swap meat ect.

While the tournament on Saturday may be the meat and potatoes, what you've really done is encompass the whole hobby and made your own mini-Games Day and set yourself apart from the other tournaments....

Just my .02

Wolflord Patrick wrote:Something that I think would be cool for a 2-day event would be to change things up a bit on the 2nd day...

For instance, you could do a big, competitive 4-round tournament on Saturday. Then on Sunday you could do a mega-battle with 1000 point armies for each player. The idea would be that nobody goes home with a bad experience. After a long, competitive day of tourney playing on Sat, players would be able to relax and play in a fun game with everyone. Say the mega battle starts at 9AM and goes till 4PM, then do a big award ceremony to cover everything on Sunday afternoon. In addition to the mega battle on Sunday, you could also hold a painting contest, terrain building, gamer's swap meat ect.

While the tournament on Saturday may be the meat and potatoes, what you've really done is encompass the whole hobby and made your own mini-Games Day and set yourself apart from the other tournaments....

Just my .02

This is a really cool idea. Except I would be sure to make the "mega battle" an apocalypse game. But other than that this sounds nice.

I like the idea of 2500, but it only would be feasable as a two day event. I think the horde argument is not an issue, since anyone who would be at this event would have to be a capable player and able to run a horde army quickly and efficiently, anyhow. Anyone running mass Nids/IG/Orks is going to know how to play quick and clean or they would not have high placing in a tournament. I also think that 2500 opens up the field a little, since it lets other armies be more diverse, particularly the second tier armies like GKs and such.

Realistically, 2k is probably the most sound logistical choice, though. Its what most people play and is the general concencus. I think going below that pushes things in favor of the top tier armies a little too much.

Phazael wrote:I like the idea of 2500, but it only would be feasable as a two day event. I think the horde argument is not an issue, since anyone who would be at this event would have to be a capable player and able to run a horde army quickly and efficiently, anyhow. Anyone running mass Nids/IG/Orks is going to know how to play quick and clean or they would not have high placing in a tournament. I also think that 2500 opens up the field a little, since it lets other armies be more diverse, particularly the second tier armies like GKs and such.

Phazael, you're a lovely fellow, but have you tried playing with 2500 pts of horde orks in the recent past, in a mission that required them all to be in motion? Simply deploying that many bodies takes a lot of time.

I use every shortcut available, up to and including deployment/movement trays, and my genestealer-heavy Tyranids still take a lot of time to play; 2k pts in 2.5 hours is about the best I can manage against most opponents. 2500 is just not reliably practicable below 3 hours for non-mechanized armies.

I think the points level should be dictated by the circuit - use the majority point level used by the events included (or, for variety, maybe use the actual average).

Love the idea of an the actual average of all the events. Could make for an interesting challenge

Janthkin wrote:

Phazael wrote:I like the idea of 2500, but it only would be feasable as a two day event. I think the horde argument is not an issue, since anyone who would be at this event would have to be a capable player and able to run a horde army quickly and efficiently, anyhow. Anyone running mass Nids/IG/Orks is going to know how to play quick and clean or they would not have high placing in a tournament. I also think that 2500 opens up the field a little, since it lets other armies be more diverse, particularly the second tier armies like GKs and such.

Phazael, you're a lovely fellow, but have you tried playing with 2500 pts of horde orks in the recent past, in a mission that required them all to be in motion? Simply deploying that many bodies takes a lot of time.

I use every shortcut available, up to and including deployment/movement trays, and my genestealer-heavy Tyranids still take a lot of time to play; 2k pts in 2.5 hours is about the best I can manage against most opponents. 2500 is just not reliably practicable below 3 hours for non-mechanized armies.

I think the points level should be dictated by the circuit - use the majority point level used by the events included (or, for variety, maybe use the actual average).

The people who know me will confirm that I am not a horde army player by nature, but I have experience running horde armies at that size, including my wife's Green Tide + Kan Wall ork list with over 200 models. Is it easy? No, but if I can knock out my turns quickly I would expect an expert player who has more experience with the army to be able to do the same, unless they are intentionally stalling. Generally, its the foot slogging guard players who pull that crap, though. Unless someone is being a massive douche and making you measure each model individually (or you are being a tool and trying to space every single model perfectly to counter templates), theres no way a top tier player should not be able to get their turns in on time with that kind of list. In fact, in some ways its easier because when you carpet so much of the table there are less tactical decisions to be made, since you cannot really avoid LOS or being charged and so on.

Again, not saying its easy or that 2500 is even really optimal for games, but we are not talking about the noobs here (and hard boyz draws in a bunch); we are talking about people with high placements in other events who know how to execute their turns rapidly. If the tournament were two days and could have 3-5 to 3 hour rounds, I would love to see it be 2500. The amount of diversity that point level opens up makes it more interesting and it levels the playing field in certain ways. Specifically, SW lists can't stuff any more razorbacks or long wangs in their army once the force org fills up at 2k. Guard pretty much get all of their major toys by 2k as well. On the other hand, Tau can start putting in some extra goodies like stealth suits, path finders, and the like. Nids can think about troop options other than Tervs and the min spec guant units that enable them. To reiterrate, I am not saying Reese should do 2500, but don't dismiss it as an option out of hand, either.

As a player who plays all armies including hoard orks, tyranids, and gaurd I have to agree that there is no reason they cant finish a 2500 point game with 2 hour turns if they want to (I have done it in arrd boyz on two seperate years). I always felt that it was my descision to play a hoard army so it was my job to learn to get thru the turns. I even remember a 2000 point tournement where I ran orks and Phazael ran nids and we were the first players done with our games.(two hour time limit)

Any movement on this Reecius? I am definitely excited to see how this would work out.

I have not done squat on anything in the past week and a half. Had a wedding in San Diego and then went home for Turkey Day and jut got back to the bay lat night. I'll get moving on it today though.

Very nice to be thought of as a "celeb"! LMAO!!! And here I thought everyone just hated playing my armies! (or me?)


I've been laying low as of lately, at least in the Tournament scene. Not even an RTT in several, several months. I dropped out of the League because I needed a breather, instead of becoming venomous towards it. Recently my efforts have concentrated on the Mega-Apocalypse Events i've been running out of GMI Games, and now just over a year later, we're about to make bigger steps! I've had a ton of fun running them, organizing them, and chuckin' dice with the boyz!


Now, i'm kind of interested in starting the 2011 Season off fresh, and the Broadside Bash is one of the events I'm debating on attending, solely to get back in the groove of things, and help support another event i've had fun and done well at over the past few years. There's quite a few other Tournies i'm looking at...just haven't made those all important decisions yet.


As to a "Masters" Tournament, I think the idea is VERY cool, and I'm definitely all for it! HOWEVER, something that has bothered me about GW's decision with their 2011 Vegas GT, the Tournament of Champions is bothering me about the ideas ya'll are tossing around here.

I think GW had the right idea of letting the gaming community at large run their own qualifying events, and just hold the "big dance" themselves. That's totally cool. I do have a problem with who/how they've decided to pick the attendees. This is a hobby, and in the Tournaments, ALL facets of the hobby are presented and scored according to importance of each Tournament Organizer and his staff. Players are then awarded "X" amount of points for these aspects of the hobby, and a total tally is taken and given at the end. Top placements are then rewarded with "loot" and often trophies, plaques, certificates, etc. So the Best Overall, Best Army, Best Sportsman, Best General, etc. are suppose to represent the epitome (at that Tournament) of that particular aspect of the hobby. And the Tournament of Champions to be held by GW in Las Vegas is suppose to be the cream of the crop, yet it really won't be...

Awarding the Top 2 players at a Tournament "Golden Tickets", or the Best Overall and Best General just falls short of encompassing all the aspects that make this hobby great and fun!

If you guyz are going to do this, please keep that in mind. I feel that the Best Overall, Best General, Best Sportsmans and Best Army should ALL get the chance to compete, not just those peeps that win games or have others paint for them.


Just my thoughts, hope they help.

I like the idea of Masters. It was actually something I had discussed with others in the past but have yet to implement it. I would say a 1500-2000 point total be set and plan on that for all games. If you wish to maintain your top battle points idea, you can but have them as a means to determine who to invite. Take the top 30-50 scores and invite them to a tournament. Granted, it can't be strait invite since you would have to pay the bills on the venue, but have those people play off. Have a committee of people that help design the scenarios and play test them, etc and have people submit their lists ahead of time to be reviewed by the committee in order to avoid problems with people going over or using items that can't be used in a given squad.

Looks like there are already some good resources already into this and I look forward to seeing the progress on this.

I agree with TDG in principle, but the reality is getting dozens of TOs to agree on some form of unified system is the proverbial herding cats. I went with Overall and Best General because the hobbyists get their guy and the gamers get their guy. Turns out the Throne of Skulls wants the hobbyist, but wants them to play like a gamer.

Hey, thanks for the input guys, I really appreciate it.

I think the system that is the most objective and makes the most sense for the purposes of this idea is to go with a straight points system. As Phazeal said, every tournament is so different that it is unrealistic to try and format a system that incorporates all of them.

What is objective is best general. That is something that comes down to who played the game the best.

I would love to either include, or see a painting side of it, but that is very difficult to include without opening the door to subjectivity. We could award the army at the masters event with best painted 1st through 3rd, or, we could organize a completely separate event in which we take the best painting scores of people from events and use the same points system to determine who the best painted is, and then award a prize. This would actually be pretty easy as no one would have to travel and it shows who the best players are and who the best painters are which covers the entire gamut.

I think another route you could go would be to contact the events that you want to include in the initial circuit and get them to submit their scores to rankings HQ. I'm pretty sure rankings HQ allows you to set up a custom set of players, so you could then create a custom set just for the selected tournaments. Then at the time the 'west coast cup' tourney rolls around each year you just invite all the players who are at the top of the rankings for that group.

I don't know if Rankings HQ allows you to filter only for battle points, but maybe they do (and if they don't perhaps you can contact them about adding it)?

Agreed, it would be easier since your using and existing and known system, they get more exposure out of it, and it's the first step in kinda codifying the US tourney scene (results wise) and could grow from there. Creating a true ranking system for the US.

Hmmm, looking at rankings HQ you can definitely create a 'club', but that only allows you to group players as opposed to a group of events, so this may not be possible.

However, I would definitely think about emailing them letting them know you'd like to use their system to help organize an event but that it doesn't provide the flexibility yet that you need. I'm sure they'd be interested in getting that kind of feedback and maybe eventually implementing something that would work for this idea.

I am all about using preexisting systems as it saves on man hours and it helps to focus the community on a single resource. I will hit them up and see what they say.

Eventually, if we could standardize tournament scoring, that would be huge. We would have an actual system that applied equally across the country and then we really could have a true ranking system which would be good fun.

Update:

I have been talking to the team behind RankingsHQ to see if we can piggy back on their site to host our Masters/Southwest Cup event.

Thanks to Yakface for the help as he also reached out to RankingsHQ to keep the momentum going on this project.

Also, you guys should check out the video they put on their site covering the Australian Fantasy Masters which is a big inpsiration for what we are trying to do here.

http://rankingshq.com/

So, everything should be sorted out be early January and then we can start to hype this up and have some fun!

UPDATE:

The owner of RankingsHQ has agreed to work with me to implement our scoring system on his website!

He is a great guy and I am very thankful that he is willing to track a different set of metrics in order to accommodate our system. I think this will allow for some great cross-pollination and hopefully take us another step closer to a true, standardized tournament and ranking system in the USA.

So thanks to Yakface for suggesting the idea and helping to get that moving forward! We should have a section of the Rankings HQ site dedicated to tracking the Southwest Masters Cup, soon!

Reece


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and for those who are curious, the system is very simple but works as such:

Every player gets a score based on their ranking amongst the number of players present in terms of painting and generalship score with a bonus for coming in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd and the amount of rounds played.

Number of players-placement+1+(10 x rounds)+bonus for rank=score.

So, if you play in a 3 game tournament with 20 players and come in 3rd place for battle points/generalship, you would have the following score:

20(number of players)-3(the players rank)+1+30(3 round event)+5(3rd place bonus)=53 points.

Painting works the same way but uses your painting rank and does not include a bonus for rounds played.

This way every event, no matter it's size, will count and every player will be in the hunt, so to speak. My aim was to create a system that was simple and would incorporate any type of tournament regardless of its format. If a tournament uses battle points or straight W/L, it will score the same. This system disregards soft scores as well, as these vary so widely from event, to event. This system will hopefully allow every event to be ranked equally based on the number of players and length. So therefore, if you play in a 3 game RTT with a lot of players, it can count for as much as a 5 game GT with less players. The aim was to allow players to get involved anywhere in the region even if they can't make it to big GTs all the time.

At the end of the year, we will take the top 16 painters and players based off of their top three event scores, and invite them to the masters cup. The players will play a tournament, the painters will have a painting competition.

Everything will have prize support, sigs for forum posting and trophies.

Looking forward to seeing this realized! Any C&C are welcome.

Great job reece. Cant wait to see it happen, and be apart of it haha.

Looks great, Reece.

I may have to make the trip when this thing happens.

Thanks, fellas! Yeah, this is cool to see it coming to life. I am excited for what this may lead to. We eventually could have regional master cups all over the USA and perhaps one day a national masters cup, with the top players from each regional meeting at a national event.

You know, it would be really easy to roll those regional tops into ... a certain event already being established ....

Yeah it would, and you already have market share and momentum behind you and your event. Plus I know you have the know-how and drive to host a great event. If we can pull this off this year and it is popular, I see no reason not to try and combine forces.

Good job getting this together Reese, but I have to say, I don't get the scoring system at all.

In your three game, 20 person tournament, if you finish 3rd you get 53 points.

If others play in a three game, 40 person tournament...everyone who finishes 18th or above will get more points than you.

I can understand disagreeing about how the size of the tournament affects how competitive it is...but this seems very extreme.

Taking only the top three scores will completely crowd out small events with this scoring system - I can repeatedly win sprue posse events for example but even with 16 players my scores will be worse than someone who just finishes 20th at three larger 3 game events, much less a 5 game event.

I was having the same issue with trying to determine a system that would weight everything equally.

I agree that a 16 man event with higher caliber players should be worth more than a 30 man event with 80% lower caliber players, but that is something that is impossible to quantify right out of the gates (more on that to come).

I wanted to create a system where not only the winners were rewarded but to include as many people as possible. If we only gave points to first, second and third, that would exclude all of those who got 4th or lower at a 50 man event.

I turned it around over and again but could not come up with a system would make everyone happy. In the end, I chose to go with a system that was simple and based on easily quantifiable metrics: number of players, size of event, placement.

That is why I included the bonus for 3rd, 2nd and 1st. It allows the winner to jump up quite a bit, as if he were playing at a larger event.

For example, if you won a sprue posse event, you would get 61 points. That equates to getting 10th place or better at a 40 person event. However, the 40 person event has more than three times as many people, and it deserves more weight due to a larger field.

As time goes by, we can develop a second layer of weighting the points, we can rank tournament difficulty but that opens a door to huge amounts of subjectivity unless done mathematically. What I was thinking was that as we develop a respected ranking system, we can develop a multiplier to increase the weight of an event based on the rankings of the players involved. So, if a 16 man event has all highly ranked players, that will affect the score the players involved get. We can't do that right out the gates though.

Lastly, I seriously considered the size of the average event in the region. Right now, there aren't many that even draw 40 players so I don't think it will be much of an issue. Most RTTs in the region are under 20 players and most GTs are right in that 40 player range as of now with a few outliers like Da Grand WAAGH! and some of the Sacramento RTTs. Those will skew the data, but I could not come up with a way around it.

If you have a system that you think would be more equitable, or anyone for that matter, I'm all ears. I am not married to my ideas and will gladly junk my system if someone has one that is better.

What is the allowed event cap? Like RHQ has a 3 highest point cap. Does this? Just curious

Is it just me or does this thread keep changing names???

Hahah, yes it keeps changing names, Grimgob! Haha, I have finally settled on a name for it, and it went form an idea to actuality so sorry for the confusion.

@Hulk
Yes, top three scores.

To remain competitive, you must go to big events, which is as it should be, IMO.

Figures this would happen when I wind up in friggin Minnesota for the forseeable future.....Oh well, I'm trying to get back for at least one event in Cali this year

I know Reece, just bustn ur chops
Do you get a green jacket?

Hahaha, that is a great idea! A green Jacket with some cool stuff on it, might have to be Orky since it's green! It would make for a great picture at least!

@Hulk
yeah, that sucks you won't be able to partake, but it does mean someone else will get to go since you won't be there to swipe the spot!

I definitely agree with Reece on the scoring. For people who only attend big tournaments because there aren't any good local RTTs (for example) it would suck to get 'shut out' by a bunch of people who play in the same series of small tournaments against each other and just 'rotate out' who gets to win this time (even if it isn't intentional).

On the flip-side, people who don't generally play in big events (too far or too expensive, for example) are going to feel like the system doesn't take into consideration the quality of players they may feel their local (small) tournament scene has.


But at the end of the day, I think you have to weight it slightly towards the larger events because there is no way to know the quality of players in those smaller events AND it gives people another reason to come attend those larger events (which is good, IMHO).


If nothing else, each 'season' can be a new test run for Reece to fine tune the scoring system. Getting it started (and getting events to send their results into rankings HQ) is the most important thing. Tweaking the system to perfection can come later.

I think there's a solution here that accomplishes a much more perfect beginning without laboring under intense deliberations until the idea passes into history.

There's nothing mutually exclusive about getting a system going, and refining it.

I completely agree with wanting to weigh it towards larger events. I also agree with wanting to give non-winners points that could qualify them. I just think the weighting is off. I will think about it a little bit and see if I can think of a way to tweak this basic framework and come up with something fairer, and if I can't I'll shut up . And I definitely won't complain about the scoring system once the season starts, regardless of how it is done. But assuming the set of tournaments/time period hasn't been set yet, it doesn't hurt to try to tweak it.

It may just be simpler to give points based on some ratio of placement to event size.

@Lambadomy
Any ideas you have I am open to, so please speak up. I am not a mathematician so I fully acknowledge that this system may not be perfect.

@MvBrandt
What do you suggest? I certainly don't want to lose any steam and if you see a way to streamline things, I am all ears.

@Yak
Thanks again for the suggestion, that was a smart play.

And you hit the nail on the head. The intention was to encourage players to go to more events. For one, the more players the more the event counts for and for two, it means bigger, better tournaments for everyone to enjoy.

How about a few relationship checks?

1) Limit points to finishing in the top half of a tournament, irrespective of size.

2) Make sure your points scale as you want them to. For example, if a 1st place finish at a 40-man, 3-round event should be twice as much as at a 20-man, 3-round event, and half as much as at a 80-man event, then adjust your formula accordingly.

3) You may also want to cap the number of players used in your formula, or Adpeticon is going to tilt the scale so heavily as to make 16--man events effectively irrelevant.

Adpeticon is not in the southwest.

Only events in the southwest region will count, and the only big one is Da Grand WAAGH!

I didn't want the big events to totally outpace the smaller as otherwise there would be no point in going to RTTs for the purposes of this cup. That is why there are so many padding points in the amount of games played. That was meant to curtail attendance figures somewhat. It also encourages people to go to multi-day events, well I hope it does anyway.

If we eliminate the bottom half from scoring, that may help to avoid situations where someone who gets 20th in a 50 man tournament gets more points than a person who gets 4th in a 16 man event. However, you can make the argument that getting 20th place means you outplayed 19 other individuals, whereas getting 4th out of 16 means you only out played 13.

Plus, by including more people it makes the event more engaging to a wider audience. People like to see where they stand in the pecking order, even if not in the hunt for the top spots. It creates more bookkeeping for me, but I don't mind that.

The main thing I was concerned about with this system is if a region has lots of big events, like Great Escape Games in Sac. They tell me they routinely draw huge crowds for their RTTs. The one I went to was not that big, but if they do generate 40-60 players on a regular basis, that will really skew figures. So there may need to be a cap set in place, but then that seems to be unfair to the guys playing against larger amounts of opponents.

Any ideas on how to curtail that type of occurrence is totally welcome.

Thanks for the input, Janthkin.

err nevermind

I'm not sure which points level you went to up here Reecius but for last year's 1250 point RTT we had something in the neighborhood of 78 people and by the time we got to 2500 in November it had petered down to 40 and I wouldn't be surprised if it jumped up to 60ish again for this coming RTT in 2 weeks though who knows it may go the opposite direction lol. It's been having an overall positive response (hurray cheap to enter lol) but I could really see how it would skew the results if we end up with the same attendance as last year.

Hmmm. It would be cool if this happened. I assume Southwest would include Arizona?

@MrDrumMachine
Yeah Great Escape game sis a bit of an x-factor! We could end up with like 50% of the invites gong to Sac guys just due to the size of events, which is not really indicative of the region covered (California, Arizona, Nevada) as a whole. I may have to come up with a cap of some sort to make sure it isn't totally skewed, but I hate to do that arbitrarily just to reign in a successful series of events.

It's an escalation tournament, right? Maybe we will just use the final results for the entire event as a qualifier. That way it will just be the largest day's turnout and the overall winners as determinants.

As for points level? Doesn't matter really, but perhaps we will use 1500 as a cut off, up to 2500.

@bryan40Kman2000
Yeah, CA, AZ, NV

Not sure what the latest word on this is but the team over at CnC, Game Empire Pasadena, and I have decided to run a year long ranked ladder with an invitational in December. We started it as a "surprise" for some of our regulars with the first tournament of the year at Game Empire. If you want specifics check it out on Capture and Control. Other tournaments/stores can participate. \The Warmaster Cup: Announcing the Inaugural Season!

That looks like a great event!

We are a green light on this. Andrew over at Rankings HQ is setting aside a section of his website to track our rankings for the Southwest Master's Cup. He is working on it now and should have it done shortly.

I will begin tracking tournament data now, and store it to upload into the system.

OverwatchCNC wrote:Not sure what the latest word on this is but the team over at CnC, Game Empire Pasadena, and I have decided to run a year long ranked ladder with an invitational in December. We started it as a "surprise" for some of our regulars with the first tournament of the year at Game Empire. If you want specifics check it out on Capture and Control. Other tournaments/stores can participate. \The Warmaster Cup: Announcing the Inaugural Season!

I posted a comment on your blog page...I'm all for a master's cup, but you really need to have 4 rounds if you're going to invite 16 people otherwise there's no way you can crown a 'true' champion and you'll be stuck with an unsatisfying 'BCS' style finale.

Also, are you reporting your tournie results to rankings HQ? I think its fine to have your own ranking system going on, but I think more and more people are interested in seeing their results tabulated in a central system that keeps track of results, so if you're not already you should really consider submitting your results to rankings HQ IMHO.

yakface wrote:

I posted a comment on your blog page...I'm all for a master's cup, but you really need to have 4 rounds if you're going to invite 16 people otherwise there's no way you can crown a 'true' champion and you'll be stuck with an unsatisfying 'BCS' style finale.

Also, are you reporting your tournie results to rankings HQ? I think its fine to have your own ranking system going on, but I think more and more people are interested in seeing their results tabulated in a central system that keeps track of results, so if you're not already you should really consider submitting your results to rankings HQ IMHO.

The format for the final is not set in stone yet. If I think it can be managed, we might try to do a two-day, five game event.

-Dis.

Just an update on the monster of an RTT we had over the weekend up in Sacramento. It did happen to be the biggest CoC ever. . . again lol. It will probably skew the rankings pretty badly as the year goes on. This weekend we had 86 players and I think there were another 4-6 that got turned away for lack of space. I'd expect there to be at least 50+ players for the rest of the year as well as I think most of everybody had a lot of fun and the missions were good and even though some tables had quite a bit more terrain than others, to cover that many tables it's tough for it to be ALL top quality.

I'm not sure if any of it gets submitted to rankings HQ or not but it's all in a spreadsheet so it should be easy enough for someone to do, but how exactly you would keep it from making the numbers weird all year I don't know. I'm sure you'll figure something out that's fair though . Using the year overall is one way for sure, though I think to determine that they take the best 4 tournaments any given person was in and add those scores to determine who was best overall for the year. I dunno!

We're taking the top 3 results, but yeah, numbers that big are way out of proportion with the rest of the region! That is great for you guys, but definitely throws us out of proportion a bit.

How many points was it? I am thinking we will limit it to 1500-2500.

Also, the owner of GEG said he was gong to call me last weekend about us hosting our GT there but he never got back to me. I sent him a follow up email but I have heard nothing back.

As for the SWMC, we are just waiting on RankingsHQ to finalize the portion of the site for us. I wrote him a follow up email today to get a status update and he is usually really responsive so I anticipate hearing back from him, soon.

You can send me the spreadsheet, I'll PM you my personal email.

Thanks for the update!

OK, so I talked to Andrew over at RankingsHQ and he said he thinks our section of the website should be done by next week!

That means if it gets finished, we will be rocking and rolling. Once we have the site up and make sure it works, then I will start hyping this up, getting sponsors, etc.

This looks like it's going to happen, so thanks again to everyone for helping out!

One simple suggestion I would make is just to cap the points for event size based on the number of rounds.

For example, a 3 round tournament in a w/l format only really finds a true winner with 8 players. 4 rounds can find a true winner in 16, and 5 rounds for 32 players. Obviously with 20/13/10/7/0 scoring or ties or however you do it this doesn't hold, but it's still a decent rule of thumb.

It would probably be fair to say that a 3 round tournament caps at 16 or 24 or even 32 people, and that anything more than that the points are the same. If you had say a 48 person tournament with 3 rounds, first and second would get first place points, second and third second place...etc. or if you had capped it at 16 you'd give first, second and third max points, etc.

For more rounds, you expand the maximum number of players.

Anyway, that's my two cents, and a more simple way of saying what I wanted to say before. There's no reason to inordinately reward people for finishing 8th in a three round tournament with 80 people.

I hear what you are saying and I think a cap of some kind would be a good idea so as not to completely sway the data in favor of localized events where guys can repeatedly play in large tournaments, such as Great Escape Games. We could end up with a situation where those guys wrack up boatloads of points and then fill a lot of the invites.

On the other hand, I want to create incentive for people to go to and grow tournaments. If it means a birth in the Masters, just maybe people will go out and encourage more gamers to come out.

SO maybe we will set a hard limit as that doesn't allow for localized advantages.

That is a good idea.

Yeah, that is part of why I suggested the cap be much higher than what the number of rounds actually determines a reasonable victor for. I mean, it's awesome that they have 86 player 3 round tournaments, and people should get points for it, but really you have what a 10 way tie for first? At some point there needs to be a cutoff.

You can of course still give bonus points for being considered 1st/2nd/3rd for these events too.

Yeah, the bonus points for 1st/2nd/3rd will stay to stratify the field.

I understand your point and was considering that, too. Someone who gets 54th place in an 80 man tournament shouldn't get as many or more points as someone who gets 1st in a 15 man tournament! Haha. It is just difficult to come up with a system that mitigates this and is still fair.

Guess I'd better start collecting some skullz!....he he he he he he