Hey All,
I just want to make a plug for the 4th annual Broadside Bash coming in February. Thankfully this event does not fall on Valentine's Day this year and is on the following weekend instead.The event will be held as part of the Strategicon convention at the Sheraton Gateway hotel in Los Angeles.

As I understand it there are only 40 spaces open for each game. The army point totals are 2200 for Fantasy, and 2000 for 40k. This event is part of the official GW GT circuit and will have Golden Tickets for the winners.

This event is being held by the Pacific Marauders gaming club. For more information, please see the event web page found here: http://www.broadsidebash.com/

40 for both? Why are they limiting themselves to less 40k spots than they had attendees last year? Oh well, I'll check it out cause it's right down the street from me so I'll probably go

It is in a different hotel this year, so I'm guessing they are limited on space. However, it says that they will also have room for 40 War of the Ring players and I doubt that they will get that many, so they will probably open up that table space to accomodate more 40k and Fantasy players.

Yeah, see I personally would have just done it out the door:

60 40k spots
40 Fantasy spots
20 WotR spots

Those are all increases from last year (heavily in the case of Fantasy and WotR) and appears as though they are trying to expland. The current numbers almost make it look like they are trying to level out 40k (the most popular even by more than 2x) with the other systems which I think is a mistake Just my opinion on the marketing. I'll probably hold out buying my ticket until I see the scenarios. I want to bring my DE or Nids (since I'm talking about them so much on my blog I should probably put my money where my mouth is) but I need to see the scenarios to see what's more viable.

On a side not I really hope they actually only do 1st round pairing with their "comp" scores since they were so far off the mark last year and they also extended it to the entire first day which mean even though I was 1-0-1 (win/loss/tie) I played a guy that was 0-2 in round 3 last year. Pure BP match-ups from round 2 on. Just something I hope they fix as it cause quite a few mutters last year. That and the fact that the overall winner didn't play anyone that was at the top 4 tables in game 5 all weekend also didn't help.

Yeah, since the event doesn't fall on Valentine's Day weekend as it has in the past, I got the "Hall Pass" from the wife to go play so I was committed before I really knew much.

As for the scenarios, I can't really say much until we see them. As long as it isn't anything super-goofy, I probably won't complain.

If considering that they have space for 120 people total, I really don't see them turning anyone away that wants to play. If I were to take a guess, I'd say that they will end up with 50-60 40k players, 30 or so Fantasy players, and about 10 LoTR guys. I could be way off on the Fantasy side and they may end up with more, but I think that 8th edition is still too new for a lot of people to really have a good feeling about it.

Considering this is a Pac Marauder event, I'm going to go hard-core on the soft scores. Basically that means that I'm going to do some extra highlighting on my wolves, build a cool new display for them, and write a mini-background for my list.

Yeah, last year soft scores were 66% of scores. And I'd suggest making sure you have noticable multi-level of highlights. I got hammered on my painting for it being "average" when I generally score very well in painting in every other event. It's a pretty subjective tournament but I normally just go for Best General which I've taken away 2/3 years so far So I'm gonna keep in this theme though I'll probably be running with my Nids so it might be an uphill fight

In regards to the numbers the thing that hurts them most is the way the Fantasy event went the first year they ran it. It had some major drama that alienated 90% of the SCGWL meaning that for the last 2 years they haven't cleared 20 people for fantasy. I hope that changes as I just want events to be successful in general but it's important to remember that gamers have long memories when you screw the pooch on things.

Hmmm, depending on how this falls in line with my school schedule next semester, I could make the drive down from San Jose, don't know yet if I'll do 40k or fantasy, but probably the latter.

Hulksmash wrote:
In regards to the numbers the thing that hurts them most is the way the Fantasy event went the first year they ran it. It had some major drama that alienated 90% of the SCGWL meaning that for the last 2 years they haven't cleared 20 people for fantasy. I hope that changes as I just want events to be successful in general but it's important to remember that gamers have long memories when you screw the pooch on things.

Yeah, I wasn't around to really see/hear what all happened, but I did hear that there was some drama. While I'd like to take the high-road and say that in this hobby of painting and pushing plastic miniatures around on the table there shouldn't be any room for anamosity, but the truth be told there have been events that I've attended in the past that I've sworn off of myself so I understand...

That being said, this should still be a good time and I'm looking forward to getting away for a weekend to play. If nothing else, it is a chance on Saturday night to head over to get a steak at Clearman's North Woods Inn which is my favorite restaurant in the world!

I will be there!

The BSB is a soft score heavy event, like 60% soft scores, and the missions last year were 3 good, 2 terrible. The comp judging was about average for most armies and horrible for some. They base the comp scores off of fluff, not power, so there were some rock hard armies with great scores and some gak armies with bad scores. It is very frustrating.

But, the terrain is awesome (needs LOS blockers on every board though) the guys running it are nice and efficient, and best of all, nearly all of my best 40K buddies will be there, so it is worth the trip.

And thank baby jeebus it isn't on Valentine's day, I know we gamers aren't known for being lady's men, but come on! We can at least try and get a little romance on Valentines!


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They have 40 spots for WotR? Last time there were like 5 guys? 40K had more than the other two games combined.

But hey, I'm sure money talks and if more 40K guys sign up, they will make room for them. They have to pay for the space, after all.

As I understand it, the 40k missions should be posted up on the BSB web page in the very near future. (Hopefully today)

Holy crap, 4 of those missions are really gakky. At least they dropped the worst mission from last year, but still, 4 of them have random victory conditions. I just don't understand why they think it is fun to have victory come down to the roll of a die, that is such a bad idea.

And I hope I am reading this wrong, but it looks like battle points are only 50 out of 140 points?!?!

Hahaha, Jiminy Christmas, that is really pushing it. Sportsmanship is 25 and favorite opponent is 5. That opens the door to abuse, big time.

Oh well. The event is fun and well run and I still plan on going. I just wish they would use missions close to those in the book.


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Fark me, and comp is 30 possible points, 0-6 per game, player judged. Ouch. That means sports, comp and players choice are 60 flipping points! Hahaha. Ah man.

They don't have anything posted for the fantasy tournament yet, (The one I would like to do) but if it's that heavy on sportsmanship etc...it might not be worth the trip. I really hate player judged scoring. All it takes is one rules query, where you can even be completely right on, and your opponent will slam you over upset feelings (who honestly believes people will stay objective?). Same goes with play scored comp. It's not hard to imagine "Hey, he beat me, must be a pretty F'd up list, 2 comp!" or "Hey, I beat him so he must have brought a fluff list, 5 comp!" sort of thing.

Though, I love me some competitive play, so I still might make the trip, just hope the scenarios are fun...

EDIT: Even though I'm a terrible player, I don't mind heavy painting scores, as it's a big aspect of the hobby, so some soft scoring is perfectly fine.

Yeah, all it takes is one guy who didn't have fun and he can take away 11 points! Which is more than a massacre earns you! That means one upset guy can take you out of the tournament. That is crappy.

Painting should be a separate thing, IMO. Being a good artist and being a good player are such different skills. They should have separate awards. Both are important parts of the hobby, but I think they are pretty hugely different.

Hopefully the fantasy scenarios are better than the 40K ones.

To be honest it looks like they didn't delete the "comp" from last year. It's not actually included in their scoring.

BP's count for 40% of overall. They must not have like Mike claiming to be the softest best overall in the country The "Hardcore" thing is a joke to. I saw the way they "judged" comp last year so I wouldn't even try to pick those points.

The thing I have a problem with is this from the Sportsmanship checklist:

Integrity-Did you think your opponent made an army list based on the theme of the relevent gaming universe and available background for that army (as opposed to a force built purely for winning with little or no regard to that armies established background)

This to me come off as completely elitist and over the top really. So if I build an army I like and it doesn't match your idea of fluff then I have no integrity? Statements like this further divide the community. Why not just leave that at did this person measure and yada appropriately?

So Missions:

Goals Not Guns (1)-So this is a 6 objective mission with 4 of the objectives being fairly close together in the middle. Kan Wall will love this. So will anyone with solid troops. Tau, Necrons, Daemons and Guard need not apply. Oh, and you need to hold all 6 for a Massacre.

Ground Control (2)-Isn't horrible. I'd prefer most VP's in a table quarter personally but most troops isn't horrible.

Lady Luck (3)-Another F-you to Necrons, Tau, Daemons, and Guard. It'll favor again heavy, resilient troop choices and midfield survivability. So...Marines, Orks and Nidz. Forcing you to come into an assault arc to play the mission isn't a good idea. Neither is randomness though that's the part I have the least problem with.

Numbers Game (4)-Well here is your bone shooty armies that aren't so bueno at combat. If your playing another shooty army pray you go first since the instant you kill enough enemy units you win, even if it's the top of a turn. It should be obvious how bad this is just at first glance. At this point I have to ask do balanced missions actually physically hurt you guys? Let's not even get into the deployment zones....

Provide No Quarter (5)-Just call it VP's. There is no reason not to really. Calling it something else just confuses people. Nothing horribly wrong with it. It's just a 4th edition mission with spearhead deployment.

Smear the (6)-Football with a random token? Really? Especially since troops have to spend a turn in the open to pick one up....

Try, Try, Tri (7)-So we didn't learn the lesson last year with an auto lose mission for some armies? Good luck Orks, Tau and Eldar...

These missions are almost painfully bad. Is it that hard to just slightly modify book missions? They kinda run a smooth event even though last year they boned the pair ups so bad that the overall winner never saw any of the other top finishers across the table from him. But to be honest I'm not actually sure I'm gonna make this. I have taken home best general 2 years out of 3 so I guess I might go to see if I can make it 3/4. Though I might be more inclined to spend my money on the Sprue Posse event and the NorCal event Reece's area is putting together in March...

I see what you mean by the scenarios....ouch! Also, how is Try, Try, Tri bad for orks? I didn't go last year so not sure on that one.

I hope the scenarios for WHFB are close to what they were at Da Grand Waaagh, they were straight from the book with just enough variables to make them unique.

Well unless the terrain is set perfectly for the mission (i.e. the objectives are in cover) orks have to stand out in the open and get blasted. Orks don't have what you would call enduring troops. Which means they have problems accumulating points and so lose quite handily. Eldar are in the same boat against anyone with more than 4 ranged heavy weapons....

The guy writing the scenarios doesn't play regular 40K. He plays a house rules version only in a for fun league setting.

So, he has very little experience in competitive 40K or even a good knowledge of the rules, to be honest. You notice there are no Dawn of War missions, again, and that is because he doesn't like DoW and did not know how it worked.

I am not putting him down, just stating why the missions are so bad. The other Pacific Marauders, the club putting this event on, pretty much only play Apocalypse. Most of them are openly anti-competition. They actually openly talked about switching the BSB to a no battle points event.

The fluff as comp thing is such a skewed measuring stick. Some "fluffy" armies, like Shane's foot Orks, will absolutely crush people at this event and score well in soft scores. Then, take a "fluffy" Eldar army and get crushed.

They are old school gamers coming from second and third edition where you really could break the game. Their mindset is so deeply ingrained that they fail to see that things have evolved past that and that this antiquated system is going to make their event less fun.

Anyway, rant off. I want to go and see my friends, I guess I will just take a gakky army and not worry too much about the results. Hahaha, yeah right, I am way too competitive for that. I should take my tournament Wolves and just crush everyone with total ruthlessness just to buck the system! But then, that would be mean to the other players.

Ah whatever, this tournament will be fun for the people there, definitely not for the system or the missions.

Hey Reece, I'll go if you promise to bring the nastiest list you can think of I'll match it since it won't matter how I paint I'll get an 11/30 again.....(not bitter, I swear). I'll even let you pick the codex I use Reece

I think it's funny that they are doing the "Hardcore" thing to count toward Best General plus the Sportsmanship score. It seems like an intentional move to help "their" type of player win.

My biggest issue is that their view is so skewed. This event is actually getting more out there every year. The best part is the worst comp score I got from them for an army I brought was for the year I didn't win Best General. Doesn't that seem odd?

Oh make no mistake, they will openly tell you they want a fluff player to win. These guys have said, and I quote, they'd like to see someone win a tournament even if they lost all of their games. No gak, those are words I heard with my own two ears.

I would bet dollars to donuts that the three guys on the panel of "highly experienced" 40K gamers will all be guys in their club who share the same points of view. The thing is, these guys do not play competitively, they have no idea what power game lists are. The guy judging the "hardcore" score, who also wrote the missions, thinks my Footdar are a well known power game army! hahaha. He is extremely narrow minded in terms of what is "fluffy" and what is not. You notice it says that players will be held to out of print standards of fluff? That is because I argued that no one should be held to standards of material that are not in print. I won't say anymore because I don't want to come across as talking trash.

Hmm, now I am on the fence. Half of me wants to bring the nastiest army I can come up with. Or, even better, come up with the nastiest "fluffy" themed army I can and game the system. That would probably be the smartest play in this case. Horde Orks would just crush these missions, especially with no DoW, fluff comp system (what's more Orky than the Ork horde?) and the hardcore fluff bunny award.

You should bring your LoganWing, Brad. Just lower the hammer! Actually though, your adeptus mecahnicus army would score super high in the soft scores and give you a huge advantage.


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Oh and yeah, Comp is in the score, 30 points worth, more than half of the battle points. Jeebus.

And yeah, getting the lowest comp score when you win best general is the exact opposite of what comp is meant to do.


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Best general is sports + hardcore + BP's?

God, this just gets worse and worse. If my best 40K buddies weren't going I wouldn't even consider this tournament.

If you have never played at this event before, stay far, far away from it.

The scoring and missions are just totally random. So you end up playing 5 games of 40k, and at the end you find out who's opponents let them win because your battle score has nothing to do with it.

I go to the BSB to play 5 games for 40k, and hang out with friends.

Actually Reece their standard breakdown says no comp points. And I'm pretty sure that little comp section at the bottom is just dumb leftover since they have the sports score down there that is totally different from the link in the 40k rules. So at least they dropped that.

As for my Admech army it wouldn't score high because it's not painted to their standard of "highlights" since I won't put 3 levels of highlights according to them conversions don't count until you do that so I'd probably still get a 11/30.....

If I'm in Cali still and I've got the weekend off I'll go. But otherwise we'll see. I wanted to run my bugs as my 2011 tournament army but I hate seeing poor painting scores because they aren't marines....

This one I'll skip this year. I guess I have to wait for the Slaughter to get my GT on.

I was considering to the BSB, but after looking at the scoring and missions, I have to say that I too am going to skip this.

I will skip this also. I was initially looking forward to attending, but after Reece's comments I am staying home. Reece is such a joy killer.

Yeah, I don't think this group realizes how much of a negative experience last year was for 40k for a lot of people and this year they decided to push it even farther. Instead of trying to grow the event they seem like they are trying to kill it. They already killed Fantasy with their first year shennanigans. It's like they don't want to run a tournament.

And the idea of "Tournament" Organizers saying they wish somebody 0-5 could win the tournament is just plain scary to me as a hobbyist and gamer.

Darrian13 wrote:I will skip this also. I was initially looking forward to attending, but after Reece's comments I am staying home. Reece is such a joy killer.

This. I was thinking I'd offer to drive down w/Reece, but he & Hulk have slain any desire to attend - I'll stay home, and work on my Adepticon armies instead.

Understand this: The tournement is four months away. If you have an idea or a legitimate concern about the construction of the missions, send a letter to the organizers. Im not off kilter when I suggest this as I am a member of the club and assisted running the event the first two years.

Yes, the Pacific Marauders core values are based on sportsmanship and hobbying, that shouldn't preclude you from building a hard list for fear of getting your soft scores nerfed....besides, that's why we have 'Ard Boyz. The PACMADS are not snobhobby elitests, nor are they power gamers, just a bunch of dudes who noticed a shortfall in large tournement play in SoCal and stepped up to provide a venue. They do not make money on the tournements, unlike other organizations who's goal is to do so, while still providing excellent prize support.

As for the WHFB missions, they are still play testing/observing how the new rules affect tournement play. Most of they guys play WHFB, rather than WH40k.

I encourage you to be PROACTIVE in seeking redress instead of allowing knee-jerk response/interpretations to dominate the discourse here.

Richard

sierm wrote:Understand this: The tournement is four months away. If you have an idea or a legitimate concern about the construction of the missions, send a letter to the organizers. Im not off kilter when I suggest this as I am a member of the club and assisted running the event the first two years.

Yes, the Pacific Marauders core values are based on sportsmanship and hobbying, that shouldn't preclude you from building a hard list for fear of getting your soft scores nerfed....besides, that's why we have 'Ard Boyz. The PACMADS are not snobhobby elitests, nor are they power gamers, just a bunch of dudes who noticed a shortfall in large tournement play in SoCal and stepped up to provide a venue. They do not make money on the tournements, unlike other organizations who's goal is to do so, while still providing excellent prize support.

As for the WHFB missions, they are still play testing/observing how the new rules affect tournement play. Most of they guys play WHFB, rather than WH40k.

I encourage you to be PROACTIVE in seeking redress instead of allowing knee-jerk response/interpretations to dominate the discourse here.

I have no baggage here, and no stake in the tournament. I look at the posted information, listen to the comments of people who have attended the event previously, and then decide whether or not it's worth the time & expense of traveling down to SoCal.

The TOs are certainly permitted to run the event they want to run, and it's my choice whether or not to attend. I really appreciate that they've posted the information so early, as it makes the decision-making process that much easier. I certainly don't expect them to change their perspective based on my wishes, and so I'm unlikely to expend much effort trying to get them to do so; I posted simply to provide another data point, if they're interested in collecting such.

*edit: I shouldn't give all the credit to Reece & Hulk; Blackmoor's previous description of the knee-high tables they were playing on last year is also lurking in the back of my mind.

I can't support this tourney format. I have attended before, and I have read tourney reports from Blackmoor and Hulksmash in the year I missed.

I don't believe comp has a place in a "tournament", I like to play 40k to win, and I like my opponents to do the same.

To all who just want a hobby weekend, by all means enjoy it. Their terrain does look nice. But I can't reinforce this "players who win games are jerks" attitude with my dollar vote, even if it means one less tourney weekend this year.

@sierm

Last year I did try and talk to the organizers. The first group of guys from your group were openly hostile when I tried to explain mission issues and how they favored certain armies. Then the current person doing the missions said that next year they'd be better because he'd have more time. Then went around being pissed that I didn't praise his missions.

The newest set of missions are horrible after having a year to do them. Only one of them isn't out the door bad. And no DoW in a 5 game tournament is abusable, just like last year. I've tried to talk to the TO's of this event about issues like comp from year 1 and 2. They flat out lied to me. I'm not inclined to waste my time trying to talk to TO's who are going out of their way to alienate me as a player.

I tried last year to talk to them about their "painting" checklist but was brushed aside. The TO's don't want to change and aren't open to criticism. I approached last year with serious, calm, rational, and non-aggressive advice on how to improve the event for everybody and got the shoulder.

And tell me how their quote under Integrity on the sports sheet doesn't come off elitist? Or the "Hardcore" score bit?

On the note of sportsmanship scoring by players, I was told twice last year that I was doing it wrong (and could be DQ'd for it)because I awarded full points to all my opponants. I had fun in all my games and don't like judging other players fluff so in my mind everyone gets full points. TO's telling me to judge peoples fluff harsher or gets to stepping is a bit hobby elitist/hardcore. Just sayin thats all.
And +1 to backbreaking knee high tables last year.

Hulk: I wasn't present last year, service commitments, so I don't have that experience to draw from. I can infer from your previous posts you have a big axe to grind, that's your perogative, but have you written out..literally, your position? Tone and body language often do more to defeat constructive discourse more than differing viewpoints do. Admittedly, PACMADs frown on "WAAC" gaming...it's not how we do business. We advocate the hobbiest and a "would I enjoy playing this person in a one-off setting" perspective.

With regards to your comment on "integrity": I think inserting "purist" or "strict constructionalist" in your previous statement would make your position tenable.

With regards to the "Hardcore": Again, that's an echo of the anti-WAAC sentiment.

The PACMAD's have done the leg work to lock on a venue. If you are unhappy with the way the event is organized or missions are written, establish "buy-in" by providing feedback and examples of methods you may have seen work in other venues.

As with anything, I am not trying to make everyone happy...i'd lose that fight. I would like to see some of these issues addressed, and incrementally, the event will be better, stronger and more efficiently run.

Semper Fidelis,

Richard

Hi all,

I'm Kurt, one of the tournament organizers of the Broadside Bash. I am known to many of you, either from the past tournaments or the local gaming scene.

We welcome ALL feedback, even if we don't agree with you. We welcome any of you to come over to our forums and post feedback, or you can e-mail me directly...kurt@broadsidebash.com

With regards to the number of slots available, that is somewhat arbitrary. We do have a fixed amount of space, but its not like we have a specific space for 40k, specific space for WFB, etc. We rarely have to turn anyone away. We do however have to allow equal space for all systems, that is part of GWs requirement. If it were up to us, we would not even bother with WoTR. We have yet to turn anyone away for lack of space, so don't be afraid to register based upon an arbitrary number.

We have been experimenting with different scoring systems and mission structures at each event, not always hitting the mark. We will take this feedback into account and may make some changes based upon this.

Something that we are adamant about is that this is a HOBBY tournament first and foremost. The biggest competition will come in the form of painting, sportsmanship and theme. Battle scores are always going to be a marginal factor. This is something that you can either like or dislike, but it is a core factor in our tournament structure.

With regards to the SCGWL drama...the ironic thing is that is pretty much was started by and involved, other people...no one from the Broadside Bash team was involved in that drama. It was between various San Diego gamers and various other OC/LA gamers. We don't now, nor have we ever had anything against the SCGWL players or organizers...even if we do disagree on how "competitive" events should be played.

@ Hulk, I am sorry that you felt brushed off by myself or one of the other TOs with regards to feedback. That was not our intent, we are all tired and I would suggest in fact I welcome you, to visit our forums and post your feedback.

@Grim, while I do not agree that you should have been directed to judge people harshly, by giving everyone perfect marks, you are skewing the scoring simply due to the fact that it seems like you don't agree with sportsmanship scoring. If you legitimately felt that you have perfect games, then score accordingly.

We are doing this for you guys. We don't make any money off of this event, everything that we take in goes to either pay for the facility (yes, we have to pay for this), goes to cover our expenses (these events are costly to run) and the rest into prizes (we buy a lot of extra prize support).

Thanks for listening, thanks for your input and most of all thanks for attending the Broadside Bash.

- Kurt

I don't have an axe to grind actually. Like I said I've taken home best general 2 out of 3 years. Even if I had to point out the error that was made on my BP scores (they had somehow dropped 10pts off my total) after the event and it was never officially acknowledged. I didn't have a problem with that as the problem was rectified fast and well. It's why I attended the second year in fact. Kurt did a great job with it and I praised him for it then and I'll do the same now.

My problem is that they are not open to constructive criticism when given and that they have done nothing to improve the event for all types of gamers that would attend and instead have actually gone the other way.

The fact that you use the phrase WAAC to describe people who just want to bring a list they enjoy playing is an underlying problem as well. Check out my Sports scores for year 1 and 3 (the years I won Best General) and you'll notice I normally get 2-3 favorite opponent votes. I'm fun to play against even if I bring a tough list. If other people aren't mature enough to have a good time even if they lose why should players like myself, reece, janth, grimgob and others be punished?

And actually all of my discussion on the topic last year was written except for the painting checklist which I discussed at the time of the event and later online. Most of it via pm with Espa from their forums or on their forums. But I was attacked immediately upon my criticism of the fact that they had just recycled year ones missions (for 4th edition mind you) last year. I then gave tons of constructive criticism citing that the missions in fact favored my army so much it would be hard to lose. I pushed for DoW and KP's as mitigating factors to the list I was bringing (before I ever saw the scenarios) but was shut down and told next year. Blackmoor, Reece, and I pointed out the flaws and issues they would have and shockingly, those exact problems arose.

I realize this even is put on by primarily Apoc gamers and people who generally don't step out and play in any kind of competitive style. That it's put on by a club of extremely like minded individuals who have a very narrow vision of how 40k is suppose to work. I just wish they could realize that people have less fun when you try and force your style of play on others than if you just said go for it. It's like they didn't even read the critique of last years events that several attendees posted up on various locations afterwards.

The only reason they've had attendance is because their haven't been other options and now that has changed. There are 3 other events in SoCal and 3 more within a 6 hour drive that are going to be going on outside of this event. That's not counting the Sacremento, Oregon, Seattle events that will also be going on the West Coast. I'd say it's a good idea to start adjusting at least a little bit to what people out there who attend these events want or they won't be running the Bash next year. Someone else might be.

@Kurt

I realize it's primarily a hobby event. Most tournaments are. But you can have a hobby event that is fun and competitive too. Nova did it. BFS did it. Adpeticon is going to do it next year. The SCGWL guys are getting much, much closer (if I can get them to drop that damn single wacky mission they always insist on). Why incorporate sports and a whole new arbitrary system into it? Why not just write good, solid scenarios (or steal them) and let the competitive (not WAAC) players have fun to? If your doing pairs by pure BP's anyway then these people will be playing each other and everyone will be having a good time. Right now your trying to shove your brand of gaming into every aspect of the game. What does theme have to do with Best General? I realized a long time ago I wasn't going to walk away with the Best Overall. I don't meet yall's painting standard which is fine actually. I might pick up sport but genearlly do to well at BP's to pick that up. Which means there is only one prize I'm going to walk away with if I do well. I'm totally cool with that and that is what I shoot for. I bring well designed, fully painted (generally very well painted by most standards), and interactive lists so I wouldn't be surprised to walk away with it again if I attend. I think it's important that you realize I just want the experience to be better for everyone and the current direction you are going drives away more people than it brings in. That's pretty much my problem with the Broadside Bash as a whole cause I want you guys to be around. I want tournaments to go to. But I'm worried that you'll get lost if you don't start to adapt to what a lot of people are looking for.

Hulksmash

“Then the current person doing the missions said that next year they'd be better because he'd have more time. Then went around being pissed that I didn't praise his missions.”

When I’m “pissed” you’ll know it. Quite honestly, I don’t recall meeting you. Sorry.

“Integrity-Did you think your opponent made an army list based on the theme of the relevent gaming universe and available background for that army (as opposed to a force built purely for winning with little or no regard to that armies established background)

This to me come off as completely elitist and over the top really. So if I build an army I like and it doesn't match your idea of fluff then I have no integrity? Statements like this further divide the community. Why not just leave that at did this person measure and yada appropriately?”

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?pageMode=multi&categoryId=300005&pIndex=8&aId=3400027&start=9

Yes. It’s as elitist as the 2008 GW Grand Tournament it was taken from. Sorry.
_________
Reece

“These guys have said, and I quote, they'd like to see someone win a tournament even if they lost all of their games.”

That’s news to me. I will begin an immediate investigation to castrate these people who design tournaments where losing is winning.

“the guy writing the scenarios doesn't play regular 40K. He plays a house rules version only in a for fun league setting.

So, he has very little experience in competitive 40K or even a good knowledge of the rules, to be honest. You notice there are no Dawn of War missions, again, and that is because he doesn't like DoW and did not know how it worked.”

Yes, if by little experience you mean 10 years of play, 4 leagues, 8 campaigns, missions used in RTTs, having owned Tyranids, Eldar, Dark Angels, Sisters of Battle, and Orks. Oh, and averaging two games of 40k just about every Saturday against more than 50 players over the past 5 years. I’m a newb.

”I am not putting him down, just stating why the missions are so bad.”

Of course you’re not putting me down. You’ve played these missions, reviewed their balance and playability, and have a well-informed basis of criticism. Some of you may know that Reece and I have personal differences. I would ask that if you wish to tell others that a movie ‘sucks’, you are fair enough to have seen it first.

I make no apologies for the PM gaming philosophy, nor its emphasis upon providing attendees an experience of fun in gaming that is not solely defined as “win”.

If you believe the only fun is to win. That there is glory to be found in being the ‘best’ at 40k by winning at all costs, so that Bieberesque fandom will validate your existence than please do not come to BSB 2011.

If however, you enjoy a good game win or lose. You enjoy seeing others interpretations of 40k in hobby and play, and you just love the game for all of its trappings – hobby, game, story, camaraderie – you are most assuredly welcome! We’d love to have ya.

Thank You,

Jason Nichols
Please, feel free to send suggestions/queries to nicho043@csusm.edu

Espa wrote:Reece

“These guys have said, and I quote, they'd like to see someone win a tournament even if they lost all of their games.”

That’s news to me. I will begin an immediate investigation to castrate these people who design tournaments where losing is winning.

“the guy writing the scenarios doesn't play regular 40K. He plays a house rules version only in a for fun league setting.

So, he has very little experience in competitive 40K or even a good knowledge of the rules, to be honest. You notice there are no Dawn of War missions, again, and that is because he doesn't like DoW and did not know how it worked.”

Yes, if by little experience you mean 10 years of play, 4 leagues, 8 campaigns, missions used in RTTs, having owned Tyranids, Eldar, Dark Angels, Sisters of Battle, and Orks. Oh, and averaging two games of 40k just about every Saturday against more than 50 players over the past 5 years. I’m a newb.

”I am not putting him down, just stating why the missions are so bad.”

Of course you’re not putting me down. You’ve played these missions, reviewed their balance and playability, and have a well-informed basis of criticism. Some of you may know that Reece and I have personal differences. I would ask that if you wish to tell others that a movie ‘sucks’, you are fair enough to have seen it first.

This doesn't really help your cause, or encourage me to attend. There are some specific criticisms of the missions posted above, and they appear to raise valid concerns; rather than use an open forum to address them, you offer sarcasm.

Would it help if someone you don't have personal differences with were to repost some of the concerns with the missions?

If you believe the only fun is to win. That there is glory to be found in being the ‘best’ at 40k by winning at all costs, so that Bieberesque fandom will validate your existence than please do not come to BSB 2011.

If however, you enjoy a good game win or lose. You enjoy seeing others interpretations of 40k in hobby and play, and you just love the game for all of its trappings – hobby, game, story, camaraderie – you are most assuredly welcome! We’d love to have ya.

And here, you're setting up a false dichotomy that leaves me feeling unwelcome. There IS room in the hobby for people enjoy the modeling, the painting, and the actual gameplay, but apparently there isn't room for such people at your tournament.

Not at all. It would help if I were contacted by these concerns, but as of yet I have not been.

I have always encouraged players to test these scenarios and provide feedback.

Reece and Hulksmash know this because they are aware that I worked with players' suggestions for BSB 2010. Reece and I have pages of discussions working to develop the scenario "Provide No Quarter" for BSB 2010 and now appearing for BSB 2011. That wasn' the cause for the personal differences, by the way. In fact, I'd found our collaboration very helpful and said so publicly - please see the BSB 2010 postings.

My cause is to provide a tournament for all attendees to have fun at in accordance with the mission of the Pacific Marauders, as best possible, and reviews of my psychological and philosophical basis of designing the scenarios is not very helpful. Simply emailing me at nicho043@csusm.edu
would very much help the cause of those who wish to open a discussion regarding BSB 2011.

However, simply ranting before saying "Hi. I have a suggestion." doesn't reveal a desire for change so much as a desire to dismiss the possibility for that change.

I don't bite unless asked. I promise.

We didn't meet Jason. Our discourse was entirely via the internet. And to be honest I'm far more inclined to take a friends word for it than yours when it came to how you discussed my criticism of the missions outside of our conversations.

As for the comment taken from 2008 it's actually in a different context. That is clearly a game play issue in their checklist. In your checklist it's an integrity issue. See the difference there? One is about the game, the other is about the person. Two totally different things.

"I make no apologies for the PM gaming philosophy, nor its emphasis upon providing attendees an experience of fun in gaming that is not solely defined as “win”.

If you believe the only fun is to win. That there is glory to be found in being the ‘best’ at 40k by winning at all costs, so that Bieberesque fandom will validate your existence than please do not come to BSB 2011."

Where the hell did we say we don't enjoy just playing or that winning is the only thing that is fun for us? Janth hasn't won a major event yet this year despite attending a multitude and he's always a blast to play or talk to and generally very much enjoys himself. Grimgob is in the same boat and we always have great games. Your painting an entire group not just with the same brush but with the wrong one.

In regards to missions and Reece comments. How many RTT's or GT's have you attended in 2009-2010? I don't care if you play in leagues, or have pick up games on saturdays, or played in a campaign. That isn't nearly the same environment as a major event.

And as for needing to play missions to see they aren't bad, I don't need to do that since I understand tournaments and all the codexes and have basic reading skills. I can tell you major issues by looking at them and then find minor ones as I play them. It's not hard to notice that lack of DoW or true KP's will favor certain builds. Nor to note that gaining points for objectives will hurt several armies. Or to point out that not giving someone a full turn isn't a fair way to run an event.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
And the insistance of personal correspondance instead of openly having a discourse doesn't help. Last year no matter what Reece did he couldn't get you to use KP's which I was talking to you about at the same time. Only reason I know this is that I talked to Reece. Blackmoor and I couldn't get you to use DoW.

Closed discourse leads to pretending to listen to people while doing what you want. Open conversation shows willingness to change.

"And as for needing to play missions to see they aren't bad, I don't need to do that since I understand tournaments and all the codexes and have basic reading skills. I can tell you major issues by looking at them and then find minor ones as I play them. It's not hard to notice that lack of DoW or true KP's will favor certain builds. Nor to note that gaining points for objectives will hurt several armies. Or to point out that not giving someone a full turn isn't a fair way to run an event."

Again, please send your suggestions for fixes to nicho043@csusm.edu

Said another way, I believe you wish to provide suggestions for the scenarios that would encourage a fun environment at the tournament. Please send them to me. Design a scenario of your own, send me one you've found somewhere else. I have no personal investment to see that any one of these are played at the tournament. The scenarios were chosen from 21 under review, 7 seemed a nice number, and 5 will be used.

There was no science behind their selection. Simply, these were chosen for the sake of simplicity, table logistics, balance, and variety.

If I was rude to you in our emails, my apologies, but I don't recall receiving such criticism. Quite the opposite, actually. You, yourself thanked me.

Again, please feel free to open a dialogue. I ask via my email simply because it offers a means to send image files and pdfs, and has a better archive.

Thanks,

Jason
nicho043@csum.edu

Oh I thanked you for changing from the initial missions that were rehashes of the 4th edition tournament. And for that I was truly grateful. Like I said last year you did a fine job in the amount of time that you had.We exchange several emails and if i remember correctly I tried very hard to include KP's and DoW. I did mention that they heavily favored midfield capable forces (primarily marines).

Here is something to consider as overall guidelines:

>1-2 DoW missions in a 5 game tournament
>No random objectives/occurances
>KP's are essential to balanced play, 1-2 mission in a 5 game tourney (1 if one mission is VP based, 2 if not)
>No more than 1 game with forced mid-table objectives
>No point gathering objectives
>Make sure full turns are always played. Avoid missions like the kill half+2 and autowin right there style scenarios

Things to do:
>Use standard deployment zones. Speeds everything up
>Slightly modify or tweak book missions, don't go overboard
>Keep it simple

Everytime to make an adjustment or change you have to think about which codex it hurts and if it will result in unhappy gamers. The current missions with the exception of the second and fifth ones are complete no-go's. Everyother mission heavily negatively impacts someone. Also bear in mind that requiring multiple objectives to major/massacre you're inadvertantly pumping up SM's who have the most resilient basic troops in the game pt for pt.

Hope that's clear and helpful.

"Oh I thanked you for changing from the initial missions that were rehashes of the 4th edition tournament. And for that I was truly grateful. Like I said last year you did a fine job in the amount of time that you had.We exchange several emails and if i remember correctly I tried very hard to include KP's and DoW. I did mention that they heavily favored midfield capable forces (primarily marines). "

With as much conviction to use KPs as you'd had last year, Reece pushed for VPs.

I would've worked with you to design a scenario for KPs that considered the other point advocating for VPs, but Reece took the initiative in that time and we began work that resulted in DPs. That's not to say you weren't involved as I often passed your points onto Reece as we discussed a solution.

In designing scenarios for a diverse collection of players, I have often found many players argue in opposition of others with as much passion and legitimacy.

For this reason and the logistical ones stated, I do not publicly discuss scenario design. This is not for the sake of a "Closed discourse [which] leads to pretending to listen to people while doing what you want." If you would like a copy of discussions concerning KPs and VPs and if Reece gave permission, I would be happy to provide you a copy.

I'm sure you'll see, just from the extensive discussion we'd had, and many drafts we'd worked on, why a public forum is not the most effective means regarding this dialogue.

Public forums also have an interesting way of intensifying the need to be 'right', or appear 'better' than others; offense is quick, frequency and style supercede substance.

Again, I ask that you contact me at nicho043@csusm.edu
if you haven't already. And, if for the sake of review you would like our email posted publicly, that's more than okay with me. I think many would find scenario design informative.

Thanks,

J

....and there you have it, folks, communication!!! It works when both parties are involved.

Hulk: I heard you the first 5 posts that you won best general 2 times in a row As for your comment on a group with a very narrow view of 40k, well Im sure every other gaming group/club has the same perspective about other groups. Pot and kettle, opinions and certain body parts, etc. Don't be so quick to judge/generalize other folks interpretation of "things", it isn't dignified or constructive.

With regards to all your other comments: Im glad you are entering the conversation as opposed to carte blanche "hellfire and brimstone" the BSB.

Mazel, Mazel. Good things!

Richard

I don't need to be right. If the actual missions are playable I normally just sit back and smile. If you check out the way Phazael adjusts his missions based on feedback you'll see it doesn't get out of hand. It's only when missions are so far off the track that they get the crazy reaction. In all honest I have zero urge to restructure your scenarios or create entirely new ones. I'll offer ideas or guidelines like I did above. I'll tell you how it can negatively impact my opponents or how it will OP my own armies. But designing from the groud up isn't my style. I'm to inclined to only moderately adjust standard missions like:

Mission 1:
Deployment: Pitch Battle
Minor Win:Most KP's
Major Win:3+ More KP's
Massacre:3+ KP's and Most Table Quarters controlled by troops.

Mission 2:
Deployment: DoW
5 Objectives-1 In middle of table and 2 in each "deployment zone but not within 12" of a long edge or 6" of a short one.
Minor:More Objectives
Major:3+ More Objectives
Massacre: 3+ More Objectives and Killed selected HQ or More KP's

Simple stuff like that. It uses standard deployments. Is easy to read. Doesn't hammer a particular army though the second one would be harder on foot sloggers like Nids but not impossible. That's as "in-depth" as i get when it comes to creating scenarios. Balance and playability come first. "Unique" or "Quirky" aren't something I look for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Sierm

It never was Fire and Brimstone the BSB dude. As for the Best Gen comments it's important because it's coming from someone who has not only attended but performed well in the events. That should, in a normal world, lend weight to their opinion as their opinions aren't coming from a "make it so I can win" perspective. See how that works?

I can and will assume from the way you run your events, the tone of your forums, the constant use of the WAAC term, and your responses that your club has a restricted view on 40k. Most of it's members aren't really part of the "tournament" scene (I could be wrong about Fantasy) and generally only come out to this event. The only guys I regularly see from San Diego aren't associated with your club and I hit every major SoCal tournament and most of the RTT's. So that tells me that your group isn't tournament oriented and the language of the replies tells me that you have a..dislike..of people who play differently than you do. Referring to them largely as WAAC gamers who get their validation from playing with little toy soldiers. That's the brush you guys use to paint people that don't play your way. Less holier than though and more honest open conversation.

Nothing I've posted has been fire and brimstone. It's been honest feedback on major issues that haven't been addressed previously and that experience tells me won't be addressed now. But I'm always willing to talk, who knows, maybe people can take something away from it.

I'm not a WAAC player but I do like the competitve part of 40k more then other parts of the hobby (I really enjoy painting and modeling also). but saying things like if your just coming to win don't come is really offensive. you have a product but you don't like a 1/3 of the people that buy said product so you alienate them to keep the product "pure". Next thing you know people arnt buying your product. you already have 5 people on here that don't like being called WAAC that are not going to attend this year which will domino to their frinds (the two people I came with last year passed when I asked them yesterday). you pulled 28 people last year and now your down to 21, way to grow the hobby. I know you don't do it for the money but you don't want to loose money and buisness is all about repeat coustomers and coustomer opinion. ignoring 1/3 of your costomers is bad buisness.

To be fair Grimgob they had 48 people for 40k last year. So they'd be down to 41 And so far it's only 2-3 non-returners and another 4+ that won't be attending who could have expanded the venue again.

I stand corrected, 41 it is

"In all honest I have zero urge to restructure your scenarios or create entirely new ones. I'll offer ideas or guidelines like I did above. I'll tell you how it can negatively impact my opponents or how it will OP my own armies. But designing from the groud up isn't my style. I'm to inclined to only moderately adjust standard missions[.]"

Of course. Please, reconsider. I find a unique, especially dissenting opinion to be the most helpful, offering views I may not have considered. I enjoyed working with you last year and I am confident I would again this year.

However, for the reasons I'd provided, I'm unable to work from forum criticism - it's logistically prohibitive and extraordinarilly time consuming. I've already lost a lot of work hours just in this discussion.

Again, I sincerely hope to receive feedback regarding these scenarios, simply pointing out what you don't agree with is not as helpful since scenario design requires a host of considerations including simple things such as 'where will players put their armies when not playing?'. The decision just on army point size included 8 people.

As always, feel free to contact me at nicho043@csusm.edu

If not, please consider creating your own tournament. No license or tests are required, and with as much passion and experience as I've witnessed on this forum, I'm sure it'll be worthwhile.

Much Appreciated,

Jason

"The decision just on army point size included 8 people."

And this is part of the problem. When you get to larger groups your start trying to make everyone feel valued and want to make everyone feel like they contributed. 1-2 people should design 10ish missions. Throw them up for criticism and review. Those 1-2 people make adjustments based on feedback. Rinse and repeat until it hits a not everyone is happy but no one is pissed stage.

And feel free to use the two I put up as an example of simple and far more balanced missions. People might not all like them but you'd be hard pressed to have people say they are gak and hurt specific codexes.

"And this is part of the problem. When you get to larger groups your start trying to make everyone feel valued and want to make everyone feel like they contributed. 1-2 people should design 10ish missions. Throw them up for criticism and review. Those 1-2 people make adjustments based on feedback. Rinse and repeat until it hits a not everyone is happy but no one is pissed stage"

With repect, what do you believe I've been doing?

With respect, I meant put it up to the community at large. Not the club. That's where you get the best answers. Clubmates tend to come from mostly the same place since that's why they are clubmates to begin with. And if you know your club is 90% "soft" score oriented players that don't participate in to many tournaments then how are you going to build good scenarios from that?

You can do that by simply posting scenarios on a forum like this and asking for feedback. Leave it alone for 2-3 days unless it's a question on how something works and then come back. Take that criticism, state your going to tweak, and in a few days come back with the tweaked ones. Rinse and repeat. That is how you use a forum to help. There are a lot of good, solid tourney players here that can help. But not everyone cares enough to go into an email dialogue and to be honest I would feel I couldn't play if I straight designed the missions as that would be unfair or could open up the possibility of public outcry if I win Best General or Overall.

Don't get caught up in arguements and you won't almost any more time than you would have correlating and reading emails and tweaking it that way.

It's not February. The scenarios are not gospel. I have asked you to work with me.

I'm not sure what else I can offer, except what you've just asked for.

Started a thread for you, I suggest checking it on friday or so, making a note, and then throwing up some reworked stuff next week. This can make for a fast and easy way to get more balanced scenarios assuming people participate. Also contacting other TO's and stealing ideas should be encouraged

Hulksmash wrote:I meant put it up to the community at large. Not the club. That's where you get the best answers. Clubmates tend to come from mostly the same place since that's why they are clubmates to begin with. And if you know your club is 90% "soft" score oriented players that don't participate in to many tournaments then how are you going to build good scenarios from that?

You can do that by simply posting scenarios on a forum like this and asking for feedback. Leave it alone for 2-3 days unless it's a question on how something works and then come back. Take that criticism, state your going to tweak, and in a few days come back with the tweaked ones. Rinse and repeat. That is how you use a forum to help. There are a lot of good, solid tourney players here that can help. But not everyone cares enough to go into an email dialogue and to be honest I would feel I couldn't play if I straight designed the missions as that would be unfair or could open up the possibility of public outcry if I win Best General or Overall.

Hulk: That's a very good point. Im not certain as to the number of tournements that are willing to post missions prior to the event, but your observation is valid.

With regards to my use of the acronym WAAC and your use of the phrase "your group": WAAC is common parlance and used frequently on this forum. If it strikes a nerve, it isn't intended. The magic of internet, as you know, is that sarcasm and humor cant be passed efficiently, the best general comment was my attempt at humor...sorry, im a Marine, not a comedian. Yes winning commands respect, but it also breeds hubris.

Yes, you are wrong to assume that about me. I play in tournements and I do not have a dislike of players who pursue victory at the cost of being cordial. Don't paraphrase my position or misquote me. I have not done you that diservice.

This conversation should be proof that the PACMADs are willing to engage in debate to resolve the issues identified.

Grimgob: I don't make anything to sell, brother. Your trite comments have been addressed by Hulk, so I'll go back to painting my Vendettas.


Richard

But even there Sierm you make the assumption that most of the players would pursue victory at the cost of being cordial. Most of the guys I run into at the top tables are the most fun games I ever have and 90% of those games are completely argument free. I could be misremembering but I used to run into worse sports and less cordial people before I began populating the top tables for the most part.

I apologize if I offended you. Remember that being part of a group though does impact how others view you and you belong to a very "hobby" oriented group so that's going to affect my comments and sometimes my tone

As for posting missions prior there has been a move that is making that common place. The SCGWL guys have been doing it for 2 years. The Nova, Bolter Beach II, and BFS have posted them all early. I'm pretty sure that Adpeticon is moving to posting them early this year as well. Props to the BSB guys on this as they have consistantly done this since at least the second year. It's an excellent move as the last thing you want is someone bitter from the experience of your tournament going home and ranting about how crappy it is because a homebrewed mission screwed them after being sprung on them at the tournament. It's the best way to make sure you get positive feedback and the most enjoyment out of the event.

For instance if the missions for this get fixed you might see people do a turn around and attend after all. That's the joy of doing this 4 months out so you can really get the ball rolling. Most of us aren't complaining about the actual scoring rubric (though I'd personally like a more step-by-step painting checklist). We're complaining about the missions which put a major damper on the whole thing for some of us as they are unfun and can lead to hurt feelings on the side of the guys getting screwed which with Sportsmanship can screw the guy who won even if he was a decent guy.

I'm always open to discussion and discourse. Heck, i even started a thread to help with the scenarios. I want to see the hobby grow and my biggest issue with the BSB this year is that they seem to be pushing some people away instead of opening their arms to bring them in.

Hulk: No, im not assuming that most players would pursue victory at the cost of being cordial. I said that I don't dislike players who pursue victory at the cost of being cordial. After the game is done, we usually have a great time...except for Tester, errrrr!!!!!!

In any case, as Espa posted earlier, the missions aren't set. I look forward to reading about this event!

I hope you change your mind about attending, Hulk.

The one thing I hate about Comp...you have no idea what a TO is going to ding until its too late.

So; what Army comps will a PacMar TO dock in points, regardless of the logic of the list or precedent found in 40K lore?
Dual lash Chaos? Triple Vindi Marines? Triple Lith Crons? 20+ missile Wolves? Melta-Vet Chimera spam Guard? 5+ Deff-Rolla Orks? Any army with multiple Special Characters (Ghazi-Snikrot, Shrike-Telion, etc)?

Also what is the policy for counts-as armies? Blue Salamanders, Black Imperial Fists, Red Space Wolves, Green Blood Angels (you know, things like using a Codex SM army as one of the specialized Armies)?

Better to get it in the open now so their are no nasty surprises on game day.

To be fair there is not comp. Outside of the 3 points available for "Hardcore" they aren't doing anything resembling comp. That isn't to say it won't affect your painting score though

They did at least take that from last year and eliminate it. That and actually spelling out the scoring (assuming they hold to it this year) were to two large steps they took forward.

The addition of "hardcore" and sports to best general was a step back. So were the scenarios. The painting rubric needs work too. If they fixed these three things you'd actually see a pretty good event assuming they fixed their pairing issues from last year as well.

Personally they don't need to drop "Hardcore" from general. I get it honestly but I would prefer them to drop the sports from it.

I'm sorry, I didnt mean to sound flamey. if your selling 60$ (and you are selling something, T-shirts too) tickets to play games dont call it a tournament. I went last year and did well but I dont like the fact that if I go, subjective thoughts about my personality and what I did with a legal codex list that has multiples of the same unit will dictate if I win or not. My list is harder then last year and my personality can be abrasive to some, but my painting is complete and I add details all the time, I know the rules, and try to be a nice person but the former will keep me away from the overall and it not a fair system. Why would I pay 60$ for that when I could go to a more rounded tournament where everyone has a chance. that was my point anyways and why I will not be attending this year.

And now it was my turn to not have read right. They have fixed the painting rubric. So that means that my only points of contention with the set-up is the scenarios and a few of the scoring aspects. If those are fixed I'll be attending and will even promote it to others since it shows they really do want to grow the hobby and incorporate all gamers. I should be back to scoring around 25-27 which makes overall possible again oddly enough...since that kind of increase over last year would have moved me up to 3rd place overall...

@Grimgob

If they fix the stuff go just to try and pick up Best General. It's all I tend to aim for due to their scoring previously. But with the fixed painting score I have an actual chance at Overall and you probably would to. Keep an eye out to see if they fix the major issues.

Thanks Brad. Nice to have a hope you don't end up out of the running before the event even starts.

I was OK with most of the missions. Agree that DoW deployment should be included. It's one of those setups that really equalize the battlefield. No turn 1 Alfa Strikes nor spammed Bright-Lance killing tanks before they even move.
I really hated the one where you auto-lose at 50% unit casualties. I can see missile-wolves mass killing transports on the alfa-strike, having the embarked unit take casualties and break, and the SW player winning on turn 1 with the opponent never getting to roll a single dice.

There are just so many problems with the tournament I don't know where to start.

First off 40k is a game. We play it for a lot of different reasons, but the actual game play has been taken out of he BSB. There is a total possible of 115 points with 50 of them coming from battle points. But if you read how many points you get for losing it is 6 points. So if you massacre 5 players you will have 50 points. If you lose all of your games you will have 30 points, so there is only a 20 point spread. You massacre two guys and lose 3 games you will have the same score as someone who has 2 major wins and 3 minor wins. Does that sound right to you?

Then the horror of player judged sports has been written about over and over again. What do you expect to have happen at a tournament? Fistfights if you do not have player judged comp? It seems like every other major event can have a lot more players than you have and the players act civilly to one another like adults should. Player judged sports lets the worst sports get away with a lot of crap because you are afraid to call them out because you do not want your sportsmanship score tanked.

Then the missions...

I will not drive 6 hours and pay $60+$20 for parking and lot more in gas to play in an event I don't look forward to playing in. I will see what they can do to fix the problems, but it looks like it has a lot of holes in it and it is taking on a lot of water.

You mean the end of May Alan Memorial Day weekend!

I thought about joining this conversation for a while, and thought it would be best to toss in my two cents again.

dkellyj hit the nail on the head. Some of these missions just are not fair, at all, in any way shape or form to some armies. Missile wolves or MSU IG will shoot other armies down to 50% KP in one round of shooting. The missions are fun in a non-competitive format, but they have enormous holes in them from a tournament perspective.

For the record: Espa (Jason) and I do have personal bad blood. It is very unfortunate as he and I used to be good friends. I will not go into the details as that is between he and I, but I will say that despite me trying to bury the hatchet, we still have great animosity. That said, he is an intelligent guy and I mean no personal disrespect towards him.

Personal issues aside, the facts of the matter are that Jason does not play competitively. There is nothing wrong with this in and of itself. He plays in a for fun league that emphasizes fluff and had a large number of house rules. They do not play tournament style games, and have little to no experience with this type of play. I am not saying this as an inherently negative comment, simply a statement of facts that I know to be true. When I suggested that the league guys go to more tournaments as they all had fun at the BSB, Jason specifically said one tournament a year was all he wanted to participate in.

Again, nothing at all wrong with that, I respect the fact that other people like to play the game differently. That is fine. But, know that this is the mentality and experience level of the rules and scenario writers of this event. They quite simply do not play in tournaments. Period. Fact. This does not mean they are newbs at all, they have a wealth of knowledge of the game and a love of the game equal to what we competitive guys have, they just have a different gaming philosophy.

Kurt is a good guy. All of the PacMads are good guys and I personally like them all. They just feel the game should be played a certain way and tend to look negatively on those who play to win. It is a very old and deeply held belief in that club.

As for my input into last year's scenarios, yes, I argued till I was blue in the face to change them as with my experience in competitive gaming I KNEW them to be skewed and unfair. It did little good. In all fairness though, Jason had very little time to get them together. he did the best he could. I also did argue for DP's (destruction points) as at that point I still didn't like KP's. I have since realized I was wrong on that count, and that KP's are an important balancing act tot he game.

At any rate, this is a lot of story that really isn't important. I apologize if I have turned anyone off from attending this event as I didn't mean to. I want to see tournaments grow and flourish as I love going to them so much. My friends will be at this event which makes me want to go and have fun, but if my presence will make it less fun for others then maybe I will skip it this year as I don't want to undermine the effort of the guys putting it together.

So, good luck to those who go, I wish them all the best. I am sorry if I came across as being negative about any individuals because I did not mean to. Like I said, the BSB is a well run event that is fun, even if the system is pretty far out of touch with the current tournament scene.

Tell ya what Reece. If they fix the issues (scoring/scenarios) your comin down this way and we'll rock the house.

I think the big problem is that some of them didn't realize before they posted the actual scenarios and scoring just how bad it looked outside of their group. But they have 4 months to fix it. If they do I'm pretty sure they'll see their attendance increase. If they don't then there are already 7-8 dudes who went last year who won't be attending in addition to people who would attend if the stuff was fixed who didn't come last year but are friends with those 7-8 dudes.

@hulk
Yeah I want to go, but I certainly don't want to cause any drama for those people going who don't really care much about the system or missions.

If they listen to feedback and alter things it will only help. A lot of guys going won't care and taking out all of the subjectivity that is now present will make the event so much more clear. The people who don't care won't notice, the people who do care will have a much tighter system.

For example, check this scenario out using the current system.

Say guy 1 has a beautifully painted, themed army. He gets a 30 on painting and the Hardcord award, but loses all his games and ends up with 63 points from those categories.

Then guy 2 comes along with a 3 color tournament standard army and gets an 11 on painting, like you did last year Brad (how, I do not know as your army looks great) and wins all his games. This guy gets 61 points.

Both guys were gentlemen and got full sports scores.

So now you have a system where a guy who loses all his games beats the guy who won all his games.

How does that make any sense to anyone?

Painting is a huge part of the hobby, and I love a beautiful army as much as anyone. I take a lot of time modeling and painting my own armies. But really? The system now makes this more of a painting competition than a tournament. Since losing all your games nets you 30 points, really, battle points are only 20 points vs. 37 with painting and 25 with sports. That means soft scores are actually over three times your battle points.

Oh, and for the record, if anyone cares, Aaron Lovejoy made the comment about wanting to see a tournament where a guy could win the event even losing all his games. I am not throwing Aaron under the bus, he is a super cool dude and the best painter I have ever met, but I firsthand witnessed this. There is nothing wrong with that mentality but it doesn't really jive with the way most people think.

I think the fundamental issue here is that you have fluff oriented gamers creating a tournament but wanting it to be a hobby event. The system is quite clearly geared towards benefitting fluff gamers, that is self evident in the scoring structure. But, they want tournament gamers to come to the event to fill it out. Therefore we get this weird sort of disconnect.

I think this event should just color itself one way or the other because it can't be both. The above situation is compounded by the fact that the rules and scenario writers who while being very involved with and experienced with the game in general, have very little tournament experience and as such are using the skill they do have to create this event. Those skills are geared towards themed, narrative campaigns and big, for-fun style apocalypse games. Both of those are great parts of the hobby, but don't translate well into a tournament.

I agree with everything you said Reece. One thing I would add is this year it's impossible for me to get boned on painting like last year as it's a full blown checklist. Looking at it my Daemons for example would score between 28-30 depending on how stringent the scorer was. The new painting checklist does mitigate the scoring slightly but yeah, if you look at that sheet and aren't scoring a 20-25 your already out of the running for Overall before the tourney starts.

I just dont get calling it a "tournament" - its a painting competition with games thrown in on the side.

Nothing wrong with that, but by saying it is a tournament, which implies playing a game to win, it seems disingenuous.

Call it a campaign weekend and you set expectations correctly.

(As a side note - apart from ToS UK doesnt really "do" comp - in 40k at least. Always seems bizarre that how nice a person you are determines if you are the best at winning games...)

To each his own I guess.

I would enjoy this tournament very much.

But it is 600+ miles away, I'll have to see how many wife points I have.

Doc

As we're still updating the site, some hold-overs are causing confusion. Our apologies, but since all BSB 2011 organizers are volunteering time outside of their employment and responsibilities, it takes some time to smooth out the site. We are working on this, and appreciate your patience.

I feel it is important to articulate a premise of BSB 2011. Perhaps, this might clarify some of the perceptions witnessed in this forum.

BSB 2011, like previous BSBs is not attempting to follow in the likeness of other tournaments. I'm sure we can all agree that it makes little sense to compete with the experience offered by 'Ard Boyz, Adepticon, and the other tournaments which are very good at servicing a particular niche of gaming.

If we organizers hoped for the same experience, we would simply attend those events, as some of us do.

Yes. BSB is more hobby-centric than other tournaments. That's the niche we hope to service. However, few players maintain a particular extreme of gaming styles. Many of us enjoy the hobby, the competition, the narrative, the fluff, the tricks to varying degrees. Where 'Ard Boyz caters to a more aggressive style of play, it can be said that BSB caters just as much to a different style - more fluff, more hobby, more narrative.

Because of this, more categories of awards consider factors outside the common experience of tournament play. By design, and that's what the organizers are hoping for.

This doesn't mean that we don't wish to engage competitive players. As has been noted, the Appearance score is capped in order to better emphasize the game score in Best Overall and is not even considered in the Best General category. But, sportsmanship is a significant portion, which will be screened as has been stated for abuses. And all in all, should promote a culture of amicable gamesmanship that we are actively fostering.

The Appearance score is designed to provide players a clear list of what's expected, but not dismiss players who are not able to invest the significant amount of time our hobby demands. We're not playing pre-painted after all.

Regarding the Appearance scoring, and as has been observed, most players should find a table-top quality will approach 26 points, tournament 32, and extreme 37. With the Appearance cap established in game-emphasized categories, we determined this to be an acceptable variance.

The Hardcore bonus is designed to incentivize narrative play, while not punishing legal armies. Since, these players must design a list considered less competitive in terms of gameplay, I thought it reasonable to award the effort. I think many of us will appreciate the difficulty of designing, building, and then playing such an army.

The scenarios are different from what is often experienced in other tournaments. Again, by design. Variety is a crucial part of the quality we hope to offer at BSB. DoW scenarios were reviewed in the 21 original scenarios considered. It didn't make the cut. Perhaps, next year. There is no contempt of this scenario versus that scenario. It's a party, there are many beers, but the cooler could only hold so many. It's really that simple.

There is no animosity between myself and any who wish to attend on this forum or elsewhere or who would like to contact me regarding suggestions they might have. I can't promise I'll implement all, perhaps any of what is suggested. But, please don't believe that failure to act was failure to listen. Please consider, that as I listen to one person's comments and suggestions, another is articulating a distinctively opposite position. With just as much good intention and legitimacy.

The thing we all love most is the unique variety offered by 40k, and that is exactly the quality our efforts for BSB hope to reflect, engage, and maintain.

With Appreciation,

Jason Nichols
nicho043@csusm.edu

My issue is why do you have to cater to a certain style of gamer exclusively? You can have an event that is great for fluff bunnies and crazy competitive people and everyone in between. Other events out there have already proven that you can do this. The event as it is currently formatted is pushing people away.

Why not go to a 1-5 score and you can only give each opponent one of the numbers. That shows you who truly is fun to play against and makes sportsmanship have more of an impact. You don't have to police it round to round, it's less open to abuse overall since it's done at the end of the tournament, and you don't get judges telling people their "doing" it wrong.

You claim to be a hobby centric event when the Nova and BFS actually have soft scores have a higher impact based on the percentages and actual available points. And these were noted to be 2 of the more competitive events this year. I'm not saying you have to do it the same as other people. I am saying that being a hobby event you should reward all aspects of the hobby and right now you waving a finger at people who enjoy playing to win and alienating part of the hobby.

Just my two cents. Hope to see some tweaks that will encourage me to attend. If not then good luck to you guys

dkellyj wrote:The one thing I hate about Comp...you have no idea what a TO is going to ding until its too late.

So; what Army comps will a PacMar TO dock in points, regardless of the logic of the list or precedent found in 40K lore?

Please ohh please, lets clear this up once and for ALL TIME...the TOs scored comp has NEVER, EVER been used for anything other than first and second round pairings. It has never been included in the final scores. The only comp scoring that was used, was player based scoring. This is a persistent rumor that just never seems to go away.

We have nothing to gain by judging your army (one way or the other)...however we do need to insure fair matchups in the tournament. You can disagree with our scoring, but since it is thrown out after round 2, it has no bearing on anything.

Once more...everyone join in....the TO judged comp is never, has never, and will never, be used in the final scoring.

Thanks for your attention.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
We do want this to be a HOBBY event first and a competitive tournament second. The scores, while maybe not perfect, do reflect this perspective.

There are plenty of events the emphasize the battle aspect first. In those events, the hobbyist has a very tough road, is never going to win the top prizes, though can certainly shoot for the painting and sportsmanship awards.

Its unfortunate that not everyone agrees with our system or the style of our play. We are hobbyists, first and foremost, and this is the style of event that we want to run. Its then your choice on wether you want to attend or not.

It would be awesome if we could run an event where both the hobby and competitive elements could both be equally important, but I have yet to find a system that would work for us in this kind of manner.

- Kurt

Kurt, you should have just left it at comp doesn't exist for this event. Because I proved to you based on the scores from 2009 how pre-judged comp affected the final scores. They did not last year. But Russ Bartmuss, the gentleman who won in 2009, had a score that was impossible to get comp wise just on points available. He scored over 40pts for comp but only 30 were available in player games. Another 10 were available (I'm assuming as this was never stated) for best army votes (2pts per Vote). That means only 40 possible points if every opponent gave him their vote. Since he scored a 42 or 43 (not sure, but it's probably in a log somewhere) and I didn't give him a vote for anthing other than favorite player (i played him round 5) your statement is false. But you are correct in that they did not effect the event in anyway last year and that they don't this year. And last year your "comp" scoring was used for the first 3 rounds. That's the only thing that would explain me playing a dude with a loss and a tie when I had a massacre and a tie.

As for the difficulty of "hobbyists" to take home first place at "competitive" events consider that the most widely discussed "competitive" event this year actually only made BP's worth 1/3 of the Overall Score. That's more harsh than any other event on the circuit. Hobbyists (by this I mean true hobbyists, not just painters) will do well at any event. They can paint, play and aren't rude. You suffering under a false assumption that being a hobbyist is only about painting and being a nice guy. This is a hobby that involves a game.

In regards to equally important competitive and hobby aspects it's only very hard to do this if you don't have a competitive person in your group. I can see why this is an issue for your club. But there have been multiple formats just this year that are are doing both and there will be even more next year. It's possible to do if you take the time and research possibilities that are out there to steal and tweak to your style. Or if you take feedback given by the community. Claiming it's not possible after it's been proven to be successful is simply wrong.

We do not have a "Comp" award...we had a "Best Army" award, which included the player judged comp, the player votes for favorite appearance and army, as well as the early list submission award. Giving Russ a total of 43, out of the possible 52 possible in these scores.

I can understand where the confusion came in

Once more...everyone join in....the TO judged comp is never, has never, and will never, be used in the final scoring.

My bad, I assumed Painting got the appearance points bonus points since one would think Best Appearance would incorporate those points and that favorite army would go towards...well army... Were the points doubled up for both awards since both scores applied to the Overall total or did you only put it in one? To be honest this is the first year you've actually posted how the points work even remotely accurately as last year there were 30 unaccounted for points in the results which came from player votes.

@Kurt
I must be reading your site wrong or missing something because it appears that you have 25 points for player judged comp, is this accurate or no?

That means that there are more points in comp than in battle points as you can only earn 20 battle points.

So, since everyone gets at least 30 battle points, we just disregard that. That means it is 20 for painting, 25 for comp (unless I am reading that wrong) 37 for painting and about 18 other variable pints based on player vote. That means of the variable scores, BP's are only like 20% of the total.

If you guys want to do it this way, that is totally fine, I am just curious is this was intentional or an over-site.

In terms of judged comp for initial pairings, when you go off of fluff you end up with big mismatches. Some fluff armies are nasty, especially with these missions. Maybe you could consider having a "power gamer" in your judging panel to give some input into the relative power level of the armies to ensure that first round pairings aren't complete mismatches.

Just a suggestion.

Ok I am the organizer of the event and have been out of the loop untill recently and had a chance to look at the new scenarios and point system. That points are going to be changed shortly and will be the same for all systems they are as follows:
Points Categories (maximum possible shown):
Battle points: 100
Sportsmanship: 30
Favorite opponent:5
Army composition: 30
Painting: 33
Early Confirmation: 2
Players' Choice: 1 vote = 1 point. This is only applied to the Best Army category.

Each player will be awarded points after each game in accordance with the scenario.
Massacre - 20
Major - 18
Minor - 16
Draw - 12
Loss - 10 or 11*

*Completing a full game with a loss awards +1 point.

Jason created alot of really cool scenarios and tested them with his local group so they work great in that context. However we are running a GT and that requires alot different criteria for scenarios. I will work with Jason to remove alot of the variables in each mission. I know most GT players do not want to loose a game because of a scenario variable that is out of their control. My main goal is to make sure the attendants have a good time whatever their definition of that is. I will not be able to please everyone but am working towards a general consensus were people are at least ok with the set up. The Pac Mads are interested in the Hobby first but realize in order to run a GT we have to make it playable for every level of competetor from fluff to hard tournament player.

Reecius: I have no idea who said to you that we were hoping to have someone who did not win a game to win it all in our tournament. That is just not true. Each year we get feedback from you guys and tweak things around a bit based on what we heard. 2 years ago we tried a army comp for paring and people did not like that so it is gone we will not be judging your army comp at all.
So please keep posting and give me your constructive critism so we can make it into somthing everyone will want to play in.

NM, this dude above me already is changing everything about what I just went thru

So comp is back in and is the new painting format out? That new checklist was the best idea and execution you guys had this year....

My two biggest recommendations on what you wrote:

Comp: It's a bad thing to have in a tournament nowadays and will drive a decent number of players who would otherwise attend.
Painting: Keep the new painting checklist. Make it max out at 30 out of a possible 37. This allows people who aren't "converters" or super highlight crazy or display board builders a chance to score well in painting.

Your BP score is misleading.

Basically, it says you get 50 points for just showing up, you don't even have to complete your games Which is fine, but should be worded accordingly.

So it's:

Introducing yourself to your competitor: 50
Battle points: 50
Sportsmanship: 30
Favorite opponent:5
Army composition: 30
Painting: 33
Early Confirmation: 2
Players' Choice: 1 vote = 1 point. This is only applied to the Best Army category.

So it's really, Generalship accounts for 25%. Not a problem, but good to know.



Just one of the few that went last years opinions on the matter:

a) Knee high tables were horrible, aka the Back Breakers. Sounds like not much you can do about this.

b) Missions were "whacky," not to be confused with WAACy . What I mean is, I enjoy a good game, and I enjoy a game with balanced, non-confusing, and non-additional randomness. I can play fluff armies that lose for the sake of story with the best of them. However, whacky games are not fun for me. (not constructive, I know )

c) Player scored Sportsmanship Scores is horrible. I got double dinged last year. I had a horrible game where my opponent didn't know the rules and he wanted to WIN, so tried to abuse the fact that he knew 4th edition rules, but not 5th, so 1) My game was not fun 2) Since I showed him in the book where 5th edition rules were different, he dinged me on Sportsmanship. Yay! How does this add to my fun?

d) I think I have said it a couple dozen times, Comp Sucks! I consider myself very creative and have a great imagination. I also read the fluff. Big fan of Horus Heresy novels and Imperial Armour books from Forgeworld. I also like to give my opponent a good match, meaning competitive. So I fuse both worlds, however, some decide that since I am bringing a competitive it is poorly composed. Out of my hands, what can I do, I have seen comp all over the place in GTs with comp, its random. Not fun. Skip it!

e) Seeing cool painted and cohesive armies, where the modeling, conversions, kitbashes, display boards, and paint jobs tell a story is AWESOME! Love it! However, if you are taking my money and awarding prized on such, is it too much to ask for FULL DISCLOSURE on the metrics for how things are judged?

Ok, that said, I probably won't go... but might if change is supported Though it's going to be hard to get over those Back Breakers... I am just too tall, too old, and apparently too fat to be playing this game

@ AB, that is some good feedback thanks.

We could have said that the BP is a 1-10 scale, rather than 10-20, but we have to scale everything the same...its just easier to have it be 10-20 and allow us to do those other things of the same scale. So don't look at it as 50 points just for showing up.

Dropping it to 1-10, means dropping sports to 3 points max across 5 games...hmm, how do I break that down...see what I mean. No, I am not asking for a new scoring breakdown

Can you expand on the comment about "full disclosure on the metrics"? I am not a thinking that you mean to have all the calculations presented, but what do you feel in not fully disclosed?

Maybe you just mean to know what points go into what category? I could do up a small reference page, and link that the rules page pretty easily.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Let me comment on the soft scores. I know that most people hate them. I am a fan.

Without specific restrictions (you cant take this, limited to X of that), I feel that you need the comp score. I'd rather that people score each other, than arbitrarily limit stuff. Yes, I realize that massive flaws in that...but its the best we have.

Same with sportsmanship, this can lend itself to a checklist style though, as game decorum can be more easily defined within the environment.

So we are gonna keep them, but we do keep experimenting with better systems. Keep the suggestions coming.

captkurt wrote:@ AB, that is some good feedback thanks.

We could have said that the BP is a 1-10 scale, rather than 10-20, but we have to scale everything the same...its just easier to have it be 10-20 and allow us to do those other things of the same scale. So don't look at it as 50 points just for showing up.

It is, though. Minimum BP score is 50; max is 100; actual variation between the two is just 50 pts, or 25% of the overall score. If that's the intended weight for results of games, that's fine. If you intended BPs to actually carry a 50% weight, though, then you should allow scores to vary between 0 and 20 (or 0-10, and just multiply by 2 in your scoring spreadsheet).

Can you expand on the comment about "full disclosure on the metrics"? I am not a thinking that you mean to have all the calculations presented, but what do you feel in not fully disclosed?

Maybe you just mean to know what points go into what category? I could do up a small reference page, and link that the rules page pretty easily.

I would guess he just wants a painting checklist, so there is some reasonable certainty as to how applying additional effort will be scored. For example, if I know that a themed display base would add +2 to my painting score, but themed bases on the models (with multiple types of painted elements) would add +5, then I have a better idea of how to spend a limited time budget. (Or, in the extreme, I bring one army over another, as it shows more obvious multi-stage highlights.)

@Kurt

You seem to be deliberately missing his point. There are ONLY 50 BP's really available to be gained since the lowest you can score per game is 10. That means that yes, you get 50pts for showing up.

Variable numbers you can get are what determine winners. Not the actual totals themselves.

Now are you guys going to keep the new painting checklist or are you going back to the last few years version of paint judging?

Did you guys put comp back in now? Because if you did holy gak did this get bad. Let me break down the new point structure of available points so you can see what i mean:

BP's:50 (more like 45 in reality since everyone will "finish" their game for the extra point)
Sports:30
Comp: 33
Early Turn-in:2
Favorite Player:5

So in this you've got BP's being worth 41% of the total available points. But one bad player and you've just lost the tourney because he slammed you for 12pts (10% of the available pts.). See how this is a problem? Your subjective scoring can break a player if he pulls one single sore loser or a person who is gaming the system.

I guess key things in this post:

Are you keeping the Painting Checklist that was posted ( http://www.broadsidebash.com/pdf/WH40Kappear.pdf ) or going back to your old one found here ( http://www.broadsidebash.com/rules.php ) under painting?

Is Comp officially back in the tournament?

captkurt wrote:
Can you expand on the comment about "full disclosure on the metrics"? I am not a thinking that you mean to have all the calculations presented, but what do you feel in not fully disclosed?

Maybe you just mean to know what points go into what category? I could do up a small reference page, and link that the rules page pretty easily.

For example, for painting, have a checklist on your website that is accessible to all illustrating the checklist of items looked for during the paint judging and how many points each item is worth. I know GW used to have a kubrick that outlined 40 points, with details and point amount for each item. This allows the entrants to see what the judges are looking for and paint accordingly. It also allows them to go back after they get scored, evaluate their army and improve their panting skills for future events. Sort of think like posting missions with points for goals before showing to event, same sort of deal.

I would have linked the GW one, but can't seem to find it with just a quick search.

..

For sports, so far I am mostly at a loss, but I actually liked Hulks idea of everyone has to rank their opponents 1 through 5 (no dupes). Not ideal, but it moves away from the chipmunking. Sucks to be the guy who got a 1 or 2 even though maybe you had a great game, but sports seems to be much about relativity and its the aggregate that counts so if your were everyones worse, well then maybe you need to rethink the situation

Comp, yeah, I just don't get the need. I feel its always subjective, either player or judged, same thing, I like to think I know what is good and bad, but there are just so many options and combination's that only a handful of experts would be close to being able to make a fair comp, and even then I would say they would be prone to mistakes based on lack of experience with all armies. As a results, I find it an incredibly hard call. Now if comp is more of a fluff call, well I also think thats too subjective for scoring, but atleast you could do a similiar 1 through 5 no dupes scoring, with opponents ranking who they felt had the "best" fluff army, still subjective, but again aggregate view where no opponent or player can overly abuse.

Just more thoughts.

I am resigning from the 40k coordinator position for BSB 2011.

Ironically, not due to those I've responded to here. In fact, I'd found your points engaging and helpful - Reecius, Hulksmash.

I was looking into the AdeptiCon replacement of Sportsmanship and I agree it has a lot to offer and should be seriously considered by my replacement.

I am resigning because I have been publicly undermined by John Macomber, whom I was asked to help:

Jason created alot of really cool scenarios and tested them with his local group so they work great in that context. However we are running a GT and that requires alot different criteria for scenarios. I will work with Jason to remove alot of the variables in each mission. I know most GT players do not want to loose a game because of a scenario variable that is out of their control. My main goal is to make sure the attendants have a good time whatever their definition of that is. I will not be able to please everyone but am working towards a general consensus were people are at least ok with the set up. The Pac Mads are interested in the Hobby first but realize in order to run a GT we have to make it playable for every level of competetor from fluff to hard tournament player

Apparently, John feels it appropriate to make such a determination before consulting me.

All the best to ya!

J

Sad thing is just tweaking the scenarios (something Jason was actually on board to start doing) was what was needed to really help this event from what it was last year. They'd pretty much eliminated comp and actually had a working painting checklist and now we've got all the bad back (according to the scoring John put up) and all we might get is decent scenarios that probably would have gotten if he'd just not shoved Jason under the bus.....

Sorry Jason to see you go. Glad it wasn't something Reece or I did. I think you were willing to work on the scenarios to get them to the point that they were at least not horrible. Oh well

Thanks. I do hope things go well for BSB, and hope you continue to assist my replacement. I'm confident you will, Hulk.

Feedback is crucial to the process. Be gentle.

All the best!

J

I did throw Jason under the bus and I am sorry for that it was handled poorly on my part. I just want to say publicly that I am sorry for the knee jerk reaction to Jasons changes He did have alot of great stuff to contribute. I am open to working with everyone's feedback to make a great tournament and we plan to meet shortly and hash more out. I wanted to get a single scoring system for all the games and we will most likely use the paint score sheet as it will be easy for all to work on with their armies. I am once again really sorry for how this was handled Jason.

I'd heartily suggest dropping comp and just going sportsmanship. The original scoring format that Jason had up does work better than the current one you posted. If you have to drop it for all 3 events I'd say do it. 40k is your largest drawer and you'll draw more players in without a comp score.

Also please for the love of all that's holy use the paint scoring that was up. 37pts available but maxing out at 30 is a really smart way to run painting and no more stuff like get an 11 for an entire converted army because you don't get conversion points if you don't triple highlight....

All of that and fixing the scenarios could see a solid increase in attendance. Failure to do so will keep people away from the tournament, many of whom did attend last year which will result in lower numbers when tournaments are growing nationwide.

Just my two cents.

Wow, I just read the fantasy scenarios and was pleasantly pleased. For the most part, they are pretty good. Comments below:

Magic Vacuum - as a Dark Elf player, I have to say this one scares me a little, but it has some neat creativity to it, there's nothing too random with it. I find it odd you get +1 point if one of your own casters was killed by a miscast result. I think dwarves will like this one, but it's not too bad

Fight For Glory - It's an interesting spin on the breaking point mission, if you have your army reduced to the breaking point, you still have a chance to salvage it (assuming you went first). I do think it should be 2 for the breaking point instead of 1, though I do remember at Da Grand Waaagh a lot of people brought 3 or less, so could be a good call.

Book of Grudges - I love this one for its simplicity. Bonus points if your general kills your enemies general! I can see fluff guys were behind this a little bit, but it makes for a decent mission, only armies that might have an issue, is people who take casters with shadow as their general, as their offensive powers are rather small. And the +2 for having your general in the enemy deployment zone again can hinder people who take caster lords, who want to keep them back, far away from danger (like me!).

Show Your True Colors - This one I'm less excited about, as armies like Orcs and goblins and skaven will have a hard time (as they usually have 2-3 times standard than other lists). Daemons, dark elves, WoC, ogres, etc will do well, as they usually sit around 3-5 standards. With a point limit of 2200, I don't think it'll be too big of a deal, if I brought Dark Elves, I'd have 4 total, if I brought my OnG, I'd have 6-7 total, so not too big of a difference. I do like how it's a completely unique win condition.

Breakthrough - this one's a little murky, and perhaps some clarification can help. This 18" zone marked, how does it work? If one of my units overruns off it, it gives my opponent double VPs? It's a strange mission, after some clarification I can judge it better.

The Fog is Lifting - I played a mission similar to this at Da Grand Waaagh, and thankfully I played against a 10 warmachine orc army that round! It's a great way to balance out gunlines, hope this mission gets used! I liked the added touch of bonus points for destroying rare units, gives a small extra dynamic.

Hearken Back to the Day of Yore - A little 7th edition shout out! I had to read it twice to make sure. For those wondering, the special conditions for this is units fleeing now count towards VPs, and units at half strength or less give up half VPs

Anyway, I think these types of missions are what the 40k guys have been asking for, using the missions out of the book, with some small tweaks that can have a big effect on the game, that's not randomness. There's also enough variety in missions, I don't think it'll be easy to try and exploit them. Good job to the writers!

Probably should not pee in the punchbowl here, but....

"With regards to the SCGWL drama...the ironic thing is that is pretty much was started by and involved, other people...no one from the Broadside Bash team was involved in that drama. It was between various San Diego gamers and various other OC/LA gamers. We don't now, nor have we ever had anything against the SCGWL players or organizers...even if we do disagree on how "competitive" events should be played. "

This is flatly untrue. Your group had five attendees come to the first Slaughter (back when Dark General was in charge, and it was at GMI games) and several of your membership bitched about it at the time (not you Kurt). When Mike and I took the reigns, there were some rumblings left over from the bitching about year one and your (then) involvement with Game Empire tourney guy (Clifford) that single handedly killed all of the events at Strategicon with his manipulation of scores and favoritism. Everyting you guys seemed to be doing at that time emulated his style and he was involved in some of your initial tournament creation. Some extremely negative things were said from your membership, as was from ours. For our part, we were very terse over members like Henry Hertz and other problem players being embraced by the group, so we essentially avoided each other's events in our year two.

Year Three, under immense pressure from outside sources, we try to play nice and a number of our guys attend your events. We issued two free passes to Slaughter 3 and the only Pac Marauders in attendance were the people who used the free tickets (Wade, and Craig). Wade is a great guy and goes on to win Best Army. Craig has a hissy fit over his point denial WE army being given an average judge comp (no affect on actual scores, remember, just pairings r1 and r2) and rides my ass all weekend. Year three also featured a bunch of bagging on Ian's Tides of War event, with you guys flaming the crap out of him in the thread on your board he started to thank you for attending, so apparently its not just us who gets that kind of treatment.

Now we are at year four. I will personally be attending to play fantasy in an attempt to further repair our damaged relations, even though your format is... odd... (more on that later) and in all likelyhood I will be tanked in soft scores just for being me, even if I show up with a pro painted magicless common goblin army. This is how its been with the BSB for our guys, but we will make another effort to mend fences with your club even though the bulk of your membership does not seem interested in it. In fact, in four years of Slaughters the only communication I have gotten from your crew are emails asking that we get together with the express purpose of unifying our scoring systems to conform to your methods of scoring and asking us to encourage L2 and PAWS to do the same. Not exactly encouraging.

Now, I know you (Kurt) and Wade are not responsible for the behavior of all the members of what is (in essence) an all inclusive hobby club, but both sides have as much blame in the start of this drama fest. The general tenor of the PacMaraiders forums is an "us vs them" vibe, and there are numerous examples of this in archived thread you have there. Our side has these as well, but the leadership has been keeping is under raps and private. Mind you, I have a lot of personal misgivings about PM, outside of Kurt and Wade, so I share some blame in this as well.

Ok, boring drama out of the way, now the tourney itself...
Plain and simple, you guys have too many subjective points (and in the hands of judges who are playing, yet again) in this event. Painting needs to be a checklist, desperately (we have the GW one if you would like a copy), and no one who is playing should be anywhere near the paint judging. This is especially true when your 20 point range BP scores are going to decide so little of the overall.

Second, I know why you picked 2200 points for Fantasy. Everyone in southern cali knows how much you guys hate daemons/dragons and 2200 is the point level where no GD or monster riding lord other than a BT is possible (yet coincidentally enough, the tooled Slaan and Anvil guy fit in just dandy). Its your tournament, and all, but every other major GT on the continent is running at 2500 (and the prior standard was 2250) so people can play with their big toys if they want. Frankly, you are just mandating Slaan and Gunlines as the dominant armies with that point level, which is indicative of 7th edition thinking. The Hearken scenario is a pretty big clue that you guys are unhappy with it. If you want more people, let them play with the toys they want. For every GD/Dragon out there, theres a dude with two cannons waiting to make him his prison bitch.

Finally, the major issue I had with the last couple years were the (frankly) subjective rules alterations, and I am expecting more of the same this year, so please be sure to make your house rules open knowledge early (especially if you are going to push the whole, no ranks/no steadfast houserule) so people who do attend can at least try and make some sort of army that works. There is no bigger turnoff to an out of towner than being made to play houserules that hose their entire army.

Anyhow, I know no good can come of this post, but I figured I would rather air this out than bottle it up, so theres my 2 cents on it all.

@Jason
Hey man, I know you and I have our differences but I want you to know that I in no way wanted to see you leave the position you took. Writing scenarios is a thankless job and I respect the effort you put forth even if I disagree with some of them. So sorry if anything I said influenced you to go as I truly had no intention of doing that.

Wow, this thing has turned into drama fest 2010. I hope this doesn't discourage people from going as at the end of the day, the tournament is fun with cool peeps to hang out with.

Edit-
Specific Scenario commentary-
Magic Vacuum-
This is just handing an autowin to any gunline or Slaan army. Becalming plus this= never cast a single spell. I know you guys hate magic, but this scenario didn't work in 7th and its not any better now, especially since you dropped the roll affecting dispel dice as well....

Fight For Glory-
So, you took the base rulebook banner scenario and made it more Woodelf and Ogre friendly (fine, I agree they need the help), but you made the victory based on remaining points at the end of the game. Problem here is that armies with lots of banners (Goblins, Bretts, Empire, Dwarves, some Chaos) are going to be undefeatable in this scenario unless you completely table them. Also, if armies have a minimum of 4 fort points, but only have one banner and a general, which they then lose, they go to one fort point and cannot autolose? Good start, needs work.

Book of Grudges-
This one is fine, but two of the bonuses mutually exclude each other.

Show your true Colors-
This is our Pride in the Colors scenario from several of our events, with minor BP alterations. It good as it stands.

Breakthrough-
This one sucked in 6th and 7th. I played it at Tides this year and it sucked there too. Its just two damn hard for some armies to have any chance in it. A foot unit has to have 5 turns of unimpeded marching to get across, in most cases. Its basically also an autowin for any army with mobile characters that cost a lot. Change it so units have to end in the opposing deployment zone. This makes it plausable for normal infantry to make it and gives the other player a chance to stop the advance if he is drastically outnumbered/tarpitted early.

Fog is Lifting-
This will cripple any gunline army, except for ones that use stone throwers, mortars, or hell cannons. The most punishing magic spells in the game also generally do not need any sort of LoS. In other words, it will have zero effect on what you are trying to punish. Meanwhile, choppy armies will have a field day and you have people bunched up in their deployment zones, making the template war machiens that much more effective. If you want this sort of effect, I suggest just giving a 4+ ward to ranged and magic on turn one instead.

Hearken Back-
Meh, its 7th edition VP rules. I am not sure this justifies an entire scenario unto itself, but its not unbalanced.

Of the lot, only two are really what I would consider bad, but there needs to be some more work put into the middle three. If I had to venture a guess, it looks a lot like these were playtested mainly with WE, LM, and O&G. You need to broaden the test bed of armies a bit before you finalize these.

Phazael wrote:Second, I know why you picked 2200 points for Fantasy. Everyone in southern cali knows how much you guys hate daemons/dragons and 2200 is the point level where no GD or monster riding lord other than a BT is possible (yet coincidentally enough, the tooled Slaan and Anvil guy fit in just dandy). Its your tournament, and all, but every other major GT on the continent is running at 2500 (and the prior standard was 2250) so people can play with their big toys if they want. Frankly, you are just mandating Slaan and Gunlines as the dominant armies with that point level, which is indicative of 7th edition thinking. The Hearken scenario is a pretty big clue that you guys are unhappy with it. If you want more people, let them play with the toys they want. For every GD/Dragon out there, theres a dude with two cannons waiting to make him his prison bitch.

Not to derail your commentary, but the Adepticon Fantasy Championships are running at 2200 in 2011, for timing reasons, more than anything else.

How are the various WHFB GTs handling 8e terrain? Lots of interesting terrain types; it'd be a shame if none were making it to the table.

Would love to get in touch with the Pacific Marauders club but I can't get approved to get on the forums :( Same happened with the SoCal warhamer league. Oh well. I'll come and ninja some video footage

Phazael, I'm glad you posted and listed your gripes because it provides an opportunity to clear up some misunderstandings.

I'm Bob, Vampire player, Plague Court player, I work with Cliff at Game Empire. I've never ever been a member of the Pacific Marauders, though they have kindly allowed me to post to their forums, and I consider myself on friendly terms with them.

Your group had five attendees come to the first Slaughter

Untrue, I think they had three. True, five San Diego players attended, but not everyone in San Diego is a PacMad. And your vague reference to 'bitching' might include me, but who knows since we only know it wasn't Kurt.

When Mike and I took the reigns, there were some rumblings left over from the bitching about year one and your (then) involvement with Game Empire tourney guy (Clifford) that single handedly killed all of the events at Strategicon with his manipulation of scores and favoritism. Everything you guys seemed to be doing at that time emulated his style and he was involved in some of your initial tournament creation.

You really need to let this lie die. Cliff had nothing to do with the first BSB (or any BSB) except to attend as a player. Which means what Cliff did or did not do is irrelevant.

Henry Herz

I'm fairly certain he's never been a member of the PacMads, and the guy has been banned from all San Diego events. The guy is a Warhammer pariah, representing no one. Other than him, what problem players are you referring to?

Year three also featured a bunch of bagging on Ian's Tides of War event, with you guys flaming the crap out of him in the thread on your board he started to thank you for attending, so apparently its not just us who gets that kind of treatment.

Very easy misunderstanding to clear up, the 'guys' flaming the crap out of Ian were me, again, not a member of Pacific Marauders, only allowed to use their forums, and I wouldn't consider it flaming, since I never called him names, I gave very detailed feedback on things that I felt needed improvement. It never got personal, and it was the same stuff I expressed to him in private e-mail discussions. I give feedback on events, I never attack the people who run them. Was there a lot of feedback? Yeah, but you were there, so you know there were a lot of things that could have been improved.

It seems to me that a lot of the misgivings you have towards the Pacific Marauders are because of people who are not Pacific Marauders. So, with some of the misunderstandings cleared up, do you feel more positively inclined towards the PacMads?

Hey Bob!

When is your next RTT? I've enjoyed them since you took them over especially since it's the only one I've gotten a best painted at

Glad to see some air being cleared. The more inter-club communication the better we can make events in SoCal.

First, thanks for the feedback on the WFB scenarios. I'm staying out of the other drama and leaving it alone. I wrote the WFB scenarios, or stole them from elsewhere and made a few modifications. Feedback from non-PM, local players and tourney organizers has also been taken into account in the current versions. If there are glaring holes, please let me know and I'll consider the comments and possibly make some revisions if necessary.

Phazael wrote:Edit-
Specific Scenario commentary-
Magic Vacuum-
This is just handing an autowin to any gunline or Slaan army. Becalming plus this= never cast a single spell. I know you guys hate magic, but this scenario didn't work in 7th and its not any better now, especially since you dropped the roll affecting dispel dice as well....

Not sure where you get the idea that we hate magic. I wrote the missions and I don't hate magic. But this one does gimp magic, that is the point. If playing against a Slann, he's gimped as well, but not as bad, because he is the WFB king of magic. Seen this played at local RTT, got no complaints.

Fight For Glory-
So, you took the base rulebook banner scenario and made it more Woodelf and Ogre friendly (fine, I agree they need the help), but you made the victory based on remaining points at the end of the game. Problem here is that armies with lots of banners (Goblins, Bretts, Empire, Dwarves, some Chaos) are going to be undefeatable in this scenario unless you completely table them. Also, if armies have a minimum of 4 fort points, but only have one banner and a general, which they then lose, they go to one fort point and cannot autolose? Good start, needs work.

I need to clarify this apparently. The point is that every needs to bring an army that has 4 fort points, not that you get 4 regardless of how few your army actual has. I'll clarify that in the rules section right next to the army size. The point is that people should bring more banners...

Book of Grudges-
This one is fine, but two of the bonuses mutually exclude each other.

I'll check that one out (I don't have them in front of me right now) and if there are some bonus points that cancel each other out, I'll adjust them.

Show your true Colors-
This is our Pride in the Colors scenario from several of our events, with minor BP alterations. It good as it stands.

Yep, I played it at the last Con event you guys ran, (that unfortunately there were not enough people there to actually get in 3 games due to 2 events that same weekend). It was fun, even though I lost my wizard lord before he even moved, I had a chance to win by taking standards. It was a good game, still, armies with lots of standards will be a bit better off, which is really a similar situation as the fight for glory scenario, that you didn't like. That is OK and the intent. Encourages people to take smaller units, more standards, IMO, rather than the 1 big 50 man unit with 1 standard in the army.

Breakthrough-
This one sucked in 6th and 7th. I played it at Tides this year and it sucked there too. Its just two damn hard for some armies to have any chance in it. A foot unit has to have 5 turns of unimpeded marching to get across, in most cases. Its basically also an autowin for any army with mobile characters that cost a lot. Change it so units have to end in the opposing deployment zone. This makes it plausable for normal infantry to make it and gives the other player a chance to stop the advance if he is drastically outnumbered/tarpitted early.

Remember, it is just bonus VPs, it isn't that you have to get something off the table to win. If you do, good on ya. If not deny the enemy getting his units off and get more overall VPs. These bonus points do benefit a certain army type and is hard to get from another army type. See a theme?

Fog is Lifting-
This will cripple any gunline army, except for ones that use stone throwers, mortars, or hell cannons. The most punishing magic spells in the game also generally do not need any sort of LoS. In other words, it will have zero effect on what you are trying to punish. Meanwhile, choppy armies will have a field day and you have people bunched up in their deployment zones, making the template war machiens that much more effective. If you want this sort of effect, I suggest just giving a 4+ ward to ranged and magic on turn one instead.

The goal was to gimp the gunlines, not necessarily the war machines. It's the 80-100+ shots on turn 1 that cause a 3rd of your army to break before they get to move that was the purpose of this mission. Again, it isn't perfect, and only affects turn 1, so should not be that big of a deal.

Hearken Back-
Meh, its 7th edition VP rules. I am not sure this justifies an entire scenario unto itself, but its not unbalanced.

This one honestly has nothing to do with my like or dislike of 8th edition VP rules. It is because there are so many local players (local in SD) that have voiced their opinion to me that they hate the no 1/2 points and fleeing does not count that I thought I'd throw them a bone for 1 possible mission.

Of the lot, only two are really what I would consider bad, but there needs to be some more work put into the middle three. If I had to venture a guess, it looks a lot like these were playtested mainly with WE, LM, and O&G. You need to broaden the test bed of armies a bit before you finalize these.

They were playtested with many armies and one of them will be run this weekend at an RTT at Game Empire (Saturday, come on down) and will get some more feedback from that. The general theme will remain the same, there might be some minor tweeking of special rules or bonus points and some clarifications. The hope is to have some effect on people not overwhelming 1 phase of the game, bring a balanced army, because you might get hit with a mission that gimps the phase that you overpowered your army in...That was the intent at least. Not saying that it was achieved...

One last thing I'd like to say is that 8th edition is still new, and this is my first attempt at doing missions for this edition. We'll accept criticism and feedback and make changes where reasonable, while still trying to keep to the theme of our tournament. It may not be for everyone, and we can't please everyone. It is certainly a different game from the last BSB. I will be chalking it all up to a learning experience on how to do scenarios for the new edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, one thing I forgot...2200 pts. Has absolutely nothing to do with hating dragons and greater deamons. I LOVE dragons, and I picked the point limit. I have an entire army themed around them (my Githyanki High Elves). It is for a few reasons...

1. To be different than all the local 2500 pt GTs. I've heard of GTs all over the board from 2200-2500, all over the world. (OK, mostly AU,UK and US...where all the podcasts are that I listen to).
2. To make for slightly faster games than 2500. More points means more setup time and play time. My experience so far is that the game takes longer to play than 7th. We ahve time limit games, lets not push that limit if we do not have to.
3. Make harder choices...many people playtest only 1 size army. There is a local league that plays at 2400 pts. It is harder to build a 2200 pt list than a 2400 pt list because of the choices you have to make. Think outside the box.
4. It is easily divisible by 4.
5. In the past we did 2250, this is close to that.

That is seriously all the thought that went into it. There was no metagame on what certain armies could field at 2200 pts.

Janthkin wrote:
How are the various WHFB GTs handling 8e terrain? Lots of interesting terrain types; it'd be a shame if none were making it to the table.

For Border Raids I'm trying to set things up table by table, theming them to a Warhammer race or area. Then going through the rulebook and seeing what fits.

Dwarf Table: Brewhouse, Hills (with mine entrances), Sinister stature (of a dwarf), Conifer forests,
Khorne Table: River of Blood (done in red resin), forests with burning foliage, temple of khorne, barren hiss with skulls on the edge.

etc, etc

Too difficult to roll up terrain for a tournament, but this lets us use 8th edition terrain, while having it fixed and themed. Working on the barren woods, graveyard, and haunted mansion tonite for the Sylvania table.

I have to agree with Q. Especially considering the Magic Vacuum and Breakthrough. My Lizardmen would more than likely get an autowin unless I fought dwarves, and even then who knows. Breakthrough, while there are more R&F units and less extremely mobile units that in 7th, gives gunline armies a hefty disadvantage.

I feel overall, my LM (which is a fairly generic list) would have a huge advantage out the gate, both due to army power and many of these scenarios.

~Greg

I really believe you guys are nit-picking. I hardly consider it an "auto win" for LM. Yes, they get an advantage in 1/7 scenarios, one that might not even get picked for the tourney. Having a scenario effect a magic phase has been a pretty common theme in tourneys for as long as I can remember, the only other style I've seen, is something like, any doubles causes a miscast (spell still goes off) in which case LM still get an advantage due to cupped hands. IMHO, LM SHOULD have an advantage when it comes to something dealing with magic.

I still don't get how breakthrough works, is it basically you want to run your own units off the other table edge? I don't see how gun lines have a disadvantage...it's bonus VPs, not the *only* way to get VPs. Gun line armies will just have to play it to keep their opponent from getting across the table.

And I don't get your second statement. LM have an advantage in many of the scenarios? How so? Most LM lists don't have too many banners. I only see 1 scenario that gives an advantage to LM, which dwarfs also receive, as well as mono khorne, or any other list not centered around magic.

As far as the 2200 points goes, the first thing I thought when I saw the total, was that daemons will have a hard time, I'm not too sure on their points totals, but I think they could get in a lord of change around those points, granted with few upgrades.

I think I'll organize a 2200 fantasy tourney and try out 3 of the scenarios people are worried about.

Would the three be:
Magic Vacuum
Breakthrough
Fog Is Lifting


I can get people to bring a nice variety of armies to try them out. Dwarfs, Dark Elves, Empire, Lizardmen, Daemons, Skaven, Warriors of Chaos. We'll see how it goes.

That's an excellent idea. I'd also provide a feedback form for the scenarios for people. That way you can see how people felt about them. Make sure they write the army they were playing on the sheet. It's a small information pool but every little bit helps.

That's a good idea Hulk. I'm only looking to get around 12 people or so for it, contacted the store already about picking a date.

Sounds good. It's the smartest way to set up the scenarios really. Run them at multiple locations and at multiple events and take the feedback to tweak them. That way you get a bunch of people outside your relative group and can better judge what you've made since your looking to bring in people from all over the west coast (or at least you should be aiming for that).

I've been to....

Well, a bunch of GTs this year. Was looking at the calendar for next year, trying to plan ahead holidays, travel, etc - my wife and I are going to come to California to visit Hulksmash and his wife again (and play in a GT of course), but I have to say....looking at the scoring and the scenarios, this stuff is as bad as a local RTT run by someone who doesn't even play 40k - and I've written batreps on some tournaments like that.


Organizer people, I've got to say - I'm probably the most or one of the most well-traveled gamers in the country for events, and I'm not sure that I'd dedicate the time to attend if I lived in town. Which is the nicest possible way I can think of giving my thoughts.

My two biggest suggestions: Keep your paint checklist, and entirely scrap your missions. There have been a HOST of well-tested, play-tested, GT run, feedback given, critiqued, examined, battle-reported missions at GTs this year, and I have no doubt that you could poach some of them instead of the current shambles.

So, now that I’m not the 40k coordinator, I can speak my mind with a lot more freedom than my position allowed.

You know, after a decade of playing 40k I’ve long ago realized that claims of ‘expertise’, ‘experience’, and ‘legitimacy’ as a means to dismiss another is usually the first sign of a myopic view of 40k at best. This is often followed up by self-serving hypotheticals that oddly dismiss the game’s reliance upon dice; terminators do roll ‘1s’. I have seen eleven ‘1s’ out of twelve dice rolled. Anyone who’s played the game knows this law of chance is truth.

Afraid of changes and with incessant circular reasoning that you ‘know’ 40k better than others, though you don’t work for GW, you believe your advice helps others.

The sad truth is that we lost more players last year when they knew Hulksmash was coming.

Blackmoor told me to ban all Tyranid players from BSB 2010.

Reece was voted out of our campaign by a group of players who each had more than 8 years of 40k in their experience, including tournaments and RTTs. His one defender, a player who had less than 6 months of experience and yet beat Reece on the table. Reece blamed me for this, than hoped to start his own campaign. After 4 turns of play his players voted to end the campaign because it wasn’t fun. Reece’s adroit scenario skills gave an Imperial Guard and Tyranid player “without number”. The two begged to stop playing as the game store approached closing.

The unfortunate reality is that most gamers don’t like you guys. It takes a tournament to find you opponents because you're 'hobby killers' (not my words). We politely abstain from getting involved in your very small discussions because we’ve seen that you simply never stop, never listen.

Right now, as you read this you’re designing some brilliant ‘comeback’. Perhaps you’ll feign reason in the same breath that you insanely hold to a singular vision.

We ‘newbs’, people who ‘don’t play 40k’, ‘fluffy gamers’, ‘elitists’, ‘hobbyists’, ‘soft scorers’, ‘fun gamers’, simply wish to have a tournament for us. Why that upsets you so much is beyond us, since we wish you all the best at ‘Ard Boyz.

Don’t you understand? We don’t want you to come. Please don’t. Stop threatening not to come, just don’t come. Go enjoy another event in the circuit.

This one is ours. Please, go away and let it go.

With Utmost Sincerity,

Jason Nichols

So who's first to not have read this and wishes to demonstrate his superior 'expertise in 40k'?

That is an awesome reply. I may not be on Jasons side of this issue, but I am very impressed with his reply.

So much poison there.

Calling it a tournament is false, as you can win despite never having won the competitive side.

Call it a campaign weekend, set expectations correctly, and you would have less people intruding. Calling it a competitive gaming event by using the "tournament" moniker is less than ideal.

Jason, I'll reply.

1. Your first paragraph is a sesquipedalian venture into personal and hypothetical rhetoric. Speak plainly. It is better to be hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobic than a compulsive polysyllabricator or a pedantic elocutionist with a propensity for hyperarticulation and meretricious grandiloquence.

2. In the extremely lean meat of the suggested vegan sandwich of your first entreaty...just because YOU believe that dice play a significant role in determining the winner or loser of a game neither validates your opinion nor makes it true. I play Dark Eldar, and am legendary for my dice rolls. With a BS4, I consistently fail 2/3 - 4/5 of all shots fired in every game. I never hope for a good dice roll because such reliance on luck would inevitably lead to the despairing conclusion I should not play games involving dice. Any player (and there are many here on Dakka alone) who has ever played me could readily attest to this unfortunate calamity.

3. Throughout this thread, people have not used "incessant circular reasoning" or demonstrated a "fear of change" to advance personal rhetoric or suppositions of superiority of 40k knowledge. What has happened is this: Change has been advocated widely by the community, far beyond the couple people that you poisonously address, which I shall come to later. Instead of embracing change, you and yours have advocated your own accusation, and been resistant to any change.

4. Successful grand tournaments have taken place all over the country this year. It is not a mistake for people to point to the successes that have been had and give advice trying to help you replicate them. Why did the Nova Open fill to capacity, to overflowing, burst the bounds of its expansion into another waiting list? Why did the UK GT sell out in a week of being posted on the internet? What made the Mechanicon fill up so quickly? There were all tournaments, and yet they were also hobby events that amply rewarded the hobbyist - SIGNIFICANTLY moreso than the tournament gamer, or WAAC gamer as you so poisonously label. Those GTs, and several more that have taken place recently, along with the revised format of upcoming GTs, the buzz over Adepticon's upcoming offerings and format -

Why do people fling money and time into these ventures, while boycotting yours?

Ponder that. Read this thread again without a veil of malice covering your eyes, and don't simply read, comprehend the advice given here.

5. I know gamers around the country like you. I really do. Your thought process, your approach to the hobby, your style of writing, your goals, your means of getting there, your responses to the community - these are literally carbon stamped and replicated in niche groups of what I'd call "elitist" hobbyists throughout the country - those who don't like new gamers in their circle, who have an established way of doing things resistant to change, who despise anyone who suggests that there is a better way than theirs....this is a mentality that belongs to an aging breed of offensive people that will hopefully in the next 20 years be too feeble to taint this hobby with their unswerving believe that they know best. Older gamers are not bad, younger gamers are not good; but the lynchpins of enforced mediocrity and the support pillars that keep the hobby-destroying carnage together need to fade into obscurity as brighter minds, communicate minds, socially presentable minds, adaptable, changeable minds take the forefront role of making the hobby experiences that we all enjoy more prevalent.

6. Your personal attacks on Reecius, Hulksmash, and Blackmoor are despicable. I can't speak for Blackmoor because I don't think he travels to the East Coast, but the prospect of Reecius or Hulksmash attending an east Coast / NE tournament DRAWS gamers. You've made poisonous and unvalidated personal attacks on some of the community's most respected gamers, and given that Hulksmash pretty much ALWAYS gets maxed on sportsmanship and picks up voted as favorite opponent, it seems to be a safe assumption that your claim of people being driven away by knowledge of his attendance is simply false. When Staerek announced his attendance at the Nova Open, their website blew up with hits. I don't have any statistical points of data about Hulksmash, although he attended, and between us - I will not make unvalidated claims.

I've personally never gotten to throw dice down against Hulksmash, but in direct contradiction to your ridiculous claims, go look at Dakka discussion. There's a 30 page thread over there somewhere titled "Three people you would want to play against." Top tournament gamers get called out left and right - people wish they could play against them to try learning something. To test their mettle. To have done it. I pray there will come a day (and fear it) that I'll get to face off against Hulksmash on a table. I don't think it will be a pretty fight, but it will be memorable. And I *know* that he will have been a pleasure to play against - I can say the same for Reecius.

That's my two cents. Redact your ridiculous and unasserted claims, give serious consideration (and influence your compatriots to do the same) to what is making hobby events around the country successful, and start contributing more than poison to Dakka.

Dash said it better....I had a really cool and long response but his is more than good enough and not tainted in Espa's eyes by it being me.

Hahahaha, holy crap. I was in the middle of writing a long reply, but there is no point.

OK, I can accept the fact that perhaps I brought on part of this little hissy fit of yours Jason by saying some things about you, so fair enough.

But what you are doing here isn't helping anything and I highly doubt the other PacMads share your point of view. You seriously are actively trying to push people away from attending the event?

So seriously, let's try this again. I apologize for casting you in a negative light in this thread, I should have been more thoughtful in my word choices. I don't care about what happened between us way back when, it really is pretty laughable that we lost a friendship over a game of toy soldiers. Let's put this behind us and move on. I don't like having enemies and I don't want to have a situation where things are always tense. You are saying things that are flat out untrue now, and by throwing mud at me you are only going to escalate things.

Let's forgive and forget here, huh? It's pointless to continue this feud, it has already damaged this event and I would hate to see more of that type of thing happen. We're both adults so let's behave as such.

@Darrian
Dude, tell me you are being sarcastic?

OK, yes, hahaha, he was being sarcastic.

It has been kind of weird reading this thread. I was wanting a discussion on how the BSB was going to grow/progress and or change as I personally plan on going for the first time and I greatly enjoy the tactical/competitive battle portion of the game (so it was neat to see the discussion progress in regards to that subject). I just want to see with my own (neutral and unbiased) eyes what this is all about, lol, so I hope the event turns out great.

-Ultimately, it is the BSB’s choice how to run the event and if people want to go, fine, if not no big deal. I personally plan on bringing a kinda soft/fluffy list and have fun and if I win some games cool. In that light, if this tournament is designed to encourage such a thing (as some people might be implying), people bringing army lists that are designed for fluff and not for win, then that may be a good thing if that is what the community they are catering to really wants. While I don’t see how an all fluffy grot rebellion army is very tactical it could be fun but I don’t think that that sort of army belongs in a tournament setting.
If this is supposed to be a tournament, it should be based on the objective standard on who is the better player determined by battlepoints. Making the tournament have all sorts of restraints on what a person should bring in order to have a shot at winning the event isn’t really fun or fair IMO as it is more like a book/story/poem contest than an exercise in hobby application. Now I don’t know if any of these points are true but I think they represent some of the opinions previously posted. I think an easy solution would be to just have different categories of winners like “best fluff”, “best fluff gameplay” or something like that if a player particularly roleplays or plays their army to the fluff. Then have just the best general and that sort of thing based on a real good spread of BPs. (again just random thoughts to be taken with a grain of salt)
-One point I wanted to make though is that the battle/gaming/tactical aspect of the game is just as integral as the fluffy/hobby/painting one and I see in this discussion people who value the competitive aspect of the game greatly wanting this event to value it more too.
I mean what do you do after all the models are painted and converted and the fluff is written? You play with them, GW products are primarily designed to be played with, everything else builds up to enhancing the gaming experience.
So with that said, I too would like to see the battlepoints/gaming aspect have more weight than it currently does. I also just want to have a good time and I have known Hulk and Reacius and not had any problems with them. I always have seen their opponents have a good time playing against them so I am more inclined to see the “drama” as just misunderstandings that took root into bitterness that needs to be let go.
I mean, it’s not like your name is enigo Montoya and it’s not like they killed anyone’s father right? =).
Anyway, I hope everything works out and that the BSB turns out to be a great event! I don’t know what to expect so I’m just waiting to see how things pan out for myself before judging one way or another.

You say the nicest things about me Mortetvie

Personally, and this may have gotten lost in the haze, the original format Jason was promoting was fine. It had no comp, a much better paint checklist, and was clear even if BP's were only 39% of the total available. The singular major issue I had was with the scenarios as they aren't balanced. If they were reworked to be balanced and non-auto loss for certain codexes and it could be a great event as they have already made great strides to overcome the issues from previous years.

That Espa post is so full of win I can hardly contain myself. I may disagree with elements of it but it does highlight the differences between two distinct approachs and how some elements of either cannot get along.

@Dash - people drawn from around the country because Hulk is going??? Pull a little to strong from the bong whilst typing me thinks. Dude, I think you over-estimate a tad the idea of "40k personalities". For some people, as Espa says, the idea of meeting and playing against people like Hulksmash is an active discouragement to playing in tournies. You cannot argue with that statement - the fact I think people maybe wrong not to turn up & play just because HulkSmash is going to play in a tournie doesn't change the fact that what Espa says is true. Isn't that what this thread is showing?

Personally, I find it strange that tournie organizers were happy to through around the WAAC label. We need to stop using that term because it is an unfair term to describe the vast majority of tournie players who just have a different approach to the hobby. "Tournie player" is not the same thing as "non-hobbyist player"

edit: removed a bit

@fullheadofhair

The funny thing is I get along with 99% of gamers I meet. I don't claim that people will show up if I do. Dash is mostly refering to the marked improved traffic to MVB's site the day I announced I was attending which led to me playing in the Friday Night Whiskey Challenge but honestly that came as a surprise to me.

Last year a few guys from the SD region (mostly PacM's from what I understand) saw what I was posting on their board and decided I was a WAAC douche and that they would not attend. I feel bad that they made that decision as I love meeting and talking to new gamers but if they are that unhappy or worried about meeting new people that is their decision.

I don't understand what you mean by the what this thread is showing question. Do you mean it's showing people won't attend if I do?

Oh well, I wish we could genuinely just get along. I just wanted more balanced missions that increase everyones enjoyment of the event so no one goes home sour because of an auto-lose scenario but that got blown way out crazy and degenerated into personal attacks. I'm keeping my eye out for the finalized style of the event to see if I'd like to attend and I hope it's a successful (i.e. growth over last year) event either way.

@Espa - Sorry, but that attack was in poor taste. Here you have a group of people that know how they have fun. Does it really matter how long anyone has played? I have been playing for a little over two years, yeah novice, but guess what, I do know what I find fun and I am smart enough to be able to understand poor balance in missions. What bothers me about your post is that you took a discussion regarding trying to gather better missions, such that ones such as Hulk, Reece, or others have fun, and started attacking people saying how other don't like them. Really petty, in my opinion. People did not show because Hulk said he was going? Really? The reality is that gamers don't like them? Where do you conjure up this nonsense? I find your attack uncalled for and childish. Your statements have tarnished any integrity you may have thought you had before. As far as narrow minded thinking, you have now positioned yourself at the top of the heap, and I hope you find the sense to apologize for your senseless attack on your fellow gamers.

It is really upsetting that a few people can try to be critical of the environment, and you not only get defensive about how your way is the only way, you then turn around and attack the individuals trying to be critical of the product. This is immature at best.

Phazael wrote:Probably should not pee in the punchbowl here, but....

This is flatly untrue. Your group had five attendees come to the first Slaughter (back when Dark General was in charge, and it was at GMI games) and several of your membership bitched about it at the time (not you Kurt). When Mike and I took the reigns, there were some rumblings left over from the bitching about year one and your (then) involvement with Game Empire tourney guy (Clifford) that single handedly killed all of the events at Strategicon with his manipulation of scores and favoritism. Everyting you guys seemed to be doing at that time emulated his style and he was involved in some of your initial tournament creation. Some extremely negative things were said from your membership, as was from ours. For our part, we were very terse over members like Henry Hertz and other problem players being embraced by the group, so we essentially avoided each other's events in our year two.

Just so everything is clear...Cliff has nothing to do with our group, nor did he have anything to do with the creation of the BSB. The only involvement that Game Empire has is the fact the GW required, at least at that time, that you go though a local store for securing the prize support. Cliff's involvement with our group or tournament is another persistent fallacy that we cannot seem to shake. Our involvement with the Stratigecon goes back much further than Game Empire's running of the RTTs...in fact John used to run (and I assisted with many of them) most of the RTTs way back in the day.

The Pac Mads, do not represent San Diego, San Diego games or anything like that. I know about the bitching about which you speak and that was not from the Pac Mads, but from other San Diego gamers...some of whom have long sordid histories with some of the SCGWL guys. But it is often hard to know who speaks for whom. :( Henry, for example, is not now, nor ever was a member of the Pac Mads...nor really are 99% of San Diego gamers. Our club has about 20 members tops, only perhaps 5 of which you would like ever run into in the forums or at a tournament.

We allow anyone to post on our forums...most of those posting are not PacMads...we like it to be an open forum, though we do moderate a bit and remove/lock threads that get into personal attacks. The only PacMads in attendance at the Tides of War, were myself and Beav. A bunch of other San Diego players went, none of which are PacMads.

None of the judges/TOs of the BSB have ever played in the event except as a ringer. Wade may have played one year as a participant...I forget...but he was not a judge.

We choose 2200 points on WFB for no particularly good or specific reason. We have been watching the tournament scene and 2400-2500 seems to simply allow too many toys, deathstar units and the like. Seems to us like a smaller point value might be the way to go. Personally I love Dragons and Lord level characters....I wish we would see more of them.
* something that we did find in past years is that 2250 seemed to require a bit too much time to complete games, so we were looking at a points reduction regardless. Really we don't have enough experience with 8th to know if this is the case or not.

Lastly we do post all of our relevant rules adjustments on the rules page and address any specific questions in the FAQ. We don't have any house rules that are not posted in one of those two places.

This is a good honest discussion, to bad it sort of carries an overall negative context.

- Kurt

Some of these statements, accusations, and claims seem really odd to me.

Adding to what f.h.o.h. said, the term "WAAC" is getting really old. What exactly does it mean? Winning at all costs paints the image of someone who is willing to cheat to win, "all costs" meaning their own morals and values.

If it implies only players who comes to a tournament to win games, what's wrong with that? We all play at home or at our local FLGS for fun. We show off our armies, take pictures, and post them online because we're proud of them. Now, when the time comes to actually PAY to play 3, 5, or 7 games against a large field of dedicated hobbysts, is it wrong to want to win? If not, then is it wrong to want to bring our "best list"? If wanting to win at a tournament and bringing our best perfoming list to accomplish that goal makes a "WAAC" gamer, then we should find a less abrasive term.

Now to define a "tournament". You aren't going to have a tournament without playing games, or else you would call it a painting competition. If the act of winning a game in the tournament becomes minimized via heavy comp scores or abusable player scores and "chipmunking", then can we really call it a "tournament" instead of "hobby day" or "campaign day"? I've participated in RTT's where a round 3 losing player takes 1st over their opponent. Is there another competitive sport or hobby out there where a losing party wins? If losing the 3rd game means nothing to his final results, why play the game at all, is that fair to his opponent? "Go ahead, table me... I'm still going to take the trophy". If the act of playing the game becomes redundant in calculating results, why are we even playing, collecting, or painting at all???

Now, as it pertains to Hulk/Brad. People avoid a tournament because they hear he's going? Really? I've never heard of such a thing in my life. Does Tiger Woods stay home if he hear VJ is going to masters? If this is really happening, why are they avoiding him? Because of his sportsmanship? I've never seen or heard of below average sportsmanship or conduct on his behalf. His score was quite high at NOVA which was full of competitive players (Brad = 69, highest was 94, lowest was 25). Are people avoiding a tournament because they don't want to lose to him? He placed 22/88 at NOVA in the competitive sort. I'd be more worried about losing to the 21 people that placed above him. If you're avoiding a tournament so you don't lose to a specific person, maybe you should re-evaluate your list or tactics. We all have access to the same codexs and models, if you don't want to lose, make better choices. Don't avoid a tournament and claim it's because someone else made better decisions from the same group of opportunities you chose from. "In other news, the Yankees dropped out of the championships because they didn't want to lose to the Rangers."

As to more people showing up to face him, I guess I could go in this category. I love tourneys and I play to win with my best list and paint job. Guess that makes me a "WAAc Douche" also. If he came to DaBoyz GT in my back yard, I would try to get a game with him too. Who doesn't want the chance to say "I beat Hulksmash/Dashofpepper/Stelek/Darkwynn/insert name here the internet celeb/loud mouth"? All tourney players deep down inside want to be the best and have our day of glory.

So, based on those things, I'd say Espa's statements are based on personal vendettas, jealousy, and ignorance. Hulk has been showing his support of this event from the beginning and even offering his personal time to improve the mission and scoring balance. He's doing this because he wants to see the event grow and become more popular to a wider spread of players. Seems to me he has more value to the event than some of the hosting club members.

Hulksmash wrote:@fullheadofhair

The funny thing is I get along with 99% of gamers I meet. I don't claim that people will show up if I do. Dash is mostly refering to the marked improved traffic to MVB's site the day I announced I was attending which led to me playing in the Friday Night Whiskey Challenge but honestly that came as a surprise to me.

Last year a few guys from the SD region (mostly PacM's from what I understand) saw what I was posting on their board and decided I was a WAAC douche and that they would not attend. I feel bad that they made that decision as I love meeting and talking to new gamers but if they are that unhappy or worried about meeting new people that is their decision.

I don't understand what you mean by the what this thread is showing question. Do you mean it's showing people won't attend if I do?

Oh well, I wish we could genuinely just get along. I just wanted more balanced missions that increase everyones enjoyment of the event so no one goes home sour because of an auto-lose scenario but that got blown way out crazy and degenerated into personal attacks. I'm keeping my eye out for the finalized style of the event to see if I'd like to attend and I hope it's a successful (i.e. growth over last year) event either way.

Hopefully you realized I wasn't saying specifically you. What my bad rushed writing was trying to show was that using terms like WAAC and a perceived reputation that the typical hardcore tournie player has often incorrectly earned is what discourages people from turning up to play I believe. I don't think what Espa is saying is inaccurate even though I think he is plain wrong.

I was using your name to give my writing context in response to Dash - no insult implied, honest.

I myself still fail to understand the issue - being a "fluff bunny" (hate that term as well) I was always happy to take on a tournie list as long as I had advance warning to change my list to avoid a seal clubbing which no tournie player had an issue with me doing. I had just a good game playing a tournie player v's a fluff player - though I will point out more tournie players seem to have more fully painted armies than the fluff players.

Final thought: there are douches in both camps. bad people suck no matter their attitude to the game.

edit for grammar

For those others promoting the BSB listening, please note that I have taken Espas message to heart and I will not be attending BSB this year. I would have enjoyed playing a game with others in the community, but I will have to take my money and time, and friends, elsewhere. It is unfortunate that Espa was a promoter of the event, as he has failed. I hope that the rest of the promoters are not as petty. For those that go, have fun. This is really sad.

@captkurt - 2200 seems fine if you ask me. The last GT I attended was at 2500, I can't speak for the rest of the games, but I know in my games I had problems getting to turn 4. Out of five games, I think one made it to turn 4, the rest to turn 3. Not because one side won, just ran out of time.

@fullheadofhair

No offense was taken from your statement. I just wanted a little clarity. It's all good I really don't get offended across the internet as it seems I could have far more things closer to home to worry about if I felt the need

I agree with your final thought though

I'm liking the idea of the BSB better and better. If my school schedule allows for it, I will most definitely be attending.

I like "competitive" tournaments as much as the next guy, hell, it's pretty much all I've done for the last few years. I find the idea of a decidedly more hobby-oriented event sort of refreshing. Remember when we all used to do this for fun? Why can't there be more than one kind of tournament? Surely if one is such a gifted player they'd be able to dominate any kind of tournament, regardless of it's parameters.

Monster Rain, you should go, the event is fun. Don't let Espa's words deter you or mine for that matter. I feel gakky for contributing to this drama. I want to see the event flourish and do well.

The PacMads are nice guys, I gave them way too hard of a time in this thread. I didn't intend to do that but going back and reading what I wrote I definitely came across as condescending which is lame and makes me look like a jerk.

The event is fun. They are actively trying to tune up their system to address everyone's concerns but still stay true to their vision as a club which is all you can really ask.

So yeah, give it a whirl if you can, last year was good fun even with some wonky missions and heavy soft scores and at the end of the day, as you said, we play the game to have fun.

Thanks for that last reply Reecius.

A ways back amidst all the drama, someone asked about how we will be handling terrian for Fantasy. In an effort to get back to actual tournament details, I'll answer it.
We will place terrain as evenly on the tables as possible, so that the side you walk up on is not unbalanced with the other side. We would like people to not have to change sides after getting to the table, just for the plain fact that it can be difficult to move around at the venue. It is a new venue, with different tables. We still need to get with them and verify what they are. Hopefully they are not the stupid stage risers that the old place always had for tables. We did not provide those, the hotel did, and they did suck! But we couldn't rent taller tables either, part of the hotel rules.

Anyway, we will have fixed terrain, so that the placement of terrain does not take up 15 minutes of your game time. We'll have tape under each piece with a number, and a piece of tape on the table...in case pieces get moved between games to set army trays down on.

True line of site will be in effect. We are not using any house rules (I know someone mentioned something a few pages back about a bunch of weird house rules we have? I have no idea what he was talking about, and don't remember having any in the past...whatever). We are playing straight up 8th edition with the GW FAQs in affect. I think the only thing that would be considered a house rule would be about dwarves, and we will post this in the rules section - all templates hit everything they touch...despite the fact that GW did not address that in the dwarf FAQ. Dwarf templates act just like everyone elses.

There will likely be no more than 1 mysterious forest on a table. We'll put a card on it if we decide to have a mysterious forest. We're still up in the air on that and may just make all forests normal, just for simplicity. The only other "special" terrain will be the few Throne of Skulls GW terrain pieces we have. They will follow the rules for that piece. MAybe we'll just put them all on one table! Hah!

We playtested 3 of the WFB scenarios again yesterday at an RTT, and they went over well. There are a few clarifications I'll make to them based on comments. Thanks to Ghoulking Bob for running them.

Mordante wrote:True line of site will be in effect. We are not using any house rules (I know someone mentioned something a few pages back about a bunch of weird house rules we have? I have no idea what he was talking about, and don't remember having any in the past...whatever). We are playing straight up 8th edition with the GW FAQs in affect. I think the only thing that would be considered a house rule would be about dwarves, and we will post this in the rules section - all templates hit everything they touch...despite the fact that GW did not address that in the dwarf FAQ. Dwarf templates act just like everyone elses.

Also, hills will be considered to be infinitely high.

Reecius wrote:Monster Rain, you should go, the event is fun. Don't let Espa's words deter you or mine for that matter. I feel gakky for contributing to this drama. I want to see the event flourish and do well.

The PacMads are nice guys, I gave them way too hard of a time in this thread. I didn't intend to do that but going back and reading what I wrote I definitely came across as condescending which is lame and makes me look like a jerk.

The event is fun. They are actively trying to tune up their system to address everyone's concerns but still stay true to their vision as a club which is all you can really ask.

So yeah, give it a whirl if you can, last year was good fun even with some wonky missions and heavy soft scores and at the end of the day, as you said, we play the game to have fun.

I don't think you or Espa looked like jerks, to be honest. Nothing wrong with having opinions, you know? Espa was responding to something he felt passionately about, which I can definitely identify with. I actually agreed with the spirit of what of you said with the drama removed, which might sound weird but whatever.

I just happen to think there's room for events of all kinds of different types, and that the more we support them the more events we'll have the opportunity to go to. I'll be attending both the BSB and 'Ard Boyz with a big smile on my face.

The only issue I could have, is there going to be golden tickets given out? If so, it's unfair for the competitive people trying to get those tickets to compete in Vegas.

If not, then I think the tournament is not bad, very unique in its approach and definitely gives players of a different ilk a chance to shine (ie, the hobbyist vs the competitor).

I think that a well-rounded player would Excel in either scenario, but maybe I'm just idealistic.

In an ideal world, we'd all be master painters and tacticians, but that's not the case!

Well, for someone like me, I can't even come close to competing in painting. I can make a very nice table top standard army, but nothing with major conversions or highlighting. At the last GT I went to, I scored a 26/46, basically right where I was expecting. At something like the BSB, I'd expect to be in the lower echelon of painting scores, which means I'm almost out of the running from the start.

If Best General gets a ticket, then it should be fine even with the player judged comp/sports factored in.

The finals in Vegas, from what I can tell, are going to heavily favor good generals, not so much soft scores. So people aiming for said tournament, are mostly

They are still giving out Golden Tickets at this event. At least as far as the GW website says. And they go to Best Overall and 2nd Best Overall.

Reecius wrote:So seriously, let's try this again. I apologize for casting you in a negative light in this thread, I should have been more thoughtful in my word choices. I don't care about what happened between us way back when, it really is pretty laughable that we lost a friendship over a game of toy soldiers. Let's put this behind us and move on. I don't like having enemies and I don't want to have a situation where things are always tense. You are saying things that are flat out untrue now, and by throwing mud at me you are only going to escalate things.

Let's forgive and forget here, huh? It's pointless to continue this feud, it has already damaged this event and I would hate to see more of that type of thing happen. We're both adults so let's behave as such.

I thought this post was excellent, and is once again why I'm really impressed with Reecius. It's possible to be a competitive gamer, be passionate about tournament formats, and to be civil about it, too. Burying the hatchet and all that... very glad to see a post like this!

Will also give the fantasy scenarios a read-through and provide some feedback if possible

Dice Gods of the Abyss, I take a short training time out and all hell breaks loose!!!

It truely is a sad state of affairs when gamers decide not to play in an event because of personal differences, spite and good old fashioned angst.

For the record, I was the first to post the dreaded WAAC in this thread as a talking point. Im curious to understand the source of contention with this term...at a later time.

Pertinent to the conversation: The TO's are making an effort to address some of the issues brought up by some of the posters, that should be a good show of faith. The willingness to compromise shouldn't be license for disaffected groups to instigate, slander or attack other poster associated with the BSB 2010. Espa's post as the exception, of course.

Best of luck to you all and I hope that cooler heads can prevail in this.

Richard

Hulksmash wrote:They are still giving out Golden Tickets at this event. At least as far as the GW website says. And they go to Best Overall and 2nd Best Overall.

That's a little disheartening. I'd really like a shot at a ticket, but there's no way I can make up for the amount of soft scores I'm going to lose. It's all good though, there's plenty of other tournaments to try for.

On Topic:

I'm officially in wait and see mode. I'm personally hoping that they keep the original format that was posted just with more balanced missions. That is the singular issue I had with the event. Because unfun/imbalanced scenarios can lead to an unfun time. Keep in mind my SW's and Nids both benefitted heavily from the scenarios posted.

Off Topic:

The problem with the Term Win At All Costs is what has been stated previously in the thread. That it implies a drive to win at the exclusion of morals. It is a term that can be extremely offensive to people that play to win but still approach this as a hobby and a game (which is 99% of "tournament" players). It has similar connotation to TFG. I hope that clears it up.

@Greenbay

The SCGWL events do Best Overall/Best General for the tickets. They have NeonCon in Vegas coming up. There is probably going to be a bay area event that will do something similar. If you do 40k there is also the Sprue Posse GT that is being advertised. Hope that helps.

greenbay924 wrote:

Hulksmash wrote:They are still giving out Golden Tickets at this event. At least as far as the GW website says. And they go to Best Overall and 2nd Best Overall.

That's a little disheartening. I'd really like a shot at a ticket, but there's no way I can make up for the amount of soft scores I'm going to lose. It's all good though, there's plenty of other tournaments to try for.

There is the Ironman XVII in Las Vegas on January 15th (40)k and Golden Snotling March 12th (fantasy) . The scoring is the Throne of Skulls format that GW will be using for their GT's. No paint score just have to have painted minis, and each tournament will be giving two "golden tickets" invitations to the GT.

I just want to say that everyone is welcome to come to the event. Once things are finalized people can make a decision based on weather this event is for you, no hard feelings whatever your decision. I would like to put this behind us, so we can get back to enjoying the hobby we all like so much.

I'm hoping for some solid scenarios, the paint checklist that was already up, and the loss of comp. I think those changes would still make it a fun event for everyone but would bring more players in overall. I look forward to seeing the final product John.

Couple things:

@Espa-
Your nuts. Everyone likes Hulk, even when he brings facebeater lists. He is in my top five favorite people to play and I have never heard anyone (outside of SD people) complain about him, ever. I understand some of your anger here, as I get constant pressure to remove the impact of soft scores from our system (and a lot of people consider me "WAAC", go figure) from people, including the three you cited. But the fact is, competitive guys are what build a successful event. If I want to go roll some pubeless wonder using a battleforce army, I just truck down to the FLGS, I don't shell out $60 and skip V-Day with the wife for that. I think that is the part of it you are not seeing here, because frankly the SD crowd is fairly insular in a way that is difficult to explain to you. Like Dash, I have been to many events all over the country in this year alone and none of the local scenes are anything like the SD bunker mentality.

@Kurt-
Everytime some sort of crap happens, the first thing I hear is "those were not Pac Marauder guys" which is a cop-out, really. It would be like us saying "Touradj is a riverside guy" after the time he mouthed off about you guys, instead of owning it and correcting it like we did. Fact is, to outside observation, your last couple BSBs ran amazingly similar to a Clifford run tournament, hence the comparison there. Also, if some guy talks smack who is from SD, attends all the local Pac Marauders events, shares the same views on gaming as your group, and posts on your message board, saying "he's not one of ours" kind of does not carry water. Consider that Henry (one of two people with a lifetime ban from our events) was, at the time I last went to one of your RTTs, a member of your group, its not exactly hard to understand why everyone from SD with a huge chip on their shoulder gets painted with the same brush. Fair? No, but it is what it is.

Now, as I said, I will be there playing fantasy regardless, in a last ditch effort to try and finally bury the hatchet with you guys. I posted my thoughts on the scenarios (and scoring comments) in an effort to try and help, whether you believe that or not. I realize this may be futile, but I am honestly going to try, despite your crew attacking some of the nicest people in the community (including the guy who bragged about bashing Ian Dimitri in this very thread, sigh) which gives me a pretty good idea of how I will be viewed, given that I am far from the nicest guy out there.

Anyway, I do have a degree of respect for Kurt and Wade, (and have had good games against Kurt) I just wish they ran a tighter ship and that the PacMars were more in tune with the rest of the GW gaming community. I think if you guys actually went to a couple events (especially QCR), it would open your eyes a lot. When you only play in your own little clique, your tactics suffer and groupthink sets in. I think some of the fantasy scenarios reflect that. Having seen some variations of these scenarios played at other events (I have almost 80 games of 8th edition, spanning 8 different armies) I what the likely result of some of those scenarios is. I cannot stress enough that no one likes losing a game entirely to the scenario, which is what is going to happen in at least two of those. Also, no one likes being told what they have to take, so telling the forest spirit wood elf guy that he MUST take 4 fort points of stuff in his army because this one scenario might be used is going to turn people away.

In any case, I probably overstayed my welcome in this thread, so I will just say See you guys in Feb.

ps- "Hills are infinitely tall" is one example of a house rule that differs from the GW book. I would go with what has been suggested and set terrain as static (for both systems) and predetermine the terrain types for fantasy. The Slaughter and Tides of War both ran with 2500 points and preset terrain. Rounds ran on time and most people completed their games, despite 8th edition being only a month old. By the time Feb rolls around I think even the most casual people will have enough playtime under their belt to manage their round time well, if the terrain is static and predefined.

I believe that you can't put the San Diego players into just one group.

It seem like there is at least the Pacific Marauders that we are talking here about, and the Game Empire crowd that that are very competitive tournament guys.

RiTides wrote:
I thought this post was excellent, and is once again why I'm really impressed with Reecius. It's possible to be a competitive gamer, be passionate about tournament formats, and to be civil about it, too. Burying the hatchet and all that... very glad to see a post like this!

Thanks man, I appreciate the kind words.

I do feel like I inadvertently cast the first stone in this thing, so the least I could do is try and mitigate the damage.

Like others have said, there is room for all types of events. Some of us competitive guys that go to all the tournaments get pretty focused on the kinds of events we think are "best" and lose sight of the forest for all the trees.

I am planning on going, having fun and seeing my friends. That is, in the end, more important than influencing every tournament to be the way we want them to be. We have plenty of tough, competitive events and like Espa said, non-competitive gamers don't come in and try to change Ard Boyz. I think some of the changes we have suggested would be nothing but a good thing, and as Phazeal said, to grown an event you really do need the support of competitive gamers as we are the ones who travel in large numbers, but it is the PacMad's show, after all and I wish them the best with the event.


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@Blackmoor

I agree, San Diego has some of the best players in the country who play very competitively. There are at least two distinct, large groups there. Most everyone gets along just fine, they just both tend to do their own thing.

Hulksmash wrote:They are still giving out Golden Tickets at this event. At least as far as the GW website says. And they go to Best Overall and 2nd Best Overall.

The Hulk may smash....but he is correct We have 2 golden tickets for each system, 40k, WFB and WotR. They go, as stated, to the Best Overall and 2nd Best Overall.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Phazael wrote:
@Kurt-
Everytime some sort of crap happens, the first thing I hear is "those were not Pac Marauder guys" which is a cop-out, really. It would be like us saying "Touradj is a riverside guy" after the time he mouthed off about you guys, instead of owning it and correcting it like we did. Fact is, to outside observation, your last couple BSBs ran amazingly similar to a Clifford run tournament, hence the comparison there. Also, if some guy talks smack who is from SD, attends all the local Pac Marauders events, shares the same views on gaming as your group, and posts on your message board, saying "he's not one of ours" kind of does not carry water. Consider that Henry (one of two people with a lifetime ban from our events) was, at the time I last went to one of your RTTs, a member of your group, its not exactly hard to understand why everyone from SD with a huge chip on their shoulder gets painted with the same brush. Fair? No, but it is what it is.

I get it...but far to often, everyone paints all San Diego players as PacMads. Friends of ours sure, gaming compatriots absolutely, a fine looking group of guys (well maybe not)...but not PacMads. Henry never was, despite having attended some of our events (well 1 actually) and living in San Diego.

Though I really don't see our events running in any way similar to Cliff/Game Empire's events. But lets not sweat that.

Thanks for the feedback Q...we are listening

Talk about self wankery

gothgar wrote:Talk about self wankery

By definition, 99.99% of the time the the term "spanking" is in relation to an act done by oneself so that makes no sense.

Back on topic with ye, me hearties! Hohoho.

Sorry, I was a pirate for Halloween. Maybe.

@Gothgar
Are you talking about Kurt? He's being incredibly even handed and level headed in this, I don't think he deserves any insults in the slightest.

If you were not talking about him, then sorry!

Phazael wrote:Blah Blah Blah... I hate Cliff... All San Diego players are in the same club and think exactly alike... Henry was in your club no matter what multiple people have said...

You know, Q, I haven't really noticed any sort of grudge between San Diego gamers and LA gamers... except for you. I don't know why you cling to it, I don't know why you perpetuate it. But it does seem to be you.

I hope you're genuine about burying the hatchet you've been grinding for such a long time.


Pacific Marauders: I do agree with Phazael about the hills, though, 'infinitely high hills' are just soooo 7th edition. If you want hills to block LOS, make taller hills for your tables.

Ghoulking Bob wrote:
Pacific Marauders: I do agree with Phazael about the hills, though, 'infinitely high hills' are just soooo 7th edition. If you want hills to block LOS, make taller hills for your tables.

I hate you Bob

Ohh how I long for those heady days, those sleepless night....of 7th Ed

Q there really are 2 very distinct groups down here in SD. The Pac Mads are a small group there are like 20-25 active members and very few tournament players. I will show the list at the event. The reason we usually say it was not the Pac mads is because that is the truth. Henery has never been a Pac Mad and neither has Cliff. I hope to clear everything up with you in Feb were we can talk at lenght.

I think your event would be best served by having this discussion in another venue and focusing the thread on the event, itself. I would be glad to discuss this further, but I don't want to derail this thread anymore than I already have.

To that point, get some playtesting in on the scenarios and figure your house rules faq as far in advance as you can. It will help your attendance.


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ps- Cliff is a massive self serving douche and nothing will ever alter my opinion on that. His history of rigging his events is well documented.

Phazael wrote:
ps- Cliff is a massive self serving douche and nothing will ever alter my opinion on that. His history of rigging his events is well documented.

There's so much wrong with this little line, but I'll just say this: Not a good start for someone who says he wants to bury the hatchet.

Maybe he wants to bury the hatchet in someone?) obviously, much anger in this one.

But since he is not a member of your group, it should not matter in the context of this discussion. I just wanted to be honest about that and confirm your assessment. And I am far from alone in my view of Cliff, as you already know or you wouldn't be driving home the point that he is not involved in your GT on any level. Anyhow, the history of Cliff's schenanigans at Strategicon Events could fill its own thread....

Couple of general questions:
Are you guys planning on using the special terrain types in the new rules or sticking to generic pieces?

Are the round 3-5 pairings being done on strictly battle points or overall points? There was some confusion about this at the 40k side last year.

How heavily are you weighing display boards in your paint judging this year?

Phazael wrote:.Couple of general questions:
Are you guys planning on using the special terrain types in the new rules or sticking to generic pieces?

Are the round 3-5 pairings being done on strictly battle points or overall points? There was some confusion about this at the 40k side last year.

How heavily are you weighing display boards in your paint judging this year?

There may be a few special terrain types, but I suspect will be limited to 1 per table max...we reserve the right to setup a few kooky tables and lots of basic table. Honestly I hate the new terrain rules...I'd use the 6th Ed terrain rules if I could get away with it

Rounds 1&2 are pre-matched by judged comp
Round 3 is based upon round 1 battle and judged comp
Round 4 is based upon round 1-3 battle points
Round 5 is based upon round 1-4 battle points

Display boards are still worth 1-3 points, as always. 1 point is for having a display board...not simply a tray.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The confusion in matchups is due to people making an assumption that a Swiss style pairing system is used. We do not do Swiss pairing...never have.

We match up by points, plus making sure that no one plays the same person twice (duh!). So things get shifted a bit here or there.

We also had a few situations where suddenly the opponent did not show up, and just matched up people together, rather than redoing all the pairings.

Though I think that it was the Swiss pairing that got most people confused.

Bottomline, don't think you can plan on who you are gonna play...seems like I saw a lot of that going on.

I see a first round matchup of Q and Cliff. It would be fun to watch. ;-) Both have said they are coming.


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Phazael wrote:Couple things:
Also, no one likes being told what they have to take, so telling the forest spirit wood elf guy that he MUST take 4 fort points of stuff in his army because this one scenario might be used is going to turn people away.

This is taking a scenario right out of the book and adjusting it to try to make it playable in a tournament setting. Nobody wants their game to end on turn 2, even if you are the one who wins. Fort 4 means a general and 2 standards. I don't think it is out of line to say take 2 standards in any army, so that this game actually works. It is obviously an intent of GW, by making it a basic scenario in the book. Other tournaments are trying to play them right out of the book, and this is the one that appears to be getting the most pushback, so we're attempting to find a way to adjust it. Will it work? Maybe not. Will it be played? Maybe not. If having to standards in your army is just too much of an adjustment to handle, which I have not actually heard from anyone who actually has that issue, then maybe reconsider your outlook on life. It's not like I'm asking you to trade armies with your opponent. (Please read that last as a light hearted jab...I traded armies with my opponent at that SCS, and had a fun game...but it was pretty out there to do in a tournament)

I am rescinding my resignation.

The BSB 2011 tournament organizers, including myself, have been working hard these last couple of weeks to finalize all of the tournament rules. The primary focus has been clarity, but a few changes have been implemented. Failures in communication amongst the organizers was the cause of many problems. Failures in communication with possible participants, primarily stemming from confusion from our site was a major problem. For this, we sincerely apologize. The site is not up-to-date in reflecting clarifications and rule tweaks recently adopted, but will be soon.

Due to the nature of webposting, we ask that players allow time for the site to be completely updated before reacting to any information that may be on site.

While we have always encouraged player feedback, it is important to note that clarification requests should be initiated on the Pacific Marauder Broadside Bash 2011 forum.

For myself, please know that discussions advocating for changes to the Warhammer 40,000 tournament rules, awards, scenarios, FAQs and any other adjudication will only be addressed via email. Please keep in mind that the design of the tournament is the prerogative of the tournament organizers, and there is no obligation to accept any requests pertaining to changes of the tournament’s organization.

Personally, I wish to extend an invitation to all players that enjoy the Warhammer 40k game and universe, all that it has to offer, and who wish to enjoy and share in our little slice of that very large cake at BSB 2011.

Espa wrote:I am rescinding my resignation.


Personally, I wish to extend an invitation to all players that enjoy the Warhammer 40k game and universe, all that it has to offer, and who wish to enjoy and share in our little slice of that very large cake at BSB 2011.

Disingenuous much!!!

Don’t you understand? We don’t want you to come. Please don’t. Stop threatening not to come, just don’t come. Go enjoy another event in the circuit.

This one is ours. Please, go away and let it go.

Insult a slice of the gaming community by telling them not to turn up you have the audacity to post this - I suggest you look up the word "hypocritical" in the dictionary because I have a feeling your picture is right next to it.

Shame on the organizers for letting you back in.

edit to include quote.

To be fair, I really don't see someone telling people who are threatening not to come to a tournament because they don't like the format that they can take it or leave it is all that out of line.

Welcome back Jason, glad to have you back! Its a bitch to run a tournament, and we get a lot of bitching. However we do it for the community, we do it because we want to see all the cool armies taking the field of battle, we do it for our love of the game.

I had a really long post written out. But I think I can condense it and to hell with the high road this time around since I, personally, am not a hypocrit.

I'm not attending due to Jason being brought back. I hope he enjoys playing the missions he designs just like he did last year (yes, the mission designer played in the event). I'm going to actively encourage my friends and fellow gamers to not attend. I can't and won't attend a tournament who endorse having someone on their staff after they insult multiple members of our community. While I was willing to be civil and nice as long as Jason wasn't a member of the staff but unfortunately the guys running this event just showed how they truly feel about members of the community that don't play toy soldiers the way they do.

I want this to be very clear. I am not attending due to Jason being involved. Not because of the structure of the event as I've got a killer counts-as Deathwatch Army I'm working on for this year's bigger, more painting/sports oriented events that I can't wait to attend.

It might be too late, but please, everyone, be sure to discuss this matter as calmly and as professionally (?) as possible.

This thread is skirting the edge as it is...

I thought I'd done a pretty good job actually Alpharius Especially since I was one of the ones directly insulted by the person now back in charge of the 40k event.

Just ran a tournament using 3 of the WHFB scenarios:

Book of Grudges
Breakthrough
Hearken Back to the Days of Yore.

Feedback I gathered was completely positive* No one claimed any VPs via the breakthrough rule, but that had more to do with 3 of the armies being gunline-esque.

The battle point modifiers were pretty good, the only wierd one people mentioned, was in the book of grudges, getting +1 battle point for losing your general to the enemies could actually benefit you more than the extra 200 for you killing his. Other than that, they were all well accepted.

I ended up playing in the tournament also (needed more people, I did end up winning...but I just donated my prize support by buying terrain for the shop.) and agree with the rest of them. The scenarios weren't too shabby, only complaint I had, was the Harken Back was almost *too* generic, maybe use one of the special deployments for it?

*I originally wanted to do Magic vacuum, but after a lot of backlash of people not wanting it, I had to change it.

Hulksmash wrote:I'm not attending due to Jason being brought back. I hope he enjoys playing the missions he designs just like he did last year (yes, the mission designer played in the event).

Hulk, I am very sorry to hear that. However I fully understand your position. You will be missed :(

I'm going to actively encourage my friends and fellow gamers to not attend.

This part of course makes me very angry, and disappointed. I'll keep any additional thoughts and comments to myself. :(

Why would you be disappointed? Someone who felt the need to insult other people the way he did shows the appearance of not being an impartial judge.

skyth wrote:Why would you be disappointed? Someone who felt the need to insult other people the way he did shows the appearance of not being an impartial judge.

I am disappointed that Hulk is choose not to participate, and worse is going to actively campaign against us.

I'm genuinely sorry that you are angry Kurt. But the thing is that you have shown what you think of players like myself (a vast majority of the players I come into contact with) by allowing Jason to be part of this event again. Why would I in anyway shape or form encourage my friends and fellow gamers to attend an event that takes this stance? You can be angry but it was brought on by your staffer who you've allowed back in after he insulted me personally and a lot of hobbyists in general. Smart thing to do would have been to say either thanks but no thanks if he asked to come back or to have just done the scenarios yourself. That isn't the direction you took.

Feel free to pm me your thoughts and comments. Contrary to some people's belief I don't get offended easily I'm willing to talk about it via pm if you like.

I've hoped to abstain from continuing in a conversation that I believe has only served to shed an unnecessary and imaginary division amongst players of 40k and the hobby at large.

I am especially cautious as my return as an organizer of BSB 2011 demands that I maintain a professional etiquette of impartiality, that I had earlier dismissed when for a short time I was no longer officially involved with BSB.

I did indeed play in BSB 2010 and did design the scenarios used in that tournament. I only volunteered to assist in this manner after several players, including yourself Hulksmash, demanded that the initial scenarios be removed then threatened to not attend. I did not desire this role, but felt that I should support the efforts of a group who have only volunteered considerable time and resources to maintain and expand the hobby so many of us enjoy. And they don't even ask for a 'thank you', but it has been long deserved.

I am not competing in BSB 2011, though I would love to ready my Thousand Sons for the tournament and join my friends in all of the great trappings that a beer and discussions of 40k brings after a few great games. Instead, I joined in assisting the aforementioned group of guys that have been giving their time and resources without demands of appreciation.

After my resigination, no one volunteered to take up the role. I'm sure we can appreciate why, as evidenced in various opinions offered in this thread. I offered to assist the new 40k coordinator, and honestly looked forward to playing in the tournament.

I decided to rescind my resignation after it became apparent that my departure would cause significant strain on those remaining organizers who are already daunted in each of his own respective roles.

We don't ask that you love us, not even thank us, but I think we can at least ask that you respect our efforts and not attempt to deride the work we've done and continue to do.

Our hobby is founded and maintained by the talents and efforts of thousands of fans. Let us acknowledge and appreciate at least that much, and respect that the pursuit of all of us should be to expand the hobby, not destroy it.

Again, with all sincerity.

Jason Nichols

Ok, soon after starting this thread in hopes of starting some excitement for the 2011 BSB, I’ve slowly watched it decline… Thus I have decided to stay away, until now.

@Jason, in my opinion after the comments you have made in this forum I don’t believe that you should have been reinstated as a Tournament Organizer. After you stepped down, you went on the offensive at Reece and Hulksmash and obviously you have some serious issues there that you need to deal with. In addition, you continuously use the term, “We” as if you are speaking for the entire group of Pacific Marauders. While you may be one of the organizers, I dare say that you do not speak for all of the Pacific Marauders.

Regardless, such animosity is NOT warranted in this thread, and I will request to Alpharius that this thread be closed.

Wolflord Patrick wrote:

Regardless, such animosity is NOT warranted in this thread, and I will request to Alpharius that this thread be closed.

No need to close the thread - no animosity being shown, if anything since the reinstatement of an obviously biased the TO it has been quite restrained. This thread should be kept open for further discussion.


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Espa wrote:I've hoped to abstain from continuing in a conversation that I believe has only served to shed an unnecessary and imaginary division amongst players of 40k and the hobby at large.

That you definitely inflamed.

We don't ask that you love us, not even thank us, but I think we can at least ask that you respect our efforts and not attempt to deride the work we've done and continue to do.

You position as organizer is quite untenable and the undoing of the good work is going to happen whilst you are organizer, the bad feeling by Hulksmash etc is brought on by yourself. He is quite difficult to offend - I think I have had a few attempts over the last year and failed miserably.

Let us acknowledge and appreciate at least that much, and respect that the pursuit of all of us should be to expand the hobby, not destroy it.

Amusing.

Jason, really? You get on a high horse now, after you threw a temper tantrum and insulted the community and told them not to come? You expect other people to all of a sudden respect you and your efforts after you told all of us to feth off?

And an imaginary division in the gaming community? You have to be kidding, you are the type of person who creates the VERY REAL divisions. You have been contradicting yourself and flat out making things up in this thread. You openly espouse the view that power gamers/WAAC gamers/competitive players are bad for the hobby and that you don't want to have anything to do with them and that you don't want them to come! Your hypocrisy is apparently limitless.

Our entire strife stems from the fact that I play competitively and that is why you wanted me to no longer participate in the campaign.

And since we're clearing the air, I know the other guys wanted me to stay because I spoke to each of them on an individual basis and they went out of their way assuring me that they had no part in the decision. There was no vote, no one else even knew what you were doing. You asked me to bring softer lists, I said sure, and then you flew off the handle and asked me to leave before I even had a chance to tone down my army. Joel called me after you posted that to once again assure me there was never any vote and that you had acted on your own because you had personal beef with me. (Sorry to Joel for throwing you under the bus man, I hope I didn't cause you any drama with Jason)

I never made a fuss about it or said anything because I didn't want to cause a scene. The bottom line is that you felt threatened by me and then made it seem like the group asked me to leave which was a lie.

You are very petty, immature and vindictive. I have tried to extend the olive branch to you twice to make peace and both times you have spit in my face for my efforts. Since you are unwilling to be a man about things and bury the hatchet I see no reason to play nice anymore.

5 out of the 7 missions you wrote are terrible. Absolutely terrible.

You don't know the rules of 5th edition.

You do not understand the metagame nor the reason why missions should be balanced and simple in order to promote fair play and fun for everyone. You don't even play 5th ed missions.

You are not qualified to write missions for a 5th ed tournament nor are you impartial in your views on the game and how it should be played.

You do not listen to other people's advice.

The scoring system as is allows only 20 battle points spread between winning all your games and losing all of them! That i half of what you get for painting!

There are more holes in this system than a block of swiss cheese.

After your temper tantrum and wild insults towards the community here, you should not have been allowed back into the event. Your hypocrisy and lies in this thread just further compound that point.

I am extremely sorry to the PacMads that all of this had to come out during a thread meant to promote their event and sincerely hope they have a great turnout. Again, to anyone considering going, please don't let this crap discourage you as that is not my intent.

Lastly, if someone needs to step up and write scenarios for the event, I will happily do so. Kurt, if you would like me to draft some missions that are fair and balanced for 5th edition then I will do so. If not, no worries and I wish you guys the best.

Jason, the best thing you can do is jut bow out of this thread. Every time you post you make things worse.

Again, sorry for the drama fest, i wanted to stay out of it but this is just too much.

fullheadofhair wrote:

You position as organizer is quite untenable and the undoing of the good work is going to happen whilst you are organizer, the bad feeling by Hulksmash etc is brought on by yourself. He is quite difficult to offend - I think I have had a few attempts over the last year and failed miserably.

This made me laugh. And I'm generally very, very hard to work up. I'm not even really worked up now so much as disappointed honestly. I mean I'm worked up enough to encourage others to avoid this event due to the way they are treating people who have attended every year they've been around till this year. But I'm not burning hot angry. It just isn't in me to get that angry over toy soldiers or anything related to them

Heck Kurt. I'll offer to help you guys craft some missions. And I'll even not play in the event for having done it but will be willing to talk to the players I do know and bounce solid ideas off of them. All you guys had to do was ask. I realize I'm not a member of your club and that could put a strain on the idea.

But I truly think it's a good idea to push Jason out of this event and find someone else to do the scenarios. Even if it's out of your group. Naturally I wouldn't dream of insisting it be me or reece. It could be anyone. I just think it would be a good thing for your event as a whole. Jason's attitude has seriously impacted the event in a negative way. Most players that play in local events in the LA area I would say are avoiding it. The reason I would say that is currently prominant gamers from every FLGS that runs tournies have already bowed out and that is going to affect the tournament overall.

I don't want you guys to fail. Far from it. I just can't in good concience encourage my friends and fellow gamers to attend an event that allows someone like Jason to be in charge of any aspect of it. Which is unfortunate but true.

Now you've got my curiosity up MonsterRain What was that picture? Assuming it won't get the thread closed

Just trying to lighten the mood a bit, is all.

Hmm, with Brad not playing... and Reece being iffy... and Dave being iffy... maybe now is MY time!

I will earn a golden ticket to Vegas in both Fantasy AND 40K!

I have read this thread for a while and I don't understand why everybody is so upset about a game with little toy soldiers.

After spending some time thinking about it I believe that it comes down to this. We all seem to fall into one of two camps. The competitive camp, which consists of players that enjoy playing competitively, and the casual camp which consist of players who are not as competitive and like to play with more fun (fluff, narrative etc). There may also a third camp for players who are both competitive and casual.

Anyway it is this difference of opinion that is at the heart of this discussion. There are players who are very familiar with the tournament setting would like BSB to be similar to other tornaments. These players know the ins and outs of 5th edition competitive play and build competitive lists. They also expect their opponent to bring a competitive list because that is where they have fun. The casual player is more focused on having fun and narrative and fluff. Durring the torunament they may be creating stories as to why thier army is fighting these various opposing armies.

I think there is room for both kinds of players at the Broadside Bash. I would love to see everybody have a good time at the broadside bash. I want to go and have fun. For me half of the fun is hanging out with my friends and talking about my opponents and what cool armies they have, or what good conversion ideas they came up with. I admit I would be more classified as a casual player than a competitive player of 40k, but I don't mind playing against competitive players. I have been to 2 of the 3 previous Broadside Bash events and I have played against comptetive players who were a lot of fun to play against.

Anyway, I am stuck in the middle because I am friends with both Reece and Jason. There was not an official vote (with ballots and such) for Reece leaving our campaign, Jason talked to the players individually about Reece, and got their imput before asking Reece to leave. When he asked me I personally advocated for Reece to stay in our campaign. Like I said before I consider both Jason and Reece to be my friends and I hope we can all work together to make the BSB a great event.

I think it is cool that Broadside Bash will be different from the normal tournaments that everybody is used to. I like to travel, and when I travel I don't like to go and eat at the same kind of resturant each place I go. Imagine going to different destinations all over the world and always eating at Mc Donalds. That would not be very fun. Part of life is experiencing different kinds of places, philosophies and ideas. I think there is room for a tournament that is less competitive than other tournaments. I know that my opinion might not be taken as seriously since I am not a tournament player, however I hope everybody can have an open mind about the BSB tournament philosophy. We can think of it like going to another country and trying a different kind of food. You might like it, or you might not, but at least you tried it.

Well, it's nice to hear a reasonable voice amongst all of the anger.

The whole campaign thing is in the past and I should have let it stay dead but Jason tried to use it as a tool to take a swing at me so I swung back. Honestly the whole things is silly and no one else even cares.

You are right in that there is room for all types of ideas and gaming philosophies and that they are all valid. The BSB can be run however they TO's choose to run it.

The thing is though, no one wants to go into a situation where they lose because of a mission that while it may be fun in a non-tournament format, really is not suited for tournament play. Most of those missions can be broken quite easily.

Lastly, to reinstate an individual into a position of authority who told a large group of players that they were not welcome to come to the event is just plainly not wise unless the PacMads really do share that point of view.

But thanks for the level headed and thoughtful comments, I agree with what you are saying.

I think you might have missed where people like Reece and I were coming from overall AB. Though you said it very well and I appreciate the tone.

I don't mind BSB being a different kind of tournament. I don't mind the soft scores being closer to 50%-60% of the overall. Would I prefer it different because I'm better at playing than painting? Of course But I have played in this event for the last 3 years and had a decent time. What we want is balanced missions for the most part. The rest of it we can all deal with and have and generally have a good time. It's the missions which cut to the heart of it. Do they have to be the same as other tournaments? Nope. But I would prefer that they are balanced so that they dont' negatively impact an army from the get-go.

Example was last year those hold the objective and earn points missions were auto-lose for most mechdar. I played against 2 mechdar armies, on both those missions. And guess what. Both of my opponents commented that the mission hosed them and didn't have as good of a time as they could have. They still must have had a good time with me as I scored max sports + some votes but they knew the mission had just made it so they couldn't possibly pull out a win.

Even casual players want an even playing field. I am still building a cool army in my limited free time that is for softer tournies. I have a fully converted admech daemon army that I like to think looks pretty good and is a testament to the hobby. Even us "competitive" guys enjoy all aspects of the hobby.

My problem is that the missions hurt the hobby for some players. That has always been my stance since I first looked at them. It's not so "I can win!". It's because I don't want to stand across from another opponent who doesn't get a turn because I got his half of the army on the top of my turn or watch an eldar player concede turn 4 when he doesn't have any troops left because he kept trying grab points while I slowly outstripped him because marines are hard to push off objectives with standard mechdar.

It has nothing to do with being competitive. In all honesty competitive guys will outstrip (in BP's which is how most tournaments do their 3rd round seeding) the other guys in the first two rounds and will generally be playing each other for the last 3 games, sometimes 4 games. So what kind of army you bring doesn't matter. What matters is balanced fun missions that don't cause an auto-lose situation.

**Bah, Reece beat me to it but I think I said it well to so I'm gonna leave my awesome long post. I typed it dangit! **

Auditorium_Bunny wrote:After spending some time thinking about it I believe that it comes down to this. We all seem to fall into one of two camps. The competitive camp, which consists of players that enjoy playing competitively, and the casual camp which consist of players who are not as competitive and like to play with more fun (fluff, narrative etc).

I wish people wouldn't always say 'competetive' versus 'fun'.

It's effectively saying that competetive players aren't fun or having fun, which is patently false at best, and trolling at worst.

Granted, I did like the tone of the rest of the post, but it always chaffs my hide to constantly hear that comparison.

skyth wrote:

Auditorium_Bunny wrote:After spending some time thinking about it I believe that it comes down to this. We all seem to fall into one of two camps. The competitive camp, which consists of players that enjoy playing competitively, and the casual camp which consist of players who are not as competitive and like to play with more fun (fluff, narrative etc).

I wish people wouldn't always say 'competetive' versus 'fun'.

It's effectively saying that competetive players aren't fun or having fun, which is patently false at best, and trolling at worst.

There is a point where someone is being a bit too competitive to enjoy playing against though, right? I mean, we've all played "that fething guy".

Edit: I'm speaking in generalities. I'm not implying that any of these guys in this thread are TFG.

Excellent adjustment MonsterRain. Though I'm pretty sure we don't think you'd mean it that way

Hulksmash wrote:Excellent adjustment MonsterRain. Though I'm pretty sure we don't think you'd mean it that way

Dude, I know that someone can read something into a post that you totally didn't mean unless you completely spell it out sometimes.

Just wanted everyone to know that I wasn't trying to start any beef.

Yeah no kidding. There is already enough beef in this thread to make a double double.

I am sorry Skyth, I am not trying to say that competitive players are not fun. I posted that I played some competitive players that are a lot of fun. The purpose of my post is that there should be room for everybody, and we should all have fun. In a perfect world everybody would go with an attitude to have fun. I think we can all have fun! I love going to the BSB and seeing all the different armies, with different themes. To me seeing all the variation and creativity in the 40k universe is fun. Sometimes when a tournament is very competitive you will see very similar armies because those army builds are the ones that work best.

I appreciate somebody who is competitive and does enjoy using tatics in order to overcome an opponent. In my opinion it is even more fun when you use tatics and cunning to win with a fluffy army against a very competitive army. For me the most memorable and fun games are the ones where you are perceived as being out matched and you still win becuase of some cool tatic you were able to employ or even a crazy bit of luck.

I do plan on going to the BSB, and I don't plan on bringing an overly competitive list. I want the list to be balanced, and I look forward to playing with guys who are seasoned tournament players because I always learn something from them. I don't mind if I loose as long as I have a fun time doing it. I want everybody to come, and everybody to have fun. Skyth I am sure you are a fun guy and I am sorry if I inadvertently upset you by implying comptitive players are not fun. There are many competitive players who are loads of fun, and there are some that are not fun at all to play against. The same could be said about casual gamers, there are some that are lots of fun to play and some that are not fun to play. I look forward to going to the BSB meeting new friends, playing against new and different armies and just having a chance to hang out and talk nerdy 40k talk with everybody.

I hope to see you all there.

Thread now closed at OP's request.