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I have a question for all of you about Primary / Secondary / Tertiary missions. I've never understood them, or why some Tournament Organizers prefer them. What is the reasoning behind them? Where did they start? Isn't having 3 objectives a little confusing? Or are they suppose to reward the player that can think ahead and keep multiple objectives in mind? If that's the case, no wonder I've never understood them.

When playing the rulebook 40K missions and there is one goal - objectives, kill points, ... One, that's it. Even in league play and custom scenarios it might be kill the enemy commander, blow up the communication station or One other objective.

The only things that I have come up with is they are a way to gauge the margin of victory between games, similar to GW's massacre / major win / minor win. They seem to have an advantage to GW's system in that they add more variety to the round score. This comes into play for the next round pairings. A wider range of scoring means less ties between people, and an easier time pairing the next round results.

Here was the scoring from this year’s ‘Ard Boyz:
Massacre 20
Major Win 17
Minor Win 13
Draw 10
Minor Loss 7
Major Loss 3
Massacred 0

There were four bonus objectives, each worth +1 point. This means that you really had to focus on 1 – 5 scoring items during the game.

This splits into the following complete point ranges
Win: 13 – 24
Draw: 10 – 14
Loss: 0 – 11
With 2 overlaps between Win & Draw, and 2 overlaps between Draw and Loss. Total there are 25 unique numbers available for a round score.

Now let’s look at P/S/T tournament scoring system (Adepticon 2010 for example)
Primary w/d/l is 21 / 10 / 0
Secondary is 14 / 7 / 0
Tertiary is 7 / 3 / 1
27 possible combinations of scoring objectives, but only 17 unique numbers when you just look at P/S/T points available. After adding in the 0 - 4 bonus points you can earn, that makes your possible score anywhere from 0 - 45, but a little more confusing. You see, there are enough pionts in the secondary / tertiary objectives to match scoring the primary objective. How do you tie in the P/S/T missions? Is the player with the most points considered the winner?

I'm trying to develop a good tournament structure for the local players and I'd like to know which style you prefer? I've posted locally, but no one seems to have any input.

You should try the NOVA format... if you are looking to creat an environment where players get better and are competitive.

The NOVA format is a little clearer toward how you win a game, but it still has a P/S/T feel to it. The NOVA "Battle Points" were % objective 1 + % tie breakers, giving equal weight to all goals, but determining winner based on first, then second, then third. The P/S/T does similar to this, but puts more scoring weight on first, then second, then third.

You could always try
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=&categoryId=2200004§ion=community&aId=11200024a

NOVA Format is basically two tournaments at once.

One is a "bracketed" w/l track, the other is a "traditional" bp+sports+paint track.

There's so much out there on it, and I don't want to seem like I'm pimping, so I'll leave it at that fact, w/out all the messy addendum. Suffice to say, BP don't have to be emphasized in order to be functional. I would even argue BP should be your last concern. Ponder via deep analysis the implications of giving people differing values for the SCALE of their win.

Do you reward the two awesome players who through luck of the draw play each other to a bare victory for one? OR do you reward the people who draw mis-matches that enable them to clean house and score massacres?

Food for thought.

MVBrandt wrote: Suffice to say, BP don't have to be emphasized in order to be functional. I would even argue BP should be your last concern. Ponder via deep analysis the implications of giving people differing values for the SCALE of their win.

Do you reward the two awesome players who through luck of the draw play each other to a bare victory for one? OR do you reward the people who draw mis-matches that enable them to clean house and score massacres?

Perhaps I should be clear in my using Battle Points. I want to use them like you did Mike - to determine seeding. Final standings are based on W/D/L record, then Strength of schedule for main tiebreaker, and finally battle points. I can even toss the lowest SoS for everybody, but then I'd have to remove those BPs too. For a 3 round even you'll only be ranked on your closest/toughest 2 games that way.

The normal store tournaments will be 8 - 14 players and 3 rounds, giving out equal store credit to ties. Once every three months I'll try to run a 4 round 16 player W/L tournament again. The last one went great!

It's a combination of scale of the event, variety, and presenting a challenging format. Multiple objective formats reward generals that can adapt and get the most out of an army list in a variety of conditions.

P/S/T generally have draw conditions for each objective. So two players can draw out across all three areas.

Monty has a good post about the pros and cons of BP on his blog at http://www.chainfist.com/2010/08/in-defense-of-battle-points.html

I have played versions of both and really I do not have a preference. Locally our gaming group has had quite a debate, but we came to the general consensus that no matter what scoring format is used, generaly your stronger players will still find their way to the top tables.

The multi tier method (primary, secondary, tertiary) is a nice way to run a tournament with say 20 folks who only have the time for 3 games, and you want there to be difference in points between players.

The NOVA format is a great way to take a "tough" match out of the equation because a slight win vs. a great opponent is just as good as crushing some new player. The constraints come in if there are not enough rounds to really seperate the players.

I dont mean to simplify each format into general categories saying "run this format for this amount of people" or anything like that. Those are just my personal thoughts on the two systems. I still believe that if the scoring system is known ahead of time, and all the players are aware going into the tourney, that the better players will work their way towards the top tables.

It serves several purposes-
Stratification: You already pointed this out, but its worth repeating. Any judge wishing to be as objective as possible needs some game driven mechanism to create the pairings. A BP system with a wide possible variation of scores achieves this. In straight win loss formats, you are still essentially doing blind draws in later rounds. Also, a skilled player who has a string of bad luck is going to simply walk off with a loss in a straight W/L format, but he can salvage some points and remain in the hunt in a BP format.

Keeping people in it- In a W/L format, you pretty much know you are out once you lose a game. In a BP format, you can overcome a bad run of luck, poor matchup, or difficult scenario by making up the points in a round where these factors are in your favor. Its also a chance for someone on the wrong end of a curb stomping to salvage some pride and a few points, provided the lesser objectives are structured properly.

Diversifying armies and leveling the playing field- Not all armies are created equal. Some armies are just plain terrible at holding objectives, usually xenos ones with crap troop options. Mixing in some side objectives lets them make the most of a bad situation at times and it forces people who play the top tier armies to cover all of their bases, rather than simply spamming units. This is, again, contingent on proper design of these scenario objectives.

I am not knocking the W/L format at all, but it requires a lot of extra preperation and enough rounds to match the numbers to work. It also tends to push 90% of the room out of contention in the last round or so, which I am not personally a fan of. I think it works best as an Invitational/Championship format and not as a standard tournament system.

Also, a skilled player who has a string of bad luck is going to simply walk off with a loss in a straight W/L format, but he can salvage some points and remain in the hunt in a BP format.

All I'll say is, since we do w/l often, this is simply incorrect. We've done w/l for over 2 years now, in a variety of tournaments, including the NOVA Open, and never once had anyone walk off over it. This is helped along by innovating in terms of other approaches and awards (i.e. best overall/ren man), as opposed to mindlessly playing into player emotion by having a system that encourages "quitting."

The big problem with Battle Points that will always remain is they reward people for massacres, which are almost NEVER the "best" match-ups in this game; winning a tight, close game against an equally skilled opponent should not be a punishment, and in BP it almost always is.


If you don't have enough games to pare down to a single undefeated, simply split the "Best General" equivalent prizes among those who remain undefeated. This is rarely a large sample set unless you're simply doing too few rounds. 4 players out of 32 in 3 rounds, 2 out of 16, etc. 3 rounds for 64+ players is paltry no matter which way you hash it. Give your Best Overall based upon contribution of paint and sports scores, if you will - and presto, you have a "best overall" that constitutes evaluation of all components of the hobby, and your best general awards don't "evaluate" people based upon the difficulty of their opponent draws over the course of the day, which is exactly what BP does. In fact, it does the opposite of strength of schedule reward - the easier your schedule by draw, the better you are rewarded. Bass ackwards.

ryan3740 wrote:The only things that I have come up with is they are a way to gauge the margin of victory between games, similar to GW's massacre / major win / minor win. They seem to have an advantage to GW's system in that they add more variety to the round score. This comes into play for the next round pairings. A wider range of scoring means less ties between people, and an easier time pairing the next round results.

I think this is the main reason - in a very large tournament, you can't have something as simple as W/L/D to differentiate opponents in a Swiss system.

However, the question of custom missions raises an interesting point that was mentioned in a 'comp' thread a while ago, which is that ANY change to rulebook 40k in a tournament might as well be house rules. The argument was that comp scoring was unfair because limiting certain codexes artificially gave some armies a 'boost'. However, custom missions and scoring systems have exactly the same effect. When writing a tournament mission/scoring system you have to keep in mind that any custom mission, custom winning condition, rating one 'victory' over another, or replacing something like Kill Points because of preference all changes the rules of the game, and will boost or nerf certain armies.

To that point, ArbitorIan, I think you need a scale equivalent to seed people within their w/l brackets (and, as an aside, Draws in a tournament are ... well, bad, but that's for another discussion) ... this equates to battle points; the differentiation is actually rewarding people on a "you're the best commander for the tournament!" front based upon bp among equivalent record holders.

The giant failing is when you have a guy who goes through 3 easier opponents, and he gets the prize while someone who went through and beat 3 really nasty tough opponents sits on the sideline crying in his beer.

Innovation can solve all of these problems, and it's that "throw hands up in the air oh well you just can't do it any other way" entrenched position that leads to a tournament organizer not ... well, innovating. This isn't even a self-plug - we're constantly revising our own approach, and it's built off global input ... it's not even really "ours," just .... collation of wide sample sets.

Missions are another component that's obviously at issue, and while another discussion, it's one worth hitting on. PST are a good start point, but when you value them differently via battle points usage, you don't really resolve the issue. Our attempt (simply to use an example I know well) is to use P/S/T that rotate, can all be "tied" to force win condition at the S/T or final VP break, and that each slightly emphasize a different build/codex "style" while being tie-forceable by ANY dex/build style. So while one mission may slightly favor a deathstar, the next may slightly favor MSU, etc., and since they are all ALWAYS in play and simply rotating on what's the win, what's the first tiebreaker, what's the second, you ensure balance in all rounds while rotating to enable "variety." Yatta yatta.

I'm not picking or attacking you Phazael, but these points always come up in BP vs W/L:

Phazael wrote:Also, a skilled player who has a string of bad luck is going to simply walk off with a loss in a straight W/L format, but he can salvage some points and remain in the hunt in a BP format.
...
I am not knocking the W/L format at all, but it requires a lot of extra preperation and enough rounds to match the numbers to work. It also tends to push 90% of the room out of contention in the last round or so, which I am not personally a fan of. I think it works best as an Invitational/Championship format and not as a standard tournament system.

Please note this: All things that Phazael brings up apply to both W/L and BP tournaments. People have already pointed out that in a BP tournaments you can get one close win and you're out of the top spot.

Can someone plese honestly tell me why a 2 - 1 player should get the top prize when they've clearly not the best player? This can and does happen with Battle Point tournaments.

I keep getting replies like, "Well, if I lose I might as well quit because I can't win" when I talk about W/L tournaments. While it is true you can't win #1, you can stil get in the top 3. With 16 players and 3 rounds, you have 2 undefeated and SIX 2 - 1 players. Tie breakers come into play for the SIX 2 - 1 players.

My original question is not which is better - W/D/L or Battle Points. My question is, how complex do battle points have to be? Should I put 3 scoring goals, like Adepticon (weighted) and NOVA (unweighted when used as BPs)? Should I just have one scoring goal and then use Victory Points for tie breakers like the rulebook suggests? Or should I go back to 4th edition missions? Have 5 objectives and each worth 1/5 of Game Points. Most Victory Points + Objective points = battle points.

Btw, I read Monty’s post, but all he points out that battle points determine an overall winner when you don’t have enough rounds to find one undefeated player. He never even brings up the possibility of equal prize support for all undefeated players. He also failed to mention that 3 low wins will put you about 65 points at Adepticon and a close loss and two crushing wins will get you about 90 points. It was an interesting read, but I don’t think I’ll ever run a pure Battle Point event. Monty had just one point and a lot of unanswered questions.

When I don’t have enough rounds to make it one undefeated, I make sure not to put #1 seed vs #2 seed? Why? It’s unfair to #2. In the W/D/L format that I prefer, continually pairing #1 vs #2 allows for #2 to end undefeated and not get a prize, while allowing #9 the opportunity to beat #10, #11, and #13 to go undefeated and share the prize for first.

Also, Swiss style means that everyone gets to play in each round and paired with people of similar standing. There are a few ways to seed each round (assume 8 wins after first round); 1 vs 2 (GW and battle point tournaments), 1 vs 8 (NOVA) and 1 vs 5 (FIDE chess). All of these are Swiss.

Ryan - the solution to the "I might as well quit because I can't win" is two-fold.

FIRST, they're being five year olds. Going to a COMPETITIVE event (which a tournament by its very definition is, regardless of how it's scored) and then quitting b/c you lost ... ugh. If it was a problem (and it's not, it doesn't actually happen), half of EVERY tournament field would quit after losing 2 games even in Battle Points systems where losing 2 is a surefire deathknell either way. Do you see 50% of every tournament ragequitting at its collection of shattered dreams? No, because it doesn't happen.

The solution REGARDLESS, is to have a Best Overall that combines the other components of the hobby - painting, converting/modeling, appearance, etc. - and so differentiates one of those top finishers as the best overall; thereafter, give your best generalS awards to all the top undefeated - it's not hard to plan for; you'll know how many there'll be going in. Just split that $200 best general prize 4 ways, if you are going to have 4 undefeated, or 2 with 2, yatta yatta.

To that end, I'd suggest simplifying the BP contribution, as a simple component for seeding ... and it doesn't matter much how you do it at that point; 3 goals, however, is probably a better idea than 1 - it's VERY difficult for a single goal to actually be balanced, and to also have it not get a bunch of people upset when missions that are readily easy to draw become de facto VP games (when using a VP tiebreaker).

ryan3740 wrote:
Can someone plese honestly tell me why a 2 - 1 player should get the top prize when they've clearly not the beast player? This can and does happen with Battle Point tournaments.

Well, that's simple, and one of the problems that is very hard to solve.

Someone who wins two VERY VERY difficult games with close matchups could easily be a 'better player' than someone who gets three massacres against three noobs (the last two being lucky ones who won their first round) or who just happened to have incredibly favourable matchups. None of these things are 'rare' situations in a tournament.

If you're rewarding a prize for 'most wins' then the person who wins all three gets it. But if you're trying to find the 'best player' then it becomes a lot more difficult.

There will always be many different tournament formats. Part of those formats will include how the tournament is scored, and who the 'winners' are. The format will depend a lot on the people organizing the event, and the player base they are drawing from, and what they put emphasis on.

Not all players want the same things. Not all TO's want to run the same type of event, and different countries, regions, and areas will have pools of gamers with different attitudes towards the game.

In designing an event, the TO should look at:
1) His resources. (Space, terrain, time, staff, $$, etc) and figure out his limits. Going beyond your limits causes problems.
2) Decide what the pool of players he is trying to draw from. (Local store, city, region, or national).
3) Emphasis on different parts of the scoring system. (Painting, games, sports, etc.), with an understanding that this also affects the pool of people attending.

How everything works together will define the event that's being run, and the TO should think about these in the planning stages. Hopefully the event works out well enough that it's sustainable and you have a chance to learn from mistakes, take feedback, and fine tune things for the next time.

You're never going to be able to please everyone, with just one format.

ArbitorIan wrote:

ryan3740 wrote:
Can someone plese honestly tell me why a 2 - 1 player should get the top prize when they've clearly not the beast player? This can and does happen with Battle Point tournaments.

Well, that's simple, and one of the problems that is very hard to solve.

Someone who wins two VERY VERY difficult games with close matchups could easily be a 'better player' than someone who gets three massacres against three noobs (the last two being lucky ones who won their first round) or who just happened to have incredibly favourable matchups. None of these things are 'rare' situations in a tournament.

If you're rewarding a prize for 'most wins' then the person who wins all three gets it. But if you're trying to find the 'best player' then it becomes a lot more difficult.

In any battle point system, the guy from your example actually never wins in spite of his loss, b/c his very very difficult games w/ close match-ups netted him low battle points (minor win, not a massacre, etc.). Allowing 1-lossers to win simply rewards people whose 2 wins were lopsided massacres, enough to compensate for whatever reason he lost a game for (which could ALSO include "he's not very good, massacred two newbs, and lost to a veteran").

When you go pure w/l as the material determinant for Best General awards, and equally award all those who don't lose, you take the "lucky draw" or "unlucky draw" symptoms out of the equation, and remove subjectivity and "hope it works out ok" out of the equation.


To Mike's point - even in a "perfect" system, within this game, you wouldn't please everyone - there'd be people who wouldn't like it simply due to its popularity. It's important to put on as airtight, well-reasoned and appropriate a system as possible, and there's not much more past that. If you say you want a "competitive tournament," and then as an organizer put out a really crappy, non-evaluative format ... well, you fail. Similarly, if you say you want a "fluffy bunny hobby tournament," and put out an airtight "fluffy bunny hobby" format ... you succeed. *shrug*

MVBrandt wrote:In any battle point system, the guy from your example actually never wins in spite of his loss, b/c his very very difficult games w/ close match-ups netted him low battle points (minor win, not a massacre, etc.). Allowing 1-lossers to win simply rewards people whose 2 wins were lopsided massacres, enough to compensate for whatever reason he lost a game for (which could ALSO include "he's not very good, massacred two newbs, and lost to a veteran").

There's actually THREE systems under discussion in this thread:
1) Pure w/l;
2) Single objective massacre/major/minor structure; and
3) Multiple different objectives (often in a p/s/t structure).

For any event that lacks rounds to go all the way to a pure swiss-style winner, I prefer #3. (Most days, I prefer #3 anyway.) I like missions that force me to complete multiple tasks at the same time - not only must I claim more KPs, but I have to do it while keeping scoring units alive to claim objectives, etc. (Many of Adpeticon's 2010 missions failed on this front, because they were using multiple objectives based on the same thing, e.g., win by KPs, secondary for killing Troops, tertiary for killing HQs.)

J - I think this would be one of those SAT type questions, which of these doesn't belong. W/L vs. W/L/D isn't really relevant to how many objectives/goals and how they are scored. I.E. take #1 out of your list. You'd figure between #2 and #3 and #whatever, then determine w/ or w/l/d

Other than that ... why is there so much resistance to awarding multiple Best General equivalent awards? Not a challenge, so much as a curiosity. "We" the tournament organizing world seems to consistently try to come up with arcane ways to differentiate winners, none of which adequately address the fact that closer games yield smaller margins of victory, and so qualifying the depth of a win becomes an inherently flawed approach.

ryan3740 wrote:Can someone plese honestly tell me why a 2 - 1 player should get the top prize when they've clearly not the beast player? This can and does happen with Battle Point tournaments.

Define "best." For a BP tournament, the "best" player has the most BPs. (Aside: in my opinion, if you can only complete the primary, you're not doing any better than a player who completes both the secondary and tertiary.)

My original question is not which is better - W/D/L or Battle Points. My question is, how complex do battle points have to be? Should I put 3 scoring goals, like Adepticon (weighted) and NOVA (unweighted when used as BPs)? Should I just have one scoring goal and then use Victory Points for tie breakers like the rulebook suggests? Or should I go back to 4th edition missions? Have 5 objectives and each worth 1/5 of Game Points. Most Victory Points + Objective points = battle points.

Battle Points need to be as complex as necessary to differentiate across your field of players, given the number of rounds you have to work with.

8 players, 3 rounds: no differentiation required, as you should have a single undefeated player at the end of the day (but watch out for Draw conditions).
16 players, 3 rounds: now you're going to have 2 "undefeated" players; if you want differentiation, you might consider missions with both a primary and a secondary objective. If you weight them 3:1, then the only way an "undefeated" player ties a 2-1 player is if the 2-1 player completes all 3 secondaries, and the 3-0 player completes none. If you want to avoid even that, then weight them 4:1.
24 players, 3 rounds: 2.5 "undefeated" players (2 or 3). Take the p/s system described above, and add 1 or 2 single-point "bonuses" to each mission; try not to make them automatic for the winner of the primary or secondary objectives.

You likely don't need a tertiary objective as a differentiation point until you reach 32 or more players in 3 rounds. For really large fields with 3 rounds (e.g., the Adepticon 40k Championships pre-2011), you can make the objectives progressively more difficult to complete (which is why the tertiary was "win by 250/500/750 VPs" in years past); you only need differentiation at the top end of the range, and that structure meant that a 2-0 player had to beat another 2-0 player by 750 VPs to get the tertiary points.

Yakface had a good article on P/S/T missions I read once, that focused on the interplay between the objectives. Accomplishing all 3 needs to be tougher than just accomplishing one or two. If they overlap too much, like in Janthkins' example, then they don't really do a lot to make a player think. You accomplish the KP mission by killing troops and HQ. At best you put a a bit of priority on those parts of the opponents force org, but not much more. I need to go read that before working on the missions for February.

MVBrandt wrote:J - I think this would be one of those SAT type questions, which of these doesn't belong. W/L vs. W/L/D isn't really relevant to how many objectives/goals and how they are scored. I.E. take #1 out of your list. You'd figure between #2 and #3 and #whatever, then determine w/ or w/l/d

I fear I don't follow you here. From a game theory perspective, I don't like #2 from my list: as you and others point out, simply "winning bigger" isn't an indication of the quality of win. I do see more value in "winning multiple ways," though; I prefer a scenario that has me tracking multiple victory conditions at once, and trying to allocate my limited resources to more than one task at a time. Pure opinion there.

Other than that ... why is there so much resistance to awarding multiple Best General equivalent awards? Not a challenge, so much as a curiosity. "We" the tournament organizing world seems to consistently try to come up with arcane ways to differentiate winners, none of which adequately address the fact that closer games yield smaller margins of victory, and so qualifying the depth of a win becomes an inherently flawed approach.

I'll flip this on you, just for discussion: why is a "closer" game something to reward, over curb-stomping someone? Close games may be more fun for both players (or not, depending on personal opinion), but a smaller margin of victory is an OBJECTIVE measurement, and can be compared to the larger margin of victory achieved on a different table.

Any comparison of individual games is inherently flawed; there's no good way to compare one win against another, as the conditions of the two games aren't identical (terrain, armies, players, dice rolls, etc.). But if we're going to have a tournament, we have to overlook that problem. After that, since we've already agreed to compare apples to oranges, we might as well determine some way to decide who had the best pineapple of the day.

Oh, that's funny. I typed "beast" instead of best. Clearly, the most brutal player is the "beast"! I edited my post above to change that.

To me the "best player" does not get beaten.

ryan3740 wrote:To me the "best player" does not get beaten.

Except in battle points?

It's not a flaw inherent to the system that allows a 2-1 player to "beat" a 3-0 player in overall battle points; it's just a question of weighting on the various objectives. If you don't want it to happen in an event you're running, and you need/want the differentiation that BPs can allow, then just weight your objectives appropriately.

J - I just mean, the multiple mission approach, type of mission, and scoring of missions does not relate to whether or not you're evaluating w/l or w/l/d on missions. So the 3 options you listed were incongruent, and that was kinda whacky to me.

In terms of your opinion there - I agree with it. The NOVA missions, for example, live and breathe that notion, and so instead of having a simple scenario where it's win or lose one mission/goal, and if you draw, determine it off VP ... it's tracking and planning for 3 different goals all at once, any one of which can be the backbreaker for the game, and all of which contribute to your final seeding, and thus you are in SOME capacity rewarded for accomplishing more missions more fully.

As far as the flip, thanks? That's the point - margin of victory is SUBJECTIVE because it's not the mission difficulty in play, but the type of opponent you draw, his list, his talents, etc. - but the simple evaluation of being able to pull off the win or not. That's objective. You either won, or you lost. Won barely because you're bad and your opponent was simply worse? Good luck next round. Won huge because you're great and your opponent was good but you were just that awesome? You'll continue to have the chance to prove that. BUT it's far more common that a huge win isn't the measure of a great opponent beating another great opponent ... arguing otherwise seems pointless.

Regardless, therein lies the rub - when you reward best generalship awards to all those who haven't lost, you're avoiding any kind of comparison of individual games - and evaluating margin of victory is a WORSE thing in SMALLER game sets, where a higher margin of variability in match-up is in play, and where you haven't pared it down to the couple of guys who over a dozen games have won each of them by larger margins.

That's to say - the smaller the set, the harder it is to establish a definitive winner among winners no matter WHAT you do, so why not just reward them all? You still have a Best Overall to award, and winning lots of games and recording larger margins across multiple objectives will help toward the competitive % of that score ... but instead of sending the guys who had tougher match-ups (for them, regardless of skill) but still WON them all ... home packing; you've taken comparison of individual games and evaluation of margin of victory out of the equation ... and THAT is a good thing.

As you've helped me complete by "flipping" it on me - neither a close game nor a lopsided game can be adequately evaluated as a proper indicator of skill, especially over a very small sample set with COMPLETELY random draw for 33% of your games (in this 3 round chatterbox example).

So, in short - we already give out multiple awards at a tournament. Let's take painting as an example - best converted, best painted single mini, best army are common as a trio of awards. So in the OP's 32-man tournament format, why any hesitation toward having multiple awards here? You'll have 4 people undefeated. One will get the Best Overall, theoretically - depending on how heavily you weight competitive score; the other 3 (or 4, if you weight Overall so that 2-1's can win it, or even 1-2's) get a prize and a token of some kind (Trophy, whatever). It's not all that odd-ball, and it remains OBJECTIVE in its evaluation of the caliber of games they had to wade through to stand where they stand.

Just my $.02. Not a $.02 "against battle points," but against taking a dump on people who didn't beat on their opponents badly enough. There's no REASON to, since you're already going to award a single Best Overall that's (in most cases) mostly competitive % anyway. You still HAVE your "best," but you don't punish people based upon their performance in individual games that I think we all agree are full of too many variables to be "definitive" based upon how much they were won or lost by.

MVBrandt wrote:J - I just mean, the multiple mission approach, type of mission, and scoring of missions does not relate to whether or not you're evaluating w/l or w/l/d on missions. So the 3 options you listed were incongruent, and that was kinda whacky to me.

Hmm. I don't see where I touched on w/l vs w/l/d in my original list; I certainly wasn't thinking about it, which is why we weren't on the same page there. Doesn't matter too much.

In terms of your opinion there - I agree with it. The NOVA missions, for example, live and breathe that notion, and so instead of having a simple scenario where it's win or lose one mission/goal, and if you draw, determine it off VP ... it's tracking and planning for 3 different goals all at once, any one of which can be the backbreaker for the game, and all of which contribute to your final seeding, and thus you are in SOME capacity rewarded for accomplishing more missions more fully.

I understand that. (Aside: I also think it would be more amusing if you randomly determined, near the end of the game, which of the 3 was going to be determinative for that round.) But the conversation isn't just about tournaments which have adequate player/round ratios to allow for complete determination.

As far as the flip, thanks? That's the point - margin of victory is SUBJECTIVE because it's not the mission difficulty in play, but the type of opponent you draw, his list, his talents, etc. - but the simple evaluation of being able to pull off the win or not. That's objective. You either won, or you lost. Won barely because you're bad and your opponent was simply worse? Good luck next round. Won huge because you're great and your opponent was good but you were just that awesome? You'll continue to have the chance to prove that. BUT it's far more common that a huge win isn't the measure of a great opponent beating another great opponent ... arguing otherwise seems pointless.

Here's a place where we'll disagree: if win/loss is an objective data point, then winning by 50 VPs vs winning by 1500 VPs is also an objective data point: however you achieved the margin of victory, you still HAVE obtained a measurable, quantifiable margin of victory. There's nothing subjective about 17 battle points vs. 11 battle points.

Regardless, therein lies the rub - when you reward best generalship awards to all those who haven't lost, you're avoiding any kind of comparison of individual games - and evaluating margin of victory is a WORSE thing in SMALLER game sets, where a higher margin of variability in match-up is in play, and where you haven't pared it down to the couple of guys who over a dozen games have won each of them by larger margins.

I read your position as "Player A's win over a 4 year old playing their first game shouldn't benefit him more than Player B's win over the undead master of all things 40k." A little simplified, but hopefully not too off-point?

Yes, we're playing a matchup-dependent game. We're also playing a dice-dependent game: games often change, based on the outcome of a single die roll. You can try to mitigate matchups in army building and playstyle; you can try mitigate random dice through army building and playstyle. I applaud your desire to limit the impact match-ups have on a given day (and thereby reduce the impact of random factors), but you won't eliminate that until everyone plays everyone else round-robin style (or at least via World Cup-style preliminary rounds).

As you've helped me complete by "flipping" it on me - neither a close game nor a lopsided game can be adequately evaluated as a proper indicator of skill, especially over a very small sample set with COMPLETELY random draw for 33% of your games (in this 3 round chatterbox example).

So, in short - we already give out multiple awards at a tournament. Let's take painting as an example - best converted, best painted single mini, best army are common as a trio of awards. So in the OP's 32-man tournament format, why any hesitation toward having multiple awards here? You'll have 4 people undefeated. One will get the Best Overall, theoretically - depending on how heavily you weight competitive score; the other 3 (or 4, if you weight Overall so that 2-1's can win it, or even 1-2's) get a prize and a token of some kind (Trophy, whatever). It's not all that odd-ball, and it remains OBJECTIVE in its evaluation of the caliber of games they had to wade through to stand where they stand.

Just my $.02. Not a $.02 "against battle points," but against taking a dump on people who didn't beat on their opponents badly enough. There's no REASON to, since you're already going to award a single Best Overall that's (in most cases) mostly competitive % anyway. You still HAVE your "best," but you don't punish people based upon their performance in individual games that I think we all agree are full of too many variables to be "definitive" based upon how much they were won or lost by.

I think all we're really discussing here is the idea of "how much" a game is won or lost by. In my opinion, a win is "better," the more I have to do for it. If I can beat you on KPs, but at the cost of being unable to hold an Objective, I didn't win as "well" as I could have. Yes, it might have been easier, if you'd been a less-skilled player (or if you had a different army); on the other hand, it might have been impossible, had your dice rolled differently, or if I'd been paired against someone with a different army - even in (effectively) single-elimination tournaments, it is certainly possible to avoid your worst-case match-up on your way to the top of the pack.

Here's my thoughts:
A) It's absurd to label anyone the "best" player at a tournament, based on 3-5 games involving match-ups and dice. (I'm not suggesting that random factors are completely determinative, or that there aren't "great" players out there.)
B) If we're going to do it anyway, then we'll need some objective structure to compare my games with yours.
C) Winning games is likely the best of of the objective measures available.
D) If we really want a single "best" player, and we don't have enough time, we'll have to have some additional objective measures in play.
E) Of the additional objective measures, I vastly prefer multiple binary objectives, to some sort of graduated "win by X, X+Y, or X+Y+Z" structure.

I understand you don't like "D." I'm not a huge fan, either. But most tournaments are structured that way, and GW's prize support for RTT-scale events is biased that way.

SCGWL uses a 12/5/3 system for PST on all rounds except the last in our GTs. The secondary and tertiary generally can be achieved by both players and do not usually directly conflict with the opponent's primary. The primary missions usually give partial points for tie situations. Here is an example from last weekend in Vegas, mission four:

Primary (12 Points) – Score this if you control more objectives than your opponent at the end of the
game. If both players control an equal number of objectives, both players score six battle points. If
neither player controls any objectives, then both players score three battle points.

Secondary (5 Points) – Score this if you eliminate at least one enemy HQ unit during the game.

Bonus (3 Points) – Score this if you end the game with at least one unit of any type in the opponent’s
deployment zone.

This is a typical mission set for us. For a 2-1 player to have more BPs than a 3-0 player, the 2-1 player would have had to achieve nearly all secondary goals and the 3-0 player would have to achieve none of the goals other than primary. I think in this situation, with these sorts of goals, that most people would agree that the 2-1 player accomplished more over three rounds of play.

As for the pwning newbs to achieve lots of BP in round one, no system is immune to that. There is no system in place that prevents these sorts of matchups entirely in round one, much less lopsided army designed ones that can happen in any round. The best measure we have is to match people entirely by BPs from round two onward. This serves a dual purpose, as the more casual guys are not getting their poop pushed in constantly, as everyone is more or less playing someone on their level by round three.

I understand why NOVA does the whole pair top with bottom thing, but that works best with ultra competitive players and would not likely go over well with a lot of the more casual guys who fill the seats a many GTs. It works great for the crowd NOVA was targetting, but that format is not the best for a more mixed crowd, which is our target.

Phazael - I would disagree strongly on the last point; I've posted to that effect before in blogs and other discussions; that said, that's SO far off topic that I don't want to heavily derail it. Suffice to say, the "thesis" is it much more rapidly brackets similar skill level players against each other, getting to "close" and fairly balanced matches more quickly ... and it also discourages wailing on people who aren't as good as you, since massacres aren't as emphasized. Remember, it's those so-called "casual" players the most likely to be offended when an opponent who has clearly already beaten them continues to forcefully wail on them deep into a "lost cause" game in order to snag the nuances of secondary/tertiary objectives.

This is why we had a wide range of awesome casual players at the NOVA (coupled w/ the Ren Man), and not just ... 100 facebeating mean nasty people (not that the best players are really ever jerks to begin with).


PS - I'm not saying the NOVA way is BETTER for that either, just as a by the way. It's just a perception thing; we deemphasize degree of win, and emphasize win or loss, so "top vs. bottom" is only within same w/l brackets.

I agree with your general sentiment, but look again at what we are using for PST. If Player A has Playeyer B beat, he can "call off the dogs" and let B save some dignity by achieving 8 points, without in any way impeding his own ability to score the full 20. This comes down to design and a lot of missions tend to simply generate 20-0 situations with how they do their objectives. Those people may as well run the W/L format.

Basically, both systems have their flaws. BPs goof things when the mission objectives are poorly thought out and can result in 4-1 players besting 5-0 players, which may seem counter intuitive if primary is all anyone cares about. W/L have to have precise numbers of rounds to match their numbers and no draws to work correctly. We favor BPs because (given full public disclosure of scoring ahead of time) everyone knows what they are getting into and it accomadates the widest array of playstyles and largest variation of numbers. I agree that the NOVA format (not the Ren Man part) is probably the best purely competitive format out there.

I do think that BPs tend to encourage at least a little more diversity in army selection, however. But the Wolf Fest that the Nova wound up being probably has as much to do with the competitive emphasis as the W/L format.

Not to be a back and forth with you and I, but "Wolf Fest?"

Space Wolves were the 4th most common army represented (behind BA, and a two-way tie between IG and Vanilla SM). They performed of a roughly similar statistical fashion to numerous other armies. Further, in the finals, while a SW player won, it was against a BA who had barely beaten an Ork (bottom 7 on the roll of 1 dice). Most or all of the players to actually advance anywhere w/ SW are fairly known or since proven as strong players (i.e. Tony placing highly and going undefeated at the NEWCC among numerous strong players in attendance, yatta yatta).

I only oppose "assertion" without analytical support. Stating that xyz system accommodates the MOST players and the widest array of playstyles is equivalent to stating it is the best ... and "Wolf Fest" is a bit of a poke, also not based on any material fact (more assertion). Kind of a "meh" overall - this has been a pretty productive discussion, but we're off topic and in mega-assertion land to boot.

As far as the NOVA format goes, when assessing it keep in mind the value of the Ren Man part - that's our Best Overall, our top finisher. Hard to talk about the system w/out including it.