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I played hard, fought tooth and nail for a major and minor victory, and had a minor loss by like 50 VP in the third game.

Guy who massacred the first round and had 2 losses the next couple of rounds took third....
And I got knocked out of the semi finals.
Very frustrating.

Didn't have an issue with it personally, last hoorah with mech guard had an outstanding showing. However that said I hate Victory Points just because of all the math involved, and it's too close to KP imo

Round 1 Massacre +4 bonus
Round 2 Major +2 bonus
Round 3 Massacre +2 bonus

Wound up having 65 points in first, with second place trailing @ 56 and third @ 54 iirc

I would love to see the event, or at least the finals, be turned into a 5 game/2 day event or something. 3 games just isn't enough to determine a solid winner IMO but it is fun and the prize support is ok for a free tournament!

I think the tie breakers need to be worked on . Victory points as tie breaker? So who is really adding victory points in first two scenarios this year ?

I thought so.....

Sounds like you ignored the bonus points.

17-13-7 (your record)

>

20-7-7 (if his losses were only minors). Those extra points at the bottom are what you shoot for turn 1, not what to see if you lucked up and got at the end of the match.

Not sure how it's possible if you had 50 points at the end and the third place finisher went 1-2 and had over 50 points.

Would have to see how the scoring actually broke down.

13 ( Minor loss + 6 battle points ), 24 ( Massacre plus all bonus pts ) 10 ( Minor Loss plus all bonus points. )

It is actually the only way possible to get to 50 with 2 losses.

Major, minor + Loss. should not get you over 6 place, unless there are 8 people playing and nobody's going massacre-ville on nobody

True, would be hard to do though. I had 2 Massacres and a major loss and ended with 43 or 44. First round draw against Grey Knights took its toll.

KGatch113 wrote:
I played hard, fought tooth and nail for a major and minor victory, and had a minor loss by like 50 VP in the third game.

Guy who massacred the first round and had 2 losses the next couple of rounds took third....
And I got knocked out of the semi finals.
Very frustrating.

How many people were in attendance

What was your total score

In general, you need to win all 3 games to be "sure" you have a spot, and they need to be decent wins. Bonus points are also really important, with something like ~15 points coming in as bonus over the 3 missions.

I snuck into third place barely with a minor loss (8) then a massacare and a massacre (23 and 23). Usually, if you shop has more than 4-8 people, the only way you can get in with a loss is to get 2 big massacres to make up for it.

I agree with the OP. I won first two games, and played the guy in 1st place. He wound up with a major victory (close 6th turn ending), and took first. I wound up in 4th place even though I was in 2nd going into the game by several points. The guy who got 2nd played a guy last round who wound up losing all three games and tabled him, and the guy in 3rd place played, in the last round, someone who lost two and drew a third, if I remember correctly. He massacred him as well. So the top two slug it out in a close game and I got knocked out of the running. Sigh.

mk2 wrote:I think the tie breakers need to be worked on . Victory points as tie breaker? So who is really adding victory points in first two scenarios this year ?

I thought so.....

Everyone at our location did. But then again, our TO running it made sure to tell us multiple times before the event started that VPs were being used for ties so GET YOUR VPS RECORDED. He wouldn't take results until you did, as he kept them recorded as well.

If you didn't, either your TO dropped the ball or no one paid attention.

Our store used KP as a tie breaker, not VP. The event wasn't well described through it's literature though, so the mistake is understandable.

VPs are a pretty bad system for tie breaking, they aren't always particularly easy to calculate.

Well, I played out of GMI Games in Riverside, Cali. There were 28 players in attendance, all who stayed throughout the gaming event! Quite a nice selection of Armies on show case. I believe Imperial Guard and Space Wolves were the most repeatative lists. (go figure!)

I brought my Khorne Daemons, same list i've played at the last 2 'Ard Boyz seasons...figured i was on 4 hours of sleep, and still had to head back to work after the tourney was over.

Round 1 I fought against a buddy, who i've played several, several times already, and his tough Imperial Guard. Him running late, deploying, etc. we only got to turn 3, but I pulled out a Minor Victory, and 2 bonus points.

Round 2 i faced another buddy who've i've played over and over again and his Ork Army. Great, hard fought battle, in the end I picked up another Minor Victory with 2 more bonus points. Had we gone 10 more minutes, it would've been a full Massacre and tabling!

Round 3 is when I finally got to face someone I haven't as of yet, but another good friend! Scott's Space Wolves and my Khornate Daemons clashed in an epic battle that went 5 turns, and saw as Draw, within 41 VPs of each other!!! We both picked up 2 bonus points.



BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!!

I went 2 Major Wins with Max points in both games, but massacured in the last game and finished in 6th.

We had no massacures in the first 2 games, and the final game had like 5 out of 6 games. Of course we had some "pairing" issues in my opinion.

Well, the only "fair" way to do this would be to then have a bracket system. The only problem with this is you need multiples of 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 etc. Otherwise, you start having byes at some point in time. On top of that, any number of players above 8 requires more than 3 rounds of gaming. This would make for a VERY long day.

On top of that, you would want to have some sort of seeding system so you don't have your two best players in the first round.

Bottom line, this would require more than one day. So, they go with this format. The scoring is given to you up front and its up to you to win and score bonus points.

Personally, I would not use VPs as tie breakers. I would (at a minimum) use win-loss record first, weighted by strength of victory. (i.e. most massacres, tied? most majors, tied? most minors, etc.) This would give the player who wins all their games an advantage over ones who make up bonus points. Second tie breaker could be KPs, VPs, whatever.

KGatch113 wrote:
I played hard, fought tooth and nail for a major and minor victory, and had a minor loss by like 50 VP in the third game.

Guy who massacred the first round and had 2 losses the next couple of rounds took third....
And I got knocked out of the semi finals.
Very frustrating.

You may not like the end result, but the scoring for 'Ard Boyz is very transparent. They provide the scoring metric well beforehand every year and then provide the missions about before the event starts (varying times). You should have known exactly what to do to win. At the smaller events, a loss/minor/draw definitely does not put you out of the running. I won 1st at my location with Loss (4 Bonus), and 2 x Massacre (Max Bonus).

For now, you might want to find out if one of the three are not going and see if you can get in (if you were fourth). Otherwise, play a lot and research more before next year.

Two Minor's and a Major Victory only netted me 5th place out of 14.

I guess I see what you're saying in that, similar performances between locations won't net similar outcomes. It doesn't bother me at all really. I think the missions, despite being funky, were fairly balanced. The only thing I dislike about 'Ard Boyz is the 2,500 point games, but it obviously wasn't enough of a problem to keep everyone from playing.

FWIW 2 massacres and a minor loss netted me 4th but there was a huge dichotomy between the players' scores. Some players unfortunately did most of the losing all day.

I actually like the GW scoring system. Yes, when there are 30+ players it can be an issue, but for 20 players or so, the scoring is just fine.

As far as wins. We had 3 players that won every game, but only 2 went on. One guy could have had a massacre round 1 and saw a lot of players were scoring massacres in the first round, so he tried to hold back, ignored killing the traitor, and scored a minor victory, figuring it would lead to better late round pairings. He massacred his 2nd round opponent, but then only had a minor win his final game. Ironicly, the guy he held back on, giving a minor loss to round 1, went on to score 2 massacres, and got third place. There were 18 players.

Ive seen people try that strategy before at tourneys and gotten it to work, sort of a back door win, but it bit him in the @$$.

I dont think the system is perfect by any means, but the bonus points do create a bit of seperation, and VP pretty much guarantees no ties.

It does come down to match-ups, but so does any tournament thats three rounds.

Norbu the Destroyer wrote:Ive seen people try that strategy before at tourneys and gotten it to work, sort of a back door win, but it bit him in the @$$.

Good. I unintentionally have had this happen to me (losing/drawing and winning it all) in several tournaments (including this prelim), but I would never intentionally try it. One, it is counter to the spirit of the thing and two, it is pretty risky and silly.

Honestly, my only complaint is how bad at this game some people are. There were 16 people where i played, and some of then were so bad that they got almost 0 points every single time, sending the people that played them straight to the top of the charts, while the armies/players that were actually good usually ended up with minors, majors, or draws against one another, and therefore scored lower than the people who had been lucky enough to play the free massacre armies.

Note: I'm just bitter i got 4th and am confident i could have beaten any of the 3 people above me if they had played me, instead of playing kids who are bad at the game or people with armies that look amazing but are not something that should be brought to a competitive event, while i was stuck playing competitive armies that i beat, but just not by enough to outweigh what were pretty much free massacres...Ah well, there's always next year, i guess :-P

well, that depends, i got second with 2 massacre (wins) and a massacred (loss) in a field of about 12

Problem is 2,500 point games is that some matches are lucky to get to T3 in the allotted time. This can make it difficult to go from minor-major win as it's only really come T4-T5 that the advantages really start to reflect in VPs. If people finish their matches then the scoring system works, problem is people don't get to finish their matches ...

I thought the scoring seemed pretty fair. Personally I came in ninth out of fourteen, but this was my first tourney of any kind, so I don't feel too bad. Honestly, if I were my opponent in the second round I might feel differently. I got whomped on, but he only ended up taking a minor victory.

jcd386 wrote:Honestly, my only complaint is how bad at this game some people are. There were 16 people where i played, and some of then were so bad that they got almost 0 points every single time, sending the people that played them straight to the top of the charts, while the armies/players that were actually good usually ended up with minors, majors, or draws against one another, and therefore scored lower than the people who had been lucky enough to play the free massacre armies.

This is the real problem with 'Ard Boyz. 3 games is not enough to decide a 20 person event. You would need to play at least 5 games (in a swiss pairings format) to flush out the effect of getting a face-rolling matchup and ensuring that the 'good' players all play against each other.

I'm in agreement with the OP. GWs system rewards those who get matched up with the proverbial 'baby seal' while punishing those who end up against tougher opponents but still pull off a win.

I'd be in favor of a W/L/D format where you still keep track of the points from margin of victory (massacre, major, minor etc.) to break ties.

So 2-1 would always beat 1-2, but 2-1 with two massacres would beat 2-1 with two massacres. Still not perfect, but it would avoid the problem described by the OP.

EDIT: I mean "...2-1 with two massacres would beat 2-1 with two MINOR OR MAJOR VICTORIES"

Our TO gave the odd one out full points if they didnt play anyone. NOT COOL. I was about to call GW about him. Thats messed up. I got FULL points round 1, then the guy I faced was the odd one out next round and got FULL points. I worked HARD for those points and he gets them FREE?!?! He was defenitly "helping out the locals" b/c here comes good players from another state and we got to make sure everyone has a fair chance.....really? fair chance? totally wrong. I travel b/c I like facing new people. Its messed up when you come accrossed somthing like that. If anything, they should get a draw or minor win, or the TO has a stand-in army to make him work for those points....

What do you guys think?

i placed 4th out of 4 people at lgs and 2nd place isnt going to semi round so i got his spot. Lucky me. Ill be playing at Game Empire In Pasadena for the Semis.

Julnlecs wrote:i placed 4th out of 4 people at lgs and 2nd place isnt going to semi round so i got his spot. Lucky me. Ill be playing at Game Empire In Pasadena for the Semis.

I must say that I was 6th and I was able to go to semis by all the locals not wanting to drive far. I should have been 3rd if the odd ones didnt get free rides, so thats what stopped me from callin. Going to semis, so I dont care as much now i guess....

Every tournament I have been in has given at least a Major Victory to the person with a bye. Giving them a draw or a loss is not fair either.

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