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While we've had a lot of posting on the general subject of Adepticon, I haven't seen a thread focused on providing feedback yet. Please stay topical & constructive; I will be moderating this thread.

My thoughts:

• For context, this is my 9th year of Adepticon (and my 9th year of the team tournament); I missed 2005. Dakka Detachment One (Blackmoor, Yakface, Centurian99, and myself) have attended as the same team since 2006. The Team Tournament, for me, is the premier event - it's what brings me to Adepticon every year. And as always, it was a real blast. It's great seeing some of the same faces year after year, catching up on the latest gossip, and seeing who has been painting what.
  
  
• I will confess some minor disappointment with the sheer number of all-GK teams in play this year; diversity felt like it was a bit down from past years.
  
  
• Terrain was very good this year, as in most years. Nice diversity, and the table randomization that is in use makes sure you see lots of different themes.
  
  
• Organization was very smooth; adding the early check-in option a couple years back has made a tremendous difference, in terms of starting the day off on-time. I do look forward to the day when Adepticon has moved past posting table assignments in 12pt font on paper taped to the wall - there are a LOT of smartphones in the crowd, and even just posting the assignments on a forum or a blog would greatly cut down on the congestion between rounds. (I've heard that they may be adding "text/e-mail me my table assignment" software in the near future, which would be great.)
  
  
• Missions:
  
  
  • Mission 1 was a neat concept, but a poor implementation. It's very hard to balance the "secret" missions against each other, particularly as it seemed like they were completely randomly distributed (rather than in random "pairs" of secret missions). On my table, for example, my coalition had a "destroy every enemy scoring unit" mission, against our opponent's "get four units across the board." I think it might have been better to fall back on "secret" missions drawn from the rulebook and/or the 40k Championships mission objectives.
    
    
  • Mission 2 was the best implementation of Team Cleanse yet; fantastic use for the Command Counters, to offset the usual strategy for the mission.
    
    
  • Mission 3 was pretty good, but needed an "objectives must be X inches from the board edge" requirement.
    
    
  • Mission 4 was pretty busy (3 levels of mission objectives), and needed a little clarification on Recon (i.e., does the "deployment zone" include the semi-circle carved out of the table quarter by Spearhead, or not?).
  
  
  
• Scoring:
  
  
  • I still don't understand Theme scoring. DD1 had a Necron/Blood Angel pairing this year, derived explicitly from codex materials (both BA & Necron codex). We received a theme score of 28; by my reading of the Theme Score sheet, it should be a minimum of 38 (25 for "Major Theme" - a theme that is generally supported by the background of the 40k universe; 10 for "Minor depth" - our team handouts, dead tyranid bits all over the bases, and our fist-bumping Necron/BA objective counters; 3 for display bases). But contrast with last year's 45 pts in Theme, for just a straight Daemon army, without any real effort at additional theme. We actually made an effort to evoke specific theme, and did worse as a result. I'd dearly love to see a few "sample" scores for theme across the field of play.
    
    
  • Resolved; thanks, Mattias.
    Spoiler:

    Also, there seems to be something a little off on the posted overall scores - if I plug the table into Excel, and ask it to sum Battle, Sports, CH, CT, Theme, & Paint, the overall scores tend to be between 2 & 13 pts higher than is reported in the "Overall" column. This doesn't appear affect the placement of anyone who won anything - just odd.

Anyone else care to share their thoughts?

I enjoyed mission 1, but could see where this could nerf certain peoples play.

Clarification on theme scoring would nice. I know how hard it is with the time constraints but having more than one judge score it and then taking an average would be the best way in my opinion. Not sure how that worked.

This was my first time playing in it and I am now an addict. Will be back for this one for certain.

Unfortunately multiple judges means different scores because it's all subjective. If there were 2 judges scoring together one for painting, one for theme it might speed things up instead of having one do everything- then it would be more consistent, and the team would be able to plead their case about their theme and army.

i know we played a cheaty team in game 2.

The only critique I have for the entire event (It was really well done) would be darn GW only tables. The GW tables consisting of 6 of their tile with bastions and unbased terrain (all stricty GW product) on the table. They were difficult to play and roll on. Outside of that I had a great time.

Oh, and I'd agree with Janth on game 1. I felt geniunely bad for our opponents on turn 4 when we found out their objective....

Hi

I had a great time as usual, aside from mixing like oil and water with one of my round one opponents. But that is not a moment to dwell upon at all.

Let's call these comments nitpicking of a great event - my favorite event of the calendar year and one of two I paint for (the other being Da Boyz GT).

Regarding the scenarios:
Agreed on the balance issues of the first scenario - I would have much prefered if they had taken one of two approaches:
1. Post all the possible missions in advance so you had a rough idea of the possibilities.
2. Stuck with the 3 book missions while still letting everyone know what was coming.

Mission 4 - I have no issue with the anti-psychic command tokens (though it hurt us this year, it would have been great last year with our Orks), but if the goal is to discourage the presence of Grey Knights (my interpretation of this addition), posting it in advance (in January at the latest) would have been more effective than dropping it in the laps of everyone the day of the event.

Regarding Theme:
- To me, this category has always been very clear - the desire is for traditional 40K cannon elements to be reflected in the theme. Moreover, that theme needs to focus on true alliances, not opportunistic moments that throws unlikely forces together against a common foe (regardless of the priceless BA/Necron Fist Bump). Picking a moment like that is not major theme - it is a minor theme (15 points, not 25). A minor tangent in the saga of 40K, not a truely memorable instance.

Our team has set aside a dozen awesome themes that just don't quite fit the vision of the Team Tournament. I recall posting on the development blog a couple of years ago asking if an adversaries theme would be considered. The answer was No, and the rationale was given as to why. We are OK with the answer as there are so many cool things to bring to light in this awesome hobby.

Cheers,
Nate, Captain
Sons of Shatner

Janthkin wrote:

I will confess some minor disappointment with the sheer number of all-GK teams in play this year; diversity felt like it was a bit down from past years.

I agree, although I was part of this problem and not part of the solution. I think part of the issue here is how theme and rules are biased towards certain combinations and away from others.

One big example of this is in how special characters are treated. Hybrid teams, such as yours, are allowed a maximum of one special character, while non-hybrid teams are allowed as many as they can legally take. Given the recent trend in GW design philosophy that utilizes special characters to 'unlock' certain army builds, this restriction seems at odds with how current codexes are written, and like a hold-over from five years ago.

Another is the "Brothers in Arms" rule. This provides a significant in-game advantage to single-codex teams (grey knights or otherwise), in that ICs may be distributed between each player's units, transports may be shared, and special rules apply across the board. I'm sure that this rule is in place to prevent potential "game breaking" combinations (Sanguinary Priest with a unit of whatever, as an example), but it reinforces the idea that teams should be built from one codex.

When I was on the event conference calls a few years ago, I made the argument that wacky interactions and combinations should be encouraged, not discouraged. The increased diversity gained by even simple things, like allowing Chaos Daemons to use Chaos Space Marine Icons outweighs the possible imbalances that may be found (and, well, aren't already part of the single-codex approach. Fortitude isn't the result of mixed codex interactions )

The Fantasy Team Tournament event goes so far as to disallow same-army coalitions. Players are expected to find in-theme alliances, specifically to make the team event different than just a two-pilot singles event.

I don't know that such a requirement is needed, but cutting out the bonuses that coalitions get from playing the same codex, and increasing the advantages that mixed codex and hybrid teams get would definitely encourage more diversity. And at an event that's not supposed to be quite as competitive as the 40k championships, I don't see it doing any real harm.

Organization was very smooth; adding the early check-in option a couple years back has made a tremendous difference, in terms of starting the day off on-time. I do look forward to the day when Adepticon has moved past posting table assignments in 12pt font on paper taped to the wall - there are a LOT of smartphones in the crowd, and even just posting the assignments on a forum or a blog would greatly cut down on the congestion between rounds. (I've heard that they may be adding "text/e-mail me my table assignment" software in the near future, which would be great.)

Agreed.

Missions:

• Mission 1 was a neat concept, but a poor implementation. It's very hard to balance the "secret" missions against each other, particularly as it seemed like they were completely randomly distributed (rather than in random "pairs" of secret missions). On my table, for example, my coalition had a "destroy every enemy scoring unit" mission, against our opponent's "get four units across the board." I think it might have been better to fall back on "secret" missions drawn from the rulebook and/or the 40k Championships mission objectives.
  

I really liked the first mission - I like hidden stuff. I liked that I knew what I needed to do early - this was much much better than the random mission that's revealed on turn 4 or 5.

Mission 2 was the best implementation of Team Cleanse yet; fantastic use for the Command Counters, to offset the usual strategy for the mission.

Agreed

Mission 3 was pretty good, but needed an "objectives must be X inches from the board edge" requirement.

Mission 4 was pretty busy (3 levels of mission objectives), and needed a little clarification on Recon (i.e., does the "deployment zone" include the semi-circle carved out of the table quarter by Spearhead, or not?).

For mission four, my game was a clash of two deathstars, with everything dead in three turns and so I don't really know what the mission requirements are. My biggest complaint was that, yet again, they decided to put a big F-U mission to what was expected to be (and turned out to be) a common army choice. Seriously? If you want to encourage diversity, do it up front, don't hose people when it's too late for them to make a choice. If you think an army is too powerful (and this isn't just this year, similar missions have shown up to mess with popular armies for several years now) implement a comp system. Let people know that they'll be punished for picking an army. Because randomly turning off abilities that one army paid for, and not impacting their opponent at all is hardly reasonable or fair. Disclaimer: My Grey Knights won that game against a non-psychic army in spite of the spirit-stone effect, so I'm not whining about losing the game, I'm philosophically opposed to the heavy-handed approach taken, an approach that didn't stop good players winning the game - or the event, an approach that didn't stem the number of GK armies in attendance at all, and an approach that made that game significantly less fun for many players.

Scoring:

• I still don't understand Theme scoring. DD1 had a Necron/Blood Angel pairing this year, derived explicitly from codex materials (both BA & Necron codex). We received a theme score of 28; by my reading of the Theme Score sheet, it should be a minimum of 38 (25 for "Major Theme" - a theme that is generally supported by the background of the 40k universe; 10 for "Minor depth" - our team handouts, dead tyranid bits all over the bases, and our fist-bumping Necron/BA objective counters; 3 for display bases). But contrast with last year's 45 pts in Theme, for just a straight Daemon army, without any real effort at additional theme. We actually made an effort to evoke specific theme, and did worse as a result. I'd dearly love to see a few "sample" scores for theme across the field of play.
  

With the tools available at the Westin, it wouldn't be hard to photocopy judge's score sheets and return them to the teams. Transparency is never a bad thing. The two years I did paint judging, I kept all the score sheets and volunteered to give any team that asked their breakdown. For the money that teams put into their themes, displays, appearance, and spirit, getting a more detailed result would be much appreciated.

carlosthecraven wrote:Our team has set aside a dozen awesome themes that just don't quite fit the vision of the Team Tournament. I recall posting on the development blog a couple of years ago asking if an adversaries theme would be considered. The answer was No, and the rationale was given as to why. We are OK with the answer as there are so many cool things to bring to light in this awesome hobby.

See, more clarity along those lines would be VERY welcome.

Redbeard wrote:One big example of this is in how special characters are treated. Hybrid teams, such as yours, are allowed a maximum of one special character, while non-hybrid teams are allowed as many as they can legally take. Given the recent trend in GW design philosophy that utilizes special characters to 'unlock' certain army builds, this restriction seems at odds with how current codexes are written, and like a hold-over from five years ago.

This part immediately stood out to me when I reviewed the rules for this year. An all-GK army could take Draigo in one army, Coteaz in another, and Crowe in a third - they'd having scoring Paladins, Purifiers, and unlimited henchmen across every army they brought.

Eww.

Redbeard wrote:My Grey Knights won that game against a non-psychic army in spite of the spirit-stone effect, so I'm not whining about losing the game, I'm philosophically opposed to the heavy-handed approach taken, an approach that didn't stop good players winning the game - or the event, an approach that didn't stem the number of GK armies in attendance at all, and an approach that made that game significantly less fun for many players.

Was Hulksmash's team ("They Shall Know Fear") a GK team?

I know Janthkin's team ("Dakka Detachment 1") didn't have any GK, as mentioned in the OP, and got 3rd highest in battlepoints...

We didn't face many GK armies (only a single one on a mixed team), but then again, we were at some of the lower tables

I loved the event, and as it was my first time, have no real constructive criticism to offer... it was great! Encouraging more diverse pairings on teams sounds like a nice idea to me, though (and it makes sense to do it upfront / well in advance, as mentioned).

Janthkin wrote:Also, there seems to be something a little off on the posted overall scores - if I plug the table into Excel, and ask it to sum Battle, Sports, CH, CT, Theme, & Paint, the overall scores tend to be between 2 & 13 pts higher than is reported in the "Overall" column. This doesn't appear affect the placement of anyone who won anything - just odd.

Going to see if I can Chris over here to talk about missions and objectives, but just wanted to clarify the above:

Overall Score is calculated as such:

Battle + Commander's Heads + Command Tokens + Theme + Paint + Quiz

Sportsmanship and Spirit did not factor in the overall scoring of the Team Tournament. this year.

We are looking into posting table pairings online for next year. We had looked into a text message sort of system, but did not have time to implement/test it for 2012.

RiTides wrote:
Was Hulksmash's team ("They Shall Know Fear") a GK team?

To the best of my knowledge.

Matthias wrote:Overall Score is calculated as such:

Battle + Commander's Heads + Command Tokens + Theme + Paint + Quiz

Sportsmanship and Spirit did not factor in the overall scoring of the Team Tournament. this year.

We are looking into posting table pairings online for next year. We had looked into a text message sort of system, but did not have time to implement/test it for 2012.

Ah-ha! Thanks, Matt. You've got an asterisk by Spirit & Quiz (rather than Spirit & Sports) over on your results page.

Wow, this has forced me to recognize I'm old.

Anyway, back when I was working on the fantasy side of things (02-03), we noticed that many of the team tourney armies were just someone's fantasy championship army being pushed around by two people...and sometimes that second person was only there for appearances as only one person seemed to be making the decisions, etc.

We had quite a bit of discussion that to encourage a true "two player" event we would require different races. There was pleanty of fluff out there that encouraged that sort of thing, Skaven/Undead, Empire/Dwarves, Bret/WE, that we felt it would encourage team play but wouldn't stifle army creation.

There were kinks like always, but it mostly worked. Special characters weren't really a thought at the time because, at the time, they were so insanely expensive and for fantasy, didn't bring that much more to the table.

Seeing the abomination that is the GK book and the current GW marketing strategy of "buy this special character as it allows you to "break rules".", I can see how it would quickly get out of control. No one is going to cry foul if 3 Eldar Exarchs are on the table, but three GK SCs would and is abusive.

The Team Tournament is the best part of Adepticon hands down.

After participating in a few times I my only complaint is the four games. It is just too brutal, if the Team Tourney was 3 games I think I my experience would be exponentially more enjoyable. Especially when your team has no chance of winning anything and the only incentive is fun.

I often look at my opponents on the other side and see either pure exhaustion or drunken overload by the final game.

I know my other team members felt the same way four games was just too much... and having to loss our entire dinner break while waiting to be rejudged for Spirit.

Since the team tournament is the one of the more "causal" of events I don't think people would lose their minds if somehow the math to find a clear winner was greyer.

Being up at 6am and going to around 11pm is just pretty insane.

Anyway my only two cents.

Janthkin wrote:

Scoring:

• I still don't understand Theme scoring. DD1 had a Necron/Blood Angel pairing this year, derived explicitly from codex materials (both BA & Necron codex). We received a theme score of 28; by my reading of the Theme Score sheet, it should be a minimum of 38 (25 for "Major Theme" - a theme that is generally supported by the background of the 40k universe; 10 for "Minor depth" - our team handouts, dead tyranid bits all over the bases, and our fist-bumping Necron/BA objective counters; 3 for display bases). But contrast with last year's 45 pts in Theme, for just a straight Daemon army, without any real effort at additional theme. We actually made an effort to evoke specific theme, and did worse as a result. I'd dearly love to see a few "sample" scores for theme across the field of play.

I was honestly surprised when DD3 won "best hybrid" over DD1. I loved your idea for the theme, and painting was scores above ours as well. The only explanation that I can see would fit would be that "Necron/BA" was interpreted as a minor event in the history of 40K and our Horus Heresy inspired treachery qualified as more points due to being considered a major theme.

Considering that even Forgeworld staff was wearing pins featuring a Blood Angel hanging with a Necron while drinking beer with "Mat Ward Drinking Club" written on it, I would think that this particular piece of fluff, while minor in fluff, has taken on a major theme in the minds of 40K fans. I realize that more judges are needed to score the large amount of teams that participate, but it does seem to raise inconsistency with scoring.

The actual event was lots of fun, and I really enjoyed it. We only faced one GK team, but we quickly worked our way towards the loosing side of the hall . The tables were great, communication about the event was good. The only thing I agree with would be the table assignments. Posting them in a way that was accessible via smartphones would have made things a lot quicker.

Janthkin wrote:Ah-ha! Thanks, Matt. You've got an asterisk by Spirit & Quiz (rather than Spirit & Sports) over on your results page.

Corrected. Too much 40K Champs scoring on the brain...

Redbeard wrote:

RiTides wrote:
Was Hulksmash's team ("They Shall Know Fear") a GK team?

To the best of my knowledge.

Yep, we were a GK Team, Draigo/Coteaz, each army had 1 unit of 5 paladins, and 2 units of cheap acolytes for scorers, solo-codex builds have advantages in the theme area as well as force org manipulating special characters. One of the tougher armies we played against was a crowe-GK army, being able to subsidize special character costs across the team is a big bonus that makes Draigo worth it.

I'll just pipe in (didn't play Team Tourney this year, so less authority than I might otherwise have) to beg for special characters being allowed in hybrid teams.

Not for the unlockable builds or competitive advantages or whatever, but just so we can use our favorite toys without all having to play the same team.

I dislike that the team tournament rules seem to favor imperial armies and chaos more than xenos, at least in terms of army selection. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be some benefits to doing an all xenos team. Why make the least taken armies get brought even less?

I would be interested to see the total army breakdown for the team event.

keithb wrote:I dislike that the team tournament rules seem to favor imperial armies and chaos more than xenos, at least in terms of army selection. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be some benefits to doing an all xenos team. Why make the least taken armies get brought even less?

Actually...

An all Imperial coalition can pick their forces from eight different codexes (SM, DA, BT, SW, BA, IG, GK and SoB)
An all Xenos coalition can pick from six (DE, Eldar, Orks, Tau, Nids and Necrons)
An all Heretical can pick from only three (CSM, Daemons, IG)

With five (maybe six) of the Imperial codexes being marine variants, it's not hard to argue that an all Xenos team has the most variety to pick from.

As just an observer, I was totally disappointed in the teams I saw. The vast majority looked like shoddy, last minute projects designed to get a grey knight team cobbled together.

And I simply do not appreciate joke themes. With the expense and time involved in doing a team army, putting all that energy into getting a couple chuckles seems pointless.

Kudos to the excellent Badab War themed team. It was a pleasure to stare at, I just hope me and my friends didn't get in their way too much.

Never did see the necron/blood angels team, it sounds neat though. Everyone who WASN'T grey knights should have gotten bonus points just for that.

The way I see it personally, the brothers in arms rules already have a pretty solid built-in advantage for teams that include same codex pairings.

So having multi-codex teams get piled on with an additional special character restriction seems unnecessary at this point.

Because with the current version of the rules if you pick a team all from the same codex not only do you benefit from the brothers in arms rule allowing you to spread your special abilities across both armies on the table, but you're also benefiting from the ability to take all those special characters as well, so its pretty much a one-two punch that makes taking an all Grey Knight team (for example) a slam dunk.

I think in the past the idea was that teams sharing codexes were getting the tactical advantage of helping to cover the weaknesses of each particular codex with another one. And while that's still true of course, I just think that at this point its swung too far in the other direction...so many cool potential combos just from a fluff perspective alone are completely cut out because you can't have multiple special characters in a multi-codex team.

Therefore, in short, I think multi-codex teams should have the special character restriction lifted for next year.

Redbeard wrote:

keithb wrote:I dislike that the team tournament rules seem to favor imperial armies and chaos more than xenos, at least in terms of army selection. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be some benefits to doing an all xenos team. Why make the least taken armies get brought even less?

Actually...

An all Imperial coalition can pick their forces from eight different codexes (SM, DA, BT, SW, BA, IG, GK and SoB)
An all Xenos coalition can pick from six (DE, Eldar, Orks, Tau, Nids and Necrons)
An all Heretical can pick from only three (CSM, Daemons, IG)

With five (maybe six) of the Imperial codexes being marine variants, it's not hard to argue that an all Xenos team has the most variety to pick from.

I think you missed my point entirely.

What BENEFITS do you get for playing an all imperial coalition, all heretical, and all xenos?

All Xenos team gets no benefits.

Heretical and imperial get some benefits to teaming with each other.

Lastly, the brother's in arms rules favor newer books a lot more (with SC's that alter force org), particularly with grey knights this was a problem, and I tend to thing a rather easy one to predict.

I don't think I missed your point at all. I think your point is wrong.

Please, give me examples of what benefits an all Imperial or all Heretical team get that an all Xenos team does not.

Teleport homers and icons interact for chaos and imperial teams. The xenos guys don't have any equavalent.

But that's the only one I can think of. The only other advantages vs disadvantages are because a team is single codex as oppossed to mixed.

And if you play a xenos team your chances of winning best in your category nearly triple. Not really an in game advantage, but something to think about.

I feel like I'm sensing a desire to knee cap or cut back on bonuses for imperial/single codex armies. But the example given for both situations is grey knights. GKs are stupidly over the top and break nearly every format, and I would hold off on any knee jerk reactions based on that army's performance until after the edition change. The game could be totally different in 2 months and xenos armies may be the ones everyone is saying beed to toned down.

That's not true anymore. "All Wargear and Special Abilities, including Imperial Guard Orders, Chaos Icons, Icon of Chaos, Locator Beacons, and Teleporter Homers, follow the rules for Brothers in Arms."

The only way you can take advantage of a team mate's gear is if you're using the exact same codex. So, no, Imperials have no advantage over Xenos in this regard.

It's also why single-codex teams are so much more powerful. Personally, I think the opposite should be encouraged. Single-codex teams are only superficially different than playing in a 2000 point tournament by yourself. Sure, you get some teammate interaction, but the games aren't different. Multi-codex teams have different strategies, they have to play off each other's strengths and cover each other's weaknesses differently. This should be more fun, but the rules are so heavily weighted towards single-codex that we don't see a lot of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Some ideas to push this in the other direction:


* Each codex in a coalition may have no more than one Special Character.

This, unfortunately, screws over the very reasonable coalition of Deathwing and Ravenwing, because of how characters are used to unlock armies. But, the plus side is that it gives a mixed-codex force an advantage over a single-codex force (if you believe special characters are superior).

* In a single-codex coalition, one of the armies is automatically considered a reserve company and must be placed in reserve.

Yup, that could be harsh. But that's kind of the point of a disincentive.

* All wargear that affects friendly models affects both coalitions.

You know what - this opens up creative list design a ton. It also introduces the possibility that someone finds a 'broken' combo. So what. The team tournament isn't uber-competitive, and if someone figures out something crazy, more power to them. What's the worst that's going to happen, I still don't think there'd be an instant-win button, and it's unlikely that both of a team's games would benefit from it at the same time.


---

It feels to me like the rules have been made so restrictive in the fear that someone lose a game to something out of the ordinary that we don't see out of the ordinary things at all anymore. FW was more restricted this year - oh no, someone might use a griffon mortar/spore mine/hades drill/whatever the in thing is this year, better take that away. Interactions between codexes were more restricted - oh no, someone might summon daemons to an icon on turn 1. I'm not a fan. I'd rather see the crazy, and see what people do with it, than restrict everything to the point where the most common result is nothing more than a 2k game with two pilots per side.

Redbeard wrote:That's not true anymore. "All Wargear and Special Abilities, including Imperial Guard Orders, Chaos Icons, Icon of Chaos, Locator Beacons, and Teleporter Homers, follow the rules for Brothers in Arms."

The only way you can take advantage of a team mate's gear is if you're using the exact same codex. So, no, Imperials have no advantage over Xenos in this regard.

It's also why single-codex teams are so much more powerful. Personally, I think the opposite should be encouraged. Single-codex teams are only superficially different than playing in a 2000 point tournament by yourself. Sure, you get some teammate interaction, but the games aren't different. Multi-codex teams have different strategies, they have to play off each other's strengths and cover each other's weaknesses differently. This should be more fun, but the rules are so heavily weighted towards single-codex that we don't see a lot of it.

Ah, I must be remembering older years then. My mistake.

I definitely agree that there should be more of an effort to (at least) not promote single codex teams in terms of in game benefits.

As for my personal TT experience, I find it's important not to face the BoLS team the first round, nor to have a 100 degree fever the entire time.

Though we did do better than we've ever done before, so perhaps the fever helped.

Redbeard wrote: The team tournament isn't uber-competitive, and if someone figures out something crazy, more power to them.

I'm not sure where this particular perception comes from. The Team Tournament is the ONLY tournament in the year that I take very seriously (largely because my contribution affects my teammates' enjoyment of the event). Planning, on the team level, starts (in some cases) a year in advance; costs for some of those teams far exceed any other event in the world. It's 8 games played across a field of 100+ teams, the results tend towards determinative, and you tend to see many of the same faces up at the top end of the brackets, year after year.

Who said it's not competitive?

For years, the "Championships" were the less competitive event; they were on Sunday, a lot of people were exhausted by then, and it tended to be just a quiet way to wind down the weekend. The Gladiator was Serious Business. That only changed last year, with the new format for the Championships. But there are far more people involved in the Team Tournament than the Championships.

Janthkin wrote:

Redbeard wrote: The team tournament isn't uber-competitive, and if someone figures out something crazy, more power to them.

I'm not sure where this particular perception comes from. The Team Tournament is the ONLY tournament in the year that I take very seriously (largely because my contribution affects my teammates' enjoyment of the event). Planning, on the team level, starts (in some cases) a year in advance; costs for some of those teams far exceed any other event in the world. It's 8 games played across a field of 100+ teams, the results tend towards determinative, and you tend to see many of the same faces up at the top end of the brackets, year after year.

Who said it's not competitive?

I said it's not Uber-competitive. There's this mentality, espoused on several blogs and sometimes here, that pure competition is the only good thing, that soft scores are bad, that comp is bad, that anything outside of the codexes takes away from the competitiveness of an event, and that your opponent's enjoyment of the game is of lesser importance than whether you win.

The TT event is not framed in those terms.

The TT event is scored with only 54% of the overall coming from Battle points. Theme, appearance and a quiz contribute roughly a third. FW models are allowed, although not in any great quantity. There's an award given out for wearing the silliest costume... (okay, not precisely, but close). Sure, it's a tournament, and as a tournament, it is competitive. People want to win, and do put in hours of prep time. The displays alone can cost hundreds, if not thousands (Mr. Sabol) of dollars. But that's only even possible because it doesn't take the "battle over all" uber-competitive approach. That's what I mean.