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I just wanted to find out what the various comp systems are. Is there a single one that has been more or less agreed upon, or does each tournament have it own, unique one ? Or are the vague guidelines that everyone follows, but adds bits themselves ?

The reason is I want to make a comp list, but I'm not sure what comp rules to follow.

Make a list that can't beat anything and lose alot of games. Great way to get a good comp score

I think xtapl said it best. Now check my sig. V

Thanks for this amazingly informative post that with one brilliant sentence solved all my life's problems.

Anyone else ?

Well there is a very simple formula you can follow to get good comp and still win a bit.

1. Max out squads (10 CSM or SoB are ok, 12+ necrons or kroot are good, around 20 gaunts).

2. Lose the triple, take a double (LST's, LRT's (if bassie is included then only take 1 LRBT)), hammerheads, excorcists, tanks in general, dakkafex's, IW oblit squads).

3. More points in troops is good.

It's ok to give all your squads las/plas and all your crisis plasma/missile etc.

CANCON comp

TO judged:

- no more than 10% on wargear (wargear does NOT include psychic powers, marks of chaos, vehicle upgrades or weapons bought for characters (except daemon weapons). It does include anything that is in a wagear section, is not a weapon , eg hardwired systems for Tau, daemonic rewards)

- a minimum of 30% on Troops choices

- 2 non-vehicle units with 75% or more of their max squad size. Imperial guard platoons require 4 squads not counting the command squad to count.

- More Troops choices than any other single choice. Thus unelss you can have more than 3 of another choice, 4 Troops choices will let you have 3 of any other choice (eg 3 heavy support).

- No more than 28% spent on any other single category other than Troops.

- Units, characters etc are named and there is a short piece of fluff accompanying the list.

- In my opinion is the list over the top (note, if it is OTT, you won't get this point).?

- Is it one of my top 3 picks.

ANUCON comp

Player judged:

Generalship:
+1pt (out of 20 max): You spent more points on troops than your opponent.

Sportsmanship:
1 point – Huge min / maxing, an army that was not fun to play against, armies that exploit imbalances in the lists and rules, Eldar, No reference to army themes.
2 points – A competitive but balanced army that is beatable and fun to play against.
3 points – A very fair army that clearly goes the extra mile on theme and playability. Highly themed armies that reflect their race more than they are designed to win.

TO judged:

Army Selection:
3 – Does the army have more troop choices than any other category?
4 – Is no more than 400 points spent on any one category (except troops)?
5 – Is more points spent on troops than on any other one category?
6 – In the tournament organiser’s opinion does this list reflect the theme of the race?
7 – Do squads and characters have names?
8 – Is there an army background – a short paragraph with the army list would suffice.
9 – In the organiser’s opinion would this be a fun army to play against?
10 – In the organiser’s opinion is this army one of the top 3 armies?

Sportsmanship:
1 point – Huge min / maxing, an army that was not fun to play against, armies that exploit imbalances in the lists and rules, Eldar, No reference to army themes.


So anyone who plays Eldar automatically only gets one point here?

I believe that was meant to be a joke on the part of the TO...

That comp system, like most of them, is geared to favor Loyalist Marines.

Mephet'ran, there are many systems out there. Most of them try to encourage large numbers of Troops and discourage loading up on specialty units in a way that dominates the army. Many also try to discourage duplicate units. Some of these systems are based on trying to prevent "broken" armies, some on trying to encourage variety.

GW's old Rogue Trader tournaments used the system below. The 2001 GT used an even more restrictive system. Here's a link to the rules for a tournament I ran last month, including comp scoring:


GW Rogue Trader Composition scoring, circa 2000-2002:
1) Was the army list handed in on time and in the correct format?
2) Is the army list correct?
3) Does the army have more Troops choices than any other single category?
4) Do troop selections make up AT LEAST 40% of the total points of this army?
5) Are there at least TWO squads that are at maximum size?
6) Has the player spent less than 10% of their total points on wargear?
(NOTE: This includes all weapons and wargear for characters and all vehicle upgrades. Everything on the Armory page. For Tyranids you count mutations and psychic powers.)
7) Do all individual characters, squads, and the army itself have names?
8) Does the army have a theme or background to it?
9) In YOUR OPINION is this a cool army that would be fun to play against?
10) Is this army one of your top three picks?

I always wondered what kind of crack whomever wrote this part was smoking. When a Tac-squad lascannon is 10% of your "allowance", there's something wrong. It seems to me to be a rule written by their sales department to sell more models.

I'm fairly sure that squad upgrades are not included in that, sutekh. Or are they....?



Thats about as 'fair' as comp scoring gets these days I suppose, although I do have a slight problem with:

9) In YOUR OPINION is this a cool army that would be fun to play against?

This is really two completely independent questions rolled into one.
I've seen plenty of cool armies that would NOT be fun to play against, and I wouldn't want to dock a guy for making a cool army that was either way too easy or way too impossible to beat.

The general European system is "no comp." UK GT effectively ignores Sport as well, since everyone gets 19 or 20 (I think this is because we invented cricket.)

I get the impression from Dakka and the EoT that US players are much more concerned about comp and sport than Europeans. This may be just because your tournaments feature soft scores strongly, forcing you to care, but that poses the question of why your tournaments should feature it strongly.

I don't think any generalised comp system can be fair and balanced if the codexes it's based on are unbalanced. Every one featured on Dakka recently has drawn plenty of criticism, much of it well argued and justified.

Most players agree the codexes are unbalanced. Ultimate comp would be to rewrite the codexes, or at least to write limited lists for tournaments.

If you're writing a comp list the best thing you can do is keep two things in mind: 1) Scale - an army at 1000 points will not be the same army at 2000 points, and 2) Fairness - the comp rules should be written so that every Codex Army/Chapter Approved Army is capable of receiving a perfect comp score.

"If you're writing a comp list the best thing you can do is keep two things in mind: 1) Scale - an army at 1000 points will not be the same army at 2000 points, and 2) Fairness - the comp rules should be written so that every Codex Army/Chapter Approved Army is capable of receiving a perfect comp score."

Those are good rules. The difficult part of no.2 is making sure that all armies can get perfect comp without unfairly reducing their combat effectiveness in terms of balance against easch other.

The classic example is Tau Fire Warriors. Like any Troops they are the weakest part of the army, but most other armies can upgrade their Troops with heavy weapons. Tau can't do this, so a comp rule that forces all armies to take large numbers of Troops unfairly reduces Tau's effectiveness against MEq and vehicles.

Kind of. Fire Warriors can take devilfish, and tau can get kroot, which are some of the best troops in the game (before upgrades such as lascannons).

Most Tau players the lurk on these forums won't agree with me here, but 10 kroot with 20 hounds is a very effective unit, for its points, especially in a shooting environment. Two of these and another 10 kroot is 30% of 1500pts, meaning you will only need 1 units of fire warriors to satisfy most math comp systems.

Of course in a non-comp environment I probably wouldn't consider hounds.

Wait...how many hounds can kroot take?

NOTHING you listed has anything to do with sportsmanship.

GW specificaly tells you that sportsmanship is not whats in your opponants army or how they built it. but rather what kind of peson they were to play against .

you can have the most imbalaced army in the world that is LEGAL to play and still be a great sport to play against.

it is inconceivable that you would give somebody a poor sportsmanship score because they took a legal choice approved by GW for thier army.

Sutekh, this was always stuff on the wargear page.  Character weapons counted, vehicle upgrades did, but not stuff for squads.  It was still a tough restriction for some armies (my Eldar vehicle upgrades are expensive), but bearable.

Mughi- It's far from inconceivable.  I believe that poster mislabeled his list (those are actually a set of Comp scoring guidelines), but many players DO let their opinion of their opponent's army count into their Sports scores.  IMO it's wrong to do so, but they do it anyway. 

Killkrazy- Some systems are better than others.  I designed a different comp system recently (and ran a tournament using it) which was pretty well received.  Check out my recent thread on the subject.

 

Yeah, people cheat...It's a know fact. It's the reason that soft scores are hated by any serious tournament player.

Also explains why at one tournament, I went undefeated, with some bonus points, and scored 13th out of 16th in the overall rankings.

Another tournament, I tied in appearance with someone who's army wasn't completely painted with an army that had conversions and was (in my opinion) well painted.

Whoops, my bad.

Skyth, you are clearly speaking of serious UK tournament players. Serious GT players here in the US are mostly very skilled powergamers who also know how to build an army which LOOKS more fluffy, paint it up to a very high standard, and are skilled at being nice and sociable with their opponents. If the metagame requires more than just asskicking skills, players will develop who have more than just asskicking skills.

Actually, I was talking about the US...Where I am. And the point is that people cheat on giving out soft scores. Especially when they get beat.

I think that is why the UK GT doesn't use soft scores. Teams can cheat especially well on soft scores.

Involved judges can always keep an eye out for this. If you notice unusually low scores you can hang out near the table of the player who was scored low to see if he really is that bad, and you can look out for patterns of scoring BY a particular player or club.

Chipmunking happens, but bear in mind that in the larger metagame players will get a reputation for stuff like this, and will reap retaliation of one kind or another from other players.

Skyth, IME this is actually pretty rare. Mind you, I've only played RTs and GTs in NH, MA, and MD (2000 to 2006), but that's my experience.

Chipmunking does happen, and usually it has nothing to do with the actual game.  Someone gets their butt handed to them in a game - ding em for comp, or sportsmanship.  Your buddy vying for top spot, ding anybody you can.  Its hard to spot stuff like this till afterwards, and if you do find it, all the back-pedaling and changes then upset more people. 

I mean, tourny organizers have it hard enough coordinating everything, tracking the points, setting up tables, etc., to have to worry about figuring out who is chipmunking too...

The only way to make a fair comp system is to create 'comp rules' for every army that are used when you face that army in a tourny.  Otherwise, all the other 'limits' are completely arbitrary, and as someone mentioned, almost always benefit marines.

No matter how you design comp, people will figure out a way to maximize it while maintaining 'killy' armies that may or may not be fun to face.

I think that the direction things are going, as evidenced in the UK, are 'compless' tournies for 'bragging rights', and 'campaign weekends', where people play in a 'tourny-lite' environment, while building toward a narrative-driven conclusion. 

Ultimately its different strokes.  I'd rather do a narrative-driven weekend than a compless tourny.