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 AnomanderRake wrote:

Startup costs? PP will sell you this season's 50pt pre-built army for $150-200 new. CB will sell you a 300pt army pack for $90. The "cost to get started playing the game" is a very distinct number from "cost per model."

CB's "300pt army pack" is also literally just one list. In a notable case(Corregidor Jurisdictional Command) set, they actually had to add a whole new Lieutenant option to make the box legally playable.

Frontline made this article:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2019/02/16/gw-grognard-you-all-need-to-calm-down/

Oh okay, lets pretend that it wasn't your decision not to stream "Player X" live at your LVO due to his reputation.

It's not just the players, it is you too.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Startup costs? PP will sell you this season's 50pt pre-built army for $150-200 new. CB will sell you a 300pt army pack for $90. The "cost to get started playing the game" is a very distinct number from "cost per model."

CB's "300pt army pack" is also literally just one list. In a notable case(Corregidor Jurisdictional Command) set, they actually had to add a whole new Lieutenant option to make the box legally playable.

My threshold here is "minimum legal list" on the logic that if you spent $3-400 on secondhand Warhammer models on Ebay you wouldn't end up with a huge amount of choice, a particularly competitive selection, or more than one minimum legal list at 2,000pts.

If you want to change the discussion to what's required to compete at a tournament level I will note that the winning list at LVO was MSRP ~$820 US. If I went out and bought one each of every single kit containing models available to Corregidor that's ~$620 US. How many lists do you want to build?

elook wrote:
Frontline made this article:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2019/02/16/gw-grognard-you-all-need-to-calm-down/

Oh okay, lets pretend that it wasn't your decision not to stream "Player X" live at your LVO due to his reputation.

It's not just the players, it is you too.

What?
The info from the WarhammerTV commentators themselves during the tournament was that Alex didn't want to be on stream (understandable all things considered). And WarhammerTV's policy has always been that both players have to agree to be on cam before they stream their game. Top tables at tournaments in the past have been missed because people didn't want to be on cam.
Unless you have a better source for your statement your doing exactly what the blog you linked is talking about.

 Ordana wrote:
How to punish mistakes/cheats I would look towards how MTG handles it as an example.
First wrong is a warning, second is a game loss. 3e is DQ.

Honest mistakes happen, and this way you can make a mistake (or 2 if you dont care about standings) but at the end of the day you are responsible for knowing your rules when you go to a tournament.

The problem with this approach is that MTG has rules that actually function RAW and 40k doesn't. In MTG if there's a question about how two cards interact you can always get a clear answer by consulting how the core rules handle it because everything is typed and keyworded and every interaction between types is explicitly handled. And all of the rules for a particular card (outside of basic keywords that even newbies know) are right there on the card so there's no "oops, I forgot it was a 3 instead of a 4" or whatever. 40k has a lot more room for disagreement over how a rule is supposed to work and you have to do a lot more from memory since constantly looking up every stat line means slowing the game down too much. Turning mistakes into DQs and extended bans from the tournament community is ridiculous overkill, and because there's no way it's going to be consistently imposed across all games/players with so few judges available it's inevitably going to result in a lot of justifiably angry players.

The Salt Mine wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Asmodios wrote:
...But seriously im curious of a single hobby that you could actually get into cheaper than 40k

You can buy a 2000 point army on craigs list or ebay for like $300-$400 and strip it and buy everything else you need for like $50. There are not many hobbies you can get into for cheaper then that outside of birdwatching in your back yard

You mean aside from every other wargame ever released?

What other wargames are way cheaper than warhammer? I played WMHs for a while and it was just as expensive if not more so than 40k. I tried infinity for a while as well and it was a bit cheaper but only in the fact that you only needed 6ish models to play the game. The models themselves were just as expensive as 40k models though. Ive looked at a few other wargames as well and as far as model price comparison goes they are all priced relatively close. I am actually legitimately curious about this. I love finding new amazing looking models as I love the modeling painting aspect.

Basically, any other wargame you get a full army (either minimum size to start playing e.g. equivalent to 1000 points or sometimes more) for about what it costs you to get a SC Box and a codex with maybe one more unit from GW. However, you almost always see the same arguments to discount it:

* Cost per model is the same/similar (yet this isn't the same thing as "how much you need to spend to get started), therefore it's not a valid comparison
* Saying how the models don't look as good as GW's, therefore, it's not a valid comparison (usually seen with Mantic and sometimes PP)
* Say how the game/genre doesn't interest them but Warhammer does, therefore it's not a valid comparison (usually seen with historical games like Bolt Action)
* Say how nobody plays that game here but they play Warhammer, therefore it's not a valid comparison (usually seen with the less well-known games like Frostgrave)

 AnomanderRake wrote:
My threshold here is "minimum legal list" on the logic that if you spent $3-400 on secondhand Warhammer models on Ebay you wouldn't end up with a huge amount of choice, a particularly competitive selection, or more than one minimum legal list at 2,000pts.

If you want to change the discussion to what's required to compete at a tournament level I will note that the winning list at LVO was MSRP ~$820 US. If I went out and bought one each of every single kit containing models available to Corregidor that's ~$620 US. How many lists do you want to build?

That's a very skewed way of looking at it. You're assuming a full 2,000 point army for 40k, which is way beyond "minimum startup costs". If you're talking about a true minimum startup 40k army, in the 500 point range, even buying NIB means paying something in the $150-200 range (plus rules/paint/etc, which apply to both games). And going beyond that minimum startup cost the only real difference between 40k and other games is that 40k is a larger game than the skirmish games you're comparing it to and therefore requires more models. Compare it to other games of similar scale and the gap is much smaller.

But TBH this is all arguing over irrelevant differences. I don't care if it costs $0.50 or $0.75 to add an extra topping to my pizza, I just buy whatever I want because both prices are so low that they aren't worth thinking about. Same thing for miniatures. Compared to other adult hobbies, especially on a per-hour scale, miniatures gaming of any kind is cheap and the difference between various miniatures is barely worth paying attention to.

elook wrote:
Frontline made this article:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2019/02/16/gw-grognard-you-all-need-to-calm-down/

Oh okay, lets pretend that it wasn't your decision not to stream "Player X" live at your LVO due to his reputation.

It's not just the players, it is you too.

I've seen Scarecrows that were made into lesser men of straw than that article...

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
How to punish mistakes/cheats I would look towards how MTG handles it as an example.
First wrong is a warning, second is a game loss. 3e is DQ.

Honest mistakes happen, and this way you can make a mistake (or 2 if you dont care about standings) but at the end of the day you are responsible for knowing your rules when you go to a tournament.

The problem with this approach is that MTG has rules that actually function RAW and 40k doesn't. In MTG if there's a question about how two cards interact you can always get a clear answer by consulting how the core rules handle it because everything is typed and keyworded and every interaction between types is explicitly handled. And all of the rules for a particular card (outside of basic keywords that even newbies know) are right there on the card so there's no "oops, I forgot it was a 3 instead of a 4" or whatever. 40k has a lot more room for disagreement over how a rule is supposed to work and you have to do a lot more from memory since constantly looking up every stat line means slowing the game down too much. Turning mistakes into DQs and extended bans from the tournament community is ridiculous overkill, and because there's no way it's going to be consistently imposed across all games/players with so few judges available it's inevitably going to result in a lot of justifiably angry players.

How often do judges have to resolve rule mistakes at lower tables? To me it feels limited to the point where a 2 strike rule wouldn't even effect many people, if any at all in a nominal tournament. And if your playing top tables then you should know your rules and not be making multiple mistakes

If you can't manage to correctly play your army, maybe you shouldn't be playing at a tournament.
Stuff like "I didn't know my codex explicitly says I dont have House Traits in an Aux detachment" is on the player, not the game.
This isn't obscure stuff, Its right there in your codex.

 Ordana wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
How to punish mistakes/cheats I would look towards how MTG handles it as an example.
First wrong is a warning, second is a game loss. 3e is DQ.

Honest mistakes happen, and this way you can make a mistake (or 2 if you dont care about standings) but at the end of the day you are responsible for knowing your rules when you go to a tournament.

The problem with this approach is that MTG has rules that actually function RAW and 40k doesn't. In MTG if there's a question about how two cards interact you can always get a clear answer by consulting how the core rules handle it because everything is typed and keyworded and every interaction between types is explicitly handled. And all of the rules for a particular card (outside of basic keywords that even newbies know) are right there on the card so there's no "oops, I forgot it was a 3 instead of a 4" or whatever. 40k has a lot more room for disagreement over how a rule is supposed to work and you have to do a lot more from memory since constantly looking up every stat line means slowing the game down too much. Turning mistakes into DQs and extended bans from the tournament community is ridiculous overkill, and because there's no way it's going to be consistently imposed across all games/players with so few judges available it's inevitably going to result in a lot of justifiably angry players.

How often do judges have to resolve rule mistakes at lower tables? To me it feels limited to the point where a 2 strike rule wouldn't even effect many people, if any at all in a nominal tournament. And if your playing top tables then you should know your rules and not be making multiple mistakes

If you can't manage to correctly play your army, maybe you shouldn't be playing at a tournament.
Stuff like "I didn't know my codex explicitly says I dont have House Traits in an Aux detachment" is on the player, not the game.
This isn't obscure stuff, Its right there in your codex.

Stuff like that imho needs to be treated more harshly because it's right there. There's forgetting something in the order of activation or whatnot, and forgetting (or wilfully ignoring) rules right in your codex. At the very least you should expect tournament players, especially ones who are at the top tables, to know their own codex in and out. That sort of infraction should get a harsher penalty than say a disagreement over a rule or accidentally playing it incorrectly.

 Ordana wrote:
How often do judges have to resolve rule mistakes at lower tables? To me it feels limited to the point where a 2 strike rule wouldn't even effect many people, if any at all in a nominal tournament. And if your playing top tables then you should know your rules and not be making multiple mistakes

That's exactly the point! People who get those strikes and the permanent consequences they carry are going to be justifiably angry that other players who made similar mistakes are not getting punished for it.

Stuff like "I didn't know my codex explicitly says I dont have House Traits in an Aux detachment" is on the player, not the game.

It's on both. It's on the player for making the "mistake", especially since they've supposedly been corrected on it in the past. But it's also on the game, for making the rules a bloated mess with tons of these special-case exceptions to how the rules normally work. It's easy to miss something like that, or to remember a stat line wrong, etc, and in a tournament the time limit is strong pressure to play from memory instead of looking up rules to be sure.

 Grimtuff wrote:

elook wrote:
Frontline made this article:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2019/02/16/gw-grognard-you-all-need-to-calm-down/

Oh okay, lets pretend that it wasn't your decision not to stream "Player X" live at your LVO due to his reputation.

It's not just the players, it is you too.

I've seen Scarecrows that were made into lesser men of straw than that article...

If they only had a brain.....

elook wrote:
Frontline made this article:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2019/02/16/gw-grognard-you-all-need-to-calm-down/

Oh okay, lets pretend that it wasn't your decision not to stream "Player X" live at your LVO due to his reputation.

It's not just the players, it is you too.

Was there actually a mob angrily rampaging around the gaming hall at LVO or is the head judge at least as guilty of blowing things out of proportion as he claims some of the players were?

Just asking. Despite the picture I am assuming no mob was actually wielding pitchforks and torches.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:


It's on both. It's on the player for making the "mistake", especially since they've supposedly been corrected on it in the past. But it's also on the game, for making the rules a bloated mess with tons of these special-case exceptions to how the rules normally work. It's easy to miss something like that, or to remember a stat line wrong, etc, and in a tournament the time limit is strong pressure to play from memory instead of looking up rules to be sure.

If it was hidden away in some weird place then maybe - but when it is right there in the codex you are playing then I think not. Read your codex, its not hard.

When your opponent spots that you are playing your own rules wrong and corrects you the appropriate behaviour is to thank them for the lesson and probably to show a fair amount of embarrassment at being such a chump. Losing a game due to not knowing your own rules is on you as a player, take your lumps without complaint.

The inappropriate response is to throw a hissy fit, demand that the consequences of your mistake be reduced or eliminated etc.

Clearly the yellow/red card system that FLG are using is not working if they subsequently find that they have to take down the video for a game that was on stream but the game itself was permitted to continue. How can it be such a bad situation that you have to delete it from internet history but not a bad enough situation to hand the player a proper penalty that actually matters to them? Oh well, not much chance of it changing and FLG seem to be the only outfit able to put on events of that size so I think players all know what they are getting into if they attend by now.

happy_inquisitor wrote:
If it was hidden away in some weird place then maybe - but when it is right there in the codex you are playing then I think not. Read your codex, its not hard.

Again, the problem is that the rules may be written down but they're inconsistent, bloated beyond all reason, and for practical purposes inaccessible during a game. IK have that restriction on LoW not gaining a faction bonus when taken in a single-model detachment, but Tau don't have that same restriction and would get the faction bonus as usual. Same situation, completely different rules, and no apparent reason why they work differently. That's a textbook example of a case where mistakes are likely to happen, and 180* opposed to the way MTG handles similar situations. So it's easy to say "know your codex" as a third party observer, but in practice 40k is a game where mistakes are common and encouraged by poor rule design.

When your opponent spots that you are playing your own rules wrong and corrects you the appropriate behaviour is to thank them for the lesson and probably to show a fair amount of embarrassment at being such a chump. Losing a game due to not knowing your own rules is on you as a player, take your lumps without complaint.

The inappropriate response is to throw a hissy fit, demand that the consequences of your mistake be reduced or eliminated etc.

Please do not build straw man arguments. In no way am I excusing or defending the player's behavior after the "mistake". It was completely inappropriate and should have resulted in a DQ and immediate removal from the event property. But that doesn't change the fact that 40k's rules are a mess and a MTG-style penalty system is a poor fit.

 Peregrine wrote:


Again, the problem is that the rules may be written down but they're inconsistent, bloated beyond all reason, and for practical purposes inaccessible during a game. IK have that restriction on LoW not gaining a faction bonus when taken in a single-model detachment, but Tau don't have that same restriction and would get the faction bonus as usual. Same situation, completely different rules, and no apparent reason why they work differently. That's a textbook example of a case where mistakes are likely to happen, and 180* opposed to the way MTG handles similar situations. So it's easy to say "know your codex" as a third party observer, but in practice 40k is a game where mistakes are common and encouraged by poor rule design.

Not that I disagree with you on rules bloat, but to be fair I have the DG and CD codexes right next to me and both have the models in auxiliary detachments cannot use these stratagems restrictions on their relevant stratagem pages. The rule is not unique to IK and seems to be consistent across all books.

EDIT- Tau do as well FWIW.

 Peregrine wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
My threshold here is "minimum legal list" on the logic that if you spent $3-400 on secondhand Warhammer models on Ebay you wouldn't end up with a huge amount of choice, a particularly competitive selection, or more than one minimum legal list at 2,000pts.

If you want to change the discussion to what's required to compete at a tournament level I will note that the winning list at LVO was MSRP ~$820 US. If I went out and bought one each of every single kit containing models available to Corregidor that's ~$620 US. How many lists do you want to build?

That's a very skewed way of looking at it. You're assuming a full 2,000 point army for 40k, which is way beyond "minimum startup costs". If you're talking about a true minimum startup 40k army, in the 500 point range, even buying NIB means paying something in the $150-200 range (plus rules/paint/etc, which apply to both games). And going beyond that minimum startup cost the only real difference between 40k and other games is that 40k is a larger game than the skirmish games you're comparing it to and therefore requires more models. Compare it to other games of similar scale and the gap is much smaller.

But TBH this is all arguing over irrelevant differences. I don't care if it costs $0.50 or $0.75 to add an extra topping to my pizza, I just buy whatever I want because both prices are so low that they aren't worth thinking about. Same thing for miniatures. Compared to other adult hobbies, especially on a per-hour scale, miniatures gaming of any kind is cheap and the difference between various miniatures is barely worth paying attention to.

I will observe that this discussion began because someone asked me if there were miniatures games cheaper than 40k.

I will further observe that every time someone moves the goalposts on how we're comparing 40k to any other miniatures game on the market the other game has come out ahead, as follows:
Cost to buy "some models" (as measured by what the developers think should be labeled "starter box", or by half of splitting a two-faction box with someone else): Warmachine/Infinity $40-45, 40k $80-100.
Cost to buy an army at a points level someone runs tournaments at: Infinity ~$90-130, Warmachine ~$150-250, 40k generally $400+
Cost to buy an army someone might actually field in a tournament: Infinity ~$150, Warmachine ~$300, 40k $800+
Cost to buy the rules for the game: Infinity $0, Warmachine $0 (or $9 if you want to use the app, or $18 if you want to use the app and want mercenaries), 40k $65 (Codex + latest Chapter Approved) plus another $25 yearly for the next Chapter Approved plus more if you want to field any allies of any kind

I understand that you're trying to compare Warhammer to something like skiing or modifying cars that's actually very expensive, but even if you live in a world where the difference between a wargame that costs ~$200 to take to a tournament and a wargame that costs $800+ to take to a tournament is pocket change comparable to an extra $0.25 to add another topping to your pizza I suspect you do understand that not everyone does.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Not that I disagree with you on rules bloat, but to be fair I have the DG and CD codexes right next to me and both have the models in auxiliary detachments cannot use these stratagems restrictions on their relevant stratagem pages. The rule is not unique to IK and seems to be consistent across all books.

EDIT- Tau do as well FWIW.

Auxiliary support detachment =/= superheavy auxiliary detachment. The first is any single non-LoW unit that costs -1 CP to take, the second is a single LoW with no CP cost/bonus. Which just demonstrates my point about the rules being unclear and excessively complicated.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Not that I disagree with you on rules bloat, but to be fair I have the DG and CD codexes right next to me and both have the models in auxiliary detachments cannot use these stratagems restrictions on their relevant stratagem pages. The rule is not unique to IK and seems to be consistent across all books.

EDIT- Tau do as well FWIW.

Auxiliary support detachment =/= superheavy auxiliary detachment. The first is any single non-LoW unit that costs -1 CP to take, the second is a single LoW with no CP cost/bonus. Which just demonstrates my point about the rules being unclear and excessively complicated.

Show me how IK can take anything other than a Superheavy detachment/superheavy auxiliary in their codex? They just changed the language to fit the context of the relevant codex.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I will further observe that every time someone moves the goalposts on how we're comparing 40k to any other miniatures game on the market the other game has come out ahead, as follows:
Cost to buy "some models" (as measured by what the developers think should be labeled "starter box", or by half of splitting a two-faction box with someone else): Warmachine/Infinity $40-45, 40k $80-100.
Cost to buy an army at a points level someone runs tournaments at: Infinity ~$90-130, Warmachine ~$150-250, 40k generally $400+
Cost to buy an army someone might actually field in a tournament: Infinity ~$150, Warmachine ~$300, 40k $800+
Cost to buy the rules for the game: Infinity $0, Warmachine $0 (or $9 if you want to use the app, or $18 if you want to use the app and want mercenaries), 40k $65 (Codex + latest Chapter Approved) plus another $25 yearly for the next Chapter Approved plus more if you want to field any allies of any kind

I will further observe that every time someone makes this comparison it's between a 5-10 model skirmish game and a 200+ model army-scale game, people never try to compare 40k to games with a similar number of models on the table. Compare Kill Team, the 40k skirmish game, to those other games and you get the same $50-100 price range.

I understand that you're trying to compare Warhammer to something like skiing or modifying cars that's actually very expensive, but even if you live in a world where the difference between a wargame that costs ~$200 to take to a tournament and a wargame that costs $800+ to take to a tournament is pocket change comparable to an extra $0.25 to add another topping to your pizza I suspect you do understand that not everyone does.

But things like skiing or modifying cars aren't extremely expensive hobbies, they're reasonable things that most people with career-level jobs are able to do. And you don't even have to get into things at that price level, compared to even something like a dinner and a movie date 40k is coming out ahead when you consider cost per hour. Hell, even if you compare 40k to the cost of attending a tournament outside your local area the difference in army price quickly becomes irrelevant. Does it really matter if the army costs $300 more when you're spending $500-1000 to travel to an event? The total cost to me to attend an X-Wing tournament vs. a 40k tournament is really not something worth considering.

And yes, I know there are people who have jobs working for minimum wage and struggle to afford even basic living expenses. But those people probably aren't buying expensive miniatures of any kind or attending major tournaments.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Show me how IK can take anything other than a Superheavy detachment/superheavy auxiliary in their codex? They just changed the language to fit the context of the relevant codex.

You're missing the point.

Everyone has a restriction on the "take any random unit" auxiliary support detachment. That's consistent across all factions, and it works fine.

Not all factions have the same restriction on the "take a single LoW" superheavy support detachment. Some (IK, IG) do not grant the faction bonus to a unit taken that way, some (Tau) do grant the faction bonus. That's inconsistent and creates a memory issue where, say, an Imperial and Tau player who is used to adding a single Tau LoW via superheavy support detachment and getting the faction bonus plays a game with their Imperial army and forgets that the rules work differently.

This is not a mere change of language to express the same concept, it's a detachment working in different ways depending on which codex you use and for no apparent reason. And the fact that we're even having this discussion, with you apparently not understanding that these are two separate detachments or that we're talking about regiment/house/sept/etc traits and not stratagems, is proof that the rules are badly written and encourage mistakes.

The problem with judges at an event like that and catching cheaters is that you need to either have the same judges ruling on later decision (e.g. the guy tries the same trick with his knight in a later game and gets called on it again) then it is obvious it is cheating. Is that realistic though? Probably not. So firstly a proper, objective way of recording infractions needs to be in place, then sanctions need to be taken and met. And they do need to be severe, because if they are light, people will chance their luck, going back to my soccer and diving analogy. If the punishment is weak, it won't solve the issue, and others will follow seeing it as a worthy risk for a performance enhancing benefit, which cheating is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

elook wrote:
Frontline made this article:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2019/02/16/gw-grognard-you-all-need-to-calm-down/

Oh okay, lets pretend that it wasn't your decision not to stream "Player X" live at your LVO due to his reputation.

It's not just the players, it is you too.

If you are a judge, and are then subjective against a player who has called you over to take action against another player who is cheating, then you are a terrible judge and should not be judging events.

You cannot get angry yourself, have a hissy fit and threaten sanctions against players highlighting issues to you because it is annoying you, that is being subjective and childish. You should solve the origional issue first, like banning the problem player, or putting a judge on them for every game is you want their entry money.

Just to be clear, when the Castellan advanced it technically could still fire its assault melta guns at -1. The stratagem was strategically misplayed BUT there was literally NO reason for the take back of the 3CP stratagem. None.

I watched Tabletactics recap of LVO and BBones said he verbally ended a turn, then realised he forgot to do something but the other player made him play as intended.

And here we have a player having a tantrum because they misplayed a turn and demanded a take back. See the standard we are letting poor players get away with?

 Smirrors wrote:
Just to be clear, when the Castellan advanced it technically could still fire its assault melta guns at -1. The stratagem was strategically misplayed BUT there was literally NO reason for the take back of the 3CP stratagem. None.

I watched Tabletactics recap of LVO and BBones said he verbally ended a turn, then realised he forgot to do something but the other player made him play as intended.

And here we have a player having a tantrum because they misplayed a turn and demanded a take back. See the standard we are letting poor players get away with?

There is also the issue that said player had probably been doing it all through the tournament (I don't know if this is true, just speculating).

My own feeling is that tournaments should have a sportsmanship rating. To be fair this has potential issues - for example the "come dine with me" problem, where if you give everyone terrible scores, you will be boosted up if everyone else scores you normally.
It is however easy to implement, and hopefully discourages people having tantrums - or generally engaging in aggressive that guy behavior. (Examples include "its cocked when its not the number I want, if it is then its fine".)

I guess it doesn't help people who cheat and are never caught - but frankly the idea that the LVO would employ 100~ judges to watch over say 3-4 tables a round probably isn't plausible.

Tyel wrote:

 Smirrors wrote:
Just to be clear, when the Castellan advanced it technically could still fire its assault melta guns at -1. The stratagem was strategically misplayed BUT there was literally NO reason for the take back of the 3CP stratagem. None.

I watched Tabletactics recap of LVO and BBones said he verbally ended a turn, then realised he forgot to do something but the other player made him play as intended.

And here we have a player having a tantrum because they misplayed a turn and demanded a take back. See the standard we are letting poor players get away with?

There is also the issue that said player had probably been doing it all through the tournament (I don't know if this is true, just speculating).

That honestly can't be helped too much.

But this act is almost a precedent set whereby if someone doesnt know their own rules, a judge has allowed them to take back a mistake (perhaps due to player influence).

Other players are not allowed take backs, why was this player allowed to do it.

Couldn't the judges collaborate? Like if Judge A gets called to the table and finds some dubious rule, rules on it and later tells the other Judges "Hey, Bob did X rule and it seemed fishy. If any of you get called to his table and he tries that, he might be purposely cheating"

Something like that, so judges know to watch out for suspect players and if it happens more than once (especially after a judge has been called) they can treat it as an attempt to cheat.

Wayniac wrote:
Couldn't the judges collaborate? Like if Judge A gets called to the table and finds some dubious rule, rules on it and later tells the other Judges "Hey, Bob did X rule and it seemed fishy. If any of you get called to his table and he tries that, he might be purposely cheating"

Something like that, so judges know to watch out for suspect players and if it happens more than once (especially after a judge has been called) they can treat it as an attempt to cheat.

There is incredibly little time to collaborate during a tournament. You'd need a tool to facilitate such a thing, which takes time to set up.

elook wrote:
Frontline made this article:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2019/02/16/gw-grognard-you-all-need-to-calm-down/

Oh okay, lets pretend that it wasn't your decision not to stream "Player X" live at your LVO due to his reputation.

It's not just the players, it is you too.

That's an...interesting approach to things for sure. Saying there was a mob mentality at the event when nobody else has pointed this out feels like they're doing exactly the thing they're advocating against. They also refuse to name names either of those who are part of the "mob" or those who were the targets of the mob. That leads to further useless and potentially inflammatory speculation and leaves me wondering what the point of that article is at all. At one point the author says people need to leave dealing with these situations to judges but even if some sort of mob mentality was evident at the LVO perhaps it's an indication of the players' dissatisfaction with how judges were dealing with infractions? Writing the article in the way the author has done seems like a classic deflection technique to me.


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 Daedalus81 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Couldn't the judges collaborate? Like if Judge A gets called to the table and finds some dubious rule, rules on it and later tells the other Judges "Hey, Bob did X rule and it seemed fishy. If any of you get called to his table and he tries that, he might be purposely cheating"

Something like that, so judges know to watch out for suspect players and if it happens more than once (especially after a judge has been called) they can treat it as an attempt to cheat.

There is incredibly little time to collaborate during a tournament. You'd need a tool to facilitate such a thing, which takes time to set up.

That implies that there aren't enough judges for the event or that the system itself requires too many judges due to how badly it's designed. I've played in and witnessed large tournaments for a variety of other games and I can't think of a single one that didn't have enough judges for the number of players present, and in every single case I think the number of judges was in single figures even when the number of players was well into the hundreds. If there's one thing that the increasing size of 40k tournaments has shown, I think it's that bigger isn't always better and there is perhaps a practical maximum number of players we should be looking at if you want to run a 40k tournament. Unfortunately the "bigger is better" mentality makes that unlikely to happen.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Couldn't the judges collaborate? Like if Judge A gets called to the table and finds some dubious rule, rules on it and later tells the other Judges "Hey, Bob did X rule and it seemed fishy. If any of you get called to his table and he tries that, he might be purposely cheating"

Something like that, so judges know to watch out for suspect players and if it happens more than once (especially after a judge has been called) they can treat it as an attempt to cheat.

There is incredibly little time to collaborate during a tournament. You'd need a tool to facilitate such a thing, which takes time to set up.

A few minutes of time to exchange notes in between rounds should be possible for a judge team at a big tournament.

I don’t know how many judges were at the LVO, but, I’m guessing the figure “wasn’t enough”. Overall, I’ve found the amount of judges at most events hit or miss, and, when taking into account those in the US and the ones in the UK I can’t get to, I feel like it is more miss than hit.

As for a system for the judges, well, I personally think the best way to go would be to add it into the TO section of BCP. Having something in place that allows a judge to select the table and player in question on the app and add a background note only visible to the TOs on their version of the app. If another judge gets called to their table later on in the event they’ll be able to see the note of what happened before and thus make a new, more informed, decision. Also, with limited judges, it can sometimes be hard to remember what was said in the past, especially if you’re having to make a lot of interventions.

Also, it’d then further help the faq cause. If the same “mistake” takes place several times over several people in 1, or more events, then that would be something to raise with GW for clarification as something clearly is going wrong in that given situation.

Kdash wrote:
I don’t know how many judges were at the LVO, but, I’m guessing the figure “wasn’t enough”. Overall, I’ve found the amount of judges at most events hit or miss, and, when taking into account those in the US and the ones in the UK I can’t get to, I feel like it is more miss than hit.

As for a system for the judges, well, I personally think the best way to go would be to add it into the TO section of BCP. Having something in place that allows a judge to select the table and player in question on the app and add a background note only visible to the TOs on their version of the app. If another judge gets called to their table later on in the event they’ll be able to see the note of what happened before and thus make a new, more informed, decision. Also, with limited judges, it can sometimes be hard to remember what was said in the past, especially if you’re having to make a lot of interventions.

Also, it’d then further help the faq cause. If the same “mistake” takes place several times over several people in 1, or more events, then that would be something to raise with GW for clarification as something clearly is going wrong in that given situation.

This is the right way to go about it, but implementation of it needs to be considered. Judge needs to go to the table, make a ruling and importantly be given time to make the note before moving on. If the judge gets into a 'I'll just go sort this out first' mentality, the notes in some cases will not be recorded. In which case, there probably needs to be rolling judges, so a judge can come back to a central desk and do the required admin, whilst another judge is then active until they need not be.

All things would not have to be recorded, and you can focus on recording certain players if they are dubious rather than every person for every ruling.

Finally, I just want to refer back to how absolutely horrendous the attitude of the judge in that article is. That is absolutely not okay and is part of the problem.

Tyel wrote:
...but frankly the idea that the LVO would employ 100~ judges to watch over say 3-4 tables a round probably isn't plausible.

Why? Aren't judges mostly volunteers? There shouldn't be a financial issue with bringing on more judges, and I'm sure there are tons of people who would want to do that and be able to survive the vetting process.

How about 50 judges/tables and 200 players, and have the first tournament round be staggered.

There is plenty of ways to make it work. Part of the problem is the expectation that there should be over 700 participants in the tournament... which is frankly kind of ridiculous. Tournaments should be smaller and have entrance requirements... lower tier players should have to work their way up from lower league tournaments first.