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Gornal:

I just work from the assumption that you're not trolling, because the objection that my position is unpopular has nothing to do with whether it's the right way to conduct a competition.

The fact is that tournaments without a level playing field are bunk when it comes to competition.

But a level playing field doesn't mean making up for player's natural deficits. It simply means letting the best man win. So the point is not to hold players' hands by making sure that they have "balanced" or "fair" lists. The point is to make the competition decided on objective terms of skill.

that skill includes list selection. After all, I'm proposing players themselves chose their armies from a short list defined by one army per list. If they're dumb enough to handicap themselves by choosing the least competitive army/list, then they've shown a lack of skill in army selection. People already bring Necrons to tournaments.

So like you say, 40k starts with choosing the best list and using it well. My proposal would not change that.

Gornall wrote:Voting system or not, it's a horrible idea, IMO. I could be off-base in saying that, but I bet if you put a Dakka poll up, it'd come back that very few people would be interested in such a system.

Free Market versus highly regulated. At the level of individual participants, they're always going to vote for as little regulation as possible.

Nurglitch wrote:Gornal:

I just work from the assumption that you're not trolling, because the objection that my position is unpopular has nothing to do with whether it's the right way to conduct a competition.

The fact is that tournaments without a level playing field are bunk when it comes to competition.

But a level playing field doesn't mean making up for player's natural deficits. It simply means letting the best man win. So the point is not to hold players' hands by making sure that they have "balanced" or "fair" lists. The point is to make the competition decided on objective terms of skill.

that skill includes list selection. After all, I'm proposing players themselves chose their armies from a short list defined by one army per list. If they're dumb enough to handicap themselves by choosing the least competitive army/list, then they've shown a lack of skill in army selection. People already bring Necrons to tournaments.

So like you say, 40k starts with choosing the best list and using it well. My proposal would not change that.

One list to rule them all....

I don't understand your argument. If you say that list selection is a skill that should be measured in a competition, then how does reducing the choice of lists improve the level of competition? Wouldn't the better measure of that skill be to let the players choose and design whatever legal army list they want, rather than a few preselected ones? If you aren't going to balance all the armies against each other, then you're still allowing imbalances in the armies, so your format doesn't change anything. Why go to all that trouble if you still have the same problems as an open format tournament?

Gornal:

I suppose that if we could say that 2000pts of Imperial Guard was equal to any other 2000pts of Imperial Guard, let alone 2000pts of Space Marines, then clearly it would be a better measure of skill to let players choose whatever 2000pts they wanted.

But we can't. Balance and fairness are subjective concepts that have no place in legitimate competition, so my proposal doesn't bother to address them.

More to the point, if picking an army is a skill, then any imbalance caused by picking the right army is good, because it helps you win. We don't want a competition that is so balanced and fair that anyone can win: we want a competition that favours skill over luck.

So instead of trying to satisfy everyone's own personal idea of balance and fairness, what we can do is give players a level playing field: the same set of options; apples to apples.

This improves the level of competition by giving us an objective standard by which to judge the level of competition. In other words, it improves the level of competition by giving us levels of competition...

Before you can have a measure of skill, you need a measure. That means you have to homogenize the conditions you are not measuring.

So no, you would not have the same problems as an open format tournament. Balance and fairness is a non-issue: you still get to choose the best army available, and it's your ability to play the game that gets you to the winner's table.


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sourclams:

All markets are regulated. Fortunately not all regulation is the same, and I can assure you that there are more competitive swimmers in the world than there are GW fans: the fact is that some regulation promotes competition, and part of that is standardizing competition so everyone is playing the same game by the same rules.

Nurglitch wrote:Gornall:
I suppose that if we could say that 2000pts of Imperial Guard was equal to any other 2000pts of Imperial Guard, let alone 2000pts of Space Marines, then clearly it would be a better measure of skill to let players choose whatever 2000pts they wanted.

But we can't. Balance and fairness are subjective concepts that have no place in legitimate competition, so my proposal doesn't bother to address them.

You lost me on this one... You say that because IG and Marines aren't balanced, then it's not a good judge of skill to allow people to design their own armies. You then go on to say that balance and fairness do not belong in a legitimate competition... and that your proposal doesn't address them. Exactly what does your proposal attempt to address then?

Nurglitch wrote:
More to the point, if picking an army is a skill, then any imbalance caused by picking the right army is good, because it helps you win. We don't want a competition that is so balanced and fair that anyone can win: we want a competition that favours skill over luck.

I agree that picking an army is a skill. That's why I think allowing everyone to make their own army is better than your solution.

Nurglitch wrote:
So instead of trying to satisfy everyone's own personal idea of balance and fairness, what we can do is give players a level playing field: the same set of options; apples to apples.

You give everyone the same army lists... but those lists are not necessarily balanced between them, so some lists are inherently better than others. Aka not apples to apples. You argue that this is okay because it also measures the skill of the player in picking the best army list. How is that different than an open format (no comp)? You still have power lists and non-power lists. You've just defined them rather than letting the players develop them at the individual level.

Nurglitch wrote:
This improves the level of competition by giving us an objective standard by which to judge the level of competition. In other words, it improves the level of competition by giving us levels of competition...

Before you can have a measure of skill, you need a measure. That means you have to homogenize the conditions you are not measuring.

What are you homogenizing? If you were to successfully homogenize the armies (where all are balanced) than you've eliminated list selection/creation as a skill and are only measuring the ability to play the game. If you can't balance the armies, then all you've done is reduced the available armies and had no real effect on "leveling" the playing field... you've just changed the playing field for no reason.

Nurglitch wrote:
So no, you would not have the same problems as an open format tournament. Balance and fairness is a non-issue: you still get to choose the best army available, and it's your ability to play the game that gets you to the winner's table.

How is that different than an open format? Allow people to make whatever lists they want and play them against each other. Then you are measuring both tactical skill and the ability to choose/construct good armies.... without all the overhead and loss of variety your format would cause.

Gornal:

I guess if you don't get it, then nothing else I can do will explain it to you. I'm sorry to have failed you.

Nurglitch wrote:Gornal:

I guess if you don't get it, then nothing else I can do will explain it to you. I'm sorry to have failed you.

Guess not. The only thing I can think of is that your idea would allow you to compare multiple tournaments against one another and eliminate the "Oh it looks like everyone there were playing crappy lists." Your proposal would at least take care of that. What it does NOT do is provide a better measure of skill at the individual tournament level. It eliminates choice and pigeonholes people into predictable armies. If you know the approved tournament lists, its a simple matter to practice against only those lists. How is that a better measure of skill than walking into a tournament and not knowing what you will face? You might have been expecting full Mech IG but instead run into foot-slogging Eldar...

FYI: It's GornaLL.

Throwing my opinion out to the wolves: as a youngun I played a min/maxed blood angel list (back in the good old days of sweeping advance and voluntary death company) and wiped the floor at most tourneys I went to... At the time it was the one trick that beat all others... But I always got poor composition which would regularly drop me to thirdish. Even at the time I was ok with that. Now I play primarily fantasy, which I feel requires you to distribute the 'heavy lifting' more evenly throughout yur army. However the idea of composition is skewed a bit more than 40k... This is because of the variety of unit types (infantry, cavalry, monster, flyer, warmachine, skirmisher ...etc) and addition of a potentially powerful magic phase. It is easy to simplify the game(s) into an abstract of paper-rock-scissors, but in reality you have 9-10 variables, and many units/lists that outperform all but one or two of those. So you are given a choice: beat the powergamers at their own game or be a losing statistic.
Another tidbit to throw away: most spam/minmax/unrealistic armies are some gamers twisted attempt at fluff... "my army fluff is an all tz demon army" or "my fluff is that a vampire raised a dragon, enslaved some bloodknights and a Varg, then had a lot of ghouls flock to him"

I feel that the new comp score is made up of two things inherent in the current 40k game.

Scoring units.

Kill points.

As long as your tournament has some mission that has either one of those two or both then comp is pretty much included by default in a way.

Kiwidru wrote:
Another tidbit to throw away: most spam/minmax/unrealistic armies

I find (at least in 40k) that spam armies are more realistic. Having lots of the same equipment makes logisitcs a lot easier, and makes the force look like an army instead of a hodge-podge of units.

And having nothing but the best possible units makes life easier too. Of course in real life (and in compelling fiction) most of the time commanders don't have exactly what they want, and make do with what they have.

Mannahnin wrote:And having nothing but the best possible units makes life easier too. Of course in real life (and in compelling fiction) most of the time commanders don't have exactly what they want, and make do with what they have.

True. But in real life/fiction, you don't expect your opponent to take it easy on you if you don't have the stuff you want, but he does.

Nope. That may be part of why I play war games, as opposed to enlisting in an actual army. That whole "fun" thing.

Mannahnin wrote:Nope. That may be part of why I play war games, as opposed to enlisting in an actual army. That whole "fun" thing.

That's not allowed in tournaments, don't you know?

In all seriousness, I think Comp is a nice idea, but I have yet to see any sort of good implementation of it. I just think that most of the time it causes more issues than it really solves.

And here I am, still waiting for an answer from the 'pro-comp' folks for the answer to my question...

Nurglitch wrote:Gornal:

I guess if you don't get it, then nothing else I can do will explain it to you. I'm sorry to have failed you.

Don't you see that all of your swimming examples have no relevance to what the discussion is? You keep talking about HOW people chose to swim, and innovate. That would be more akin to making a rule such as 'Only a max of one scoring unit can be in a Valkyrie because it is too easy to do a last minute objective grab'.

On the flip side, a real comparison of composition scoring to swimming would be to give the shortest swimmer a time advantage because he will tend to not be able to produce the best time due to his height.

People who build lists want to be rewarded for how optimized and brutally powerful they are, ergo no composition. People who build armies want to be rewarded for how coherent they are, by comp score rewards to compensate for the efficiency they forfieted in the name of unifying theme. Those that want to climb to the top of the faux wargaming food chain, against those that would rather enjoy the spectical. On and on, so it goes.

Kiwidru wrote:People who build lists want to be rewarded for how optimized and brutally powerful they are, ergo no composition. People who build armies want to be rewarded for how coherent they are, by comp score rewards to compensate for the efficiency they forfieted in the name of unifying theme. Those that want to climb to the top of the faux wargaming food chain, against those that would rather enjoy the spectical. On and on, so it goes.

1) Who gets to define what a 'unifying theme' is? You?

2) The biggest problem with setting up composition is that it will make a new codex or list overpowered, thus undoing the original intent of the comp (e.g. heavily favouring troops will catapault Orks to the top codex).

Kiwidru wrote:People who build lists want to be rewarded for how optimized and brutally powerful they are, ergo no composition. People who build armies want to be rewarded for how coherent they are, by comp score rewards to compensate for the efficiency they forfieted in the name of unifying theme. Those that want to climb to the top of the faux wargaming food chain, against those that would rather enjoy the spectical. On and on, so it goes.

Two problems with your statement:

1. Oftentimes there are no criteria, or the criteria are at the mercy of a single person's judgment call. In such cases Pedro Kantor and Sternguard squads, while a fully comprehensive and coherent army based on background material, can be docked for being cheesey-superpowered.

2. Specific pre-set criteria allow the 'ueber comp-hating powergamers' to simply maximize their army within the constraints of the event. The casual player shows up with his army of 3 Tactical Squads and 4 attack bikes (which are the only models that he has) and gets nailed on Comp because he has duplicates of FA choices and only one type of identically-equipped Troops in his list.

In both cases, Comp utterly fails in its intended purpose. In the former, due to lack of structure, and in the latter, due to the non-competitive player that comp is supposed to "protect" not being able to adapt to the comp restrictions due either to lack of models or unwillingness to 'game' this aspect of the system.

If you really want to find out who's the best player, have a tournament where everybody has to use exactly the same army. Then you'll find out who's the best player. Anything else introduces too many random variables/strengths/weaknesses to make a fair comparison.


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If you want to reduce the impact of uber killy elite units on a tournament, make the tournament a campaign. Have replacements for casualties be lots slower for things that are not 'troops' or 'core', and no replacements for anything that is named/unique. That will cause players to be more conservative with their forces, just like real commanders in a campaign have to be. Tne you'll see. after a couple games, whether players are able to cope with 'you got what you got' as forces like real commanders do.

Actually in my experience, Campaign-style play tends to reward the winners, who then go on to keep on winning.

For example, in a 2k campaign scenario Ueber person plays Casual person. Ueber person loses 400 pts worth, Casual person loses 1300 pts worth and the match. "Reinforcements" or whatever the special reward is pour in, and now Ueber person has 1800 pts against Casual person's 900 points....

If you really want to find out who's the best player, have a tournament where everybody has to use exactly the same army. Then you'll find out who's the best player. Anything else introduces too many random variables/strengths/weaknesses to make a fair comparison.

Part of the game is building an capable army. All players have access to the same GW resources and army books. It is not necessary to require everyone to have the same army in order to keep the competition fair--free access already accomplishes this.

Sure, but anybody can build a capable army. Good players are like good generals, in that they work with the resources that they have, not the resources that they wish they had.

I wish people would stop writing about any military as if they actually understood it.

The point is that a general would bring with them what is most synergistic, not random volunteers just because they are available.

You have failed to have this make any sense with random swimming analogies and now by likening yourself to a military officer based on your skill at playing plastic men. What is next? Bobsledding? Professional hopscotchers?

Fearspect:

My point has been simply about competition: if you want a competition that says anything about skill, then you need a level playing field. That's how it's done in swimming, that's how it's done in any competitive sport or endeavor.

If you want to be judged on skill, then you play the same game. It's as simple as that.

I suspect that's too complicated for you though.

What is the level playing field of swimming? The weight categories? Must be age brackets?

I don't want to be judged on your strange definition of skill. I want to show that I am the best at taking in a complex set of variables and can produce top results. Giving less choices is like playing on easymode through life.

Fearspect:

The level playing field in swimming is the event. In the 200m Freestyle, for example, everyone starts when the gun goes off, and the first person to cover 200m wins. Everyone swims the same distance in the same pool, using the same stroke.

While you may find this "definition" of skill to be strange, it's how things work in competitive sports.

If you want to show that you're the best at taking a complex set of variables and producing the best results, then you're going to need to do it on a level playing field: same board, same armies, same missions.

In other words, the same complex set of variables.

I see what you're saying. We should ban all the codices other than the newest one, and remove all the choices for each FOC slot but one.

Better yet, we should show up with the TO's only approved list and play with that.

Wait... that's chess.

Sure, but anybody can build a capable army.

You don't attend many tournaments, do you?

That's not a dig at you by any means, but most of the armies people bring for competitive play are actually pretty terrible. That's find in and of itself, but when you talk to them they actually think that the lists are competitive. Look at Warseer, for example, and the thousands of topics where people try to justify why their god-awful lists are supposedly dominating.

Indeed. Everyone (mostly in the pro-comp camp) says it's "easy" to build good lists, but when you see the average forumite's idea of a "good list"...it doesn't really look like it.