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I think I need to give a bit of background on myself before posting. I am a High School Physics teacher from NJ. I have a masters in education as well as a couple science degrees under my belt. The purpose of a rubric is to give a student a way of giving themselves immediate feedback in a OBJECTIVE way. It in essence removes all subjectivity from scoring! Well here is the GT rubric for this year. The second reason of the rubric is for improvement. How many people see the response to the "sportsmanship" part of a tourny? How many people discuss this with their opponents after the game is ended so people can learn to be better opponents? In my experience they have been kept too secret!!! Ogre from adepticon inspired me by saying he tells his opponents bluntly his thoughts. I think some of these should be filled in before the game starts and some after and discussed. I also think that the Tourny should allow time for this to take place! I will discuss them after you read them.

SPORTSMANSHIP CHECKLIST
Compulsory Trappings - These are the items an opponent can reasonably expect you to be prepared with, including being on time and playing promptly .

1 Did your opponent show up on time (or early)? 1 Point

2 Did your opponent have all the materials they needed to play (dice, templates, army list, rules for their army, rules for the game)? 1 Point

3 Did your opponent play their turns in a reasonable amount of time (taking in account time to plan strategy, and includes playing throughout all the phases)? 1 Point

Game Play - These items include courses of action your opponent took during the game or in deciding what to field in their army.

4 Did your opponent measure accurately for both model moves and shooting distances? 1 Point

5 Did your opponent solve rules disputes by showing you the relevant passages in their rulebook (or, if that could not be found or remained confusing, was amicable about bringing over a Rules Judge)? 1 Point

6 Was your opponent’s army easy to understand with clear conversions or completely WYSWIG? 1 Point

7 Do you think your opponent built an army based on the theme of the relevant gaming universe and supplied background for that army (as opposed to a force built purely for winning with little or no regard to that army’s established background)? 1 Point

Behaviors - These items include basic social skills.

8 Was your opponent of good humor and amicable when not concentrating on strategy or planning out moves (this does not mean they put on a one man circus for you, but rather was not angry/grumbling/complaining/obtuse during your game)? 1 Point

9 Was your opponent helpful in explaining correct rules, explaining how their army works? 1 Point

10 Win or lose, was this person the type of opponent you look forward to playing again? 1 Point

Total Up to 10 Points

#s 1,2,6, should be filled out at the start of the game, before anything starts as these are Objective. #7 is a subjective score and should be discussed after the game, but filled out beforehand.

#s 3,5,8, and 9 should be done after and then discussed with your opponent.

The results for all of these should be shared! Now I know what some people will be thinking... This is going to piss people off if they get a bad score... If it pisses you off get over it! If all of your opponents tell you you're not helpful with rules, will not play you again, you aren't fun to play.... Guess what that means? but don't stop there, Have your opponent explain why! this is what needs to be done. We need to talk, as adults and gamers, about how to make our games more fun.

Now I also feel this will at least limit the temptation to tank your opponent on these scores. ::start rant:: At adepticon our team got tanked sportsmanship, but I couldn't figure out why. We had all of the objective stuff and at a maximum we would have lost 6pts per round on sports if the people had the worst game of their lives... well it turns out most people we played except the last round because we were all tired, said they had the best game of their lives... now they were either liars then, or liars on the objective stuff. Personally I practice honesty and would like to see Objective things kept objective... ::end Rant::

So what do you guys think? Should time be allotted for this to happen before and after games at the GTs?

Open or secret sportsmanship has been a debate for a long time.

I would like my opponent to tell me openly why he scored me the way he did. If I get a low score I am left to wonder if it was my army, my behaviors, or just the way my opponent scores people.

I am an adult, and I can take criticism. Last year at the Las Vegas GT, I scored high in sportsmanship, but at Baltimore I scored very low, and I am left to wonder why. If I had the soft scores at Baltimore that I had at Las Vegas I would have finished in 3rd place.


There are downsides to open scoring though. I am a very comp friendly player and about a year and a half ago there have been people showing up with powerful builds (cheesy). I have been grading people harshly at RTTs when I played them, and gave them the scores that I thought that they deserved. When you bring an army that is built only to win in a comp environment, you should not be surprised when you get a less than perfect comp score. The people though that brought these armies would give me a hard time when ever I showed up, and accused me of chipmunking etc. It was such a hassle that I just started to give everyone a max score and I did not bother giving them the score that they deserved.

Assuming that there are comp scores, point 7 should not be part of the sportsmanship award.

That is one of my pet peeves...Grading sports on comp.

Skyth, I agree with you... but #7 is not a place to comp. It is asking if there is a fluff background or if the army was min/maxed with out regard for the theme aspect of the game. This is a pretty subjective yes or no question... but only because people don't have a good idea of what a THEME is

Blackmoor, don't give in. I give people the scores they deserve. Don't get bullied into not being honest. Maybe instead ask the opponents why they feel their list isn't cheesey while grading them on it.

If you did follow your format then I would add in one more point. I really dont know how to word it but it would go along the lines of did your opponent take the score you gave him in good manner. More less did he pop off because you scored him the way you did.

Most of the time I now guys that get really pist off if you give them a low score on something they think they should of got a better score.

Over all I do like the new format and would not mind talking about the score before it was turned in. That way if somebody tries to shaft you because you clean their army off the board, you get a chance to see the soft score before its turned in and finalized. That way if they want to be a prick then it gives you a chance to say wait a min, I showed up 10 min early and you did not score that correctly, wait a min I have everything needed plus other items that others might need to share so why did I not get a point for that.

It just makes sense on soooo many levels Tarval. There is no benefit to the scores being secret! At least none that I can see. Can someone give us a benefit for secret sportsmanship?

I would also Like to point out at this point that I have had people at tournies tell me "I'm giving you full for sports! and fav player" when I know they are liars. I believe it was the Hellfire Air show, A tourney out in Pittsburg PA where the last round player just wasn't any fun to play... He didn't understand the difference between LOS terrain and Area Terrain, Was fake and obnoxious and generally wasn't someone I would ever play on purpose. I think this would shut the "I'm giving you everything" people up if people Stuck to it. Remember when you sign this thing in the end you are signing that everything is true... which surprisingly makes it a legal document

For many years now I've always given people max scores.

For everything and anything.

This year, it will be different.

Personally I hope I lose some games as the 'new' sportsmanship system is sh~t. Don't talk to the players about what they want, don't expect us to put up with horrible decision making forever.

The funny thing is, the nicer I am about sports/painting/rules bending/outright cheating...the worse a score I get because despite all that, I still clean them off the tabletop in short order and it seems like that is a large part of the issue.

Which is sad, but really unfixable.

GW's part is also sad, but quite fixable.

I don't think cleaning people off the table is the issue. I do this more often then not and still win best sportsman. Its all on how you do it

Now if you play people that get pissy when you beat them... well it could just be the crowd you play in... which is more reason for the objective things to be done BEFORE the game starts and for them to not be secret

If anything it would be great if GW would take the top 10 or what they think they need to take. Then go around and re check the soft scores for errors. If a guy got a point on four out of the five games for showing up on time and on the last game did not get the point. It would call into question on did somebody shaft this player a point or two....

Well... part of being a sportsman is reporting accurate scores. GW assumes people are honest.

I've never been to a tournament and I just have a small question. What is chipmunking?

And I personally don't see a point to these scores. If it's anonymous why not just give 0s to all your opponents, makes you win more am I correct?

Typeline wrote:I've never been to a tournament and I just have a small question. What is chipmunking?

And I personally don't see a point to these scores. If it's anonymous why not just give 0s to all your opponents, makes you win more am I correct?

unless i am mistaken you need to explain to the judges why you gave the opponent a zero in order to validate it.

the only circumstance i could see myself giving out a zero would be if my oponent was being generous with his measurements and picking up hit dice that were misses.. continually.

one thing that annoys me is when people give out 10s for every game. do you honestly play the 5 best games of your life at a GT? i certainly dont. i wouldnt expect to recieve 10s every game, and it shouldnt be that way.. imo there should be a rule against giving out more than one 10 per GT.

Why not simply ask players, at the end of all their games, to rank their opponents' sportsmanship relative to each other (1st: player B, 2nd: player F, and so on)? This is the closest to objectivity as one can get, since you have to pick someone who was most fun to play with, least fun to play with, and everything in between.

And then the unscrupless players marks as worse sport the guy who has won most of his games and the muppet he played in round one gets his pick as best sports...

Aeon wrote:And then the unscrupless players marks as worse sport the guy who has won most of his games and the muppet he played in round one gets his pick as best sports...

Say it ain't so.

The way I rate soft scores in my tourneys works like a charm. *shrug*

Typeline wrote:I've never been to a tournament and I just have a small question. What is chipmunking?

And I personally don't see a point to these scores. If it's anonymous why not just give 0s to all your opponents, makes you win more am I correct?

What you just asked sir is Chipmunking. If you purposfully rate your opponent with 0s you are a deuschbag and therefore chipmunked. Sir the stands alone.

The point of the rubric here is to make the scores as objective as possible. That means that if you were to write "0" for someone who did bring dice if bringing dice was on the rubric you would be lieing. Now since you sign this form you are testifying that it is all true this means you are verifying that you checked the scores. This kind of skullduggery is why this needs to change into what it was ment for, A way of making games more fun.

Aeon wrote:And then the unscrupless players marks as worse sport the guy who has won most of his games and the muppet he played in round one gets his pick as best sports...

If this is what some players do... I am sorry it is that way. I, as well as the majority of people I play with, rank the person we had the most fun playing as the person we had the most fun playing! Who cares if you win this though? I mean sure go for the win but if someone is better then you... step aside and take it like a man.

Ztryder wrote: one thing that annoys me is when people give out 10s for every game. do you honestly play the 5 best games of your life at a GT? i certainly dont. i wouldnt expect to recieve 10s every game, and it shouldnt be that way.. imo there should be a rule against giving out more than one 10 per GT.

I agree 100% This is just not cool either. It makes the point of sportsmanship invalid

We used this rubric in a tournament last month. Everyone at the tournament knew and had played each other before, they were all semi-regular gamers from two stores taht has a lot of interaction. Going into the 3rd round, there was a 10-way tie for best sportsmenship (out of 16 players - some guys had some minis that weren't finished with the painting). Ended up using the "Best Game" rating to find who won it.

It was also used in another tournament a couple weeks ago. Wasn't quite so close this time around. People were a little more harsh (people paid attention better to things like was one model not WYSIWYG) and were better about not marking every single game as "the best one ever."

Overall I like the system better then what was there before. Plus in a smaller tournament, the judge has the time to question people who turn in low scores for their opponents every round and double - check with their opponents on things like "did you have rules/dice, show up on time, etc". Harder to police at a larger event.

Hehehheh, Ogre is always blunt!! But I love the big sap anyways.

Skyth, this is the GT Sports scoring, there are no Comp scores for the US GTs this year.

I'm one of the Tourney judges budro mentioned in his post (Seth, I'm guessing Matt was the other?). I don't think it really worked that well in a small group, especially one where everyone pretty much knew each other. I loaned out dice and blast/templates, yet the players to whom I loaned those items got full marks on the scoresheet. That's why I went back to the standard RTT 0-2-4-6 scale in the tourney last week.

There's both good and bad regarding open scoring. Bad, I mark you down, you might mark me down in revenge. Good, less chance of someone chipmunking if they have to show and explain the scores they give. My solutioin would be that when the players turn in their sheets to the judge, at that point they are allowed to see what they received from the opposing player. Too late for a revenge markdown but if you know it's going to be revealed, then less likelihood of chipmunking.

Sportsmanship and comp scores are a complete waste as far as I'm concerned. If you trend sportsmanship vs wins and losses, you see that people who get their face pushed in and don't whine get high sportsmanship scores. Those who do the face pushing usually get the bad scores. Tournaments should be about wins and losses. Sportsmanship, painting and comp can be auxillary awards if so desired, but in should no way play into the tournament winner.

Techboss wrote:Sportsmanship and comp scores are a complete waste as far as I'm concerned. If you trend sportsmanship vs wins and losses, you see that people who get their face pushed in and don't whine get high sportsmanship scores. Those who do the face pushing usually get the bad scores. Tournaments should be about wins and losses. Sportsmanship, painting and comp can be auxillary awards if so desired, but in should no way play into the tournament winner.

So by that standard a complete a-hole with an unpainted army can win overall? I'll disagree. Add in a Best General award, as well as Best Army and Best Sport. But overall should be the one that merges all aspects of the hobby. Or just run a 'Ard Boys/Gladiator tourney, where there are no painting/comp/theme/sports scores.

frgsinwntr wrote:
9 Was your opponent helpful in explaining correct rules, explaining how their army works? 1 Point

10 Win or lose, was this person the type of opponent you look forward to playing again? 1 Point

I'm OK with this, in principle, but I'd suggest that the truly subjective elements are weighted too low:

9: Did you enjoy your game? 1 pt
10: Would you play them again? 1 pt.

@frgsinwntr,

SPORTSMANSHIP CHECKLIST

Thats a great idea, I think the checklists are a great step in the right direction. I would certainly advocate it. While I like and respect the idea of having time to discuss the marks built into the games, time is awlays a premium at tourneys, and I wouldnt do that.

@techboss

Yup I completely agree with you. "Sportsmanship and comp scores are a complete waste (as they are now)" paranthesis mine.

@JohnHwangDD

"a complete a-hole with an unpainted army can win overall? I'll disagree. Add in a Best General award, as well as Best Army and Best Sport. But overall should be the one that merges all aspects of the hobby."

The awards ought to be seperated, counting in arbitrary sports for overall, and subjective openent scsores for painting and theme is meaningless. The awads need to be best general, best painted (judged by organizers) and peoples choice by popular vote, everything else is just random sillyness, or a popularity contest, opr worse, opportunities for nepotism to game the system.

@Typeline

Typeline wrote:
"I personally don't see a point to these scores. If it's anonymous why not just give 0s to all your opponents, makes you win more am I correct?"

Yes you are correct, that is exactly what is wrong with the system.

@Ztryder
"people give out 10s for every game. do you honestly play the 5 best games of your life at a GT? i certainly dont. i wouldnt expect to recieve 10s every game, and it shouldnt be that way.. imo there should be a rule against giving out more than one 10 per"

It's the devil's deal Ztryder, it makes perfect sense. Here goes; before the game, say to your opponent: Mark me perfect for soft scores and I'll do the same for you then we can just decide this on the field. Kind of has some ballsy Sportsmanship appeal doesn't it? If memory serves Mauleed claimed to do this regularly, years ago...?

@ Stelek
"For many years now I've always given people max scores. For everything and anything."

Me too, but particularly for comp, essentially, if the organizers have said it is legal and the list was checked who am I to say the army is unfair. RUBBISH that just makes poor sports out of people, of course he beat me because his army was unfairly constructed? Balderdash say I, it was legal and checked by the organizers right? To bad.

I’m of the complete opposite philosophy.

While chipmunking is the evil that haunts secret scoring, collusion is the evil that haunts open scoring. IME it is extremely common for players to explicitly or implicitly agree to score one another max, without regard to the actual guidelines. This is cheating every bit as much as chipmunking, but is harder to spot and correct. It also doesn’t have the guilt factor attached which I think helps prevent most players from chipmunking.

IME a substantial percentage of gamers lack refined social and communication skills, and most do not handle confrontation well. Which unfortunately is what will often result when you cap off a bad game with telling your opponent it was a bad game to his face. I expect that mandated sharing of scores would result in even more collusion, whether deliberate or just to avoid confrontation and hurt feelings.

At one GT I attended my final round opponent and I were both in contention to place Overall. For the most part it was a good game, in part helped by him making a distinct and conscious effort to be a fun and entertaining opponent. But at multiple points in the game he BLATANTLY moved his models too far. An ~8” move to get a Carnifex into my deployment zone in the final turn in Recon, for one example*. I had to mark him down for cheating, and when he openly marked me max sports and, smiling, asked me what I was scoring him, I had the distinctly uncomfortable experience of explaining to him that for most of the game he had been great, but I really didn’t appreciate his repeated cheating in the movement phase.

IMO the best system is the one GW used at my first GT- Baltimore 01. Both players come up together, and go to opposite sides of a long table to fill in the Sports scores. Then submit them together. Optionally they could then reveal the scores to one another, as Mondo suggested.



*Since it was an important move, I carefully observed when he made the measurement and marked the spot before he moved the model. He would have been pretty close to the line but might have made it. He then reconsidered his move in light of what units of mine would have LOS to the Carnifex and instead moved it at a 45 degree angle to be behind a wood. But the Carnifex ended its move 6” closer to my table edge, despite the angle.

don_mondo wrote:So by that standard a complete a-hole with an unpainted army can win overall? I'll disagree. Add in a Best General award, as well as Best Army and Best Sport. But overall should be the one that merges all aspects of the hobby. Or just run a 'Ard Boys/Gladiator tourney, where there are no painting/comp/theme/sports scores.

I think the overall "score" should be done away with. It's merely a consilation prize to the fluff nutters who can't paint and are sore losers. I can't paint, I usually get a bad match up or two and I get along with other players pretty reasonably. I've won best sportsman a couple times and come close to winning some tournaments. Anything that is placed in the hands to the players as a subjective score, is going to be abused and is therefore worthless. Tourney awards should be:

Tournament winner, decided by win/loss and possibly victory points if needed
Best painted, decided by judges
Best theme/comp, decided by judges
Best sportsman, decided by 0-10 did you have fun score or what was your favorite game (opponent gets +1 sports, highest sum wins)

You can add additional prizes for 1, 2 & 3 places if you want for each catergory.

Techboss, I just want to point out that this is a thread about how to improve the situation with sportsmanship scoring, not to whine about how you think it stinks. Guess what? GW will never change this aspect so get over it. If you want to talk about how it shouldn't be part of the game by all means start your own thread and I will come post in it and stay on topic. The GTs are a place for hobby enthusiasts to compete. This means all aspects of the hobby as well as just tactical skill. The hobby involves painting and interpersonal relations so it should apply a value to this. The question is how can this be done in a fair manner.

@ don_mondo

Do you think it would be possible to have a set of judges there to review the sportsmanship scores as they come in. There are around 170 spots in the tourny which means you would need to review 85 sets of scores turned in over a 30 min period. If one judge were to do this it would alot very little time per match... but how about if there are 10 judges reviewing this or better yet 10 volenteers. This could get done very quickly and it only takes about 2 min to review the scoring effectively. If there are problems this would be where the judges could penalize the ones who are incorrectly with deductions to the forms, -1 point for the first offense, -10 for the second and -20 for the third, ejection for the tourny for the 4th.

How many judges are at the typical GT?

Overall works fine, IME. Best General is the dubious one, as it occasionally draws guys who don’t want to put any effort into painting or making the game fun for their opponent. Those guys can stay home and play with themselves. If you want to make a tournament which caters to them, feel free. I’ll vote with my feet and my wallet and not attend.

So you don't go to Adepticon then?

Oh right, the gladiators are for the best pro-paid painted armies around. My bad!

Non sequitur. The Gladiator isn’t a GT. It’s a special event showcasing crazy armies and with no soft scores. People have been running those at least as long as I’ve been in the hobby (first one I saw was in 2000, and it was 2000 points for that reason). But they are specifically an ALTERNATIVE to the default “complete hobbyist” event that the GTs have been for more than ten years now.

And in accordance with my “vote with my feet” policy, I play Warhammer on Friday at Adepticon rather than playing in the Gladiator.

#7 on that list needs to go. Just plopping an army down on the table does not automatically make it's theme (or lack there of) apparent. Often it takes a long winded speech from the army's owner to make it all apparent and the more out of the norm it is, the longer this takes. Listening to a speech from each player over the course of several games is going to suck up a significant amount of time, and that's one thing most tournaments are short on already. One thing that has always angered (not just annoyed) me about 40k is the pressure to make your army into one of the generic ones from the fluff (blood angles, dark angles, Saam Hein, catachacans, etc). I had a friend who went to a tournament back in the RT days and hand an opponent try to get him ejected from the tournament because all his marines were painted different colors. That's just insane. If I (or anyone else) want to play the Pluto Rainbow Brigade Marines (or any similar outlandish or not theme) there shouldn't be a penalty verses playing ultra marines. #7 is going to instill that penalty.

You also probably want to organize the list into two sections, before the game and after the game, rather than into sections based on the type of questions. That will make it easier to fill out instead of going "Ok I need to fill out 1, 2, and 7 before the game and then other afterwards". Just a thought.

As for lying on sportsman ship scores goes, its always going to happen. You will get people like Stelek who will give people full points no matter what and you will get goobers who will give straight zeroes no matter what. I rarely play in tournaments because I'm not fond of the atmosphere at most of them. However a friend talked me into a team tournament not that long ago where the sportsmanship scores were initially secrete but then they posted the scores for everyone at the end of the tournament. The first game we played, we went up against some guys that got screwed by the mission, we had some rule arguments with them, and in the end, we wiped them out. They gave us full points on sportsmanship. The second game went moderately well. We were getting wiped out in the early/mid game but took objectives and got the win on the last turn. There was one rule question during the game but it was solved by looking it up. We got almost full sports points from that team (7/10 if I remember correctly). The final game we played, we fought some guys and managed to do well. It was fun game for us and it seemed to be a fun game for our opponents who did fairly well but ended up losing in the end. By far I found it to be the best game of the day and they were the only ones we gave full sportsmanship scores to. They gave us a 0 for sportsmanship. *shrug* That 0 kept us from winning prizes...I'm a bit bitter about it.

The biggest reason that point 7 shouldn't be there is that there are two types of gamers that, when they lose because of an army mis-match-

The first one blames their opponent's army
The second blames their own army.