Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Eidolon wrote:Here are a few simple, easy to answer questions for all you tournament guros.

1-Do you make a point of playing in any event you can? Be it a little 10 man local tournament or a 20 man 60 miles away?

2-Are you selective of who you play casually?

3-How many games do you get in a week.

4-Is there a sense of comradery among you best of the best. I would assume that you could say 'well i made it to table 1, but lost to Marc, Bill, Allen, Scott', so I didnt do too bad.

I'll be nice and answer these since I hate writing batreps . I don't play nationally (though this year I'll hopefully make it to Adepticon) yet, but I'm still pretty young, so...

1. Yeah. No tourney's worth missing if I can reasonably get there. Since I went to college, though, I've had a much harder time making it places.
2. No. If I'm playing "casually" I'm playing a list that might throw me for a loop if I see it in a tourney-I'm practicing against the unorthodox.
3. Nowhere near enough. 1 tiny (1000 pt) swiss tourney in a local GW (yeah, really tough competition) every 3 weeks + whatever I can get . College has turned the screws. Before, I'd play twice-ish a week.
4. I usually meet people before and during games-but yeah, when I play someone on a top table, it's usually different in a positive way.

The scenarios shouldn't be balanced for all armies by virtue of the fact that not all armies excel at the same thing.

shaarn wrote:The scenarios shouldn't be balanced for all armies by virtue of the fact that not all armies excel at the same thing.

Here, I'll give you an extreme example to help you understand.
Scenario: no ranged weapons can be fired.

So that's an okay scenario? I mean not all armies were created equal right, so just suck it up? You'd be totally okay with this in a tournament?

The farther from "normal" a scenario is, the worse the game becomes balance wise. Scenarios should not decide the game, generals should.

Eidolon wrote:Here are a few simple, easy to answer questions for all you tournament gurus.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can answer for me.

1-Do you make a point of playing in any event you can? Be it a little 10 man local tournament or a 20 man 60 miles away?

Yes. Whenever there is a 2 day tournament I think about going no matter where it is. I am more likely to travel for a GW tournament though because you know what you are getting, with indy tournaments it is a crap shoot. When you are playing for a flight and a hotel room, it is best to know what you are getting ahead of time. That is why you will see everyone at Adepticon, because you know it is a quality tournament. This last year no one really traveled far and people played close to home.

2-Are you selective of who you play casually?

I only play at tournaments, so no casual games.

3-How many games do you get in a week.

I get in 3 games every month or 2.

4-Is there a sense of comradery among you best of the best.

There is a lot more camaraderie then you would think. Since they travel around to event to event, they all know each other, and they don't know the locals so they hang out together.

Greg called me an told me he was going up to Conquest NW in Seattle, so I think I will go up there to check it out.

I would assume that you could say 'well i made it to table 1, but lost to Marc, Bill, Allen, Scott', so I didnt do too bad.

What happens is when 2 good players face of it is considered unlucky. Most of the time what happens is that you will get a tie or you squeak out a minor win, and that hurts your score. Marc Parker won the 2008 Las Vegas GT with his Orks but he did not do very well in Baltimore because he had to play a couple of the good players (because of the 'Ard Boyz finals the day before there was an unusual concentration of the heavy hitters). As to the general population they have no idea who Marc Parker is so when he beats you it is just another loss.

So that's an okay scenario? I mean not all armies were created equal right, so just suck it up? You'd be totally okay with this in a tournament?

The farther from "normal" a scenario is, the worse the game becomes balance wise. Scenarios should not decide the game, generals should.

This illustrates my point excellently. Some armies would function perfectly fine under this scenario, and others not so much. If you want balance then you either need to play the same scenario every single time or everyone needs to play the same army.

EDIT: When I was saying that scenarios shouldn't be balanced for all armies I'm basically saying that it is a goal that can't be reached by virtue of the fact that most armies aren't balanced within their list for all aspects of the game and therefore any scenario that has bias one way or the other isn't balanced.

That is exactly true. Just take the scenarios in the BGB. You have 2 objective missions and one KP mission. Even those are not balanced for all armies. What if an army that is designed for objective missions - to the exclusion of KP missions, plays a tournament with random missions from BRB and every one of his games comes up objective. Would you cheapen his victory then saying "well you won because you got all objective missions!".

The fact is that there is no perfect balance in 40k. 40k is designed to having a very diverse set of battles. No particular mission needs to be balanced perfectly. The overall selection of missions being in relative balance is the key. Luck of the draw is part of winning tournaments no matter the sporting event.

As an example of this, I bring you to chess. I am an amateur player of chess, and compete semi regularly. In chess, there is no random luck on the board. There, it is all about skill. Recently I won the amateur event at the biggest local annual open in the city. Now I am a good amateur player, but going 5-0 was not something I expected. In analyzing my victory of the tournament, I couldn't help but notice that the luck of the draw (there is a pairing system, but who is in the pool is the variable, so luck is still a factor in any given event) put me against exactly the right opponents to give me an opportunity to win the whole thing. I did not end up playing a guy who beats me regularly, and a strong junior player I got the advantage of playing white against. Even chess is not perfectly balanced, despite each side being identical save who gets first turn!

The only random variable in my example above is who enters the tournament. Everything else has a system to it. Quite the opposite in 40k, there are so many built in random variables in the game that it is, practically speaking, impossible to achieve a perfect balance in each game. The system looks to provide overall balance, across multiple games. The 2/3 chance of playing objective missions I think is evident of this design intent.

Far out scenarios do make the meta implications of a tournament hard to analyze, but to cheapen the victory of the winner is rude at best, and covetous at worst.

We all knew what they missions where ahead of time, so blaming the outcome on the missions is a bit wrong.

In fact, I knew that I would be screwed in the 3 turns of night fight because Eldar can't see in the dark.

Already (again) there are disagreements on how tourneys should be run:

For those who truly want a 'competitive' tourney, how would you go about getting an FAQ? Everyone I've read online gets blasted and ridiculed.

Scenarios: There are essentially 9 scenarios out of the book. Do you just stick to those and forgoe anything else? Some tourneys post them ahead of time, some do not. I've even read someone blasting the Ard Boyz missions. Heck, they were posted ahead of time and there was no painting requirement for models (not a lot of room here to blame the scenarios for others inability to adapt or just bad luck).

Is every codex created equal? Most don't think so, but when someone tries to make an adjustment for a tourney, those folks get blasted.

3 games isn't competitive; 5 games aren't considered competitive. What would be considered competitive? Right now, there are a handful of folks willing to travel across the country for tourneys. I fail to see this changing b/c of a 'competitive' circuit being introduced. I think you'd still see the same faces showing up.

Personally, I'm hoping these 'competitive' players will develope and run this 'competitive' type tourney. The sad truth is, I doubt it will happen as they are trying to do something with a game in which it was not designed for.

I like the indy scene. I don't mind comp. I don't mind sportsmanship and I don't mind army painting scores. In fact, the only tourney experience I've not liked is the Ard Boyz; where prizes support was larger which seemed to amplify the a**hole attitude with folks.

Bottom line: if folks don't like the current toureny system, pony up and develope one. These indy tourneys are being run by fans of the hobby and the berating attitude gets old. Don't look to GW to do it. It's not their responsibility. They develope and sell product. Use it how you want. It's just my opinion you won't like what you get.

I seriously don't know how to respond. If you take "this scenario doesn't let army X do anything at all." and say "yeah, that sounds about right" then you must have a greatly different concept of everything related to balance, competition, and fun, than I do. Should I just host my own tournaments with scenarios that I let my cat write? "In this scenario all orks move at half speed. Necrons all gain rending. All other armies must move forward at max movement speed if possible."

EDIT: And "blaming" the outcome on missions? Do I have some mysterious beef towards you that I must explain away your victory by blaming missions? No, no I don't. I have an issue with a tournament that creates random, arbitrary scenarios and says "this should be interesting".

ph34r wrote:I seriously don't know how to respond. If you take "this scenario doesn't let army X do anything at all." and say "yeah, that sounds about right" then you must have a greatly different concept of everything related to balance, competition, and fun, than I do. Should I just host my own tournaments with scenarios that I let my cat write? "In this scenario all orks move at half speed. Necrons all gain rending. All other armies must move forward at max movement speed if possible."

EDIT: And "blaming" the outcome on missions? Do I have some mysterious beef towards you that I must explain away your victory by blaming missions? No, no I don't. I have an issue with a tournament that creates random, arbitrary scenarios and says "this should be interesting".

I'm guessing your referring to my post.

Balance? Really? Please explain how Kill Points is balanced for all armies ? I never claimed some missions created by indy tourneys were poorly conceived. But, for some of the bad missions, there have been good ones just as well. And those of us who attend these tourneys do provide constructive feedback to the tourney organizers about what went well and what could be improved upon.

Since you wrote you don't know how to respond, I suppose my other points are fairly valid?

Balance is a myth, it can never exist in any competitive game with any sort of random variables especially when luck is involved. However things balance out in the long term and that is what a competitive player should be playing for. It is why he doesn't use Abaddon or a Bloodfeeder and tries to make a list that is well rounded.

Missions in a tournament are(hopefully) somewhat balanced over the course of the tournament. Kill points will always favor one of two armies in a game but then again so do VPs. VPs were more abusive than KPs(Orks, Mech Eldar give up very little VP during a game compared to most armies) while making your army strong at KPs hampers your ability to take objectives. If your army experiences a disadvantage in the mission variable it may still gain a greater advantage in the pairings and beginning of game variables, not to mention flat out luck. And ultimately fighting a little uphill puts some hair on the chest plate.

Some of your points are fine. Tournaments overall have a lot of problems.
I don't think KP are balanced, but I think that they are a lot more reasonable than "no terrain this mission" or "everyone deep strikes. everyone."
I don't know how to respond to many of your points because I disagree with them so intensely and have provided extreme examples that I thought would be impossible to not understand as being imbalances that should not exist, so I don't know how to proceed. How about "if you are xenos you lose this mission on a 3+, on a 1-2 play as normal", would that be a fun mission? Balanced? Acceptable?

HI all.
I am not a tournament player , but I belive the core descepancy is the strategic focus of the 40k game.

To simplify if we substitute 40k for 'Rock Paper Scissors' for an analagy.

If every one sees 'Rock' as the biggest threat they take 'Paper'.
And get scuppered by all the 'Scissors!'

TTFN
Lanrak.

Blackmoor wrote:We all knew what they missions where ahead of time, so blaming the outcome on the missions is a bit wrong.

In fact, I knew that I would be screwed in the 3 turns of night fight because Eldar can't see in the dark.

This is something that shouldn't happen. 3 turns of night fighting is a good example of a bad mission condition that shouldn't be seen in tournament play, as it arbitrarily rewards some armies and punishes others. The fact that people knew about the bad missions beforehand (except for the no-terrain mission) doesn't excuse the fact that the tournament organizers had three or four bad missions out of five games total. The no-terrain mission is legitimately awful, as it is unstrategic, favors some armies excessively, and violates some of the core principles of 40k.

Perfect balance is impossible. That said, missions should be as balanced as is reasonably possible. No army should go into a battle with a huge advantage or huge disadvantage based solely on the mission being played.

Blackmoor wrote:
I think a large part of why Darkwyn, the guy who won BolsCon and myself got so much flack about our wins, is because we posted our lists and battle reports. Everyone now gets to see how the sausage is made, and we took a lot of mystery out of it.

Here is an example of what happens when you are transparent:
[...]
Here is what happens when you are not transparent:
[...]

So there exists a rather large dis-incentive to be transparent. Why would a winner want to go through the grief of posting bat-reps if all he gets is criticism?

Revealing, I appreciate your input sir.

I agree with fetterkey. I do believe missions should be somewhat balanced. Sure its always good to have crazy scenarios but only too a point. I played a game at an event that was night fight the whole time, on a table that had about 10 big pieces of ruins. You can imagine how my mech eldar did against the poor chaos player i was up against.

Eidolon wrote:I agree with fetterkey. I do believe missions should be somewhat balanced. Sure its always good to have crazy scenarios but only too a point. I played a game at an event that was night fight the whole time, on a table that had about 10 big pieces of ruins. You can imagine how my mech eldar did against the poor chaos player i was up against.

Personally, why can't people adapt to tournament missions and learn how to overcome them instead of complaining that omg they are are all horrible. Don't you think if your supposed to be a "good" player you should be able to overcome missions and still pull out a win?

No. You shouldn't have to "overcome" missions because missions shouldn't be against you in the first place. Adapting to different scenarios, yes-- "overcoming" biased or unfair missions, no.

Fetter how do you call them biased and unfair? The last Ard boy missions were straight out of the book and you guys are still calling them Whacky and making generalization across the whole tournament scene.

Wild West shootout missions were different but having night fight in round 3 really shouldn't be that big of a deal if you know how to handle it.

All of these missions you guys are saying whacky there are solutions to which are pretty obvious and are easy to overcome.

Night fight for 3 turns in one mission isnt bad. No terrain is. thats the only mission I really have issues with.

Not ones that put you on odd footing, but ones that completely change the game up

The Wild West Shootout was by no means the only tournament to use weird or undesirable scenarios. BoLSCon and 'Ard Boyz also had serious problems, though the final round of 'Ard Boyz was much improved over the earlier ones. As for how I call scenarios biased or unfair, I think it is very difficult to honestly claim that scenarios like "you have to kill the enemy HQ to score anything at all" or "no terrain shootout" aren't biased towards one list or another.

Eidolon wrote:Night fight for 3 turns in one mission inst bad. No terrain is. that's the only mission I really have issues with.

Not ones that put you on odd footing, but ones that completely change the game up

Yes, but in games where some tournaments allow you to place terrain I could easily just move terrain to the side of the table and place most of it where it does nothing.

thus reducing the table down from the normal 25% terrain to at least 10% depending on terrain size pieces and having a similar affect. I just have a hard time people blaming and saying missions are the main reason for whatever reason.

Tournaments should (obviously) not allow players to place terrain.

Fetterkey wrote:The Wild West Shootout was by no means the only tournament to use weird or undesirable scenarios. BoLSCon and 'Ard Boyz also had serious problems, though the final round of 'Ard Boyz was much improved over the earlier ones. As for how I call scenarios biased or unfair, I think it is very difficult to honestly claim that scenarios like "you have to kill the enemy HQ to score anything at all" or "no terrain shootout" aren't biased towards one list or another.

and how did Bolscon scenarios have hard problems? What where those issues with those missions? Please enlighten me? Where you there? As most people were happy with those missions from the feedback we have gotten. Did you go to Bolscon even? All of the Bols con missions were based of missions in the book with just additional objectives such as bonus for killing HQ or heavies.

Reading over this I might come off to defensive or at least aggressive and I am sorry if it does but truly I want to know what are the issues they you are seeing because right now it seems you are making a opinion off people who were not even there and they came off from general accusation on being ill formed.

some top players and yes these guys consistently finish high in most events they attend.

Marc p.
Mike M.
Scott s.
Greg S.
Bill K.

there thats five, each one of these have multiple "big" event Wins.

It's been a while but don't forget Shawn Kemp and his sidekick Chris Courtney

Most of the BoLSCon scenarios were OK, with some weird elements but not ones that really tipped the balance, but one was extremely poor. Having to kill all enemy HQs to score is obviously an awful scenario. What if they're playing Space Wolves with four HQs and you're playing Codex Marines with one? You go into the scenario being arbitrarily penalized for no clear reason. That should never happen in a tournament setting. I understand that there's a certain desire to ensure imaginative and interesting scenarios, especially in long tournaments, but that should not trump balance!

BoLSCon had other issues too, such as the idiotic ban on Inquisition units. However, it wasn't all bad-- the idea of a seven-game series for a tournament is very good, and I was pleased to see a strong turnout for the event. The prize support was also very impressive. Hopefully the next BoLSCon will continue along similar lines while avoiding some of the missteps of the inaugural event.

Fetterkey wrote:Most of the BoLSCon scenarios were OK, with some weird elements but not ones that really tipped the balance, but one was extremely poor. Having to kill all enemy HQs to score is obviously an awful scenario. What if they're playing Space Wolves with four HQs and you're playing Codex Marines with one? You go into the scenario being arbitrarily penalized for no clear reason. That should never happen in a tournament setting. I understand that there's a certain desire to ensure imaginative and interesting scenarios, especially in long tournaments, but that should not trump balance!

BoLSCon had other issues too, such as the idiotic ban on Inquisition units. However, it wasn't all bad-- the idea of a seven-game series for a tournament is very good, and I was pleased to see a strong turnout for the event. The prize support was also very impressive. Hopefully the next BoLSCon will continue along similar lines while avoiding some of the missteps of the inaugural event.

So lets break down some things here too for your benefit and everyone else. The ban you are talking about was with inquisition units allied was because with the New guard codex and the short amount of time it was too close to get everything together and make it correct and right. We could rush it but we would have some issues and rather push out a better product then push out a bad product. As for the mission to about HQ and kill points wasn't affected like you think it was across any of the tournament players. You still gained Kill points for when you killed units but it just switched the idea of what units to kill at certain times.

I am sure that Same Space wolf player would hide all of his Hq so in theory he think he could win but you know what he would probably take out about half his force off the table and would do nothing because he is playing Mother hen. The Space marine player could hide and always protect himself if need to and out survive it. I think a scenario like this is where a player should be able to adapt and overcome to pull out a win.

I honestly can't tell what you're saying here. Were you associated with BoLSCon in some way? If so, cool-- congratulations on your event going well. Like I said, I was happy to see BoLSCon succeed, and I'm hoping that next year it will be even better!

I only played first round ard boyz. Went on vacation during round 2. But the missions were pretty good if I remember them correctly.

Missions such as 'night fight all game' or 'remove all terrain' are terrible.

Missions such as kill the enemy hq are fine. So what if that wolf player does have 4 hqs. Thats a third to half his army in points on characters who can get their heads ripped off by power fists. And the rest of his army would struggle in normal missions.

I find this kind of discussion interesting and valuable. However, I am frustrated by opinions that by talking about the game, and educating players One reduces one's chance to win. This ultimately turns the hobby into a very closed-rank mentality of gamesmanship. This may be an outgrowth of the kinds of folks that play with little plastic men. But it is a culture that I feel needs to change.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a very good point, how many times has someone asked you what do you think about my army? Me, I'll point out what I think is working and what isn't, but I like to ask why do you have that unit? Play style makes all the difference in army construction and exicution on the table.
But on the other hand how many times have people told you that "that unit dosn't work, why would I try that".
Actually sitting down and playing out a few turns and having a AAR "after action review" of what worked and what didn't is very hard because most people only run into a certain Good General at a tournament so the opertunity isn't there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Eidolon wrote:
Here are a few simple, easy to answer questions for all you tournament guros.

1-Do you make a point of playing in any event you can? Be it a little 10 man local tournament or a 20 man 60 miles away?

2-Are you selective of who you play casually?

3-How many games do you get in a week.

4-Is there a sense of comradery among you best of the best. I would assume that you could say 'well i made it to table 1, but lost to Marc, Bill, Allen, Scott', so I didnt do too bad.
----------------------------------------
1. more major than lesser
2. yes , time is the enemy
3. maybe 1 or 2 every couple of weeks
4. without a doubt, we all know who is up there, it actually make for a great last game


Greg is right, who has the time to post battle reports and get into the internet drama( i lurk, more because of time) but I work hard on a list, battletest, tinker with, why should I post it for someone to just copy it and then tell me it sucks, go make your own list.

Looking at what people put up and post can give you some good ideas, but you have to make it your own.