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Who won?



Clay

Damn good question.

Best Overall (Golden Ticket): Dave Fay (Tie Breaker came down to Sportsmanship votes)

2nd Overall: Reece (Reecius) who tied with Fay on total points

Best General (Golden Ticket): Dashofpepper

I merely managed to come in 3rd highest BP's and 5th overall.

Ironically, Hulk also managed to help Dash out by painting the army Dash had better than his own.

Overall - David Fay (heavily themed fluffy Nurgle Chaos Marine army) won on tie breakers

Best General- Justin Hilderbrant aka Dash of Pepper (Dark Eldar Witch List)
2nd General- Reece Robins aka Reecius (Guard)
3rd General- Brad Townsend aka Hulksmash (Razorspam SWolves)

Best Painted- Anthony Wang (Heavily converted Nurgle Chaos Marines)
2n Best Painted- Ryan Shepard (Guard)
3rd Best Painted- Kieth Silva (Eldar)

Best Sportsman- Touradj Mansouri aka Dark General (Daemons) also had lowest judged comp
2nd Sportsman- Geoffrey Zatkin (Orks)
3rd Sportsman- Jon Regul aka Yakface (Tau)

Players Choice- George Mason (Blood Angels)

Last Place- Tracy Gitchell (Chaos Marines)

Top 5 Overall were (in Order):
David Fay, Reese Robins, Justin Hilderbrandt, Geoffy Zatkin, and Brad Townsend

Battle Points wise it was:
Justin Hilderbrant (76), Reese Robins (75), Brad Townsend (73), David Fay (72), Geoffry Zatkin (69)

David and Reese were tied on overall points, but David won the tie breaker, which was Player's Choice votes, with 4 votes to two. Both are excellent players and great to play and we would have been proud to hand either the trophy, but the pre-established tie breaker rules in the packet put the overall in David's hands, so hats off to the him.

Not counting the trophies themselves, we handed out just under 2k in prize support. A good chunk of it came from Romeo at Battle Foam, who showed the patience of a saint while I frantically described the 14k of fantasy Daemons and 14k of allied inquisition to him that I wanted crammed into two cases. The 3rd placers generally walked off with $60 in prizes, while the top spots in each catagory walked off with 2-300 in prize support.

The results were really close and our numbers are still lower than we want, but I felt this year was a big improvement in execution. Outside of Necrons, Templars, and Sisters, all armies were represented to some degree. Once I have a chance to put it into PDF form, I will link the PDF file to this site with all the detailed results by catagory.

Once again, thanks to all the Dakka-ites who made the trip up.

Phazael wrote:Ironically, Hulk also managed to help Dash out by painting the army Dash had better than his own.

Overall - David Fay (heavily themed fluffy Nurgle Chaos Marine army) won on tie breakers

Best General- Justin Hilderbrant aka Dash of Pepper (Dark Eldar Witch List)
2nd General- Reece Robins aka Reecius (Guard)
3rd General- Brad Townsend aka Hulksmash (Razorspam SWolves)

Best Painted- Anthony Wang (Heavily converted Nurgle Chaos Marines)
2n Best Painted- Ryan Shepard (Guard)
3rd Best Painted- Kieth Silva (Eldar)

Best Sportsman- Touradj Mansouri aka Dark General (Daemons) also had lowest judged comp
2nd Sportsman- Geoffrey Zatkin (Orks)
3rd Sportsman- Jon Regul aka Yakface (Tau)

Players Choice- George Mason (Blood Angels)

Last Place- Tracy Gitchell (Chaos Marines)

Top 5 Overall were (in Order):
David Fay, Reese Robins, Justin Hilderbrandt, Geoffy Zatkin, and Brad Townsend

Battle Points wise it was:
Justin Hilderbrant (76), Reese Robins (75), Brad Townsend (73), David Fay (72), Geoffry Zatkin (69)

David and Reese were tied on overall points, but David won the tie breaker, which was Player's Choice votes, with 4 votes to two. Both are excellent players and great to play and we would have been proud to hand either the trophy, but the pre-established tie breaker rules in the packet put the overall in David's hands, so hats off to the him.

Not counting the trophies themselves, we handed out just under 2k in prize support. A good chunk of it came from Romeo at Battle Foam, who showed the patience of a saint while I frantically described the 14k of fantasy Daemons and 14k of allied inquisition to him that I wanted crammed into two cases. The 3rd placers generally walked off with $60 in prizes, while the top spots in each catagory walked off with 2-300 in prize support.

The results were really close and our numbers are still lower than we want, but I felt this year was a big improvement in execution. Outside of Necrons, Templars, and Sisters, all armies were represented to some degree. Once I have a chance to put it into PDF form, I will link the PDF file to this site with all the detailed results by catagory.

Once again, thanks to all the Dakka-ites who made the trip up.

Grats to all the winners!

Phaz. Army Lists of the top generals would be nice.

I am reluctant to release army lists without the person's permission, but let me discuss it with the rest of our league staff. I know Fay wouldn't mind his list being revealed, so here is what I recall from memory:
Nurgle Prince with Wings and Warp Time
Nurgle Lord on a bike with Daemon Weapon
Four 7 Man Plague Marine squads (2x Plasma squads, 1 Melta Squad, 1 Flamer Squad)
All had leaders with Combi versions of the same weapon the squad had and a fist.
All four had Rhinos with Combi Meltas and Pintle Combi Bolters
2 Defiliers with all the weapons stripped off
Dreadnaught with a heavy flamer

Pretty tame, especially considering what the other chaos players were running in the room.

Hulk ran his Razorspam and I am sure he would be happy to post his list when he does his Bat Reps.

Zatkin ran a Cult of Speed army with three Roller Wagons, but the rest of his list was a mish mash of truck boyz and other random junk, like a single Kopta and a three man Meganobz squad. Really tame.

Dash ran an all mounted Dark Eldar Wytch army led by Hesperax and backed by one Ravager and two Talos, if memory serves.

Reecius ran a hybrid guard army that was pretty well tuned, but not especially mech spammy.

All the top dogs either are frequent posters here or played one of them, so I am sure the information will be forthcomming.

Awesome time! I had a great weekend, all my opponents were just cool guys, every game was a very hard fought battle, and all of them were very good players. I couldn't ask for anything more from a tournament in terms of competition.

My list was pretty mild, it is basically a 4th edition guard army with Marbo and a Vendetta.

Dash's army had not Talos, but 3 ravagers. Very, very nasty. He had the tools to ruin any MEQ player's day.

Dave Fay just barely beat me out for best overall and his list is very mild. He is though, truly one of the most skilled players I have ever met.

Again, awesome time! I sincerely hope more people come out to the next one as the event was very well run and great fun.

I was sooooooooooo close to getting my ticket this time! There were so many little what ifs that would have gotten me the one extra battle point to take best overall!

Oh well, I still have time ot get my Golden Ticket.

Thanks for running the great event guys!

A big congratz to all the winners!

That's just awesome news to hear... Man, I wish I had been able to go.

http://www.scgwl.com/downloads/SIS10/Scores.pdf

That is the link to the PDF of the final score sheet. I blanked the individual player scored comp and sports, but the totals are there. The Army Comp column represents what the judges assessed the lists and was used solely to pair the first two rounds. There are also two people who dropped who are not on the list.

Hey Phazael, I did at least paint my army better according to you guys than I did Dash's , not by much but 4 points is 4 points

I stand corrected!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ps- If anyone knows how to get this to player rankings or whatever that site is, I would appreciate this being forwarded to them.

Just do a google search for 'HQ Ranking'.

G

So one person dinged me one point on sports, I guess I can handle that Though, even that 1 point is rough, given the field of play. However, I got stomped on player scored comp.. 24! The only player comp worse than mine was "The Dark Generals." This would not greatly change my "rank" since my generalship was admittedly lacking, but just goes to show its not about the list, its about who you end up being paired up with.

This actually upsets me a little, but I'll get over it.

As far as the missions.. here is my summary of the really poor ones.

Mission 3, the one where you destroy objectives, was horrendous. It had a few auto win situations, one which the Dark General (who played deamons) knows too well, since the worst scoring comp got an auto-lose. My opponent didn't see the hole in the mission and initially said he would keep everything in reserve. I know his thoughts were probably that since I won initiative and deployed a steel wall, that it would be better if I had nothing to shoot at. However, as the mission is written, and since I have three skimmers with scout transporting troops, I would have been able to destroy both of his objectives before he put a model on the table. My thoughts, as I thought I was a good sportsman, was to admit that I didn't want to win that way, and reminded him of the mission rules before pretty much auto winning the mission. In hindsight, this might have been a mistake, since throughout the tournament, after seeing my own sportsman and player comp, it's become clear that this sort of behavior is not appreciated Hopefully it is, but I probably wouldn't do it again... I may not have been WAAC before, but that may change Anyway, poor mission.

Mission 4, the objectives in this mission were interesting, with objective to destroy org slots, but this created an interesting "we can both score high" or "both score low" situation, which can skew the oeverall results. This was not the big problem in my game though. The bigger issue was the preliminary bombardment rule that for each unit roll a d6 and on a 6 vehicles are stunned or non-vehicles take d6 wounds. My opponent was rolling hot, even rolling with my own die , and manage to stun pretty much everything I had on the table. In turn, I roll and I don't get one 6... he is fully operational. Fine, this is a dice game, but that swung the game so far that it took everything I had to make it competitive and I somehow eeked out 12 points and he managed to get 15 points. Not bad, but the that aspect of the mission put too much control in the "warp"

The rest were ok... I misplayed the first mission, but that was on me. The rules were clear, I just got "primary objective" blind and wasn't fully considering the impacts of the secondary objectives.

I had fun overall, though with anonymity, I have found some folk to be a bit picky in their assessment of comp.

I was only 2 comp points above you for the weekend Absoluteblue and I was initially comped only 1 point higher by the judges for initial pairings. To make it funnier it was my first 2 rounds that I lost those comp points against. So basically the two other lowest comp guys dinged my comp They were up front about it but I still found it funny. Plus with only a 7 point spread between 1st and 5th every single point counted

I am sure Reecius comp ding of 1 point was pretty critical too

Mission 4 was Scott's baby and its not my place to comment on it, other than to say that its the one that got the most revisions in playtesting.

Mission 3 was the one I designed and I think some people missed the point of it, somewhat. I wanted to make an objective mission that eliminated both "reserve hammer" and the infamous last turn eldar objective denial swoop that everyone hates. The idea was for people to position defensive units on their own objectives, initially, and use the rest of their army to press the other objectives and then withdraw once the damage was done. The people who understood it really enjoyed it. The people who played it like a standard Capture and Control were really frustrated by it. I think next time we might put a small hint section in on the more complex scenarios including comments from the playtesters to avoid that.

Overall, the goal was to force diversified armies, make very wide spread of battle points (minimizing the need for tie breakers in pairings and awards), and make it extremely difficult to maximize battle points. I think the battle points reflect that we accomplished that goal, but that is not to say that everyone was happy with it.

Yeah, the one guy who knocked my comp by one point cost my the tournament! Haha, oh well. It turns out my list was illegal anyway due to an oversight on my part that was covered in a FAQ that I missed, so I am glad I didn't get the ticket this time as it would have been controversial.

Great tournament though.

I think mission 3 was an interesting idea but you should never have a mission where the best certain armies can do is tie. If Daemons go second, there are many armies that will have the objectives first turn and be winning 12-0. It also favors mech in an edition that already favors mech and assault armies which don't need the help, and some armies just can't hold their ground for 6 turns and need to be able to move off an objective and then come back.

The mission needs a tweak or it is inherently unfair against an army that cannot start on the table. It needs some kind of tweak. Something like:

Force the check only at the end of the opponents turn.

Force the unit to be there for two whole turns uncontested to complete the mission

Make it more of a "you score points the longer you're there" count instead of all or nothing

Make the objectives something that can be picked up/owned but only by the attacker (and the owning unit drops it where it is if it dies)

Something, anything to give the army that can't defend their objective first turn a chance.

You can also prevent denial swoop by making controlling/contesting based on number of units, not just "it is controlled/it is contested".

Mission 4 I actually liked, except for the fact that it was one of two missions during the weekend that actually favored having more units while none of the missions favored having fewer. It also penalizes older codexes - some armies just have absolutely nothing worthwhile in the fast attack slot, and sometimes both in FA and Elites. I got 6 points by turn two in that mission due to no FA chaos losing its only elite on a deep strike mishap. It also needed more of a reason to actually take your opponent off the second objective...multiple games people were content to split the objectives and then just shoot at each other to try to get those last kill points, because they didn't gain anything from taking the objective, just took points from their opponent. This may not happen on the top tables, but it is kind of weird to have a mission where both players can score a 16 point tie. Some players "won" but got fewer points from the primary than they did from the secondary+bonus points. I for example "won" 14-12 with more points in primary but 8 of those points were secondary objective and both bonuses.

@Blue

Edited because Reece brought it up first

But I agree that at the top that 1-4 points is a huge spread. But so is painting so I just take it the same way. Basically if I'd played better I'd have made up the difference

@Phazael

The Daemon thing on 3 got completely missed by me too or I would have been far more vocal about it. It need further modfication or to be totally dropped as a concept due to it being an auto-lose for some codexes.

And my only problem with 4 is that the primary points were heavily spread out. Making it damn near impossible to pull in a high point score on that one if you played a good opponent. Just check your point spread on that one and you'll see what I mean.

Overall I had a blast and so did everyone else I talked to. Even the daemon who auto-tie/lost mission 3 and the two guys who mission 1's random booby traps hosed. Everyone there had nothing but good things to say about the event. There was no screaming, no shocked looks when the winners were announced, nobody in between rounds saying that that last mission was BS. All in all the best you can ask for running an Indy GT and it's an event you'll see me at next year too

And promoting to all my gaming friends for a few months leading up to it too. I want to see more people next year!

When your playing 5 games in 2 days in a competitive enviornment, do you need missions that complicated? Interesting missions mabey, but one where people don't get what you wanted them to do is too much.


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When your playing 5 games in 2 days in a competitive enviornment, do you need missions that complicated? Interesting missions mabey, but one where people don't get what you wanted them to do is too much.

Seeing as the average sportsmanship score was 29.7 and the average player comp score was 28.4 everyone at least was playing nice! My poor Tau, below average player comp.

It was a good event. I wish the turnout was better, but that was probably a lot about timing (adepticon and others being near by probably hurt a bit).

For mission 3, basically what lambadomy said I can blame my opponent for not being familiar enough with the missions, but I honestly wanted a competitive fight not an auto-win. I informed him of such and that made it competitive. I knew I wasn't going to be a contender in the prize pool, so it was a non-issue. But, something to consider for next time.

For mission 4, i agree with Hulksmash. We played agressive (which I would have recommended for anyone else, since holding back doesn't help you, it really just hinders your opponent). I could have reserved out for mission 4 and not dealt with the stuns, but then I risk the bleed in result, which also leaves your fate in the hands of the dice (more than I would like). The massive amount of stuns just sealed my fate.

For comp, it actually isn't such a big issue, since I expected to get dinged for emperor's tarot, mystics, and table wide hood and overwhelming the shooting phase. However, my lessons learned from BSB still hold and keep bringing competitive lists... maybe someday my generalship will match up to the list I bring


Again, had a lot of fun... no complaints of significance either, the the couple mission quips above I plan on showing up next year, if that says anything.

Phazael wrote:Mission 4 was Scott's baby and its not my place to comment on it, other than to say that its the one that got the most revisions in playtesting.

Mission 3 was the one I designed and I think some people missed the point of it, somewhat. I wanted to make an objective mission that eliminated both "reserve hammer" and the infamous last turn eldar objective denial swoop that everyone hates. The idea was for people to position defensive units on their own objectives, initially, and use the rest of their army to press the other objectives and then withdraw once the damage was done. The people who understood it really enjoyed it. The people who played it like a standard Capture and Control were really frustrated by it. I think next time we might put a small hint section in on the more complex scenarios including comments from the playtesters to avoid that.

Phaz an easy way to maybe balance mission 3 would be to prevent destruction of objectives before turn X to allow slower reserve armies a chance to compete in it while at the same time preventing last minute cap control contesting.

I'll post my list and all pictures and battle reports this week/weekend as time presents itself (as I always do).

I made a couple of mistakes this weekend that cost me best overall, which I'll discuss in my battle reports, and my game 5 against David Faye didn't get through 5 turns...or 4 turns....but that was probably because of a combination of things involving me being unfamiliar with my army, and perhaps the empty bottle of Captain Morgan's I discarded at the end of the 5th round that I opened at lunch (just before the 5th round).

David was an incredible opponent, and while he left me with a new respect for chaos, I'm simply glad that I didn't have to play against Brad (Hulksmash) - his razorback spam + 19 missile launchers are the bane of my Dark Eldar, and I whispered feverish prayers that I wouldn't face him round 5 and get stomped on, although David did a fairly good job in Brad's absence of stomping on me anyway.

*EDIT* And most important of all, I'm just glad that Dark Eldar took a Golden ticket to represent that they're still a competitive army.

Congrats, Dash! And nice to meet you man.

Yeah, Dave is an exceptional player.

Way to go on best general, you just edged me out! I was hoping Dave would hold you to 4 points so I would take it.

But it is for the best that I didn't as it turns out I am a dirty rotten cheater! haha.

But Reece, It's no fun when all of us are adults. Then there is no drama!!!!!!!

And I second Dave is a great player and deserved the overall win. 4 favorite opponent votes ain't no joke! And his army on it's base looked pretty

Let me start by saying that the tournament was run very well and that I had a fun time. I had 5 very good opponents, and I gave everyone max points (even though Sergio forgot his scatter dice, and George had an assault army that dominated one phase of the game, but was fun to play against. They were both Blood Angels players, so what does that tell you?)

I was going to write up my thoughts about the missions tomorrow, but since everyone is talking about them now, I will give my $.02.

Mission #1: Planetfall
Primary: This mission was fine, but it was a bad combination of having a strange deployment zone+Dawn of War+ objectives in the middle of the board. By the time my opponent and I got to the objectives, it was turn #5 and the game was over in a tie.
Secondary: What was bad about this was you got 5 points for keeping our opponent out of your deployment zone. The problem with this mission was you were going to get 5 points for just sitting around and not doing anything (not only that, but you were both going to get the points). You should have some incentive for you to get into your opponent’s deployment zone, and to keep them out of yours. It would have been better if you got 5 points if you have more units in your opponent’s deployment zone than he has in yours, 3 if you have the same amounts of units, and 0 if you have less. That way you have an incentive to cross the board. Of course you can’t do that secondary objective in Dawn of War with a different deployment zone because foot slogging armies have no way of getting across the board in time to make it into your opponent’s deployment zone.

Mission #2
Primary: Where do I begin? Large multi-unit armies will dominate this mission. Especially armies that can expnad or contract units at will like SM and IG. I played a small, elite chaos army and there was no way that I could blast 5 raiders out of the sky, and then kill their contents all the while not lose any units to 7 plasma cannons, and 13 dark lances.
Secondary: Some HQs are leading the charge, and others are in the rear with the gear. Keith S. had Eldrad and the Avatar which are almost impossible to kill, and on the other hand George M. just had Astoroth the Grim, and he is by himself and in front leading the charge and is easy to take out. I don’t like awarding points just by the luck of the draw.

Mission #3:
I liked this mission, and the only downside it looks like was some unforeseen strange match-up. With a modification or two this could be a fine mission.

Mission #4
I did not like this mission. Some armies can flood a huge portion of each of Elites, Fast Attack, Troops and Heavy Support. If you wanted to all you had to do is buy a couple of cheap units to cover your slots and hide them the whole game and you could not do anything about it. For example, I could play IG and take something like an allied Inquisitor (with a psychic hood of course) and hide all game, and deny my opponent points. In my game my opponent killed my greater demon and that was it, and I wiped out his whole army except for a tac marine squad with a sanguinary high priest in a rhino, and an attack bike, and we tied because at the end of the game he ran and hid, and his vehicles were too fast for me to catch them. Also he got 6 points off of me before the game started because chaos has poor elites (or at least very situational) and they have bad fast attack choices. It is strange that you earn 6 points just by showing up, and doing nothing to earn them. On the other hand I should have played my Eldar army that can fill all of the FoC slots with good units. Also this was another mission where both you and your opponents can score max points. There was an incentive to run at each other and kill each other off, and points should be rewarded so you have a winner and a loser.
Secondary/Bonus points: You should get more points for holding your opponent’s objective than holding your own.

Missions #5
Secondary: Some armies have a ton of troops, others do not. Space Marines can combat squad and be all over the table with scoring units, so can Imperial Guard and Dark Eldar. Some armies have very expensive troops and can’t hold table quarters well. If your army started with 3 troops, there is no way that you can get max points on this mission.

It's nice to know that Alan (Blackmoor) doesn't like my list!


Ok, so I'm actually still pretty tired and still haven't shaken this stupid cold/cough. But, I had a freakin' blast!!!!

Yeah, it's kinda funny that I won the Best Sportsmanship with the lowest Comped list out there! LMFAO!!! But in actuallity, the list isn't nearly as bad as many make it seem. It's definitely tough as nails to kill, but the nature of the Army makes it less powerful. Way too random to be a serious competitive Army unless you have loaded dice.

There were some very nice looking Armies out there, and some like mine! I think each player there was well behaved for the most part, and the tournament did indeed run smoothly. I'm the one who actually started the first SoCal Slaughter (Fantasy) a few years back, and it's very rewarding to see it grow into what it is now!

Now when it comes to the Scenarios, I definitely wasn't a fan of any of them, except maybe #5...but only because it heavily favors my Army in some ways...here's some thoughts from a Daemon players perspective...

Scenario #1: Cool idea, but I could've auto-won this almost because of my Army build, and Brad could've done nothing about it. Instead, I played for fun and the theme of my Army and ran at him attempting to kill every model I could and collect as many skullz as possible! In the end I of course "loose" the game, but crushed Brad's Army...he he he...we'll have re-match I'm sure!

Scenario #2: This is just silly. Too hard for high points costing Armies to win unless you're almost tabling your opponent. Imperial Guard, Bugz, etc. all have a huge favor in this one. I happened to get lucky in my match up and faced another high point costing list and was able to take away most of his strengths (no Armor and no Feel-No-Pain).

Scenario #3: I hated this one. Stupid that I almost auto-loose on ONE dice roll! Oh, I don't get the first turn...boom, 12 Battle Points for my opponent, I can't get certain Battle Points now...best hope is a Draw??? I played Erik on this one, and it was or 3 time facing each other. Great guy, and he apologized all game for the bad scenario...but it was still a fun game because we made it one! More Skullz for the Throne! LOL!

Scenario #4: Odd, and some Army books can easily abuse this one...keeping track of and calculating Fast and Elite and all that was a bit of a pain and took some of the fun out of it, but my combat Daemons fought mostly combat Tyranidz and Kevin was a very gracious and easy going opponent! The wording was poor on the Prelim bombardment, so my Bloodcrushers took some wounds, as did 5 of Kevin's units, 3 of which weren't on the table. This scenario gave a huge advantage to Daemon Armies and Reserve Assault Armies like Tyranids, so it worked out that we faced each other, but would've been very unfair against most other Armies.

Scenario #5: Fun scrap! But in a Slaugther Style Kill Point mission, keeping enough Troops around for Table Quarters seemed very anti-clamactic...took some of the umph out of it I feel, and totall hammers armies that don't have at least 4 troops on the board (that live on top of that!).



The Prize Support was AMAZING!!! I'm not a big 40K player as many know, more of a Fantasy and Apoc guy, but I did have a ton of fun, and it was great to face 4 players I've never played before! Next year, my game #5 opponent Dawson and I plan on taking ZERO Comp lists next year to face each other in Game #1 for a re-match! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!

thedarkgeneral wrote: It's nice to know that Alan (Blackmoor) doesn't like my list!
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!

It scares me.

I wake up in a cold sweat at night thinking about it.


In hindsight, I should have been more afraid of the Dark Eldar armies.

In 7 games at Adepticon my only loss was to Dark Eldar, and now after 5 games at the Slaughter my only loss was to Dark Eldar.

Great run event, I had a blast and it was fun to meet everyone and see some old friends too. Kudos to the event organizers for taking the time and effort to run this puppy.


Before I write anything even remotely critical, I want to put out the standard proviso that I think the missions were fine. For the most part we knew what they were ahead of time, something many tournaments don't even do, and at the end of the day you still have to play the game and accomplish the objectives. The most important thing was that the missions were varied enough that while one or two missions might have felt like they screwed you, I think every army probably felt like that in a different one or two missions. The players that won were obviously those that were able to overcome the odds in the missions that were stacked against them.

So ultimately I think the overall package of missions was nicely balanced and I have absolutely no major complaints as a player about the missions. If anything I think you guys should consider only publishing a collection of 'test' scenarios with the very clear caveat that anything published ahead of time may or may not be representative of the final published mission. That way people who completely build their armies to take advantage of a mission objective can't really get bent out of shape if that objective doesn't end up in the final missions as they were warned ahead of time to build a balanced list to take on any type of objective.


But anyway, with all that said, I know you guys are always open to constructive criticism and I certainly think that the missions overall have some room for improvement, so I figured I'd post.


I'm a big fan of having multi-tiered missions as you guys did. I think they really help to mitigate simple 'bad matchups' and allow players to focus on trying to accomplish what their army is best at while trying to deny the same for the opponent. However, it is of vital importance to make sure that the different mission objectives are varied between the different types of army specialties, because if they aren't then basically you don't have a tiered mission, you just have a mission with one basic type of objective with different levels of success, but fails because if an army type isn't good at accomplishing that one objective type, then the entire game is basically an uphill battle.

Essentially there are two different 'types' of basic mission objective in 40K, that being area control (table objectives) and enemy destruction/preservation of your own forces (kill points). On a tournament level there are many, many variations of these two objective types but is always important to remember which one of these two disciplines each mission objective falls into, as in order to have a good varied mission, you need to make sure you don't make a mission 'tripled up' on one of these two types of objectives or the other.

Just some of the variations of 'area control' discipline are (I'll call this discipline 'A' from here on out):

Basic objectives from the rulebook (and any variations on how to capture or control these).

Table Quarter or deployment zone capturing (or holding).

Terrain feature capturing.

Center of the table capturing.

Some of the variations of 'enemy destruction/preservation of your own forces' discipline are (I'll call this discipline 'B' from here on out):

Kill Points from the rulebook (and any variation on these).

Victory Points from the rulebook (an any variation on these).

Destroying particular units in the opponents army (such as certain FOC choices or the most/least expensive unit).

Keeping certain units from your own army alive (such as certain FOC choices or the most/least expensive unit).

Obviously some armies are better or worse at accomplishing one type of these or the other and vice-versa. Again, I believe that a good mission is one that is varied enough that every type of army is challenged by at least one of the mission objectives in every mission regardless of what enemy they're playing. The very best way to ensure that this always happens is to make sure that you never 'triple up' your mission objectives in any one area and you make sure that when you have two objectives coming from one discipline that you make sure the one objective you have from the other discipline awards either the most or 2nd most battle points. You never want to make the odd mission objective the lowest battle point provider because then again you're weighting the points available for the mission too heavily towards a player who has a good opponent match-up rather than to someone who is able to overcome weaknesses in their own army.


So let's take a look at your missions:


MISSION 1: PLANETFALL
Primary: Objective control (discipline A)
Secondary: Keep the enemy out of your deployment zone (discipline A)
Bonus: Destroy enemy Heavy Support (discipline B) and keep your expensive Troops alive (discipline B)

OVERALL GRADE: Fail, as the odd discipline (bonus objective) gives out the fewest amount of battle points, which means that armies which have an easier time controlling objectives are going to dominate this mission. By simply swapping the Bonus and Secondary missions around, that alone would help to make the mission more balanced, as players with armies that excel in enemy destruction will likely get a fair amount of points while still needing to play out of their 'comfort zone' to get the primary.


MISSION 2: CUT THE HEAD OFF THE BEAST
Primary: Kill Points not including transports (discipline B)
Secondary: Destroying enemy HQ units (discipline B)
Bonus: Your HQ destroys opponent's HQ (discipline B)

OVERALL GRADE: Major fail, as all three objectives fall into discipline B, which means that players with a good matchup are HEAVILY favored to get all the points for this mission. So again, there should be some type of area control objective in every single mission, and if two of the objectives are from discipline B then the one from discipline A should be at least the secondary objective.


MISSION 3: STRIKE AT THE HEART
Primary: Destroy enemy objectives (discipline A)
Secondary: Keep your objectives alive (discipline A)
Bonus: If One of your HQs destroys the objective (discipline A)

OVERALL GRADE: Major fail, as all three objectives fall into discipline A, which is the essentially the same as Mission 2, but just on the opposite end of the spectrum. While it may seem that by having two opposed missions like this would be 'fair' overall for the tournament, this actually isn't necessarily true, as instead it really heightens the importance of the matchup you draw for that round, because these missions weighted towards one spectrum tend to favor one army or the other being able to dominate the mission completely, which is almost always going to mean that players with a good matchup are going to get max points for the mission, while someone with a bad matchup is going to tend to get completely rolled. On the other hand, if your missions are always split between disciplines, then good players will be able to score some points for a close game even when the overall mission objectives aren't that favorable to their army type.


MISSION 4: THINNING THEIR NUMBERS
Primary: Destroy enemy force org choices (discipline B)
Secondary: Control your own objective markers (discipline A)
Bonus: Control enemy objectives (discipline A) and Destroy enemy HQ choices (discipline B)

OVERALL GRADE: Pass. With Discipline B making up the primary and one of the bonuses and discipline A making up the secondary and another one of the bonuses, this is the first mission to be very well balanced from the standpoint of varied objective types.


MISSION 5: NO HOLDING BACK
Primary: Slaughter Kill Points (discipline B)
Secondary: Control Table quarters (discipline A)
Bonus: No bonus

OVERALL GRADE: Pass. While lacking any third tier (bonus) objectives, this is a pretty solid mission from an objective balance standpoint in that both kill-style and control style armies have something at least to play for.



As you can see, based on my grading system, only 2 of the 5 missions pass the very basic tournament mission design guidelines I feel are important to promote a nice balanced tournament experience for all players. Again, I want to emphasize that if you look of the spread of the missions above, it is pretty clear that there is a nice split between missions dominated by discipline A and B, which means that overall the tournament was definitely well balanced. But not including the same kind of balance within each mission itself really does mean that WHAT type of opponent you draw in which particular mission will have an elevated impact on the tournament (i.e. luck of the draw plays an even bigger factor than it should).


Now obviously it doesn't all come down to objective balance onto whether a not a mission is really great or not. There are some other major no-nos I think are easy to avoid that can really help to make a tournament mission either great or not so great.


1) Remove Unneeded randomness: We all know that 40K is a game that can be dominated by randomness (i.e. luck). Hell, the single roll for the first turn has a major, major impact on every game. Introducing further randomness into the game via missions can be okay, but only if done so that it is combined with some sort of tactical or strategic element for players to interact with.

For example, the 'preliminary bombardment' in mission #4. At least as written it doesn't specify that units in Reserve aren't hit by the bombardment, but assuming that's how you intended it to be played, that still isn't much of a tactical choice, as there are some armies who can gladly keep all their units off the table and there are others who just can't. So ultimately it just ends up being a completely random element to the game. Maybe both players roll roughly the same number of 'hits' on each other, but it is absolutely possible that one side will suffer more (or more costly) losses than the other player and all because of something they really can't control...not an addition to the tournament that really rewards good play.

Instead, you could do something like give the preliminary bombardment rule to the player who goes 2nd...now all of a sudden you're giving players more of a tactical choice which suddenly makes the random element of the 'preliminary bombardment' a whole lot more interesting from a gameplay perspective rather than just a random element which can screw one player who gets really crappy luck.


2) Don't Penalize Players For Their Codex: Not all codices are created equally. In some codices, the Heavy Support choices are dynamite while the Elites choices aren't all that hot. In other codices the Troops choices are amazing while the Fast Attack choices kind of suck, etc, etc, etc. At the end of the day a player should be able to select his army as he likes to play it and expect to be able to accomplish the mission objectives with the tools he has selected. The only force organization recognition the mission rulebooks recognize is that 'Troops' are the only scoring units, so this is really the only mandate that tournament missions should stick with as anything else will always have the side effect of punishing certain armies and rewarding others simply based on what units in the codex are quality or not.

IMHO, your missions have WAY too many objectives based on Force Organization choices. Having objectives based on the most expensive or least expensive units are fine, because across the board every codex follows the basic idea of more points = more powerful unit and less points = less powerful unit, so basing objectives around this mechanic will always be more or less balanced across every codex.

Mission #1 wants you to destroy enemy Heavy Support and keep your most expensive troops unit alive. What about armies that have crappy (or easy to destroy) Heavy Support? And the most expensive Troops choice is soooo wildly divergent dependent on army type. A giant Ork Mob is infinitely more durable than a max size Firewarrior squad, for example.

Mission #2 has you destroying enemy HQs (and trying to do so with your HQ). Again, some armies have weak or more of a support HQ. Why should a player be punished for not taking a strong HQ unit (if they even have that option)? Shouldn't the player be able to create his army as he likes to play with it?

Mission #3 has HQ units trying to destroy objectives. Again, the quality of an HQ choice varies tremendously based on codex.

Mission #4 has players attempting to destroy whole FOC 'groups' (e.g. all 'Elites', all 'Fast Attack', etc) as well as killing an opponents HQ. This is probably the worst offender of all, basically rewarding players who simply walk up to the table against an opponent who hasn't taken any choices from one or more of these 'groups'. How in gods name is this a mission objective (as written) that rewards good play?

At the end of the day, these are essentially a version of comp scoring built right into battle points. The problem I have with this is, #1, you already have comp scoring in the tournament (both player and judges), so why impose further comp restrictions in the missions themselves? And worst of all, these types of arbitrary bonuses/penalties really do affect different codices completely differently. So rather than deciding your battle points DURING the game, you're already either handicapped or rewarded for the army you've built (or your opponent is playing with) before the game even begins.

My suggestion for the future is to get rid of any objectives involving force organization choices, or if you *must* keep them, make sure they are only the absolute smallest amount of points available in the mission (i.e. the 'bonus' points). Never, ever, make them the Primary or Secondary objectives again.


3) Stay FAR Away From the 'Buddy' System: Tournament objectives should never, ever, ever allow players to both score the same objective at the same time. At the end of the day tournament 40K tends to emphasize sportsmanship and sportsmanlike players will often (even unintentionally) throw their opponent 'a bone' and allow them to claim an objective if it won't negatively affect them in the game. Yeah, technically those points given to their opponent could come back to haunt them because their opponent could then go on to win the tournament, but the reality is that many times players have a pretty good feeling that their current round opponent isn't going to be challenging them for overall tournament ranking, so a good sense of sportsmanship kicks in and allows them to give their opponent a 'freebie' objective because it doesn't actually hurt their score to do so.

Even more scandalous is the possibility that players (especially friends) will simply say that both players accomplished the objective regardless of what actually happened in the game. Now, I'm the first to stand up and say that cheating at tournaments isn't as crazy rampant as some people want to claim, but at the end of the day why not just completely close that door so that players don't even have the option to do something negative like that.

The truth is, you can alter your mission objectives to remove this kind of discrepancy without majorly affecting how the missions fundamentally play.

Mission #1 allows both players to hold their own deployment zone. Why not put some sort of mechanic in there to award these points only if one player is holding their deployment zone, or less points if both players are holding their deployment zone? Anything like that would do the trick. Both players can destroy each other's Heavy Choices and keep their most expensive Troops choice alive. Again, these points should only be awarded if the enemy also can't claim the same (or even less points if both players can, etc).

In Mission #2 both the Secondary and bonus objectives suffer from this same problem (both players can accomplish them).

In Mission #3 again the bonus objective can be accomplished by both players.

Mission #4 has the Secondary and both bonus objectives open for both players to get them.


Ultimately there just isn't any reason to have points available to both players simultaneously. These should simply be eliminated or relegated ONLY to very few points in the mission (and even then I just don't see the need for them at all).


4) Always consider distance to mission objectives vs. deployment: Anytime a tournament mission utilizes a wacky deployment, you have to consider that fact against where armies need to get in order to accomplish the objectives for that mission.

The two missions of yours that really jump out at me for this sin are Mission #1 which uses Dawn of War but then forces the objectives to be in set spots that are going to be really hard for less mobile armies to get to. Mobile armies will always have an advantage in objective missions because they're able to rapidly respond to changes in the game and go capture objectives that are hard to get to when needed. However, slow moving armies should never be completely penalized by their deployment making it really difficult for them to even get to the objective.

With the rulebook missions, even when you play Dawn of War, at least you get to place your 3 starting units in a much larger area of the table (compared with your mission #1) AND players are able to place their own objectives, allowing them to at least pick a few of the objectives that they will be able to totally dominate.

So in other words, Mission #1 did the trifecta of crapping on slow armies by forcing Dawn of War deployment AND reducing the allowed deployment area for the few starting units AND not allowing players to place the objectives meaning that slow armies don't even get ONE objective that they can easily reach.

Mission #4 forced all the objectives to be in the center of the table and then introduced the 'preliminary bombardment' rule which then penalized players for starting units on the table...again this is a double-whammy for slow armies. Having the objectives forced in the center of the table can be great, but just don't include a rule that penalizes players for starting their units on the table! The first turn Reserve rule is a nice counter-balance to this, but really, why not just get rid of the preliminary bombardment rule AND the reserve rule and just let players fight it out over the objectives?



And...that's it! Sorry about the incredibly long post, but I really enjoyed the tournament and I thought I'd at least give you everything I could from a constructive perspective to improve the missions from my own point of view.

But thanks again and I look forward to next year (or later this year in Vegas, I guess).