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One thing that everyone should do is go to the web site of the tournament and read the rules.
The Broadside Bash’s website is here:
http://www.broadsidebash.com/

Here are the rules:
http://www.broadsidebash.com/rules.php

You need to read them carefully and really try to understand what they mean, and what can we learn from them?

Point limit
Well the first thing that we see is that it will be 2000 points. That is about the top you will find for tournaments outside of the ‘Ard Boyz. Some armies do better at different point limits, so if you know what they are, you will be ahead of the curve (I have no idea what does better at what point limit). You will then need to then check the time for the rounds. The schedule shows that you have 2.5 hours around which means that you have time to play your game. The BoLSCon had 2000 points with 2 hours games which means that you have to play a small army, and move fast if you want to finish on time.

WYSIWYG
Every tournament player should always have their army already for this.

Scenarios
This is really important. If a tournament posts its scenarios ahead of time, you really need to not only read them but to understand them. Let’s take a look at the Broadside Bash’s senarios.

I will save everyone the trouble of looking at them and break them down as a whole

Special Rules
They all have the special rules of Deep Strike, Infiltrate, Scout and Outflank. So that means that if you want to build your army around those deployments, you will be rewarded. They also all have the Reserves special rule so you will need to keep that in mind, so you can always start your army in reserves if you need to, and be aware of your opponent doing the same.

Random Game Length is also important so you will not have to worry about someone at the bottom of the turn grabbing the objectives on the last turn. What it also means is that the game might end on turn #5 so you have a shooting army that moves out after you have shot up your opponent some, you have to get moving on turn #4 to be where you want to be on turn #5 which might be a little earlier than you want to.

Deployment
There is no Dawn of War deployment. That is huge for a lot of armies. That means that you can take 9 Carifexes with scything talons and know that they will start on the board at the edge of the deployment zone. It also means that you can take squads like lootas and know that they will start on the board, and you do not have to run them on in an unfavorable location.

Mission Objectives
This is one of the most important to look at. When the missions were first published there were no KP missions. That is also a huge factor. The reason why is that it can change your whole build around. With KPs you have to consolidate your units together to minimize the damage that they can take in KP missions. For example, it is much better to take 3 squads of 1 land speeder than it is to take 1 squad of 3 land speeders, but with KP added in, it is not. Without KP it is safe to take a lot of small squads that are a pain for your opponent to kill. Also assault armies do better in non-KP missions. After they run across the board and get into assault even if they win combats they get chewed up, but assault armies can hunker down on objectives and are hard to get off.

The fact that they are almost all objective based means several things, that you need a lot of troops. It also means that if you are an assault army, you are in good shape.

What this all adds up to is that horde Orks/Tyranids are in good shape. Not only do they always start on the board, but they will be where all of the objectives are while other armies are cowering in their deployment zones. What I worry about playing horde armies is being slow played. Whether they do it on purpose or not, if a game only goes to turn 4 or 5 they are in going to win.

Note: I lobbied hard for KP missions and a Dawn of War deployment and they did not want DoW, but they did add a modified KP missions, that is not really KP.

Scoring

Sportsmanship
They are doing non-checklist player judge scoring. You get a score from a scale form 1-10. 1-3 if the game was not fun, 4-6 for an average game, and 7-10 for a great game. Since you have no control over your score you are at the whim of your opponent. Sometime your opponent always will give a max score, and sometimes they will give whatever, so maybe you should kiss a little ass. The downside of this is that if your opponent is cheating, or you have a lot of rules debates, people are less likely to speak up out of concern for their sports score. This is why everyone has gone to the checklist now because it is a list of accepted behaviors, and nothing so arbitrary, or they have dumped Sports altogether and still people manage to play this game without getting in fist fights.

Paint scoring
Remember that tournaments are not just a game, but it is a beauty pageant. Most armies are scoring between 14-18 points, and the best armies should score between 26-30. So a good paint score will add about 10 points to your score.

Comp scoring
Yes the dreaded comp raises its head again. Here are some more arbitrary points that your opponent will give to you. Over the Top (0 Points), Hard (1 Pt), Normal (2-4 points), Themed (5-6 Points). I can guess my score just on the fact if I won or lost the game, and not really by how hard my army really is. The funny thing about comp is that it is based on public perception. I have a saying. A comp friendly army is space marines, a non-comp friendly army is an army that can beat space marines.

Bonus points
You get 2 bonus points if you turn in your army by Feb. 1. Since I believe that you should max out on all your points whenever you can I have till tomorrow to finalize my list.


In summation
I think I will play my Tyranids. Looking at the scenarios, that army will give me the best chance to win.

I don't agree that SM armies are automatically perceived as a comp friendly armies. There are a lot of different ways to play SM. Some are more friendly than others. Some are more WAAC than others. Vulkan Marines are often perceived as WAAC while SM biker armies tend to be viewed as friendly. Consider the thunderfire cannon. While it is a situational unit it is very cheap and can pound horde armies. It just seems like vanilla SM never win big events and that is the main reason why I think most people think they are viewed as friendly lists.

G

Comp....that's a bummer. Even GW changes their own fluff, so why are we having to judge armies based on whether the conform to the fluff or not.

A 1-10 scale for Sportsmanship. Still not a fan as I see a whole lof folks end up giving max score or 0. For the most part, folks won't judge this how it's meant to be judged. After seeing what goes on in some Ard Boyz tourneys, I'm still up in the air how to handle this.

Always a fan for having painting in a tourney. If anything, folks should at least get a couple of extra points for having a real stand out army. And of course, it has to be painted in order to be fielded.

No KP can be huge. I've lost count of the games I've played where I have to start targetting Rhinos and Drop Pods in order to win. VP's are still my preferred way to score instead of KP's.

Good luck. Can't wait to read the battle reports from this.

Wish I could get out to Cal. Good luck.

I have the usual tourney player's views of these scores.

Couple things.

-Certain Ork builds are gonna dominate just based on the scenarios. Objectives for moving out of your zones and holding it somewhere between armies which will really help the ork hordes out there.

-The KP mission isn't actually a KP mission. It's a victory point mission which doesn't do anything to force people to be a little more conservative with their units. Heck, it even encourages you not to squadron vehicles since you get vp's if you kill one instead of waiting for the squadron to go down.

-Dawn of War is at least normally mitigated by night fight first round but the absence does guarantee deployment which means certain builds can be built.

All in all I won't decide even which codex to use till tomorrow. Granted I have 1-2 lists from each codex ready so I just have to decide what style I feel like playing

Green Blow Fly wrote:I don't agree that SM armies are automatically perceived as a comp friendly armies. There are a lot of different ways to play SM. Some are more friendly than others. Some are more WAAC than others. Vulkan Marines are often perceived as WAAC while SM biker armies tend to be viewed as friendly. Consider the thunderfire cannon. While it is a situational unit it is very cheap and can pound horde armies. It just seems like vanilla SM never win big events and that is the main reason why I think most people think they are viewed as friendly lists.

G

I was making a generalization. Since everyone always plays against space marines they kind of become commonplace no matter how hard the build is.


The funny thing about comp is that it is in the eye of the beholder. If you take a lot of thunderfire cannons against an ork player they are devastating and seem like the height of cheese. You take them against a marine player and they are just annoying.