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Well, GBF's had his fun, now my turn:

I like all aspects of the tourneys. The only issue I've ever had a problem with is Composition. After the last few Comp threads I'm becoming to think that in this Age of Warhammer that Comp is really too subjective to make it a viable grading criteria. I generally build pretty soft list and I don't get hit on comp, but I've seen some really well thought out lists get knocked.

I'm not a tournament player. I don't enjoy making my hobby overly competitive.

What about painting, sports, and battle points.

I loathe "comp", but like the other three. Somehow that combo doesn't have an entry.

I'm not a great painter (I mean, I'm not terrible but I'm not winning any prizes) and I especially hate basing all my guys, so I suppose battlepoints and sportsmanship. But I don't think sportsmanship should be scored, I just think it's an important part of the game.
Comp can go die a death in 40K. I'm slightly more open minded about it in fantasy, but mostly I just wish GW would maintain balance inside editions.

Redbeard wrote:What about painting, sports, and battle points.

I loathe "comp", but like the other three. Somehow that combo doesn't have an entry.

Ooops, let me see if I can add that oversight.

Battle Points, Painting, and Sportsmanship would be my vote - if it was up there. I think GW had done a better job with the recent codexes, and fifth edition objectives, so the min/max ability is lessened. In any point-based army building game, there will always be 'better' and 'worse' units based on the points spent.

And what's wrong with having different types of tournies? I like have Battlepoint only ones, but I also like having a Best Hobbyist one too.

Untimately, no tourney scoring system is perfect, and that's why there are so many types.

Awesome poll!

G

I'm not a great painter either, but think it belongs, at least as a side prize and/or contributing towards "best overall." Why is simply winning Best General a bad thing if you don't like the other stuff?

Battle Points, Painting, Theme/Comp & Sportsmanship

- I don't just give games up, I play to win
- I love to paint, won best painted a "few" times at events
- For comp, I've run swarm lists with the 4th ed Tyranid codexs at GTs and RTTs
- Sports because I like to enjoy the game

I go with battle points for deciding placement so your opponent can't stop you from winning just because they are a sore loser (have one of those at my LGS). The sportsmanship/painting should be there as side prizes with lesser value. This gives players who enjoy tournaments but never win games a chance to have a prize and still work on their armies.

I like all aspects of the hobby for normal tournaments.

Battle Points - what it's really about, should be worth more than all others combined
Sportsmanship - keeps people from being douches so everyone can have a good time
Painting - you should be rewarded for having an excellently painted army and penalized for just sporting a basecoat or something horribly offensive to the eyes (I knew a guy who primed all his eldar white and then put dots of yellow black and blue all over each models with no regard to armor or skin or anything)
Composition - people playing suboptimal armies for the fluff should be rewarded and those playing some elite tourney cheese build they got off the internet should be punished, but it's incredibly difficult to have an unbiased system for doing so. So I like the idea of comp but I'm not happy with any of the ways I've seen it done so far.

That being said I like a variety of events with a different focus on each. 'Ard boyz with no soft scores is a great opportunity for a down to the mat no holds barred slugfest. But some event with huge comp scores done in an unbiased manner so that everyone is playing suboptimal armies with units you don't often see would be great too because you'd have to go about things in a different way.

Culler wrote:I like all aspects of the hobby for normal tournaments.

Battle Points - what it's really about, should be worth more than all others combined
Sportsmanship - keeps people from being douches so everyone can have a good time
Painting - you should be rewarded for having an excellently painted army and penalized for just sporting a basecoat or something horribly offensive to the eyes (I knew a guy who primed all his eldar white and then put dots of yellow black and blue all over each models with no regard to armor or skin or anything)
Composition - people playing suboptimal armies for the fluff should be rewarded and those playing some elite tourney cheese build they got off the internet should be punished, but it's incredibly difficult to have an unbiased system for doing so. So I like the idea of comp but I'm not happy with any of the ways I've seen it done so far.

That being said I like a variety of events with a different focus on each. 'Ard boyz with no soft scores is a great opportunity for a down to the mat no holds barred slugfest. But some event with huge comp scores done in an unbiased manner so that everyone is playing suboptimal armies with units you don't often see would be great too because you'd have to go about things in a different way.

The previous was brought to you by the DCGM...

I love how people who play crappy armies are doing it "for the fluff" instead of just being bad list builders, and on the other hand anyone who brings an "elite tourney cheese build" must have gotten it off the internet, instead of just knowing how to build an army.

Battle Points and sportsmanship. If I'm going to travel and pay for events, don't be a tool. Let's have a good time.

I try to engage in every aspect of the hobby.

Battle points are the #1 consideration at tournaments, that is the point afterall. However, I challenge myself to paint to the best of my ability, and only field fully painted units. I also challenge myself to build "hard" lists that fit fluff or a centralized theme without being a 'netdeck or a spamlist. I strive to also be the best sportsman, but I sometimes have difficulty with it against certain unscrupulous players.

Battle points and nothing else, it's all that really matters for a tournament.

That said, every army should still be painted, and you shouldn't be allowed to play if you don't have a painted army, but I don't think you should get bonus points for your paintjob. Make a separate award for painting or something to award the best-painted armies, but don't tie it in with battle points.

Sportsmanship - keeps people from being douches so everyone can have a good time

False. If anything it breeds douchebaggery, because then you have people tanking everyone but their friends on sportsmanship scores purposely so they have better chances of winning, or worse, using it as an excuse to cheat, threatening to dock you points if you call them on playing the game wrong.

Sportsmanship scores don't "keep everyone from being douches", I don't know why you or anyone has this idea in their heads to begin with.

Composition - people playing suboptimal armies for the fluff should be rewarded and those playing some elite tourney cheese build they got off the internet should be punished, but it's incredibly difficult to have an unbiased system for doing so. So I like the idea of comp but I'm not happy with any of the ways I've seen it done so far.

Why should you be rewarded for bringing a sub-optimal army to a tournament? All you're doing is wasting the other players time and money. You go to a tournament for the challenge, there's no fun in tabling someone's fluffy-bunny list on turn 2.

And lmao, you're one to bring up bias after saying "People who bring gakky armies to tournaments should be rewarded! People who bring good armies to tournaments should be punished!"...good armies are what you should expect to see at tournaments, that's what it's all about!

That's not always the case what you said Sid. Soft scores can work, it's up to both the players & TOs to see to that. If you just want battle then maybe you should think harder about the merits of soft scores.

G

The few times I have played in tournaments I try to win without uber-lists (read=cannot afford to them) with a friendly smile and always listening
= Battle Points and Sportsmanship

I think that if I had my way, tournaments would work like this:

-RTTs and GTs would have painting REQUIREMENTS. Your paint score would not factor into your tournament scoring - you're there to play, not to paint.
-RTTs and GTs would have sportsmanship REQUIREMENTS. IE, an advertised notice that no special dice are allowed, that cheating will result in the player being instantly disqualified, removed from the event, publicly shamed in front of everyone else, and forever banned from that venue and any other venue where the TO has influence. TOs and judges should be on hand and ready to handle these issues if a player calls for help. Players should be encouraged to call for help in response to shady behavior. Outlawing shady dice would be a great first step. But a sportsmanship score is unnecessary. I just went to SVDM; no sportsmanship scores, still no problems.
-RTTs and GTs should not have composition scoring - the point of a tournament is to play competitively.

Battle points should be expanded and complicated to include composition related things. Have your 20 battle points per game, and start adding bonuses to that. +2 points if you have an elite unit in the enemy deployment zone. +2 points if you have a heavy support unit in the enemy deployment zone. +2 points if one of your HQs killed an enemy HQ. Stuff like that. Tabling someone gets you 20 points, but there's a slew of other points that may/may not be gotten, depending on the tactical prowess, list, and creativity of the player.

At the end of the day, prizes should be for tournament winners. Sportsmanship and painting are requirements, not score cards.
Secondary to that, players should spend the day / lunch break examining armies and voting for the one they think has the best theme.
Secondary to that, a judge should have a painting checklist that they take through every army.

When prizes are given out, you have three categories:
1. Tournament winners.
2. Best Painted.
3. Player's Choice

Painting *is* a part of this hobby, which is why we have painting competitions, sculpting competitions and the like - but a competitive tournament should not include scores for something you may or may not have painted yourself in determining who won the event.

Dashofpepper wrote:I think that if I had my way, tournaments would work like this:

-RTTs and GTs would have painting REQUIREMENTS. Your paint score would not factor into your tournament scoring - you're there to play, not to paint.

If you do this, you get people priming the guys, dunking the head in blue and the feet in red and calling it three colours.

-RTTs and GTs would have sportsmanship REQUIREMENTS. IE, an advertised notice that no special dice are allowed, that cheating will result in the player being instantly disqualified, removed from the event, publicly shamed in front of everyone else, and forever banned from that venue and any other venue where the TO has influence.

You're confusing cheating and sportsmanship. You can be a bad sport, and not actually break any rules. Cheating should be a disqualification regardless of whether sportsmanship is scored or not.

Outlawing shady dice would be a great first step.

These is evidence that suggests that all chessex dice should be disallowed on this basis...

Battle points should be expanded and complicated to include composition related things. Have your 20 battle points per game, and start adding bonuses to that. +2 points if you have an elite unit in the enemy deployment zone. +2 points if you have a heavy support unit in the enemy deployment zone. +2 points if one of your HQs killed an enemy HQ. Stuff like that. Tabling someone gets you 20 points, but there's a slew of other points that may/may not be gotten, depending on the tactical prowess, list, and creativity of the player.

See, I really dislike this idea. If I make the most competitive list I can, and I happen not to use any elite choices, why should I lose those two points. There's nothing that says a balanced list has to include entries from each category. A skimmer-based Eldar army is faster than any other army, and is slowed by the inclusion of swooping hawks or warp spiders, yet those are called "fast attack". My army's need for maneuverability is met outside of the force org chart naming system.

Assigning tournament points by category is just comp by another name, yet even worse, because at least with a comp system, I know before I make my list how they're going to screw me. Putting objectives like the one you describe above is just a crap shoot. Did I happen to have a Fast Attack choice in my army, or do I lose points?

At the end of the day, prizes should be for tournament winners. Sportsmanship and painting are requirements, not score cards.
Secondary to that, players should spend the day / lunch break examining armies and voting for the one they think has the best theme.
Secondary to that, a judge should have a painting checklist that they take through every army.

When prizes are given out, you have three categories:
1. Tournament winners.
2. Best Painted.
3. Player's Choice

Painting *is* a part of this hobby, which is why we have painting competitions, sculpting competitions and the like - but a competitive tournament should not include scores for something you may or may not have painted yourself in determining who won the event.

Isn't that what we have now, only, we add another 'overall' category. I haven't been to a tournament where there wasn't a Best General award. Doesn't that satisfy the 'prize for game winners' requirement? The fact that there is another prize for someone who not only wins, but also looks good doing it, doesn't take away from the Best General.

Dashofpepper wrote:
Battle points should be expanded and complicated to include composition related things. Have your 20 battle points per game, and start adding bonuses to that. +2 points if you have an elite unit in the enemy deployment zone. +2 points if you have a heavy support unit in the enemy deployment zone. +2 points if one of your HQs killed an enemy HQ. Stuff like that. Tabling someone gets you 20 points, but there's a slew of other points that may/may not be gotten, depending on the tactical prowess, list, and creativity of the player.

I agree with you on everything but this Dash.

This just punishes certain armies that don't have viable choices in certain slots. Troops are already needed for claiming objectives. Elite/Fast attack/Heavy support all play different roles, its not like fantasy where 1 is better than the other.

I am all for a couple +1 points for random objectives and such but they should be able to be accomplished by any type of unit so you don't punish old codices and the like.

Also I find it funny how much of a lead "just battlepoints" has despite TO's constantly talking about how everyone wants comp and no one would come if it wasn't included.

Dashofpepper wrote:I think that if I had my way, tournaments would work like this:

-RTTs and GTs would have painting REQUIREMENTS. Your paint score would not factor into your tournament scoring - you're there to play, not to paint.
-RTTs and GTs would have sportsmanship REQUIREMENTS. IE, an advertised notice that no special dice are allowed, that cheating will result in the player being instantly disqualified, removed from the event, publicly shamed in front of everyone else, and forever banned from that venue and any other venue where the TO has influence. TOs and judges should be on hand and ready to handle these issues if a player calls for help. Players should be encouraged to call for help in response to shady behavior. Outlawing shady dice would be a great first step. But a sportsmanship score is unnecessary. I just went to SVDM; no sportsmanship scores, still no problems.
-RTTs and GTs should not have composition scoring - the point of a tournament is to play competitively.

Battle points should be expanded and complicated to include composition related things. Have your 20 battle points per game, and start adding bonuses to that. +2 points if you have an elite unit in the enemy deployment zone. +2 points if you have a heavy support unit in the enemy deployment zone. +2 points if one of your HQs killed an enemy HQ. Stuff like that. Tabling someone gets you 20 points, but there's a slew of other points that may/may not be gotten, depending on the tactical prowess, list, and creativity of the player.

At the end of the day, prizes should be for tournament winners. Sportsmanship and painting are requirements, not score cards.
Secondary to that, players should spend the day / lunch break examining armies and voting for the one they think has the best theme.
Secondary to that, a judge should have a painting checklist that they take through every army.

When prizes are given out, you have three categories:
1. Tournament winners.
2. Best Painted.
3. Player's Choice

Painting *is* a part of this hobby, which is why we have painting competitions, sculpting competitions and the like - but a competitive tournament should not include scores for something you may or may not have painted yourself in determining who won the event.

If this was how it was run, I would never participate in any RTT/GTs


I might not win all my games, but If I can get more wins than losses using a fluff based list, with a well painted and converted army, and have a good time doing it while making sure my opponent also has a good time, then I think I should have a stab at best overall vs a person who went out and bought the power codex, spammed the best units, slapped 3 colors on the models and roflstomped all of the opponents he happened to get paired up against.

Another thing to consider is that many lists act as a rock-paper-scissors to other lists, and at RTTs/GTs with over 100 players its very well possible that a complete idiot with a spammed list that he didnt know how to use could run into the perfect matchups in each of his games and win best general. With the painting/comp/sports scores combined it would ensure that only people who actually have a good amount of time/money invested in their armies have a chance at capturing best overall.

Demogerg wrote:

Another thing to consider is that many lists act as a rock-paper-scissors to other lists, and at RTTs/GTs with over 100 players its very well possible that a complete idiot with a spammed list that he didnt know how to use could run into the perfect matchups in each of his games and win best general. With the painting/comp/sports scores combined it would ensure that only people who actually have a good amount of time/money invested in their armies have a chance at capturing best overall.

Couldn't a complete idiot make a rock style army that got full scores for comp because it was under the radar, pay a good painter to paint it, and then luck into the correct 3-5 matches (while being nice to his opponents) and win best overall in your system?

Timmah wrote:

Demogerg wrote:

Another thing to consider is that many lists act as a rock-paper-scissors to other lists, and at RTTs/GTs with over 100 players its very well possible that a complete idiot with a spammed list that he didnt know how to use could run into the perfect matchups in each of his games and win best general. With the painting/comp/sports scores combined it would ensure that only people who actually have a good amount of time/money invested in their armies have a chance at capturing best overall.

Couldn't a complete idiot make a rock style army that got full scores for comp because it was under the radar, pay a good painter to paint it, and then luck into the correct 3-5 matches (while being nice to his opponents) and win best overall in your system?

Congratulations, you've just discovered how most people win tournaments.

willydstyle wrote:Congratulations, you've just discovered how most people win tournaments.

The system works!

That made me laugh.

And the suggestions I made aren't actually those; like +2 points for having an elite in the enemy deployment....just that there should be some kind of...points so that you can do more than just score your 20 battlepoints. Doesn't matter what those other points are, just something creative that adds extra dimension to the game. Killing an enemy HQ with one of your HQs. Insta-killing a multi-wound model. Successfully death or glorying a vehicle. Killing all enemy vehicles. Things that no one will really be able to score *all* the points for.

Danny Internets wrote:

willydstyle wrote:Congratulations, you've just discovered how most people win tournaments.

The system works!

Actually, I kinda agree with that.

Even at the GT level where you play 5 games, with the size of the pool of players that show up and the vagaries of early round match-ups, there isn't really a large enough sample size of games to show who the "best" player was. You only get the player who did the best under the circumstances they were faced with. Playing five opponents out of the 50+ that show up to a largish GT is hardly enough games played to determine the "best player," especially if a lot of the people on the top tables have never played each other and only had, maybe, one common opponent.

At the very least, an ideal tournament setting would have pools of a given number of players who would all play round-robin (every player plays every other player once). Then, you have a ranking of each player in the pool. Then a pre-determined number of players from each pool advance to a single or double elimination tournament seeded based upon how they performed during pool play. Maybe only the best player from each pool advances, maybe everyone in the pool is seeded based upon their performance in pool. Regardless, seeding in the elimination rounds would be done by power-protect, where, in early rounds, the players with the best pool-play results play those with the worst pool-play results. This should improve the chances that the best players advance deep into the tournament, and (if bye-rounds are included for top pool-play performances) give added incentive for players to do as well as possible during pool-play.

This kind of a system, unfortunately, is highly impractical due to time constraints. The closest thing we have to this currently is 'Ard Boys, but I still don't think that enough games are played at the first and second rounds to ensure that the best players advance, and I don't believe that seeding at the finals takes into consideration performance during the earlier rounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dashofpepper wrote:That made me laugh.

And the suggestions I made aren't actually those; like +2 points for having an elite in the enemy deployment....just that there should be some kind of...points so that you can do more than just score your 20 battlepoints. Doesn't matter what those other points are, just something creative that adds extra dimension to the game. Killing an enemy HQ with one of your HQs. Insta-killing a multi-wound model. Successfully death or glorying a vehicle. Killing all enemy vehicles. Things that no one will really be able to score *all* the points for.

Very good point, Dash. Most tournaments have completely unimaginative battle point systems that really don't require any real thought or strategy to achieve. I really enjoy games that have primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives; these make it much more difficult to get every point possible for the game. This further differentiates between the players who can merely put together a strong list and roll lots of nasty attacks and players who can analyze the table, their opponent, and the objectives and the set a plan in motion that takes into consideration all of those.

[Edited for grammar]

If people would just learn to play the game faster, you could have a more competitive environment.

In a 2 day competition you could run 7-8 games if you switched game length to 1.5 hours.

Give each person a chess timer set to 45 mins. If either person runs outa time, they lose by massacre. (That would teach people to speed up their game pretty quickly)

Right, because the point of it is to be as stressed as possible, and rush all your games, and take all of the fun out of the event...

Seriously, people have problems playing horde armies in 2 hours at 1500 points. You want to cut a half-hour from that?

Well, I know stuff like my Tau aren't horde, but they do drop about 70 models on the board at 1850 and I can play them quite relaxed in under an hour and a half.

I have watched people drop 200 models on the table and finish easily in under 2 hours.

Its more about being decisive than number of models you need to move.

Heck, I actually find slow play more stressful than fast play tbh.

Going fast doesn't make games not fun. (for you personally maybe, but I have ran into quite a few players who are like me and like to finish their 2000 pt games in an hour)