How are
40k tournaments run?
This topic is directed at both players and organizers.
I have never been in a tabletop gaming tournament, unfortunately. However, for the entirety of my adolescence and adult life, I have been involved in running chess tournaments, some of which with very large turnouts (We currently run the U.S. Amateur East Tournament, which nets about 150 - 200 players between adult and children’s sections each summer.) We also often run quad-based tournaments for about 20-40 people once a month.
Mainly, I am curious as to how they are run, how winners are determined, and how bad sports (what
40k calls the
TFG and what chess players just call “a-holes”) are dealt with. What are the rewards? Money? Trophies? Models? And in what ratios?
For a picture of how I perceive things… currently, the way chess tournaments are run is as follows:
Our small tournaments are “quads” or 4 man round robins – players are divided into groups of 4, play 3 games, and winner takes a prize bigger than what he put in (but not so big that we lose money, of course)
if odd numbers are left, we use a 5-6 man swiss, depending on how many are left over. Children (“scholastic” players) usually can choose between money or trophies, but this depends on TD, some go for money only, some trophies only.
In emergencies, a secondary TD can fill in for games if it is necessary to avoid weird bye situations, particularly in smaller tournies. TD’s usually don’t since they are usually paid pretty good.
Bigger touraments use swiss pairing, with the guy having the most points in his section being on top when all the rounds are over; Wins are 1, Losses, DQ and such are 0’s, and draws are 1/2. “tie breaks” are used in ties, and I think it involved USCF ratings in some capacity (if 2 players are 5-1, but one got 5-1 against higher rated players I believe, something like that… but I need to check to be sure that’s how it works.)
Ratings are used to determine who plays who first round.. but how is this determined in
40k? Knowing the USCF (united states chess federation) rating system, I feel that some sort of modest rating system would be helpful for figuring out who plays who first round and such.
TFG and cheaters rarely show up in chess, but it happens. Usually, their tactics are more subtle – an adult may stand over the board instead of sitting when playing a child so as to intimidate the latter. In such a case, my experience is that we usually ask the person to stop, and since my father is not very tolerant of who don’t follow rules, failing to listen after warnings means possible DQ. I need to reread the USCF rulebook to see how they handle this kind of thing again (since I am usually only at tournaments in a assistant capability - to lift trophies, do floor duty, help out with parings, etc.)
Time is an issue, yes, particularly if your venue gives you limited time to wrap up the games, but players are expected to bring chess clocks, (where each player has a limited amount of time) with time controls being between 30 minutes to 6 hours depending on the tournament. I think any concept of competitive
40k would benefit from their inclusion in tournaments – it would kill claims of “stalling” outright if you were going to lose the game on time for stalling! (it would help finesse based armies like elder/tau who cannot realistically hope to table opponents) Of course, in
40k, the penalty might be more lenient (your opponent counts as having an extra objective maybe? It needs to be play tested.)
Additionally, time gives you a way to penalize a
TFG during a game – is he found making an “illegal move”? He loses 10 minutes off his clock! This is a way to discipline illegal moves in chess,
btw.
Sportsmanship scores obviously aren’t in chess, but you CAN claim someone was a bad sport to the TD (tournament director, as we call organizers). I feel this makes more sense than sportsmanship scores, from what I read of them, but it’s only really reported in the worse cases anyways.
How expensive is it to buy dice in bulk? Buying dice in bulk and then requiring people use dice all from the same pool might help with claims of “fixed” dice that I have also heard of. Chess TD’s are expected to buy boards in bulk and provide them, even if some get coffee spilled on them (ruining them).
A lot of the above is possible, in part, because the USCF helps to pay for the biggest tournaments and maintaining a rating system.
So, how are
40k tournaments run, and do any of my ideas make sense? Before we begin, I must remark that I belong to the view that tournaments should have best sportsmanship/painting rewards and such (the bigger chess tournaments sometimes have similar prizes – team tournaments will sometimes have “best team name” and even “best costume as a prize [to my knowledge, only the team tournament east has the latter,]), but ultimately the tournament should reward the best player. This is my stance and is the underlying logic I use when making suggestions about tournaments.
