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Well I am finally recovered from last weekend and ready to give a brief summary of our team tournament experience. I had attended Adepticon last year and I was extremely excited to attend. A few people from the Madison area wanted to do a team as well, and my brother agreed to play. We wanted to build a nice display board as well as put a lot of time into painting and converting our army to compete not only for top battle scores but for top soft scores.

As a team we had a lofty goal of winning best overall. Our display board was the Imperial bastion being overrun by deamons, orks and Tyranids. We chose a Cthulu theme and had converted every miniature in our armies.

Here were our lists
IG
Lord Commisar (Fist, Plas pistol)

1 Vendetta
1 Vendetta

1 Executioner (plas spons)

Marbo

Penal Legion (10)

10 Vets (3 melta)
10 Vets (3 Plasma



Orks

Big Mek (KFF)

20 Boyz (Nob Klaw Boss pole)
20 Boyz (same)

11 Lootas

Deff Dred

3 Kans (rokkits)
3 Kans (rokkits)



Tyranids

Hive tyrant (devourers, lash whip, bonesword)

3 Hive guard

10 gaunts
Tervigon (catalyst, adrenal glands, toxin sacs)

Trygon Prime

8 genestealers


Deamons (ME)

2x Heralds of Tzeen. (Chariot, master of Sorce. Bolt)

13 deamonettes
7 horrors (Bolt)

4 Blood crushers (Fury, Icon, Music)
4 Blood Crushers (same)

5 Screamers






Game 1
We fought 4 tau players. The team seemed to be 1 guy who knew how to play Tau with the other three players just there to push the miniatures and roll dice. The team my brother and I fought had no idea what 30% of their equipment and weapons did. My brother and I would look up the weapons while they rolled the dice. They did not fair to well as both our table as well as our teammates wiped both tables out in about 4 turns. My brother and I left both our CC out of the game but it was one of the bonus objectives. Combined total 58/60 battle points




Game 2
We fight the eventual champions TEAM SONS OF SHATNER. They had 4 identical ork lists. Each was 5 Nob Bikers, a warboss, 30 shoota boyz, 10 gretchin, 3 gretchin artllery, and 12 lootas.

I am teamed with the Orks this round. I make a horrible assumption and assume the orks will come right for our throats. We deploy in a sort of Appocalypse style with an 18" no mans land between the two armies. We deploy our orks with a layer of boys with Kans behind for a counter to the Nob bikers.

I drop crushers and deamonettes next to one of the Nob squads hoping to fight it out. Our shooting drives one of the gretchin kannon groups off the board.

The orks proceed to fall back and concentrate all guns on my deamons. Our orks desperately try to rush forward to help out my deamons, but our defensive set up hurt us. By the end of turn 3 all my deamons had been shot dead with the exception of my horrors who I landed in our deployment zone so we could at least grab a table quarter. Esentially at this point its 2 ork armies Vs 1 and it looks grim. We fall back and use shooting and some mission hyjinks to drive a couple of their units off the board but they grab 25/30 and we grab 5/30. I look at our teammates tables and it is a similar situation. Combined our two teams score 9/60 pts.

I am glad we had a chance to fight the top team. I enjoy challenging games and I underestimated our opponents. They certainly deserved the overall champions status as they outplayed us. Perhaps next year...a rematch.


Game 3
All 4 players were Tyranid. The guard were my allies for this fight. Essentially the Tyranids rushed us and we weathered the storm untill our second unit of crushers arrived. We shot their big bugs dead early and they had no answer for our executioner tank. We wipe the tyranids out. On our temmates table there seems to be some hot tempers and rules disputes. Four ravaners assaulted an ork mob and caused 7 wounds. The orks did none in return but then the Klaw swung, hit and wounded with all three attacks. My brother tells them its 3 insta kills so 9 wounds, the raveners lose the combat. The tyranid players disagree and say it just counts as 3 wounds. My brother looks up the rule and shows them the rulebook entry and they refuse to read it and insist on getting a judge. After walking over to the judges booth and returning the judge imediately says its 9 wounds and the raveners lose the combat. The players are upset and proceed to drag their feet the rest of the match. They complete 4 turns but 1 more is needed to grab their objectives and/or wipe them out. Total between both games 40/60
When the tournament is done we see that we were docked 2 sportsman points as well as one team rated our lists as over the top and overpowered docking us 3 comp points. I am no Sherlock Holmes but Im assuming it was this team.


Game 4.
4 Mech guard players. I team up with my brother again (Tyranids).
Our opponents have 2 vendettas, 2 Leman Russ's, 2 chimeras of vets, psyker squad in chimera, Inquisitor and mystics in psycannon razorback, command squad with -1 to reserves guy in chimera, 2 hydra flak tanks, and two Hades drill things.

Mission was mared for death. Choose one of the opponents armies. You only recieve kill points for knocking out their units. They mark me (deamons) and we just mark the guard player that has more kill points (10 as opposed to 9)

The game was awesome mainly due to
A. Getting to team up with my brother
B. Our opponents were extremely fun to play against.

First turn they roll 22" with the mystics and just barely reach my herald and shoot him off the table before he gets to do anything. We stun the razorback and knock out the psycannon.

They shoot up my screamers but leave 2 alive. The blast our Hive Tyrant and kill his bodyguard. They also wound and kill Hive guard.

We get no reserves but the screamers kill a Russ. Our Hive guard blow up the Razorback and the explosion kills the mystics.

They shoot all but 1 crusher dead and both drills arrive.

Horrors, Herlad, Trygon prime arrive. Mystics shoot up horrors killing 4. They also put 2 wounds on the Herald. We surround and kill one of the drills essentially destroying the squad that is due to arrive the next turn. We also destroy the other with shooting.

They rush up with a Chimera to unload melta on the Hive Tyrant but a boxcar scatter by the Leman russ puts a pieplate right on the squad. It kills 6 and breaks the unit. Shooting kills off my deamonettes and Horrors.

My crushers arrive and I put them front and center in cover. We start knocking out some of the chimeras and cleaning up the various broken crews scattered in their deployment zone.

My crushers face every gun in the army but I only lose 1 and 2 others are wounded. We start closing in and grabbing objetives. Crushers assault a stationary Vendetta destroy it. Hive guard immobilize another. Trygon prime eats command squad.

Their shooting kills the last of my deamons and I am wiped out.

Trygon prime and hive guard wreck more vehicles and they are left with 1 Russ tank, 1 hydra, and the chimera with the psyker squad. My brother has not lost a unit.

We take all points with the exception of wiping all their units out of their deployment zone. Our teammates score 10/30 netting us 38/60.


As a whole tht was an awesome time and that is the most important thing about these tournaments. We had put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform well but our 2nd round defeat took a lot of that pressure off.

We end up tied for 11th in battle points. We lost 2 sportsman points and 3 comp points. Even though all of our miniatures were converted and (not that we are the worlds best painters) decently painted as well as a nice display board our appearence score was in the bottom 30 teams in the tournament. Not that our soft scores would have won us the tourney by any means but finishing in the top 10 would have been nice. Our appearence score was a 30. I talked to one of the other teams from Madison and they had no display board, very little converting, and not everything was based and they had 29 points. The paint judging in my opinion was extremely subjective and not objective. I was not expecting best appearence by any means, but our score was not an accurate reflection of the appearence of our army.

Enough sour grapes. Again, an awesome time and a great chance to play teams from all over the country, (note: sons of shatner were Canadian). Adepticon is still a top notch Con if not the top tournament convention in the country. If you enjoy 40k at all and have friends that enjoy it just as much, you need to try out this event. It is a lot of fun to go through the tough games as well as the fun games with your friends and then stay up late laughing about it over a few beers.

Im not sure where we exactly finished in points but the last score sheet I saw had us in 18th. The night of the event we were 20th, the next day we were listed as 15th, on monday a posting of results had us 17th, and the final one I saw was 18th. Im sure the crew tabulating the 14 categories for 110 teams was scrambling and sleep deprived so I understand the minor tweekings of all the scores.

Thanks to the Adepticon staff for putting on a top knotch Convention, because without them there would be no convention. Also, thanks to all those who attended. I met a lot of friendly folks, and quite a few dakkites there at the convention.

Question on your painting: do you have any pics? In my experience (as a player) the judges like all four armies to look similar. So all other things being equal, four armies that are painted with equal skill, the ones that look like they belong together will get higher scores.

Norbu the Destroyer wrote:
Even though all of our miniatures were converted and (not that we are the worlds best painters) decently painted as well as a nice display board our appearence score was in the bottom 30 teams in the tournament. Not that our soft scores would have won us the tourney by any means but finishing in the top 10 would have been nice. Our appearence score was a 30. I talked to one of the other teams from Madison and they had no display board, very little converting, and not everything was based and they had 29 points. The paint judging in my opinion was extremely subjective and not objective. I was not expecting best appearence by any means, but our score was not an accurate reflection of the appearence of our army.

I judged your armies' appearance. I'll admit, I was probably the most conservative of the four judges there that day. I actually look for things like mold lines and drilled gun barrels before awarding points for master-level blending or the like. But, in all honesty your army's appearance was middle-of-the-pack, and in my discussions with the other judges, a middle-of-the-pack army should have scored about 30 points. In fact, of 109 teams, 35% fell within 3 points on either side of 30 points.

First, your display board has nothing to do with your appearance score, it's part of your theme. Army appearance is how the army appears, not how the base appears. So, the effort you put in your display base (which looked, in some cases, like more effort was spent there than on the minis) goes towards your theme score, not your painting score.

Secondly, two of your team of 8 points, and two got 7.

Everyone on your team got 1 point for basing, 1 for 3-color painting, 1 for "beyond" 3 color painting, 1 for uniform painting, 1 for detail painting, 1 for basic highlighting, and 1 for basic conversions. Two of the armies got an additional conversion point each (the daemons and the orks).

I cannot speak to how the other judges handled their tables. But, I cannot honestly say that your basing was more than sand and rocks. I don't recall seeing hand-painted markings on the models, or master-level highlighting. Where exactly do you think you lost points that you deserved?

I would like to applaud the judge responding on paint scores. I know as a player in a tournament like this I appreciate the judge being able to explain what they judged and how.

Fisrt off Alex, I like you and I dont want this to be a personal attack on you and I was actually hoping to have this discussion at the Bunker the next time I come down. I like your insights into the game and you are extremely fair in your online banter with others. Really that is why this score shocked me.

As far as the complete scoring criteria I was hoping, (although logistically I think this is probably impossible) people could see how they are scored.

As far as points we hoped to receive, 1 point for basic conversions seems a little low. The entire army had either a bit swap, puttied tentacles, and both units of Bloodcrushers had major overhauls, we had melted carnifex carrapaces onto the blood crusher bodies and then puttied in the lines to make complete looking models. We then used about 5 or 6 different kits to make up the rest of the riders and the crushers. Now what this would add, I dont know. I thought having the entire army converted would also add points. As a whole I dint expect max. points or anything but to be scored in the bottom 27% just seemed a bit low to me.

Our theme was judged 35/45 and that is fine. It was hard to pull our 4 armies together, and we knew this score would be somewhere around where we scored. I guess we assumed that the display board was part of appearance and not theme. That being said how low would our theme have been without the display board.

Again, having a higher paint score would not have shot us to the top of the charts or anything and I feel like a bit of a whiner having to write this out rather than a discussion the next time Im at the bunker.

If you could be so kind as to give me five minutes to discuss where we did not receive points and give me the details on how theme and appearance were judged, I would appreciate it. Lets keep it light because I dont want to get bent out of shape over this. I enjoy chatting with you in between rounds at the Bunker and I would like to continue that in the future. Good Luck on whatever army you decide to bring, and perhaps we'll meet again on the table.

@ Centurion99 I will try and get some pictures on the site here.

I'm not at all offended or bothered by your questions. I believe that if I cannot explain why I judged an army a certain way, I should not be judging. I believe it is your right to ask these questions (assuming you're polite, which you have been so far), and that part of my responsibility in judging a major event like this is to answer these questions.

Not all judges feel this way - and that's fine. But I believe in accountability, so anyone else who I personally judged, feel free to contact me.

That said, 1) I don't have the sheets in front of me anymore. 2) I took pics of all the armies I judged, but they don't show a great level of detail, so while they might help jog my memory, they're not the same as having the models in front of me.

For the team tournament, the complete scoring criteria was:

(For each of the 4 armies in a coalition)

Paint:

1 point: Army was painted to a 3-color standard
1 point: Army was painted to more-than-three color standard
1 point: Army painting is uniform, not a mix of styles
1 point: Details were painted
2 points: Hand painted details were added, such as banners, unit markings, etc.
1 point: basic highlighting, "lines are neat, drybrushing is appropriate, inking is controlled and not sloppy".
2 points: Masterful highlighting - "Highlights have been masterfully blended, shaded, or layered.
2 Points: overall appearance is amazing, everything works great together to create an awesome scene.

Basing (choose 1):
1 point: models are based
2 points: models are really well based (extra stuff, details, painted on details, or so on.

Conversions (choose 1):
1 point: some weapon swaps
2 points: units have multi-kit conversions, including swaps
3 points: very difficult conversions using putty, plasticard, drilling, sawing, sculpting etc. Could also apply to the whole army having very well done multi-kit conversions.

After this, cap any individual army at 15 points (if you do the math above, there are more than 15 points to attain), so a coalition max is 60.


Like I said, I don't have your models in front of me to verify what I'm saying right now. From what I recall, you didn't have hand-painted details on the models, and they weren't what I'd call "expert blended".

The Overall appearance thing is really where judges award discretionary points. Kind of a way to indicate that this is one of the best looking overall armies on the day. I don't think your armies were among the best of the day, so that is why you didn't get those points.

So, you got the rest of the painting points.

Basing - I'm fairly certain your bases were just plain rocks. Correct me if I am wrong, but my photos seem to indicate this.

That leaves conversions, which seem to be what you keep bringing up.

The two armies, Tyranids and Guard, got the point for some minor swaps. I really didn't see anything extremely interesting in either of these, and while I'm sure that some of the guardsmen had weapons from other guard kits, that's still just a point.

The two other armies, the daemons, which, as you mentioned, had some fairly heavily converted crushers, and the orks, which had all sorts of chaos spawn parts, and nid claws on the killa kans, got the points for more interesting conversions. I don't think that they qualified for extremely difficult, or "very well done", which is what the 3-point category calls for.

I'm fairly sure that the horrors weren't converted much, nor the daemonettes or screamers. I could be wrong, and I'm not sure that if they had minor conversions, they would have bumped it up to that three point category either.

My photos of the army, taken during judging:

Irrespective of all the other issues popping up in this thread, I have to say that I really like the cliftop bastion display. How does that break down for transportation?

Thanks, the buildings all detached to be put in boxes. The board itself had 4 smaller sections that could be used as carrying trays for the armies to move from table to table. The main board was fairly sturdy and actually had a table fall on it in transport to the convention. A few broken beams but very little damage. The board is now on display at our local gaming store.