Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Mann - The only place where GD doesn't guarantee you games is the "Open Gaming" section. Otherwise, GD has plenty of ready-made tables for games with scenarios designed for fun (i.e. not-serious, wacky, over-the-top, not intended to be taken in a serious manner, etc.). I've never been at a GD waiting for games to play, but there are other activities that could've attributed to that instead of solely looking for games.



I'm a competitive guy, so I take great pleasure in competition as well. I find it pleasurable. Is this what you're calling "fun" here? I consider it a different sort of fun than hanging-around-with-your-friends-talking-BS fun. From my experience that sort of fun and legitimate tournament-style seriousness aren't made for each other. But I do find pleasure in competition, if that's what you're talking about. Then again, it could just be my personality and some people can make tournament-fun and smartass-fun work together.

And I take my tournaments seriously anyway. Some people might joke around and do whatever, I guess, but I have other hobbies and when I go to a (paid) paintball or chess tournament I'm certainly gonna try to be serious about it and try to win as best as possible. Most people I've seen in these environments are the same and honestly 40k's really the only game I've ever seen where complaints of "fun" (i.e. fun that is different from the pleasure of competition) are seen so often. Even videogames, whose sole purpose is for casual-friendly-fun is serious when it comes to tournament play. Is this a skewed experience POV? Because if it is, someone better let me know since I'm probably ruining someone else's experience if hangout/prankster fun is the sort of pleasure you're supposed to gain from tournaments.



Sure. I'll say their complaints are unfounded, sure. Just, like I said, don't complain if someone obliterates you in a game if you took an army that is known to be weaker to that army. That just leads to more what-is-cheese crap on forums.  But, I don't see a problem with the event if some people took legit lists that beat other people's weaker lists. Or whatever. That's the organizer's fault with comp restrictions.  But, if the comp rules are written for every participant to see, and the players who later complain were allowed to see the comp rules in some form, I don't see the problem. 

You could challenge yourself, sure.  (I consider it illogical and ridiculous if you're trying to win a race with weights strapped to you feet but I do my own illogical crap, so I'll drop that.  My main beef was with the "holier than thou" excuses some people might use regarding their weak lists.) Don't claim to be morally-superior because of it. That's what the other user sounds like. If you win, great! You're an outstanding general. Then you can laugh at the faces of the idiots who lost to your weaker army. That's a great reason to gamble upon the effectiveness of your army (no sarcasm). I know if I were a better player I'd probably use Orks in 40k instead of my Tau. But most complaints I read about aren't in that form. They're in the "boohoo I took my weak list and I was 'surprised' that I got my ass beat" form. If you take your weak list and win, awesome. If you lose, suck it up. Don't complain and claim that the other guys play cheesy armies and your mommy didn't buy you enough armies and you would've won if this and this-and-that.

spikydavid - "It's a simulation of war, not war. If we played 40K according to US army doctrine, one side would have a 1500 point list, the other side would have a grot."

And the object of the game would be to find the grot.

Mannahnin- "I will probably claim that I am a better player than you if I take Orks to the UK GT and place higher than you, while you are playing Iron Warriors (assuming we each are at least moderately skilled at using them). The former is almost universally acknowledged as one of the weakest armies in the game. The latter are likewise recognized as one of the strongest. If we compete on the same playing field and I do better than you with a weaker army, I am most likely a better player."

This is the clincher, there was a footslogger ork army that won its tourney heast posted a short while back, and the victory was much more impressive because of the list. I dislike 'cheese' mainly because it takes no brains or skill to max out, just about everyone now knows what way to outfit a tactical squad, carnifex etc etc. Its nice to see a change.

If someone wants to wring out every last point at tourney I can understand. Its a competition. Go for a win. I was helping a friend make a hybrid Eldar/Tau list for Conflict, it included 'cheesy' options I would not take in a normal game.

What I dont respect are those who consider you stupid if you dont take the optimum for every unit every time.
Some will go as far as to claim you are slowed if you add a token plasma cannon, a Commissar, mortar squads or other fun but underperforming options. A few will even go as far as to complain if any of your units or weapons has less than the statistically %%% uber choice you must be slowed, even if the options are workable or almost identical.

I like this thread.

I like it particularly because StoneFox and Orlanth have both beautifully illustrated what kind of attitudes create problems and arguments, without being rude or calling anyone names.

It's the folks on the extremes, who insist that their way of playing is the only way, and refuse to make allowances for other ways of enjoying the game.

A person who enters a no-Comp tourney and expects the armies to be fluffy is making a bad assumption, and is unlikely to be happy. He may also make a jerk of himself by judging everyone else by his usual criteria and assumptions that fluff/variety are something everyone should strive for.

A person who enters a tourney with Comp and expects the armies to be cutthroat is also making a bad assumption, and is unlikely to be happy. He is likely to get scored low with his cutthroat army, and may make a jerk of himself by denigrating other people's armies or simply by pounding them with his own style of play (Siren, anyone?), and the mismatches which result.

We need to bear in mind when discussing army lists, tactics, codices, and many other parts of the game, the effects these differing standards / expectations / metagames have. In a current thread over in News & Rumors, Therion (an extremely competitive player from no-Comp Finland) has held forth at length about why the current Eldar codex is an utter failure. From his perspective, there is only one worthwhile type of tournament army that can be built from it, and the Alaitoc/Ulthwe abuses available under the previous two codices (Eldar and Craftworld) were better, because it meant that at least there were two different types of competitive Eldar armies. Other players, playing in environments where people use less maximized lists, have completely contrary opinions, as for them many different types of lists are competitive, and the Eldar codex is a rousing success.

PS: Orlanth- For the record, Spikeydavid took 2nd at the heat, and 15th at the final. No Orks have won any UKGT heats in recent years AFAIK.

Posted By malfred on 03/10/2007 12:56 PM
Was comp score pre-judged or player judged?

Malf, the tournies which use comp scores for pairings have lists submitted beforehand, and impartial judges score them (usually with the names removed to prevent any favoritism).

Haha Mann, you're probably right. The "expectations" of an event is what I don't get. Like I said, it may be a poor assumption on my part to expect cut-throat armies when my CCG/Chess/Paintball/sports touranements and even my one formal 40K tournament have said that the only pleasure to be gotten is competition. And no, I don't discourage anyone playing their own thing. I play odd Tau lists at the local store as well. It's that unsaid expectation that 40K tournies, for some odd reason, are not supposed to be like other tournies where you're supposed to win all-out. That doesn't mean to be a jerk, ass, or whiny WAAC guy. It just means to do everything you can to win and poke fun at the other guy afterwards. Is 40k, or miniatures games in general, supposed to be different? Because from what I hear Warmachine's pretty cut-throat too.

Comp is different. I understand that if someone explicitly lays out, using comp, that somone's trying to make a hangout/prankster "fun" tourney using tons of troops or something, I can see that. Even then, I'm sure you know that comp sucks at weeding out powergaming lists since demonbombs, IW, and BA satisfy most comp sheets nicely. So if comp can't do it, and the lists are legal, how exactly am I, as a player, supposed to know what the expectations of a tournament is? Keeping in mind that tournaments for me have always been cut-throat.

So I'm asking an honest question here: What am I supposed to "get"? What am I "missing out on" by following the rules (and comp) and expecting everyone else to do the same? Am I supposed to assume people are just gonna be hanging out during the tourney and just playing to have a good time? The last one is what gets to me, since I can do that for free at any time at my local store and I can attend, but not pay for, the tournament just to look at pretty armies and powerful players as well. There's no need for me to pay for a tourney to look for niceties that could be had for free, so I really don't get it. But is that it? Is there a metagame unsaid/unwritten "treatise of what you should use for a tournament" you're supposed to formalize by yourself? I'd really like an answer here.

It's a good set of questions. I appreciate the honest inquiry.

I came into 40k with a fairly "pure competition" mindset myself. I played for a couple of years without any comp scoring, just making the best lists I could, and playing my hardest to win. The Dakka Dakka league was where I started, and it encouraged that approach. There were still fluffier players in the league, but the overall expectation was just to play your best. Certain armies/lists became known for being tough to face and having advantages over others, but there wasn't generally judgement of the players based on that.

When the Rogue Trader tournaments started up (late 2000?), they included comp scoring guidelines. It was a simple checklist, emphasizing taking lots of Troops and reducing your reliance on lots of other stuff and wargear. Obviously some armies do this more easily than others, but the list was simple enough that pretty much every army could score decently, and probably get max scores if they tried.

At first I was a bit annoyed, because I was used to having only 30-35% in troops, as opposed to the 40% the guidelines looked for, and I was used to spending more than 10% on wargear, when you counted vehicle upgrades. I could have broken either and it only would have been 2 points out of 100 or so, but I wanted to maximize my chances of winning the Overall. I worked on my lists,cut some of the upgrades, worked in some more troops, and tried it out.

And it turned out that my lists still played well. They weren't quite AS strong as my regular lists, but they were pretty tough. Moreover, they LOOKED cooler, with more models on the table and more variety in the units I fielded. This also applied to the way they played. I found that playing with more variety in the units I used was just more interesting and helped create games with more tactical depth and variety. My league lists were well-honed and reliable, but not quite as varied and interesting. Either way I was still playing competitive games against good opponents, but at the Rogue Trader tournaments (and later at the GTs when I tried them), which included comp, there was more variation in armies and the way the game played. The game had more depth and was more enjoyable. I also won a half dozen or so of these tournaments, and placed reasonably well at the GTs I attended, which naturally reinforced my enjoyment of the format.

These experiences also started informing my league play. I had modified and expanded my first army (Eldar) to work both in the league (no comp) and the RTs and GTs (comp), and when I built my Chaos and Dark Angels armies, I made sure they were designed to score well in comp as well as performing well in a no-comp league. I definitely got feedback from the no comp players (in the army lists forum here on Dakka, for example) that having three different HS choices in my DA (Devs, Annihilator, Vindicator) was less effective and reliable than taking multiples of the same choice, but I found that it wasn't usually a big hit in performance, and it did make the army substantially more interesting to play with and against.

At this point, eight years (this May) of regular, competitive league and tournament play later, I think I have a decent amount of experience. I've played hundreds of games, played in dozens of tournaments, and done pretty well, generally. In 40k my armies have run somewhere between 75%-90% win percentages at different times. I have played in no comp leagues and in max-cheese Gladiator events, and enjoyed myself, but I found that the games tended to be more repetitive. Often I'd need to tool up a list to compete with certain of my best rivals (using Tyranids, Chaos, Codex Marines, and some Templars and Space Wolves in 3rd), and using my tightest lists against lesser opponents frequently made games I probably would have won with a compy list more boringly one-sided. I've found that when I make some alterations for the sake of variety and comp, my armies are more enjoyable to play and face, though my win percentage may slip a little.

On the whole, Comp seems worthwhile to me, since it makes the game experience more varied and interesting, and therefore better.

It does have its problems.

Some people use it as an excuse to whine and complain and look down on other people's armies, or the way other people play the game. It's also difficult to implement fairly, given the variety of the 40k armies out there. A mathematical formula is certainly going to be harder on some armies/builds than others.

But that doesn't mean it's impossible, or that any degree of unfairness means we should chuck the whole idea. Not all armies are created equal in the first place. Playing in a completely no-comp environment means that some armies will naturally be seen a lot less often, as they don't win as often or as easily as some other armies. There's certainly some unfairness there. And I think that's a loss. No codex is worthless, and they all offer different and interesting game experiences and tactical challenges. If we do come up with a system which rewards the underpowered codices/unit choices a little, or handicaps the ones known to be among the best in the game (or outright overpowered), we level the playing field a bit. Hopefully we encourage people to bring more varied armies, and make the results of the tournament more dependent on player skill on the table, and less on exactly which codex they picked at the store.

From my experience at the GTs and RTs, this can and does work. People go to the effort of building less-seen armies and fielding less-seen units, when they know they're not completely shooting themselves in the foot. I fielded Dire Avengers in my RT and GT lists prior to the current codex. Biel-Tan was a dominant army in no comp 3rd edition events; but instead of the standard Banshees/Scorpions/Dragons in Wave Serpents list, I saw a very competitive player field a Biel-Tan army using every aspect- even Shining Spears and Warp Spiders before GW made them good. I saw another guy build and field a bloody Thousand Sons army, because he could get great comp and painting scores, and when he won, people wouldn't attribute it to an overpowered army.

When I started running tournaments last year, I wrote up a simple set of mathematical comp guidelines. They're not very restrictive. They're just there to encourage a little more variety in the lists. The players can still cheese up pretty hardcore if they want. Having a written scoring system gives people the ability to "game the system", but I like having the whole thing available to read before people sign up. If I ever run a really big tourney, like an Indy GT, I'll probably try the banding system/council of judges style of list review.

Anyway, that was pretty long, so I hope some of it was of use to you.

Haha, thanks Mann. That's useful. Probably will take me a while to get the idea of using "themed" armies in tournaments, just because I also play other stuff that requires me to be cut-throat.

Anyway, either I asked the wrong question or it doesn't matter, but I don't think you answered the question about the "hangout" philosophy that some 40k players feel is central to 40k tournaments. I think "hangout" is mutually exclusive to "competition", but I hear all sorts of things about "not understanding the reason for 40k tournies" or similar words. But I guess that's OT for this thread.

Not necessarily OT. Tournaments really are for playing some competitive games, but a big part of the enjoyment definitely IS just being there, seeing new armies, meeting new gamers, etc. They're not mutually exclusive, though getting the games done in a timely fashion does tend to mean the time for just "hanging out" is limited. A lot of guys do the real "hanging out" and drinking after hours on weekend-long tournaments.

Something else to add that hasnt really been mentioned - at least not from this angle: Not everyone goes to tournament with the same agenda.

Consider a tournament as analogous to a marathon. You get those who are out to win, and those who are only out to cross the finish line. They all run together. By and large there is a lot of respect between the two, the only thing that matters is for the casual joggers not to get in the way of the olympic quality atheletes and spoil their times. This is how it should be.

Now the major difference is that the respect between the two types of player is often lacking. Sensible casual gamers, who by and large are not necessarily less able, respect or at least understand the competetive game. Most 'top level' tourney gamers are smart enough to respect the casual gamer - though there are exceptions. The problem is that some tourney winners think of themselves as mental atheletes when in fact they not necessarily are. This is compounded with a horde of brash kiddies who each think they are Alexander reborn because they have scripted a zilla or Iron Warrior list from the internet.

For this reason the most important part of a tourney is the socialising afterwards, or the odd friendly games, and the 'challenge' matches between two highly competitive experienced players. Unlike the tourney itself there you get to meet the gamer you want rather than someone "of similar ability" who is drawn aghainst you.

Miniature wargaming as the game against yourself.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

I'm all nostalgic for Matthew Broderick now.

edit: I posted this in appreciation of the marathon analogy.

OK thanks Malfred. I might get it now. It's like a koan!

Hey Sorry to stick my nose in but I think I can answer one of your questions. You said the following in one of your earlier posts.

Am I supposed to assume people are just gonna be hanging out during the tourney and just playing to have a good time? The last one is what gets to me, since I can do that for free at any time at my local store and I can attend, but not pay for, the tournament just to look at pretty armies and powerful players as well. There's no need for me to pay for a tourney to look for niceties that could be had for free, so I really don't get it.

I don't think you should expect people to just be hanging out and playing just to have a good time, but you should be prepared to encounter that and not belittle the people who are doing that. Take me for Example I have played in  many tournaments and even one GT. but i have played less than10 games not in a tournament setting. Why you may ask, It is all about time my life is very busy I have problems finding time to get in any activities other than work, taking care of my family and driving my son here there and everywhere. So I look at tournaments as three guarantied games against three different opponents. I can find time to schedule a tournament into my life here and there a month or more in advance but I cant justify swinging by the local store for the possibility of a game. It is all a matter of how much free time you have. If you don't have much you need to make the best of it.

Even though I think it is fine for someone to enter a tournament for just the fun of playing the game I do think it is only right that they do their best with whatever army they brought to try and win and challenge their opponent.

Sorry this was so long winded but next time remember the guy acorss the table from you may be some long suffering maried guy who had to promise his wife a weekend of backbreaking labor just to be able to spend the day getting crushed by you.