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The Green Git wrote:

Centurian99 wrote:I see nobody's addressing my point...

I'm sorry... it was phrased as a statement. Didn't realize you were looking for feedback. Let's address that shall we?

Centurian99 wrote:The problem with running an event where you try to emphasize the other aspects of the game is in the point spread and weighting. It really doesn't matter how many points you allocate to each category...if the point spread is out of whack, whatever category has the largest spread will be the determining factor.

And therein lies (what I feel anyway) is the root of current trends: Too much of a point spread in battle points and not enough in other aspects of the game. In this proposed type of scenario I see it just as possible to win via being a good sport and having an awesome army as it is to win by crushing all before you.

I've actually got no problems (with comp out of the picture) of trying to increase the importance of sports, appearance, and theme. The problem comes in how you judge it.

Generating a point spread in the non-battle categories is next to impossible, if you want to do it in a fair, evenhanded way. If you do it subjectively, there's no way to avoid pissing off nearly everybody, and nobody can be really fair an impartial. If you do it objectively (checklists and the like) you end up not getting the needed point spread.

The only way I've seen it done was how we did it at AdeptiCon three or four years ago, when we instituted a ranking system for several events. It was used in the 40K Championships and I used it when running the BFG Championships in its first year. In a ranking system (where each player is forced to rank their opponents in each category after the tournament is over - so in a 3-game tourney, they have to rank one of their opponents 1st, one 2nd, and one 3rd) we got the point spread we needed, and people were largely happy with what resulted.

The problem was one of logistics. Instead of spreading out data-entry throughout the day, we ended up with a massive pile of results that had to be entered after the tournament was complete. It took me nearly 45 minutes to enter the results for the relatively-small 16-man BFG championships, and for the 40K tournament, it took absolutely ridiculous amounts of time. When I used a ranking system for another smaller local tournament, it delayed final results for nearly an hour. Even with spreadsheets set up for quick data entry and automatically checking for errors, it takes way, way, way, too much time.

I voted no.

My interest is in playing a tactical mini game against reasonably competent players.

You want to be rewarded for decent painting? Join a painting contest lke Golden Demons.

You want to be rewarded for knowing what rock Snikrot was born/hatched under? Gather around the campfire and boast of lonely nights reading the rulebook cover to cover 12 times.

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:My interest is in playing a tactical mini game against reasonably competent players.

Well if you don't play 40k, why vote on a 40k tournament?

I'm fine with this, and think that variety can only help things. Just publicize various criteria and scoring mechanics in advance, and all should be fine.

I don't see why Cent says it's doomed to fail - it simply won't attract the same audience as something like Adepticon. Nothing wrong with that.

I wouldn't travel over an hour to attend an RTT.

JohnHwangDD wrote:I'm fine with this, and think that variety can only help things. Just publicize various criteria and scoring mechanics in advance, and all should be fine.

I don't see why Cent says it's doomed to fail - it simply won't attract the same audience as something like Adepticon. Nothing wrong with that.

Because any scoring mechanism itself fails at being fair and generating the necessary point spread.

Anytime you put a person's opinion as the measuring stick in competition it's going to be sketchy.

Judging painting.... Do you use a set in stone checklist that has a several options to earn points? Or does judge just give points on his personal opinion of what he likes

Judging Fluff/backstory of Armies......Does a dude's spralling 8 page monstrosity of army lore outweigh some other guy's 3-4 paragraph reason for fighting in this specific battle?

While I appreciate everyone playing/modeling 40k. Does it make sense to have competition with so little of the game result weighing the outcome of the tourney?

Centurian99 has it right.

Thanks everyone for the candid responses, especially you naysayers. This is all very useful.

The point about this is not that it will be easy to emphasize other than battle points. I don't think it will be easy. I think it will be difficult. But then again doing something in a new and different way is usually not easy or everyone would be doing it. To get greater reward requires greater effort.

I think the key points will be to communicate criteria and set expectations before the event so those looking for this type of thing can attend, and those that are not can make informed decisions.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:My interest is in playing a tactical mini game against reasonably competent players.

Well if you don't play 40k, why vote on a 40k tournament?

Now THAT was priceless.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

Old Man Ultramarine wrote:My interest is in playing a tactical mini game against reasonably competent players.

Well if you don't play 40k, why vote on a 40k tournament?

Very true. I have seen alot of "stains" 40k in my day.

Our current tournaments are 25% comp, 25% painting, 50% battles. Comp and painting are judge based, totally biased one persons opinions. Have by far had more compliments than complaints, and some solid constructive criticism.

mikhaila wrote:Our current tournaments are 25% comp, 25% painting, 50% battles. Comp and painting are judge based, totally biased one persons opinions. Have by far had more compliments than complaints, and some solid constructive criticism.

Good work at making people happy. But...

The numbers you're throwing around are totally meaningless. Because its not important how much each part is worth proportionally...what's important is the point spread for each category. If you really want to make the game more about the overall hobby, you need to look at the high/low scores in each category, the standard deviation, and the median/average scores. Take this for example:

In a 5 game tournament, players can earn up to 75 points in battle, 75 points in painting, and 75 points in sportsmanship. Looks like the importance of battle is minimized, right? After all, its only 33% of the total score!

Not necessarilly.

Lets say that people are in general getting good sports scores. Maybe people are losing a point here and there, but at the end of the day, the highest sports score is a 75, and the lowest is a 50.

Painting, is judged on a checklist, and the vast majority (say 75%) of scores are between 40 and 60, with a small handful of players at the top and bottom ends.

Now with Battle, you have scores ranging from 0 to 75. With deviation all over the place.

In this situation: battle is king. minimal efforts at sportsmanship and painting, and a crushing battle score, are far more important for winning.

player A and B have a painting skill of 5 out of 10, there....player A plays his games against players who are a 7 out of 10 and B plays games against players who are 3 out of 10.

Player B will have a higher score....this is why i wouldnt go to a hobby tournament.A tournament based on batte points you play better and better opponents if you win so if you win all your games there is no doubt that you are the best there.

I think I see what Cent is saying. It's not how many points are theoretically available in each category, it's how many are actually in play. You can allot 25pts out of a hundred to sports, but if nobody gets less than 20 that's only 5pts in play.

The problem I see is that the more paint is weighted, the bigger a hole many players will find themselves. I mean, I paint my own stuff, and show up for fun, but I know that the better painters will simply blow me out of the water. So, that's a big chunk of points I can't get.

Fluff/comp/theme do tend to come down to personal judgment, and while I think most gamers know good comp when they see, there is enough grey area to choke a mule. I have a friend that continues to hold a grudge against eldar skimmers, even now in fifth, so any eldar force will get dinked. Some people still hate special characters. Others think that Nob bikers are totally fluffy and cool.

I think an event like this could be a lot of fun, but I doubt you'd get people traveling. The only way to really win is to have an interesting army that's been converted and painted really well. It's more like a 40k army show than a tournament: sure you might under perform, but your breeding and posture will make up for it.

Well, right now, a lot of tournaments might as well be 90% Battle for the swing that they cause.

You can't convince me that every player has a perfectly "even" set of boards and missions, either, but we sweep this under the rug and pretend that Battle doesn't have secondary biases in the matchups and missions.

Well yeah. When you comp/sports scores that generally are pretty high and paint scores that are about even (which should be the case mostly) it means that BP's are the determining factor.

You could always do what the Broadside Bash did and make painting a huge score since they just gave the best 3 painters got around 30 while everyone else was between 10-13 and the non-painters got 1's. Made painting huge in the overall since 3 guys could have lost a game and tied one and still wound up with overall. Not to mention the "comp" scoring there. So there ya go. It was a non-battle point based event. In fact I think the guy that went 5-0 wound up in damn near last place (he deserved it, unpainted Dark Eldar and no fun to play).

See, events like that are out there. They just don't bill them that way cause regardless of what people say a lot of guys won't show up to one

I'd participate in something like this if there was a clear breakdown/checklist of what the scores were in each category (How do you score fiction? Is my epic blood-soaked saga of the Perdus rift anomaly 'better' than JohnHwangDD's 'Index Astartes: Grey Marines?' If I knew how the things would be scored or at least had some idea of the spread, deviations etc. then I'd participate, but only if the event was no further away from me than say DC or Baltimore.

I'd probably go to a RTT that was "holistic," but I can imagine that I might very well finish the Tournament vowing never to return to that store, which isn't a common reaction to RTTs that only really care about battle scores. There's a lot more potential to piss people off when you start judging these things.

I would definitley hesitate to judge "fluff writing" or "fluff knowledge." The fluff changes far too fast and too often. And even official GW fluff created at the same time is often contradictory in both tone and factual details. I think most players would be upset if they lost points for being "wrong" about a "fact" of the 40k universe if the "wrong" choice was also supported by GW fluff. This can bleed over into painting, modeling, and army list creation. What color is ork flesh? What color is "Blood Angels Red?" Did the new Chaos Codex retcon the fluff enough that Thousand Sons can now party with Bloodthirsters? Should an Astral Claws army use C:SM or C:CSM?

If you avoid these problems by asking broad questions and having open standards then you run into the problem Centurian99 mentioned, where everyone gets the same 10/10 "fluff points" or whatever.

I like the idea of encouraging painting, and other aspects of the hobby. I like playing well-painted armies, and I like it when my opponents care about their army, and are proud of the effort. But I don't like the the idea that my army, which I have spent hundreds of hours working on will be looked at for five minutes by a judge and found wanting.

Well, like I said, I think it can be fun, but one of the reasons that Battle is a huge factor in most tournaments is because that's what people spend most of their time at the tournament doing: playing the games.

I've got no problem with a day long celebration of the hobby that included fluff recitals, painting judging, army comp breakdowns, a pub quiz, etc. I just think that everybody would have to go in with dramatically different ideas of what to expect: namely playing hard to win a prize isn't an option. There will be a winner, but in the same way that there's a winner at a junior high talent show. It's more for the fun of being there and going. Frankly, i think most store tournaments are more like this than people realize, but if it'll make the painters and what not feel better for more prizes to be given to them, then I got no beef with that.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Well, right now, a lot of tournaments might as well be 90% Battle for the swing that they cause.

You can't convince me that every player has a perfectly "even" set of boards and missions, either, but we sweep this under the rug and pretend that Battle doesn't have secondary biases in the matchups and missions.

I wouldn't say 90%, but right now what's happening in most of the majors (GT's, AdeptiCon, etc.) is that Battle is the King, and soft scores overcome close battle totals. Played in an RTT myself where I took second, because the 1st place finisher's army (Mike Mutscheller) was scored significantly higher in painting (not complaining - it's a gorgeous army), despite the fact that I edged mike in battle.

Something similar happened at Baltimore in 2007. Scott Simpson got a perfect 100 in battle, and ended up losing the overall to someone who edged him through sports and appearance.

If you increase the points allocated for painting, theme, etc. - without figuring out how to create a similar point spread - nothing will change.

The big thing about "secondary biases" in battle, is that its much easier to spread out the pain. Any given matchup in mission/terrain/etc. will be unfavorable to one side or another, but over the course of 3-5 games, that bias can be balanced out, to a certain extent. (I'm running the AdeptiCon Gladiator this year - along with Inq. Malice - and our motto when creating missions is, "we're not prejudiced - we simply hate all armies equally.")

With painting/theme/etc., you can't change the game-to-game variables.

Orkeosaurus wrote:Green Git, would you have an overall winner of this tournament, or would it just be a winner for each event?

Sorry I missed this earlier. I see such an event as having an Overall winner and lesser awards for various categories like Battle, Painting and/or Craftsman, and Sportsmanship. Door prizes and young blood type awards would be included as well.

How about concentrating on having fun, rather than winning?
Sure, have some fights, and maybe some prizes, but what about splitting the place up into areas where people can chat, compare models/conversions/paint-jobs, and not be worried that their opinion will be over-rules by some "judge"?

Currently, I am a poor-to-average painter, an average tactician, a slightly-above-average converter and a medium-to-good story-writer. Not much point me going to a major tournament, I'd get walloped.
Somewhere to meet up with other enthusiasts, however, sounds like a plan!

No need to end the day/weekend with a big list of scores and prizes. Just some fun.
Maybe a few honourable mentions, and interesting situations in the battles (more "Look how Johnny's Eldar survived a Khorne-Berserker rush! OK, he got mashed in turn 4! " Rather than "I scored 400000000 pts, how many did you get?")

I wouldn't not do it just because it gave points for army story.

However, that would not be the draw.

It would be because conventions and events are fun for all sorts of reasons.

Then again I hardly ever get away to events.

BTW by excluding negative comment about Theme (for instance) you run the risk of overestimating the enthusiasm for such an event.

Centurian99 wrote:

mikhaila wrote:Our current tournaments are 25% comp, 25% painting, 50% battles. Comp and painting are judge based, totally biased one persons opinions. Have by far had more compliments than complaints, and some solid constructive criticism.

The numbers you're throwing around are totally meaningless. Because its not important how much each part is worth proportionally...what's important is the point spread for each category. If you really want to make the game more about the overall hobby, you need to look at the high/low scores in each category, the standard deviation, and the median/average scores. Take this for example:

What's the old saying? 'Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs' ? I've got two degrees, one in mathematics, the second in statistics. I long ago noticed that too many tournaments had most people scoring in the 90+% range for sports, etc. When everyone gets a perfect score for sports, and a decent score for painting, then battle points still decide the tournament.

The way we've been doing it, both painting and comp start at 0. All models must be painted 3 colors and based to even play in the tournament. No unpainted models can be used. If you show up with the minimum army, then you get a 0 in painting. My scale goes 0-30 for both comp and painting. Getting a 0 in painting isn't going to let you win, no matter how you crush people. Similar for comp. Several armies got 0-5 for comp out of 30 points. This tends to be a bit of a handicap.

The goal with our tournaments isn't to emphasize softscores over hard, but to emphasize all 3. So far it's working.

Would I get to play several games of 40K? Yes? Then I would probably come.
However, with that out of the way, I'll admit that I do have a problem if the 'soft' scores are weighted to the degree where someone who doesn't win a single game can walk off with the overall prize. For some reason, that bothers me..........................

don_mondo wrote:However, with that out of the way, I'll admit that I do have a problem if the 'soft' scores are weighted to the degree where someone who doesn't win a single game can walk off with the overall prize. For some reason, that bothers me..........................

Don't think that would happen any more than someone could win every game but score dead last in Sports and Appearance and still win overall.

Besides, isn't the point of finding the "Best Overall" something other than "Best General and oh yeah some other stuff"?

I think I'd go if I didn't have to drive far, say 3 hours at the most. If it was a two day affair, having a get together list for couch-crashing or hotel room sharing would help.

The tournaments I've experienced have weighed battle scores heavily over painting and comp, which is the main reason that I haven't participated in them. I'm not highly competitive and WAAC is pointless from my perspective, but the hobby aspect of the game is something I'm highly interested in.

I agree with BlackSpike, above, in that an open forum that includes painting and modelling workshops, a place to show off your army, getting a few games in after taking in a short seminar on Mathammer 40K and "How to recognize a powerlist and what to do about it" would be great. A kind of a mini-con dedicated to the hobby as a whole...

Yes, for the thrill and seeing other (well-painted) armies.
But I only travel miles for the GT.

Sounds like fun! I'd be in.

Official Rogue Traders circa 6 years ago were just like this. If you had a fully painted army, a decent list with points spread fairly evenly, and a great attitude you could count on getting top points even before the first game started. I would go 1-2 and still finish top 5 out of 16.

I feel that when you put an emphasis on the "hobby" aspect you get people who are willing to stay up the night before to finish their armies. You have lists with lots of Core/Troops, mild characters, and a less competitve nature. If you win some games then great.

I would travel and would look forward to it. I know that people are going to put in that extra effort, but that's me.

My friends and I normally wind up spending the night before finishing out armies for a tourney. And that is just because we want and expect to play painted armies.

That being said I attend tournements to play games and want my game performance to matter in the standings. I'm not a stellar painter, I don't build crazy tough lists (Pure GK's anyone? ), and i'm a good guy to play against but I really hate that I'm out of the running for the tourney overall just because I don't paint that well compared to some hobbyists.

And as for 6 years ago in tournies I think you meant to say that if you gamed the comp score section, had a decent attitude (not hard back then as the internet hadn't made playing in tournies and wanting to win not part of the hobby), and painting very well then you could place top 5 even with crappy battle scores.

It hasn't changed that much. It's the attitude people have taken toward tournements that have changed.