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Warboss: Again, your misunderstanding the point. In the golf analogy, its not that 20 people got INTO the Masters, its that the guys who shot 20 MORE than Tiger are now "comped" those strokes (their handicap) and are suddenly tied with Tiger...while the guy who was 19 strokes down is now up by 1.
However:
My hardship isn't that the Comp system exists in 40K. Its that their are no Rules, rhym, or reason behind it. What is fine in 1 event can get dinged in the next...simply because of the vagaries involved with people and subjective calls.

As for your challenge...How do you prove a negative...especially when you see your comp score, but have no clear idea WHY the TO gave it to you?
An example of "soft scores" having an effect was with the 2010 SeatleSlaughter. 5 guys tied in Battle points (80). Linbo got 49 points for Sports and 41 painting. Zheng got 50 Sports 36 painting. Sparks got 51 Sports 34 painting.
So, based on the completely arbitrary soft score category (painting in this case...but its the same issue as comp...its subjective) the guy who had the most battle points AND Sportsman points ended up 3rd.

Note this little 12 man event:
http://www.dragonslairbossier.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77:62709-warhammer-40k-tournament-results&catid=35:warhammer-40k&Itemid=55
Note the scores of player 4. While he should have placed a clear 2nd based on BP and Sports, the subjective Comp score drpped him to 4th...below a guy he beat in BPs and tied in Sports.
On a side note, right after that this group started using strait BPs with VPs determining any tie breakers...exactly as suggested in the BRB.

Again, my point is soft scores are too subjective. It can, and has, affected the results of Tournaments and should be looked at hard. If a common system can't be developed (herding cats anyone?) at least the TOs should put out their criteria so we can make a better judgement while building our lists...or decide if the expense of going to a particular event vs the expected outcome is worth the effort.

(EDIT) As an afterthought, I see that you have issued your little challenge, then turn around and acknowledge the issues of Comp scores that were created at the Valentine Massacre...essentially making my case and answering your own challenge. I'm not a young kid (not even a young man) and do not appreciate p1ss-ant games like that.
If you disagree with my premise (that soft scoring systems should be standardized or at least pre-announced) then by all means please make a case for the opposing viewpoint. But don't start playing childish games...especially when you already know the answer.

Again, my point is soft scores are too subjective. It can, and has, affected the results of Tournaments and should be looked at hard. If a common system can't be developed (herding cats anyone?) at least the TOs should put out their criteria so we can make a better judgement while building our lists...or decide if the expense of going to a particular event vs the expected outcome is worth the effort.

That's not strictly true. A common system wouldn't be too hard. All GW has to do is release an official format for events, and refuse support for any events that don't follow it. Most other game companies do the same, like the Infinity Tournament System and Privateer's Steamroller. The real issue is that GW actually likes the comp system for some godawful reason.

dkellyj wrote:My hardship isn't that the Comp system exists in 40K. Its that their are no Rules, rhym, or reason behind it. What is fine in 1 event can get dinged in the next...simply because of the vagaries involved with people and subjective calls.

then, technicallly, we're in agreement. from your initial post, it sounded like you were a hard core "comp must die!" person; if you're not, i'm sorry that i misread that. i don't like the fact that there is no set standard for comp and painting. i personally don't attend events that don't publish concrete rules for the "subjective" parts of scoring (if there are rules, they're not exactly subjective). i also don't attend events that don't include comp/painting/sportmanship (or at least 2 of the 3) because i believe they're an important part of the hobby.

dkellyj wrote:
As for your challenge...How do you prove a negative...especially when you see your comp score, but have no clear idea WHY the TO gave it to you?
An example of "soft scores" having an effect was with the 2010 SeatleSlaughter. 5 guys tied in Battle points (80). Linbo got 49 points for Sports and 41 painting. Zheng got 50 Sports 36 painting. Sparks got 51 Sports 34 painting.
So, based on the completely arbitrary soft score category (painting in this case...but its the same issue as comp...its subjective) the guy who had the most battle points AND Sportsman points ended up 3rd.

Note this little 12 man event:
http://www.dragonslairbossier.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77:62709-warhammer-40k-tournament-results&catid=35:warhammer-40k&Itemid=55
Note the scores of player 4. While he should have placed a clear 2nd based on BP and Sports, the subjective Comp score drpped him to 4th...below a guy he beat in BPs and tied in Sports.
On a side note, right after that this group started using strait BPs with VPs determining any tie breakers...exactly as suggested in the BRB.

i actually see the above slightly differently. i see a tourny where the 5 people tied for top battlepoints took 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place. in the second example, the top 4 people in battle points took 1st through 4th (with the #1 guy taking first and a person tied for 2nd taking 2nd, 3rd and 4th were switched). the two you provided are good examples of soft scores but they show IMO that they work. the same people that took the best general prizes (most battlepoints) still got the best placement overall with some minor changes due to the other categories of scoring. no one with gakky battlepoints took the spot from them. they lost out to people who were just as victorious or incredibly close on the battlefield.

people rag on comp here with vague examples of how somebody with high comp/painting/sportmanship but low to medium battlepoints wins a tourney overall champ over a guy who completely kicked everyone's ass... but no one shows a concrete example of it (just old wive's tales of it happening). maybe hulksmash will dig up the svdm tourny info (there were PLENTY of problems with that one and it was an example of what NOT to do when incorporating soft scores) and we'll have one. the two you provided are good examples of soft scores but they show IMO that they work. the group of best generals got the best placement overall with some minor changes due to the other categories of scoring.

dkellyj wrote:(EDIT) As an afterthought, I see that you have issued your little challenge, then turn around and acknowledge the issues of Comp scores that were created at the Valentine Massacre...essentially making my case and answering your own challenge. I'm not a young kid (not even a young man) and do not appreciate p1ss-ant games like that.
If you disagree with my premise (that soft scoring systems should be standardized or at least pre-announced) then by all means please make a case for the opposing viewpoint. But don't start playing childish games...especially when you already know the answer.

did you bother reading the post? yes, there were problems with comp there but neither hulksmash nor i actually remember if the comp problems gave people with poor battlescores a boost over people with low comp like people claim. in addition, i simply forgot about the tourny since i didn't attend it and just posted a couple times in the thread 6 MONTHS AGO. if 6 months from now someone brings up your username, i won't remember it either because these threads are not life changing memorable events for me.

as for your premise that the scores should be standardized, i agree. but that's not what you said in the first post i responded to. you simply railed against comp with exaggerated claims with nothing to back them up. the fact that some one else MIGHT (possibly, maybe) have found something to support your initial conclusion doesn't make your railing against comp right.

warboss wrote:
people rag on comp here with vague examples of how somebody with high comp/painting/sportmanship but low to medium battlepoints wins a tourney overall champ over a guy who completely kicked everyone's ass... but no one shows a concrete example of it (just old wive's tales of it happening).

I've been to a tourney (4th edition) where I got the highest battle points, but got 13th place (5th from the bottom). I would say mostly due to composition.

Warboss: yeah sounds like we are closer on agreement than we initially thought. My apologies for any misunderstandings.

I've always hated "subjective" topics/issues/rules because its too easy to play the "I said so" game rather than provide a concrete explanation of why, and how to make it better next time. As for 40K; while I would never accuse a TO of rigging an event (unless I know kidding had ironclad proof to back it up) subjective scores just seem to easilly corrupted (even unintentionally) among buddies that play together to rule in his favor because thats the way you guys play together. Add to it where the subjective ruling of a TO in Boston will not be the same as the one in LA.
So when the ticket winners get to Vegas we will have alot of people playing under slightly different rules (based on what their TO already told them in the qualifier GT).
Some guys got a ticket from Ard Boys, where comp/painting are irrelevent. Some from Tournys where INAT is the end all-be all. Some from events that do not use INAT.

But yeah, thats th gist of my point; standardize, or at least pre-publish, how the soft-scoring system will work. Or get rid of it.
Or keep it the way it is and enough people will get ticked off and go play Warmachine/Flames of war instead.

Comp has no place in a competitive tournament.

It's been said a million times, but I'll say it once again. All it does is add a layer of subjectivity to a competitive environment where it doe snot belong.

The best tournaments I have played in are comp free.

The only non game related score I like to see is an award for painting and possibly spirit award, or players' choice award, but they should be separate from who actually wins the tournament.

skyth wrote:I've been to a tourney (4th edition) where I got the highest battle points, but got 13th place (5th from the bottom). I would say mostly due to composition.

interesting. is there a link we can follow to get info on the other players and the points breakdown?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dkellyj wrote:Warboss: yeah sounds like we are closer on agreement than we initially thought. My apologies for any misunderstandings.

no problem. same here.

It varies from place to place.

If its pre marked then generally you can take broken stuff because it never covers everything, like nob bikerz are 2 HQs and 2 Troops, what are you going to do punish me for not taking slots?

The other system is stupid because if you beat a guy he can say you're army is broken, I had someone mark me down because he doesnt like Eldar rangers or another time Ork big meks with KFF.

WARNING INCOMING BIASED OPINION


I dislike comp, but where I play comp means composition not all soft scores (painting, sportsmanship), though comp itself IS a soft score.

Basically your army composition counts for points as a handicap. People who run multiple power-units get docked, redundancy gets you docked, not taking one of every slot gets you docked. . .

Personally I feel this is wrong as it penalizes people for making a good list. I apologize if I entered this tournament to win & brought a good list with plenty of redundancy so that if one unit gets killed another can easily step in and do the same job. I apologize if my list isn't fluffy, again I'm here to win not RP. I apologize if I didn't use something from every FoC slot but that would make my army bad because my Fast Attack choices are all doo-doo (I'm looking at you CSM). Or that I only have 2 units of troops but 3 elites & 3 fast attack, maybe my army was modeled as an elite strike force not a generic force.

Note: I am not a waac player but list building really is one of my strong points & I use it to my advantage.

I could rant more on comp but I won't. As for other soft scores I hate when they are included in the overall winner. My 2 friends are fantastic players but one an army veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan & another has had 4 reconstructive surgeries after a paint sprayer was shot into his hand. Neither one can hold their hands very steady & paint fine details so they get docked on painting scores (which after one lost the paint sprayer a tournament I flipped out on the store owner and have never been back) the nerve of him docking 15 points out of 50 for a "sloppy paint job" which knocked him from 1st to 3rd and cost $100 in prize money because he has a disability at least he tries to paint unlike a vast majority of players I see.

That and sportsmanship is just plain biased, I'm sorry I play by the rules. . .

warboss wrote:

skyth wrote:I've been to a tourney (4th edition) where I got the highest battle points, but got 13th place (5th from the bottom). I would say mostly due to composition.

interesting. is there a link we can follow to get info on the other players and the points breakdown?.

Nothing was posted online, but I posted a tourney report...http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/29966.page

Back on the actual topic of comp, you have to ask yourself 'What is the purpose of comp?'

To me, the purpose of comp is two-fold. The first is to balance the game. The second is to help everyone have more fun.

Now, I am approaching this from more of a Fantasy perspective.

To make the game more balanced, you try to make every army equally likely to win given equal player skill.
To make the game more fun, you try to avoid lopsided or rock-paper-scissors matchups where the result is almost guaranteed to favor one side or another.

I have seen various ways to accomplish this:

List restrictions and/or modifications
List scoring (By opponent, TO, or a council)
Strength of opposition (Basically taking half the comp score difference and adding it to battle points. This is done instead of having the comp score itself added to the final score for overall or any other category)
Matching by composition.

Now all of these can be objective or subjective. Objective means either a published in advance list of restrictions and/or a detailed checklist-type of how a comp score if calculated. Subjective is at the whim of whomever is scoring whether the list is allowed and/or what score it gets. you can also have a mix of both. Either a checklist plus a subjective score or banding by army with a subjective bonus or penalty based on a 'typical' army of that race.

Objective is always better in my book as you know in advance what your list will get. Both objective and subjective have 'stealth cheese' where either the objective list didn't take a certain combination into account or the subjective scoring didn't notice a certain thing or had certain biases. Opponent scored subjective is the worst, as the result of the game also impacts the comp score.

The problem with plain list scoring is that you still have the bad matchups. If comp is accurately judged, and has an impact in the game to match the likelyhood of difference in battle points. You still have the possibility of a person with max comp and a person with min comp playing. The game is so lopsided that it likely won't be fun for either player, and the result won't matter. While it may be a perfectly balanced result, it fails on the increasing fun factor. There is also the problem where if (example comp is scored out of 20 points) you have two players with identical win/loss results at the end of a tourney. One player has a 5 comp score, the other has a 15 comp. Under just the list scoring dynamic, the player with the 15 comp scores higher in the tournament than the person who scored a 5 comp. The problem is that the person with a 5 comp played only against opponents with a 2 comp whereas the person with the 15 comp only played against opponents with an 18 comp. The person with the lower comp score theoretically had the harder battles, but scored lower overall. This fails on the balance perspective.

Pairing by comp takes this into account. It avaoid the bad matchup/pointless game issue. However, if the comp score is tacked on at the end of the tournament towards overall (or any other category) then it doesn't take into account the second problem where the lower comp list scores lower overall even though the opposing lists it faced were theoretically even. This fails on the balance spectrum.

Strength of opposition scoring takes into account the balance issue presented above, but it does not take into account the bad matchup syndrome where the game is a foregone conclusion even if the result plus comp modifier is actually balanced. This fails on the fun factor.

An argument can be made for a combination of the above. First round, people are paired by comp scores. The battle score you get is affected by strength of opposition. From then on, the battle points from each round are totaled and the comp score is subtracted for a composite score for match pairing. If the comp score is not included for the overall rankings anywhere, this can be a decent system. To illustrate this, take the following example:

Assuming you have an army that scores a 10 comp, 15 paint and 12 sportsmanship playing in a 3 round tournament. A win is worth 15, draw 10, and loss 5.

First round, he plays another 10 comp army. He wins this battle. His composite score for the next round is 5 with 15 battle points. He plays against a 5 comp army that had a draw ( composite score is 5). He loses this game. However since you had strength of opposition he get 7.5 points for the loss and the opponent gets 12.5 points for the win) He now has a composite score of 17.5 and 27.5 battle points. He plays against a comp 13 army that had a composite score of 17.5. He draws this game, but gets 11.5 points for the draw (39 battle) and his opponent gets 8.5 points. His composite score would be 29 and his opponent's would be 26 if there was another game. However, since there is not we go directly to scoring. For overall, his points are 39 for battle, 15 or paint and 12 for sportsmanship for a total score of 66. The 10 points for comp are not figured into the final score. Granted, this is not a perfect example as a 0 comp versus a 20 comp would have (assuming the 0 won) the 0 comp getting 5 points and the 20 comp getting 15.

Personally, I believe the best system is objective restriction with no comp scores. However, the second best system is like I described above (combination of pairing by comp and strength of opposition) with objective scoring for the comp.

skyth wrote:Nothing was posted online, but I posted a tourney report...http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/29966.page

yeah, you definitely got chipmunked by your opponents. while i still think comp is a good idea when done objectively pretourny by staff via checklist and used for pairing, your case is the opposite. subjectively scored by your opponent post game and used for final score. ughh.

I'm not anti-comp either (Regardless of what some of the local 40k players would tell you). It's more of a case of I'm anti-subjective comp. I also don't like blanket comp scores that are just tacked on at the end of the tourney.

nkelsch wrote: The 3rd edition HQ options for an Ork warboss could build a retinue of close to 60 models and be almost 100 wounds deep in a single unit and be over 1000 points.

By that reasoning you could havce an HQ choice of infinity models. No points limit on a nob's wargear, no limit to attack squig numbers. And anyone who would do that would deserve the beating they would get, either on the table or in the face.

Claypool wrote:@dkellyj

BMI is a terrible measurement of an individual's fitness level. It is simply a height to weight ratio and does not take into account increased muscularity. I personally have a BMI of 31.6 but at 6'4" and 260lbs, I hardly consider myself obese. In fact, as a varsity college wrestler, I would consider myself in better shape than most other wargamers.

I see your point but, due to my hatred of BMI, must disagree with you. Perhaps a one point deduction for every body fat percentage point over 24%.

So true. Any doctor tht quotes BMI gets an instant from me. Know a few body builders who have been denied insurance because their BMI says they're morbidly obese. These are people who are 250+ lbs of muscles and veins, and in ridiculolously good shape. And no, I'm not correcting the spelling in that last sentence...I just created an awesome new word!

Yeah, BMI is stupid. Any guy that lifts weights on a regular basis will be listed as over weight, which is absurd. Those guys are healthier than the vast majority of people.

I was listed at obese when I was up to 205 at 6'2" and I was in the best shape of my life.

I think comp should only be used for first round pairings in 5 game tournaments. Assigning a points value to something that is so dependent on the person judging it is unfair and open to abuse. I dislike soft scores in general and believe that they should all be part of a "composition requirement" for the tourney (i.e. minimum painting requirements, restrictions on special characters, FOC limits, removal of bad sports, etc.) that way you don't get screwed by opponents chipmunking you, judges hating your painting, or people thinking you brought "cheese".

Win all your games, win the tournament. Have a seperate scale to determine the best painted and best sportsman. Not everyone plays for the same reasons, soft scores and comp scores are just ways to make people play the way "they are supposed to play" according to someone else. Keep wins, painting, sportsmanship, and comp seperate TOs!

@Warboss

I'm pretty sure it hammered Yermom pretty badly actually. I could be mistaked but I think I remember his comp score shifting him significantly down the ranks. Could be wrong though and he'd need to chime in since I can't seem to find the results online.

Ahhh, found it. Yermom wouldn't have mattered much but the extremely low comp score (a 2/20) kept Alex Fennel from placing top 2. Not that it matters since I think Alex has his ticket now but it did matter. Not to mention the impact that kind of thing has on the weekend because of the initial pairings.