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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/01 19:51:59
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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[DCM]
Tilter at Windmills
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I agree with Janthkin on 1, and on his suggested replacement.
2. You can drop "at least" and "partially", given the nice clear rules for "within" on page 3.
3. Looks solid.
I like the overall methodology. Looks solid!
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Adepticon 2015: Team Tourney Best Imperial Team- Team Ironguts, Adepticon 2014: Team Tourney 6th/120, Best Imperial Team- Cold Steel Mercs 2, 40k Championship Qualifier ~25/226
More 2010-2014 GT/Major RTT Record (W/L/D) -- CSM: 78-20-9 // SW: 8-1-2 (Golden Ticket with SW), BA: 29-9-4 6th Ed GT & RTT Record (W/L/D) -- CSM: 36-12-2 // BA: 11-4-1 // SW: 1-1-1
DT:70S++++G(FAQ)M++B++I+Pw40k99#+D+++A+++/sWD105R+++T(T)DM+++++
A better way to score Sportsmanship in tournaments
The 40K Rulebook & Codex FAQs. You should have these bookmarked if you play this game.
The Dakka Dakka Forum Rules You agreed to abide by these when you signed up.
Maelstrom's Edge! |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/02 08:15:20
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Awesome Autarch
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Thanks for the input, guys!
So instead of number 1, perhaps destroy half or more of your enemy's scoring units?
The reason I ask, is that number 2 is already a board control objective and number 1 would be more of the same. We wanted to make them all as different as possible.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/02 13:21:17
Subject: Re:5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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[ADMIN]
Decrepit Dakkanaut
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I voted 5 games because personally I'm far more interested in relaxed games than I am with a 'true' winner of a tournament...but that's just my humble opinion (I get the positive benefit of having one 'true' winner).
If you do go with 4 games in one day then I strongly suggest keeping the game sizes down to 1,500-1,750 points. If you wanted to do something wacky you could make it an escalation tournament and make day two's games played at 2,000 points...but that certainly takes a bit of the fair and balanced approach out of the tournie to some degree.
As for your tie-breakers, I don't think you should go with standardized tie-breakers that apply regardless of mission type. If you're using rulebook missions, then you should have slightly different tie-breakers for each mission type that basically rewards players for playing 'against type' in the mission they're playing. Something like (these are off the top of my head):
Annihilation Missions
1) You have more Kill Points remaining on the table (unclaimed) in your army at the end of the game than your opponent.
2) You have a scoring unit within 3" of the center of the table while your opponent has no unit within 3" of the center of the table.
3) You have more scoring units remaining on the table (unclaimed) at the end of the game than your opponent.
Two of the three reward the player for having or using scoring units properly, which is a nice complement to a Kill Point mission and #1 recognizes that a high Kill Point army is at a disadvantage in Annihilation missions and therefore rewards players for having more Kill Points remaining in their army at the end of the game than their opponent.
Capture & Control Missions
1) You scored more Kill Points by the end of the game than your opponent.
2) You have a scoring unit within 3" of the center of the table while your opponent has no unit within 3" of the center of the table.
3) You control both objectives at the end of the game.
The Kill Point inclusion is a no-brainer (since the mission is scoring unit based). The other two reward players that move out and don't just play for the tie...holding the middle of the table means one scoring unit not holding your own objective or going for your opponent's and the ability to pull off the double-capture should definitely be rewarded too!
Sieze Ground Missions
1) You scored more Kill Points by the end of the game than your opponent.
2) Your opponent controls no objectives at the end of the game.
3) You control every single objective at the end of the game.
Again, the Kill Point inclusion is a no-brainer (since the mission is scoring unit based). The other two reward dominant performances in capturing objectives. Obviously if you get #3 you get #2 as well, but it is much more likely for someone to get #2 and not #3 (so its kind of tiered in a way).
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/02 15:31:01
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Dakka Veteran
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I am generally in favor of 5 game GTs, but then I am also a proponent of BP style events instead of strict W/L, so it is what it is. If you are going with 6 games, I strongly suggest doing the suggested 4 on Saturday thing, to allow time for teardown and people to travel home that need to. It can be done with 2.5 hour rounds, its just a long day. Something like:
Round one 9am-11:30am
Round two 12pm-2:30pm
Lunch
Round three 3:30pm - 6pm
Round four 6:30-9pm
You will have to rule with an iron fist and make people end there games when time is called, but its doable. Just make sure the room has good airflow or the sea of humanity will make the BSB smell like a flower garded after 12 hours of constant gaming in the San Fran sun.
Keeping the final day to two games makes people more likely to help with the teardown, which you will want any help you can get.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/02 19:23:42
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Awesome Autarch
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Thanks again for the suggestions, guys.
Yak, I really like those tie breaker conditions and I think we will go with those or some extremely close.
Q, I was thinking of a schedule very similar to that. I am going to bounce these ideas off of White925 and Italiaplaya and if they green light them, too, we're going to finalize this and start preregistration today.
Also, the hall we rented is HUGE. There will be a ton of room and everyone gets an 8' table, so no worries there.
Thanks for the help.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/02 19:33:07
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Fixture of Dakka
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Reecius wrote:Also, the hall we rented is HUGE. There will be a ton of room and everyone gets an 8' table, so no worries there.
Huzzah for space! Y'all are nice fellows, but we don't have to be bumping butts.
I wish more venues allowed for 8' tables. Someplace to actually PUT your army before deployment is always welcome.
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Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/02 19:50:05
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Archmagos Veneratus Extremis
Home Base: Prosper, TX (Dallas)
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It is getting more common though. The only event I attended last year that didn't have 8' tables was the BSB.
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Best Painted (2015 Adepticon 40k Champs)
They Shall Know Fear - Adepticon 40k TT Champion (2012 & 2013) & 40k TT Best Sport (2014), 40k TT Best Tactician (2015 & 2016) |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/02 22:05:56
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Dakka Veteran
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Yeah the smartest thing I pushed for when Garner started our events out was for 8' tables. I'd rather turn people away and have fewer happy people than more people and everyone is miserable and breaking stuff.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/02 22:45:13
Subject: Re:5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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[DCM]
Tilter at Windmills
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Yak's post is pure gold, except that two of his "tie-breakers" are actually secondary or tertiary objectives; which would make sense for extra battle points in a tournament using Battle Points, but don't make sense as tiebreakers because the condition given doesn't allow that the mission came out a Draw. They're actually extra-good Wins.
That said, those two are easily corrected. Here are a couple of suggestions.
yakface wrote:Annihilation Missions
All three of these are perfect as-is.
yakface wrote:Capture & Control Missions
The first two are perfect, but...
yakface wrote:3) You control both objectives at the end of the game.
...doesn't work, as you'd have won the game at that point, and wouldn't need a tiebreaker. Here's my suggested replacement:
"3) You have a unit closer to your opponent's objective than he has to yours." This achieves the same effect he was going for, encouraging people to play aggressively and try to get at your opponent's objective.
yakface wrote:Sieze Ground Missions
Again, the first two are excellent, but you'd have won the game if the following were true:
yakface wrote:3) You control every single objective at the end of the game.
Suggested replacement:
"3) You have more Scoring Units within 3" of objectives than your opponent does." Again, this one reinforces keeping your Scoring units alive and rewards you if you can somehow get them all in position for objectives.
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This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2011/03/02 22:48:16
Adepticon 2015: Team Tourney Best Imperial Team- Team Ironguts, Adepticon 2014: Team Tourney 6th/120, Best Imperial Team- Cold Steel Mercs 2, 40k Championship Qualifier ~25/226
More 2010-2014 GT/Major RTT Record (W/L/D) -- CSM: 78-20-9 // SW: 8-1-2 (Golden Ticket with SW), BA: 29-9-4 6th Ed GT & RTT Record (W/L/D) -- CSM: 36-12-2 // BA: 11-4-1 // SW: 1-1-1
DT:70S++++G(FAQ)M++B++I+Pw40k99#+D+++A+++/sWD105R+++T(T)DM+++++
A better way to score Sportsmanship in tournaments
The 40K Rulebook & Codex FAQs. You should have these bookmarked if you play this game.
The Dakka Dakka Forum Rules You agreed to abide by these when you signed up.
Maelstrom's Edge! |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/03 00:18:54
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Awesome Autarch
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Thanks for the input Mannahnin.
I think there is some ambiguity on what purpose Tie Breaker Points actually serve. The Tie Breaker points aren't for breaking ties in a specific game (although I can definitely see how that would be the implication), they are for breaking ties in bracketing and for final rankings.
If you tie a game on objectives, you still tie that game despite who got how many tie breaker points.
In the event that there are players with the same records at the tournament's end (which there will be) players will be stratified according to Tie Breaker points.
The Tie Breaker points (intentionally) have very little to do with game results. The game still fundamentally uses a W/L/D format, Tie Breaker points are only there to determine bracketing in the case of odd numbers of players in a given bracket and for final placings.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/03 00:46:08
Subject: Re:5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Longtime Dakkanaut
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Since no one has touched on it...
Since you are wisely opting for book-esque missions, then it should be pointed out that there are exactly three deployment types, and 3 mission objectives in the rulebook.
This likely means that the game designers at GW want there to be an equal emphasis on kill points, multi-objective mid-table action, and "base attack/defense". If you run a 5 game tourney, then you have to pick one deployment type and one mission type that doesn't repeat. So tourney organizer bias creeps in when you ultimately decide arbitrarily which mission type is "less important". Whether it be annihilation, cap and control or even seize.
in situations where you just can't deliver a number of missions in multiples of 3. I think the better way to go MAY be to run missions similar to adepticon. One "meta-mission" encompassing all three standard mission archetypes as single objectives.
the astute among you may have just realized that this still doesn't fix the issue that the deployment types would still not be adequately represented. Do you cut to one dawn of war? And add bias to heavy weapon toting stationary armies? Or do you cut to one spearhead, and then ensure the attendees that they will have a luxurious 72" wide spread for their gunlines in 4 of 5 missions?
As far as 3/3 or 4/2...
Definitely go 4/2. Most people traveling wouldn't mind a late night saturday, where they know they are a short car drive to a hotel and some rest. And your venue won't care how late you stay in their location and if you leave tables set out and covered in terrain on friday and saturday night. But they will want the place cleaned up and want you out early evening on sunday. Sunday just needs to be light so that people can get into a car early and feeling rested to get back home and ready for work on monday.
Just my input
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/03 01:18:10
Subject: Re:5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Awesome Autarch
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Day 1: Mission 1: Dawn of War, Annihilation plus tie breaker points.
Day 1: Mission 2: Pitched Battle, Capture and Control plus tie breaker points.
Day 1: Mission 3: Spearhead, Seize Ground plus tie breaker points.
Day 1: Mission 4: Dawn of War, Capture and Control plus tie breaker points.
Day 2: Mission 5: Spearhead, Annihilation plus tie breaker points.
Day 2: Mission 6: Pitched Battle, Seize Ground plus tie breaker points.
That is the schedule we have been looking at so far. I agree, there needs to be an equal disbursement of all mission and deployment types. The goal has always been to have a competitively oriented event with book missions (or as close as possible) and very simple, transparent scoring systems that produce a single winner. We want to eliminate subjectivity and create a real tournament structure that also recognizes the hobby side of the event without requiring that players be expert painters AND players to have any chance of winning.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/03 01:19:17
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/03 06:45:34
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Regular Dakkanaut
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Reecius wrote:After a lot of deliberation we decided to go with book missions (including tie games) but with a system of tie breaker points.
The tie breaker points are the same for every game and are the following:
1.) Destroy your opponent's most expensive HQ. If there are more than one which cost the same, choose one at the beginning of the game.
2.) Have a scoring unit at least partially within 6" of the center of the board.
3.) Have half or more of your scoring units alive at the end of the game.
The tie breaker points are used ONLY for pairings and for breaking ties in final pairings. They have no impact on the game itself. For example, if you get 3 tie breaker points and your opponent gets none, but you tie on the mission objectives, you still tie. During pairings for the next round, the player(s) with the most tie breaker points will play up if there is an odd number of players with a certain record.
At the end of the tournament, the players with the same record will be stratified according to who got the most tie breaker points. So if two players are 4-0-1 at the end of the tournament, the one who got the most tie breaker points wins. This carries down through the rankings to stratify the field and so that everyone knows how they did. We prefer this to strength of schedule.
How do you guys feel about this system? Any holes you see in it?
We wanted to preserve ties as it is a part of the game and allows you to avoid defeat in a bad match0up by playing for the tie.
Thoughts?
Isn't this battle points, and exactly what you didn't want?
Either way, I like the direction of it.
W/L/D is the major determining factor with battle points to decide ties. It's exactly the system I had worked out.
I had four battle point type objectives up in the facebook group before I left that I have used before and I think were very well balanced against each other. They should still be there, feel free to take a look.
Although once you have a tie breaker like this, you no longer need 6 games.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/03 06:46:14
Build a fire for a man and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
Sly Marbo was originally armed with a power weapon, but he dropped it while assaulting a space marine command squad just so his enemies could feel pain.
Sly Marbo doesn't go to ground, the ground comes to him. |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/03 12:00:50
Subject: Re:5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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[ADMIN]
Decrepit Dakkanaut
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Mannahnin wrote:Yak's post is pure gold, except that two of his "tie-breakers" are actually secondary or tertiary objectives; which would make sense for extra battle points in a tournament using Battle Points, but don't make sense as tiebreakers because the condition given doesn't allow that the mission came out a Draw. They're actually extra-good Wins.
Yeah, I made the suggestion because it seemed like extra-good wins would actually be appropriate in this case as they are tie-breakers for overall tournament performance rather than tiebreakers for the individual games.
Reecius wrote:Day 1: Mission 4: Dawn of War, Capture and Control plus tie breaker points.
Why? Why?
I know this is a completely legal 'book mission' but it really is terrible almost guaranteeing a tie except in the case of really, really lopsided army match-ups. I know a lot of people hate Capture and Control in general; although I think it can be fun and challenging, I do think when it has Dawn of War deployment it is at its LEAST fun and balanced, so I'm surprised to see that's you've selected it as a choice.
Its one thing if you're randomly determining missions with deployments and it comes up, but to actually go out of your way to select it seems crazy to me from a tournament organizer perspective because it generally leads to so many tied game results.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/03 12:02:04
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/03 15:26:37
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Dakka Veteran
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Capture and Control is probably the worst mission in the book, frankly, especially when paired with the Dawn of War or Spearhead deployments. I personally think that a book mission GT of 5 games should go something like this:
Pitched Annihilation
DoW Sieze (3 Obj)
Pitched Capture and Control
Spearhead Sieze (5 Obj)
DoW Annihilation
C&C is the most tie inducing boring mission and Spearhead is probably the least enjoyable deployment, making them the obvious drops in a 5 game run. Plus, putting a DoW in the last mission makes the last round move faster. For that reason, I would look at making DoW missions your day one openner and day two closer, since those are the games that tend to drag. I would also suggest making Annihilation the closer, since it tends to play faster, there are less hemming and hawing over KP than objectives, and in the final round you want the mission that has the least likelyhood of favoring a particular archetype, which basic KP fits the bill for.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/03 15:31:30
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/03 19:48:43
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Awesome Autarch
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@whocares
the tie breaker points (which we have changed the name of to Bracket Points) have NO impact on the game being played. I know it was confusing, but they are ONLY there to determine bracketing in the case of an odd number of players in a bracket and for final rankings.
We still need 6 games though, to determine a winner.
@Yak
Dawn of War C&C is the most likely result of a tie game, you are correct, when I was changing them around I didn't notice I had done that. Thanks for pointing it out.
@Phazael
We don't want to finish with DoW as that will be the championship game and DoW is the most problematic deployment type for some armies. We wanted to go with a straight up, typical game for the final round.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/03 22:28:10
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Stabbin' Skarboy
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Reece out of curiosity why aren't you just going to use Swiss tiebreakers (strength of schedule etc...) for the pairings? You realize that SOS is something that players can control right? The more you win the harder your path to victory becomes and therefore the better your SOS.
Not that it really matters all that much but it just seems like you're making it harder on yourself doing the pairings. Good luck trying to do it correctly with software using your system. It would give me a serious headache.
Capture and Control tends to tie more often but I don't really know if deployment matters all that much (please see Deepstrike, Outflank, Reserves or otherwise highly mobile armies).
For the record c&c still ties less than 50% of the time based on over a year of our tournament data.
If your army isn't mobile in DOW then please have the good sense to place two troops in the middle of the table at the beginning of the game.
I'm not sure why everyone thinks ties are the end of the world. It's really just a perception thing. If you go to game tiebreakers does it really give you that tremendous satisfaction of winning after going to a tertiary objective or winning a coin flip over an otherwise equal opponent?
If it was just a single game and the game ended in a tie I'd probably not appreciate that. But over the course of a 5 or 6 game tourney a tie or two really isn't going to take away from the enormity of the event. Ties are fine in a Swiss system so long as pairings, scoring and tiebreakers are done correctly.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 02:10:51
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Regular Dakkanaut
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Reecius wrote:@whocares
the tie breaker points (which we have changed the name of to Bracket Points) have NO impact on the game being played. I know it was confusing, but they are ONLY there to determine bracketing in the case of an odd number of players in a bracket and for final rankings.
We still need 6 games though, to determine a winner.
Uh...yeah, I know what they're there for. And they will ultimately have an impact on the games, since they are something players have to DO in the games. So, through the act of trying to score these points (although they are meta tournament points) they will change the games, even if they don't directly influence the out come. Not saying that's a bad thing, though. It's just a thing.
Won't the winner be the one who's final ranking is 1? And these tie breaker points determine final ranking.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kevin Nash wrote:Reece out of curiosity why aren't you just going to use Swiss tiebreakers (strength of schedule etc...) for the pairings? You realize that SOS is something that players can control right? The more you win the harder your path to victory becomes and therefore the better your SOS.
Unless you randomly play the winner/last place person first round.
Also strength of schedule is based on the simple philosophy that if player A can beat player B and player B can beat player C, then player A can beat player C. Which is true for things like chess. But not so true with things like 40k that have a huge random element, and lists that play rock, paper, scissors with each other. "Harder opponent" really means nothing in a game where different match ups are harder for different armies.
Also if two players tie in their tournament points (same number of wins, etc) and the tie is decided by strength of schedule, then it is essentially being decided by something totally out of their control. They both won just as many games (and as you say, the thing you can control about strength of schedule is the player...trying to win) but the tie will be decided by who won more games earlier in the tournament and stayed in the winner's bracket longer, which isn't necessarily a good determinant of skill at all. You can randomly be paired against the winner of the tournament first, lose, end up in the losers bracket for the rest of the tourney, win all your other games, and then watch the guy who lost to the winner his last game take second place after you both won every game but one and lost to the same person. Which is a problem even with something like chess.
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This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2011/03/04 02:20:37
Build a fire for a man and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
Sly Marbo was originally armed with a power weapon, but he dropped it while assaulting a space marine command squad just so his enemies could feel pain.
Sly Marbo doesn't go to ground, the ground comes to him. |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 02:36:14
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Regular Dakkanaut
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Why not just use victory points to breck ties?
If you have just 1 more Victory Point then your oppoent then yo win.
Just a thought
Doc
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Play Hard, Laugh Often
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 02:40:03
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Awesome Autarch
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@Kevin
We debated this for a while actually. Basically, the guys and I came to the conclusion that we wanted a directly controllable factor to determine tie breakers. As Who Cares said, we do not agree with the fundamental concept behind SoS as it applies to 40K.
As for pairings, we will pair players with the same number of bracket points with one another randomly. I think it will actually make pairings pretty easy, although a bracketing program would be really easy.
I agree that tie games are fine and are a part of the game as designed by the game designers. Often, it is a very viable tactic in a bad list match up.
I think Yak's big reaction to DoW C&C stems from the fact he plays Kan Wall Orks a lot.
@Whocares
I wasn't trying to imply that you didn't get it or that you are not intelligent. I just wanted to make sure I was being clear as to what purpose they served.
The bracket points will have very little impact on the actual tournament unless we have a tie for first place, in which case they will have a very large impact. Honestly, we included them primarily to stratify the field so people knew where they stood in the final rankings without resorting to SoS. Also, in the case of a tie for 1st, we did not want to fall back on SoS but have a system where the player directly controlled their fate. Automatically Appended Next Post: @Doc
That was our initial game plan. However, after talking to Mathias and the rest of our club, we decided that tie games were an integral part of the game and decided to keep them, which necessitated a system to break ties only for rankings and bracketing.
The actual games can result in ties, though.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/04 02:41:37
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 02:50:47
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Regular Dakkanaut
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Reecius wrote:@Whocares
I wasn't trying to imply that you didn't get it or that you are not intelligent. I just wanted to make sure I was being clear as to what purpose they served.
The bracket points will have very little impact on the actual tournament unless we have a tie for first place, in which case they will have a very large impact. Honestly, we included them primarily to stratify the field so people knew where they stood in the final rankings without resorting to SoS. Also, in the case of a tie for 1st, we did not want to fall back on SoS but have a system where the player directly controlled their fate.
I know you weren't. No offense taken. Communicating online it's hard to read tone, but I was not offended. Sa'll good.
Oh, I agree. I like that system very much. At least in the sense that I think it's better than the other options. Really just posted initially to say I had a few ideas for secondary objectives you could look at if you wanted.
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/04 02:51:07
Build a fire for a man and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
Sly Marbo was originally armed with a power weapon, but he dropped it while assaulting a space marine command squad just so his enemies could feel pain.
Sly Marbo doesn't go to ground, the ground comes to him. |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 04:05:14
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Stabbin' Skarboy
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whocares wrote:
Also if two players tie in their tournament points (same number of wins, etc) and the tie is decided by strength of schedule, then it is essentially being decided by something totally out of their control. They both won just as many games (and as you say, the thing you can control about strength of schedule is the player...trying to win) but the tie will be decided by who won more games earlier in the tournament and stayed in the winner's bracket longer, which isn't necessarily a good determinant of skill at all. You can randomly be paired against the winner of the tournament first, lose, end up in the losers bracket for the rest of the tourney, win all your other games, and then watch the guy who lost to the winner his last game take second place after you both won every game but one and lost to the same person. Which is a problem even with something like chess.
If you do correct swiss pairings those players should have met at some point in the tournament though. At least that's the case if they are at the top of the standings. So then you have a head to head tiebreaker to fall back on. If they happened to tie their game? Well then I think SOS is a reasonable tiebreaker at that point. I mean, they played each other and tied. What more can we do?
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 06:32:00
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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[ADMIN]
Decrepit Dakkanaut
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Kevin Nash wrote:
Capture and Control tends to tie more often but I don't really know if deployment matters all that much (please see Deepstrike, Outflank, Reserves or otherwise highly mobile armies).
For the record c&c still ties less than 50% of the time based on over a year of our tournament data.
If your army isn't mobile in DOW then please have the good sense to place two troops in the middle of the table at the beginning of the game.
I'm not sure why everyone thinks ties are the end of the world. It's really just a perception thing. If you go to game tiebreakers does it really give you that tremendous satisfaction of winning after going to a tertiary objective or winning a coin flip over an otherwise equal opponent?
If it was just a single game and the game ended in a tie I'd probably not appreciate that. But over the course of a 5 or 6 game tourney a tie or two really isn't going to take away from the enormity of the event. Ties are fine in a Swiss system so long as pairings, scoring and tiebreakers are done correctly.
I agree that a tie or two isn't the end of the world, I just believe that C&C using Dawn of War deployment is going to end up with way more ties then any other mission configuration. But more than that, I think it is easily the most un-fun of the 'nine' book mission configurations. The reason for this is because it makes any slow units in the army non-threats towards capturing or contesting the enemy's objective and that makes the mission play very cooky-cutter.
Assuming the opponent is intelligent and places his objective very near the edge of his table it means that a foot unit will be unlikely to reach it by the end of the game unless it has a perfectly straight shot at the objective (not having to go through any terrain or around any obstacles) and has better than average run rolls (which also means the unit won't be inflicting any damage the whole game while it runs). And even if a foot unit *does* get to within contesting range of the opponent's objective, the enemy will have plenty of time to destroy the faster threats first before focusing on the slower moving units trudging across the board.
So that tends to encourage players to keep any slow-moving units in their army back on 'defense' while the fast moving, outflanking, deep striking, etc units go on 'offense'. Again, this is all very, very clear to both players so they know exactly which things are going to be on defense and which things are going to be on offense and that usually allows both players to sit back and destroy the enemy's offensive units and hold their objective.
Obviously if a player has a completely mechanized army or an army that the majority of it can outflank, deep strike, etc, then you have a different story, but again this is comes back to what I was talking about how the mission plays as a serious mismatch:
If one player has a slow army and the other player has a balanced speed (or high speed) army then the slow player can only play for a tie while the other player can play for a win.
If both players have balanced speed armies then they tend to knock out each others 'offensive' units and end up with a tie.
If one payer has a high speed army while the other player has a more balanced speed army then the high speed player basically dictates how much they want to 'risk' going for the win instead of playing for a tie. The medium speed army can still win, but generally when the high speed army overcommits too much to offense and allows the medium speed army's offensive units to succeed.
You suggest that an un-mobile army should set up two troops units in the center of the table in DoW C&C...but that only works if you get to set up first. If the faster army gets to set up first they will always set up for a maximum push back on the flank containing their objective. And even if you do get to set up first with those two big troops choices, that still helps to feed into a tie game as the opponent will ignore trying to send anything on offense and will instead just roll everything onto the table purposely to try to obliterate the two enemy troops choices plus any other enemy 'offensive' units that will be coming on.
In the other two variations of C&C (even Spearhead) ANY unit, even the slow ones, have a realistic ability to reach the enemy objective before the game ends. Although Spearhead can have roughly the same amount of distance for the units to cross, generally speaking with the two armies setting up on the table there is a lot more assault, pile-in and consolidation movement going on. And with Spearhead reserves coming in all along a player's own board edge it creates a totally different dynamic of 'offense' vs. 'defense' than you find in DoW deployment C&C.
So regardless of whether or not a tie or two is acceptable in a tournament (they are IMHO), I think having a mission that isn't very conducive to being bun is a mistake to include, even if it is a 'book mission'.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 15:46:51
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Dakka Veteran
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C&C is a tie fest in both spearhead and DoW deployments, generally, even with mobile armeis for the reason Yak stated. Plus, not every army has rampat access to mobility and/or deep strike in the way that all the T4/3+ armies do. Whenever I play that mission I pretty much always play for the draw, because its virtually assured if your army is even remotely descent.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 17:47:15
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Devastating Dark Reaper
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I would prefer to do a 4/2 split also. People arrive Friday and want to leave Sunday at earliest.
One thing that I like about S.O.S. as a tie breaker is that it tends to sort the 1 loss group very nicely. I run 4 round tournaments when I can. With my four 3 - 1 players I've noticed that those that lost to the overall winner have a higher SOS than those 3 - 1 that lost to another 3 - 1. Don't you want final results like that? If you're really unsure of the SOS tiebreaker, you can modify it by tossing out the lowest score. In swiss perfect this is the modified Bucholz.
One thing I don't like about ties is that you often have to pair one of the ties up or down into other brakets. Doesn't this give the player that got paired down an advantage? Kevin would know this from his tournament results more than I though. Maybe the SOS tie breaker balances this out though.
Another option for scenarios is to use all three book mission types as rotating Primary / secondary / tertiary goals. You can assign "Goal Points" for each on a sliding scale to ensure that if you win the first goal, then you win the game. If you tie the first goal, then it's a tied game. That way the secondary and tertiary goals will be just used for bonus points to sort round pairings after the first round. This also has the bonus of putting in 2 of each of the sieze ground game sizes (3 - 5 objectives). I'd also suggest either using 3+ Kill points to win, or use a modified KP variable that is based on how many points a unit is worth. I played in a local tournament that the modified Kill Points was the unit's point total divided by 100, rounded up for non-scoring units and down for scoring units. Minimum of 1 point. This put everyone around 20 for a 2,000 point game.
Speaking of round pairings, how are you planning to do them? Swiss perfect does 1 vs 5, 2 vs 6 , ... Opposite seeding does 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7,... and battle point tournaments typically do 1 vs 2, 3 vs 4,... Please note that the battle point way to do it winds up with just about the opposite player schedule as opposite seeding. With 1 vs 2 the best players will play each other in the first few rounds, and then play weaker opponents later on. Opposite seeding keeps the best players away from each other until the end.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 18:10:24
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Longtime Dakkanaut
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Phazael wrote:C&C is a tie fest in both spearhead and DoW deployments
Phazael wrote:Whenever I play that mission I pretty much always play for the draw
I wonder why you seem to think that they tie all of the time?
Kevin Nash has already cited the tourney data he has compiled in running 7-8 RTTs and a GT over the last year. The mission ties less than half of the time. My personal capture and control record has I think only a single tie in it over the course of playing the mission probably 6-7 times in tourney play. The lion's share of those tourney games were played with a tyranid army that does not have a single spore pod or pair of wings.
Its not an "automatic tie", and the more people play for the tie the more likely it will happen. Be more aggressive.
Phazael wrote:Plus, not every army has rampat access to mobility and/or deep strike in the way that all the T4/3+ armies do.
Do you need rampant access? Or do you just need to tune your list to be prepared for missions that are about as official as they can get?
I want to be careful and skirt the line between offending friends of mine, and making my point here. Please don't take umbrage...
At what point does your own armies inability to put pressure on the enemy deployment zone cease to become your fault? And start to become the game designers fault? Its a book mission and refusal to make army adjustments in order to have a chance of winning it is obstinate. If your favorite way to play is to have two 5 man scout units as your only troops choices, would you get any sympathy from friends when you complained that you couldn't win a seize ground? What would they say? Add more troops....
Why is capture and control getting thrown under the bus, with a bald assumption being made that its a poorly designed mission? Perhaps the army you are piloting has not taken ample steps in order to put more pressure on the objective? This is VERY reminiscent of the anti-annihilation crowd that has largely become extinct. Rather than adapt their list building to make allowances for an extra easy to score kill point here and there, they declared kill points 'stupid' and spammed their MSU mech armies in spite of the mission being a very clear "check" to counter how excellent mechanized and MSU armies perform in the other two missions. In much the same way, slow, immobile armies carry many advantages in annihilation and in seize ground (if the general did well in placing his objectives).
"But I don't want to play with any fast, outflanking or deep striking units." Does not translate into "capture and control is a bad mission".
What are some notoriously slow armies?
Kan wall? Deffkoptas, Kommandos, A trukk boy unit or two flaring on from reserve.
Gant farm nids? Genestealer outflanking, trygon deep striking
Foot eldar? Warp spiders, war walkers out-flanking, a holo-falcon or two.
In spearhead games, with the enemies objective in the far corner. Hold some units in reserve, and move them on from the part of the long table edge directly across from it. Even a foot unit that arrives on turn 2 needs to average just a three inch run to make it into contesting range on turn 6. And don't forget that charging the unit that is scoring that objective gives you an extra 6" getting you into contesting position a turn sooner.
Mobility is one variable in this game that some armies will have more of, and some will have less of. With cap and control, it seems the game designers have determined that mobile aggressive armies will be given an advantage, much like low unit count immobile armies are quite difficult to beat in annihilation. i understand the desire to play a hyper-focused army that spams identical unit types (infantry/walker/vehicle/ MC) but its clear to me that GW has put a real effort into making the main book missions enforcers of diversified units. Mech spam eats it in kill points, foot horde eats it in cap and control, troop light eats it in seize ground. I also suspect that you all would much prefer a game system where one unit type wasn't king among all others. And where mobility, survivability, and shooting/assaulting aggression were all rewarded in equal measure.
Add some mobility, and practice the mission with friends in every deployment. I didn't just accidently get good at winning cap and control, I play 3-4 games a week and I made sure I knew exactly where I wanted to place my objective, and exactly what units I wanted to include in order to attack the enemy objective with every tourney army I play with.
A special note to Yakface and Janthkin. Cap and control for a "mostly" foot horde gets significantly harder if games only reach turn 4 or are, at best, guaranteed to stop right at 5. I've been talking with Kevin Nash about that quite a lot, as you both have made excellent points regarding time constraints. Games of 40k are not balanced around time limits. Much like baseball, they are supposed to go until the appropriate number of turns are completed. With random game length being a design feature... the person with the bottom of the turn isn't supposed to know with any certainty if the move he made will expose himself to retribution or not, unless its turn 7. Tourney time limits increase the ratio of 'turn 7' type situations for players with the last turn. And that isn't a good thing. Kevin Nash is always trying to keep the game sizes appropriate for the time that our venues allot. In a perfect world, we'd all just play 2000 point games and wait for everyone to finish a game naturally. I hadn't noticed if Reecius had mentioned his time limit and his game size. But be careful, when in doubt, make a nid list and a foot ork list and play them against each other at your game size on a clock, that should give you your goalpost for time.
Adding a speedier, killier more aggressive element to your lists has a good chance of increasing your ability to win cap and control games, and it has a decent chance of speeding up the games as well. Units with mobility are expensive, and that shrinks model count, and therefore time spent in the movement phase. Also killier units do less 'grinding' on enemy units and more explosive destruction of enemy units, which also speeds up the game. This is just a thought...
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 18:24:05
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Fixture of Dakka
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Shep wrote:In spearhead games, with the enemies objective in the far corner. Hold some units in reserve, and move them on from the part of the long table edge directly across from it. Even a foot unit that arrives on turn 2 needs to average just a three inch run to make it into contesting range on turn 6. And don't forget that charging the unit that is scoring that objective gives you an extra 6" getting you into contesting position a turn sooner.
I actually like C&C, but let's not neglect the assumptions you've got embedded in this statement: in order to cover 45" between turns 2 & 6, you need a) completely open ground from your board edge to the opponent's corner, as difficult terrain is going to make it worse; b) to be able to run every turn (as well as maintaining that 3" average); c) an opponent who isn't savvy enough to block you off, or assault you from the side to pull you away; and d) the game has to LAST 6 turns (both time & random game length). Quite a lot has to go right. A special note to Yakface and Janthkin. Cap and control for a "mostly" foot horde gets significantly harder if games only reach turn 4 or are, at best, guaranteed to stop right at 5. I've been talking with Kevin Nash about that quite a lot, as you both have made excellent points regarding time constraints. Games of 40k are not balanced around time limits. Much like baseball, they are supposed to go until the appropriate number of turns are completed. With random game length being a design feature... the person with the bottom of the turn isn't supposed to know with any certainty if the move he made will expose himself to retribution or not, unless its turn 7. Tourney time limits increase the ratio of 'turn 7' type situations for players with the last turn. And that isn't a good thing. Kevin Nash is always trying to keep the game sizes appropriate for the time that our venues allot. In a perfect world, we'd all just play 2000 point games and wait for everyone to finish a game naturally. I hadn't noticed if Reecius had mentioned his time limit and his game size. But be careful, when in doubt, make a nid list and a foot ork list and play them against each other at your game size on a clock, that should give you your goalpost for time.
Couldn't agree more. While tournaments are always going to be constrained by the amount of time available for play, matching "size of game" to "time available for game" is crucial. Last I knew, Reece et al. were talking 2.5 hour rounds. Coupled with 30 minute breaks between rounds, and enough space to put down display trays next to your board, that should be enough for most games. (I'll still be using deployment trays, if I bring the 'nids.)
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This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2011/03/04 18:27:47
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/04 22:53:00
Subject: Re:5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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[ADMIN]
Decrepit Dakkanaut
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Shep:
I wasn't trying to push C&C under the bus. I have no problem with playing it, even with DoW deployment. If the tournament is rolling up random deployments/objectives then by all means, bring it on! But if you're actually picking the deployments/objectives ahead of time then I do believe that C&C with DoW deployment is the least dynamic combination in the game and should therefore be a combination that is left out of the mix.
And again, it isn't because of whether or not the current army I'm playing with does or doesn't struggle with winning it, but rather because of the points I made in my last post:
C&C w/ DoW deployment stratifies units in an army into those that can potentially reach the enemy's objective and those that realistically cannot and therefore makes it really easy for both sides to focus on destroying the 'offense' portion of the enemy's force knowing full well that they don't have to worry about any 'defense' unit because those can't realistically reach their objective.
So I believe this combination of objective and deployment creates the most boring games possible out of the nine configurations unless both armies are extremely offense oriented and should therefore not be selected if, and only if, objectives and deployments are being pre-selected by the TO.
Of course, even if the TO disagrees with me and chooses it anyway I would gladly play it any way...I just think its the weakest of the nine.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/05 01:45:24
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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[DCM]
Tilter at Windmills
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I tend to concur with Shep that people who Draw all the time in C&C are people who have refused to adequately account for C&C in their army design; it's often a symptom of not fully adapting to 5th ed. If you don't have Outflankers or DSers to get into the enemy backfield, that's a flaw in the army list.
That being said, DoW C&C is probably the worst offender, and I have no objection to a 6 game event making their DoW missions use the other two deployments.
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Adepticon 2015: Team Tourney Best Imperial Team- Team Ironguts, Adepticon 2014: Team Tourney 6th/120, Best Imperial Team- Cold Steel Mercs 2, 40k Championship Qualifier ~25/226
More 2010-2014 GT/Major RTT Record (W/L/D) -- CSM: 78-20-9 // SW: 8-1-2 (Golden Ticket with SW), BA: 29-9-4 6th Ed GT & RTT Record (W/L/D) -- CSM: 36-12-2 // BA: 11-4-1 // SW: 1-1-1
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A better way to score Sportsmanship in tournaments
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Maelstrom's Edge! |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2011/03/05 01:50:11
Subject: 5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?
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Dakka Veteran
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@Shep-
Our League runs 20 league games a year, roughly 1/12th of which were DoW or Spearhead C&C games. In those games, there was something like a 85%+ draw rate, with most of the wins occuring due to severe player skill imbalance or army imbalance, ie space wolves doing a routine curb stomping of necrons. Maybe that figure differs in your neck of the woods, but its bad enough that the SCGWL stopped running DoW C&C in league games, at least out here.
What I mean when I say rampant access to DS, Outflank, ect, is to say most non-SM armies simply cannot conquer the opposing objective while defending their own, so it becomes a turtling with a series of feints at the other objective to keep pressure off your own. Meanwhile, your average SM army has outflank and pods/DS across every FOC sllot, with durable dependable troops. Its not like Nid players are going to try and pod in 20 Termagaunts and try and push the objective late game.
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