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Dashofpepper wrote:

thehod wrote:It player A and player B end up undefeated at a tournament: I say split the winnings.

Yes, and give all elementary school students awards for graduating each grade and refuse to let them keep score during softball games so that no one's feelings get hurt. =D

You're both wrong. Whippy stick fight...TO THE DEATH!!!

What about letting true skill decide? Best out of 3 rounds of paper/rock/scissors!

@Hulk
If you don't want soft scores, why should faceraping people to pump up battle points be a big concern? I can understand the desire to take your foot off of the gas once you have the win secured, but it kind of runs at odds with a no comp/no sports mentality, where bringing the best list and playing it to perfection is encouraged.

Also, quitters do happen, even in BP formats. I agree with Dash that you need some serious incentives like the Nova offered last year to keep the butthurt play for the bling crowd around to finish their games. Those resources are not always available and will be even less accessable to the smaller GTs with the way GW is handling prize support next season. I agree that it is not an epidemic, but I could see it getting slightly worse in a strice WL format.

Now, I am not disparaging the straight W/L format in any respect, as it really is the most competitive format when properly executed. I just look at the metagame trends of 7th fantasy and see a lot of parallels to what the current 40k metagame is like and I have some concerns about what impact it will have on the diversity and freshness of the game if all GTs adopt W/L as the sole standard. Looking at the finals in both the Nova and the rescent Adepticon, I see half the field comming from three books. This is, in my view, a direct result of the strict no nonsense W/L formats of those events and its bad for the health of the game in the long run (as the DoC, DE, VC domination hurt fantasy during 7th). The only real offset to 18ML razorspam/Leafblower/mephiston spamming is a well crafted battle point system (admittedly, hard to do well) to incentivise other choices. I guess if you don't mind the cheesewolves netlist domination, its not an issue, but I feel I can't be the only one that is tired of seeing the same lists facerolling their way to victory all the time.

My FLGS tends to use a 3 tier points system. for each turn of the tourney, there's 3 objectives, primary, secondary and tertiary, and they swap around each game, so while the first game is determined first by objectives, second by tablecorners, and third by kill points, the second will be primarily table corners, secondary objectives, and tertiary kill points, the third might be primarily kill points, etc.

But, after each game, there's also a kill points tally, which I believe is used to determine the overall winner.

Seems to work pretty well, but I don't know how well it would scale up from the ~10 player tourneys we have here.

Hulksmash wrote:The idea of mass amount of people bailing after losing at a win/loss tournament is also erroneous. The Sprue Posse runs strictly win/loss/tie and I don't think a single person has ever bailed after a loss. Adepticon had 240ish dudes for the 40k Champs and only lost 4ish dudes over the course of the entire day. The idea that people will ditch in droves if it's pure win/loss is silly.

In regards to it fitting your playstyle Dash it's because you bring very win big/lose big army lists. Not that it's a bad thing but it does cater a BP mindset. Which makes sense because most smaller events are still using them. In regards to the SiS I happened to be the only undefeated player but you pulled out the win at 4-1 because of BP's

You do realize Dash that for a single person to be undefeated after 3 rounds you can generally only have 8 people playing right? So it's likely that generally there are 2 undefeated players (or more) at most local events. In regards to larger events I'd honestly do my best to not have BP's at all and go for a system similar to Nova or Adepticon.

Just my two cents. I'm just not a huge fan of BP's since I feel bad pounding people into slush to get the needed points for a win.

Hey now....don't go blowing what I post out of proportion. No one said that droves would quit, just that some do.

And you can have many more than 8 at an event for a single person to be undefeated. Remember that while events like the Nova Open have multiple tie-breakers, many events do not - leaving plenty of people going 2-0-1.

Some good advice in here. A few things from my experience that sometimes go unaddressed at smaller events:

Always have everythign written down in advance. Scenarios being used, rules for addressign the issue of uneven players(bye) ... how its resolved, how many points they get, how they are matched for the next round, etc. Note things that might be common sense -- like not playing the same opponent twice, nor the same table twice. You want to have a predetermined list of guidelines to follow so you are not making decisions on the fly .. these tend to be subjective and nothign sours an event like a gamer who feels slighted complaining for the entire day about how bad the event is, and how its unfair, and personal, etc.

Set the expectation of the event: Many events have prizes only for how you play durign the event, some reward best overall across multiple catagories, some hand out random prizes for last place, best sportsman, etc. Listing the ways to participate tells people what to expect before they arrive. The person that slaved over their army for a month to get it 100% beautifully painted only to show up and find out there is no reward for painting and its not even considered ... well theyll be a little unhappy. Setting out what is going on from the very beginning is very important so people can know what to expect from the event and invest their time and effort appropriatly.

Time the rounds. Few things are worse than 14 people waiting around for that one table that is still playing an hour after everyone else has resolved their games. Set reasonable limits for time, but stick to them. Remind players to not start a turn unless there is time remaining for both players to have a turn. Announce when the round starts and give reminders a few times throughout the round. One location I played at hooked up their laptop to a bigscreen tv on the back wall with a countdown timer. That was A+.

Be sure to post signs in the local venue, and collect info. networking will yeild better turnout. Sending an email 3-4 weeks before an event gives people time to schedule the day off if need be, and gives you a chance to lay out the event specifics in advance(points limit, time and date, location, prize support, requirements to bring books, dice, appropriate faqs, x number of copies of the army list, WYSIWIG requirement, etc). If you plan on painting compettions or prizes the advance notice gives people time to prepare.

Set a WYSIWIG requirement! Proxies are fine in friendly games, but someone showing up with 30 terminatiros of varying armamaent and saying ... oh, theyre all th/ss .. well, except for that one, and not him becasue hes a character, and ... :(

Number the tables! Even if its as simple as a peice of paper with the number, it is surprising how many events have to run through the list of which table is which. This one by the back door is number one and this one on the left then the right then back over her by the counter is 7 no wait, thats number 9. Confusing!

Tournament organization: Doesnt matter how you do it, but you need something more than pen and paper. Excell sheets are fairly popular, as are some tourney programs. I like Tournament Marshal -- its in a thread here on dakka - that a dakka user wrote. Its not perfect, but it tracks points, assigns tables, makes sure players dont repeat on the same table or with the same person, etc. Another nice thing is that it saves the events so you can see how people do accross multiple events.

Scenarios, again to some this might be obvious but... Always have scenarios printed for each table. Gathign everyone in a huddle and explaining things 17 times and answering the same question 3 different times is a waste of time and instantly downgrades the respect level of the players for you the organizer and for the validity of the mission. if the players cant remember the scenario, they will often disregard it, or play it their own way, and suddenly people are reporting on games played five different ways. Having the scenario at each table lets the players help themselves. Make sure scenarios cover deployment, special rules in effect, victory conditions and how to achieve them, etc.

Avoid wacky scenraios! Tournament play is usualy best served by baseline sort of missions. Simple and straightforward rules. If you do feel that adding a special rule is what you want from yoru event, be careful and consider its implications for different armies. I have played in events that forced you into reserves with almost yoru entire force and only came in on a 5+ turn 2, 4+ turn 3, 3+ turn 4 etc. For 3 turns of the game I had less than 900 pts vs my opponets full 2500(he gut lucky with his rols, and mine were horrid). Very bad situation when players think the scnarios screws them over before they even begin placing models on the table. With that in mind also vary the scenarios. Don't use dawn of war or kill points in every scenario. Change things up so that if something is good or bad for a particular army that it doesnt hit them in every scenario.

Be open to feedback. I hate talking to a tourney organizer who doesnt at least listen to my praise or critique of their event. You might keep the scenarios fairly tame, and find out everyone is telling you to make them wacky(unlikely, but I suppose it could happen). The goal is to provide a venue for everyoen to have fun, and usually to increase sales at the FLGS so they stay in business and continue supporiting our plastic crack habits. So if it seems people are walking away unhappy find out whats going on. Sometimes they don't like yoru scoring, or they felt that the sportsmanship or comp system you used was unfair. Other times they are all complaining about TFG and you'll want to adress that since one guy can ruin it for everyone.

In some places these things are just a give(Hint: I go back to those events). In other places these things seem like pulling teeth, and the store usually gets a reputation for favoring certain players, or never being run right, and people stop showing up to their events.

Anyway, hope my perspective helps yo uin some way.

@Phazael

I actually don't mind soft scores. I think sportsmanship matters. Painting also matters. Comp is an outdated method for perceived imbalances from a previous era I think the way that Adepticon/Nova do it works best. Heck the way you guys do it is fine since your Best General and Overall get the same prizes. I just like a clear winner. Having been on the side that won because of BP's and lost because of BP's means I actually can step back and see how the system itself doesn't work.

In regards to 1/2 the final 16 coming from 3 books looking at it most of the codexes are represented oddly. The only 5th edition codex not represented was DE w/a couple 4th edition codexes thrown in. Hell, SW's wasn't even the most popular army and there was only a single guard player. Orks were as popular in the final 16 as SW's and IG combined.....

Regarding the "netlists" have you actually looked at the lists that made it to the top? Top players don't tend to have super spammed lists w/Reece as an exception and even he knows he doesn't have the depth he probably should have. I don't see SW domination when I look at results. If anything Orks have taken more away in 5th edition than any other army in existence but no one screams orks are broken, quite the opposite

@Dash

You can have more than 8 people play and have a single winner but in my experience generally you're more likely to see 2 undefeated's in a general RTT field (12-20).

You are correct about not saying droves. However you imply that people would drop in significant numbers without a reason to stick around. That didn't prove to be true at Adepticon and it hasn't been true in most similar events I've attended.

Those people also paid significant funds to travel, register, buy badges, get a hotel....their weekend is spoken for.

I thought we were talking about tournaments at a FLGS here, where home is 10 minutes away and if you don't have a chance of winning, the temptation is signfiicantly higher to head home early?

Ah, at a local level I think it's even less likely. I've had exactly 2 people ever bail on a RTT and both were at Ard Boyz....But that could be different based on the local area. I've only played RTT's in 6 states now but none of them were in the southeast.

I'd also recommend touching base w/Disdainful (think that's his name). He runs a really solid batch of 1 day tournaments in SoCal. Also if the guys from Great Escape Games post on here they might be a source for you. Kevin Nash w/the Sprue Posse is also a pretty good resource for single day events. Just to name a few.

I can echo what Hulksmash said, at my local level, there have never been any bailouts that I can remember.

Thanks for all the info, and the debate. It helped me see the benefits and the drawbacks of each system. I'm working on my ideas now and I'll post my final stuff here.

I'm doing this for a FLGS who actually listened to their customers and finally went direct with GW. So I offered to run some tourneys to get things rolling for them.

Right now I have to get tables built and terrain setup. Thanks again.

Dashofpepper wrote:

thehod wrote:It player A and player B end up undefeated at a tournament: I say split the winnings.

Yes, and give all elementary school students awards for graduating each grade and refuse to let them keep score during softball games so that no one's feelings get hurt. =D

Lets give the NCAA title to USF for beating 5 out of their 6 opponents but won each game 103 to 20 where as FSU went undefeated in their tournament run but narrowly winning 86 to 84. A win is a win. Like Hulk said, BP is a flawed system where it can come down to matchups and how many baby seals you can club. Now if you want a true tie breaker, you can either go with how many objectives you scored (if by NOVA system) or simply keep track of VP. To me, if there are several undefeated players then split the prize for showing the merit of skills on the tabletop.

btw its a bad analogy since the example you provided is based on students getting an award for the most mundane of accomplishments. A better example is giving elementary students awards who made honor roll, or which class has won the most softball games.

In an NCAA tournament, teams are seeded based on prior performance during a regular season. In a BP tourney, people (after round one, generally) get paired against opponents with like performance. If properly done, the whole clubbing seals part should only happen in round one.

Phazael wrote: In a BP tourney, people (after round one, generally) get paired against opponents with like performance. If properly done, the whole clubbing seals part should only happen in round one.

It's the "like performance" that is open to interpretation. For pure battle points this means the person next to you in the standings (which may not have the same number of wins). If you consider only number of wins, then you play someone with the same number of wins.

Phazael wrote:In an NCAA tournament, teams are seeded based on prior performance during a regular season. In a BP tourney, people (after round one, generally) get paired against opponents with like performance. If properly done, the whole clubbing seals part should only happen in round one.

That's really not true at all; it is common for a seal to club another seal badly, while a pro barely edges a pro, while another pro clubs a seal, and another seal barely beats a different seal.

Result? Similar-points seeding pairs Pro vs. Seal, and Pro vs. Seal. You can't "fairly" seed the early rounds of a random-first-round tournament. It's for this reason that we'll be doing random pairings within w/l brackets for all of the first 4 rounds at NOVA 2011.

UsdiThunder wrote:Thanks for all the info, and the debate. It helped me see the benefits and the drawbacks of each system. I'm working on my ideas now and I'll post my final stuff here.

I'm doing this for a FLGS who actually listened to their customers and finally went direct with GW. So I offered to run some tourneys to get things rolling for them.

Right now I have to get tables built and terrain setup. Thanks again.

Good for you! I appreciate the work you're putting in to support your local gaming community.

On a side note, I'd love to put in a quick word about terrain. This is, IME, the single most common problem in 5th edition 40k tournaments. 40k is designed around the expectation that the game is not played on an open field, and that there are several places around the table where you can HIDE an entire tank or unit of infantry. Not just get them in cover; actually get them out of LOS of much of the table. Back in 3rd and 4th edition this was easy, as a few Forest templates accomplished this effect, since in those days LOS was abstract and you couldn't see across a forest. The problem in 5th is that many gamers and stores are lazy or can't figure out how to cheaply and easily get True-LOS blocking terrain on their tables.

While GW's plastic ruins are one nice-looking solution, they do cost a mint and take some time and work to build and paint. The two cheap and easy solutions are...

A) Ruins/buildings made from packaging foam (particularly the kind electronic equipment is packed with; big, solid, formed geometric shapes made to securely hold a TV or DVD player or whatever).
B) Hills made from 1", 2", or 3" thick closed-cell wall insulation foam. The kind you can buy at Home Depot, Home Quarters, Home Goods or similar stores in smooth pink or blue sheets, usually about $10 for a two foot by ten foot sheet. Get one or two sheets of this and a hot wire foam cutter and you can literally make enough attractive hills in an evening's work to fill an entire store worth of tables with adequate LOS-blocking terrain. The hot wire foam cutter is fun to use, too, and lets you cut really nice scalloped and sculpted sides and edges. Throw a coat of dark paint on these (brown, green, black, whatever suits the table/s in question), drybrush the edges a lighter shade, and you've got attractive and practical terrain on the cheap and easy.

Just make sure to use the foam cutter outside or in a well ventiltated area. Melting syrofoam fumes are toxic. Spray paint eats the foam (also toxic fumes) so use a cheap latex paint. Home Depot used to have an "oops" bin of returned paint. I picked up a gallon of dark brown paint there for $5.

The railroad modeling trees work great for adding in blocking woods. The GW trees just don't give vehicles cover in 5th ed. Maybe they'll change it back in 6th edition. That's the main rule I miss anyway.

Good luck with your tournament preparation. I hope you have a lot of locals to help you with the table building.