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Oh, I didn't think of that... he diced off his last game. I guess, given that he lost the dice-off, that could be grounds for his opponent thinking he was an excellent sport based on the limited information available.

Still didn't get an answer as to what separated the best sportsman from the other guys with perfect sportsmanship scores... it must have been their other scores at the event, right, of which Dash was highest?

MVB mentioned somewhere else that it was a random assignment of all the people with max sportsman scores.

When I asked at the event, I heard it was based on performance (objectives).

And willydstyle, we did play our game. We said "diced off" because it was easier than explaining the whirlwind game that we had. My opponent (Devin) is a semi-frequent opponent, and one of the few gamers from Jacksonville, FL that I don't loathe.

But you said it was over in 5 minutes? Usually saying it's over in five minutes would mean you didn't play a game

willydstyle wrote:But you said it was over in 5 minutes? Usually saying it's over in five minutes would mean you didn't play a game

Yes, from the blog:

DashofPepper wrote:Game Eight: Devin's Grey Knights - Devin is one of the few guys from Jacksonville, FL (an old haunt) that I don't find to be a petty tool. We're not in the running, and both of us are completely exhausted, so we dice off for the game so that we can get to bed early.

Given that you lost, I would've liked to have heard something of the game / reason why... seems a little odd that you actually played a game given what you said in the interview, too.

Not really a big deal, just odd... I can't think of a reason to say you "diced off" for a game that you actually played, particularly lost, and I would've liked to know more about it.

Well, we diced off for first turn; I rolled a 2 to Devin's 6, and he elected to deploy and go first.

He deployed, then I deployed.

I told him that if he didn't shoot me, I wouldn't shoot him.

Turns one through four, neither of us moved or fired at each other; we just caught up on each other's doings for the last year or two. Turn five he took the central objective and won 3-2 objectives.

Devin would tell you that I was quite a gentleman about the loss.

If I had won the roll to go first, it would have been the opposite. Since neither of us were playing for prize support, it was a good end for two exhausted players.

If you want to rabble at him for giving me a good sportsmanship score for playing the game in that fashion....go for it. Otherwise, suck it. By the definition of sportsmanship and the "excellent game" criteria, we both fit the bill quite well to each other.

Dash you won a sportmanship award....what the world coming to?

Dash won best sportsman on random assignment.

Rather than pick a biased but arbitrary determiner of "Best" among I think 16 "8 perfect game votes" players, such as highest battle scores, or lowest battle scores, or whatever ... we went with a completely impartial arbitrary determiner :p

The best was the photo of all the guys, though, which will go up soon with our next big photo update!

Mike, might you guys consider going back to last year's sportsmanship scoring in light of the high number of ties resulting from the new system? Having been there last year and read about the system this year, it seems like it was kind of a step backward for a number of reasons.

Danny Internets wrote:Mike, might you guys consider going back to last year's sportsmanship scoring in light of the high number of ties resulting from the new system? Having been there last year and read about the system this year, it seems like it was kind of a step backward for a number of reasons.

I'd second this, while neither system was bad persay, having been at both and talked to numerous people, I got the feeling/was told by many that they just gave excellents if it was a good game, or if they beat someone really badly and felt bad they gave an excellent game, etc. Not saying this is always the case, but I don't think you can have a system where people are allowed to give excellents every time, as they'll typically just give excellents to friends, or give them to game the system and try to sway their opponent into giving one, etc.

That being said, there's no real award tied to sportsmanship/in your overall score, so it's not a huge deal. But I did prefer year 1's system, ymmv though.

MVBrandt wrote:Dash won best sportsman on random assignment.

Rather than pick a biased but arbitrary determiner of "Best" among I think 16 "8 perfect game votes" players, such as highest battle scores, or lowest battle scores, or whatever ... we went with a completely impartial arbitrary determiner :p

The best was the photo of all the guys, though, which will go up soon with our next big photo update!

That sucks that I missed it but MBG wanted to roll out. Oh well next time I'll fly out of DC and be able to stick around sunday night. : )

Thanks for the explanation, Dash, I appreciate it. And no, I don't think he was amiss for giving you an excellent for that game at all.

Over the last couple of years I have seen Sports scoring where you are instructed to give average for most games and Excellent only for truly amazing games. I start to follow those guidelines and then see not many other people are following them. Then I feel bad that I have followed the instructions to deviate from the norm(every gets a 10 out of 10 or these days Excellent/Awesome) while few others have. I have effectively chipmunked my opponent for no reasons. The TOs don't enforce it because it is a little silly to try to do so though at Wargamscon they did say they would have to talk to the opponents if they kept giving Awesome Game! repeatedly. They didn't though so the concept just seems silly. So unless my opponent is a big jerk they get Excellent from me. I think being decent at a major event is a huge accomplishment anyways because I have seen many others as well as myself be annoying at these things in the past.

How about just a thing that says if your opponent was a huge pain in the ass please let us know so we can talk to them and keep an eye on them?

Shinkaze wrote: Over the last couple of years I have seen Sports scoring where you are instructed to give average for most games and Excellent only for truly amazing games. I start to follow those guidelines and then see not many other people are following them. Then I feel bad that I have followed the instructions to deviate from the norm(every gets a 10 out of 10 or these days Excellent/Awesome) while few others have. I have effectively chipmunked my opponent for no reasons. The TOs don't enforce it because it is a little silly to try to do so though at Wargamscon they did say they would have to talk to the opponents if they kept giving Awesome Game! repeatedly. They didn't though so the concept just seems silly. So unless my opponent is a big jerk they get Excellent from me. I think being decent at a major event is a huge accomplishment anyways because I have seen many others as well as myself be annoying at these things in the past.

How about just a thing that says if your opponent was a huge pain in the ass please let us know so we can talk to them and keep an eye on them?

Both what Shinkaze and targetawg have said sum up exactly how I feel about this style of sportsmanship scoring. It's not an inherently bad system for judging sportsmanship, it's just that it's been around forever and has been used incorrectly for so long that the incorrect use has actually become the norm, so the scoring criteria for good versus excellent are wholly ignored for the sake of either politeness or reciprocation.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure my reading of the card and using it the right way on day one cost me in sports. I noticed that the trend was just to give excellents and I caved on Day 2. Simply because I don't see the point in getting lower scores or dinging other people if everyone isn't going to use the format properly.

My suggestion: A thumbs up/thumbs down per game and at the end of each day a favorite opponent vote. That means you won't forget the guys on day 1 when it comes time to vote and would probably help spread the field far more than it currently sits. Just a thought, haven't tried it in practice as I'm far more intested in playing than running events

I actually gave out all excellent marks except for one because they were far better than average games. I was pleasantly surprised.

The NOVA used a very similar, if not the same, Sportsmanship system as AdeptiCon did last year. We discovered the exact same issues in April (there are multiple posts somewhere discussing the abundance of positives and how the spirit of the system did not function in practice). People get set in their ways, adding to that the exhausting nature of these events, and people are bound to fly through something as secondary as Sportsmanship scoring.

We revised our system shorty after the event last year to be inline with what Hulk just suggested. Each game will have +/- mark. At the end of the event, each player will cast a classic Favorite Opponent vote which will be weighted heavily when determining Best Sports and Best Showing.

Here's a nice link about thumbs up / thumbs down sportsmanship that Mannahnin put together. I'd love to see someone try this out, or a similar system:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/The_Pass_or_Fail_Method_of_Tournament_Sportsmanship_Scoring

That system was a big influence as we reworked the system in late 2010. AdeptiCon's 2012 system will be similar, although tweaked given the other changes to the event.

i like the thumbs up thumbs down format. Rtides link is also helpful in how the format is used to influence overall scoring. I am going to consider the format for the battle for salvation tournament in october.

During the GT itself, I think I actually gave out all excellent game votes.

Karma from Day one must have been balancing itself out, because I floated through the GT against opponents who didn't argue and quibble, who knew the rules, and were happy to throw dice.

Literally, every game that I played was one of my best games ever. When I ran into Rich, I was expecting trouble because he gave me some trouble during the invitational - every move needed judge intervention, double-checking every dice roll - but he told me that was because of my "reputation" and that I was right in every circumstance, and played an extremely tight game. He didn't repeat during the GT, we had no issues, and despite knowing what was coming for me, I still won by the tiniest sliver of skin on my teeth.

Close games, no rules arguments, fun opponents....this was the best set of 8 games that I have ever played in my life. It would have been a disservice to *not* give excellent game rewards to the players who unknowingly worked together to make this the best tournament experience I've ever had.

Even Tony got an excellent game vote. He was serious, all business no jokes, and I played poorly - bad reserve rolls, not going first...but I settled into his rhythm and we had an extremely enjoyable game. He took me fair and square - beat me succinctly, Njall ran amok through my entire army almost singlehandedly, and I had nothing but admiration for him giving me a lesson in humility. That would have gotten my best game of the day vote if we had them.

Is it so strange that my opponents might have felt the same? A couple people said they learned a whole lot watching me play across from them. Most said that it was an amazing game. Several also commented on how unfair my reputation is.

Eh - I had a blast. ++, will go again next year. If Mike had used a ranking system for best sportsman based on other factors, I probably would have won it because of where I stood in the brackets compared to the others. Random chance giving it to me...was gratifying, hilarious, doubly hilarious, and worth a drink.

But Dash, that's precisely why sportsmanship *scores* are innately flawed. Some people will play a tight, fair, but taciturn game, and really enjoy the game for itself, and call that "excellent." Some people will play the same game and say "meh, not enough BJs" and score it lower.

The flaw with every system that tries to give each game a sportsmanship score is that a person's score is as much tied to whether they get lucky and play like-minded people or not, as it is to their own behavior.

Personally, my favorite sports system does not use a score at all, but allows each player to hand out a "favorite opponent" to one of their opponents, and everyone who receives favorite opponent votes receives a raffle ticket for each vote, and then Sportsmanship prizes are done as a raffle.

And I think it's important to emphasize, these are criticisms of the system as each person sees it with ways to improve, they are 100% not a critique of the people who were awarded excellent votes, or all excellent votes at the NOVA this year. I'm sure every one of them were great sportsmen, as were the very vast majority of NOVA attendees.

The point is more "does the system work". As in, does every player read, and interpret, the criteria being used and apply it in the same way. From the people I talked to, this wasn't the case. Now of course they never gave a bad game an excellent, but many gave excellents for reasons not on the sheet. If this is the case, then obtaining all 8 votes is more a random event which occurs among good sportsmen. Were all 8 games of each of the 24 winners of best sportsmen the best games they had ever played in their life? Probably not. Were they still good games, definitely!

That's why I like the system from NOVA last year, it forces separation in scores and people have to make a choice, rather than just give out all perfects. I know that not everyone liked this as they said "i got a 50% on sportsmenship, wtf!" without thinking that 50% was perfectly fine, and not indicative of the traditional "high means I was a nice guy, low means I'm a jerk".

Of course, now that Dash has clarified that he actually played a game, there's no reason to say he didn't deserve an "excellent game" vote,

Matthias wrote:That system was a big influence as we reworked the system in late 2010. AdeptiCon's 2012 system will be similar, although tweaked given the other changes to the event.

Excellent! I am planning to be at Adepticon 2012... already have the missus' approval (although I won't be playing 40k, I'd love to watch some of it, and it'd be awesome if the same rubric is used for fantasy)

I like Ragnar's sportsmanship system. Would like to see that used in a few GTs.

We're still pondering sportsmanship. We divorced it from having any impact on scores in any category this year, and the result was overwhelming feedback of a poisitve, upbeat atmosphere and tons of excellent votes. Getting to call up nearly 20 guys to get a photograph and be honored as equivalently great sports felt far far more right to me than the application of social engineering and influence of players' competitive scores as some sort of farscical (sp) attempt to "force" good sportsmanship upon people.

It's smething we'll analyze pretty heavily for next year, but the outcome here was great tourneywide sportsmanship and broad honoring of excellent sports. Not sure that's a misstep, honestly.

DakkaDakka wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:We're still pondering sportsmanship. We divorced it from having any impact on scores in any category this year, and the result was overwhelming feedback of a poisitve, upbeat atmosphere and tons of excellent votes. Getting to call up nearly 20 guys to get a photograph and be honored as equivalently great sports felt far far more right to me than the application of social engineering and influence of players' competitive scores as some sort of farscical (sp) attempt to "force" good sportsmanship upon people.

It's smething we'll analyze pretty heavily for next year, but the outcome here was great tourneywide sportsmanship and broad honoring of excellent sports. Not sure that's a misstep, honestly.

With sportsmanship being separate from the scoring, I got to be myself, instead of campaigning for a good score during the game. It was nice.

Is Stelek still pedaling that BS line about taking underpowered armies? For crying out loud, that is so tired, he has been doing that for years.

That list was not bad at all. But thankfully, his super human tactics and skill overcame such a weak army. Please.

Whatever. Congratz to both of them for doing so well, and congratz on the best sportsmanship award, Dash.

@MVBrandt
Yeah, we use a +/- system for the BAO and it works well. Keeps things super simple and largely closes the door to chipmunking, which is best in a long tournament, IMO.