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njpc wrote:In the end, your paying for what your paying by walking into a tournment, just play what you want. Play fair, hard, and with sportsmanship and you will do fine. A possible comp rating of 1-5 likely will not matter much if you are a good opponent and pay attention to objectives and bonus points

I agree - the only situation where a 1-5 comp margin would matter is if you get to the top and lose a place due to comp scoring.

If the comp IS done well, then that's fine - the other player has done as well as you, but with a worse army. For the purposes of the tournament, he is the better player.

njpc wrote:

tuiman wrote:So would it not be easier just to say no special characters (draigowing) and no more than two of each unit outside troops (longfangs)?

Would that not be a fairer system as it is clearly black and white, with comp score I find it such a grey area, I can never tell what I will eactly be judged on.

Minor suggestion: Think of comp as a margin of error in the event. A few posters above already hit on paint / comp really being subjective. If you are trying to consider "tinkering" your possible comp score as you have concerns about having Grey Knights or Space Wolves, your probably going to have a low comp score anyway. Think of it this way: you have a low comp score which is reflective from a 1-5 range. So if 1 is the lowest, you have a 4 point window. How do you make this up? Pay attention to objectives during the game, opportunities to bonus points, etc.

I goto GT's fairly frequently. If the comp range is a 1 (low comp) 5 (high comp) you generally have a lot of 2-3 range lists, as when you goto a tournment, you should expect to play nasty stuff. Think of it from your opponents perspective. I don't play GK. However, I get darn sick of seeing spammed rifle dreads, min-max razor squads, etc. I've seen balanced GK lists do just fine against any army in the game. So the book will naturally have a lower comp then most Tyranid lists out there. That's just an example.

In the end, your paying for what your paying by walking into a tournment, just play what you want. Play fair, hard, and with sportsmanship and you will do fine. A possible comp rating of 1-5 likely will not matter much if you are a good opponent and pay attention to objectives and bonus points

Thanks for summing this up for me, makes some sense to me now

I dont use rifle dreads, mainly cause I dont have the models...yet

Its a fun tournament, I will just take a fun grey knights list, leave most of my heavy hitters at home

tuiman wrote:boost your ranking? so your a major player here on the NZ scene then? Sorry for my ignorance

You must teach me the ways to be a good player, any chance you could tell me what the meta is like here?

Yeah, Im hoping to go to call to arms in August, and they will use 6th, so I will have to change back to 5th again, oh well

The NZ Masters are held every year in November/December, with the top 12-16 players on RankingsHQ for each system getting an invite. I went last year and aim to stay in the top 10 this year. Its hard to work out exactly where you are sitting until all the results go up, and you also have to manually remove the points for Doubles tournaments (since they aren't being counted as Masters is a singles event), but I expect to end up sitting around 8th after everything is sorted out (2 major tournaments still haven't been uploaded, one last weekend and one about a month ago which I ran). There is still Fields of Blood in July to come, which will be the biggest tournament this year, but I've gone 8th, 4th, 8th in my last 3 tournaments so hopefully that should be enough to secure a top 10 ranking.

Its hard to describe the 'meta' here, there isn't really any major pattern in terms of lists that I have seen in the last couple of years beyond the obvious new codex trends (i.e the newest book tends to get a boost in numbers). I have been to tournaments with no Orks and 5 Dark Eldar players and then the next tournament has 3 Ork players and 5 Eldar players. Given that we don't have huge numbers of people the most obvious thing is that there is a core of top level players who tend to consistently place in the top 10 no matter what armies they run. The top player in NZ is definitely Charlie St Clair (proximity on most forums, he doesn't post here much anymore), he has won pretty much every tournament for the last 2-3 years. He is currently using a Necron list with 2 Barge Lords, 2 x 6 Wraiths, 3 Annihilation Barges and some Warriors for scoring. There are 2-3 guys who tend to grab 2nd/3rd and then a bunch of guys including myself who are usually chasing them. Just for reference the armies the top 12 atm usually run (not in order) are 4 x Grey Knights (1 Draigo, the rest Rifleman + stuff), Necrons, Eldar, Sisters, Blood Angels, Nids, Templars, Dark Eldar and Chaos Marines.

Has Call to Arms confirmed they are using 6th? Aside from Fields which has confirmed that it will be using 5th (as its in July) afaik the rest haven't confirmed anything since no official release date has actually been announced for 6th. In most cases you can expect a 2-3 month changeover period so I would be surprised if an August tournament runs 6th (unless its a 1000pt 1 day tournament or something like that).

Wow, maybe in a few years I will be able to be up there with you guys

Yeah, call to arms is a weird one as their is no 'confirmation' that 6th is even coming, although we can guess it is, I sent an e-mail to the TO and this is what I got:

"There are several reasons that CTA will be using 6th ed, the main ones being that - from past experience over all the previous editions - nobody will be interested in playing the old rules when the new ones have been out for a month. Also, the restriction of any new codexes ensures people don't have to get to grips with the new rules AND the latest dex. From what I understand the rules won't be a huge learning step for people already playing. And 1500pts keeps the games a bit faster with less models to move, leaving more time for rules discussions."

He sounds like a nice guy and I guess the explanation makes sense, the only problem I see, is everyone getting a hold of the rulebook (I guess it will be very expensive in our money) and getting it read within a month.

Tbh, I would prefer 5th, as I am holding of buying anything for my army incase 6th makes some things awsome and awsome things bad

I wouldn't tinker your list. I would stick with what your comfortable with. It sounds like from the posts your also going to be newer to the tournment scene? That is an extra reason to just play with what you have. You will need to learn how to really manuever your army to put yourself in the best possibility for the best results.

However, in the end our dice fail all of us at times, and its going to seem like it happens ALOT in the beginning of learning to play tournment warhammer. I find tournment warhammer very exciting, strategic, and a great change of pace I still love the beer and giggles games with friends. But tournments are a chance to challenge yourself. In the beginning you will spend lots of time just trying to get your head around why players field certain combinations when they look sub optimal. Slowly you will see the concert that warhammer can be, where a "compy-fluffy" list can actually really smack around a "hard-low comp" list given the right scenario.

Alright I'll post this again after the first time got deleted after a few days mysteriously considering it wasnt offensive at all.

kronk wrote:I'm fine with COMP where everyone knows the matrix.

"The result you are given is final and we don’t need to explain our result."

The above is BS and I wouldn't play in their tournament.

Like with any pompus comp system is just a matter of breaking it, look at the black templar guy that got 80/80 and fielding 3 landraiders (2 as dedicated and 1 heavy) in a tournament where dark eldar are crap and you get docked points for duplicate squads (aka meltaguns), mind you he did score 0/30 for the judges comp but they will NOT reveal what they score that on, which is basically them picking who wins, which is just as stupid as having your opponent do it.

The painting matrix is just as bad but thats another can of worms.

This has probably been stated already but I will go ahead and give my 2 cents as well.

Comp scoring is not just biased but it is absolutely bad for the hobby. Let's think about it for a moment, why do we even need to consider comp scoring to begin with? The reason is that not all Codices are created equal. Some are outdated, others over-powered, and some that are just poorly written. The responsibility completely lies with GW to make a balanced system. Now the reality of this happening is slight I know which then brings up the question of what to do about it.

1. Constantly ride GW's ass about making a better product. I know , I know GW just ignores us generally but there is no reason not to give feedback even if it means doing it constantly.
2. Evaluate the missions played in the event. Too often the problem also lies with having poorly constructed mission. It takes me at least a few hours to write a mission and another week or two to play test it. After play testing it generally requires another hours or two of work to clarify the mission more precisely. If the TO isn't putting forth that effort then the missions are likely crap or worse out of the back of the rulebook. Constructing missions that are achievable regardless of the armies participating is the goal here, not easy I understand but worth the effort when you get to see Tau and SOB competing and not just a speed bump.
3. Be objective as a TO. This really goes hand in hand with the second point but deserves to be explored further. Many events are set-up to accomdate local players and the meta played. But for many areas seeking to improve in competitive play this can hinder that development. Players that travel to play in events, I am one such myself, do not want to arrive at a tournament only to see that the missions favor particular armies and that the local players just happen to play those armies. After a couple times those non-local players will just stop coming and that hurts the effectiveness of the event in the end.

In closing, if you develop good missions that are achievable to all armies it will encourage people to play more varied armies. Comping lists is lazy and penalizes the player by limited their choices, put the extra time and effort in as a TO and run a superior event. In the end you will have a more successful event and players will more liekly want to be a part of your future events.

Doctor33 wrote:

In closing, if you develop good missions that are achievable to all armies it will encourage people to play more varied armies. Comping lists is lazy and penalizes the player by limited their choices, put the extra time and effort in as a TO and run a superior event. In the end you will have a more successful event and players will more liekly want to be a part of your future events.

As our event we typically runs comp and I take offense to calling the TO’s for DaBoyz GT lazy.

To run a comp event is 2 to 3 times as hard as an average event. Let’s take last year’s event. First off we had to create a matrix and try to make it as fair as possible. It was not prefect. Once you receive the list you need to verify if the lists are even legal and then verify all 90+ lists using the matrix. That is not lazy; you have created a ton of more work for yourself. That is not taken into account what we did the year before to “create a fair” event. We had players submit list (up to three times) for a comp score. The list would have to be reviewed by 5 people and then an average score was assigned.

Comp is not for everyone. I am sad to say it going to way of the Dodo bird. I am afraid painting scores will be next. Most event painting scores do not even factor into overall award. Some major events are not even requiring painted armies.

I am only aware of a couple events running comp anymore. Because of 6th addition we will not be running comp. It is in our opinion the release date is to close to our event. We need time to digest 6th edition before we put together a comp matrix.

Jay_Daboyz wrote:

Doctor33 wrote:

In closing, if you develop good missions that are achievable to all armies it will encourage people to play more varied armies. Comping lists is lazy and penalizes the player by limited their choices, put the extra time and effort in as a TO and run a superior event. In the end you will have a more successful event and players will more liekly want to be a part of your future events.

As our event we typically runs comp and I take offense to calling the TO’s for DaBoyz GT lazy.

To run a comp event is 2 to 3 times as hard as an average event. Let’s take last year’s event. First off we had to create a matrix and try to make it as fair as possible. It was not prefect. Once you receive the list you need to verify if the lists are even legal and then verify all 90+ lists using the matrix. That is not lazy; you have created a ton of more work for yourself. That is not taken into account what we did the year before to “create a fair” event. We had players submit list (up to three times) for a comp score. The list would have to be reviewed by 5 people and then an average score was assigned.

Comp is not for everyone. I am sad to say it going to way of the Dodo bird. I am afraid painting scores will be next. Most event painting scores do not even factor into overall award. Some major events are not even requiring painted armies.

I am only aware of a couple events running comp anymore. Because of 6th addition we will not be running comp. It is in our opinion the release date is to close to our event. We need time to digest 6th edition before we put together a comp matrix.

He wasn't trying to call out anyone involved with Da Boyz Jay, stop looking for things to be offended by. He was just stating his opinion that you can balance the game with scenarios instead of comp scores.

But if you want some feedback, I thought the comp for last years Da Boyz WAS lazy. You had a good comp rubric designed to help vary lists, but then you had a whole bunch of Hidden points that were awarded by a group based on ????? which never leaves people with a good feeling. More over, it feels like it was done to catch people who "snuck" really hard lists through the comp system with a good score, rather than just making the rubric better and more complete. So basically, it stopped half way through and wasn't play tested enough. So why even have a public rubric part?

He could have voiced that opinion though, without calling TO's that use comp "lazy".

No matter what system is used, TO's put in a ton of work on events. Not liking, or disagreeing with the idea of a comp system is fine. But keep comments to the high road, please.

True, certainly agree, organizing events is a lot of work and Da Boyz has been a successful event for years. That doesn't happen if people are not putting in the time.

Doctor33 wrote:

In closing, if you develop good missions that are achievable to all armies it will encourage people to play more varied armies. Comping lists is lazy and penalizes the player by limited their choices, put the extra time and effort in as a TO and run a superior event. In the end you will have a more successful event and players will more liekly want to be a part of your future events.

The poorly constructed missions are usually the events who don't use comp.

Missions can't solve the gross imbalance of underpointed units. I would love to see a mission that nerfs GK and SW shooty spam armies, but don't harm an eldar shooty or ork shooty list and makes them equal in strength through a mission. Underpointed units do things better than overpointed units. no amount of missions can rebalance points whcih is the true solution to 40k balance, Living rulebooks and constant repointing.

But that is not going to happen.

Some can argue an uncomped event limits their choices as you are punished by the natural use of the rules if you do not bring the optimal undercosted units.

Calling comp lazy and then putting forth an immpossible solution of making missions that magically balance the meta shows a lack of understanding of how the game works and what it takes for TOs to run an event. Not all comp solutions work, but it is certiantly not lazy and I have played in events with well thought out and playtested comp. And if the goal is to promote alternatives to netlists, that is usually accomplished very well by comp.

If you don't like it and you want to bring your netlist and smash faces (or get your face smashed because you choose to play a xenos army) then go to those events. I will say I have been to COMP events which were more balanced and fair than 'ard boyz which is the most COMPed event I have ever been in since the 3rd edition GWGTs in baltimore.

Comp is not bad for the hobby. The pure reason behind comp is that there is a realistic different between giggle cames and games at a Tournment level. Comp is also not required at all tournments depending your player field. Most of the people who smile, laugh, and shake hands at the NE GT Scene all know each other across various systems. Most of the guys who goto events have GT Calibre lists that are tweaked to take on the top tier.

Why do you need comp then? To balance the playing field. There is a different in the Codex's, we all know that. Comp gives those older / likely less viable codex's a chance against newer / beefer books. I'm not saying that you cannot make really good lists out of older books, but newer books have lots of advantages older books do not. 40K GT's run fairly smooth without comp. However with a decent comp spread, all of a sudden all those "zero comp" lists have to work harder to level the playing field against those middle of the road lists.

I was against comp before the current "Everyone plays the same 3 spammy armies" thing happened.

Anything to break up the monotony is welcome.

Comp was a lot more important before 5th edition. Nowadays the mission structure makes the imbalances between codices less important and evens things out a bit.

I'm curious to see if there might be a resurgence of comp scoring/handicapping in 6th.

Monster Rain wrote:I was against comp before the current "Everyone plays the same 3 spammy armies" thing happened.

Anything to break up the monotony is welcome.

There is something to be said about going to an event and playing a range of armies.

Jwolf posted that there are at 50 players with Coteaz going to WargamesCon. so a couple of weeks ago I understand that had 200+ players signed up for the singles event. What that means is 20% to 25% of the players will be playing a GK list with Coteaz. The GK % could be higher because he is not counting armies without Coteaz.



@ Mannahnin it is interesting to see what 6th edition will bring. You, Alex and guys need to come down this year.

Jay_Daboyz wrote:

Doctor33 wrote:

In closing, if you develop good missions that are achievable to all armies it will encourage people to play more varied armies. Comping lists is lazy and penalizes the player by limited their choices, put the extra time and effort in as a TO and run a superior event. In the end you will have a more successful event and players will more liekly want to be a part of your future events.

As our event we typically runs comp and I take offense to calling the TO’s for DaBoyz GT lazy.

To run a comp event is 2 to 3 times as hard as an average event. Let’s take last year’s event. First off we had to create a matrix and try to make it as fair as possible. It was not prefect. Once you receive the list you need to verify if the lists are even legal and then verify all 90+ lists using the matrix. That is not lazy; you have created a ton of more work for yourself. That is not taken into account what we did the year before to “create a fair” event. We had players submit list (up to three times) for a comp score. The list would have to be reviewed by 5 people and then an average score was assigned.

Comp is not for everyone. I am sad to say it going to way of the Dodo bird. I am afraid painting scores will be next. Most event painting scores do not even factor into overall award. Some major events are not even requiring painted armies.

I am only aware of a couple events running comp anymore. Because of 6th addition we will not be running comp. It is in our opinion the release date is to close to our event. We need time to digest 6th edition before we put together a comp matrix.

Yeah but your comp matrix sucks. You throw or steal 30pts from players based on how YOU personally feel about the army, there was a guy there with a junk grey knight army with zero duplicates and got bombed because it was grey knights. When you hand out the equivilent of a massacre win or massacre loss before the tourny even starts on an entirely random and unknown system thats not only unfair but entirely bias.

Thats what I would like to know (as I honestly have no idea) is comp based on army choice, composition or a bit of both?

As I said in the original post, I play greyknights, but say I took landraiders or stromravens instead of dreads, or strike squads instead of purifiers, would I still get a low comp score just because I am grey knights?

If so, then my un-competitive gk build will still be up against things like sw longfang spam and other heavy hitters, just becasue I toook gk.

Every army I feel has a few nasty builds, I guess its up to the TO to make sure they see them all, not just the marine ones (not hating, you guys do a good job)

I have played in tournaments with comp systems, and deliberately dumbed down my list to just... silly standards so I could give opponents a "fun game." I still got docked.
So now, I bring exactly what I want and I just give everyone a 0 and I tell them that as I'm doing it. And I expect them to do the same.

Jay_Daboyz wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:I was against comp before the current "Everyone plays the same 3 spammy armies" thing happened.

Anything to break up the monotony is welcome.

There is something to be said about going to an event and playing a range of armies.

It was a major reason that I attended tournaments in the first place.

Jay_Daboyz wrote:

Yeah but your comp matrix sucks. You throw or steal 30pts from players based on how YOU personally feel about the army, there was a guy there with a junk grey knight army with zero duplicates and got bombed because it was grey knights. When you hand out the equivilent of a massacre win or massacre loss before the tourny even starts on an entirely random and unknown system thats not only unfair but entirely bias.

The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:
However, the 30 subjective points are terrrible. There is no amount of planning you can do to keep them and that sucks for people who travel a large distance. If you dont like GK/SW (I played SW at their GT) then just publish a penatly for playing that army.

In my experience, the more subjective comp is, the more you should try and avoid the tournie. The more the clear (lists/Rubric with penaltiesbonuses shown) comp is, such as at DaBoyz, the more you should try and seek out the event. My advice to the OP is to ignore comp and play what you what for if care what your score is at that tournament, then you will be dissapointed.

-Mike Mutscheller

I'd have to disagree on the subjective points. At least in terms of last year, there was plenty of material to pull from to plan a Da Boyz comp favorable list. The general guidelines they posted in their comp packet go a long way in explaining what they see as bad comp (special characters, duplicates, the same stuff you see in every other tourney army). And at least for the past 2 years, it has been fairly consistent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ravenous D wrote:

Yeah but your comp matrix sucks. You throw or steal 30pts from players based on how YOU personally feel about the army, there was a guy there with a junk grey knight army with zero duplicates and got bombed because it was grey knights. When you hand out the equivilent of a massacre win or massacre loss before the tourny even starts on an entirely random and unknown system thats not only unfair but entirely bias.

What was his list?

Warmaster Primus wrote:

The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:
However, the 30 subjective points are terrrible. There is no amount of planning you can do to keep them and that sucks for people who travel a large distance. If you dont like GK/SW (I played SW at their GT) then just publish a penatly for playing that army.

In my experience, the more subjective comp is, the more you should try and avoid the tournie. The more the clear (lists/Rubric with penaltiesbonuses shown) comp is, such as at DaBoyz, the more you should try and seek out the event. My advice to the OP is to ignore comp and play what you what for if care what your score is at that tournament, then you will be dissapointed.

-Mike Mutscheller

I'd have to disagree on the subjective points. At least in terms of last year, there was plenty of material to pull from to plan a Da Boyz comp favorable list. The general guidelines they posted in their comp packet go a long way in explaining what they see as bad comp (special characters, duplicates, the same stuff you see in every other tourney army). And at least for the past 2 years, it has been fairly consistent.

Respectfully:

Assuming you are refering to the 30 points from last year, it was far from clear and concise. For example you list: "the same stuff you see in every other tourney army". That statement its self is subjective. Does that mean that just mean GK/SW's? Does it mean ANYTHING (sarcastic) you have seen at a different tournament such a tyranids? How many points do you lose for bringing a "same stuff" list? Additionally, are all sepcial characters treated the same for loss of the 30 bonus points?

If these points aren't assigned subjectively, that part of the rubric was unpublished. However, one is left to assume that since the majority of the score was publised that the remaining points were scored by an individual's bias. In either case, it does not let a tournament goer make informed decisions on whether or not they want to go to a tourny based on a comp score. This is a big question for players who don't like comp.

DaBoyz 2 years ago was completely different and by no means comparible. And again, I recommend Daboyz GT with the Rubric to everyone.

We also need to give Jay/Smitty and DaBoyz team credit for the massive amount of work a rubric takes to develop. Respect to those guys for taking the time to develop the list and communicate to everyone what they want their tournament to be.

I respect your opinion, but we may have to agree to disagree.

-Mike Mutscheller

I keep seeing people crying about bias...

Every tournament has bias. Every event has event FAQs. INAT has bias, and then there are people who disagree with INAT and make their own FAQ which then has their bias. Ruling differently on specific rules drastically impacts some armies and changes how people play the game as well.

Every tourney has a level of bias of how the TO or group running the event think the game should be played. This can be missions, point restrictions, which army lists can be used, custom FAQs, restricted force org, and COMP. They are all forms of bias.

Bias is not necessarily a bad thing either. Well run events can be full if bias... only inflexible people who are participants who want the game played their way usually have issues. My answer to them is 'run your own event' instead of wanting TOs to bend to your whims.

I think the DaBoyz rubric is quite possibly one of the best ones I have seen. It does cause variety in armylist building so it accomplishes that goal. I am glad 6th edition is coming because having events where 20% of the participants play a specific army with a specific SC is a problem with the game IMHO and gets us back to 3rd edition levels of uncompetitiveness.

I see where you're (Mike) coming from. We're just on the two opposite sides, but that's okay and probably healthy for the discussion.

I scored best comp at Da Boyz 2 years ago, and got a 21/30 this past year. Both times, my score wasn't much of a surprise.

Additionally, I have to agree that Jay & Da Boyz need a great deal of credit for trying. The game isn't perfect, comp isn't perfect, but it's good to see people trying to make it more fun.


Back to the OP, I think that the hardest thing to talk about when it comes to Comp is its definition. Comp in Rochester may be different than Comp elsewhere. I've found that it varies from place to place, and when one person complains about comp, their criticism may not be appropriately applied to your scenario.

Take for instance Black Matt's Black Legion Blog. 2 years ago he went to Da Boyz with a Imp Fist list that had mainly terminators, scouts, Telion & Lysander. It was a pretty weak list, and that's what he thought the comp would be gauged on - relative strength of the list.

If he had read the rules packet, he would have seen that the largest comp hits were for taking special characters (he took 2) and repeating squads (his army was 3X shooty termies & 4X scouts). Initially, he felt blindsided because his definition of comp was different than Da Boyz. Afterwards, we had talked about it and he'd realized that he hadn't read any of the rules packet (something you should do for every GT).

nkelsch wrote:I keep seeing people crying about bias...

Every tournament has bias. Every event has event FAQs. INAT has bias, and then there are people who disagree with INAT and make their own FAQ which then has their bias. Ruling differently on specific rules drastically impacts some armies and changes how people play the game as well.

Every tourney has a level of bias of how the TO or group running the event think the game should be played. This can be missions, point restrictions, which army lists can be used, custom FAQs, restricted force org, and COMP. They are all forms of bias.

Bias is not necessarily a bad thing either. Well run events can be full if bias... only inflexible people who are participants who want the game played their way usually have issues. My answer to them is 'run your own event' instead of wanting TOs to bend to your whims.

I think the DaBoyz rubric is quite possibly one of the best ones I have seen. It does cause variety in armylist building so it accomplishes that goal. I am glad 6th edition is coming because having events where 20% of the participants play a specific army with a specific SC is a problem with the game IMHO and gets us back to 3rd edition levels of uncompetitiveness.

I agree that their Rubric is good and it is an example of openly communicated bias. The complaint about bias is that you are, as a TO, trying to attract players to your event. Each player has a seperate motivation for traveling to the event. To ask someone to spend time and money to attend your event but then to conseal the event details will dissappoint alot of players.

Bias isn't the problem. The Rubric is applied bias. Bias without open communication is. The more one applies bias WITHOUT being open about it the less numbers of people you will attract to your event. If you want an all tyranid event, fine, but you should only expect tyranid players to be happy and excited about it. If you don't tell people it is all tyranid and they show up with Chaos, then they can't play to win. Maybe that was their motivation to go. Now you have just wasted their time.

The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:

I agree that their Rubric is good and it is an example of openly communicated bias. The complaint about bias is that you are, as a TO, trying to attract players to your event. Each player has a seperate motivation for traveling to the event. To ask someone to spend time and money to attend your event but then to conseal the event details will dissappoint alot of players.

Bias isn't the problem. The Rubric is applied bias. Bias without open communication is. The more one applies bias WITHOUT being open about it the less numbers of people you will attract to your event. If you want an all tyranid event, fine, but you should only expect tyranid players to be happy and excited about it. If you don't tell people it is all tyranid and they show up with Chaos, then they can't play to win. Maybe that was their motivation to go. Now you have just wasted their time.

Well-run events don't have problems attracting people to their events. Also people tend to go to events which they want to participate in and Tos usually conform the event to what the people who actually attend want.

The problem is there are people who do not attend these events to complain events need to cater to them or there is an issue with the event. If a TO is running an unsuccessful format, he can adapt or have no participants.

I think there is room for judged comp. I can look at a list and tell if someone has built that around exploiting a broken rule or around spamming a specific undercosted unit. It isn't hard and doesn't take a genius... and when they get called on it they look all surprised-face when they knew exactly what they were doing.

If they clearly said the goal is to break things up, minimize special characters, then don't spam, don't rely on special characters. I would be crazy to take a megaboss over ghazghkull, but if everyone is taking a regular IC over a SC, then I can make a megaboss 'work' for most ork lists and still have fun. You don't need a rubric for that. Because then peopel are like 'I can still take a snikrot/ghazghkull combo by taking a big choppa here and taking kannons and a boomwagon here to offset the points for a 75% good list. We all see what you did there.

Players know what they are getting themselves in to. If you don't like it... don't attend. People who take themselves and their skills of always placing top tables where COMP score actually matters are usually disillusioned and don't actually have the skills of placing top tables where the difference in comp will actually matter.


This is the same thing when events have secret missions. People like to be able to 'game' the system and feel in ultimate control. They get all red-faced when they build a list and a mission screws them. They want to know the missions so they can make lists designed to exploit the missions. Almost all the old GW RTTs were secret missions and you could have the best list ever and lose because your MIN/MAXing got nuked by missions.

Personally, I don't have a problem with hidden missions which force people to make a more well-rounded force 'just in case'. I think it can be fun. At least Judged comp you have a rough idea what is usually expected. Random missions, you have no idea what to expect. If it really annoys you to not have full disclosure of every aspect of the event, go elsewhere.

Jay_Daboyz wrote:

Sorry you feel that way, but the 30 points was for lists that were hurt by the matrix. Older codies that typically only have one build. The 30 points was spelled out beforehand. These points came from an panel of judges. If you came and did not like it or understand it then sorry, but it was clearly posted on rules. If did not come because of it that is also fine, that is way is clearly published beforehand, so there no surprises. That is reason why we are not doing it this year, because we can put out the comp matrix 6 months before the event.

I would be interested in seeing what you would come up with.

I see you are from Canada, I would highly recommend a no comp event called WarMasters. It is great run event.

I did attend your event, I actually had a blast aside from the painting matrix thing giving me zeros for resin bases. I went in with the crappiest comp stupid army (Draigowing) so I knew what I was getting into, I just saw lots of examples of people breaking the matrix or getting screwed by it. Honestly if you're starting the tournament with minus points and lose your first game you might as well concede that you arent winning anything and the next 6 games are just for fun.

I started running my own tournaments and trust me I do appreciate the work you guys put in, but KISS works for a reason.


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Warmaster Primus wrote:
What was his list?

IIRC correctly it was 80/80 for the first part and was totally brutal, Grandmaster, walking dreadknight, interceptors, elite purifiers, strike squads, 1 rhino, and some termies. No duplicates what so ever and got 0/30 from the judges. He got stomped hard from what he was telling me. I remember him saying "Meh I guess its cause its Grey Knights".

nkelsch wrote:


I think there is room for judged comp. I can look at a list and tell if someone has built that around exploiting a broken rule or around spamming a specific undercosted unit. It isn't hard and doesn't take a genius... and when they get called on it they look all surprised-face when they knew exactly what they were doing.

This is not the problem. Identifying a hard list is easy. Scoring it on some scale relative to all other lists in the room is hard. And almost always, some of them are dead wrong in this regard.

How much should comp count and how much of a handicap should the truly hard lists have to start with? This is the question, one I have little confidence in any TO/Group getting right. When someone finishes 1 point behind someone else for overall, this can be a huge problem.

This is why people like things being public beforehand. I was unable to make it to Da Boyz last year due to a family wedding, but I was very skeptical of the comp system, as you could see gaping holes in the rubric (which is presumably why the 30 mystery points where there in the first place). But all the mystery points were handed out based on something, so why no just work it out a little more and make that public?