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Hello my friends!

I was thinking, how the tournaments you people play work?

In my area, sportsmanship takes a huge part in the game( gaming is only 9 pt outta 44), paint is 10, sportsmanship is 15. Another 10 pt depends on the special rule of the tournament, or the theme. Painting is for the effort, not the quality, so as long as you paint the models you get 10 easy points. But sportsmanship is hard to get for some reason. I mean I am always a nice player, I don't make fun of others, I am nice, and I don't argue 99% of the time. But some people are really popular, and they get full points for sportsmanship...I don't really feel its fair. BTW sportsmanship are given by the other players.

Is there other tournaments like that?

Comments please!

That scoring sucks monkey balls. Seriously sports is more then actual game play? Painting is more then actual play too? Hell nebulious points depending on special rules of the tournment is more points then actual playing the game.

That sucks. And its completely unfair.

In my view Sportsmanship should be there to act as a warning to the tournament organizers. Generally speaking as long as you aren't cheating or being a total A-hole most people should be recieving an average rating.

Tournament organizers should take a couple quick tours around players who recieve a negative sportsmanship score after the first round to see if they see anything that may require to them to say something to a player and if they don't see anything make note of that too. If the same player gives multiple negative sportsmanship reports in a row it might be worth keeping an eye on them incase they are tanking peoples sportsmanship scores on purpose, generally those people will do other things you may not want to see at your tournament.

I see to many organizers just sitting at a table chatting it up during a tournament when a couple trips around the room could show some things they could assist with, especially since many people are hesitant to call a judge in fear of having their sportsmanship tanked because of it.

Has a whole week passed already? I thought there was not enough argument in this forum.

I have to say I have never heard of a gaming system where battle points was only 20% of the total score.

With your situation I am not sure that sportsmanship is the issue, but the scoring ratios overall. Even the softest of the soft events I have seen have battlepoints be at least 50% of the total score as well as recognizing best general which is pure win/loss or game scores.

I would see no issue with 10paint/15sport/10theme if 3 games were like 12-20 points a piece or something.

I got average sportsmanship points for every game I played. I did not lose a single game. That should put me in the ranks of good players. And yet when I checked the list I was the 4th last player! I mean even a guy who lost all his games got higher than me, I just feel its not fair...


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No really...9 pt for games, 35 for others...

OP:

You guys are on the right track.

To be honest, you guys should probably remove the battle points aspect. Leave it to sportsmanship and painting, just a social event where people look at each others' armies and vote on who is the nicest socializer.

Dashofpepper wrote:OP:

You guys are on the right track.

To be honest, you guys should probably remove the battle points aspect. Leave it to sportsmanship and painting, just a social event where people look at each others' armies and vote on who is the nicest socializer.

The ratios seem quite off to me. If the majority of players there like them the way they are, that's up to you.

I devised a new Sportsmanship scoring relatively recently (link to the article is in my sig), and Adepticon 2011 had a pretty good one too.

Dashofpepper wrote:OP:

You guys are on the right track.

To be honest, you guys should probably remove the battle points aspect. Leave it to sportsmanship and painting, just a social event where people look at each others' armies and vote on who is the nicest socializer.

Hmmm....sarcasm there, but it did bring up a point that maybe everyone here is playing for another purpose, not winning. Maybe they just want to look at cool armies and enjoy the soft games....


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I think sportsmanship is a very important part of a tournament, but if it takes up too much of the points...whats the point of gaming?

For a second I thought my daughter's tee-ball coach was in Canada running events. They don't keep score because they don't want anyone's feelings hurt. Guess what, no one tries! She asked to "talk" to me about my daughters team "keeping" score and knowing they won a game. I told her "I'm sorry but my daughter and her friends can add."

Competition builds character. Winning and loosing are a fact of life. I think if you want to call it a "tournament" then you need to have winners and loosers based off of ...winning and loosing.

Just my 2 cents.

Dashofpepper wrote:OP:

You guys are on the right track.

To be honest, you guys should probably remove the battle points aspect. Leave it to sportsmanship and painting, just a social event where people look at each others' armies and vote on who is the nicest socializer.

Seriously, that. If they want to have a golden deamons type event, just hold one. What the OP was in wasnt a tournmentr. It was a popularity contest.

OP: The obvious strategy in this format is to purposely lose your games while complimenting your opponent on their skill. This should get you a top three placing so long as you spend some money getting your army professionally painted.

Fearspect wrote:OP: The obvious strategy in this format is to purposely lose your games while complimenting your opponent on their skill. This should get you a top three placing so long as you spend some money getting your army professionally painted.

That is a way to do things, but I really don't like other people painting my models. And sucking up to my opponent is an option, but its one I won't take. I took a minute to think about this, and I've made my mind that later on playing with that group of people I won't be expecting anything.When I want to play competitively, I find a better group of people.

Wings of Light wrote:

Fearspect wrote:OP: The obvious strategy in this format is to purposely lose your games while complimenting your opponent on their skill. This should get you a top three placing so long as you spend some money getting your army professionally painted.

That is a way to do things, but I really don't like other people painting my models. And sucking up to my opponent is an option, but its one I won't take. I took a minute to think about this, and I've made my mind that later on playing with that group of people I won't be expecting anything.When I want to play competitively, I find a better group of people.

I think your on to something there.....

Inquisitor_Dunn wrote:

Wings of Light wrote:

Fearspect wrote:OP: The obvious strategy in this format is to purposely lose your games while complimenting your opponent on their skill. This should get you a top three placing so long as you spend some money getting your army professionally painted.

That is a way to do things, but I really don't like other people painting my models. And sucking up to my opponent is an option, but its one I won't take. I took a minute to think about this, and I've made my mind that later on playing with that group of people I won't be expecting anything.When I want to play competitively, I find a better group of people.

I think your on to something there.....

When your local gaming circle doesn't meet your needs consider becoming a gaming nomad. Find a few larger events a year and make an effort to travel. If you are in the US there has to be at least one major event within driving distance.

Sometimes quality is better than quantity.

I like ranking for sportsmanship as it minimizes chipmunking. Mannahnin's sportmanship ideas work well too. But what really works is close supervision by the TOs over sports scores. If someone does give low scores, they better give a good reason. Competitive tournaments can still have sportsmanship scores as you can still have overall and tournament winner share the same prestige. Otherwise might as well call them ard boyz.

I like the way Adepticon does it.

The 40k Championships have a composite ranking system that factors in Battle Points as well as the soft scores, with a second event to evaluate the "best player" from the top 16 generals from the Championships.

That was, at least, the way I understood it.

I think sports points is an increasingly archaic notion in some senses; more and more I find myself leaning toward pass/fail, with best general/overall-caliber prize support for stand-out sportsmen.

I think the more I attend and run tournaments, the more I notice jerks are jerks, norms are norms, and nice guys are nice guys. Not to wax tautological, but donkey-caves are donkey-caves. One guy scored min sports @ the NOVA 2010 ... after the event, he PMed me thanking me for running it, and saying "don't fret sportsmanship, I never do."

My point here ... why do we so heavy handedly try to incentivise good behavior? It reminds me of people praising folks for not being criminals. You're not supposed to be a criminal. Most people are fine or good sports. Simple pass fail, with extra pts in a sports category for a truly amazing person ... increasingly seems to make sense. Point out to donkey-caves that they really are donkey-caves; beyond that, let people be their normal selves without fear of scored retribution for not filling the air with platitudes.

Maybe a Favorite Opponent vote on day one and two (so two votes per person) to spread the field for best sport Mike? Pass/Fail w/Favorite Opponent Votes?

MVBrandt wrote:I think sports points is an increasingly archaic notion in some senses; more and more I find myself leaning toward pass/fail, with best general/overall-caliber prize support for stand-out sportsmen.

I think the more I attend and run tournaments, the more I notice jerks are jerks, norms are norms, and nice guys are nice guys. Not to wax tautological, but donkey-caves are donkey-caves. One guy scored min sports @ the NOVA 2010 ... after the event, he PMed me thanking me for running it, and saying "don't fret sportsmanship, I never do."

My point here ... why do we so heavy handedly try to incentivise good behavior? It reminds me of people praising folks for not being criminals. You're not supposed to be a criminal. Most people are fine or good sports. Simple pass fail, with extra pts in a sports category for a truly amazing person ... increasingly seems to make sense. Point out to donkey-caves that they really are donkey-caves; beyond that, let people be their normal selves without fear of scored retribution for not filling the air with platitudes.

I agree it is archaic. I used to be one of those guys who argued to keep it because I felt it helped to add a more rounded feel to the game. But after playing in quite a few tournaments in Europe where no one uses sportsmanship I have found that nothing is loss by not having sportsmanship score. The games are just as fun without the added factor of guys chipmunking you or in the in case of me at adepticon not reading the scoring correctly

Many people question me about how tournaments are different between Europe and the US. The two big differences are mission objectives and sportsmanship. Most of them like the different objectives but no one even likes the idea of sportsmanship scores.

There is a whole world of 40k out there without sportsmanship and its seems to be doing just fine.

So basically what youre saying is you have to be on your opponents to get full score? Everytime I go to comp and sports tournaments I try to laugh and have a good time because that isnt a competitive tourney. Im going to the Great Escape Games COC in may and expecting to get a 0 on comp an 0 in sports as Im running a PURE DOA list.

Im there to win, I could care less if someone doesnt like the fact they cant touch me until turn 2. I try to never argue because of time concerns, so maybe not the bottom tier of the people who win all their games, but Im already calculating I'll be in the bottom 60.

carmachu wrote:That scoring sucks monkey balls. Seriously sports is more then actual game play? Painting is more then actual play too? Hell nebulious points depending on special rules of the tournment is more points then actual playing the game.

That sucks. And its completely unfair.

Unfair? How is it unfair?

It sounds like these rules are said in advance - nobody is penalised from the outset - everyone has the same chance of winning, it's just that the most important event has changed. It's completely FAIR. You just don't like the idea of a tournament where gameplay isn't the deciding factor.

I could organise a tournament where the you get points for wearing the most hats while playing Warhammer. You start with ten hats, and if you can play six games without them falling off you get points. As long as I tell everyone in advance, and they sign up knowing this, then it's COMPLETELY FAIR.

Sounds like just as much fun, ArbitorIan, considering it would be just as arbitrary. Isn't that kind of the point everyone else is making?

The point is that SOME of the criticisms of the event are off-base.

I agree that the scoring mix seems inappropriate and silly to my personal taste and preference. But that doesn't mean it's unfair.

I like pass/fail sports + fave opponent votes. Dicks still exist even in Europe. Pass/fail keeps them in check without making Sportsmanship the deciding factor for the tournament.

The only reason they made it this way was because a lot of people in the store(a good number of those weaklings) complain that people join tournaments with cheesy armies, for example razorback spam and deathstars. But I mean really, if you wanna play in a freaking tournament, deal with it.
Not a lot of people are actually jerks in my area, this is the thing I don't understand. My friend in California said that some of his local gaming people argued for 10 min over some rule problem...this never happened here. In such a calm area, I don't understand why they make sportsmanship so important.

Wings of Light wrote:The only reason they made it this way was because a lot of people in the store(a good number of those weaklings) complain that people join tournaments with cheesy armies, for example razorback spam and deathstars. But I mean really, if you wanna play in a freaking tournament, deal with it.
Not a lot of people are actually jerks in my area, this is the thing I don't understand. My friend in California said that some of his local gaming people argued for 10 min over some rule problem...this never happened here. In such a calm area, I don't understand why they make sportsmanship so important.

So... some people think that everyone with a razorback army is a jerk? I'm not really sure how sportsmanship, in the spirit of how it is usually enforced, covers this. Seems like more of a composition issue.

If there isn't a comp thread on the first page of this sub-forum, just wait two days and a new one will come to post in

I have ran events with where everyone votes at the end of the day who thier favorite opponent was for the day. Plus I typically do 60% battlescore, 25% painting 15% sportsmanship. Painting is based on effort just a check list did they do this or that to get each point. Sportsmanship you start the day with full sportsmanship you lose points if you forgot to bring things like templates, rulebook etc, or are being a tool. Bottom line is don't make me take points away from you. each favorite opponent vote a person gets adds 1 to their sports score, highest total gets best sport.

Corbett wrote:I have ran events with where everyone votes at the end of the day who thier favorite opponent was for the day. Plus I typically do 60% battlescore, 25% painting 15% sportsmanship. Painting is based on effort just a check list did they do this or that to get each point. Sportsmanship you start the day with full sportsmanship you lose points if you forgot to bring things like templates, rulebook etc, or are being a tool. Bottom line is don't make me take points away from you. each favorite opponent vote a person gets adds 1 to their sports score, highest total gets best sport.

That sounds solid.

In all of these threads that pop up nobody is able to explain how their particular voodoo magic brand of moving the numbers around somehow creates a better system to deter poor sportsmanship than "Have the judges pay attention"

Seriously it's a ton of this:

"Well I take 4, then add the number 1 to get 5!"

"Oh yeah? well I take 6 and subtract the number 1 to get 5!"

"Oh wow, your system is awesome! But I prefer to add the number 1 together 5 times to get 5 at my tournaments, that is how I create good sportsmen out of a disparate group of wargamers!"

MikeMcSomething wrote:In all of these threads that pop up nobody is able to explain how their particular voodoo magic brand of moving the numbers around somehow creates a better system to deter poor sportsmanship than "Have the judges pay attention"

Seriously it's a ton of this:

"Well I take 4, then add the number 1 to get 5!"

"Oh yeah? well I take 6 and subtract the number 1 to get 5!"

"Oh wow, your system is awesome! But I prefer to add the number 1 together 5 times to get 5 at my tournaments, that is how I create good sportsmen out of a disparate group of wargamers!"

Sorry I...dont...get it...


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Do you guys think it would be a good idea to take out sportsmanship? I mean since its given that EVERYONE in the tournament knows each other pretty well, and that no jerks are there(only so-called cheese lists)