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I have played in a few tournaments and have a basic understanding of them. Now I'm thinking about offering to run some tourneys at my FLGS, and need some advice. Here are my questions:

1. What is the best scoring and paring method you've seen.

2. How should I build the missions for the Tourney? I was thinking of just doing a mix of the standard 3 missions and deployments.

3. What is typical for entrance fee, prizes, etc...

4. I was thinking of doing a seperate best painted contest on the side, as not to take away from the competition.

Any other advice not covering the questions I have above would be appreciated.

Thanks,

I think one big thing to consider is the number of tables you plan to fill, and how you will be handling providing terrain for all that.

I find, at least for smaller non-national tournaments, the costs go more toward funding the actual costs (space, terrain, etc.) than goes into the prizes.

1. I think most use a swiss pairing system, though I have seen a few move toward a win/loss system (the second requires more rounds). They each require modified missions though. Swiss pairings tend to depend on battlepoints as a factor for how well you did, and that will decide youre next opponent, where as Win/Loss needs tiebreaking rules to ensure every single game ends without a draw.

2. I guess that is explained a bit in (1), but I think a good system is to keep it simple as much as possible. Your proposal sounds like it matches that principle.

3. Here, I think you need to look at if you are trying to invest in growth. For smaller tournaments, I usually see about $20, whereas for ones closer to 100 players I tend to see in the realm of $60. Of course, the size of the prize pool tends to hinge on this. You can up it significantly by brokering a deal with the storeowner for discounted items (because it should mean a bunch of guaranteed sales).

4. You can keep it separate, or even include it in some combination with the games to determine an overall winner.

If you are thinking of becoming a fully fledged TO, you are going to have to come for initiation at the GATHERING OF ORGANIZERS.

It involves a lot of poor people with bald or grey heads.

This quasi-joke includes a great deal of "subtle" information about what you need to know as an aspiring TO.

Before you become a TO make sure you are an ORGANIZED person. Also, know the rules well *And* be able to acknowledge if youre wrong when you look something up

Everyone hates a TO who gets rules wrong and then throws a fit when someone shows him the right rule (Also you look dumb)

1. Swiss.. Simple for 3 round events with tiebreaking going to strength of schedule or bonus points

2. Standard missions + secondary objectives is best imo. IE you have X # of objectives + a secondary objective such as KPs or whatever.. Or KP as primary and I dont know, table quarters as secondary. Multi-tiered missions are great. Dont be fancy and make wacky missions that screw over some armies. A LOT of TO's fail to understand the actual game when they create flawed scenarios

3. Depends on your store or lack of store. I charge 10$ for painted, 15$ for non-painted. But I pay 0 for venue due to Legions being a massive store

4. Subjective scores should be separate for sure. What we do is give best painted an award based on the store employees voting

But above all, again, organization is key. It can be overwhelming but you have to prove you're the leader of the event or there are people who will walk over you.

Time wasters, rule exploiters (ie those who try to get a judge for everything) will not bother you if you establish yourself as an organized and strong TO. Trust me, not telling people you dont deal with BS just leads to trouble as there are players out there who will make your life hell if they sense youre a pushover

I run the tournaments at my shop as of now because our current mini guy had a kid and hasn't been heard from in a while.
1) I do my scoring system based on points system. depending on what game system you are using ie. fantasy or 40k, changes the points values and how you obtain them. for 40k i do objectives with a set number of points for achieving them. On the Fantasy side i use massacre through Massacred results to gage how well they did. kinda like 'Ard boys.

2) Basically thats what all scenarios are: just offshoots of the standard ones. Do your Research, look up old tournaments and see how they scenarios are done.

3) my Entry fee usually is $10 for our normal tournys and 15-20 for longer ones.

4) you could make a Painting Contest in itself. basically they have to paint something in a certain amount of time and has to purchased from your store. brings in a bit of sales and you can do this monthy.

1. It's different everywhere. Typically your battle points are 60% of a player's total, appreance 20-30%, sportsmanship 20-10%. But lots of places do it differently, just make it public whatever you are planning on doing, and try not to make battle less than 40% of the total (although adepitcon did at roughly 1/3 of your total this year).

2. If there is a popular large tournament within a few hours of you I would just copy whatever they do. It attracts people who want to practice for that event and is easy for you.

3. $10-20. You probably need 4 plaques, Overall, General, Appearance, and Sportsmanship. Where I am at the usually cost $15 a piece. Big cities will probably be more. Budget maybe 20 dollars for printing and spend 100% of the rest on prize support (you may be able to work deals with stores or wensites to get more for your money).

4. I would keep it with the tournament awards, but yes you do want a best appearance award.

Thanks for the info. I have a few more Q's that popped up.

I'm trying to understand the swiss rules how do you pair up players for the next rounds?

Is the 20-0, 17-3, 13-7, 10-10 scoring method from Ard boys a good system?

Is three rounds too short of a tourney?

3 rounds is fine for a one-day tournament. 'Ard Boyz scoring is fine as well. Mix up your missions a bit, keep it interesting - you don't always have to use the book missions; don't be afraid to snatch GT missions and use them (Nova, Adepticon, SVDM, etc)

-I've grabbed a sample of three themed missions and put them at the bottom here.
-In general, players are paired up by battle points. Round one is random, round two and three are paired based on who has the most points. Add modifiers (see below) to make it difficult for people to have the exact same score.
-I would *definitely* avoid using strength of schedule to determine *ANYTHING*. It is a horrible, HORRIBLE method to determine position or victor.

"Yes, I know you went 3-0, but you didn't win because someone else went 3-0 as well, and his opponents were tougher."

OR...............

"Yes, I know you went 3-0, but you didn't win because the other guy who went 3-0 scored better than you did in the missions."

Strength of schedule makes it the TO's fault in situations like that for your pairing choices. Avoid it.

-Make SURE that you know the rules up, down, left and right. Go to YMDC and surf around - do those issues look like regular news to you? Can you play a game of 40k without referring to the rulebook? Can you quote page numbers for commonly needed stuff? IC rules, assault rules, tank-shocking, etc. Don't be threatened if you don't know it...but make sure that someone at your store, playing in your tournament is an absolute rulebook guru if you aren't. When I got to FLGS tournaments, as often as not the TO (or even the players themselves) will come ask me rules disputes. It makes up for the TO.

-Prize support. You'll have to find a balance between rewarding the effort of the winner, and encouraging people to come back in hopes of winning something. $5 is too little, $25 probably too much to start out. If you're fresh into starting to host, I would encourage you to think of it this way: 1 place per 10 players. If 1-10 people show up, pay out one place. 11-20, two places. 21-30, 3 places. If you hit the 21-30 bracket, add in a token prize for the worst performance.

-TO requirements: I wouldn't encourage you to implement painting, sportsmanship or anything else at your first tournament. You want to get as MANY people as you can into the tournament, even those with unpainted armies - the biggest event that you can get to leave the impression in the mind of the players attending that it was a worthwhile tournament. Make it a smaller tournament...like 1500 points or so as well; you want people coming to play. Use that first tournament, or the first few tournaments as a springboard to add depth to later tournaments. At that first tournament, I'd literally make an announcement at the beginning like this:

"Hey folks, I appreciate everyone coming, and I'm going to do my best to make sure that you all have a great time today. For this first tournament we're just having some basic 40k because I don't want to get in over my head, but I want you to know a couple of things:

1. In all future tournaments, everyone's models will need to be WYSIWYG - your models need to show what equipment they have, no invisible turrets or sponsons, no boxes standing in as Land-Raiders, that sort of thing. It creates a lot of confusion on the table, and I want to avoid it - so if you HAVE anything you're proxying or isn't modeled as you're using it, make sure to take between now and the next tournament to fix that stuff up.

2. Painting isn't part of this tournament because I wanted to have the doors open to everyone, but I do want to encourage you to bring good-looking models to the tournament. At next month's tournament, I'm going to implement a basic painting score, like "Is the army painted? Are the models based?" that will give everyone time to get working on unpainted models without feeling rushed. My goal is to have a full painting score implemented within a few months so that you can show off and be proud of your painting.

I would discourage you from using sportsmanship scoring for a FLGS tournament. Presumably everyone, or mostly everyone knows each other, and you're going to have 4-10 tables at most - making it very easy for you to have a presence. If you have one of "those guys" that is a slow-player, tell them at the beginning of the tournament that games are timed, and if they want to play in your tournaments, they're going to have to focus on getting through their games because it isn't fair to their opponents to have paid money to play 40k and not be able to get through a game.











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Scenario 1: Targeted Destruction
“Without the possibility of reinforcements due to a localized warp storm in the solar system, each commander looks to strategically weaken his enemy…”

Mission: This scenario is a variation of the annihilation mission (page 91) with the following amendments:
Kill Points in this mission are determined in the following way:
-Every unit is worth its own points divided by 100 in killpoints.
-Troop choices round down to a minimum of 1.
-Dedicated transports have no killpoint value; their points are added to their troop choice.
-All others round up.
Example: 190 point troop choice = 1 point. 210 point Heavy Support vehicle = 3 points.

Each player deploys their forces as per the deployment rules.

The Seize the Initiative Rule found on page 92 is in effect.

Deployment: Spearhead (Table Quarters)

Length of Game: Random Turn Length after Turn 5 (see page 90).


Calculate Results:

Massacre(20) – If a player has 6 or more killpoints than their opponent, then they score a Massacre.

Major Victory(15) – If a player has 4 or more killpoints than their opponent, then they score a major victory.

Minor Victory(13) – If a player has 2 or more killpoints than their opponent, then they score a minor victory.

Tie(10) – If both players have the same number of killpoints, the game is a tie.

Minor Loss(7)
Major Loss(5)
Massacred(0)

Battle Point Modifiers:
+1 if your opponent has no HQs alive at the end of the game.
+1 if you destroy all your opponent’s troop choices.
+1 if you have a scoring unit in at least three table quarters at game end.
+1 if you have at least one HQ alive at the end of the game.
Scenario 2: Into the Breach!
“After an endless day of fighting, a gap in the warp storm lets orbiting ships fire off a salvo of supply pods in a desperate attempt to reinforce their troops…”

Mission: This scenario is a variation of the seize ground mission (page 91) with the following amendments:
-There is one primary objective, which starts the game plummeting towards the planet. Each player turn, roll a D6 to see if the objective lands on the battlefield. Turn1(5+), Turn2(4+), Turn3(3+), Turn4(2+), Turn5(Auto). This objective is worth two objective points.
-When the objective hits the field, it scatters 3D6 and causes a STR10 AP1 Orbital Bombardment. After resolving the strike, place the objective centered on the hole of the bombardment.
-There are two secondary objectives (supply pods) worth one objective point each. At the start of the game, each player places their objective centered in one of the four quadrants of the board determined by a D6; 1-4 for each of the quadrants, 5-6 for player choice of quadrant. Objectives may end up in the same quadrant if your D6 determines it to be so; players may not voluntarily place an objective in the same quadrant as another.

Each player deploys their forces as per the deployment rules.

The Seize the Initiative Rule found on page 92 is in effect.
Deployment: Pitched Battle (Long Table Edges)
Length of Game: Random Turn Length after Turn 5 (see page 90).

Calculate Results:

Massacre(20) – If a player controls more objective points and has more killpoints than their opponent, then they score a massacre.

Major Victory(15) – If a player controls more objective point but has less killpoints than their opponent, they have scored a major victory.

Minor Victory(13) – If neither player controls more objective points, the player with more killpoints has scored a minor victory.

Tie(10) – If neither player controls more objectives or killpoints, the game ends in a tie.
Minor Loss(7)
Massacred(0)

Battle Point Modifiers:
+1 if you have more troop choices left alive at the end of the game than your opponent.
+1 if you have destroyed all your opponent’s troop choices.
+1 if you control the central objective.
+1 if you control all three objectives.
Scenario 3: Dawn Approaches
“Despite a grueling night of fighting, neither commander is willing to wait for the dawn to try ending the conflict by overrunning the enemy camp.

Mission: This scenario is a variation of the capture and control (page 91) with the following amendments:
-The game starts in Nightfight. At the beginning of each full turn, the player who chose to go first rolls a D6 to see if dawn breaks. Turn1(Nightfight), Turn2(5+), Turn3(4+), Turn4(3+), Turn5(2+).

Each player deploys their forces as per the deployment rules.

The Seize the Initiative Rule found on page 92 is in effect.

Deployment: Dawn of War (Table Halves)

Length of Game: Random Turn Length after Turn 5 (see page 90).


Calculate Results:

Massacre(20) – If a player controls more objectives than their opponent and has more killpoints, then they score a massacre.

Major Victory(15) – If a player controls more objectives than their opponent and does not have more killpoints, then they score a major victory.

Minor Victory(13) – If both players control the same number of objectives, than the player with the most killpoints has scored a minor victory.

Tie(10) – If neither player controls more objectives or has more killpoints, the game is a tie.

Minor Loss(7)
Major Loss(5)
Massacred(0)

Battle Point Modifiers:
+1 if you control both objectives.
+1 if you have destroyed all your opponent’s troop choices.
+1 if all your HQ choices are alive and not in reserve at the end of the game.
+1 if you have more scoring units in your opponent’s deployment zone than they have in yours.

Send MVBrandt, Matthias, and Jwolf an email. Those three individuals have done some revolutionary work for the US indy GTs.

thehod wrote:Send MVBrandt, Matthias, and Jwolf an email. Those three individuals have done some revolutionary work for the US indy GTs.

Absolutely. Those three guys have been very approachable for me as I've been putting together at GT for the first time this year. They'll give you gobs of feedback, what those guys have told me has helped out a lot in getting terrain ready, scenario construction, etc.

Thanks for all the info, especially Dash. It gives me a lot to consider.

As Usual Dakka comes through.

Dashofpepper wrote:"Yes, I know you went 3-0, but you didn't win because someone else went 3-0 as well, and his opponents were tougher."

OR...............

"Yes, I know you went 3-0, but you didn't win because the other guy who went 3-0 massacred more rookies or got better army match ups.."

There, I fixed it for you Dash.

My best friend was in a recent Battle Point tournament. He and another player went 3 - 0 and they wound up in 5th and 7th place with no prizes. The wound up so low due to the wacky missions. One mission awarded points for each time you cause a unit to fall back. My friend played a stubborn army that round and never got them to break.

I use strength of schedule as my primary tie breaker because of how it works. The top player is undefeated and 2nd will be the player that went 2 - 1, lost to the winning player and beat another 2-1 player. Those are the characteristics of a second best player that I want to award. Now, if you have two undefeated players, then give them equal prize support. It's not too hard to do that. It may mean that instead of awarding prizes for the top 3 it's now the top 2.

Entrance fee depends how how many players you have, what percentage is used as prize support, how large you want the prizes to be and how many prizes you want to give out. I like prizes for the top 3 players and best painted army if you have enough prize support.

If you have 8 players and 3 rounds or 16 players and 4 rounds, then only offer scenarios that result in a win or a loss. Multi-tiered missions are great for this format. Primary being the winning condition and a secondary and tertiary as the tiebreakers. If you have more people and not enough rounds to get to one undefeated, then use scenarios that can result in a draw. This will help get to one undefeated and people with ties will fight for the second place.

For software to run the event I've used www.swissperfect.com. You can enter battle points in it as a secondary score and choose which tiebreakers you want, including battle points. I like bucholz (strenght of schedule), berger (strength of schedule that you beat) and then Secondary Score (battle points). I feel you should only compare battle points when the opponents were equally skilled.

ryan3740 wrote:I feel you should only compare battle points when the opponents were equally skilled.

I absolutely do not.

Part of skill is GETTING more battle points than your opponent. Now, your best friend admittedly played in a very badly designed tournament. A couple months ago, I ran into a similarly unbalanced situation - it was a modified KP mission; you nominate one of your HQ units to be your "champion". Every model that your "champion" kills generates 1 killpoint for you, and this is the ONLY means of getting killpoints in the game. I pointed out to the TO how imbalanced the concept was because my Ork friend playing a kan wall had two Big Mek's with KFFs - neither one had the slightest chance of personally killing anything. I explained to him that on the flip-side....I was basically going to auto-win my next game if I went first. And showed him how. The mission got put up to vote, and changed back to regular killpoints. Everyone was happy.

Those kind of things are EXCEPTIONS to the rule, not the standard.

Battlepoints are *how* you determine which opponent is the more skilled. If a seize ground mission has 4 objectives, and getting full battlepoints requires players to hold all four objectives...and awards bonus battle points for killing enemy troop choices...and your army only has two troop choices in it - chances are, you're probably either not going to win, or not going to get full points if you do. Building a balanced list is part of player skill. At the same time, if I zerg one objective with my Orks, and my 40 point gretchin units spreads out of claim all three of the other objectives....and they live to the end of the game to hold them....that's player skill as well.

Battlepoints are invaluable in finding and trying to match players of equal skill, which is why most tournaments use them as the metric for finding the tournament winner at the end.

I really do not want to get off on a tangent of arguing over tie breakers. That's how I see Battle Points as - a tie breaker. I think you should always rank players by their number of wins first. There is just this stigma that Battle Points is the best tie breaker and I think this is false. I mainly want the original poster to see some flaws in ranking by battle points. To me these are major flaws when I look at a tournament's final standings. If player A beats player B and they wind up with the same number of wins, I think player A should rank higher than player B.

Dashofpepper wrote:Part of skill is GETTING more battle points than your opponent.

I agree that in a battle the most skilled player will usually win (dice can fail you and you can get a very bad army match up), and therefore the most skilled player will earn more battle points from that mission than their opponent.

Dashofpepper wrote:Battlepoints are *how* you determine which opponent is the more skilled. If a seize ground mission has 4 objectives, and getting full battlepoints requires players to hold all four objectives...and awards bonus battle points for killing enemy troop choices...and your army only has two troop choices in it - chances are, you're probably either not going to win, or not going to get full points if you do.

How many competitive armies can take 4 objectives (half)? How many competitive armies can win a seize ground mission with 4 objectives (many). Winning by a greater margin does not mean that you are more skilled, especially when basis of the margin changes from round to round (number of objectives, number of kill points, number of Victory Points...)

Dashofpepper wrote:Battlepoints are invaluable in finding and trying to match players of equal skill, which is why most tournaments use them as the metric for finding the tournament winner at the end.

Here I strongly disagree. If battlepoints are used to match players of equal skill then that means the highest skilled players will always have the higest battle points. This is not the case in practice. A medium player can massacre a rookie very easily. A very skilled player, when matched against another very skilled player, should be a very close game - thus awarding lower battle points to the winner and higher battle points to the loser. The spread of Battle points theoretically therefore dictates the spread of players' skill in the match. A large Battle Point win means you were not paired up with someone of your skill level, not that you are the most skilled player. Too often have I seen a player with a record of LWW wind up in second place by beating weaker opponents in the last two rounds while the person they lost to in the first round has to play stronger opponents, thus getting lower battle points, and winding up 2 - 1 in third (behind the person he beat). Heck, if the LWW player scores enough BPs in the first round then they may even beat the 3 - 0 player for the tournament win!

In one of my tournaments the 4-0 player played the 0-4 player in the first round. This was the most skilled vs the least skilled player. The result was not a massacre. The better player only completed the primary and tertiary goals. This game was his lowest battle point scoring game. Later on he played against several 3-1 players and got all three goals for a "massacre".

I also feel that most tournaments use Battle Points because that is what GW ran, and still uses in 'Ard Boyz.

I have yet to look at my final results (sorted by wins, str of opponent,... , battle points) and see any odd results. My top ranking 3-1 players are those that lost to the 4-0 player and beat a 3-1 player. The bottom 3-1 players lost to other 3-1 players. That to me is a true ranking of skill.

Ryan, the flaw in that system is in the ability to "submarine." Have you heard the phrase before?

5 Round GT:

Player A wins Game #1 by tabling his opponent, scoring 20 points for a massacre, and 5 bonus points for bonus objectives (dead troops, HQs, controlling table quarters).
Player A wins Game #2 by tabling his opponent, scoring 20 points for a massacre, and 5 bonus points for bonus objectives.
Player A wins Game #3 by tabling his opponent, scoring 20 points for a massacre, and 5 bonus points for bonus objectives.
Player A wins Game #4 by tabling his opponent, scoring 20 points for a massacre, and 5 bonus points for bonus objectives.

Thus far, Player A has maximum battle points, and presuming pairing based on battle points, has had to progressively play the toughest and most successful players in the tournament. Going into the 5th round, he has 100 battlepoints.

Player B wins Game #1 by a narrow margin (minor victory), scoring 13 points and no bonus points.
Player B wins Game #2 by a narrow margin (minor victory), scoring 13 points and no bonus points.
Player B wins Game #3 by a narrow margin (minor victory), scoring 13 points and no bonus points.
Player B wins Game #4 by a narrow margin (minor victory), scoring 13 points and no bonus points.

Thus far, Player B has 52 battle points, has the same record as player A, but has avoided having to play against the toughest and most successful players.

For game #5, Player A and Player B are the only two undefeated players and get matched against each other. Player B wins by a narrow margin, scoring 13 points to Player A's 7.

The tournament ends with Player B having 65 battle points and Player A having 107 battle points.

In this system, awarding the tournament win to Player B is awarding him for gaming the system to avoid difficult fights. Obviously, avoidance isn't guaranteed, but it does allow him to avoid playing against the top bracketed players. And in this system....submarining is actually a popular strategy.

I *agree* that wins should take precedent over battlepoints. Where I disagree with you is in using them as a tie-breaker. I think tournaments should follow one of two formats:

1. Win/Loss, with enough secondary and tertiary tie-breakers to guarantee that a tie is not possible. Pairings thereafter are based on Wins and losses, and the winner is the guy who hasn't lost any games, and entries are set to avoid multiple undefeated people. 16 people in your RTT? 4 games leaves one undefeated player.
2. Battlepoints, where pairings are done by score and the winner is the guy with the most points.

Both are suitable systems, both are fine....but I think that mixing them is a mistake.

TO requirements: I wouldn't encourage you to implement painting, sportsmanship or anything else at your first tournament. You want to get as MANY people as you can into the tournament, even those with unpainted armies - the biggest event that you can get to leave the impression in the mind of the players attending that it was a worthwhile tournament. Make it a smaller tournament...like 1500 points or so as well; you want people coming to play. Use that first tournament, or the first few tournaments as a springboard to add depth to later tournaments. At that first tournament, I'd literally make an announcement at the beginning like this:

Remember you get what you incentivize for. If you only reward battle points you'll only draw battlepoints players in any further tournaments. If you want Hardboyz thats what you'll get. If you want something else you have to incentivize for it.

I would make whatever rules public before gaming.

@OP

I think you out to start small first. Run a few RTT style local tourneys for the regulars, and listen to what they (and the shops) want, and then provide.

Then after you've got some experience under your belt, you can decide what direction you'd really like to go.

Organizing a tournament of any kind is a big affair before you even get into things like Mission Selection, Comp, etc. Before you even worry about those, you need to decide how many folks you will have attending, and what method you will use to keep everything organized throughout the day.

- Matchups
- Score Sheets for each player
- Recording Scores
- Mission Sheets for each table
- Table Space available (getting there early to set up)
- Terrain (making sure you have enough)
- Any other logistical things that you need to consider to have an event run smoothly.

Once you have all that down, you can worry about adding in complex missions, rules, scoresheets, rounds, or whatever you want.

MY advice.

1) Seek input from people who have done things successfully. The three names listed already in this thread are a good starting point and I would add Mike Hengl of Leadership 2 to that list.

2) Delegate as much as you can. You need to ultimately be the final say, but having a crew to hand out tasks to ultimately goes a long way towards keeping your sanity and objectivity. More opinions means more chances to catch obvious errors or imbalances in your scenario and scoring systems, as well.

3) No matter what style of scoring you intend to use, make sure it does two things well: It should be as objective as humanly possible. Second, it should be something you are comfortable with presiding over. If you are a battle points kind of guy, you are not going to be comfortable running a strict win loss system and the reverse is true. If you are not comfortable with your own system, you will make errors in judgement. This, plus subjective scoring systems, are the largest turn offs to the tournament community at large.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ps- Having all the rules public in advance of the event is the single most crucial thing you can do. It helps loads with player satisfaction and can help you catch things you overlooked in your scoring and mission design. Remember that transparency, accuracy, consistency, and objectivity are the four cornerstones of a smooth running tournament.

Phazeal is a great guy, although his prioritizes are a bit mixed up.

There are *six* cornerstones to running a successful event, and the two he missed are the two most important ones. Ample booze, and hot chicks. Put those six together, and you're sure to be a success!

Unless the wife visits you at the tourney in which case its Bad Day at Black Rock!

UsdiThunder wrote:1. What is the best scoring and paring method you've seen.

At least you understand that there are different scoring and paring methods. Many players still don't get that. Futhermore, it is essential that the scoring you use match up with the appropriate paring structure.

In traditional GW rogue trader tournaments they use Battle points for scoring. Parings are done by sorting the list of players by battle points. Do not look at the number of wins when sorting players. Sort them purely on battle points and then pair #1 vs #2, #3 vs #4,... If you have 2^n players and can go n rounds then your results will work out fine. If not, that's when the shenanigans can have a huge effect (submarining). If you have 16 players, then you need 4 rounds for your results to have any meaning. I'd like to add that this is the easiest way to run an event. All it requires is adding numbers and then sorting based on those numbers. If your players care more about having fun and wacky scenarios than being competitive, than this may be the event for you.

When you are awarding players for their number of wins and sorting based on str of schedule and other tie breakers then you need standard swiss subgroup pairings. What this does is put the top half of each win group vs the bottom half. So if you have 16 players split into eight 1-0 and eight 0-1 after round one, you pair winners: 1 vs 5, 2 vs 6, 3 vs 7, 4 vs 8 losers: 9 vs 13, 10 vs 14,... Or pair by opposite seeding (think playoffs) 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6,... Opposite seeding actually works best when your sorting starts with str of schedule. By using the opposite seeding it will pair (among players with the same number of wins) players with the higher SoS (strongest past opponents) vs the lowest Sos (weakest past opponents). The end result is that the SoS of all players at the end of the tournament will be pretty close together. This is the competitive format. This is what NOVA did last year - sorted by number of wins and competitive rating and then used opposite pairings within the win groups.

@Dash - your example is really bad in many ways. If the tournament is pure BPs then player A won't play B in the final round because the gap is too large in their battle points. If you sort by number of wins and then pair by swiss subgroups then they will always be playing someone with the same number of wins as them. Assuming you pair by subgroups, Player A (top of group) will be playing against the middle and Player B (bottom) will be playing vs the middle in every round - thus they should have a a comparable str of schedule (sum of opponent's wins). Your example looks like the players were paired rounds 1 - 4 by battle point rankings (1 vs 2, 3 vs 4,...) and then pair round 5 by the number of wins? That's really mixing the two types of tournaments! And what's with your final result? Player B wins, ends up 5 - 0, including beating your "best" player and you want to award first place to the guy that lost in the final round? WTF???

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

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

@Dash

BP's is inherently flawed. It promotes less fun gameplay as people struggle to get the full points to stay in the running. And leads to more shennanigans honestly. I know you've played in a lot of tournaments in the last 2 years but you need to take note that you are promoting a format that best supports your personal style. Your above statement is also ridiculous by the way

Undefeated is undefeated. I'm of the opinion that if you don't have enough rounds then all the undefeated players receive the same prize support.

Yeah I agree with Hulk.. Ive played in a lot of tournaments and the "I have more points than you, but we're both 3-0" is silly

The winner is simply the person who did more noob stomping. This is why I consider the 'ard boyz a weak tournament system with no real competitive merits, since its all about facing the weakest opponent in round 1 (or who can afford to buy all the vehicles required for top armies!). Even in the finals the like top 8 were undefeated, yeah real best-of-the-best. At least in most tournaments you can get prizes for painting, or other various scores

Unless you really just enjoy crushing newbies and amassing points its fairly easy to see the flaw in the system. Of course, this isnt whining as Ive gotten a free army basically every year 'ard boyz has been going on.. but that doesnt mean its a good event that means a thing. A scoring system vastly affects the kind of event you want to run. If you want a more competitive event Id focus on mission objectives rather than micro managing points. Degree of victory is less important than simply winning because MOST top tournament players should know that if you face another GOOD opponent you're going to get less points

On a different note, Id like to again stress ORGANIZATION. Ignore all the talk about scoring systems until you're confident that you are well organized, you will fail if you arent on the ball

UsdiThunder wrote:I have played in a few tournaments and have a basic understanding of them. Now I'm thinking about offering to run some tourneys at my FLGS, and need some advice. Here are my questions:

1. What is the best scoring and paring method you've seen.

2. How should I build the missions for the Tourney? I was thinking of just doing a mix of the standard 3 missions and deployments.

3. What is typical for entrance fee, prizes, etc...

4. I was thinking of doing a seperate best painted contest on the side, as not to take away from the competition.

Any other advice not covering the questions I have above would be appreciated.

Thanks,

1. The scoring method at my local store has been better than most I've played. It's 20 pts a game, split between players: 20 for massacre, 16 for major, 12 for minor, 10 for draw, and the oppenent gets the other half of the 20 pts. Also, each table has up to 3 objectives, that can be scored by either opponent, up to an additional 3 for specific acts. For example, +1 pt. for having killed some enemy unit, +1 pt for having some unit live, +1 pt. for first player to kill off an enemy unit/some other objective.

2. Standard missions are ok, but you should not have it be random. Set up/print off missions with the deployment already made by you the organizer. It's better if the missions have some sort of organization and story to make the battles more interesting and tie in additional victory pts. from the above set up.

3. Standard entry fees are $5. My LGS usually runs 40k at $10. Depending on size of tourny and organizer. If you work with your store owner and they buy direct from GW, GW gives out prize support based on the amount of product purchased/sold. So, you could run an event for free, and still have prize support. And/or have more prizes awarded in a fee tourny.

4. Painting competitions should almost be separate events completely, say a monthly display with people voting on a certain date.

However, if you want to encourage painting add a pt. or two to the total tourny/ not per game unless the majority of the participants typically are painted. You should encourage prizes so that more than just the top finishers get prizes as typically in most tourny's I've participated in, seen have the same people winning. This discourages other players from participating and will make attendance slack. Good examples, 1st. and 2nd. get prizes, 1 random, last place gets money back. This is good for most small tourny's. Another example, 1st., random, best painted, sportsman, last. etc... No one can win twice. I personally think at a tourny the first place player should always place, if its totally random, you will get the opposite effect as above and the competitive people stop showing up.

As a BP person, I admit there are flaws to poorly implemented systems and there is a deffinate merrit to using strict win loss. However, the main reason I prefer it is that in BPs you can lose a game and still be in the running, wheras in Win/Loss, you are done. Now, for a lot of people, this is not a big deal and you keep drinking and chucking dice. But there are people who immediately bail from a tourney when they have no chance of winning. Plus win loss systems that attempt to generate one undefeated player tend to break down when ties occur.

Again, run the method you are most comfortable with, but understand the merrits of other systems before you totally shelve them.

Phazael wrote:the main reason I prefer it is that in BPs you can lose a game and still be in the running, wheras in Win/Loss, you are done. Now, for a lot of people, this is not a big deal and you keep drinking and chucking dice. But there are people who immediately bail from a tourney when they have no chance of winning.

This.

I've been to plenty of tournaments where people lose the first game, and bail on the tournament since they can't win. The Nova Open used a win/loss format instead of Battle Points, but went through EXTREME lengths to keep people from ditching the tournament after losing. Most of the prize support went out via raffle tickets, and you got an additional raffle ticket for every loss - so the more losses, the greater chance of winning something if you weren't in line to win everything. And scoring for "Best Overall" was set up in such a way that losing a game doesn't take you out of the running; it had equal prize support to "Best General" so to speak.

Both systems have pros and cons. The best "merge" betweeen the two to reward the undefeated players while trying to prevent losing players from leaving was the Nova Open - but the resources to do that aren't really something you'll have starting out locally. For a local scene tournament scene starting out....you need to draw and attract players, and KEEP them. I meant to mention this earlier, but collecting contact information is invaluable. Whenever you meet a new player, nab their e-mail address and phone number so you can reach out to people to solicit interest in the event / make them aware that there is one. Unless I already mentioned that.

Hulksmash, I'm curious why you think that Battlepoints supports my personal style? I *have* been in a lot of tournaments, but its never been an issue. At the end of tournaments, I'm typically undefeated with close to max battle points, and either the only undefeated player, or ahead of the other undefeated person (if there isn't another round) on battle points by a screaming margin; either because they had narrow wins or were trying to submarine their way up the ranks.

If you're referring to the SiS last year, the potential existed for me to win best overall without going undefeated because of the gigantic lead in Battlepoints that I had, but it didn't play out that way.




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Hulksmash wrote:
Undefeated is undefeated. I'm of the opinion that if you don't have enough rounds then all the undefeated players receive the same prize support.

Generally speaking, I think that tournaments are either small enough that only one person will be undefeated after a number of rounds, or large enough to provide tie-breakers.

The assumption that scoringly highly on battlepoints means that you played against noobs is erroneous.

Dash, the assumption that scoring highly on battlepoints means you're good is also erroneous. Neither assumption can be accurate enough among a tiny sample set (which 3-4 games is).

Hulk is correct - it is far simpler and fairer to reward equivalence in prize support for "generalship" to every undefeated, and to use a soft-score-inclusive component factored with generalship battle point scores to determine your overall.

Scoring highly in battlepoints at most simply means you won a lot ... it can neither provably mean you were better than other people who haven't lost, nor worse.

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.