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Just got home from a tournament in Sacramento and had a really good time. The Great Escape Games contest of champions events are really big for one day RTTs, this one had 76 players. They are run by a good group of guys, too. Italiaplaya, White925 and went out to toss some dice and promote our upcoming Bay Area Open GT this July. http://bloodofkittens.com/bayareaopen/

These events are heavily comped and with a lot of soft scores, so I had to alter my list to make it fit. The list is weird but I literally wrote it 5 minutes before I started playing and had to make it work with what models I had in my bag when I got to the store as I did not know what the comp system was until I arrived. It is not optimal, but it got a pretty strong comp score (31 out of 35). To win at these events, you have to have good comp.

HQ
Rune Priest: JotWW, Storm Caller

Elites
Dreadnought: L.Cannon, H.Flamer
Wolf Guard x 3: P.weapon x 2

Troops
Blood Claws x 10: Fist, Rhino
Grey Hunters x 5: Lazorback, Flamer
Grey Hunters x 5: Razorback, Assault Cannon, Flamer
Grey Hunters x 5" Razorback, Assault Cannon, Melta

Fast
Typhoon x 2
Typhoon

Heavy
Long Fangs x 6: M.Launcher x 5
Long Fangs x 6: M.Launcher x 5
Long Fangs x 6: M.Launcher x 5, Lazorback

Game 1
Opponent: Tau
Mission: Dawn of War, 2 objectives, table quarters count as objectives

HQ
Shas El: Positional Relay, twin missile pod, targeting array, gun drones x 2

Elites
Crisis Suits x 3: plasma Rifle, m.pods, bonding knife, team leader, gun drones
Crisis suit: twin fusion blaster, targeting array

Troops
Fire Warriors x 12: Shas O, Bonding Knife, Devilfish, SMS, multi, d.pods, targeting array
Fire Warriors x 12

Fast
Pathfinders x 8: Bonding Knife, Devilfish, SMS, multi, d.pods, targeting array

Heavy
Hammerhead: rail gun, burst cannon, d.pods, multi
Hammerhead: rail gun, burst cannon, d.pods, multi
Sky Ray: SMS, d.pods, multi, targeting

The board we played on didn't have much LOS blocking terrain so it was a straight shoot out, and Tau don't win shoot outs against...well against many armies these days. I got my units into position first and let lose with hot missile death. My opponent played a smart game but my turn two shooting was devastating, my dice went red hot and pretty much crippled his offensive capabilities. His dice stunk, too. He stopped all of the glancing hits, and none of the punches. I ran my Blood Claws straight at his lines as a distraction unit. He fired everything at them and they still made it across full strength, it was crazy.

So, long story short, shooty wolves shot the Tau to death in short order and I took max points. My opponent was a great guy though, and went on to win his next two games, finishing with a winning record with Tau which is pretty awesome.

Game 2
Opponent: Grey Knights
Mission: Pitched Battle, Kill Points, table center worth 2 kill points, held like an objective.

HQ
Librarian: Halbred, Might, Shrouding, Summoning, Sanctuary, Quicksilver
Inquisitor: Daemon Weapon, Communion, 3 servo skulls

Elites
Henchmen x 11: Death cult x 2, Crusaders x 2, Arco, Daemon Host, Jokaro, Warrior x 2, Chimera with H.Flamer
Purifiers x 8: 3 Halbreds, Incinerator, Daemon Hammer, Rhino

Troops
GKT x 5: Psycannon
GK x 10: 2 psycannon, daemon hammer, Rhino
GK x 10: 2 psycannon, falchions x 1, Rhino

Heavy
Rifleman dread: psycannon ammo
Rifleman dread: psycannon ammo

I got first turn again, and deployed in a refused flank. My opponent, seeing the lack of LoS blocking terrain, and the large amount of firepower my army packs, decided to deploy defensively in the opposite corner, which turned out to be a poor choice. I quickly disabled his Dreads which forced him to come into the teeth of my army and the result was fairly predictable. Most of his army was gutted fairly quickly ending in a nice little scrum in the middle where the Blood Claws managed to destroy his remaining scoring units in combat before dying themselves. In all fairness though, without terrain to cover his advance, there wasn't much he could do. He may have been able to get into combat with me had he bum rushed me but the table was pretty open.

Full points victory to me, but my opponent dinged me on comp a bit as he didn't like my army and thought it was overpowering. That is the thing with comp/sports, it is just so easily abused, even if the other person doesn't think they are doing it. Had he beaten me, I wonder if he would have dinged my comp score? My army was legal, it shouldn't be penalized (at least not in my opinion). But hey, that is comp for you.


Game 3
Opponent: Daemons
Mission: Spearhead, Secure and Control with certain units counting as on objective (most expensive: HQ, Vehicle, Unit)

HQ
Fateweaver
HoT: Chariot, bolt, gaze, legion
HoT: Chariot, bolt, gaze, legion

Elites
Blood Crushers x 6: Diversified
Blood Crushers x 6: Diversified
Fiends x 6: Might

Troops
PBs x 5
PBs x 5
PBs x 6: Icon

Fast
Seekers x 15

Italiaplaya and I drew each other for the final round. 6 of us left were 2-0 and I drew my teammate! I ALWAYS play one of my teammates at every event we go to, without fail! We asked the TO if it would be possible to play someone else, and he agreed so long as another pair of guys wanted to switch with us. Well, none of the other guys wanted to run the risk of playing Italiaplaya's Fatecrusher list! So, it was the two of us duking it out once again.

He got first turn and gave it to me to take away a round of shooting. He got his preferred wave but scattered away from me. My shooting was garbage and I barely did any damage. He then went red hot and started popping vehicles left and right. My boys just couldn't do any telling damage, barely taking any units out. Fateweaver was going apeshit. He took out 4 units by himself and I couldn't even put a wound on him. By turn 4 most of my army was butchered and I was playing a total defensive game. Turn 5 I still held one uncontested objective and my Typhoons manged to contest his 2. Luckily for me, the game ended on turn 5, giving me a narrow victory when I honestly should have lost as my army got the crap kicked out of it. Had it gone another turn, I honestly would have been tabled or damn near it. Play to the objectives, even when you're getting pwned!

So I managed to get another full point win as I managed to grab my bonus points with the few remaining boys I had left alive. This finished me out with max battle points.

In the end, I won best general and third overall, which I was pleased with considering my army was so ad-hoc and last minute.

Despite my aversion to comp, it was a fun event and I would gladly go to another. I met a bunch of cool guys and there were some amazing armies there as well.

Congrats on winning 3rd overall.

Wow, there were three tournament today: Great Escape Games, Black Diamond Games, and Oakridge, all 1850pts. Me and jy2 were thinking about going, but decided it was too long of a drive. We ended up playing at Black Diamond Games.

The Blood Claws is an interesting addition. I'm so use to seeing Bjorn in your lists.

I'm surprised the Tau won his next two games. His list doesn't look very optimal. The GK player's list wasn't suited to castling in a corner and weathering out a firefight against your Missile spam.

Yeah, comp score doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It requires all players to be sensible and overlook their defeat to a strong army like yours.

The last game sounds epic. Fatecrusher is strong. Good job getting away with a narrow victory.

Thanks, SabrX.

Yeah, the blood claws are crappy, but with this comp system, you can only have 3 types of any troop unit. so I could only have 3 units of Grey Hunters. I also couldn't take Bjorn as he cost too many points.

I had to throw in some crappy units from what I had in my bag to make up the difference.

Their comp system has gotten better but it is still bad.

Whenever you have a blanket system, some armies will be fine and others will be punished when there is no reason to punish them. For the most part Space Marine armies seem like they are fine, and Xenos get hit with the comp hammer.

Blackmoor wrote:Their comp system has gotten better but it is still bad.

Whenever you have a blanket system, some armies will be fine and others will be punished when there is no reason to punish them. For the most part Space Marine armies seem like they are fine, and Xenos get hit with the comp hammer.

Hasn't that always been the way though? The newer space marine books especially have alot more options available to them that comp doesn't really harm them much, while the Xenos usually have less overal choices in their FoC slots.

i am not opposed to soft scores when appropriately applied, but if they already have FOC restrictions it is surprising that they then had a player scored component.

I am not sure on the criteria used, but I would have probably scored your list a 3/5 from glancing at it.

calypso2ts wrote:
I am not sure on the criteria used, but I would have probably scored your list a 3/5 from glancing at it.

Here is there comp scoring:

http://www.greatescapegames.com/?page_id=89

SabrX wrote:Congrats on winning 3rd overall.

Wow, there were three tournament today: Great Escape Games, Black Diamond Games, and Oakridge, all 1850pts. Me and jy2 were thinking about going, but decided it was too long of a drive. We ended up playing at Black Diamond Games.

The Blood Claws is an interesting addition. I'm so use to seeing Bjorn in your lists.

I'm surprised the Tau won his next two games. His list doesn't look very optimal. The GK player's list wasn't suited to castling in a corner and weathering out a firefight against your Missile spam.

Yeah, comp score doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It requires all players to be sensible and overlook their defeat to a strong army like yours.

The last game sounds epic. Fatecrusher is strong. Good job getting away with a narrow victory.

Yeah a buddy of mine, my bro, and I almost went to great escape but ended up making the drive out to black diamond to mix it up. What army were you sabrx? I was the Dark eldar guy

heavily comped and a missile spam list is near max points, yeah great comp system

Around here we don't have much of a cheese problem however so most tourneys are little or no comp.

anyhoo, nice writeups and well done all in all

Hückleberry wrote:
Yeah a buddy of mine, my bro, and I almost went to great escape but ended up making the drive out to black diamond to mix it up. What army were you sabrx? I was the Dark eldar guy

I was the Sisters of Battle player. Shame we didn't end up playing against each other. It would have been an interesting match between our two mech heavy armies.

How exactly does a list contaning 18 Long Fangs with 15 Missile Launchers and a bunch of MSU troop choices get such a good comp score?

I hate comp myself, but that just doesn't make any sense. Long Fang ML spam is like enemy #1 of army comp.

Based on the criteria listed, Reccius probably should have had a high comp score - I think he met just about all the conditions and I do not see any 'wiggle room' in those rules, they are really explicit on how to score it.

haha i got 5 out of 32-35 pts on comp. OWNED.

Great job eckin out that win against me reece haha. If only those damn crushers didnt get stuck in Difficult terrain :(

Congrats on the placing, Reece. I actually got the day off and was considering going to Great Escape. I didn't for mainly 2 reasons:

1. It was sold out and with a waiting list. Though the organizers said some people probably wouldn't show, I didn't want to take the risk of driving 2 hours there only to not be able to get into the tournament.

2. I had some plans that evening and wouldn't have been able to make it if I had gone so far away for the tournament.

Instead we (SabrX and I) went to Black Diamond. If I had gone to Great Escape, my army probably would've been tanked in comp (though probably not as bad as italiaplaya). I didn't know it was a comped event.

Congrats on winning against daemons. It's a good thing you got multiple objectives. Otherwise, you probably would've lost.

That comp system is kinda nuts. Anything that complicated is just going to lend to certain builds that still dominate but get a ton of comp points.

At least it's transparent and not subjective.

People confuse qualitative with subjective. It is okay to have a qualitative system that is less formally stated than the one used. English teachers grade on qualitative scales all the time, when I teach a course and TA's grade written responses they make qualitative assessments that are (with proper instruction) remarkable consistent with one another. Out of 180 students, I usually have 2 or 3 legitimate cases of inconsisten grading...same goes with comp if implemented appropriately.

@SabrX Yeah your army was beautiful and I would have loved to play against you. Are you planning on posting any battle reports for your games?

Hi guys, I am the events coordinator at Great Escape Games and I act as head judge during the tournaments. I'd like to first thank Reecius, Italiaplaya, White925, and everyone else who came to the Contest of Champions on Saturday. We at the store are happy to hear you had a good time! The CoC has grown from a fairly informal affair with roughly a dozen people into a major tournament that is bigger than most other events I attend, and IMO the players are a big reason for that.

I realize that many people on this board are very derisive toward comp in general, but it is what it is. Our comp is not player scored at all, the players get to judge each other only on sportsmanship. As a judge I can't really do much to influence sportsmanship votes but when possible I do stress the difference between how someone treats you during a game and how they have built their army - there is a very definite separation that is not always clear to players in the heat of the moment. I am not personally a fan of comp, but at the end of every tournament season (December) the store owner and I hold a round table meeting for the players to discuss changes to next year's tournaments and the vast majority of the players vote overwhelmingly to keep comp. This is 60-70 out of 100 or so that vote to keep comp, not just a few people! There are many dissenting voices as to what is fair and what is not, and it is impossible to make everyone happy. We do our best, working with the imperfect system that is the 40K ruleset. Until the majority of the players vote against it, there will be a comp system in our tournament and as you may or may not know creating one that is as fair as possible is no easy feat.

For what its worth, 'a list contaning 18 Long Fangs with 15 Missile Launchers and a bunch of MSU troop choices' would certainly not get a perfect comp score. We do not hide our comp, everyone can access it and the players have some input as to what form it will take.

Again, big thanks to everyone who showed up.

Sirus @ Great Escape Games

Dogstar34 wrote:
For what its worth, 'a list contaning 18 Long Fangs with 15 Missile Launchers and a bunch of MSU troop choices' would certainly not get a perfect comp score.

His list (I think) scored nearly perfect comp. The one thing he was missing was that he had 3 identical HS choices.


It seems like you have no trouble attracting players, so if it is not broken you don't need to fix it.

I just have a pet peeve where I show up at a comp tournament with a comp friendly army and I get matched up against a guy who ignores the comp rules and I get crushed because it is like I am playing with a hand tied behind my back.

At least you publish it ahead of time so people can build their lists accordingly rather than player-judged, or judge-judged so your score is not in the hands of anybody's whim..

Hückleberry wrote:@SabrX Yeah your army was beautiful and I would have loved to play against you. Are you planning on posting any battle reports for your games?

I'm behind in my battle reports. I have 9 on the back burner. I still need to post a 1500pts tournament from Oakridge played a few weeks ago. Expect Diamond Games battle report hopefully sometime next month.

@Dogstar34:

It's good to see someone in charge of the tournament on the forums and listening to player's criticism.

I wonder if Reecius will alter his list knowing it won't score perfect comp.

@Dogstar
Thanks for jumping in with those insights! I thought the event was fun, and will be coming to more. I prefer no comp myself, but I know a lot of people don't. There is room for both types of events in the hobby.

@SabrX
I would have brought a different unit for my third heavy slot but I couldn't find the comp rules on the website the night before, so I just brought what I had in my bag.

Next time I will bring my bugs as I should have them painted up in time.

Even with comp, the same guys consistently win. Comp, as we have all discussed ad-nauseum, doesn't curb power, it shifts it. Different armies become better within the framework of the comp system, and good players with large model collections see that and build the best army then can within the limitations of the system.

A lot of people don't realize that and think that comp protects them from exploiting the system when it does not. Gamers by nature look for ways to manipulate systems, it is in their nature. People do it without even realizing it.

I just realized, that comp system craps all over Deathwing!

Not too bad. The guy that got second played deathwing and he used two squads as elites. At 2000 points it makes it a lot worse.

Reecius wrote:Not too bad. The guy that got second played deathwing and he used two squads as elites. At 2000 points it makes it a lot worse.

What can a Demon Prince "count as" in a Deathwing army.....;-)

I played against a fatecrusher list at 1500 points this weekend, its nasty.

grats on the win, space wolves are insane, reminds me why I want to play them.

@Whitedragon
Dreadnoughts?

@Smitty0305
Italiaplaya beat the crap out of my army, he should have won the game. I lucked out with his Bloodcrsuhers not getting to my objective and the game ending on 5.

We play a lot against each other and the games are always super close. We usually tie, but these past few games were big butt kickings one way or another.

I played Frankie in Round 3, it was great to meet you guys. We are doing our best to get the logistics taken care of right now to make it over to your tournament!

Good to meet you, too! We hope to have you guys at our event!

That's really cool you got out here to play, shame I couldn't make it to the 1750 this year. Maybe if you and your crew come for the round table at the end of the last tournament we can swing the vote for no comp for next year :-D. What did you think of the secret objective system? I think it's pretty fun personally but I like to hear non-local thoughts about things.

Reecius wrote:@Dogstar
Thanks for jumping in with those insights! I thought the event was fun, and will be coming to more. I prefer no comp myself, but I know a lot of people don't. There is room for both types of events in the hobby.

Wow, I wish more people felt this way. Personally, I don't care either way, comp or no-comp, as long as I know how it's going to be scored well in advance. Most people who don't like comp seem to want everyone to abandon it, even tournaments they have no intention or opportunity to ever attend.