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Do you think the sportsmanship score is a valid way to be part of a score? Do you think it is monitored enough by the judges?


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I like the score. But it can screw a player by getting a bad score by an angry loser.

It's certainly a valid thing to score - I would say that sportsmanship is the most important thing in any tournament, and it's certainly one I'd be most happy to see prizes for.

However, it's very hard to come up with a system that avoids a situation where people vote for/mark up their friends or collude on scores, since it pretty much has to be marked by the players and not the judges.

As is the end of all these discussions, the best way would be to award separate, equal prizes for all elements of a tournament, so one does not affect the other. The idea of an 'Overall Tournament Winner' is unneccesary.

I think its great, maybe just not have it effect best general sort of awards, just have it with its own award (though that comes with "troubles" in friendly groups where everyone gives everyone 5/5 lol!)

Nope it needs to be done away with. I believe in good sportsmanship, and flagrant violations should be dealt with games losses administered by the judges. However, I have way too often seen people give other people a low sportsmanship score just becaus that person handed them their arse in the game. Also I actually have heard people say that they ALWAYS score their opponents poorly on sportsmanship to increase thir chances at best general of sportsman prizes. Its not right to do, but it is real and does occur. My 2 cents

I think its a good thing for tournaments to have an incentive for players to stop behaving like jerks. But sportsmanship scores don't always work. You might have been a perfect gent and played by the rules, but if you trashed me I don't think I'll give you a high score for sportsmanship.

s.j.mccartney wrote:I think its a good thing for tournaments to have an incentive for players to stop behaving like jerks. But sportsmanship scores don't always work. You might have been a perfect gent and played by the rules, but if you trashed me I don't think I'll give you a high score for sportsmanship.

Why not? I don't see how the two are related.

Sportsmanship scores are totally valid. A lot of competative gamers will grumble about this as well as a painting score or a comp score, but fail to recognize that 40k is not meant to be played as a fair and balanced game. They want to be scored only on their in game performance. I get that, but being a jerk who plays with unpainted models and wins every match because the particular net list you play with does not IMHO exemplify what the game is all about. Not all competative players are like this, but some are. Thats why most tournis have best overall, best painted, best sport and best general prizes. It accomodates those who want to WAAC, as well as those who spend hours modelling and painting, those who are fun to play with, and best overall should go to the player who best represents a winner from all of the above catagories. Since being a good sport is one of the most important things in any gaming setting, it deserves to garner a reward as well. By no means does this imply that the tournis best sport will always win this award, but it does encourage a atmosphere of friendly play.

Sportsmenship scores should be kept separate from the scores given by W/L/D, but they should be included. I almost always score my opponents highly, unless they cheat or act like a D-bag. As I posted in your other thread, I gave the guy in the tourney a low score for cheating in his list building and for suspected cheating with weighted dice. I actually questioned other players about his dice rolls, because they were EXTREMELY high. Rolling three 1s in an entire game, and everything else being a 4+ leads to suspected cheating. I truly wish I was exaggerating. Moral of the story-don't cheat me or constantly swear/act like an ass and you'll get a perfect score from me.

I think they are valid. It prevents people from acting like jerks and saying things like
"This list will blow your list out of the water"
Or threatening to break someones arms because they touch your models.

hotsauceman1 wrote:
Or threatening to break someones arms because they touch your models.

This isn't normal? Oh, that's why they kicked me out...

Kidding aside, I like sportsmanship scores, get a judge to query low scores, and perfect scores (all it has to be is 'hey bob, why did you give joe a 1? He had a dance involving crotchless pants because he won? Fair 'nuff' or 'hey bob, why did you give timmy a 5? He was a genuinely nice guy who had no issues with you casting a spell even though you forgot to nominate a target like you were meant to, as well as whatever else went wrong? Fair 'nuff')

I have more of a problem with theme scores, I find it difficult to show that my dwarf hold is an old hold at 1000 points (no blackpowder, lots of longbeards, I want to run my 'younglings' as ranger crossbowmen because thats where they learn their trade, etc) because you wouldn't really be able to include all the fluff (or break it by having 2 cannons and an organ gun) until 1500/2000, so how can I just say 'oh, well, it won't be there at that level, I pwomise...' and expect them to believe me (they did, but thats because they are decent guys)? Seems kind of hard.

I have yet to play in anything but a friendly game, but I would prefer to have a sportsman score for when I decide to enter into a tournament. (I've been playing for almost eight years, I dunno why I've never done one yet...)

My reason is obvious, but I'd hope to see the method be something like this: It's a sportsman rank of 0-4 stars, meaning how badly you'd like to have a rematch with the player. 0 means they were a complete arse to play against and you wouldn't mind never seeing their face ever again. 4 means you could ally your army with this person if you had a chance, and could be grounds for an invitational rematch. 2 is the acceptable average and does nothing to whatever the sportsman score is added to. Anything lower would mean that you need a n explanation as to why you really hated the game.... if they really can't justify why they gave you a score of 1 or 0, then that's the score they themselves are stuck with. If it becomes a he said she said argument, that's the judges call, especially if it's means for disqualification or expulsion.

I like the IDEA of sportsmanship scores. It's great to encourage it and reward it.

That said, the IMPLEMENTATION of the idea is something that I've yet to see anything where I can fully support it.

My system works pretty well.

Is it that time of the week already for the sportmanship/comp thread? OP, do a search and you'll find hundreds of pages to read on the subject here at dakka (mostly from the same dozen people or so).