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Please bear in mind that my statements in the above post are in reference to my earlier post concerning having sound "Tournament" rules and adjudication.

GrimTeef wrote:I think it's pretty sad that someone wants to get the credit for something they had next to nothing to do with (sounds kinda like people at my job), and didn't have the skill to sit down and create themselves. ... Personally, I say you don't have the skill, you can't win the award.

Please try not to confuse skill with time. There is a difference.

Most commericially-painted armies don't require much skill. They tend to come out at regular tabletop quality, from very basic shortcut techniques (i.e. "dipping").

What the commercially-painted armies do have is an owner with more money than time. The typical owner nearly always has the skill to produce an average, tabletop model. What they tend to lack is the time and patience to do this repetitively for dozens or hundreds of models en masse.

Fortunately, they have money, and there are people willing to take this money to paint on their behalf.

sirisaacnuton wrote:

The ideal tournament scoring system (imho):
1) Multiple objectives to better differentiate scores (as opposed to just win or lose)
2) A fixed number of battle points available to the mission, to be distributed based on objectives. Essentially I get all the points if I get the objective, you get all the points if you do, we split the points if neither does. There are only X total battle points in each mission.
3) Only the basic painting requirements count toward scoring overall.
4) I really liked the idea of the poor/normal/good sportsmanship scoring, with specific reasons to score someone as better than normal in addition to worse.
5) No comp/theme/fluff scoring period, or else done as a completely separate thing that doesn't influence overall.
6) All extra/fancy painting points and player votes go toward best painted only, not best Overall. Ditto with player voting for Sportsman.

I would go to this tournament you ran SirIsaacNewton (If only it was in Australia)

But seriously. You've touched on all of the points that have been discussed in numerous different threads on tournament scoring.

1) Is the way that things have started to go already.

2) Is used by some people. Is also a great way of stopping the shenanigans going on in this post. If players have a chance at scoring themselves by denying the opposition...they have incentive...Tournament organisers aren't just relying on their competitors strong moral code.

3) Yes! This is what so many people confuse! The WARhammer part of the event as opposed to the PAINThammer. Go in the freakin painting competition...you shouldn't get 2 or 3 bites at the cherry. This is easily flexible as well with a small (1 point) bonus if some organisers feel they want some sort of bonus for the absolute best painted miniatures on the tables.

4) The 3 point spread has been discussed at great length for sportsmanship. I believe it is clearly the best option for simplicity sake for both the players and organisers. I had a direct report (from a friend) at a tournament where someone who gave their opponents beer and pretzels and lost every game convincingly ended up scoring higher in the overall than him with a better than 50/50 win loss ratio with decently painted miniatures due to large painting/sports weighting...hell he's one of the most amicable guys I know and a pleasure to play against. Having large pointing weighting on soft scores and large variables demerits the rest of the tournament set up.

5) Haha comp/theme/fluff is slowed. Especially in the current 40k setup. I agree there is a lot of bias involved and it should never be included in something supposedly competative. Example: You play tennis as a hobby...should your opponent give you a set because you choose to serve underarm?

6) Yes! The ability for players to be honest about their armies paint jobs! If it doesn't impact their chosen event why is there any incentive to lie?!? YES!
The difference between giving people the option to chipmunk and actually adjudicating games properly. If people feel free to call people on rubber tape measuring, dice counts etc then the players will start to adjudicate themselves, with an official only required if it gets out of hand...under the present systems YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING out of fear of the chipmunk factor for saying something that needs to be said! Why is this concept so freakin hard for tourney organisers to understand!

A No-@#$% way to really do a tourny is for there to be an independent score system, not associated with the players.

I was never a big fan of the scoreing system by peers. Then you get these witless prats that come as a group, eventually end up pulling for one of thier own, and if you arn't a house favorite, you always get the shaft.

just my two cents, but if you've ever been a victim of this stuff, you know what I mean.

As for the OP example of it being cheating, it goes along with the prepainted army being a win, even though said owner didn't paint it.
Don't hate the player, hate the jacked up preteen tourny system.
The games just fine when everyone plays the same one.

Grim, I'd agree with you if they didn't treat the 'Ard Boyz like such a joke. 2500 is a ridiculous point value to try to achieve for most armies with the FOC restrictions, and the missions they played were ridiculous. Those missions weren't like playing regular 40k, they were playing some bizarro game where some matchups just resulted in basically an auto-win, and at least one mission that was basically roll to see who wins (on the roll for first turn).

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of normal tournaments here and there run in the style of 'Ard Boyz but without the ridiculous shenanigans. Otherwise, (and this is my preference) there needs to be more support for Best General. Best Overall at a GT is for the best all-round hobbyist, as you said. There are also typically awards for the best sport, best painted, and sometimes best theme/army. But I rarely see a Best General award these days. I don't understand why it can't at least be a standard subset at tournaments. It's fairly frustrating showing up at a tournament knowing that while I have a good army and I can play it well, even if I do very well I'm unlikely to win anything, or get any recognition or prize support, because I can't paint worth a darn. So give best Overall to the guy who's the best hobbyist, sure, but give me some recognition if I'm the best player.

Honestly, the current system of needing a great paintjob to win a tournament would probably make me get my army professionally painted if I could afford it. I try to play at the top of my game, I'm as sporting as possible, and if paint scores were what kept holding me back from winning, you better believe I would do something about it. I'm competitive. Now I'm NOT saying I would claim the work as my own, or try for/accept a Best Painted award, but I would certainly do my best to make sure that I was getting the best paint scores possible.

Those missions weren't like playing regular 40k, they were playing some bizarro game where some matchups just resulted in basically an auto-win, and at least one mission that was basically roll to see who wins (on the roll for first turn).

But isn't this true of "normal" 40k tournaments anyway? Marines vs. Tri-Falcon Eldar? Decided. Tau vs. Nidzilla? Don't bother. Army X vs. Inquisition? Pack it up.

stonefox wrote:

Those missions weren't like playing regular 40k, they were playing some bizarro game where some matchups just resulted in basically an auto-win, and at least one mission that was basically roll to see who wins (on the roll for first turn).

But isn't this true of "normal" 40k tournaments anyway? Marines vs. Tri-Falcon Eldar? Decided. Tau vs. Nidzilla? Don't bother. Army X vs. Inquisition? Pack it up.

Not always. Marines' first turn: AC gets a 6 against Falcon, 5/6 for glancing table. Repeat twice. Game, Marines.

On the other hand, say the mission has no deployment zones, and everyone can just deploy anywhere. And you're up against Tau. And they get the first turn. And you can't assault on your first turn. How many armies can stand up to two unmolested turns of rapid-fire range shooting from that army? It pretty much doesn't matter what you brought, you lost when they won the roll for first turn. On the other hand, when that Tau army sees a mission where it's general has to run out to the center of the table and grab an objective, good luck. Or when you're playing a mission against some assault army and thanks to the mission rules they can Sustained Assault their Troops right onto your board edge and immediately assault you. Bad matchups and pairings are always going to happen, particularly in the current state we have where some codices just straight up have more power than others. But the 'Ard Boyz took it to the extreme with missions that play absolutely nothing like any other type of mission, and sometimes don't even play like games of 40k. How many people can look at their codex and say "ok, I need a unit that can beat a Falcon-mounted unit out to the center and grab the objective which determines the entire game"? In a standard-ish mission, Marines can certainly win against Tri-Falcon Eldar if they brought enough anti-tank fire for the Falcons and enough Rhinos to protect their squads from being chain-killed by Harlequins. I've had it happen to me. Not much you can do about hit after hit after hit from Lascannons and Assault Cannons if there's nothing out there to throw Harlequins at but the back armor of a tank. On the other hand, in a mission where I just have to grab an objective in the center and carry it back to my deployment zone, awesome. Unless they can shoot all the Falcons down turn 1 I pretty much do auto-win. There may be mismatches in normal tournaments, sometimes bad ones, but there are very few matchups that are literally unwinnable before the game even starts.

I agree that 'Ard boyz tourneys conflate too notions. Notion 1, tournament at a higher point value than normal. Notion 2, tournament with no soft scores.

I think the easiest solution to sirisaacnuton's issue is to, as he suggested, put Best General on the same plateau as Best Painted. So you'd have Best Painted, Best Sporstman and Best General (and Best theme/player's choice/any other local things) as the second tier awards, and best overall as the main one. Makes sense to me.

John - yeah, I see what you mean. It depends on which commodity you have more of on one hand, but on another there are those that just can't be arsed to bother learning. I see you point however.

Sirisaac, I was under the impression that there still was a Best General award. There is not? That does kind of color my past comments if there is not one. I had thought it was still a category. Odd that it's not.

Painting should be scored completely seperately and ranked completely seperately. So someone who paints well and loses can getto the top of one tree, if not another.

For gaming points sportsmanship should be set aside and used purely as a tiebreaker.

GrimTeef wrote:Sirisaac, I was under the impression that there still was a Best General award. There is not? That does kind of color my past comments if there is not one. I had thought it was still a category. Odd that it's not.

As far as I can tell it's no longer a supported/"official" award. Some stores that run tournaments still have it (we include it in our tourneys in Atlanta) but it's a mixed bag in other places, with most places leaning toward not having it. The Maul in the Mall we just went to didn't have it, and the total of soft scores was worth more than the total of battle points across the three rounds. Painting alone could get you up to 26 points, while a full victory in a round was only 18.

I don't mind awarding people who can paint well, but I'm not a particular fan of the situation where playing well gets you no recognition unless you also paint very well. I believe that a tournament should do one of two things: either have a limited amount of painting points be the only contribution of paint to overall (in other words, fully painted, 3 colors, based, squad designations, etc, but with anything more advanced counting toward Best Painted only and not Overall) or else toss all the painting points in to Overall but also give a Best General award to recognize people who play well, even if they don't paint well. Either solution would be perfectly fine in my book, but I've been to quite a few tournaments lately that don't do either, and typically it's my only major gripe about these tournaments. (Because, if you haven't gathered, I suck at painting.)

Well if lately the tourneys suck that hard, I would have already not bothered.

The more people that collude and claim awesome paint jobs they paid for the better!

I wonder if you can organise some kind of ranking system where a group goes to a particular tourney that ranks Sports and Painting categories highly and decide who gets to have the most chance at winning? I.E. It's Jimmy's turn to win this month...everyone give him 10's...then he only has to win 1/3 of his games and he'll still come out on top.

If you get this happenning regularly perhaps they'll look at the way that they go about things. More likely is that they'll just turn a blind eye to the problems and try and remove the individuals.

It's hard to have a team group push up someone's sportsmanship when most tourney's keep club members from playing each other - and you only rank your opponent's sportsmanship. I guess they could always rank down their opponent to improve their chances - but it's hard to believe that an entire club could agree to that.

Painting is a harder one. I think as a gaming community that is something that we could self police more. I.E. if I buy and army and I win a best painted - and people find out I didn't paint it myself - let the public humiliation begin.

As far as overall and painting - I personally think that if someone is willing to spend the big bucks and buy a professionally painted army - then ok. Not eligible for best painted - but as far as scoring - no problem.

Shenanigans at a 40K tournament; when the designers freely admit the game is not suited for tournament play!?!

Cue Claude Rains in Casablanca.

@Aldonis, I know guys at a certain store that I used to go to for RTT's, they would always chipmunk the "visitors" thus they local gaming group would have the best shot at winning. Michaelangelo could paint an army and get only get average painting scores at their events unless he was a local.

@Darrian- Is the Store still an on-going business, or are Tourney's @ the store successful?

I hope not. Disgraceful behaviour.

The store is still going strong, from what I hear. However, they do not run 40K RTT's anymore.

I was thinking more towards a major event - although it's pitiful for even local stores.