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I love some of the alternative ideas here, and laud the general attempt to structure tournament scoring so as to emphasize other aspects of the hobby. I absolutely would go to a tournament that factored in sportsmanship, painting, converting, and so on. In fact, I'd travel a lot father and make a lot more of an effort to seek out such events.

Of course there are nay-sayers, who see 40K as a wargame and complain that applying any other metrics are subjective. That's fine. I see their points. Hey, they already have events they can go to, where battlescores are king. And I'm glad for them -- there certainly should be tournaments that test tactics: hardcore arenas, pitting the hardest armies against each other.

I don't go to such tournaments myself -- that's not why I play 40K.

They have their events. I'll keep looking for mine.

tinfoil wrote:They have their events. I'll keep looking for mine.

There are plenty of beat down events where players are encouraged to take the hardest lists and game winning is stressed over all else. Seems like a majority of the responders like the idea of something else.

Thanks again for all the responses and feedback.

Well that's the problem I have with the "beatdown" tourneys. People bring an entirely different mindset to them. If 100% of the points go to battle, then people will play that way (*gasp* i know it's hard to believe). That's why I don't have a lot of interest in the Ard Boyz tournament series. At our local store people were leaving after the first game because they didn't win their first game.

Come on now, if I traveled over an hour to play, put my money on the table, had a fully painted army, and played against 3 people with naked armies that sucks. At this point you may as well play some Clix game. That should be the draw of the game, to play with more than one factor considered.

The Green Git wrote:

don_mondo wrote:However, with that out of the way, I'll admit that I do have a problem if the 'soft' scores are weighted to the degree where someone who doesn't win a single game can walk off with the overall prize. For some reason, that bothers me..........................

Don't think that would happen any more than someone could win every game but score dead last in Sports and Appearance and still win overall.

Besides, isn't the point of finding the "Best Overall" something other than "Best General and oh yeah some other stuff"?

Weight the painting and other soft scores heavily enough and it can indeed happen. Years back, someone won one of the US GTs with a non-winning record.
The point is to find the best Overall, so if you don't manage to win most of your games, you don't (IMO) fall into that category.

I've thought about this at some length, and I think if you can create a system that rewards a player that does the following:

Plays to a winning record
Has one of the top 15% or so painted armies
Has an interesting and non OTT theme/comp
Has good and fun games with his opponents, and
Shows a solid knowledge in the pub quiz,

then having him as a best over all is totally fair. Just don't' diminish the actual playing of the game to the extent that it's immaterial.

Polonius wrote: Just don't' diminish the actual playing of the game to the extent that it's immaterial.

I don't think that anybody is advocating that. I think there is a notion that some where between 100% battle and 0% battle, there is a happy medium that would be preferable to a large chunk of players who don't currently enjoy tournament play.

I know, I think this is being sold as a radical new idea, when in actuality it's what RTTs used to be about. The radical idea is to make Battle almost irrelevant, and I think that wasn't made clear enough early on. I'd have no proble with 25% battle, 25% sports, 25% paint, 15% comp and 10% pub quiz. The key, as Centurian and a few others point out, is to make sure that sports and paint have the same actual range of results as battle tends to. Now, nearly all players score full sports, which tends to eliminate that as a genuine factor.

My original proposition put forth was this: "Would you attend an event where Modeling, Painting, Sportsmanship, Trivia Knowledge and Army Background story writing were emphasized just as heavily as Battle Points?"

I don't think anyone wants game results to be ignored... just downplayed. Right now battle points scores are THE deciding factor in tournament play. Figuring out how to make the others count in a way that isn't easy to meta-game is the trick.

Polonius wrote:I know, I think this is being sold as a radical new idea, when in actuality it's what RTTs used to be about. The radical idea is to make Battle almost irrelevant, and I think that wasn't made clear enough early on. I'd have no proble with 25% battle, 25% sports, 25% paint, 15% comp and 10% pub quiz. The key, as Centurian and a few others point out, is to make sure that sports and paint have the same actual range of results as battle tends to. Now, nearly all players score full sports, which tends to eliminate that as a genuine factor.

RTTs used to "say" they were about it, but since there was essentially no comparable separation in the soft scores, they weren't.

I'd go as long as it was fairly close. I can't afford long distance travel though.

Polonius wrote:I'd have no proble with
25% battle,
15% comp

25% sports,
25% paint,

10% pub quiz.

I put together a "Hobby" RTT scoring system loosely based on your proposed breakdown.

Check it out!

Lots of good posts all around.

Sad to say, I am in the "no" camp. I never have been and never will be a fan of soft scores. IMHO, they should only be used to break ties or provide a minimal bump where two players are close in battle points.

And I actually only live about 2 hours or so from Atlanta, so if the OP is planning an event there, I could attend and probably talk a few other rabid players into going with me. But I will not do it for a "hobby" tournament.