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 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:


I disagree on virtually everything. Maybe around you overall isn't used anymore, but every tournament I have ever been to, and all of the major national level tournaments have some sort of combined/overall category.

And getting rid of the overall/combined (whatever it's called) has multiple negatives with virtually no positive. More prizes makes tournament goers happy. More ways to compete and potentially win makes tournament goers happy. And only having generalship and appearance awards pushes people to extremes and rewards only those people on the extremes. Most tournament goes are never going to get the highest battle points in any event. Most tournament goers are never going to have the highest appearance score in any event. Having a category that properly combines the two encourages all of those tournament patrons to get better even if they will never be the best in either. They can still compete, they can still win something meaningful, they can be more than stepping stones to the battle point winners.

I think the real issue is people who want to focus on nothing but battle get their feathers ruffled because usually the prestige (and often the better prize support) goes to the overall winner. They want to win with generalship but then they want all the adulation and prize support that goes with being the tournament winner. Having someone else lay claim to prize support or prestige is offensive to their idea of what a tourament should be. Because after all they "won" the tournament the legitimate way. I find that attitude very off putting, bad for the tournament scene, and bad for the community.

It sounds like we're on the same side, in that we both want players who spend some time on their armies to get rewarded for it. I'm just saying that in my experience there is no good way of combining the two scores fairly. The Games Day Grand Tournaments had painting scores, and I don't think a single player that finished in the top 10 actually painted their army. That's what will happen on a competitive level. Local tournaments, sure, allow an Overall score, but if they're local they probably want a large playerbase and it does turn off players if they need to be good painters in order to enter. As to your claim of more prizes, the prize support at any tournament is always set to a certain value. A TO cannot simply add a Best Overall award and throw in a boxed set as a prize. If tournaments were to include a Best Overall, it would come at the expense of the other prizes.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But they do have overall competitions within sports. There is an overall gymnastics category, the decathlon is the overall of the track & field events. Even the Olympics recognizes that someone who is above average in many disciplines should be rewarded. The decathlon winner would have no chance in a 100m against Usain Bolt. But they are above average in the 100m, and everything else and so there is a way for them to compete at the highest levels too.

Without overall awards we would have nothing but specialists at a tournament, which limits and marginalizes other ways people can compete. And with appearance scoring systems that don't differentiate properly and more or less give the some scores to everyone the "decathlon" winner is really determined by who is the fastest sprinter.

That's a good point. And the fact that every competitor in a 40k tournament has to compete in every event makes it much more like a decathlon. At the moment, though, the scene is like a decathlon where the sprint section is the only important one, worth two to three times as much as the others. We'd have to make scoring Overall an even split for it to be fair?

DarknessEternal wrote:Tournament - : a series of games or contests that make up a single unit of competition (as on a professional golf tour), the championship play-offs of a league or conference, or an invitational event

If you you want these things to be less about winning the games and more about how many rocks you've glued to a base, perhaps you should start calling them "exhibitions".

Are you suggesting that the Olympics aren't a tournament? I'm not saying that single event-tournaments don't exist, I'm suggesting that wargaming is more similar to a multi-discipline tournament like the Olympics than a single-discipline tournament like a golf tour.

As to your last comment, maybe we should just judge people by how well they search google for netlists and how much money they have for spamming OP units? We wouldn't need to play any games. After all, if it's as easy as glueing rocks to a base....?

 Oaka wrote:
A TO cannot simply add a Best Overall award and throw in a boxed set as a prize. If tournaments were to include a Best Overall, it would come at the expense of the other prizes.

People need to quit counting their chickens before they hatch and focusing on cash grabs. More prizes and spreading around prize support is always better. This is not the PGA where people make a living off these prizes. There is no expectation of 'fairness' over % of the prize support as everyone has a different idea what is 'fair' and if people are looking at this as a cash grab then they have the wrong attitude out of the gate.

best overall is still done virtually everywhere, it still serves a valid purpose and most times the best general is best overall anyways... and if for some reason the best general was *NOT* overall, I have no problem with him winning a lesser prize for not having a 'middle of the pack' army or better. The only way it can happen is if someone showed up with a real "snub your nose at the TO" 3-color and based. Most rubrics for painting are a bell curve where most people will be in the middle with very few on the extreme top and bottom so it becomes basically a tie breaker for people who can't have a tourney with a clear win/loss record definer like having 64 people in a 3 game tourney.

More prizes even for dumb stuff is fine. I even support door prizes for random attendees and 'last place' prizes. There is no valid reason the prizes need to be loaded to the top and limited to two things and no reason an overall is not valid.... Unless you are someone who only plays these for the cash money.

 Oaka wrote:
I'm just saying that in my experience there is no good way of combining the two scores fairly.

That's a different issue, and I agree it's a tough one. This is what I would do. At the end of the tourament players get ranked 1 - whatever based on battle results. Then you have a painting system that is designed to differentiate. After players get scored you rank them 1- whatever. Add the player's two rankings. The person with the lowest score wins overall. So long as your paint scoring differentiates this takes care of a lot the problems that turn Overall/General into General 1/General 2. And it gives somone who is an above average gamer and above average player a real shot at winning overall without having to be the best at either painting or playing. Different ways to compete, different types of players being rewarded, encouraging the players not on the extremes to get better, all very good things to me.

 Oaka wrote:
The Games Day Grand Tournaments had painting scores, and I don't think a single player that finished in the top 10 actually painted their army. That's what will happen on a competitive level. Local tournaments, sure, allow an Overall score, but if they're local they probably want a large playerbase and it does turn off players if they need to be good painters in order to enter.

No one needs to be a good painter to enter. You can come with a 3 color min and play for generalship. Not having an overall actually forces people into high levels of painting because like I said, in order to win anything I need to be at the extreme. I need to be an extremely good player or an extremely good painter. There is no award for people who want to be reasonably good at both. It perpetuates the idea that gamers and hobbyists are mutually exclusive which is silly.

 Oaka wrote:
As to your claim of more prizes, the prize support at any tournament is always set to a certain value. A TO cannot simply add a Best Overall award and throw in a boxed set as a prize. If tournaments were to include a Best Overall, it would come at the expense of the other prizes.

You're right, it's not really creating new support, it's spreading support out across more awards. But that's a good thing.

I see the separate but equal solution a lot but it is a bad one. The problem with having three separate but equal prizes is that you now have three tournaments that really should be seperate but do have an impact on each other. The guy trying to win best painted may take a horrible army just because it looks good. When he is paired up with guy going for best general it probably won't be a good game. And a guy playing three painters will have a better record (possibly) than a guy playing three best generals. Using the Olympics narrative it is like having some of the basketball teams play volleyball teams and vice versa. Having an overall award (even if it has no soft scores) focuses everyone on the same prize. People may take different paths to get there but that is there choice. Going back to the Olympics, some decathletes focus on the endurance events, some on speed events, some on strength events.

 ArbitorIan wrote:
We'd have to make scoring Overall an even split for it to be fair?[

Yes, but just splitting the points 50/50 doesn't work. Because if 90% of players get 90% of the appearance points the effective split in more like 90/10. Which leads to what most of us who regularly attend tournaments see. The overall winner was the really the general winner and general is actualy 2nd general.

You need a 50/50 split and then you need your paint system to create a points spread similar to your battle scores. That's really hard to do, so I prefer what I wrote above. You rank each "event" (the battle resuls and the appearance results) and then combine the rankings. So if your battle or paint systems inadvertantly create weird spreads that would skew a raw points combination for the overall score they'll still combine correctly.

tuiman wrote:

I will start off with my opinion. I go to a tournament because well, its a tournament, not a hobby expo, I go after months of preparation making my army and developing tactics, to play against the best lists and best players in the country. If you are not a competitive gamer, and care more about the painting, maybe this is not the place for you. I still believe in having a fun experience though, and hate waac gamers, but at a tournie, you really go there to do the best you can and to try and win, or is it becoming more than that?

So, whats dakkas views?

IMHO, this is the biggest issue regarding tournaments. That issue is Expectations.
The tournament organizer determines the type of event.
If the event is billed as a one that celebrates all aspects of playing with toy soldiers (modeling, painting, gaming, sportsmanship) than you're expectations should be different than if the event is billed as a competitive, bring-your-toughest-army tournament.

If you are trying to win a hobby based tournament than you should be approaching it differently than a game play only event. Taking a poorly painted, tough as nails army to a hobby tournament doesn't make sense if you want to win overall.

tuiman wrote:
So little bit of discussion going down here in NZ, wanted dakka's view on things so here it goes.

There is becoming a discussion that tournaments are a whole "hobby" experience, not just about playing to win and kicking ass. Some suggestions are that it should be 50% game score and then 50% made up of sports and painting scores, to encourage the more painter minded hobbyist to participate in tournaments. There is also much discussion on how sports and painting are scored, how painting should be harder, to improve the stranderd of armies that we see, and sports should be changed so not everyone gets max score, otherwise its just pointless.

I believe there should be a sportsmanship element. Once again to manage expectations. Each player should know his army rules, have a basic understanding of game rules, have a legible list for opponents, move at a reasonable pace, not be a complete chucklehead. A simple checklist should cover that, but if you want to separate scores than add a ranking element where each player rate their opponents 1-5 (for a five game tourney).

A simple checklist can be used for painting as well. I suggest the list from MechaniCon.

If you want people to improve their painting than painting should be worth more than battle.


Perhaps the best way to go is to have different type of events. Have a hobby event alternate with a competitive game play event.

Take care and be well

tuiman wrote:The main reason I go is to play some really competitive games, I don't want to miss out placing well because although I win most of my games, someone does not like how my army is painted.

Well, and that's part of the problem. As mentioned, there are a lot of reasons one can have to go to a tournament, and winning games is only one of them. How do you make a tournament that caters to everybody? The answer is, you probably don't.

For example, I take this view...

AesSedai wrote: I've never understood how some people can exploit 40k's poor balance and feel a real sense of pride and accomplishment thereafter.

... with the addition of the fact that 40k is a dice game, and so question people's pride in the results of how their dice randomly rolled that game. As such, for me, and a slice of players out there, a tournament that is literally nothing more than who wins the most out of a small number of games has little drawing power. Having painting and comp scores adds an element of skill back into it (artistic skill, rather than skill in the movement phase, but still), and, more importantly, makes the whole experience much more interesting.

Being in a room full of grey minis where people throw dice at each other isn't interesting to me. Being in a room full of well-painted and converted miniatures where people swap backstories is much more so.

But that's just me, right? Other people are going to be looking for other things, and because often what people are looking for contains at least a couple of things that are mutually exclusive, everybody is always going to be a bit unhappy.

As for in general, my only real problem with soft scores is when they're done poorly. In the league I'm in right now, you get points equal to 10% of the total number of painted points you field. That's pretty solid, and easy to understand. I have a 1000 point game and everything but a leman russ is painted, I get 85 points, end of.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:only having generalship and appearance awards pushes people to extremes and rewards only those people on the extremes.

Oh, I'd also like to note this as well. If you break things up into different categories, then what you're really doing is running two tournaments in parallel. One on one side of the room for the gamers, and the other on the other side of the room for the painters. While this would distress me somewhat (being a bit of both), I guess it's better than having separate entire tournaments to cater to each individual group.

I don't think that tournament planners would want this either. Let's say that Adepticon split and catered to hobbyists and Nova split and catered to the competitive types. You would suddenly see the total number of people showing up to each tournament cut in half as all the hobbyists would no longer have a reason to drive out to Nova and vice versa.

 Ailaros wrote:



Being in a room full of grey minis where people throw dice at each other isn't interesting to me. Being in a room full of well-painted and converted miniatures where people swap backstories is much more so.

But that's just me, right? Other people are going to be looking for other things, and because often what people are looking for contains at least a couple of things that are mutually exclusive, everybody is always going to be a bit unhappy.

As for in general, my only real problem with soft scores is when they're done poorly. In the league I'm in right now, you get points equal to 10% of the total number of painted points you field. That's pretty solid, and easy to understand. I have a 1000 point game and everything but a leman russ is painted, I get 85 points, end of.

Not just you Ailaros, I agree, and I do feel painting is an important part of the hobby. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but in my view, Tournament = gaming, hobby expo = painting. However that's my just me, I was just trying to say I dont think it should become more 50/50 like some are looking at doing here, it should still be 60% gaming 40% soft score as thats what most people are there to do.

tuiman wrote:


Not just you Ailaros, I agree, and I do feel painting is an important part of the hobby. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but in my view, Tournament = gaming, hobby expo = painting. However that's my just me, I was just trying to say I dont think it should become more 50/50 like some are looking at doing here, it should still be 60% gaming 40% soft score as thats what most people are there to do.

Your view is not 'old fashion' since for over two decades tourneys have always been run as a 'hobby expo' when it comes to 40k and GW. Your view is actually 'new' as 'ard boyz is a relatively young concept in the tourney circuit for GW games. The actual 'old fashion' attitude is softscores and appearance having a much much larger impact on the outcome.

Nothing diminishes the accomplishment of 'best general' unless you only measure the status of the award by the cash value of the prize associated with it. It doesn't hurt anyone to have a best overall unless you only look at these events as a cash grab.

Personally, I have always rather have trophies than prizes or cash, and I really like events which try to spread prizes around so losing one game doesn't mean you are no longer part of the event. I think door prizes, pub trivia and other things to keep people engaged is good for events where most people will not be best general.

A tournament is a way of measuring and ranking people according to certain standards.

IMO, those standards should encompass the entire hobby, including painting and modelling as well as playing the game.

I prefer tournaments that have an overall ranking, with prizes for first, second and third place. This overall ranking should include painting, modelling and battle points. I think sportsmanship is better implemented as a yellow card / red card system.

I also think that there should be separate tracks as well. Best general, and best painted. If you don't want to paint your forces, you can still aim for best general. If you're not very good at the game, you can still aim for best appearance. But you need to be good at both if you want to win overall.

Painted armies have class.

Hi

In my view, the hunt for overall is the true competition - I compete on the basis of the gaming and the basis of the painting and any other category that the TO chooses to measure, be it comp, sports, best army list presentation. I feel that as a participant, if I want to win "overall" at an event, I need to focus all aspects of the hobby the TO wants to measure, not whine about there being something I am relatively weak on.

Having distinct categories allows many people with limitations in some areas to still have targets that they can accomplish. If you are a talented player with limited painting skills, there is generalship. If you are a talented painter with limited gameplay skill, there is painting. This is good as it broadens the appeal and the player base.

From personal experience, I spent the first 4 or 5 years in the hobby targeting generalship because my painting skills were lacking. Eventually, my desire for the big prize led to vast improvements on the painting side.

The true competitor seeks to be the best in all measures of the hobby. It takes time and dedication to reach that level - if you don't want to put the work in, that is OK, but there is no need to argue for the dismantlement of the toughest prize because it is hard to achieve.

Final note - there is nothing quite as enjoyable for me in this hobby as battling a tremendously skilled opponent with beautiful armies on a table with great terrain with a tourney on the line while realizing we are grown men playing with toy soldiers and just enjoying the experience.

Cheers,
Nate

Nate said everything I wanted to say.

His painting is better than mine, though.

 GreyHamster wrote:
My main contention with this point is that this attitude is precisely what KEEPS 40k from being balanced. GW looks at the tournaments and how they continue to apply soft scores. They conclude that people like cinematic fluffy things and print rules to that effect.

This is based on a very faulty premise.

GW don't base their rules on what tournaments do. The studio guys have absolutlely zero care about what goes on in tournaments. They write the rules the way they do because that's the way they want to write the rules.


Conversely, aside from Composition, tournament soft scores are nothing to do with the state of the rules. Sportsmanship is there to encourage people to not be dicks, and Presentation is there to encourage people to bring painted armies because it looks better on the table. That wouldn't change if GW released a 7th edition 40K tomorrow that was written as a tournament ruleset.

I'm with nkelsch on spreading prizes around - ive run a couple tournaments where i've put spot prizes in, usually associated with a negative trigger (e.g. first unit killed in a single round of combat, the first person to be tabled etc) as it means everyone from table 1 - 30 has something riding on the game, not just the top few tables, and you get a reward for something bad happening to you. Seems to work well and is a relatively modest outlay - although shopping for e.g. 6 fantasy prizes that can be used by near enough any army is damned impossible at times, especially as i veer away from BL books - if you like 'em you will have read 'em, if not you wont want one

As for painting / soft scores? Dont generally see soft scores in the UK, however again seeing the ToS scoring of bonus points for favoured opponent becoming more popular - works on a rather steep curve so if X of X players vote you as favoured you get far more points than (X-1) of X, and so on. This is better, in my opinion, that markng on a false curve - 1 to 5 in a 5 game tournament, when usually you only discriminate best and worst, 2, 3, 4, ... arent as well thought out

Painting - dont run a scored system, just have two awards - judges and players choice. Easy, and encourages players to bring cool models. We have some great local painters (If you own a 40k rulebook, one of them is featured in their - his space wolves, from memory) which is a big help when it comes to picking a shortlist for people to vote on.

Another club, Bristol Vanguard, have the luxury of even more great painters (again, open your BRB and the wonderful warp spiders, wraith lord et al are one couples work that way, amazing armies) so they have asimple rubric, and they personally mark every army on the way round - again most will get the majority of marks, only the best will get the full allotment and that ISNT "how many rocks" as some of the more ... dismissive... posters have put. These people understand skill.

I always liked the simple 4 award system that used to be very common: Best General, Best Sportsman, Best Army, and Best Overall split 1/3,1/3,1/3.

It allows people to go to the tournament for any reason that they choose with the hopes of still winning something based on how they approach the hobby.

 BladeWalker wrote:
I always liked the simple 4 award system that used to be very common: Best General, Best Sportsman, Best Army, and Best Overall split 1/3,1/3,1/3.

It allows people to go to the tournament for any reason that they choose with the hopes of still winning something based on how they approach the hobby.

That's a pretty common set up, although where I am at it's often more like 60% battle 20% appearance and 20% sports for overall.

The problem in my view, like I've been saying, is that most appearance rubrics and sports systems basically give almost full points to everyone. Often the difference in points between the best appearance army and the rest of the pack is less than half a game. The effect of that is appearance means nothing to overall unless you completely tank it. It's literally a tie breaker for battle points and overall becomes just another generalship award.

I know the thread started with the question of whether appearance should be counted at all. I think the resounding answer from 90% of people is yes. I would go further and say that it should be counted much more than it currently is. In my mind general should go to the guy with the highest battle points, appearance to the highest appearance, and overall to someone above average in both but not necessarily super high in either. The requirement to basically win or tie best general to really be in the running for "overall" is a problem in my mind.

To create more of a spread in sportsmanship and army appearance you need to have a larger scale. For example 1-10 score with hard justifications (checked by the judges) for a 1,2, 9, or 10 score. Or you can force the players to choose a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd favorite opponent for sportsmanship and the same out of ALL the armies for appearance. Then you don't get the "everyone gets max" in sports and painting, allowing for a nice spread and a true overall award.

Hi

Regarding the painting rubric concept ,my approach is the following (I recently "retired" from 5 years of TOing):

- If you have 3 colour and based, you should "pass" (score a D) on the rubric (60-70%)
- If you put in effort but the execution is poor (skill limitations) you should score a C (70-80%)
- If you have a a nicely painted tabletop army (looks great across the board, but just OK when you pick it up) you should score a B (80-90%)
- Once you cross that threshold to the A range, each point should be tough, as this determines the award for best painted/presentation.

Net result: new players/poor painters still have a decent place in the overall standings (or at least their painting isn't a lead weight that kills their desire to return), effort is rewarded for those lacking in skill, tabletop quality painters are in striking distance of overall with some solid play (and other soft scores if applicable) through effort and skill, and the cream of the crop has a small advantage in the overall race through effort and mastery.

Cheers,
Nate

I've mentioned it a couple times already, but doesn't anyone else see the problem with painting scores counting to Overall Champion when it's the only thing that the player may not actually be responsible for?

Winning games- you have to be able to do this yourself. Paying your opponent to throw the game would be instantly punished by the tournament organizer, so it means you have to be a good tactician in order to win games.

Sportsmanship- while you may be able to feign kindness to a stranger, you are still responsible for your own actions and your sportsmanship is a complete reflection on yourself as a person.

Composition- this is a score determined by your opponent, so no player has any control over this aspect except by writing a fair army list.

Painting- anyone with a nice income can hire one of the many painting services out there in order to get a level that may far exceed their own skill.

This is why painting scores should not be factored into an Overall award, because they are subject to abuse and may not accurately reflect the actual person who is 'Overall Champion'.

The usual problem with best overall is if the same score used for best painted is used for best overall then the top tier players will blow everybody out of the water and score a large lead over good painters.

Example: 0-35 for paint and 0-20 per battle round. Painters with some practice and teachable know how can get 25 with a lot of effort, or half ass it for 15. Golden Deamon/Crystal brush painters with a lot of effort will struggle for a 32 to 35. Being a tier 1 painter now gives the player the equivalent of upgrading a tie to a win, and half assing paint for a 15 is the same as turning a tie into a loss.

Is it an unfair edge to tier 1 players? Sure, but what's the alternative?

Option #1 No paint scores: Now you have more players half assing their paint and less players bringing their Sunday best. It will downgrade the quality of the tournament.

Option #2 Cap the paint score for best overall. If the TO believes any player can score a 25 with enough effort cap the paint score at 25 for best overall. Now we have the best of both worlds. Players bring out the best they can do with paint, and best overall is mainly about battle points, but also factors paint and sportsmanship.

 schadenfreude wrote:
The usual problem with best overall is if the same score used for best painted is used for best overall then the top tier players will blow everybody out of the water and score a large lead over good painters.

Example: 0-35 for paint and 0-20 per battle round. Painters with some practice and teachable know how can get 25 with a lot of effort, or half ass it for 15. Golden Deamon/Crystal brush painters with a lot of effort will struggle for a 32 to 35. Being a tier 1 painter now gives the player the equivalent of upgrading a tie to a win, and half assing paint for a 15 is the same as turning a tie into a loss.

Is it an unfair edge to tier 1 players? Sure, but what's the alternative?

Option #1 No paint scores: Now you have more players half assing their paint and less players bringing their Sunday best. It will downgrade the quality of the tournament.

Option #2 Cap the paint score for best overall. If the TO believes any player can score a 25 with enough effort cap the paint score at 25 for best overall. Now we have the best of both worlds. Players bring out the best they can do with paint, and best overall is mainly about battle points, but also factors paint and sportsmanship.

Surely Option 3 is to make the painting score worth the same as the battle points? So, the best players can win Best General, the best painters can win Best Painted, and the person who is good at both can win Best Overall.

Otherwise, as you say, you're always going to have a situation where the top level players get a massive advantage. You only need one of those top four or five to be a half decent painter and he wins best overall, as long as he's better at painting than the other top-tier players...?

 BladeWalker wrote:
To create more of a spread in sportsmanship and army appearance you need to have a larger scale. For example 1-10 score with hard justifications (checked by the judges) for a 1,2, 9, or 10 score. Or you can force the players to choose a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd favorite opponent for sportsmanship and the same out of ALL the armies for appearance. Then you don't get the "everyone gets max" in sports and painting, allowing for a nice spread and a true overall award.

You’re on the right track. But if the majority of people get a 6-7 points you still have the same problem. You need a system that creates high/low spread similar to battle points but you also need to differentiate like battle points. So almost no two people have the exact same battle points, and battle points has a certain distribution pattern. If you want appearance to combine in equal weight with battle you need the same high/low spread and the same distribution pattern. That’s incredibly hard to do. So not to sound like a broken record, but if you rank and combine rankings things work out nicely.

 carlosthecraven wrote:
Hi

Regarding the painting rubric concept ,my approach is the following (I recently "retired" from 5 years of TOing):

- If you have 3 colour and based, you should "pass" (score a D) on the rubric (60-70%)
- If you put in effort but the execution is poor (skill limitations) you should score a C (70-80%)
- If you have a a nicely painted tabletop army (looks great across the board, but just OK when you pick it up) you should score a B (80-90%)
- Once you cross that threshold to the A range, each point should be tough, as this determines the award for best painted/presentation.

So everyone is going to get at least 60-70% of the available paint points and most people are going to get 70-90% of the paint points. That’s very different than battle points where people get between 0 and 100% of the available points. The net effect is appearance becomes an afterthought in the overall calculation.

TOing is hard, and I’m not knocking you personally. I ran tournaments similarly for a long time. But the more I did it and the more I thought about what I wanted to accomplish and what this was doing the more I became turned off to it.

And although this removes the “paint as a lead weight” idea battle scores become a lead weight and I generally find that tournaments turn into a shark pool which runs off new players far faster than high levels of painting.

 Oaka wrote:
I've mentioned it a couple times already, but doesn't anyone else see the problem with painting scores counting to Overall Champion when it's the only thing that the player may not actually be responsible for?...

Painting- anyone with a nice income can hire one of the many painting services out there in order to get a level that may far exceed their own skill.

This is why painting scores should not be factored into an Overall award, because they are subject to abuse and may not accurately reflect the actual person who is 'Overall Champion'.

So the person who dropped $1,000 dollars on leaf blower guard three years ago didn’t “buy” any of their victories? So the guy who ran out and bought 9 night/death scythe boxes last June didn’t buy any of their wins? So the guy who spent $500 last month getting 9 boxes of flamers and 9 boxes of screamers didn’t buy any of their battle points?

Lots of people throw this around as if money didn’t play any part in battle results which is total bunk. Yes people can “buy” a better appearance score. People can also “buy” better battle scores. And the percentage of people actually bringing nice commission painted armies is nothing compared to the percentage of people perpetually dropping hundreds and thousands of dollars to army jump into the latest and greatest book.

And if you make appearance scoring more important it will actually hurt people who bring commission painted armies. Commission armies are usually done to an average or slightly above average quality. In a painting system where that gets you 90%+ of the appearance points a commission army is totally fine. The best in appearance armies at larger events are almost never commission armies. So with a highly differentiated appearance system the commission army (being average to slightly above average) is notably handicapped in the overall calculation against people who paint armies themselves to an exceptional level.

 schadenfreude wrote:
The usual problem with best overall is if the same score used for best painted is used for best overall then the top tier players will blow everybody out of the water and score a large lead over good painters.

You’ve hit on what I’ve been saying all along (I’m very passionate about the this topic if it wasn’t obvious already).

The option that I’m trying so hard to sell is combining rankings for battle and paint.
So we have 3 people, an awesome player, an awesome painter, and someone above average at both.
At a 256 man tournament player 1 wins general and gets middle of the pack of painting. He gets a 1 rank for battle and a 128 for appearance for a combined rank of 129.

The painter does the opposite, gets 1 in painting and middle of the road for battle for a combined ranking of 129.

The player that is above average in both gets 40th in battle and 40th in appearance. Their overall ranking is 80 and they are far ahead in the overall calculation than the best general or best appearance player.

Again, this rewards a different type of player, which means more ways to compete, more ways for people to win prizes, happier tournament goers, and a more successful event.

 Oaka wrote:
The Games Day Grand Tournaments had painting scores, and I don't think a single player that finished in the top 10 actually painted their army.

I missed one Baltimore GT between 1997 and 2008 (and played in some others too). And I can confidently say that the above statement is nonsense. Yes, some of the most competitive guys did get their armies pro-painted to give them a better chance at overall (although I think I saw more of this on the WFB side than the 40k side). But most players painted their own armies, including most of the top 10s and overall winners. Heck, I finished top 10 twice or three times and painted my own stuff. Remember that prizes were non-existent or light for much of the existence of the GW GTs, and so dropping $500 or $1K on pro painting to try to win a trophy and bragging rights wasn't the best investment in many players' eyes.

Quite honestly, I think including painting in overall scores made players try harder and gave them incentive to improve.

gorgon wrote:

 Oaka wrote:
The Games Day Grand Tournaments had painting scores, and I don't think a single player that finished in the top 10 actually painted their army.

I missed one Baltimore GT between 1997 and 2008 (and played in some others too). And I can confidently say that the above statement is nonsense.

Agree. If anything, my experience was painters explicitly painted up a awesome GT army to play and win an award with then 'sell' it at the end of the weekend. There were not nearly the number of painting services or GD quality painters back then so there was not a TON of pro painted armies.

I know people who were placing top 10 during the GT days and they were painting their own armies and I attended at least 4 Baltimore GTs.

And most GTs were not even close to gamesday. Gamesday didn't even have a GT in Baltimore for most of the years, it was always a single day RTT or 'nothing'

I'll address the main point that always bothers me in these discussions:

And that is that there is no 'right' way to do things. Different tournaments, different parts of the world, different clubs and local groups, all will have an influence on the types of tournaments that get run and what rules/scoring/meta/ you will see at the tournaments run.

No group on the internet can force TO's to run a certain scoring system. Just like no TO can force players to come to a tournament.

Tournaments will get organized. Players should look at the scoring, rules, venue, cost, etc and decide if they would like to attend.

Of course there is no “right” way, but I think most organizers would agree that they would like their events to do 2 things:

1. Promote the hobby generally
2. Create the most fun for the most people

I think certain systems are much better at that than others. And even if your main goal is to find the best player I think you can still accomplish the first two and still find the best player. I don’t see why they have to be mutually exclusive. Most of the arguments for dropping appearance assume that you can’t accomplish all three things.

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

The option that I’m trying so hard to sell is combining rankings for battle and paint.
So we have 3 people, an awesome player, an awesome painter, and someone above average at both.
At a 256 man tournament player 1 wins general and gets middle of the pack of painting. He gets a 1 rank for battle and a 128 for appearance for a combined rank of 129.

The painter does the opposite, gets 1 in painting and middle of the road for battle for a combined ranking of 129.

The player that is above average in both gets 40th in battle and 40th in appearance. Their overall ranking is 80 and they are far ahead in the overall calculation than the best general or best appearance player.

Again, this rewards a different type of player, which means more ways to compete, more ways for people to win prizes, happier tournament goers, and a more successful event.

I like where you're going here.

Overall is determined by lowest combined ranking of general, painting, sportsmanship. So if a person was tenth in general, fifteenth in painting, and third for sports they would have a total of 28.

Say painting is 0 - 50 points and you have the following scores:
48
45
43
40
40
40
37
I would say the 40s are ranked fourth and the 37 is ranked fifth (normally would be considered seventh). The score is still the fifth best score there just are six people who scored better.

This would make for an interesting hobby celebration tournament. It certainly promotes all aspects of gaming. I hope the fellas at MechaniCon take a look at this

Take care

 albinoork wrote:
I like where you're going here.

Thanks. If you really want battle and appearance to count 50/50 it’s the only real solution I have ever seen. You could do the same thing for sports too if you wanted a 1/3 – 1/3 – 1/3 mix for battle sports and appearance. Just combine all 3 ranks and take the lowest.

The only quirk is ties. I don’t know if you should go 1, 2, 2, 2, 5 or 1, 4, 4, 4, 5 for ties. They both have pros and cons. Ideally your appearance and battle systems would differentiate so there weren’t many ties. And then you need a tie breaker in the overall calculation because someone ranked 10th and 20th will have the same overall rank as someone 9th and 21th. In that case I think the best single rank should win, if it’s still a tie maybe the best battle rank. I don’t know, there’s lots of ways to subtly personalize and shift focus with the tie breakers.