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 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
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.

Actually, you're assuming things that bolster your own stance. The two things you posted are sort of like "everyone thinks World Peace is a good idea". Everyone will agree with you, but only because disagreeing makes them look like TFG.

Other reasons:

- Run a highly competitive tournament to see who is the best player.
- Run an event to bring people into the store/venue to further sales and promote the venue.
- Run an event to get the 12 year olds in so you can babysit them, let them play with unpainted models, and hope that mums and da buy them lots more stuff.

And as for 'most organizers would agree'? Bah. Most organizers are gamers too. They'll argue just like the rest of the gamers.

I run SVDM for two reasons:

1. Make money. More people in the store is more money. I intend to shake loose every last bit of pocket change out of the people attending.
2. Get together with old friends, throw a party, drink beer and eat chili and pulled pork sandwhiches.

Making everyone have fun and play with nicely painted figures is just a means to get to those two goals.

I believe there is enough room in the hobby to have a wide variety of different tournament formats that cater to all the different aspects of participant.

You can have a tournament with absolutely no soft-scores that determines the winner solely by performance in the games.

Alternatively, you can have a tournament that is heavily geared towards soft-scores, including sportsmanship, army composition, army appearance, and army background, with less than half of the final score comes from the results of the games.

Or, you can have a tournament that fits anywhere in that spectrum.

In my opinion, as long as a tournament organizer makes it clear up front what type of tournament they're running and how the scoring will work, there's not really a reason to complain. Go to the tournaments that fit the structure you like and avoid the tournaments that fit a structure you dislike. Just don't go around believing there's only one right way to run a tournament.

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
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...

Tournaments aren't the place to promote the hobby. People who don't know about the hobby aren't going to be showing up to tournaments.

Tournament Soft Scores are for the benefit of the players, not for making the hobby more attractive to outsiders.

 mikhaila wrote:

Actually, you're assuming things that bolster your own stance. The two things you posted are sort of like "everyone thinks World Peace is a good idea". Everyone will agree with you, but only because disagreeing makes them look like TFG.

Other reasons:

- Run a highly competitive tournament to see who is the best player.
- Run an event to bring people into the store/venue to further sales and promote the venue.
- Run an event to get the 12 year olds in so you can babysit them, let them play with unpainted models, and hope that mums and da buy them lots more stuff.

And as for 'most organizers would agree'? Bah. Most organizers are gamers too. They'll argue just like the rest of the gamers.

I run SVDM for two reasons:

1. Make money. More people in the store is more money. I intend to shake loose every last bit of pocket change out of the people attending.
2. Get together with old friends, throw a party, drink beer and eat chili and pulled pork sandwhiches.

Making everyone have fun and play with nicely painted figures is just a means to get to those two goals.

Nothing you listed has to be at the expense of promoting the hobby or having soft scores in your tournament. That’s the entire point, you can do it all in one event. And I would say having a tournament with heavy soft scores is actually going to enhance your ability to do your 2 primary goals of making money and seeing old friends. More ways to compete appeals to more people which means more people show up which means more money and more friends. I don’t see why this is hard to understand.  

 insaniak wrote:

Tournaments aren't the place to promote the hobby. People who don't know about the hobby aren't going to be showing up to tournaments.

Tournament Soft Scores are for the benefit of the players, not for making the hobby more attractive to outsiders.

Wrong on all counts. Tons and TONS of people wander into tournaments that have never been exposed to the hobby before. Think of where major tournaments are held, large hotels, community halls, major shopping malls, large game and comic book stores. There are so many people who wander through with no prior knowledge of Games Workshop or wargaming it’s incredible. Tournaments are probably the most visible part of our hobby, it is going to send a message out about who we are and what we do whether you mean to or not. I think we should be depicting a wide inclusive community with cool looking armies and lots of ways to enjoy yourself instead of the very narrow view that all we do is game, all we are about is winning, and if you don’t want to be the best player you need not apply.

And your statement that “tournaments aren’t the place to promote the hobby” goes back to the exact mindset that I have refuted. You think tournaments should be oriented to people who want to win games and find the best player and do nothing else. My entire point is you can still provide and environment for people who want nothing but to win games and find the best player while promoting the hobby, allowing other types of players to derive their own enjoyment out of the tournament, and allowing people to have fun in other ways not just the way you have fun.

I don't understand the level of complication necessary here.

Tournaments are an inherently voluntary-attendance thing, and there are NO guidelines or requirements published and enforced anywhere as to how they should be run or why.

Attendance determines whether a tournament's focus is acceptable or not - either people show up and pay in enough quantity to justify continuation in the mind and pockets of the TO, or they don't. If they don't, the tournament was not run on appropriate merits for the available and/or target audience, and if they do it was.

The nuance to what makes a good event or a legitimate event is often NOT in any of the things we are talking about ... but in subtleties that require a great deal more attention paid to them, and also relate to varaibles not entirely w/in a TO's control (someone trying to make a massive, internationally-attended 40k GT in mid-April or late August or mid July is going to struggle for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of their event, for instance).

This is why you see events as far-ranging in style as MechaniCon and Ard Boyz succeed, for entirely and dramatically different reasons ... and why you see hybridizations of those two extremes ALSO succeed. Even the notion of success is entirely variable ... if only 100 people showed up to the NOVA Open's 40k GT, it would not be classified as successful, and its focuses and promotion and execution would all need to be questioned ... after all, that's selling less than half of the spots. If 64 people sell out the BFS GT and there's a wait list of 36 ... that's an enormously successful event.

Blah blah, the long and short is ... there's no ansxwer to the question of what's important in a tournament and what are the correct reasons to run them. All that matters is an event is successful toward its goals ... if the goal is to bring people into your store and catch up with old friends and you sell out every year (aka, SVDM), you're enormously successful. If the goal is to be ridiculous and over-the-top "competitive" (definite quotes) and sell a lot of models while engaging your US community and you sell thousands of dollars in merchandise because of it (aka, Ard Boyz), you're also enormously successful.

There should be an awareness on the average person's part that success is not measured by individual or even relatively mass opinion. Success tomorrow here int he US, for instance, can even be earned by someone who isn't supported by a majority of his constituents.

The nuance to what makes a good event or a legitimate event is often NOT in any of the things we are talking about ... but in subtleties that require a great deal more attention paid to them, and also relate to varaibles not entirely w/in a TO's control

A very good point.

I see scoring/softscores/missions etc talked about constantly.

But a lot of complaints come from other sources:

What about the venue? Air conditioning?, space between tables?, cost of a hotel, food, and beer? Hell, is food even available without an hours wait? Quality of scenery? On time rounds? Enough staff? Knowledgable staff? Clear rules and FAQ's? Prizes/trophies? Quality and appropriateness of those prizes? Parking? Distance to food/beer/hotel from where you are playing?

TO's have a huge amount of small things to worry about getting right, or working on to get better the next year. The larger the event, the more problems that have to be dealt with ahead of time, or figured out on the fly when they pop up.

People just have to figure out what they like in a tournament and make a choice of going or not. Or try out a new tourney and get some first hand experience. So the scoring or missions aren't exactly how you like them? Will you still have an enjoyable time rolling dice and moving your toy soldiers around the board? If the answer is yes, maybe quit worrying so much about how you want things to be, and enjoy the event anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:


Nothing you listed has to be at the expense of promoting the hobby or having soft scores in your tournament. That’s the entire point, you can do it all in one event. And I would say having a tournament with heavy soft scores is actually going to enhance your ability to do your 2 primary goals of making money and seeing old friends. More ways to compete appeals to more people which means more people show up which means more money and more friends. I don’t see why this is hard to understand.

I don't see why you don't understand either

YOUR entire point, is that you don't understand why everyone doesn't do things how you want them to do things. Some people do, some wont. It's nice that you have an opinion on how you want things to work. If you ever ran you're own tournament, we'd know what to expect.

I haven't even said that I don't do exactly what you say. Sometimes. Other times I run knockdown smashface tournaments. Some require painting, some don't. I run a lot of events each year, and I don't run all the same type.

 mikhaila wrote:
The nuance to what makes a good event or a legitimate event is often NOT in any of the things we are talking about ... but in subtleties that require a great deal more attention paid to them, and also relate to varaibles not entirely w/in a TO's control

A very good point.

I see scoring/softscores/missions etc talked about constantly.

But a lot of complaints come from other sources:

What about the venue? Air conditioning?, space between tables?, cost of a hotel, food, and beer? Hell, is food even available without an hours wait? Quality of scenery? On time rounds? Enough staff? Knowledgable staff? Clear rules and FAQ's? Prizes/trophies? Quality and appropriateness of those prizes? Parking? Distance to food/beer/hotel from where you are playing?

If you guys want to talk about the importance of air conditioning and table spacing, then by all means start a thread titled “The importance of air conditioning and table spacing”. This thread is about the importance of appearance and sports scores.

 mikhaila wrote:

YOUR entire point, is that you don't understand why everyone doesn't do things how you want them to do things. Some people do, some wont. It's nice that you have an opinion on how you want things to work. If you ever ran you're own tournament, we'd know what to expect.

I haven't even said that I don't do exactly what you say. Sometimes. Other times I run knockdown smashface tournaments. Some require painting, some don't. I run a lot of events each year, and I don't run all the same type.

My point is that appearance scores are important. So important that I think they should be emphasized more than they are in most formats. I say that because having a properly applied appearance system makes an event more inclusive, with more ways for different kinds of players to compete and win prizes. That means larger events with cooler looking armies, and more fun for more people.

My counter argument to those who would say “my event’s goal is to focus on gaming and do nothing but find the best player” is that you can still have rigorous games and find the “best player” with an inclusive event that uses soft scores in an overall calculation. The two are not mutually exclusive. And running a “gaming only” style event inherently limits the base of players interested in coming which means less fun for less people (and no fun if you aren’t a high level player). It also perpetuates this arbitrary and unnecessary divide between “gamers”, “painters”, and people who want to be decent at both. We can all exist and all succeed in the same tournament. And given the very niche and tiny nature of our community, I am all in favor of things that bring the community together as opposed to fragment and divide it.

And I do run my own tournaments. And I’ve been involved with running large national level events. And in my personal experience the tournaments that do focus solely on gaming tend to be smaller, less fun, and have much shorter life spans than more inclusive events.

Though i agree about painting scores the hobby as a whole has changed. This is both good and bad but that's why their so many events out there. What major events do you work on btw?

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

 mikhaila wrote:
The nuance to what makes a good event or a legitimate event is often NOT in any of the things we are talking about ... but in subtleties that require a great deal more attention paid to them, and also relate to varaibles not entirely w/in a TO's control

A very good point.

I see scoring/softscores/missions etc talked about constantly.

But a lot of complaints come from other sources:

What about the venue? Air conditioning?, space between tables?, cost of a hotel, food, and beer? Hell, is food even available without an hours wait? Quality of scenery? On time rounds? Enough staff? Knowledgable staff? Clear rules and FAQ's? Prizes/trophies? Quality and appropriateness of those prizes? Parking? Distance to food/beer/hotel from where you are playing?

If you guys want to talk about the importance of air conditioning and table spacing, then by all means start a thread titled “The importance of air conditioning and table spacing”. This thread is about the importance of appearance and sports scores.

 mikhaila wrote:

YOUR entire point, is that you don't understand why everyone doesn't do things how you want them to do things. Some people do, some wont. It's nice that you have an opinion on how you want things to work. If you ever ran you're own tournament, we'd know what to expect.

I haven't even said that I don't do exactly what you say. Sometimes. Other times I run knockdown smashface tournaments. Some require painting, some don't. I run a lot of events each year, and I don't run all the same type.

My point is that appearance scores are important. So important that I think they should be emphasized more than they are in most formats. I say that because having a properly applied appearance system makes an event more inclusive, with more ways for different kinds of players to compete and win prizes. That means larger events with cooler looking armies, and more fun for more people.

My counter argument to those who would say “my event’s goal is to focus on gaming and do nothing but find the best player” is that you can still have rigorous games and find the “best player” with an inclusive event that uses soft scores in an overall calculation. The two are not mutually exclusive. And running a “gaming only” style event inherently limits the base of players interested in coming which means less fun for less people (and no fun if you aren’t a high level player). It also perpetuates this arbitrary and unnecessary divide between “gamers”, “painters”, and people who want to be decent at both. We can all exist and all succeed in the same tournament. And given the very niche and tiny nature of our community, I am all in favor of things that bring the community together as opposed to fragment and divide it.

And I do run my own tournaments. And I’ve been involved with running large national level events. And in my personal experience the tournaments that do focus solely on gaming tend to be smaller, less fun, and have much shorter life spans than more inclusive events.

Define "most formats" please. The most popular formats out there right now give 50% of their Overall score to Appearance scores. Ref: NOVA and all NOVA style events, plus in varying iterations Adept, WGC, BAO, etc., with all of these events having subsidiary generalship scores that are exclusive of appearance, and subsidiary appearance scores that are exclusive of generalship.

All the tournaments I go to (run by different people/venues) have the following separate awards and it works really well.

1st place trophy
2nd place certificate
3rd place certificate
last place Wooden spoon

Best painted army - voted by players

Best sportsmanship - voted by players

I go to have a fun weekend meet new people and to try for best painted army.

The best place I've ever got is 6th but its not my goal to win, I have three best painted army trophies though and I've been playing for just over a year.

See i hate when best painted is voted buy players as becomes more of a popularity contest then actually is the best painted.

MVBrandt wrote:
Define "most formats" please. The most popular formats out there right now give 50% of their Overall score to Appearance scores. Ref: NOVA and all NOVA style events, plus in varying iterations Adept, WGC, BAO, etc., with all of these events having subsidiary generalship scores that are exclusive of appearance, and subsidiary appearance scores that are exclusive of generalship.

It’s like I have been saying, even though NOVA gives 50% of the Ren Man score to appearance the effective split is weighted in favor of battle. That’s because the spread in points for appearance from top to bottom is nothing like the spread for battle. Think of it this way. If I give everyone 100 additional points no one benefits and the tourney’s all about who wins battle. If I give 10 players 100 points and 240 players 99 points no one really benefits and it’s all about battle. The typically tight distribution of paint scores lowers their real weight in the overall calculation to something far less than 50%.

I know from personal experience placing 14th and judging paint at Adepticon that this is the case. And I know from personal experience placing 4th at WGC (with a far above average army) that appearance moved my overall place an entire nothing. I’ve not been to NOVA but I’ve played in NOVA patterned events and it worked out similarly. And virtually every RTT I have been to used an appearance system designed to give most of the points to most of the players. Once you do that the weightings of battle vs appearance don’t really matter unless you do something crazy like 90% appearance. The overall winner 9 out of 10 times will be the best general.

I like the idea of the 50/50 split between appearance and battle like NOVA but when your appearance rubiric/judging gives the majority of points to the majority of people the effective splits are more like 90/10 and appearance becomes a tie breaker in a battle oriented tournament. Even if everyone’s painted three colors you need some people down at zero appearance points and fairly even distribution throughout to mimic what happens with battle points.

That's actually not true, at all. The appearance distribution scale is designed to and results in a spread that finds an average appearance score nearly identical to the average competitive score (namely, 50%). Also, there's a rough bell curve matching the competitive bell curve (that's to say, the highest individual point being around 50%). This is why people can't win Best Overall if their paint score isn't approaching the 70-75% mark of possible, regardless of competitive rating.

So, no, it actually is identical by design and quite close to a 50/50 in practice.

PS - I do agree that in many systems the appearance score scale is something like a maximum of 20 points where most people score around a 15, and the result is that appearance is even less valuable due to the delta than it otherwise is. What I suggest, however, is actually digging into results / etc. to find that there's actually more value given to the thought process on these things than you presently think. I'll only at this point speak for NOVA, as it's my format, but yeah - results and intent, it's an ACTUAL 50%, not a "de facto 10% due to delta."

Edit for posterity:
2012 Average appearance score discounting those who chose not to be scored (and thus received 0's): 48/100
2012 Average competitive score: 50/101

Result was in a field of nearly 200, the high appearance score placed 29th overall, despite a 2-4 record (overall by 6 games in 2012), and despite 4 undefeated players as of the end of round 6, only 1 made even the top 60 for Best Overall, yet 3 of the top 10 appearance scores were in the top 10 overall.

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
Wrong on all counts. Tons and TONS of people wander into tournaments that have never been exposed to the hobby before. Think of where major tournaments are held, large hotels, community halls, major shopping malls, large game and comic book stores.

And most people who don't know what it's all about, from my experience so far, just stick their head in, say 'That's a bit peculiar...' and wander off.

I have no doubt that some people find themselves introduced to the hobby by wandering into a tournament and asking what it's all about... but 'tons and tons'? I doubt that.

And your statement that “tournaments aren’t the place to promote the hobby” goes back to the exact mindset that I have refuted. You think tournaments should be oriented to people who want to win games and find the best player and do nothing else.

I do...?

When did that happen? Somebody should have sent me a memo.

I'd point out that he still hasn't stated what major national tournment's he's worked on.

More on topic though I personally WANT a Best Overall/Ren Man/Ultimate Hobbyist/Whatever. Why? This gives me a reason to get better at aspects of the hobby I am poor at. When I was younger, much like our Kirk avatared friend, I went for General/Battle and my painting was appropriately dismal. Now however, I push hard for Overall. I convert almost every model in my armies (gk's excluded) and continue to evolve my painting. Removing the overall would hurt the hobby.

As for sports I prefer a rank your opponents 1-However many games played. This creates dispersion. But some people don't like to rank their opponents on a fun to play scale and so this is looked down at

MVBrandt wrote:
That's actually not true. The appearance distribution scale is designed to and results in a spread that finds an average appearance score nearly identical to the average competitive score (namely, 50%). Also, there's a rough bell curve matching the competitive bell curve (that's to say, the highest individual point being around 50%). This is why people can't win Best Overall if their paint score isn't approaching the 70-75% mark of possible, regardless of competitive rating.

So, no, it actually is identical by design and quite close to a 50/50 in practice.

PS - I do agree that in many systems the appearance score scale is something like a maximum of 20 points where most people score around a 15, and the result is that appearance is even less valuable due to the delta than it otherwise is. What I suggest, however, is actually digging into results / etc. to find that there's actually more value given to the thought process on these things than you presently think. I'll only at this point speak for NOVA, as it's my format, but yeah - results and intent, it's an ACTUAL 50%, not a "de facto 10% due to delta."

How do you force painting scores into a bell curve similar to battle? With a 4 round w/l you more or less know you'll have 16 maxed out battle, 16 zero battle, so many at 3-1 etc. There will be some ties but you have a pretty good guess of what it will be. How do you guarantee 16 maxed out appearance scores, 16 zero appearances, so many at 75%, 50%, and 25% of max appearance? I can't think of any good way to do this other than combined rankings like I wrote in one of my earlier posts. However unlikely it’s possible 80% of people show up with poorly painted 3 color min armies and “deserve” a 25% of the max appearance score, what do you do then?

And if you still use battle points it's virtually impossible to match the distribution between paint and battle because you can't predict what the battle spread will be.

And I'm not saying other major organizers don't think about it, they’re smart guys and they spend a lot of time on this. And like I said I'm friends with at least a couple of them. But to date they have not, for whatever reason, really done anything about it. Maybe they like the way it all plays out, maybe it’s intentional. I think (for all the reasons I’ve already given) things would be better with a true 50/50 split.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hulksmash wrote:
I'd point out that he still hasn't stated what major national tournment's he's worked on.

Two posts up I said I judged paint at Adepticon. It would help to read before you make snide comments.

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:
That's actually not true. The appearance distribution scale is designed to and results in a spread that finds an average appearance score nearly identical to the average competitive score (namely, 50%). Also, there's a rough bell curve matching the competitive bell curve (that's to say, the highest individual point being around 50%). This is why people can't win Best Overall if their paint score isn't approaching the 70-75% mark of possible, regardless of competitive rating.

So, no, it actually is identical by design and quite close to a 50/50 in practice.

PS - I do agree that in many systems the appearance score scale is something like a maximum of 20 points where most people score around a 15, and the result is that appearance is even less valuable due to the delta than it otherwise is. What I suggest, however, is actually digging into results / etc. to find that there's actually more value given to the thought process on these things than you presently think. I'll only at this point speak for NOVA, as it's my format, but yeah - results and intent, it's an ACTUAL 50%, not a "de facto 10% due to delta."

How do you force painting scores into a bell curve similar to battle? With a 4 round w/l you more or less know you'll have 16 maxed out battle, 16 zero battle, so many at 3-1 etc. There will be some ties but you have a pretty good guess of what it will be. How do you guarantee 16 maxed out appearance scores, 16 zero appearances, so many at 75%, 50%, and 25% of max appearance? I can't think of any good way to do this other than combined rankings like I wrote in one of my earlier posts. However unlikely it’s possible 80% of people show up with poorly painted 3 color min armies and “deserve” a 25% of the max appearance score, what do you do then?

And if you still use battle points it's virtually impossible to match the distribution between paint and battle because you can't predict what the battle spread will be.

And I'm not saying other major organizers don't think about it, they’re smart guys and they spend a lot of time on this. And like I said I'm friends with at least a couple of them. But to date they have not, for whatever reason, really done anything about it. Maybe they like the way it all plays out, maybe it’s intentional. I think (for all the reasons I’ve already given) things would be better with a true 50/50 split.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hulksmash wrote:
I'd point out that he still hasn't stated what major national tournment's he's worked on.

Two posts up I said I judged paint at Adepticon. It would help to read before you make snide comments.

Honestly it was the first responsibility of our appearance judge when he built the scorecards and designed his judging criteria. It's worked each year, with the appearance scores averaging at 50% an d being increasingly difficult to increase beyond a certain point. We're actually refining the system substantially this year to make it more directly comparable, with 6 army score "brackets" into which you'll fall, directly comparable to the 6 score brackets you'll be in based upon your competitive rating (since 90% of competitive score is based upon w/l in NOVA scoring).

As my edited numbers above also support, it actually works in practice as well. We further factor appearance scores by percentage of possible, as we do with competitive score. If at any point the average isn't correct, we curve so that the delta remains relevant. That's to say, if everyone came to NOVA with a nearly perfect army, we'd curve it so that the average was 50% regardless. We simply haven't had to. In so doing, we ensure appearance really is just as important as generalship with regard to determining who the best overall hobbyist is. Not rocket science.

It's more complicated than just saying we curve up or down to 50%. You need to curve some people down, potentially heavily, but leave some at the top too. So then how do you decide the cutoff point of who gets points removed and who doesn’t? I think judges arbitrarily adding/removing points (even if you know why you’re doing it) is less than ideal.

I'm not saying what you are doing is wrong. But I do think that it's more complicated and open to criticism than what I proposed. We are trying to get to the same place, and I think 9 times out of 10 we would get to the same place. But I think ranking and combined rankings is much easier to explain and doesn’t require any on the spot adjustments mid-way through the tournament.

Sigh. Quoting the results is the best I can do ... it accomplishes what you are requesting, and has done so for three years. It's an ACTUAL 50/50, which is what you're shouting for. It's not the only way to do it, but it is support for the fact that the world at large is giving a LOT more credit to appearance as part of Overall than you think.

To your own advice to someone else, if what you're REALLY trying to do is say you have this brilliant system of your own and it is the ONLY way to do appearance scoring as a component of a tournament ... make a new thread.

What's with the hostility? No one is making you participate in this. I'm asking genuine questions in good faith. If you don't like your tournament system being questioned don't bring it up.

I never said it was the only way to an actual 50/50. But it is simpler and less prone to accusations of favoritism and TO intervention than what you have been doing.

And I’ve spent most of my time arguing that appearance and overall (with a meaningful appearance component) are important for tournaments. How to accomplish that is a natural extension of the topic, especially because I find many TOs think they are accomplishing it but aren’t.

I'm not trying to be hostile at all - there's a lack of tone on internet that I sometimes struggle with.

As a TO, I haven't intervened in the scores (see above), nor heard anyone accuse me of it. Same is true of favoritism accusations, of which there haven't been any.

The sigh was because I thought I'd already answered your questions - that the bell curve was achieved, that it was the specific intent of the scorecard and judging criteria we put forth, and that appearance was an "actual" 50%, simply put out there to answer your concern that it was only really a de facto 10%. I felt like I was repeating myself, and apologize if you felt I was being hostile toward you, as that would be the responsibility of my word choice.

MVBrandt wrote:
I'm not trying to be hostile at all - there's a lack of tone on internet that I sometimes struggle with.

Fair enough. I've not done anything half as big as NOVA, but I have TO'ed and I prefer to make systems that are as objective as possible. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable reserving the right to adjust the curve of appearance scores to blend right with battle. That's just me, if it's been working for you, more power to you guys.

I guess I just have a hard time imaging a paint system that forces the bell curve. The brackets you mentioned I think are a good idea. But even placing people in the brackets to me seems like it would still require some sort of rubric, and the rubric is where I think it all breaks down. If the rubric generates a lot of ties or a very tight grouping because everyone stinks or everyone is great then how do you split them into 5 distinct brackets?

And again it’s not the only answer, and it's not even my answer (I was listening to the 11th company podcast and they were tossing around almost the exact idea for their GT) but combining rankings is nice because you can make a rubric that is made to differentiate as much as possible and then the rankings force you into the right distribution without any adjustments by the TO. You could apply the differentiating rubric to the bracket idea and take the top so many for each bracket etc, I think the brackets are basically the same as the rankings, but rankings would work better for combing in battle point tournaments where you don't have a bell curve distribution of battle points.

As I'm a horrible player but decent painter, I'm all for having painting scores determine prizes!

Painting is a must have, in some capacity. I am not a good painter, but if I can bang out 200 guardsman to a consistant 3 color standard, complete with some minor conversions, then the 20 model necron army I am facing can at least do the same. People pay money to enjoy themselves with the game for a day/weekend and playing three rounds against Codex Greyplastic Marines is not enjoyable.

Sports I think is a needed thing in some form, but simply having a proactive judge with the testicular fortitude to keep the d-bags in line can make an actual score unnessecary.

Comp is a safety valve that works best when there are obvious balance flaws that will not be fixed in the forseeable future (see WHFB) or the metagame is in some crazy sort of flux because of a new edition, like 40k happens to be right now. It can be good for long term recruitment, if done right and it can be event killing when done wrong.