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Well that's a combination of words I never thought I'd see.
As for 40k coaches, yes, that's a thing. A while back a new ad from Reecius' mob showing off their coaching service would appear on my Facebook feed. The comments were simply hilarious, although I doubt Frontline Gaming appreciated them seeing how often the ad would vanish only to reappear sans comments (which never lasted long).
Most Facebook ads I see are so thirsty and cringe so they always appear sans comments on my feed as well.
I can just imagine the Frontline coaching facebook ads being a gold mine of memes lmao
Not Online!!! wrote: oof ...
not gonna lie, that is some serious BS.
And the rigging is the smallest issue, because that could be resolved by a Flat out ban for all of them from ever participating again or hosting a counting tournament but watch nothing be done beyond a lovetap. Make an exemple and be done.
yeah zero chances of any ban happening. It would have destroyed their whole business model.
Call me oldschool, but pricing and payment should be separate from the competition and ranking, aka pricemony should come from outside IF needed at all.
And further, if you rely on this, to make you look good, in order to make money of your reputation, then frankly i believe the whole of the ITC has an issue with integrity. And you don't solve that with a "year long" (short) ban for the organiser. Not to mention that the lack of integrity can damage legitimaty, something ITC allready has issues with .
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Not Online!!! wrote: oof ...
not gonna lie, that is some serious BS.
And the rigging is the smallest issue, because that could be resolved by a Flat out ban for all of them from ever participating again or hosting a counting tournament but watch nothing be done beyond a lovetap. Make an exemple and be done.
yeah zero chances of any ban happening. It would have destroyed their whole business model.
Call me oldschool, but pricing and payment should be separate from the competition and ranking, aka pricemony should come from outside IF needed at all.
And further, if you rely on this, to make you look good, in order to make money of your reputation, then frankly i believe the whole of the ITC has an issue with integrity. And you don't solve that with a "year long" (short) ban for the organiser. Not to mention that the lack of integrity can damage legitimaty, something ITC allready has issues with .
The way they setup competitions, handle controversy, etc it makes the ITC looks like a clown show tbh. It is cool what they are trying to do for 40k (Since the only thing that James Workshop cares for is selling models) but you can't take the "40k competition scene" serious with all of these issues.
Not Online!!! wrote: oof ...
not gonna lie, that is some serious BS.
And the rigging is the smallest issue, because that could be resolved by a Flat out ban for all of them from ever participating again or hosting a counting tournament but watch nothing be done beyond a lovetap. Make an exemple and be done.
yeah zero chances of any ban happening. It would have destroyed their whole business model.
Call me oldschool, but pricing and payment should be separate from the competition and ranking, aka pricemony should come from outside IF needed at all.
And further, if you rely on this, to make you look good, in order to make money of your reputation, then frankly i believe the whole of the ITC has an issue with integrity. And you don't solve that with a "year long" (short) ban for the organiser. Not to mention that the lack of integrity can damage legitimaty, something ITC allready has issues with .
Cannot agree more with the highlighted. I've already made my feelings about the necessity for 40k coaching known and if people want to spend money on it then so be it. However, if the business side of that coaching relies on standings in the ITC then I think the people offering the coaching need to be a lot more distanced from the organisation of events and hold themselves to a much higher standard than we've seen recently.
Not Online!!! wrote: oof ...
not gonna lie, that is some serious BS.
And the rigging is the smallest issue, because that could be resolved by a Flat out ban for all of them from ever participating again or hosting a counting tournament but watch nothing be done beyond a lovetap. Make an exemple and be done.
yeah zero chances of any ban happening. It would have destroyed their whole business model.
Call me oldschool, but pricing and payment should be separate from the competition and ranking, aka pricemony should come from outside IF needed at all.
And further, if you rely on this, to make you look good, in order to make money of your reputation, then frankly i believe the whole of the ITC has an issue with integrity. And you don't solve that with a "year long" (short) ban for the organiser. Not to mention that the lack of integrity can damage legitimaty, something ITC allready has issues with .
Cannot agree more with the highlighted. I've already made my feelings about the necessity for 40k coaching known and if people want to spend money on it then so be it. However, if the business side of that coaching relies on standings in the ITC then I think the people offering the coaching need to be a lot more distanced from the organisation of events and hold themselves to a much higher standard than we've seen recently.
indeed. Hammer meet nailhead.
the fact however that it is tolerated or even encouraged, because at that point that mini "ban" is encouragement, we have reached, as gundam pointed out, peak clownshow.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Not Online!!! wrote: oof ...
not gonna lie, that is some serious BS.
And the rigging is the smallest issue, because that could be resolved by a Flat out ban for all of them from ever participating again or hosting a counting tournament but watch nothing be done beyond a lovetap. Make an exemple and be done.
yeah zero chances of any ban happening. It would have destroyed their whole business model.
Call me oldschool, but pricing and payment should be separate from the competition and ranking, aka pricemony should come from outside IF needed at all.
And further, if you rely on this, to make you look good, in order to make money of your reputation, then frankly i believe the whole of the ITC has an issue with integrity. And you don't solve that with a "year long" (short) ban for the organiser. Not to mention that the lack of integrity can damage legitimaty, something ITC allready has issues with .
Cannot agree more with the highlighted. I've already made my feelings about the necessity for 40k coaching known and if people want to spend money on it then so be it. However, if the business side of that coaching relies on standings in the ITC then I think the people offering the coaching need to be a lot more distanced from the organisation of events and hold themselves to a much higher standard than we've seen recently.
indeed. Hammer meet nailhead.
the fact however that it is tolerated or even encouraged, because at that point that mini "ban" is encouragement, we have reached, as gundam pointed out, peak clownshow.
Pretty much on point. Without that separation or lack of standards, I can't see how anyone can take the ITC seriously. Offering coaching services is just the cherry on top. It's like people telling you random appearing volcanos are a thing while at the same time trying to sell you volcano insurance.
Maybe the coaching services should focus on how to create events, have people drop out last minute, how to use ringers to counter such submitted lists, etc lol
Maybe the coaching services should focus on how to create events, have people drop out last minute, how to use ringers to counter such submitted lists, etc lol
Maybe the coaching services should focus on how to create events, have people drop out last minute, how to use ringers to counter such submitted lists, etc lol
You assume they don't already....
I mean it's assumed they do. Just saying them coaching how to massage the ITC rankings would be the complete coaching package lol
Can anyone really act surprised by the behavior though?
Competitive 40k in a nutshell is essentially stressing the rule set to the breaking point. These guys literally look for glitches and holes, and people reward them by acting like they are brilliant, for what is in my view, finding said holes in a colander lol.
So your now saying they are also willing to exploit the tournament/format ruleset? Yea, color me not surprised at all.
It's funny how folks can clearly see the one application as foul, but celebrate the other like they are trail blazers lol.
Red Corsair wrote: Can anyone really act surprised by the behavior though?
Competitive 40k in a nutshell is essentially stressing the rule set to the breaking point. These guys literally look for glitches and holes, and people reward them by acting like they are brilliant, for what is in my view, finding said holes in a colander lol.
So your now saying they are also willing to exploit the tournament/format ruleset? Yea, color me not surprised at all.
It's funny how folks can clearly see the one application as foul, but celebrate the other like they are trail blazers lol.
Being somewhat new, I had no idea how ITC rankings worked until this latest shady thing happened and I saw it happens pretty often. It became apparent they were really easy to tweak, so having a high rank is a pointless flex tbh.
And you are right, exploiting broken units/lists isn't really a ground breaking strategy, it is just pushing the broken meta until the colander gets patched..and then off to find the next leak lol
It's what happens when you take anything meant for casual time with friends and try to turn it into some sort of professional circuit and E-sport.
I always thought idolizing the best general at events lead to more below board behavior. So imagine compiling every event into one giant point system with one spot on top of all of them? Yea, no surprise from me lol.
Oh wait, your adding prizes and sponsorship on top of that?
Surprise surprise!
This really is a situation that would be much worse if it wasn't so damned funny though.
This is some Home Alone Wet Bandit type of failed theft ROFL
The saddest thing in this is the sheer volume of people who either look up to these players as role models somehow, or are so desperate and dependent on the ITC because it must have ranking and points to make it a serious "sport".
I'm fairly confident both of these things could only happen in/originate from the US.
Red Corsair wrote: This is possibly the funniest/most pathetic thing I have heard in a while.
It's like the nerdiest, neck beardiest, lamest organized crime scheme ever lol.
That Nurgle Inquirer gak post also simultaneously made the whole thing that much better.
I'm in tears over here
My reaction to the letter.
The idea someone would take a beer and pretzels game that was designed to be played with your buddies over a couple drinks to a level where there is organized rigging of rankings is comic gold. Seriously people are cheating the system to seem better at a toy soldier game to the other players of the game.
Someone needs to call up Christopher Guest, I think we found the story for his next mockumentary.
Dudeface wrote: The saddest thing in this is the sheer volume of people who either look up to these players as role models somehow, or are so desperate and dependent on the ITC because it must have ranking and points to make it a serious "sport".
I'm fairly confident both of these things could only happen in/originate from the US.
There is nothing wrong with attempting to make the game competitive. Atleast not inherently. What is wrong, is attempting to do so, and then tolerating such behaviour, especially when you allready have a lack of legitimicay prescribed to your system because you have modified the ruleset allready to make comp work.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/16 08:34:23
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Dudeface wrote: The saddest thing in this is the sheer volume of people who either look up to these players as role models somehow, or are so desperate and dependent on the ITC because it must have ranking and points to make it a serious "sport".
I'm fairly confident both of these things could only happen in/originate from the US.
There is nothing wrong with attempting to make the game competitive. Atleast not inherently.
What is wrong, is attempting to do so, and then tolerating such behaviour, especially when you allready have a lack of legitimicay prescribed to your system because you have modified the ruleset allready to make comp work.
It can be competitive without being a world or even nation ranked sport though, I know natural tendencies usually head that way, especially in very large countries though.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/16 10:24:55
Also true.
that doesn't change the fact though that if it is run "as a sport" then it should enforce and maintain it's legitimacy and integrity.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
beast_gts wrote: So apparently there was an ITC Ironman tournament in Florida last weekend which had a few issues. Blood of Kittens has a not exactly balanced write-up (copied below) - has anyone seen anything else about it? There's been some chatter on Facebook about it, but that's all 2nd & 3rd hand and focusing on what the ITC should do in the future.
Spoiler:
All we are saying is give ITC exploitation a chance?
Just when you thought Covid had killed Warhammer 40k competitive drama for the time being; it seems pandemic petri states like Florida anything is still possible. This particular Warhammer 40k Tournament drama situation, is one I had foreseen coming for a long time. Last weekend, the lovely Warhammer 40k players of Florida decided to try to run two one-day GTs. The idea is simple; farm ITC points not once but twice, over a weekend by doing self-styled 5 game “Ironman” events. All you have to do is find 28 players who are willing to play five games in one day.
On the surface, while a pretty insane test of tabletop endurance it is not that noteworthy. What makes this particular case interesting are the players involved, because any time you take a nebulous ranking system, and tie it to ego or profit motives you can get some bad behavior.
Here are the bullet points of what happened. Team Brohammer the Top ITC team of 2019, which includes a quite a few of the best Warhammer 40k players decided time was running out on getting sweet ITC points. More importantly, one member of Brohammer is so close to the number one spot in the ITC, any GT win could be the difference. Another wrinkle is this still 2nd ranked ITC player is part of Warhammer 40k hype house known as Art of War, who specialize in selling coaching services for the garage neck beard Morlocks of 40k society. Art of War also continues to try and Jake Paul Warhammer 40k through Twitch, Podcasts, and YouTube as well. Art of War already houses the 2018 and 2019 ITC champs, so making sure this Covid stained 2020 ITC season champ is also in the Vlog squad might be of paramount importance.
That leads us to the actual “Ironman” events, organized by Brohammer and supported by Art of War. Where day one got 30 (2 above GT status) players, of which 5 magically dropped out after game one. Then we had the odd situation where the #1 ITC player (member of Brohammer & Art of War) from 2019 is the ringer with a gak kicker list playing folks who might get in the way of making sure the current 2nd place ITC player (Brohammer & Art of War) wins the event. This potential collusion creampie as you can imagine has not sat well with tournament organizers; the ITC, and newest keeper of the rage flame current Top ITC player, who feels like Brohammer’s attempt at rigging the system is really in poor taste.
Now what I just described is pretty cynical, as one who looks down on the unregulated competitive Warhammer 40k scene, do you blame me? What amount of motive you want to place on Brohammer and/or Art of War is up to you, and since I was not at the event I can only speculate. The 2nd place ITC player did play real games against real tough opponents at this “GT”, so it wasn’t like the event was handed to him, in fact he had to beat the 3rd ranked player in the ITC to win the event. What my dramatization does say about this event and the players involved though is the danger of allowing profit/status motives get in the way of true competition. When your whole business model is based on having or being the “best” players; you run the risk of doing stupid stuff, ultimately hurt your brand, or at the very least make people question how you got to where you are in the first place.
This seems to be the trademark of Brohammer brief history; from mostly unfounded arranged tie games to, how at Las Vegas Open 2019 almost the entire team took identical lists using obscured rules interactions to get as close as possible to breaking the game. Brohammer likes to come right up to the edge. Like these one day GTs, which are permitted under the ITC rules, and how they were organized didn’t explicitly break anything. You can have an event with 100 players, call yourself a major then have 60 drop out after round one, and still be a considered a major. Exploiting such things though makes your wins and points look cheap and unearned, but I guess the idea is no one will remember how you got the gold medal once it is all said and done.
As long as the Art of War can claim their Cielo Drive home has the last three ITC champs inside, then it makes it that much easier to take money from semi-pros who get entrapped by pedestrian marketing schemes. So I hope you can see the possible conflicts developing. Art of War is also not the only group doing similar things, with Glasshammer being the equivalent British version. If these type ventures end up successful is still up in the air, but one thing is certain I don’t think either are the type of home the majority of players want to live in.
For the love of God. It's a fething toy game. This kind of crap is why I left the hobby, the constant drive to flavor of the month, or to "run the meta" was just insane. Then you have this kind of nonsense where people are trying to play in the middle of a pandemic? Feth off.
Dudeface wrote: The saddest thing in this is the sheer volume of people who either look up to these players as role models somehow, or are so desperate and dependent on the ITC because it must have ranking and points to make it a serious "sport".
I'm fairly confident both of these things could only happen in/originate from the US.
There is nothing wrong with attempting to make the game competitive. Atleast not inherently.
What is wrong, is attempting to do so, and then tolerating such behaviour, especially when you allready have a lack of legitimicay prescribed to your system because you have modified the ruleset allready to make comp work.
Exactly. If people want to make 40k competitive, cool. If they also want to turn it into some sort of e-sports style national/international circuit with ranking points and overall champions, also cool, I guess (though I'd advise using a better, deeper, more balanced game for that). But if you're going to do that you need to do it right and you need to create your own legitimacy through your actions. Tolerating cheating or collusion is the fastest way to make a mockery of your own system.
That's not even getting into the stupidity of hosting in-person tournaments right now, all so you can manipulate your rankings in the toy-soldier community.
beast_gts wrote: So apparently there was an ITC Ironman tournament in Florida last weekend which had a few issues. Blood of Kittens has a not exactly balanced write-up (copied below) - has anyone seen anything else about it? There's been some chatter on Facebook about it, but that's all 2nd & 3rd hand and focusing on what the ITC should do in the future.
Spoiler:
All we are saying is give ITC exploitation a chance?
Just when you thought Covid had killed Warhammer 40k competitive drama for the time being; it seems pandemic petri states like Florida anything is still possible. This particular Warhammer 40k Tournament drama situation, is one I had foreseen coming for a long time. Last weekend, the lovely Warhammer 40k players of Florida decided to try to run two one-day GTs. The idea is simple; farm ITC points not once but twice, over a weekend by doing self-styled 5 game “Ironman” events. All you have to do is find 28 players who are willing to play five games in one day.
On the surface, while a pretty insane test of tabletop endurance it is not that noteworthy. What makes this particular case interesting are the players involved, because any time you take a nebulous ranking system, and tie it to ego or profit motives you can get some bad behavior.
Here are the bullet points of what happened. Team Brohammer the Top ITC team of 2019, which includes a quite a few of the best Warhammer 40k players decided time was running out on getting sweet ITC points. More importantly, one member of Brohammer is so close to the number one spot in the ITC, any GT win could be the difference. Another wrinkle is this still 2nd ranked ITC player is part of Warhammer 40k hype house known as Art of War, who specialize in selling coaching services for the garage neck beard Morlocks of 40k society. Art of War also continues to try and Jake Paul Warhammer 40k through Twitch, Podcasts, and YouTube as well. Art of War already houses the 2018 and 2019 ITC champs, so making sure this Covid stained 2020 ITC season champ is also in the Vlog squad might be of paramount importance.
That leads us to the actual “Ironman” events, organized by Brohammer and supported by Art of War. Where day one got 30 (2 above GT status) players, of which 5 magically dropped out after game one. Then we had the odd situation where the #1 ITC player (member of Brohammer & Art of War) from 2019 is the ringer with a gak kicker list playing folks who might get in the way of making sure the current 2nd place ITC player (Brohammer & Art of War) wins the event. This potential collusion creampie as you can imagine has not sat well with tournament organizers; the ITC, and newest keeper of the rage flame current Top ITC player, who feels like Brohammer’s attempt at rigging the system is really in poor taste.
Now what I just described is pretty cynical, as one who looks down on the unregulated competitive Warhammer 40k scene, do you blame me? What amount of motive you want to place on Brohammer and/or Art of War is up to you, and since I was not at the event I can only speculate. The 2nd place ITC player did play real games against real tough opponents at this “GT”, so it wasn’t like the event was handed to him, in fact he had to beat the 3rd ranked player in the ITC to win the event. What my dramatization does say about this event and the players involved though is the danger of allowing profit/status motives get in the way of true competition. When your whole business model is based on having or being the “best” players; you run the risk of doing stupid stuff, ultimately hurt your brand, or at the very least make people question how you got to where you are in the first place.
This seems to be the trademark of Brohammer brief history; from mostly unfounded arranged tie games to, how at Las Vegas Open 2019 almost the entire team took identical lists using obscured rules interactions to get as close as possible to breaking the game. Brohammer likes to come right up to the edge. Like these one day GTs, which are permitted under the ITC rules, and how they were organized didn’t explicitly break anything. You can have an event with 100 players, call yourself a major then have 60 drop out after round one, and still be a considered a major. Exploiting such things though makes your wins and points look cheap and unearned, but I guess the idea is no one will remember how you got the gold medal once it is all said and done.
As long as the Art of War can claim their Cielo Drive home has the last three ITC champs inside, then it makes it that much easier to take money from semi-pros who get entrapped by pedestrian marketing schemes. So I hope you can see the possible conflicts developing. Art of War is also not the only group doing similar things, with Glasshammer being the equivalent British version. If these type ventures end up successful is still up in the air, but one thing is certain I don’t think either are the type of home the majority of players want to live in.
For the love of God. It's a fething toy game. This kind of crap is why I left the hobby, the constant drive to flavor of the month, or to "run the meta" was just insane. Then you have this kind of nonsense where people are trying to play in the middle of a pandemic? Feth off.
I stopped a long time ago with the comp scene, i still follow it , as it is one amongst many indicators of the state of balance, which i take into account when i run a campaign with mates and friends.
But this frankly is the pinnacle of absurdity and ironically doing it during the pandemic is just the qualifying earmark that certain teams that intend to turn this into a buissness venture should frankly just outright be banned from play and any LGS /offical GW store.
This is actually damaging, giving the whole of the community by beeing associated with them a bad reputation as antisocial idiots.
Exactly. If people want to make 40k competitive, cool. If they also want to turn it into some sort of e-sports style national/international circuit with ranking points and overall champions, also cool, I guess (though I'd advise using a better, deeper, more balanced game for that). But if you're going to do that you need to do it right and you need to create your own legitimacy through your actions. Tolerating cheating or collusion is the fastest way to make a mockery of your own system.
That's not even getting into the stupidity of hosting in-person tournaments right now, all so you can manipulate your rankings in the toy-soldier community.
The lower part is frankly just the icing on the gak-cake. How fething stupid can a group of people be in the name of greed.
And it tarnishes us all, the fact that we even accept this, or the slight mini ban with 0 fething consequences should give us pause, especially the bigger venues and hosters as to what the actual feth we are doing.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/16 11:31:39
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Same kind of stuff happened in the Warmachine circuit as well so I’m not at all surprised. A stink was raised when in the final round of a tournament where the winner got a spot in a later invitational, his opponent who was a friend of his and had already previously won a spot in an earlier event forfeit.
How did the ITC gain such prominence? Note I’m not going anywhere with this, I’m just interested in the overall history.
I think it was mostly because GW doesnt care for the competitive scene and 40k does have a lot of players in the US. Frontline started the ITC so if you take a large community of players that would like to have a competitive scene with zero competition, it makes sense why they got prominence.
But that aside, there look to be conflicts of interest, questionable practices, and a bunch of other things happenning. Like when I first got into the hobby the "competitive" scene looked like a good angle to the hobby, but now it looks more like Home Alone meme schemes to boos the rankings
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AduroT wrote: Same kind of stuff happened in the Warmachine circuit as well so I’m not at all surprised. A stink was raised when in the final round of a tournament where the winner got a spot in a later invitational, his opponent who was a friend of his and had already previously won a spot in an earlier event forfeit.
The use of the ringer in the shady tournament was also super sketch. Imagine having access to the lists and then just being able to cater your player lists to counter those?
Dudeface wrote: The saddest thing in this is the sheer volume of people who either look up to these players as role models somehow, or are so desperate and dependent on the ITC because it must have ranking and points to make it a serious "sport".
I'm fairly confident both of these things could only happen in/originate from the US.
There is nothing wrong with attempting to make the game competitive. Atleast not inherently.
What is wrong, is attempting to do so, and then tolerating such behaviour, especially when you allready have a lack of legitimicay prescribed to your system because you have modified the ruleset allready to make comp work.
yeah a legit not shady competitive scene could help 40k more mainstream. I mostly got this due to the social aspect and I m just using the pandemic to build my armies until the stores can open up
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/12/16 23:48:42
beast_gts wrote: So apparently there was an ITC Ironman tournament in Florida last weekend which had a few issues. Blood of Kittens has a not exactly balanced write-up (copied below) - has anyone seen anything else about it? There's been some chatter on Facebook about it, but that's all 2nd & 3rd hand and focusing on what the ITC should do in the future.
Spoiler:
All we are saying is give ITC exploitation a chance?
Just when you thought Covid had killed Warhammer 40k competitive drama for the time being; it seems pandemic petri states like Florida anything is still possible. This particular Warhammer 40k Tournament drama situation, is one I had foreseen coming for a long time. Last weekend, the lovely Warhammer 40k players of Florida decided to try to run two one-day GTs. The idea is simple; farm ITC points not once but twice, over a weekend by doing self-styled 5 game “Ironman” events. All you have to do is find 28 players who are willing to play five games in one day.
On the surface, while a pretty insane test of tabletop endurance it is not that noteworthy. What makes this particular case interesting are the players involved, because any time you take a nebulous ranking system, and tie it to ego or profit motives you can get some bad behavior.
Here are the bullet points of what happened. Team Brohammer the Top ITC team of 2019, which includes a quite a few of the best Warhammer 40k players decided time was running out on getting sweet ITC points. More importantly, one member of Brohammer is so close to the number one spot in the ITC, any GT win could be the difference. Another wrinkle is this still 2nd ranked ITC player is part of Warhammer 40k hype house known as Art of War, who specialize in selling coaching services for the garage neck beard Morlocks of 40k society. Art of War also continues to try and Jake Paul Warhammer 40k through Twitch, Podcasts, and YouTube as well. Art of War already houses the 2018 and 2019 ITC champs, so making sure this Covid stained 2020 ITC season champ is also in the Vlog squad might be of paramount importance.
That leads us to the actual “Ironman” events, organized by Brohammer and supported by Art of War. Where day one got 30 (2 above GT status) players, of which 5 magically dropped out after game one. Then we had the odd situation where the #1 ITC player (member of Brohammer & Art of War) from 2019 is the ringer with a gak kicker list playing folks who might get in the way of making sure the current 2nd place ITC player (Brohammer & Art of War) wins the event. This potential collusion creampie as you can imagine has not sat well with tournament organizers; the ITC, and newest keeper of the rage flame current Top ITC player, who feels like Brohammer’s attempt at rigging the system is really in poor taste.
Now what I just described is pretty cynical, as one who looks down on the unregulated competitive Warhammer 40k scene, do you blame me? What amount of motive you want to place on Brohammer and/or Art of War is up to you, and since I was not at the event I can only speculate. The 2nd place ITC player did play real games against real tough opponents at this “GT”, so it wasn’t like the event was handed to him, in fact he had to beat the 3rd ranked player in the ITC to win the event. What my dramatization does say about this event and the players involved though is the danger of allowing profit/status motives get in the way of true competition. When your whole business model is based on having or being the “best” players; you run the risk of doing stupid stuff, ultimately hurt your brand, or at the very least make people question how you got to where you are in the first place.
This seems to be the trademark of Brohammer brief history; from mostly unfounded arranged tie games to, how at Las Vegas Open 2019 almost the entire team took identical lists using obscured rules interactions to get as close as possible to breaking the game. Brohammer likes to come right up to the edge. Like these one day GTs, which are permitted under the ITC rules, and how they were organized didn’t explicitly break anything. You can have an event with 100 players, call yourself a major then have 60 drop out after round one, and still be a considered a major. Exploiting such things though makes your wins and points look cheap and unearned, but I guess the idea is no one will remember how you got the gold medal once it is all said and done.
As long as the Art of War can claim their Cielo Drive home has the last three ITC champs inside, then it makes it that much easier to take money from semi-pros who get entrapped by pedestrian marketing schemes. So I hope you can see the possible conflicts developing. Art of War is also not the only group doing similar things, with Glasshammer being the equivalent British version. If these type ventures end up successful is still up in the air, but one thing is certain I don’t think either are the type of home the majority of players want to live in.
For the love of God. It's a fething toy game. This kind of crap is why I left the hobby, the constant drive to flavor of the month, or to "run the meta" was just insane. Then you have this kind of nonsense where people are trying to play in the middle of a pandemic? Feth off.
I stopped a long time ago with the comp scene, i still follow it , as it is one amongst many indicators of the state of balance, which i take into account when i run a campaign with mates and friends.
But this frankly is the pinnacle of absurdity and ironically doing it during the pandemic is just the qualifying earmark that certain teams that intend to turn this into a buissness venture should frankly just outright be banned from play and any LGS /offical GW store.
This is actually damaging, giving the whole of the community by beeing associated with them a bad reputation as antisocial idiots.
Exactly. If people want to make 40k competitive, cool. If they also want to turn it into some sort of e-sports style national/international circuit with ranking points and overall champions, also cool, I guess (though I'd advise using a better, deeper, more balanced game for that). But if you're going to do that you need to do it right and you need to create your own legitimacy through your actions. Tolerating cheating or collusion is the fastest way to make a mockery of your own system.
That's not even getting into the stupidity of hosting in-person tournaments right now, all so you can manipulate your rankings in the toy-soldier community.
The lower part is frankly just the icing on the gak-cake. How fething stupid can a group of people be in the name of greed.
And it tarnishes us all, the fact that we even accept this, or the slight mini ban with 0 fething consequences should give us pause, especially the bigger venues and hosters as to what the actual feth we are doing.
the way the tournament was set up, like 20% of the players "dropping out" same day, tournament sponsors using a ringer as player and organizing the tournament in a supposed pandemic hot zone, you really dont know where to begin lol
How did the ITC gain such prominence? Note I’m not going anywhere with this, I’m just interested in the overall history.
For years GW didn't have any real official competitive ruleset. Nothing akin to Steamroller or Gaining Grounds or whatever you want to call it. That didn't stop people from running tournaments, but for the most part any scenario elements were up to the TO. The ITC basically started as someone's homebrew scenarios designed to help balance out the game. They gained traction, got shared online and started being used by other TOs that didn't want to invent their own. It got adopted by TOs running major convention events people regularly practiced for and built a reputation is the primary tournament scenario packet in the US.
1) ITC measures something akin to skill level. Maybe it's better to call it endurance, your score goes up the more tournaments you participate in - provided you place. That's not a useless metric and it probably does correlate to actual talent. But people should be clear about what it measures and stop pretending it's something else.
2) The people complaining about the Ironman don't seem to understand point 1. They are projecting some other meaning on the score as if it's some kind of scam. The arguments about ethics seem divorced from the reality of what the score measures. They should not be treated as serious people, but more as goofballs who just want to yell. They ruin the scene, probably don't have any friends and are incapable of winning anything. Amplifying their voices just puts more suck out into the world.
3) Right now, significant numbers of people who would attend tournaments are not able to due to Covid. They have high risk factors, live in a place with extreme lock downs, or they just don't trust what could happen. Tournament results for 2020 should have an asterisk next to them, even if they are being compiled for use in ITC scoring. No one thinks the competition pool is as big as it should be.
4) In high school, I was a scratch golfer. I made money through private lessons, caddying and bets on the outcomes of competitive games. I shot a 70 on a bad day. There is nothing wrong with having a talent and sharing it with others even when it's for money. There is nothing wrong with using competition to promote your talents, yourself as a person, some group you belong to, etc. That's how the world should work.
Expanding on the golf thing, I used to call myself the Golden Boy and make outlandish claims about being the best there ever has been, telling people they're lucky to be seeing me before I peak, asking men to keep their wives away to avoid alienation of affection, and how I'm related to Rick Flair and got all the good genes that skipped him.
None of that was true, nor is there anything wrong with the fact I said it. I like to compete, it was entertaining to build this image of myself as that person, and anyone who wanted to challenge me was free to pick up a club.
That's how differences over a game should be settled, not these stupid polemics. If you're better than the top ITC player, prove it or shut up.
Sometimes when I hear someone complain about a tournament I try to figure out who they are. It's hard because none of the ones I was able to identify ever placed in a tournament or invested much time trying to be the better player. They're really just babies looking for attention because it's not happening for them on the tabletop. They're using any excuse they can to take down the people who are putting the work in, showing up and actually playing the game. That's victory for some people, making everyone who actually succeeds out to be a monster and twisting the truth about outcomes out to be something other than what they are.
Rots the tournament scene when you give them a voice. You are making the world measurably worse when you let them run their mouths, repeat what they say, promote it on other forums, or treat them as anything but losers.
1) ITC measures something akin to skill level. Maybe it's better to call it endurance, your score goes up the more tournaments you participate in - provided you place. That's not a useless metric and it probably does correlate to actual talent. But people should be clear about what it measures and stop pretending it's something else.
2) The people complaining about the Ironman don't seem to understand point 1. They are projecting some other meaning on the score as if it's some kind of scam. The arguments about ethics seem divorced from the reality of what the score measures. They should not be treated as serious people, but more as goofballs who just want to yell. They ruin the scene, probably don't have any friends and are incapable of winning anything. Amplifying their voices just puts more suck out into the world.
3) Right now, significant numbers of people who would attend tournaments are not able to due to Covid. They have high risk factors, live in a place with extreme lock downs, or they just don't trust what could happen. Tournament results for 2020 should have an asterisk next to them, even if they are being compiled for use in ITC scoring. No one thinks the competition pool is as big as it should be.
4) In high school, I was a scratch golfer. I made money through private lessons, caddying and bets on the outcomes of competitive games. I shot a 70 on a bad day. There is nothing wrong with having a talent and sharing it with others even when it's for money. There is nothing wrong with using competition to promote your talents, yourself as a person, some group you belong to, etc. That's how the world should work.
Expanding on the golf thing, I used to call myself the Golden Boy and make outlandish claims about being the best there ever has been, telling people they're lucky to be seeing me before I peak, asking men to keep their wives away to avoid alienation of affection, and how I'm related to Rick Flair and got all the good genes that skipped him.
None of that was true, nor is there anything wrong with the fact I said it. I like to compete, it was entertaining to build this image of myself as that person, and anyone who wanted to challenge me was free to pick up a club.
That's how differences over a game should be settled, not these stupid polemics. If you're better than the top ITC player, prove it or shut up.
Sometimes when I hear someone complain about a tournament I try to figure out who they are. It's hard because none of the ones I was able to identify ever placed in a tournament or invested much time trying to be the better player. They're really just babies looking for attention because it's not happening for them on the tabletop. They're using any excuse they can to take down the people who are putting the work in, showing up and actually playing the game. That's victory for some people, making everyone who actually succeeds out to be a monster and twisting the truth about outcomes out to be something other than what they are.
Rots the tournament scene when you give them a voice. You are making the world measurably worse when you let them run their mouths, repeat what they say, promote it on other forums, or treat them as anything but losers.
Don't do it.
for reference,
the context of this thread was groups of people creating questionable tournaments to exploit an amateur ranking system in order to sell services. At NO POINT no one here said they were better than those players.
No one here wants the tournament scene to die. But it would be taken more seriously if the organizers would enforce such rules whenever questionable tactics were used to push yourself in the rankings. When the organizers don't do that, then the clown show ensues like we all saw.
If you would have kept that in mind, it would have saved you such a long post. Otherwise, it just looks like a long elaborate red herring.
I'm still waiting for any legit proof it was a questionable tournament. I see an original post full of so much innuendo and emotion I cant take it seriously. people drop out in the second round after losing in the first all the dang time, Give me a break. Oh the winner's friend was in the tournament OMG that never happens. As far as the whole scheduling discussion I remember a couple years ago I'd often end up in an impromptu sanctioned magic tournament that would happen cause we had a critical mass at the game store. Sorry sounds like people making a mountain out of a mole hill.
There's no such thing as an illegitimate tournament. The accusations in the article are paranoid and ridiculous.
ITC allows people to organize ad-hoc tournaments in an amateur circuit and recognizes their achievements. By the nature of the scoring system, scores go higher when you place in more games. There's nothing more to it than that.
So the tournament format was 10 games over 2 days. So what? Top players should be optimizing their play to increase their rankings in any system because that's exactly what top players do. There's nothing unethical or immoral about getting more games in, you're just blaming people for understanding the rules and playing by them. All the talk about pushing things to the edge, almost breaking the game - come on. That's not serious, that's just some little person making things sound bad because he's got nothing real to complain about.
Let's be generous. Pretend the accusations about ringers, staging ties, etc to grow and sustain a streaming audience are actual facts. How does being the ITC champion translate into subscribers? Like, is there a way to quantify the benefit someone receives by having the top spot?
Talent and having something to say seem to be more important factors in growing an audience than someone's ITC ranking. Anyone who believes having that spot translates into money - the kind of money that would make it worthwhile to rig tournaments - needs to really consider what lead them to that conclusion. Like, what specific dollar amounts could be expected to be earned by virtue of having this title. How does that compare with the costs of organizing the tournament, logistics, etc?
If the return is not 10x the cost, it's unlikely a team of people would decide it's worth the trouble. They are probably motivated by factors that have nothing to do with finance. Not knowing anything about the business model under which TB operates, I can tell you they probably don't make much money at this and all have day jobs. $100 in additional superchat money over a month split between everyone on the team is not going to make this worthwhile.
Which brings me to the point of the previous letter. It's 2020, the talent pool for tournaments is shallow. If someone wants to be King of the ITC, it's with an asterisk. ITC scores measure something, part of it is being able to play games. That's not the reality for a lot of people right now so the position itself doesn't mean much to begin with.
The letter is a repetitional attack on the members of Team Brohammer over something that means very little. The accusations are petty and designed to create outrage and drama. Acting like they're anything but nonsense is silly.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/17 05:31:05
Jerram wrote: I'm still waiting for any legit proof it was a questionable tournament. I see an original post full of so much innuendo and emotion I cant take it seriously. people drop out in the second round after losing in the first all the dang time, Give me a break. Oh the winner's friend was in the tournament OMG that never happens. As far as the whole scheduling discussion I remember a couple years ago I'd often end up in an impromptu sanctioned magic tournament that would happen cause we had a critical mass at the game store. Sorry sounds like people making a mountain out of a mole hill.
The issue is not the tournament, but the marketing and therefore posibility to make money off it, for further reputational gain. Whilest other players in the same league can't due to the difference in strictness of lockdowns etc. Basically you have a counting league, that doesn't really meassure skill but endurance, whilest outside forces disallow certain players to partake , which is a situation taken advantage by this group. Or in other words the comptetition for the rankings doesn't play for some anymore since they can just do tournaments whilest others can't. The correct thing would've been to state as the ITC, nope no more points until x date.
Beyond the fact that it is completely fething slowed to have a tournament during the pandemic but that's besides now isn't it.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/12/17 07:54:00
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GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
not gonna lie, that is some serious 
