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When you rate comp, what do you use to determine the rating that you give someone?

I voted 'other'.

Comp (I believe) was used as a way of implementing restrictions on armies (either based in the fluff or based on percieved loopholes in the codex) that should have been in the codex in the first place if it was written as a fully competitive game.

In other words, comp was essentially created to help balance army lists for tournament play that should have been in the codex/rules to begin with.

Of course, it is utlimately a very flawed concept because no two people agree upon what is "fluffy" or "cheesy".

If comp isn't punishing armies that are too "powerful," regardless of the rationale, then I don't know what it is.

I've said for a long time comp should be replaced with 'Handicap' reflected the fact that some armies are much, much harder to win with than others. Someone who goes 3-0 with a foot Ork army deserves a lot more respect than a drop pod army.

So I went with punish strong armies.

In an ideal world, it would be choice 1- reward armies that have a good theme or fit the background well.  Tragically, the majority of players see their made-up, far fetched "background" as an excuse to min-max or cheese out their army.  Also, many feel that if the army won, it must have poor comp.  Therefor, I went with choice two.

While it would be nice if it actually rewarded those armies that have a good theme, fit the background and aren't overly optimized exercises in mathematics, the reality is it's a highly subjective system that is used to punish what people perceive as overly powerful armies, regardless if justified or not. Excellent generalship and good luck with the dice can allow a crap list knock the snot out of some cookie cutter list, especially if the user hasn't a clue what they are doing.

But backgroun does not always mean a balanced army. A 4 ordinence Iron Warrior amry or drop-pod marines are fluffy and they're grossly overpowered.

Ive seen to many guys rock marine army's with two 5 man scout squads and drop all there other points on Termi's and other hard hitting things. For instance one guy in our area has done the two 5 man scout squads and the rest of his army is maxed out with Termi squads with a$$ cannons, land speeders with a$$ cannons, land raiders with a$$ cannons, and dreads with a$$ cannons. 72 a$$ cannon shots a turn bud....weres your comp there?

Regardless its not fun playing this guy, actully no one really plays this guy cause his army comp isnt fair, ya its legal but come on. This same guy destroyed most people in a local turnament we had, he crushed everyone, and then complained that he didnt come in first......and he wounder'd why? Well I think like 7% or his army was troop choices and the army was built around exploting loop holes and what not....

I understand a few armies are built around specific ideas....like the Deathwing, Iron warriors, speed freaks, sticking to fluff is one thing I feel but...........

Thats my rant

Keep it real!

-MR.B

I knew the ratings here would be opposite to Warseer's version. I help keep the ratings that way.



Hell, background is ALWAYS talking about how powerful the ZOMG armies are. All of them. The background says "tehy rox0rz and conquer stuff and have kewl guns and are liek the best!" Seriously, it's weird that people say armies are overpowered and "don't fit the fluff" (in any way you interpret it) because all the codices are meant to sell their army, so they'll talk about that army being the most efficient and brutally efficacious fighting force ever to grace the universe. My Tau are "ultra-mobile, hard hitting" (heh, similar words in every other codex) with a bunch of other adjectives and adverbs but somehow having a 3-head, 3-crisis/stealth, 2-FW, 2-'el basis for a cadre is wrong. Eh.

As for Mr. B, aren't Space Marines said to be hit-and-run special forces? I'm pretty sure that an army that teleports in, hits you as hard as it can, while taking minimal losses, is in the marine background. Then again, like I said, similar backgrounds are written for all the other races, so speed freaks and Deathwing (overpowered?) are fluffy too. Demonbombs are pretty fluffy too - bunch of demons being summoned and utterly crushing their enemies and making their opponents afraid of 'em? Yeah, sounds like Chaos.

Punish the strong.

Crush the weak.

Fondle the Willing.

Pretend it's not In There.

Malfred blushes.

I've always advocated in the favor of comp, just not in the way it is usually used.

I think a clear comp system should be used so that everyone playing can give themselves a comp score prior to the tournament (example, if you field 2+ deep striking units, you get Xpts of comp). Of course, judges would have to confirm the scores. The "cheesier" your army, the more points you get.

Here's the catch, comp points should be used only to determine pairs, which means that if you have a powerfull army, you're more likely to face one. Of course, as the tournament progresses, the top "weak" armies will eventually face some of the top "hard" ones; it simply means someone who decides to field a cheesy army will get to play against tougher opponents even if he loses his first game or two, whereas some people have been rumoured in the past to intentionally get fewer points in their first game just so they would't play on head table all tournament long...

+Of course, once all the games have been played, comp is then discarded to determine final rankings...

You know, that's not a bad idea, Spinsane. Use "Comp" to determine pairings so the cheesemeisters face other cheesemeisters and the balanced guys fight other balanced guys, and then ignore Comp for determining who wins the tournament. Of course, the problem with that is that still 90% of the time the tourney will be won by a cheesemeister, which will thus prompt the balanced players to cry foul.

Posted By MR.B on 12/17/2006 1:13 PM

Well I think like 7% or his army was troop choices and the army was built around exploting loop holes and what not....

I play O'Shovah Tau and take only two minimum-sized (i.e. 6 models) squads of Fire Warriors, regardless of the points size of the battle. So in an 1,850 game, my Troops choices are only 6.5%. But this is typical of O'Shovah armies and I get no complaints. Not only is it fluffy, it's prudent.

If we apply rules to punish the donkey-cannon-toting player in your example, would the same rules punish my army?

I agree with Yakface on the actual purpose of comp.

The fact that few use it correctly or have a proper guide to do so is a different poll entirely.

Is there a thread about comp anywhere else that explains its breakdown?  Ive only briefly heard about it and have no idea how it is figured into the tournement setting.  I dont know which armies are considered to be to strong or to weak (as far as the comp goes). 

Could someone post a link to somewhere that breaks it down for me?

Most people don?t have copies, Vult. Rogue Trader tournaments used to have a fixed checklist, and the US Grand Tournaments have used a couple of different checklists at different times. These were used by the judges to score your list, and you could design your army taking the rules into account, so you knew what you would get. You could choose to make compromises in your army design, deciding where to go for comp points and where to sacrifice them so as not to make changes to your army that you didn?t want to. The Grand Tournament ones were published in advance. The Rogue Trader ones started as a secret, but the judges were allowed to give you feedback afterwards on what you could do to improve, and pretty quickly the list became public knowledge.

For the past three years or so they?ve been using opponent-scored comp, in which each player gets a scoresheet with either a 1-3 scale or a 1-5 scale, and rough descriptions of what kind of armies should get what score. Obviously this is a lot more subjective, and has been subject to some abuses by bad sports deliberately underscoring their opponents and friends maxing each other out every time. The current RT scoring sheet has trimmed it down even further to a four point scale for Sportsmanship and a three point scale (actually 0, 1 or 2) for combined Comp and Appearance of your opponent?s army:

http://us.games-workshop.com/community/rtt/downloads/assets/Tournament/ResultSheet.pdf

I?ve got the 2004 GT rules packet in one of my gaming cases, and MIGHT still have the 2001 packet around somewhere too. The 2004 rules include the scoring scale for grading your opponent and his army, and the 2001 packet had the details of the judge-scored comp system, which was VERY strict. Much tougher than the RT checklist below. I?ll try to dig them out for you, if you like.

The old RT scoring list was as follows, 2 points for each check:

1) Was the army list handed in on time and in the correct format?

2) Is the army list correct?

3) Does the army have more Troops choices than any other single category?

4) Do troop selections make up AT LEAST 40% of the total points of this army?

5) Are there at least TWO squads that are at maximum size?

6) Has the player spent less than 10% of their total points on wargear?

(NOTE: This includes all weapons and wargear for characters and all vehicle upgrades. Everything on the Armory page. For Tyranids you count mutations and psychic powers.)

7) Do all individual characters, squads, and the army itself have names?

8) Does the army have a theme or background to it?

9) In YOUR OPINION is this a cool army that would be fun to play against?

10) Is this army one of your top three picks?

------------

Since GW doesn?t support ANY fixed mathematical comp scoring system anymore, comp is often in the eye of the beholder. Many players still retain some general ?rules? in their heads which correspond to the old comp formulae. however. Stuff like ?Troops should make up the bulk of the army?, ?You shouldn?t spend a ton of points on wargear and characters?, ?Max-size squads are fluffy?, and ?Several repeated units with the exact same configuration and weaponry are lame.? I see those a lot, and lists which break those unwritten rules seem to get more complaints and criticisms.

Thank you for posting this.  Looking at what you posted for a checklist and comparing that to my army I think I would score fairly high on that.  Using all grey knights well over half of my points are in troops, and i never take more than 100 pts of wargear so thats all to the good for me.

Another question is are the points you score with comp compaired to your opponents comp score to give you a total? or do you just total up what you got on that list in each game that you play? 

I have a lot of questions because there are very seldom good 40K tournaments in this area, but I would love to find some GW or RT sanctioned tourneys to get involved in. 

Sorry, that checklist system just screams 'Play Loyalist Marines'

Vult-

Remember that this is an old list, not used in the current Rogue Trader tournaments. If you play in a local tournament with different rules, and which uses comp scoring, it might be a similar system.

In most tournaments in the US, you score points for several different things. Playing games, your sportsmanship, your army’s appearance, and your army’s composition or theme are the most common. The judges add all your points together, and the person with the highest total wins the tournament- the Overall Champion.

Skyth-

Most of the shooty marine armies at the time used small squads in Razorbacks.  Only the assaulty armies would usually use 10 man squads. 

 

Any codex could do get max comp.  I fielded a 10 model squad of Dire Avengers and a 22 model (full 20 + weapon crew) squad of Defenders to do it with my Codex: Eldar, which was not the ideal build, but I still won most of the RTs I entered.

I ignore it. All of my opponents get full points for comp. If I can't deal with what they put on the table, well that's my fault. I mostly do the same with sportsmanship, unless your a complete ass.

Comp IMO is a flawed concept designed to cover bad game design.

If the comp sheet has specific requirements then I score them as asked. Otherwise I give full comp for most everything (siren prince would be the only exception I can think of but never seen that in a tournament).

I have to agree with the general sentiment here. Subjectively scored comp is a crap shoot most of the time, unless your list is completely unoptimized (and even then you may still draw ire for some silly reason). And any structed comp system will favor particular armies and builds. The best system I've seen is the one used at Astronomicon but it still has some flaws (major one being it requires a judge to review ahead of time). I don't think it favors any particular army heavily (well drop pods are given a bit of a pass compwise but their torunaments are 1500 points so pods aren't as hard anyways). Also, comp score is used to create first game matchups (as mentioned above). I'm not a huge fan of comp but if its going to be used that is the system I'd prefer.

It's original intent is what Yakface posted in my opinion.

The comp Mannahnin posted from older RTT's turned out to punish some armies simply b/c it made little sense. Necrons had to field 2x 20 strong Necron Warrior squads (or is it 15?) or Chaos would have to field either 15 Demons to a squad or 20 Marines to get max size units. Theme was simply abused (the max number of Las/Plas squads of the past, currently max number of Assault Cannons for a 'theme').

While 40K isn't really designed as a tourney style game, comp was a way to curtail extreme army builds. However, GW never found a way to be reasonable and fair about their army comp scores. I believe this is why they have simply abandoned Comp for their upcoming (and current UK) GT's.

Bear in mind that the RT scoring system was invented by the US RT rules creators, not by the UK design studio.

Also remember that the current Chaos Codex (and its big maximum squad sizes) came out about two years AFTER said comp checklist. The Necron codex was later too. 

The guys who wrote the RT scoring rules did a pretty decent job, but they weren't working with the studio, and the studio didn't pay the RT rules any heed when they worked on new codices.

Ok basically I think the purpose of comp is Australia is so we don't see lists like those at the UKGT, because we don't like those lists.

Other people think many other reasons for why they like comp, but the majority of tournaments use comp to basically encourage variety and discourage lists that will ruin the fun for the opposing player (ie encourage lists that win turn 6 rather than turn 2).

It's used more as a tool to encourage people to do the right thing than to change who wins. The person with the highest battlepoint, painting, and sports score overall actually wins overall more than 90% of the time (I can recall 7 2006 tournaments where this has been true all 7 times).

Comp is just So Stupid, why dont they just get rid of it? we dont have comp scores here in the UK and after reading a few threads on comp I can see Why.
@onlainari REMEMBER its a competition, You donk go to a gunfight with a knife? Unless you want to lose.

What Yakface said.

(But Jester's post made me laugh more)