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Do most players prefer a tiered approach to scoring, where a wiping out an opponent gives you more points than beating an opponent in a close game, or beating him with finesse?

Or should a win give the same amount of points, no matter how big the margin of victory? I think under the old RTT days, the beatstick army would separate itself by getting 1-3 bonus points based in game objectives...

For example, I had 2 minor wins and a draw recently in a tournament. But Player X played a 12 year old and wiped him out....he got another win and a loss, and won the tournament, despite mine being a "better" overall record.

Any examples of a better scoring system? I think the Massacre system encourages players to gravitate towards certain types of armies.

( I once played at a store where VPs were recorded and used to determine tournament winner. Which meant you could lose all 3 games and still win. I once won a tournament there by replacing a player who dropped out and won with only 2 games worth of VPs.....UGH).

I like the massacre system. I prefer to get rewarded for winning big vs. playing keep away for the minor win. A flat win/loss/draw system can work but it doesn't spread the field enough in a 3 game tourney generally. Course I generally win big or tie

I once played tournaments where the winner was based on record first and battle points were used as a tiebreaker. Massacring a weak opponent won't mean a thing if you can't keep winning, but winning big will still be better than squeaking out a win.

Ah, the famous UK vs. US tournament scoring debate.

As a general rule, I like the missions like at Adepticon where you have several objectives that you have to achieve, and that any army can get.

My second favorite is strait W/L. The reason why is that some armies struggle to get massacres, but they can win games. Take Tau for instance, for the most part they are not going to table anyone, but they can win games. They have a better chance at winning a tournament that is strait W/L rather than one that rewards crushing your opponent.

My least favorite is the tiered scoring. It not only favors the toughest army builds, but it also favors certain armies.

Blackmoor wrote:Ah, the famous UK vs. US tournament scoring debate.

As a general rule, I like the missions like at Adepticon where you have several objectives that you have to achieve, and that any army can get.

My second favorite is strait W/L. The reason why is that some armies struggle to get massacres, but they can win games. Take Tau for instance, for the most part they are not going to table anyone, but they can win games. They have a better chance at willing a tournament that is strait W/L rather than one that rewards crushing your opponent.

My least favorite is the tiered scoring. It not only favors the toughest army builds, but it also favors certain armies.

I also prefer tournaments that use scenarios with multiple levels of objectives. This requires MUCH more thought in both list creation and in-game play that does merely attempting to table your opponent.

For example, if you have to commit your entire force to tabling an opponent, but by then lose out on a number of additional objectives because your units were out of position to contest objectives for the secondary/tertiary objectives, are you really a better player than someone who can soundly defeat their opponent while still satisfying all primary/secondary/tertiary objectives? In my mind, a player that can keep in mind and achieve all the objectives is far superior to a player that just wipes out their opponent. One inherently requires more thought than the other.

As a general rule, I like the missions like at Adepticon where you have several objectives that you have to achieve, and that any army can get.

The store the runs our local tournaments has recently adopted this scoring and it definitely helps stratify the participants better, especially in single day tournaments with only 3 games.

I go with Major Win, Minor Win, Draw. Tabling your opponent doesn't automatically give you a Major, you have you have enough stuff left to meet whatever the objectives were.

The nature of the objectives tends to leave about 2/3s getting Minors, and the rest split between Draws and Majors.

I'll play them all, but over the last couple of years have come to prefer the multiple objectives format, even tho that usually makes it harder for my IG.

The massacre system will always be flawed as long as the first round is "Hope I play the weakest person and prove how good I am.. er I mean get max points with no effort"

Kirasu wrote:The massacre system will always be flawed as long as the first round is "Hope I play the weakest person and prove how good I am.. er I mean get max points with no effort"

Actually, you don't want that max score in the first round of a 5 round tourney. Cause then you're facing all the other max scores. You want to be one step down, get some slightly easier games in rounds 2 and 3, then only face those tough games in the last couple of rounds.

Lots of objectives is not bad if the scoring is calculated right. At Conquest NW back in January you got 5 points for the "Bonus" objective while you got 15 points for a win, 10 for a tie, and 5 for a loss. 2 of my 3 ties I ended up getting the bonus objectives. I just didn't feel good about getting the same number of points for a tie as I did with getting a win.

don_mondo wrote:

Kirasu wrote:The massacre system will always be flawed as long as the first round is "Hope I play the weakest person and prove how good I am.. er I mean get max points with no effort"

Actually, you don't want that max score in the first round of a 5 round tourney. Cause then you're facing all the other max scores. You want to be one step down, get some slightly easier games in rounds 2 and 3, then only face those tough games in the last couple of rounds.

Haha...which is why I posted a suggestion in another thread to utilize a seeding system based on pool play followed by a single/double elimination tournament format, but that got shot down by people for various reasons.

Personally, I think the current system for getting RTT and GT winners is about as valid as the BCS is in American NCAA Football.

W/L/D plus bonus points for secondary objectives has always been the best. As noted, it lets armies which have a hard time getting Massacres compete better, and the secondary objectives allow the superior players to differentiate themselves.

Mannahnin wrote:W/L/D plus bonus points for secondary objectives has always been the best. As noted, it lets armies which have a hard time getting Massacres compete better, and the secondary objectives allow the superior players to differentiate themselves.

That's similar to the way I run my tournaments. I run custom scenarios, which some are straight objective missions, some use straight victory points, and others(my favorite) have a combination of the two. Then there's the Massacre/Major Victory/Minor Victory based on how many points you scored during the game (I use a custom Victory Points based system that works well with objective points)

I pair, and calculate victory based on wins/losses, but if there is a tie, then I use the game scoring as a tie breaker. If anyone is interested in the VP system we use, I'll post it, but I'm not sure exactly which forum it should go in. It's worked very well, and is a thousand times better than the crappy Space Marine Win Button that kill points are

Aramus wrote: It's worked very well, and is a thousand times better than the crappy Space Marine Win Button that kill points are

This killed your credibility for me.

As for straight W/L/D it just doesn't spread the field if enough people show up. So something else is required to make sure their is a clear winner. Multiple tier missions are the best way I've seen of doing this. Again my opinion.

I find both can be fun. For hard style events like ard boyz i prefer tiered wins.

For rogue traders I like just win loss draw. It means I dont have to absolutely table my opponent, and can make the game more fun as im not running down stragglers with fire prisms and stuff.

Hulksmash wrote:

Aramus wrote: It's worked very well, and is a thousand times better than the crappy Space Marine Win Button that kill points are

This killed your credibility for me.

As for straight W/L/D it just doesn't spread the field if enough people show up. So something else is required to make sure their is a clear winner. Multiple tier missions are the best way I've seen of doing this. Again my opinion.

How so? Take DE or Orks for example. How is a 5 man squad of DE in a raider worth EXACTLY as much as a 10 man Tac squad in a Rhino? One's less than 100 points, and the other one is worth well over 200. I don't know how many times I've won against my DE friend with DA in games that he should have won, but I beat him in kill points. I was exaggerating a bit (maybe a lot) by calling it what I did, but my point is still valid.

Since we've switched to the new system, I've not heard one complaint, and a lot of comments on how much they like it. YMMV of course.

KP's are a game design to limit people building extreme lists. By taking KP's out of the running you are taking away one of the major disadvantages armies like Mech Guard, Razorback Spam, Raider Spam and several others. Your "redesigning" the game by taking out a key component in 5th edition.

Don't get me wrong every TO that takes kill points out of the running I thank since it makes my army even tougher but I still don't think it should be done. Ever...

Ive seen quite a few events that feature both kill points and victory points, sometimes in the same mission.

And yes, kill points are necessary to stop MSU spam armies for stomping over most stuff.

Aramus wrote:
How so? Take DE or Orks for example. How is a 5 man squad of DE in a raider worth EXACTLY as much as a 10 man Tac squad in a Rhino? One's less than 100 points, and the other one is worth well over 200. I don't know how many times I've won against my DE friend with DA in games that he should have won, but I beat him in kill points. I was exaggerating a bit (maybe a lot) by calling it what I did, but my point is still valid.

Since we've switched to the new system, I've not heard one complaint, and a lot of comments on how much they like it. YMMV of course.

I do not want to turn this thread into a KP mission debate, but since your opponent knows that they are going to be KP missions why is he only taking 5 guys in a squad? Because there are KP, maybe he should take a look at his army and use more durable units and larger squads. I personally never change my armies for KP, and I often time have a ton of units, and I win a lot of KP missions. Maybe it is your opponents strategy, and maybe he should be picking off more rhinos.


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asugradinwa wrote:Lots of objectives is not bad if the scoring is calculated right. At Conquest NW back in January you got 5 points for the "Bonus" objective while you got 15 points for a win, 10 for a tie, and 5 for a loss. 2 of my 3 ties I ended up getting the bonus objectives. I just didn't feel good about getting the same number of points for a tie as I did with getting a win.

Maybe it is just a case of bad PR. Instead of calling them "bonus objectives" you call them "secondary objectives".

That way if you get a draw in the primary objective, and a win in the secondary objective it sounds right that you tie someone that only gets the primary objective.

don_mondo wrote:

Kirasu wrote:The massacre system will always be flawed as long as the first round is "Hope I play the weakest person and prove how good I am.. er I mean get max points with no effort"

Actually, you don't want that max score in the first round of a 5 round tourney. Cause then you're facing all the other max scores. You want to be one step down, get some slightly easier games in rounds 2 and 3, then only face those tough games in the last couple of rounds.

I think in any game you want to start out the tournament with a Max score in the first round and proceed to get Max scores throughout the rest of the event.

If you lose a few points in the first game and then get 4 Massacres you could lose the tourament to someone with 5 Massacres that you could have played had you performed better. It's all Chaos Theory though, no one can tell what would have happened if you had done something else.

Ive had a few many events where I got max score game one, did terrible game 2 and massacred round 3 to get third. Works in smaller 10-15 person events at least.

It's all about the Primary/Secondary with a possible Tertiary or bonus points. Though it does usually feel like the mission has no cohesive theme, the Tertiary objective is often kind of silly and feels like a complete after thought. It is very important that when using the 3 objective system you don't almost automatically get all 3 if you get the Primary. For example: Primary KP where HQ are 3, Secondary Kill all HQ, Tertiary Kill all ICs. I've seen this sort of thing alot, at least when it comes to objectives. Like Pri - Table Quarters, Sec - Control Terrain, Ter - Control Center of Board. Make sure the objectives are diversified!