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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.
If people are going to put any stock whatsoever in a rankings system that's very easily manipulated that's entirely on them, IMO. Yes, this looks pretty shady, and maybe it is, but the problems seem to stem from the undue importance put on the ITC rankings.
Frankly, I think anyone who pays money for 40k coaching is a moron but it's their money and the people offering the service aren't hiding what you get for your money. So if people really want to spend their money on such a service it makes sense that people are willing to offer it. Yes, there's then a bit of an ethical issue as highlighted in the article, where your position in the ITC rankings then becomes a key part of your marketing strategy. Again, that's at least as much of a problem with the stock people put in the ITC rankings system as it is with the running of a tournament like this.
In short, this is a whole bunch of highly predictable drama around an easily manipulated system, allegedly done to further enhance the reputation of a bunch of people offering services of extremely questionable value that people are nevertheless willing to pay for.
TIL that "40k Coaching" is a thing...wtf? How the hell do you "Coach" someone to play 40k? Is most of the course just how to hide credit card statements from your significant other?
"OK bro so what you wanna do if you wanna get ahead in competitive 40k is every time you make a purchase at the grocery store, you wanna get 20-40$ cash back. A couple of weeks of that and you probably have enough for the loss from an ebay army flip. Just complain to your wife that grocery prices are always getting more expensive, and try to substitute meals for rice and beans and ramen whenever you can bro."
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
the_scotsman wrote: TIL that "40k Coaching" is a thing...wtf? How the hell do you "Coach" someone to play 40k? Is most of the course just how to hide credit card statements from your significant other?
"OK bro so what you wanna do if you wanna get ahead in competitive 40k is every time you make a purchase at the grocery store, you wanna get 20-40$ cash back. A couple of weeks of that and you probably have enough for the loss from an ebay army flip. Just complain to your wife that grocery prices are always getting more expensive, and try to substitute meals for rice and beans and ramen whenever you can bro."
I think a lot of it is trying to get people to buy in to the idea in the first place. I watched a YT battle report recently from a prominent UK tournament player and it involved a Blood Angels army basically winning the game on turn one (this was apparently a competitive format battle report as well, which doesn't really paint the game in the best light). The thing that really struck me about it was how hard they were trying to convince people (themselves?) that there was a lot of depth to the game despite the obvious evidence to the contrary. They were using technical sounding terms like "board control" and "tempo" to try to add a veneer of depth that simply isn't warranted, while also trying to cover up the obvious mistakes by the Necron player who was getting annihilated. I'm aware that board control is a thing, BTW, but in the context it was used here it was just nonsense.
I'm sure it's a complete coincidence the people involved also sell 40k coaching services and that's absolutely not the reason they were trying to add depth and complication to a game that really doesn't have any /s
A lot of it is bleedover from e-sports culture. I find the marketing of Twitch to be... strange. A sign of my age I suppose, though I've watched every brick laid on the path. I just find the destination kind of hilarious and sad.
If there's a ranking with points, people will do silly things to "get the points".
Check YouTube for all the silly, blatantly obvious and laughable ways Donald Trump cheats at Golf. Doesn't even matter that everyone knows and sees as long as he's the "winner".
People cheat at video games all the time to "beat it", even if it's a single player solo-game campaign mode thing where the only thing they cheat is themselves out of content they paid for.
I don't get what the big deal is. How long have golf or bowling "pros" been earning money coaching new players? And I don't know how much dart league or bowling league drama I've heard over the years...
solkan wrote: I don't get what the big deal is. How long have golf or bowling "pros" been earning money coaching new players? And I don't know how much dart league or bowling league drama I've heard over the years...
It comes down to what you're actually selling. Golf, for example, is a sport which requires technique and co-ordination, which is extremely difficult to pick up just by watching someone else play. Chess, theoretically, can be picked up and learned without any coaching by a sufficiently dedicated player but has enough depth that coaching can massively speed up or jump-start that process.
The main problem with 40k "coaching" is that the game itself doesn't have enough depth to warrant it. There are a few little nuances to the gameplay but they're very easily picked up by anyone watching a few games on YT or reading some battle reports. The rest is more or less about being able to identify and jump on the next big meta bandwagon, which generally requires free time and cash rather than an abundance of skill. My issue with a lot of the "coaches" is as I describe above: there's an Emperor's new clothes kind of vibe to a lot of it where everyone involved seems to be desperately trying to justify the need for such a service.
Evidence seems to be contrary to your analysis. The fact that the same players seem to make their ways to the top of any tournament they are in says they know something about playing the game that others don't.
It just like those players who can't seem to win no matter what they do. It could be their list, but it can also be the lack of a core understanding of how to win the game.
alextroy wrote: Evidence seems to be contrary to your analysis. The fact that the same players seem to make their ways to the top of any tournament they are in says they know something about playing the game that others don't.
It just like those players who can't seem to win no matter what they do. It could be their list, but it can also be the lack of a core understanding of how to win the game.
I'm not saying there's no skill involved in winning a game of 40k. I'm saying the level of skill required is not something that should require payment and coaching to understand because the amount of "core understanding" required is pretty low. I'm also not blaming those who offer the coaching - if it's a service people are willing to pay for and you feel you can provide it then go for it. Ironically, I think the key thing that's needed to succeed in 40k is a willingness to engage in a little bit of thought about the metagame and a strong bank balance. People who pay for coaching are obviously sufficiently invested in terms of their time and money, which means they're probably the group that benefits least from the coaching.
The people winning tournaments are usually the ones that attend the most and switch armies the most to chase the meta. We seem to idolise certain gamers at the top of the ITC rankings yet easily forget those who do well in one tournament here or there, which may often be because they don't travel around the country playing multiple large tournaments every year. Also, need I remind people that Richard Siegler - one of the aforementioned "idolised" top players - basically came out of nowhere in 2019 and won loads of big tournaments. Maybe that means he's some kind of 40k savant...or maybe it's an indication that the game isn't quite the high-level deep tournament system some people seem to think it is.
Slipspace wrote: Frankly, I think anyone who pays money for 40k coaching is a moron but it's their money and the people offering the service aren't hiding what you get for your money. So if people really want to spend their money on such a service it makes sense that people are willing to offer it. Yes, there's then a bit of an ethical issue as highlighted in the article, where your position in the ITC rankings then becomes a key part of your marketing strategy. Again, that's at least as much of a problem with the stock people put in the ITC rankings system as it is with the running of a tournament like this.
In short, this is a whole bunch of highly predictable drama around an easily manipulated system, allegedly done to further enhance the reputation of a bunch of people offering services of extremely questionable value that people are nevertheless willing to pay for.
Yeah, it seems like that is the case. It was weird that this tournament did appear out of nowhere and it does look like it was just done for points farming.
I do agree that the game does have some depth but not as much as people think given that the meta changes often to meet GW sales goals.
Also the fact that first turn advantage does seem to influence the win ratio and thus having a strong meta army, can offset you not having the first turn. The more I watch the more I realize its less about skill and more about breaking the game as much as you can.
Take for example Nick from Art of War. He suppodsely won the most trophies ever but now can't win a single game in the Art of War stream in the last 6 months. Seems once the castle Tau was nerfed and more board strategy was implemented, there seems that took away his training wheels recipe.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/13 00:06:08
Doesn't really matter if it's "skill" or "keeping up with the latest loopholes", etc..
There's demand for that. People have been coming to Dakka for 20 years to ask the "interwebz" questions like "is this list any good", "what units should I take for my Orks to wreck face", "should I take Heavy Bolters or Flamers on my Chimera", etc..
Monetising that demand through a paywall and some marketing to convince people that the answers they get to these questions are a "premium" on Art of War, more valuable than the (probably often conflicting) answers to the same questions on dakka or facebook, the shining Apple-product-to-the-trashy-android, the Nike-swoosh-to-the-identical-10-bucks-no-brand-sneaker of "answering-internet-questions", isn't necessarily the worst idea, if you wanna make money off toy-soldiers.
It certainly seems a more sustainable business atm then trying to parasite of GW's popularity selling "not-Tau" or "not-Marines" bitz and knock-off figures or trying to keep a commission painting service afloat or whatever.
Successful business is about having demand, not having a logical reason for it.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Doesn't really matter if it's "skill" or "keeping up with the latest loopholes", etc..
There's demand for that. People have been coming to Dakka for 20 years to ask the "interwebz" questions like "is this list any good", "what units should I take for my Orks to wreck face", "should I take Heavy Bolters or Flamers on my Chimera", etc..
Monetising that demand through a paywall and some marketing to convince people that the answers they get to these questions are a "premium" on Art of War, more valuable than the (probably often conflicting) answers to the same questions on dakka or facebook, the shining Apple-product-to-the-trashy-android, the Nike-swoosh-to-the-identical-10-bucks-no-brand-sneaker of "answering-internet-questions", isn't necessarily the worst idea, if you wanna make money off toy-soldiers.
It certainly seems a more sustainable business atm then trying to parasite of GW's popularity selling "not-Tau" or "not-Marines" bitz and knock-off figures or trying to keep a commission painting service afloat or whatever.
Successful business is about having demand, not having a logical reason for it.
But the point of the thread originally was about creating fake tournaments in order to pump up the ITC rankings. So they could present the facade of being the "best" at playing make-believe war with plastic toys and charge "premium" for it.
Not whether it was smart to pay for coaching so you can better exploit the meta with your plastic toys.
The ITC page posted a reply by AoW but then blocked all replies from the post.
Needless to say, it looks like it was a bit sketchy. I guess they are lucky they just got the points removed instead of getting banned. The ITC Facebook admin closed all replies to that post.
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.
it was shady enough that the points were lost. The final was against the Twitch channel top gifter. Also, look at the previous message.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/13 23:58:39
But the point of the thread originally was about creating fake tournaments in order to pump up the ITC rankings. So they could present the facade of being the "best" at playing make-believe war with plastic toys and charge "premium" for it.
Sure. But then there were actually more people in this thread doing the standard wargaming-hipster-virtue-signalling of how 40K is allegedly generally a bad/inferior game to other toy soldier-rules on the market, somehow trying to make that point through questioning the business of "40K coaching" on principle, rather than the specific Art of War guys who may or may not have been up to something shady. I.e. questioning the business of, say, building automobiles on principle, not the specific emission scandal of Volkswagen.
So that was worth responding to.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/12/14 08:24:44
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.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/15 12:45:56
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.
But the point of the thread originally was about creating fake tournaments in order to pump up the ITC rankings. So they could present the facade of being the "best" at playing make-believe war with plastic toys and charge "premium" for it.
Sure. But then there were actually more people in this thread doing the standard wargaming-hipster-virtue-signalling of how 40K is allegedly generally a bad/inferior game to other toy soldier-rules on the market, somehow trying to make that point through questioning the business of "40K coaching" on principle, rather than the specific Art of War guys who may or may not have been up to something shady. I.e. questioning the business of, say, building automobiles on principle, not the specific emission scandal of Volkswagen.
So that was worth responding to.
there wasn't any virtue signaling, and there wasn't any other toy figure game mentioned. We all blow money in different ways so if people want to blow their money on coaching to better play make-believe war with toy soldiers more power to them. People pay for coaching for pretty much any known game. People had more of an issue that these guys were boosting ratings to justify their prices, service, etc
Automatically Appended Next Post:
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 ex
emple and be done.
yeah zero chances of any ban happening. It would have destroyed their whole business model.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/12/16 00:20:08
gundam wrote: that was pretty funny lol why the spoiler?
'Hiding' images makes the thread easier to read on mobile (or so I'm told).
I never use this site on mobile since it is not that great but I can see that. Also worth mentioning that the whole moniker ringer name was a bit shady too.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/14 13:57:17
puma713 wrote: This is sad, like on a cringeworthy level.
Yea, it's actually kind of hilarious.
Like really hilarious actually.
At the end of the day it's not some super important or horrible scam. I mean, it's immoral, deceitful etc. But its aimed at such an unimportant thing. 40k tactics
It's just pointlessly stupid. It's pure comedy really.
In fact, if their strategy coaching is in any way a reflection of how they hatched this little scam, folks REALLY should walk the other way from their paid for services. But there is a sucker born every day, so I am sure some folks will still buy the garbage they are selling.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/12/14 19:18:55
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).
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/12/15 03:11:15
![[Disk]](/dakkaforum/templates/default/images/icon_disk.gif){kind=icon}
not gonna lie, that is some serious 
Death Guard 5100 pts.
Daemons 3000 pts.
