Ok guys I need your help conquering the 800 pound Gorilla of the 40K Tournament scene. If you were contacted by a convention organizer and asked to create a Comp/scoring system for a 40k GT styled tournament what would you suggest? The option of no Comp is not an option at all. So if you had to make a Comp/scoring system what would you like to see in it?
How much would you want to see these four different categories count for in the overall event?
Winning games
Army Composition
Sportsmanship
Painting (although not required to participate in the event)
Do you know of a Comp system that works and doesn’t gimp any of the 40k armies?
Personally I think idea of comp is outdated in 5th, but I have been given a task to help with and would like to get feedback. In fact I was asked to post this up to see what the 40k bloggosphere would like to see.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Big Jim
Ouch! I feel for you Jim.
ReplyDeleteComposition in my opinion should be dead.
However, since you have to create a composition system, I would contact dverning, he made a post on my blog about a checklist system for composition that sounds like it might not be to bad.
Thanks Magilla, I will contact him if he doesn't post a reply, as he follows my madness here.
ReplyDelete-Jim
I think painting could also have sub sections for things like "effort" and "skill" given that some people at least try (and that grey armies just look horrific*), they should be rewarded.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I am pretty sure army comp is borne out by whether they win or not :)
*I also wish they would release the board games with pre-painted miniatures. As people who are just buying the board games don't want to infest the time/effort/money, leave that to the army guys.
Hi Jim,
ReplyDeleteIn a tournament winning games is the most important score.
Army composition is too open to abuse for certain armies which appear more balanced on paper, but are actually very strong. So I'd throw this out altogether. It is a tournament after all, so competitive lists are the norm.
Sportsmanship is a tough one. Generally people are just penalised for being an arse. But there should never be extra points awarded for winning the vote of 'Best Sportsman' as it's more often than not a popularity contest. Hey, I won it once!
The same goes for painting. No one should get extra points for being nominated for a Best Painted Army. It's a tournament for Pete's sake!
However, points are traditionally awarded for:
WYSIWYG
Having a fully painted and based army
Having a large number of conversions
Having squad markings
Remember that the most important points in a tournament is the Game Winning points. Other 'soft scores' are to encourage properly presented armies and fair play.
Points equal to the age of the Codex.
ReplyDelete1 point for every FoC slot occupied.
1 point for painting large areas yellow or white.
Points equal to the shoe size of the army owner divided by the number of divorces they had had, times the number of children they have adopted from Chile.
It's as fair as any other composition system...
As a serious idea, grade comp on a 1-20 scale with 3 judges, average that, and you're good to go.
I like extra points for yellow and white. 1pt per model though :)
ReplyDeleteMy little suggestions. Do painting scores *before* game one. Whether you present them the or after the last game is up to you. But schedule ample time for it! If someone should be scored, score them fair and give them a chance to show the army properly.
Sportman is bogus. Giving it to your opponent is double bogus. Have judges walk the tables, and any player acting like a donkey gets a point penalty. Just like most professional sports out there.
The codex says what is legal and what is not. Score for something "fair" is bogus. It is a game after all. Bonus points should be given for anything that is cool though. It can be an unusual army well made or the best timed Waaagh. But give bonuses. Keep them small though. More like tie breakers than game winners.
Have plenty of things to score in the game, not just winning and objectives. Give the players many different goals in each game. Keeps it fresh. Idea on the top of my head: lowest point unit survivng. Highest point unit surviving. Killing HQ. Tabling. Holding objectives. Most kills by a unit. Best survivability of a unit. I am sure you can come up with better suggestions. The point is the diversity, not the individual ideas.
Let us know what you come up with:)
Thanks for all the comments guys!
ReplyDeleteAgain if it were up to me I’d ditch the comp score completely. To be completely honest if the organizer wasn’t a long time acquaintance I wouldn’t even try to make this work. I will keep trying to convince him that comp isn’t needed.
So what I’d like to do is make a Comp system that basically everyone will score fully on while giving the illusion of having the restrictions of a Comp system. Does that make sense?
I fully plan on making battle scores 80% of the total tournament points, with comp and painting being the other 20%. I just spoke with him and he’s ok with me dropping Sportsmanship as long as we police the tables. Which I am fine with, as I will just enforce a “don’t be a Douche” statute.
I’m working to just have painting be it’s own category with it’s own overall winner and prize.
After all, the event is a tournament and should be about competition and winning. Also while it is not a popularity contest its not that had to be friendly and/or civil to your opponents.
I’ll post some of my ideas tomorrow.
-Jim
I was thinking of a pretty simple comp scoreing system.
ReplyDelete1. Multiples of the Same Unit Type?
5 points - All unit types are different.
4 points - 10% is a copy.
3 points - 25% is a copy.
2 points - 50% is a copy.
1 points - 75% is a copy.
0 points - Everything in the army is a copy.
2. Between units of the same type, How closely are they equipped?
5 points - Similiar squads are equipped completely differently
3 points - Somewhat Differently
0 points - All the Same
3. In the army, how many options between different squads are the same? (i.e. taking Lascannons in a dev squad, on a pred, and on a Land raider)
5 - No/Few options are the same
3 - about Half of the options are the same.
0 - They only took one type of option(I.e. 20 meltaguns)
4. Does the Army composition make sense with the army book background.
5 - Fits Perfectly.
3 - some discrepancies
0 - Nurgle and Tzeetch are hugging buddies while Slaanesh makes a love child with Khorne...
This scale will give a 0-20 point value on composition with definitive guidelines. It is designed to stop the problem of copy and paste units, and also encourage thinking about how your army fits into the Warhammer 40k Universe.
Ok talking from several years of banging my head against the brick wall that is sub comp, FO comp and sportsmanship I have come to some "amazing" conclusions :P
ReplyDeleteOk been serious now.
Starting with sportsmanship, how often do you truely play someone who goes above and beyond what is normally expected of a good, friendly player to be a true sportsman. In all my 16 odd years of gaming I have come acorss it about a dozen times if that. So it is something that is more the execption rather than the rule. Because of this I am always reluctant to reward Sportsmanship beyond a certificate. I am especially cautious of giving tourney points towards it as it opens a whole can of worms through cohersion or been vendictive.
That is not to say it doesn't have its place.
The system I have ran for the past 4 years that has met with a lot of acceptance within my tourney community is this:
At the end of a tourney every player is invited to mark down who they think is the most sporting player. If someone gains enough votes equivelant to 10% of the players +1 (so 30 players you would need 4 votes )10%+1) then they are in the running for most sporting. If there are a few people who meat this criteria then whoever gets the most votes wins.
Give them a prize and no more that 5% of the maximum generalship score.
This works 2 fold. Its a little boost so not going to really affect anything except a tie break. Also as it is down at the very end of the tourney after all the games have ended there is less chance of players feeling coherced into giving an sportmanship tick/point/whatever to their opponent.
Now that one is easy.
Comp however I feel is a mine field inviting disaster.
ReplyDeleteSubjective comp i.e We think X % should be HQ, should have no more than Y heavy weapons etc etc is never going to work as no-one has enough time to compile a truely balanced set of criteria that is individual to each and every codex. As it has to be, saying for example, that you must have 50% of you points in troops plays totally into the hands of armies like Orks whilst it makes like hard for say Tau.
Having all encompassing blanket % for subcomp is going to only end up meaning that savy tourney players work out how to get around it. And they always will.
Been there done that many a time and it has always failed.
If you go the whole hog and write comp for each and every codex you are going to be left with something so restrictive that no-one is going to want to play as you are essentially telling them exactly what their army is going to be.
That falls straight under the big bad banner of forcing your view of the hooby upon someone elses.
So we are left with Force Org Comp.
Been trying this out for 3 years now and whilst is is far from 100% perfect it is however proving to be the best of the bunch. It requires lest ground work by organisers and less pissing around with % by players.
What I have been running at my tourneys and is now getting rolled out to a number of bigger national events here in the uk is this:
No Duplicate HQ choices. Common sense is to be used regarding special characters i.e Ghazgkul is a Warboss.
No more than 2 of the same Elite, Fast Attack of Heavy Support. This is army list entires NOT unit comp.
i.e you cannot take 3 units of oblits even if they are of different numbers.
Any unit that is available both as either an Elite, Fast Attack, Heavy Support AND Dedicated Transport counts towards the above restriction.
i.e Battlewagons and Landraiders.
Landraiders of ANY type count as Landraiders regarding this restriction.
So regardless of the config you cannot have more than 2 Battlewagons in your army.
Nor can you have more than 2 Landraiders of anysort.
As I say it is working well and has been for a a few years.
Currently we are in debate over IG vehicle squadrons as to if we should put some further restriction upon them. The same will no doubt happen for Carnifex broods but that is still under discussion for Jan.
Obviously this system leaves you with a final problem, how do you give a score. Personally I hate comp scores and this is why my tourneys and in fact 90% of tourneys in the UK and Europe have ditched them.
Seriously there is no good answer for it, it is always going to be subjective and benifit one army over another.
If you can don't do it!
I'd still like to call it unsportsmanlike and have it be a negative score. The point is to encurage "good behavior", and scoring your opponent isn't the way to go for that.
ReplyDeleteHow about a nice guy award? Best opponent award?
Something in me detest the idea of people brown nosing to get extra points. Being nice should be a reward in and by itself. No reason you can't be competitive and nice. Letting people abuse you so you can butter them up for sportsman… No thanks.
And Magilla throws me under the bus! :-p Heh. I saw this post about 10 minutes after it went up but had held off commenting. I wanted to marshall my thoughts and give a bit to see what others had to say.
ReplyDeleteMy reply ended up growing well past the space of a comment box, so I posted it up over here instead: http://40kmaunderings.blogspot.com/2009/12/tournament-composition-scores.html. Cheers!
@Dverning:
ReplyDeleteOh course! LOL!
I have no idea how to do it, so I just directed him to someone who has at least an idea of what they are talking about. By the way, your system seems to be at least one I don't hate. :-)
@Big Jim, make sure to do a follow up post so we know what you decided.
Thanks for all of the comments and feedback. Sorry for the delayed respond, I still have a house full of visiting relatives until New Years. It's a madhouse!
ReplyDeleteI'll be posting a response up tonight or tomorrow.
Jim