Howdy folks.

I havn't played a turney in quite some time, and I think it's in part to all those extra rules and restrictions that accompany them. The Dogcon Thread reminded me of this, and I'd like to have your point of view on the following:

On entering a turney, your army list must not only apply to the rules, but it should also adhere to a set of rules that are ment to even the balance between power houses and fluffy armies. Or at least between those that bend the army chart to it's breaking point and those that bring a "normal" competetive army. If you choose to ignore some of these rules, you enter the turney with a handycap.

So much for the basics. Now, I prefer playing among friends with fair (fluffy) lists and for sports. But I guess that just doesn't work on turneys, or does it? I mean those composition rules are artifically and pretty subjectively imposing an additional handycap on some things that are plain nasty, but are completely legal. So is this the way this game is ment to be played? Are the basic rules so broken you cannot live without such amendments? Why create such an armylist in the first place then? I'd really really prefer to have turneys be just army book dependant. After all, those are the rules. I'd really rather have increasing "Patches" to the game balance by constant erratas like in a computer game than this jury rigged system.

The Sportsmanship rating has probably less of an impact, but still I fully endorse such a system that encourages friendly games. But it's highly subjective. And something one opponents rates as totally fair and just, another might allready concider as pretty annoying. How big is this' impact on the overall score? Is it just my prejudice, or does it work?

Here is the issue at stake. GW has developed a game that is not balanced for competitive(tournament) play. I wish we had "patches" as well to counter balance the fact that they don't playtest their books but they refuse to do either.

So given the fact that in an only army book tournament scene you get the same armies dominating(check the UKGT heats for the classic example), tournament organizers use comp as a means to put army books on a more even level. Is it often subjective and does it affect armies differently? Hell yes. There is no perfect comp system, but the commonly shared idea of people who run and attend those tournaments is that a comp system despite its flaws is better than no comp.

Patches would be an excellent idea. I have always wondered why GW stopped making the Chronicles books every January. They should at least give us some updates once a year.
Sadly, the problem with most comp systems (at least the ones I've seen) is that people will mark you down for no reason what so ever, they simply want to win.
Now, Comp scores given to you by the tournament organizers are find, in my opinion. The issue is dealing with the "cliques" that appear in the tournament environment. A group of players will vote one of their own to be the best sportsman and end up giving all the new faces a lower score.
It's quite annoying.
I try to bring a friendly list that at the same time can be considered competitive. Just be as polite and friendly as possible when playing in any kind of tourney, hopefully that kindness will come back to you.

I think the chronicles weren't to well received. If I remember correctly, the later ones were lacking in official rules, and sported painting guides and alternatives few ever played with. So if indeed they would have used it as a patching system, it might have survived longer.

There are numerous difficulties to overcome to ensure satisfying patches, but it would greatly enhance the experience in my oppinion.

Thank you for describing your experiences with these systems. I guess I'll just keep staying away from tournaments.

Cronicles:
Their main problem was/is that the direct communications between fans and game develloppement was cut off. There was no longer input, so the quality of the output deminished. Before one gets his questions through and the time they take to answer them ... :rolleyes:
Tournaments:
I don't like the 'official' ones a lot. On the other hand there are gaming groups who organize 'unofficial' ones that are very playerfriendly, where having fun is the central theme.

Tournaments are just like everything else; they are what you make them. Sure you are going to have people that bring cheese lists and aren't the best sportsmen around, but big deal. You have those kind of people all over the place, not just at tournaments. That's actually the minority. The majority are cool people with really great looking armies that are there to just chuck dice and push little toy soldiers around.

We really can't take ourselves or our hobby too seriously. It's all about having fun and throwing dice, and tournaments are a great way to do that.

I personally have only ever entered tournaments at Warhammer World, the doubles and singles tournaments and while there have been restrictions this year with scenarios and the kill points (40k idea) the point value remains 2000 points which I believe is what GW intended to have as a level playing field as far as competitive lists were concerned.

I've seen an increase in other countries default points, some 2250 and more recently 2500 this (IMO) while allowing more core choices really only hampers the amount of heros and their values, for our army we generally take 4 characters and max them pretty much out with their 50/100 points, but means our armies are somewhat smaller so this increase in points just means more troops for us where as other players will increase their hero selections which may seem a little harder for us to cope with.

I think that the games development is suffering, we know how daemons are broken with so many advantages and it won't be a simple points change to rectify it, the game was designed around an optimum point value which I'm led to believe is 2000 points, this should be the best balance available - who's tried to take on the Empire at 1000 points or less? Heavy and I mean really heavy cavalry, hero on a pegasus and great cannons with cheap throw away troops, I don't see how a competent general cannot fail to win against us (Khemri) where as at 2000 points TK do a hell of a lot better...

Tournament play will always get the power players and the win at all costs lists, sometimes they work, other times not so but it is meant to be fun I go to tournaments 'cos I enjoy the weekend of concentrated games and the banter in bugmans :) I've heard a lot of bad things about unofficial events but cannot directly comment as it's hearsay from a friend of a friend as it were.

Sportsmanship can of course take many forms, I personally prefer to be shown rules in a book rather than take someone's word for it - it's nothing personal but if I learn something new I want to be able to read and understand it - and maybe use it in future games and if picked up in those I can hardly say "I was told this by some bloke last week" this of course may seem to be a little argumentative to some and thus regarded as unsporting but not everyone has access to all the army books so we can't all be expected to know all the various special armies rules... can we?

Cheers

Cbt

I prefer it when the judges score sportsmanship. I was in one tourny at the Glen Burnie Battle Bunker, a few years ago and go a 0 from one of my opponents. This when I let him go back and take his magic phase 2x's when he went straight to the shooting phase. I tabled him in turn 4 so he was pouting. He could not have been more than 13 or 14, so I just chalked it up to a poor sport kid. I have never given anything lower than a 3 out of 5, even to this whinny kid. Then there is the painting judges that take off points if you don't base your models the way GW does, I have news for them not all people like to base the models and to take points off for this really gets on my nerves.

Anyway, as a TK, MoC, Brett, Dwarf, Empire, VC, and yes DoC player I see where some armies are more powerful than others, but I have hopes that the TK will get a slight fix in the new book, hopeully late this year or early next year.

Course the local GW store MGR doesn't even know what the next book is, he says. If this is true GW is really going down the drain.....

Sid....

Well, the next book is pretty surely Skaven, which will be out sometime late this year, followed by Beasts of Chaos in 2010. After that, the bets are on Tomb Kings. (Source is the www.warseer.com rumour mill)

Getting back to the topic, I think such subjective behaviour is exactly what I fear in an additional player based sportsmanship rating. But the judges themselves don't have the time to observe every player continuously. Hence they can't judge it either =/

So basically: we'll tape every match on every table and the sportsmanship points are distributed after the judges have watched all 400 hours of it ;)