40k comp

[Goldeagle]

Gabe is right on. The good thing about the proposal by Moz is that it does what both Boldo and Doug are talking about. First, it handicaps battle points. You get the highest comp battle modifier for playing armies that are hard to win with. Plus it avoids the whole who has the most troopers debate which is in my mind at the heart of why many comp systems get people so angry and why many think most comp systems favor armies like trooper heavy marines. Second, it rewards a player who creates and paints a themed army. You get the highest comp modifier for painting models most in theme with the respective armies (i.e. right out of the 40k fluff). The only one of these that I think needs any work at all is the comp modifier to sportsmanship. True, the principle is anti-cheese which is the right way to go, but I think the language could be tweeked. Once I get a few quiet moments I will make a proposed amendment to this one. Also, I don't think this system would be that easy to break (i.e. it would be really hard to score a 10 in all of these, not impossible, but hard ... think about it ... ).

[moz]

I'm glad the idea is well recieved. It honestly just hit me as I was typing out the objectives for what a comp system is for. I'll do some copy pasta over to the Syracuse boards to see how my comp hating peers gnash and wail at it.

I agree that the idea of using the troops slot as any sort of fairness indicator is ruined by the huge number of ways people can use to get around it. If there were no ways to turn specialist units into troops, and if all troops were even sort of comparable to one another, I would feel differently.

[skyth]

It's still WAY too subjective, though a good idea in general.

Also, how much are each battle worth as compared to the comp bonus? If each win is worth 15 points, and you get 0-10 points each game from your opponent, it makes winning effectively meaningless.

How are you going to stop people from going by the opinion of 'If it beat me, it must be horrible comp'?

moz said:

With a split as I mentioned, I think a specific point by point rubric could be dropped entirely.

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'Even the Field' (0-10 points) Bonus to battle:
0: This armylist is built to win and the faction was probably chosen to play this list. It is maximized in every fashion, relies heavily on gimmicks, and will probably stomp everything today. (Example, my bug list)

3: This armylist is very strong, with a few strong gimmicks, but a few weaknesses as well. I can imagine an army that would beat this one.

5: This army is a 'take all comers' kind of list. Lots of tough units, but no grand scheme for beating everything into the dirt.

8: This army lacks any really strong units and will have a difficult time beating most armies.

10: This army is ridiculously weak. I think they were intentionally trying to make a terrible list. I would be suprised if this person wins a single game.

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'Fluff' (0-10) Bonus to painting:
0: No theme, period. Includes a lot of units that would never be found on the same planet, let alone in the same military organization by the fluff.

3: The choices at least come from the same armylist. No immediate blasphemous choices.

5: There is a theme. It is not immediately obvious, but after the player explained it, the theme makes sense.

8: This is a well themed list. I could imagine this army actually waging battle in the 40k universe.

10: This list is straight out of the fiction. It used an existing example within the fluff as a guide.

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'Fun factor' (0-10) Bonus to sports
0: This list is miserable to play against. Every unit is exactly the same, even when it doesn't have to be. The entire list is either shooty or assault, no mix.

3: A snoozer, a lot of identical choices, no originality.

5: A decent list to play against, variation in choices, some creative units.

8: A fun list. No two units are the same, shooty and assaulty elements. Even some whimsical rare choices showed up.

10: This is going to kick ass! This army is crazy and should be a total blast to play against.


Done!

[moz]

Your feedback mirrors someone elses on our Syracuse board Skyth, so I'll just pasta that response over here as well.

1. Points are an abstraction until a value for the actual category would be assigned. I am thinking that somewhere between a 25-50% of the max possible score in a category could be determined by the soft-score component. So if we kept 'Even the Field' at 0-10 points for instance, I would suggest making the max points from Win/Loss/Draw somewhere between 10 and 30 points. I would lean more towards the 25% end of that spectrum.
We could do an equal split for overall champ, or weigh the battle score more heavily. It should be handled in a manner that meets the participants expectations, ex. battle counts for more in Syracuse than it would in Rachaha.
To avoid alphabetical tiebreaks, I would suggest using scores in this order:
Combined Battle score
Combined Sports score
Combined Painting
Even the Field score
Fun Factor score
Fluff score
And finally - If 2 players are vying for Overall champ and are tied in all of these categories: Then the first to kick the other one in the junk is declared the winner.

2. Perhaps the best guide would be clearcut examples in each category. And yes, powerpoint presentations and riot shields are practically necessary in any for any comp discussion in public.

3. I was considering a setup where you fill out your own scores before the first round and turn it in with your first W/L/D scores. The judges also give you a score during the first round (or when possible for painting) but before looking at your self evaluation. After the judge scoring, if there is a significant difference between the judge score and the self-score, the judge will first jot down a few notes as to his justification for the score, and then come to your table and put a ticket/card with your stuff. This ticket will give you one chance to meet with the judges at your convenience and theirs to plead your case as to what you see in your army that they did not. The judges will be obliged to explain their score and are allowed to change it. However they are also allowed to stick with the old score or even dock you points for being abusing the privaledge (example of abuse, giving yourself all 10's just so you can try to argue your score higher with the judges).

4. On the 'Fun factor' score, I think variety and creative unit choices are important. Basing it on speed or mobility is too limiting to many army lists and a total gimme to others. This field is probably the least structurable, since defining what is a fun army to play against is significantly more difficult than defining what army has a good chance of winning / or adheres to the fluff better.
In no particular order, the things that could contribute to this field in my opinion:
Bonus for:
Rarely seen units
Creative unit combos
Variety between units
Multiple focus, not just shooty or just assaulty
Bonus for being the only player using a particular army (or Chapter / Chaos god)

Penalties for:
Lots of identical loadouts
Heavy reliance on 'I hit you, you can't hit me' techniques (dual librarian fury, crisis suit overload, ordinance overload)
Heavy reliance on nearly invincible point-sinks (huge seer council of yore, 3 monolith, trifalcon, siren prince, bouncing swoopy hacks)
Complete focus on either assault or shooting

An Idea here, is maybe allow the opponent to view and comment on the score the judges give you when the points are turned in for a round. Akin to the way they did sports in the Rachaha GT, but on the sheet you use to fill out your opponents sports score, will also be his 'Fun Factor' armylist score with an option for you to request it be bumped up or down at the judges discretion (remember, the player himself will also be defending his armylist if he thinks it is fun to play against and the judges disagree).


So I hope someone else is getting some work done today, because I'm not.

[skyth]

What about the option to turn in your list before hand and get it scored so you can change it before hand?

[skyth]

btw, where is the Syracuse board?

[moz]

A wretched hive of scum and villainy.
syracusegamers.proboards74.com/

In regards to requesting a score in advance, on the one hand it smacks too much of playing the system, and on the other the judges would probably like it if each players understanding were closer to their own.
Probably somewhere in between would be acceptable. Where a judge would offer advice, but the actual score will still be determined on the day of the game by a concensus between judges. I don't think you could expect an advance score the day of either, since events are always running late and this would just add to that problem.

[MajorSoB]

skyth said:

It's still WAY too subjective, though a good idea in general.

Also, how much are each battle worth as compared to the comp bonus? If each win is worth 15 points, and you get 0-10 points each game from your opponent, it makes winning effectively meaningless.

How are you going to stop people from going by the opinion of 'If it beat me, it must be horrible comp'?

Follow the links to the Syracuse board and you will see that these ideas have been addressed. Yes, there is some subjectiveness involved, however if you are scored by every opponent as well as the judges, the law of averages will work out. These numbers are being used for discussion purposes only, and I can see my friend the hampster in your cranium is aready working overtime trying to devise ways of beating the system. To help eliminate a unusally high or low scores I have suggested adding a disclaimer like "A Unusually high or low scores may be question by the judging committee" to help weed out the "nice guys" who give perfect scores as well as the cockmonkeys who downgrade even the most perfect armies.

[Ranger Dude]

Personally, I saw this as only the beginning of an idea that needed work. I agree that systems are better when more concrete. What I think this system does is it allows us to accomplish all of the goals that various people see comp scoring as accomplishing. You balance the armies, you reward/penalize the cheeze, and you reward/penalize the fluff. I do like the idea of rewarding somone for being the only one to bring this army, although it is a little less meaningful in small tournies where you often have everyone bringing different armies.

Maybe someone should look into merging this idea with Boldo's fantasy sytem and see what comes of it. It would have to be a judge based system and not a player based system, but I think a lot of us would prefer that as it puts a balance into the mix. If you have three judges score everyone, than you know everyone was scored by three people who have the same view rather than three different opponents for each player which might not match.

[skyth]

[quote author=majorsob board=tournamentnewsandannounceme thread=1171498931 post=1172094474I can see my friend the hampster in your cranium is aready working overtime trying to devise ways of beating the system.[/quote]

True, but mostly because I honestly don't understand soft scoring, so if I can figure out what is required to get better scores, especially with the meta being different in different areas.

[MajorSoB]

Here is where we have a disagreement. I agree it would be nice to have a "checklist" type of concrete scoring system like Boldo's in 40K but my own personal though is that it is like comparing apples to oranges. Allow me to explain...

Boldo's system for scoring fantasy is great. It tends to penalize overly powerful armies while rewarding more bland, non mgical armies. It works well because, im my opinion, most all armies in the fantasy world are the same. Every army tends to have blocks of troops with a few special units and some uber characters sprinkled in. The difference in the armies stems from their special rules moreso than actual army composition. From what I see, everyone has cavalry, fliers, troops warmachines and characters who tend to do roughly the same thing. This is not the case in 40K. Yes, there are basic troops, HQ, elites, fast attack, etc., but the way that each different army plays is vastly more different that in the fantasy world. From what I have seen most every army in fantasy can be built around a large troop based core and be very sucessful. No so in 40K. Take Tau, how does an army of 60% fire warriors do? How does this compare to the 60% troop army of Chaos, loaded with marines and deamons? What about Orcs or marines? Nids, how about Eldar or worse, Dark Eldar troops? This is my point that structuring around the "basic troops are good" philosophy does not always work, some armies are favored by that while other armies need specialty troops to be competetive. The specialty troops in 40K give the armies its flavor. I am not interested in playing a bland, every army is the same game. I will throw at you an example, 5th Street's Tau, either version the skimmer wall of death or the crisis suits out the wazoo army. Both would have comped really poorly but both were different and fun to play. Ron played the suit army and liked playing it, and no offense to Ron, but he would have been the first to biatch if it were tooled out. We all know what OTT is and we all know how to rate it given guidelines to follow when scoring. I do not think we can make a checklist that would be fair to everyone. I think if this avenue is pursued, we will end up with a few comp friendly armies with little or no diversity. Just my humble opinion,, but if you think you can make the fair 40K checklist, go ahead and post it.

I am not complaining for the sake of complaining (suprizingly), I will work out a scoring sheet for both judges and players based around the info posted ragrding fairness/funness/painting/fluff. Look for it in the next few days.

[skyth]

majorsob said:

We all know what OTT is

That's the problem. Not everyone agrees on what that is. And the meta from area to area on what is OTT disagrees severely.

I know, I play armies that I'd like to play against, but around here, my armies that I would like to play against are OTT (See my Daemonhunters list I posted in the other thread-Scored bottom of all three soft scores in a tournament locally. Funny I went undefeated and I know at least 4 of the 6 armies I faced were more powerful than mine on an objective scale).

[Goldeagle]

Great discussion guys. I assumed the points value was an abstraction since Moz started this idea so this would obviously have to be clarified. It seems to me that the real issue is who assigns the points for these comp scores. Using judges for the first two would be obvious. Any kind of judging is to some extent subjective, but you have to trust somebody or a hobby like this can't work. The third category - as it affects comp should be judged by opposing players. Doug is right that some guys are harsh and some are ridiculously lenient, but resolving this by scoring sportsmanship at the end of the tourn, thus ranking all of your opponents against one another is a partial solution to this problem. Of course its possible that you get extremely lucky and have nothing but good opponents. What to do now. When dealing with ranked statistics in my discipline we allow ties, which is based on averaging ranks. That way some decent opponents wouldn't be penalized as badly as a straight ranking might do to them. Anyway, I look forward to seeing Major SOB's rubric when he gets it done.

[Ranger Dude]

Doug, I agree that a straight rubric as Boldo has for Fantasy wouldn't work due to the differences in the systems. What I was trying to get at was the need for some sort of concrete scoring using the idea of boldo's. A core rubric for the basics and an extra rubric based on each army. Obviously this would need to be taylored to the system. Where in fantasy, the core focus can be good, you are right that it doesn't always work in 40k. I'm not saying to use his rubric as is, just the idea and principle behind it. As skyth says, the Meta in different areas is different. By putting together a more concrete rubric, you give the players a better idea of what to expect. I think a problem we have been having is that we keep using the reasoning that "everyone knows what's OTT." But the fact is that it differs from group to group. When I first came here, people were complaining about the ranger disruption tables, and I often got scored based on bias. But as you guys know, I never min maxed my army, and the tables were just a tool to me, not a gimmick to be exploited. This is the sort of thing that we can avoid. Subjective systems leave too much up in the air. People don't always know what they are getting into. It's rough going into a tourney not knowing how you'll be scored. It's worse going into a tourney THINKING you know based on how you iinterpret something. It's much easier if the standards are detailed out ahead.

It's nice to see a pleasent, intelligent discussion on such a sensitive point. We might actually accomplish something with this.

[nycowboy]

I think one of the biggest problems with comp. discussions is the fact that not everyone agrees on what comp should be and how it should be scored. Personally I think When I go to a tournament I am going to win and I want to bring the strongest list I can to do that. Other don't always see it that way. What I think makes Moz's system so different and why we are not at each others throats about this is that it would still allow players like me to bring a strong list to a tournament and not get completely screwed. While other who do want to have fun and bring a different style of list can still do that want do very well and not have their "fun" list hinder their ability to win because I brought a "nasty" list.

My only real input of scoring is that for level the playing field the points possible should be equivalent to a draw (for a 3 round tourney) or win (for 5 rounds) in 1 round of the tournament.

Overall I still think this system can't be judged by players because while most people on this board and the Syracuse board have been playing awhile and can tell what is a strong list, it is the younger and in experienced players who may not understand why a big bugs list like johns is way too strong.