Shock and Awe

First off here's the results from the doubles tournament:
3-0 Players:
Steve(Eldar) and Luke(Eldar)
Stephen(Demons) and Jim(Demons)

2-1 players:
Sean(Chaos Marines) and Justin(Demons) 4290 Victory Points
Sandwyrm(BA) and Farmpunk(WH) 4137 Victory Points
Scott(Marines) and Carl(BA) 3427 Victory Points
Wienas(BT) and Caanaan(WH) 2337 Victory Points
Tim(Marines) and Chad(Marines) 1765 Victory Points

1-2 Players (In no particular order, not all VP's reported)
Mike and Nick
Jamie(Guard) and Eddie(Orks)
Trevor and Nick
Aaron(SW) and Andrew(SW)
Louis and Richard

0-3 Players
Chris and Alexander
Erik and Mike

Hit the jump to see me rant about armies and results :)

I want to say that the two teams who took the top spot where good players who played good games. But in a theoryhammer world, I didn't expect either army to win. I think both armies won the day on account of the WTF factor.

For instance, most of the G2D4 guys don't face Eldar armies regularly. My mechdar army is the exception to that statement, but it's such a different list from Steve and Luke's footdar that it might as well have come from a different codex. Even then, my army wins many games due to my opponent not having the prior experience of trying to take down a Falcon with Holo Fields. That Avatar/Wraithlord footdar list wins through due to bad target priority and over specialization with melta on the part of their opponents. None of their opponents brought any long range, high strength, low AP weapons that where not melta. You need to take down MC's at range. If you rely on melta to do it, you face the chance of wifing and getting counter-charged. On occasion you face an Avatar, and melta is completely useless anyway. Of course, the team format allowed them to take 2 more MC's than a normal 2000 pt army would allow. Facing 4 Wraithlords and 2 Avatars without a cohesive force of you own is a difficult challenge. Still, I was wishing I could throw down one of my own armies. Most of my lists would have out-ranged and out-gunned the Eldar, and reliably downed a Wraithlord every turn.

On the other hand, we had Stephen and Jim's double Fateweaver/Blood Crusher list. Two Fateweavers at 2000 points is another difficult challenge. I don't believe most of their opponents get to face Demons on a regular basis. The G2D4 guys face demons all the time, and know how to deal with them. One of the locals mentioned that he heard Jim and Stephen's third round opponent act surprised to find out that the whole army had invul saves. Demons are pretty easy to figure out how to beat, but if you don't have the experience, you are at a disadvantage.

In a three round tournament format, pairings go along way to determining the winner. Had Aaron and Andrew's Space Wolves drew Steve and Luke's Eldar in the first round we would have seen a drastically different outcome. Aaron's Long Fangs and Thunder Wolves where the right units to take down those Eldar MC's. Unfortunately Aaron and Andrew faced double Fateweaver and the dice where against them that game.

I think it would have been very interesting to see the top two teams face each other for one more round. I think the dual Demon list was the best match up for the Eldar MC's other than the dual Space Wolves.

I did not need this

GW had to go and redesign Dark Eldar to look cool. I think my fantasy High Elves are going to have to wait. The sexy future evil elves are cutting in line.

I ran my first tournament yesterday. I think it went well. I at least haven't seen any internet posts about how awful a job I did. That has to count for something right?

Too Much Going On

I have about a dozen things going on right now. Here's a quick rundown.

I'm almost done painting a Hammerhead for my Tau army. I tried to incorporate some of the advice I got from Sandwyrm about color isolation. I've got the base colors complete, and the tank does look more interesting than the Fire Warriors. I'm not sure if it looks like a real tank though. I still have to do the detail work. When I'm done with that, I'll post some pics. I'm going to take a close look at how they break apart the colors on the armor of the Spartans in Halo: Reach and try to use that as a basis for breaking up the colors on my battle suits. I've always appreciated Bungie's ascetic. I play their games more for the art, music, and story than for game play.

Speaking of Reach, I picked that up this week and it is going to cut into my painting time until I'm board with it and buy Civ 5. Civ 5 will then will swallow me into a dark hole and spit me out if 4 or 5 months. Civ 4 almost burnt my apartment down in college.

I bought the new fantasy starter too. I never heard back about swapping the skaven for more high elves, so I'm going to let my wife paint the skaven to try to get her interested in the hobby a little. At least enough to give me more time to paint my own armies. So now I have a high elf army to build and paint.

I finally got some games of Firestorm Armada in. I was holding off purchasing or painting anything new for that game until that condition was met. So now I have to finish painting my Terran Battleship. And I might buy a few Aquan Heavy Cruisers and Terran Shield Ships. The game is random as hell, but I like playing it and the ship models are very cool. Unfortunately the G2D4 crowd has decided to play on Tuesdays, and I cannot make it to G2D4 on any day but Saturday.

When Battle Points Attack, ...err Fail!

I want to share a scenario I worked up based on a standard 3 game battle points driven tournament. You'll see some interesting results from the tournament format favored by many 40k players.

A lot of other bloggers have posted conclusions similar to mine, but none have shown any examples of how the system fails.


Just to be clear this scenario was constructed specifically to show the deficiencies of the battle points system. It is possible that this can occur in a real world situation. We'll be looking at battle points alone, we'll assume that every player is a gentlemanly golden daemon winner. Also for this example we've cobbled together a magic 8-ball, an e-meter, and a Ouija board to create a device that can accurately determine a 40k player's skill level between 0 and 10. When two players play each other an equal skill level results in a draw, a difference of 1 results in a minor victory, and a difference of 2 or more results in a major victory. The games are scored at 8 points for a major, 5 for a minor, 3 for a draw, and a 1 for a loss. There will be a random first round pairing which we are going to force into a purposely bad situation. It's a 3 game 16 player tournament with players and skill levels as follows:

Player	Skill
A	3
B	0
C	6
D	0
E	4
F	1
G	2
H	0
I	5
J	4
K	7
L	8
M	9
N	9
O	9
P	10

In this scenario the best players where accidentally seeded to play each other in the first round. A few mediocre players gained initial pairings with some baby seals. Parings are generated every subsequent round according to battle points. The rounds and pairings go as follows:

Round 1		Round 2		Round 3
A B	A(8)* B(1)	A C	A(8)* C(16)**	C E	C(24)*** E(17)**
C D	C(8)* D(1)	E G	E(16)** G(9)*	L N	L(14)** N(19)-**
E F	E(8)* F(1)	I L	I(6)* L(13)**	P G	P(18)*** G(10)*
G H	G(8)* H(1)	P M	P(10)** M(4)-	J O	J(10)* O(17)**
I J	I(5)* J(1)	N B	N(11)-* B(2)	A I	A(16)** I(7)*
K L	K(1) L(5)*	D F	D(2) F(6)*	F M	F(7)* M(12)-*
M N	M(3)- N(3)-	H J	H(2) J(9)*	B D	B(6)- D(6)-
O P	O(1) P(5)*	K O	K(2) O(9)*	H K	H(3) K(10)*

The expected results according to player skill should be: P, M, N O, L, K, C, I, J, E, A, J, F, D, H, B.

Instead we get: C, N, P, E, O, A, L, M, G, J, K, I, F, B, D, H.

In a situation where we know what the results should be, we see that battle points fails to get us there. Even if the tournament went 4 rounds and the two undefeated players duked it out, the tournament would leave a tie for first place. If in that situation, C had 1 more paint or sport point he would win out over someone who beat him. Even if P had a bad game and only scored a minor victory, he would still be taking home second place. This says nothing of the jumbled mess that is the rest of the bracket. K is rated as a better player than C and ends up in the bottom half of the results.

There are going to be bad paring in any tournament format. There's nothing that stops the two best players at the tournament from getting each other in the first round. However, in a battle point system you run in to the "clubbing baby seals" effect. Bad players are like rocket fuel to the scores of people who play them. Since the system rewards degree of victory, people who play games against opponents of drastically lower skill gain huge point advantages. Playing a close game with a competent opponent penalizes you.

I tried the same setup using a 4 game opposite seed pairing and got much better results. P ended up the winner, and C was in the middle of the pack where he should have been.

@Archfiend of Dezdemon

I don't have your email, so hopefully you'll see this. You mentioned wanting to do a swap with the Island of Blood miniatures. You still interested? I plan on buying mine this weekend.