The team team tournament I ran on Saturday wen off pretty well except for the poor turnout. We had 4 teams of 4 show up, and fun seemed to be had by all. Steve's team from Saltire Games won first place. They beat out Spag's G2D4 team by one point. I ran the tournament BP style even though I'm a big time w/l evangelist. I felt since one pair of a team could win and another lose, there was no good way to avoid the tie situation. This lead to the winning team taking first place even though they where technically beat by the second place team in the first round. I still think this is a fair situation since every team played every team, and the result came down to Steve's team scoring 6 points against the team that Spag's team only scored 5 against. It's not a situation where Steve's team only played easy opponents, and Spag's team played only hard ones.
I was disappointed about the low turnout. We just barley made 4 teams thanks to the second G2D4 team needing to be rebuilt the day before. There are a few things that I think effected the turnout for this tournament.
Getting yourself to a tournament is easy; getting 4 people to a tournament is hard.
There are occasionally people who drop out of tournaments at the last minute. It's difficult to get a team together full of people who you are relatively sure will make it. Even then emergencies happen and one player has to back out and take his whole team with him.
Advertise, Advertise, Advertise
I thought that we would have no problem getting 6 to 8 teams together from the local hard-core tournament population. Unfortunately a good group of them couldn't attend, and I did put out advertisement to catch guys from a larger radius.
The Uber-Team
Word got out that the players that win most of the local tournaments where forming a super-team to compete. This may have put some people off of the tournament.
A bad case of GW-itis
GW went off and did their usual thing. You know how I feel about the about the recent GW news(though it looks like there may be some real quality issues with Finecast; hopefully they're just early production problems that will get cleared up in a few months), but I don't doubt that a few local where put off enough by the news to shelve their armies for a few weeks.
If anyone has any comments or criticisms about the format or the way I ran the event, please let me know so that I can address them the next time I run a tournament.
Showing posts with label Tournament. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tournament. Show all posts
Monday, June 6, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
June 4th 4x4 Team Tournament Format
Here are the complete rules for the upcoming Hivefleet Indy 4x4 tournament.
Start Time: 10am
Number of Rounds: 3
Game Length: 2 hours 30 minutes with a 45 minute break after the first round and a 15 minute break after the second.
Max 8 teams=32 players (4 teams pre-set: G2D4team 1, GP North team 1, GP South team 1, Saltire/Bradford team 1) The 4 remaining teams are first come first serve.
Entry per team. $45
Tournament Organizer: Greg / Caulyn Darr
Rules:
*Teams: 4 players with a 1,000 point list that follows all FOC requirements and current Codex restrictions. (Only 1 unique character per 4 man team){No 4 Calgar's, or 2 Njal's, or 3 Straken's, etc.)
*Codex special abilities that effect any friendly units do not effect teammate's units.
*Codex special abilities that effect enemy units can effect both enemy players' units.
*Codex special abilities that effect enemy and friendly units can effect all units in the game.
*Team Captain will determine team pairings before each round, but before pairings of opponents are decided.
Missions:
Each team will be paired with another each round and play two simultaneous games. Each game will be comprised of two team members facing two opposing team members. The team will claim one point for each mission objective claimed in either game with the winning team being the one that claimed the most points. An equal number of objectives claimed will result in a tie.
Each mission will be comprised of three separate mission objectives. One mission objective will be a team goal that either player can assist in claiming. Each teammate will then select one of the personal objectives, and only they will be able to claim it in the game. No two teammates in the same game may select the same personal objective.
Mission Objective 1: Objectives. Five objectives are placed on the board; one in the center and one in the center of each table quarter. Objectives follow the rules in the 40K rulebook.
Mission Objective 2: Table Quarters. The team or player with the most claimed table quarters at the end of the game wins this objective. Whoever has the most Victory Points in a table quarter claims that quarter. Scoring units count as an extra 100VP for claiming a table quarter. If a unit is in more than one quarter, then they count as being in the quarter that contains the majority of the unit.
Mission Objective 3: Kill Points. Kill points are scored as described in the 40K rule book. In order to win this objectives the team or player must score 3 more KP than his opponent team or player. When this is a personal objective, a player may claim kill points by destroying either opposing player's units, but units killed by his teammate do not count.
Each game will go for 6 turns with a 7th turn played on a 4+ die roll.
Each time a player claims a personal objective type for the first time they score an additional point for their team. Each player can score 3 bonus points, for a total of 12 possible for the whole team provided they claim all three types of objectives as a personal objectives. For example if a player claims mission objective 1 in the first game, 2 in the second game, and 1 again in the first game, he would score 2 bonus points for is team. These bonus points will be used as a tiebreaker for teams with identical w/l records.
The objectives for each round are:
Round 1:
Team objective: Kill Points
Personal objectives: Table Quarters, Objectives
Round 2:
Team objective: Table Quarters
Personal objectives: Kill Points, Objectives
Round 3:
Team objective: Objectives
Personal objectives: Table Quarters, Kill Points
Prize Support:
Pending...
Start Time: 10am
Number of Rounds: 3
Game Length: 2 hours 30 minutes with a 45 minute break after the first round and a 15 minute break after the second.
Max 8 teams=32 players (4 teams pre-set: G2D4team 1, GP North team 1, GP South team 1, Saltire/Bradford team 1) The 4 remaining teams are first come first serve.
Entry per team. $45
Tournament Organizer: Greg / Caulyn Darr
Rules:
*Teams: 4 players with a 1,000 point list that follows all FOC requirements and current Codex restrictions. (Only 1 unique character per 4 man team){No 4 Calgar's, or 2 Njal's, or 3 Straken's, etc.)
*Codex special abilities that effect any friendly units do not effect teammate's units.
*Codex special abilities that effect enemy units can effect both enemy players' units.
*Codex special abilities that effect enemy and friendly units can effect all units in the game.
*Team Captain will determine team pairings before each round, but before pairings of opponents are decided.
Missions:
Each team will be paired with another each round and play two simultaneous games. Each game will be comprised of two team members facing two opposing team members. The team will claim one point for each mission objective claimed in either game with the winning team being the one that claimed the most points. An equal number of objectives claimed will result in a tie.
Each mission will be comprised of three separate mission objectives. One mission objective will be a team goal that either player can assist in claiming. Each teammate will then select one of the personal objectives, and only they will be able to claim it in the game. No two teammates in the same game may select the same personal objective.
Mission Objective 1: Objectives. Five objectives are placed on the board; one in the center and one in the center of each table quarter. Objectives follow the rules in the 40K rulebook.
Mission Objective 2: Table Quarters. The team or player with the most claimed table quarters at the end of the game wins this objective. Whoever has the most Victory Points in a table quarter claims that quarter. Scoring units count as an extra 100VP for claiming a table quarter. If a unit is in more than one quarter, then they count as being in the quarter that contains the majority of the unit.
Mission Objective 3: Kill Points. Kill points are scored as described in the 40K rule book. In order to win this objectives the team or player must score 3 more KP than his opponent team or player. When this is a personal objective, a player may claim kill points by destroying either opposing player's units, but units killed by his teammate do not count.
Each game will go for 6 turns with a 7th turn played on a 4+ die roll.
Each time a player claims a personal objective type for the first time they score an additional point for their team. Each player can score 3 bonus points, for a total of 12 possible for the whole team provided they claim all three types of objectives as a personal objectives. For example if a player claims mission objective 1 in the first game, 2 in the second game, and 1 again in the first game, he would score 2 bonus points for is team. These bonus points will be used as a tiebreaker for teams with identical w/l records.
The objectives for each round are:
Round 1:
Team objective: Kill Points
Personal objectives: Table Quarters, Objectives
Round 2:
Team objective: Table Quarters
Personal objectives: Kill Points, Objectives
Round 3:
Team objective: Objectives
Personal objectives: Table Quarters, Kill Points
Prize Support:
Pending...
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Missed it by that much
I took my Eldar to todays Hivefleet Indy tournament and didn't do too well. I had three good really close games, but I made mistakes, and you aren't allowed to make mistakes when playing Eldar.
I've lost all faith in my Eldar as a tournament army. I have to make some changes, or do something drastic to be able to keep playing them. My GK's are my only army I have any confidence in right now.
I've lost all faith in my Eldar as a tournament army. I have to make some changes, or do something drastic to be able to keep playing them. My GK's are my only army I have any confidence in right now.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Gamers DMZ Tournament 4/23
Came in sixth place today going 2 and 1 with my GK deep strike list. I changed up my list a little for the tournament. I replaced the dreadnought with a second Dread Knight, and took the conversion beamers out of the list. I gave the inquisitors psycotroke grenades and made all the Justicars' weapons master crafted. Master crafted weapons for the Justicars are very much worth the 5 points. I think that I'm going to run rad grenades instead of psychotroke next time though. Psychotrokes are too random, and I was continually rolling results that where of no use. Inquisitors with grenades and a couple of crusaders are one hell of a CC unit. Overall, I'm happy with how my list is working.
My first game was against Blood Angels. He was a casual player, and I let him call it on the top of turn 5 with a squad of marines left.
My second game was against Tyranids, and it was a brutal close game. I kept my army in one block to focus fire and to keep half of his army out of the game. It hurt me because it meant that I had to give up on 3 of the 5 objectives. It came down to having to kill two tervigons on the last turn. My inquisitor made his psychic test and instant killed one, but my dread knight periled and lost his last wound fighting the other one. He won 2 objectives to my 1. I killed most of his army though. He had only 10 gaunts, 2 hive guard, and a tervigon left at the end. I killed 73 gaunts in the game. He was a good opponent, and it was a fun challenging game.
The third game was against orks. I was the highest ranked 1-1 player so I played the lowest ranked 2-0 player. The game started out really bad for me. I was missing just about every roll, and the ork player was rolling phenomenally. It changed up in the fourth turn. I was able to counter attack affectively and finally roll above a three. I ended up almost tabling him at the end of turn 7.
I was only about 180 points behind the 2-1 player that got to go into the final round. If I had been a dick and tabled my opponent in round 1, I would have gotten at least 4th place.
It was a very fun tournament. I feel bad for the locals though. 90% of the hard core Indy tournament players showed up, and beat a whole bunch of local kids in the first round. We had 4 G2D4 regulars show up and play locals in the first round, and all of us ended in the top 6. Of the other two, one was from Muncie and the other a north side player. Even though I'm a hardcore competitive format proponent, I think the locals could have benefited from a more hobby friendly event for their first tournament experience.
My first game was against Blood Angels. He was a casual player, and I let him call it on the top of turn 5 with a squad of marines left.
My second game was against Tyranids, and it was a brutal close game. I kept my army in one block to focus fire and to keep half of his army out of the game. It hurt me because it meant that I had to give up on 3 of the 5 objectives. It came down to having to kill two tervigons on the last turn. My inquisitor made his psychic test and instant killed one, but my dread knight periled and lost his last wound fighting the other one. He won 2 objectives to my 1. I killed most of his army though. He had only 10 gaunts, 2 hive guard, and a tervigon left at the end. I killed 73 gaunts in the game. He was a good opponent, and it was a fun challenging game.
The third game was against orks. I was the highest ranked 1-1 player so I played the lowest ranked 2-0 player. The game started out really bad for me. I was missing just about every roll, and the ork player was rolling phenomenally. It changed up in the fourth turn. I was able to counter attack affectively and finally roll above a three. I ended up almost tabling him at the end of turn 7.
I was only about 180 points behind the 2-1 player that got to go into the final round. If I had been a dick and tabled my opponent in round 1, I would have gotten at least 4th place.
It was a very fun tournament. I feel bad for the locals though. 90% of the hard core Indy tournament players showed up, and beat a whole bunch of local kids in the first round. We had 4 G2D4 regulars show up and play locals in the first round, and all of us ended in the top 6. Of the other two, one was from Muncie and the other a north side player. Even though I'm a hardcore competitive format proponent, I think the locals could have benefited from a more hobby friendly event for their first tournament experience.
Monday, February 7, 2011
A View to Kill Points
Let me preface this post by saying: I hate kill points. Here are some thoughts I have on the different ways to run a Annihilation mission in a tournament format.
First of there are the two common scoring methods for Annihilation:
Kill Points
Kill points took all the hard math(you know: addition and division) out of determining the winner in annihilation missions. Everyone knows the common example of why KP are a problem: that a 260 point Land Raider scores you the same amount of points as a 35 point Rhino. A common argument I hear for KP's are that they balance Small Model Count(SMC) armies against Multiple Small Unit(MSU) armies. I think it overcompensates for MSU's advantage in objective games. SMC armies tend to have halve the available KPs as MSU, and the MSU KPs are much easier to claim.
Victory Points
The old tried and true method for kill-em-all scenarios. It has the advantage of providing fine granularity that KPs don't, but can be a hassle to calculate when 50% casualties come into play. Plus they can be hard on armies that have a small number of expensive targets. This is really hard on the small model count armies, flipping the polarities on the way KP's reward small armies and hurts MSU. Victory points reinforce the advantage that MSU has in objective games, which is not necessarily a good thing. One lucky shot in this situation can swing the score several hundred points.
I have an alternate option that I would like to test out in future tournaments:
Graduated Kill Points
This option gives kill points a little more granularity. Basically a unit is worth 1 kill point for every 100 points it's worth. 1-100 points is 1 KP, 101-200 is worth 2, 201-300 is worth 3, ext. ext. This rewards a player for taking out a hard target in the same way as VPs, while still being fairly abstract like KPs. For instance a Land Raider(260 points) and a 10 man Marine Squad with Rhino(205 points) are both 3 Kill Points. As a bonus, the Marine player doesn't get penalized for using combat squads. Broken down the rhino and two combat squads are 1 KP each. This approach allows the SMC armies to claim easy kill points while the MSU armies don't have to dig themselves out of a huge KP disadvantage. In this system available KPs for MSU armies should roughly stay the same. KP's for the SMC armies should go up, but should stay lower than the MSU lists. For instance, take 4 units at 70 points each. This counts as 4 KPs in this system and cost 280 points. A single 280 point MC in another army would only count as 3 Kill Points. You still maintain a slight edge in annihilation for running SMC, but it's not as drastic of an advantage.
First of there are the two common scoring methods for Annihilation:
Kill Points
Kill points took all the hard math(you know: addition and division) out of determining the winner in annihilation missions. Everyone knows the common example of why KP are a problem: that a 260 point Land Raider scores you the same amount of points as a 35 point Rhino. A common argument I hear for KP's are that they balance Small Model Count(SMC) armies against Multiple Small Unit(MSU) armies. I think it overcompensates for MSU's advantage in objective games. SMC armies tend to have halve the available KPs as MSU, and the MSU KPs are much easier to claim.
Victory Points
The old tried and true method for kill-em-all scenarios. It has the advantage of providing fine granularity that KPs don't, but can be a hassle to calculate when 50% casualties come into play. Plus they can be hard on armies that have a small number of expensive targets. This is really hard on the small model count armies, flipping the polarities on the way KP's reward small armies and hurts MSU. Victory points reinforce the advantage that MSU has in objective games, which is not necessarily a good thing. One lucky shot in this situation can swing the score several hundred points.
I have an alternate option that I would like to test out in future tournaments:
Graduated Kill Points
This option gives kill points a little more granularity. Basically a unit is worth 1 kill point for every 100 points it's worth. 1-100 points is 1 KP, 101-200 is worth 2, 201-300 is worth 3, ext. ext. This rewards a player for taking out a hard target in the same way as VPs, while still being fairly abstract like KPs. For instance a Land Raider(260 points) and a 10 man Marine Squad with Rhino(205 points) are both 3 Kill Points. As a bonus, the Marine player doesn't get penalized for using combat squads. Broken down the rhino and two combat squads are 1 KP each. This approach allows the SMC armies to claim easy kill points while the MSU armies don't have to dig themselves out of a huge KP disadvantage. In this system available KPs for MSU armies should roughly stay the same. KP's for the SMC armies should go up, but should stay lower than the MSU lists. For instance, take 4 units at 70 points each. This counts as 4 KPs in this system and cost 280 points. A single 280 point MC in another army would only count as 3 Kill Points. You still maintain a slight edge in annihilation for running SMC, but it's not as drastic of an advantage.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Army of Two
Ever since my recent game with Sandwyrm, I've been thinking of ways to improve my neglected Ultramarines army. It's led me to put together a new 1500 point list for the Hivefleet Indy tournament this weekend. So the new list looks like this:
Captain w/combi-melta and relic blade
Captain w/combi-melta and relic blade
9 Man Sterngaurd squad w/ 2x combi-melta and rhino
Dreadnought w/2x twin -linked autocannons
Dreadnought w/2x twin -linked autocannons10 Man Tactical Squad w/meltagun, missile launcher, and rhino
5 Man TacticalSquad w/combi-melta and las-plas razorback
5 Man TacticalSquad w/combi-melta and las-plas razorbackLandSpeeder w/heavy flamer and multi-melta
LandSpeeder w/heavy flamer and multi-meltaMy usual combo of Shrike+TH/SS Termies is a bit too expensive for 1500. My other usual choice of HQ, a Librarian, hasn't been working out too effectively for me. His abilities are nice, but he can't save his squad in HtH combat, and his powers are not useful if every match up. So I decided to go with two captains that can beat face 100 percent of the time, versus a librarian that can give me a tactical advantage 50 percent of the time.
I tried it out last Saturday against Dodger3's demons. The Sterngaurd did well, they sacrificed themselves to take down Fateweaver with poisoned bolter fire. The captains performed even better. They took down 7 Bloodcrushers in melee combat with a little supporting fire to soften them up first. I ended up loosing the game to a couple of bad rolls at the end. It didn't help that I wasted my dreadnoughts and speeders by getting them too close.
I think it's a solid list. I'm debating whether to cut a few guys from the Sterngaurd squad to afford a few more upgrades. Namely, more combi-meltas for the Sterngaurd, and a power fist for the 10 man tactical squad sergeant. I do like being able to fire 18 shots of special issue bolter ammo though.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Competitive Tournaments == Laid Back Gamers
Haven't had much to post about recently. New project at works has taken up my attention, plus building my Tau and running the escalation league has left me too little time to write any rants about little plastic men. Speaking of the escalation league...
Now that the league has started I don't have to worry too much about it. I set up the rules so that players can essentially self run it. I only have to step in to stir things up occasionally to keep things interesting. Justin and Scott are racing for the top spot, so the first big team battle should be ready to go in a few weeks. It's looking like the Chaos players are well on their way to unleashing a devastating ancient weapon if they keep up their digging in the wasteland. The order players will need to step up in the spaceport and forge if they want to have any hope of mounting a credible defense if the first big game.
I'm very pleased with how the players are approaching the league. I haven't heard any of the bickering you usually get from 40k players about fairness or cheeses. Of course that may just be because as the organizer, I can't complain about my own event. I think some of it has to do with setting expectations, but I think a lot has to do with our tournaments taking the competitive edge out of our group. By having fair competitive tournaments, we don't have as much to prove during our regular friendly games.
That's right, I think our highly competitive tournaments are making us more laid back gamers. Competitive people set out to test themselves and prove something. If all your measurable ways to test yourself don't prove anything, then you don't really accomplish anything. I think battle point tournaments leave many players feeling untested. You can end up in 4th place undefeated without ever having played the guy who was awarded first. I think that Win/Loss tournaments feed our instinctive reptile brain in a way that battle point tournaments don't. At the end of a W/L tournament, you are left with the feeling that the spot you won was the the spot you deserved. Even if that spot is a 4 way tie for 1st place.
But, how does this make us more laid back? If we are feeding that part of our brain that needs competition a full delicious feast, we are less likely to go looking for snacks in between our meals. A well fed competitive player has no need to eat up poor little kids in 600 point league games. Knowing that another good competitive tournament is coming up lets us save our appetites as well.
There's been some complaints filtering in about our next Hivefleet Indy Tournament because we end the day without a clear number 1 player. It's hard to make a rational argument that that is not a big deal to someone who has never played a W/L tournament. Our instinctual expectation in a competition is that there is a winner at the end. You have to experience a W/L tournament to realize that you don't need to have a winner to feed your competitive nature. You just need to have tough fights where you skills are adequately tested and your results are fairly rewarded. What you don't want to do is declare someone the best without making them prove it. That will just ruin the meal. A hungry competitive nature will look to feed itself anyway it can.
Now that the league has started I don't have to worry too much about it. I set up the rules so that players can essentially self run it. I only have to step in to stir things up occasionally to keep things interesting. Justin and Scott are racing for the top spot, so the first big team battle should be ready to go in a few weeks. It's looking like the Chaos players are well on their way to unleashing a devastating ancient weapon if they keep up their digging in the wasteland. The order players will need to step up in the spaceport and forge if they want to have any hope of mounting a credible defense if the first big game.
I'm very pleased with how the players are approaching the league. I haven't heard any of the bickering you usually get from 40k players about fairness or cheeses. Of course that may just be because as the organizer, I can't complain about my own event. I think some of it has to do with setting expectations, but I think a lot has to do with our tournaments taking the competitive edge out of our group. By having fair competitive tournaments, we don't have as much to prove during our regular friendly games.
That's right, I think our highly competitive tournaments are making us more laid back gamers. Competitive people set out to test themselves and prove something. If all your measurable ways to test yourself don't prove anything, then you don't really accomplish anything. I think battle point tournaments leave many players feeling untested. You can end up in 4th place undefeated without ever having played the guy who was awarded first. I think that Win/Loss tournaments feed our instinctive reptile brain in a way that battle point tournaments don't. At the end of a W/L tournament, you are left with the feeling that the spot you won was the the spot you deserved. Even if that spot is a 4 way tie for 1st place.
But, how does this make us more laid back? If we are feeding that part of our brain that needs competition a full delicious feast, we are less likely to go looking for snacks in between our meals. A well fed competitive player has no need to eat up poor little kids in 600 point league games. Knowing that another good competitive tournament is coming up lets us save our appetites as well.
There's been some complaints filtering in about our next Hivefleet Indy Tournament because we end the day without a clear number 1 player. It's hard to make a rational argument that that is not a big deal to someone who has never played a W/L tournament. Our instinctual expectation in a competition is that there is a winner at the end. You have to experience a W/L tournament to realize that you don't need to have a winner to feed your competitive nature. You just need to have tough fights where you skills are adequately tested and your results are fairly rewarded. What you don't want to do is declare someone the best without making them prove it. That will just ruin the meal. A hungry competitive nature will look to feed itself anyway it can.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
A Viper, a Viper, My Kingdom for a Viper
G2D4's 1750 tournament is coming up, and I want to play my Eldar. Problem is my Eldar is a 1500 point force. My original 1750 point expansion plan was to upgrade my Autarch to Yriel and add a few Vypers. Unfortunately, nobody close by has any Vipers in stock and I won't be able to get any in in time to get them built and painted. It's what I get for focusing on my Firestorm Fleets and my WIP Tau for the last few months.
I'm going to have to pick something from the Eldar B team that I can get painted up in time. I have no spare transports, so Fire Dragons, Dire Avengers, and Storm Guardians are out. No jet bikes, so none of those. Ranger/Pathfinders are too expensive to put in enough to be a threat. My Heavy slots are all filled. Everything else besides Striking Scorpions suck too much to mention, so I'll be running Scorpions. Five Scorpions plus Exarch with Biting Blade and Shadow Strike, fits well into the 140 points I had slotted out for the two Vipers.
It's a sub optimal choice, but I own the models already. I can also get them painted up to match my army pretty quickly. I hate running 6 foot models in a all mech list. I can at least use them as first turn bubble wrap or semi-survivable objective holders.
Everybody seems to be getting on the 40k blog rolls, maybe I should do that...
I'm going to have to pick something from the Eldar B team that I can get painted up in time. I have no spare transports, so Fire Dragons, Dire Avengers, and Storm Guardians are out. No jet bikes, so none of those. Ranger/Pathfinders are too expensive to put in enough to be a threat. My Heavy slots are all filled. Everything else besides Striking Scorpions suck too much to mention, so I'll be running Scorpions. Five Scorpions plus Exarch with Biting Blade and Shadow Strike, fits well into the 140 points I had slotted out for the two Vipers.
It's a sub optimal choice, but I own the models already. I can also get them painted up to match my army pretty quickly. I hate running 6 foot models in a all mech list. I can at least use them as first turn bubble wrap or semi-survivable objective holders.
Everybody seems to be getting on the 40k blog rolls, maybe I should do that...
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, September 27, 2010
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?
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?
Saturday, September 4, 2010
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:
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:
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.
Monday, August 30, 2010
I Hate Comp
I was contemplating hading up to Lafayette for a tournament this weekend, until I found out about the crazy tourney rules. A lot of people have chimed in on why they dislike or like the old comp'ed or battle point style tournaments. I thought I go and put down my particular reasons for disliking the format. I going to cover not just comp restrictions, but painting and sports scoring as well.
Comp
Comp restrictions and scoring always irk me. Comp is a means to try and fix a game that I don't think is necessarily broken. It never seems that the people who come up with comp really understands the game. That, or their understanding of the game was cemented in place some time in the distant past. From my observation, most comp comes from local groups trying to overcome some perceived imbalance in the game. 40K is a very complex game in terms of possible interactions with a dozen armies written against three different editions. Most gaming groups are only exposed to a small subset of those interactions. A lot of comp rules I see suffer from having big blind spots toward uncommon armies and builds. Take the one from Lafayette where they are requiring 4 Troops instead of 2. Older armies suffer from very poor troop choices. Forcing a Tau player to run extra troops hurts him a lot more than forcing a Marine player to run another tac squad. Of course that's assuming the motives of the TO are misguided and not malicious. Hypothetically the TO could think that Tau are overpowered and is trying to cripple what he thinks is a local players WAAC list.
Comp
Comp restrictions and scoring always irk me. Comp is a means to try and fix a game that I don't think is necessarily broken. It never seems that the people who come up with comp really understands the game. That, or their understanding of the game was cemented in place some time in the distant past. From my observation, most comp comes from local groups trying to overcome some perceived imbalance in the game. 40K is a very complex game in terms of possible interactions with a dozen armies written against three different editions. Most gaming groups are only exposed to a small subset of those interactions. A lot of comp rules I see suffer from having big blind spots toward uncommon armies and builds. Take the one from Lafayette where they are requiring 4 Troops instead of 2. Older armies suffer from very poor troop choices. Forcing a Tau player to run extra troops hurts him a lot more than forcing a Marine player to run another tac squad. Of course that's assuming the motives of the TO are misguided and not malicious. Hypothetically the TO could think that Tau are overpowered and is trying to cripple what he thinks is a local players WAAC list.
This leads to my other gripe about comp in that it is exclusionary social engineering. There are these 'other' people who play 'differently' and something must be done about it. Comp rules favor local players, and hurt the guys from across town. All power rangers in our sandbox must be red, or you can't play here. Comp is meant to keep out WAACs, but is just as likely to hurt some random player's honest attempt at a 40k army list. Anybody who can build a good list to standard rules of 40k can also game any comp system, so it ends up that the only player who really gets hurt is the poor random scrub. In fact most comp systems can be gamed far worse than standard 40k. Oh, what joyful things can be done with a tournament that allows Dark Angels and Black Templars to have Codex Marine wargear!
5th edition makes comp redundant anyway. The newer codex's don't require as much FOC min/maxing and spamming to be competitive. It too easy for a Guard or Marine player to tip-toe around a comp system and still put a face smashingly brutal list on the table.
Painting
I would like to preface this by saying that I like to paint miniatures. I'm not the greatest at it, but the ability to build and paint a model and then do something with it was one of the things that drew me to the hobby. But painting requires two things to be good at: Time and Talent. Not everyone has those in spades. Plus painting injects a huge subjective blob into what should be a fairly objective affair. If you can't paint, and you want to win, people will just get their armies painted for them. This turns the painting competition into a how much money you can spend competition. I've always felt uneasy giving good painting scores to an army that was professional painted by someone other than the person playing it. There are also people who are physically incapable of painting small miniatures. How are we supposed to fit them into the hobby? Painting scores also skew the results towards veteran players. It takes time to fully paint an army to high standards, and it can take years to develop good painting skills. New players might have good tabletop skills, but are years away from fielding a pretty army.
I'm in support of minimum painting requirements, and separate painting competitions. I would also never turn away someone who had an unpainted army from a local tournament. Grand Tournaments are another matter entirely. I'm OK with them holding players to higher minimum requirements.
Painting and Comp are also contradictory. Painting an army takes a lot longer than it does to come up with some comp scoring system. You may not have the painted models to adjust your list to account for comp rules; forcing you to decide whether to take a comp hit or a painting hit in a tournament.
Sportsmanship
Like painting, I think of this as more of a requirement than something that should be scored. As Bill & Ted once said, "Be excellent to each other." I've becomes friends with many players where my first tournament experience against them was not pleasant. Sports scores are again skewed toward locals, and act as exclusionary social engineering. You accept the idiosyncrasies of people you are friends with more than those of complete strangers. Being friends with someone means the difference between, "That's just how Mike plays", and "What a WAAC jerk."
It's also another way for WAACs to abuse a system meant to protect us from them. People for the most part will act in their own self interest, and you are giving them a slip of paper that essentially says, "Check this box if you don't want your opponent to win the tournament."
It's the job of the TO to police bad behavior. It's up to the players to let the TO know when bad behavior is occurring. Cheating should not be tolerated.
Conclusion
Short conclusion: do it like the NOVA Open did. NOVA was structured as an event that tried to include people and promote a common community. This upcoming Lafayette tournament looks like the opposite. While I've seen worse tournament setups, it's not inclusive. It doesn't take into account that 5th edition 40k is a fairly balanced system. Some armies don't have as many tools, but any army can give a decent showing with a good player behind it. Giving some armies free upgrades, and hamstringing others does not help the game. The only people who benefit from a tournament like that are local players who are used to that particular home-brew 40k. Tournaments should be about stripping away the BS to determine who the best player is, not about adding another layer of crud to reinforce stereotypes.
While I have my own personal opinions about 40k and how it should be played (you just read through a whole post full of them), the only ones I adhere to are on the basis of inclusion. I don't think we should turn people away who have different opinions about the game. We should embrace systems that cater to as many people as possible. From what I've seen Nova was an event that accomplished that, and I think it is something that should be emulated whenever possible. I don't like tournaments that penalize people for not playing with their toy soldiers the 'right' way.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Always in a Rush
Our 40k club at G2D4 has another tournament coming up on Aug 7 (Yes, they know that's during GENCON). No particular information is available yet, but the TO should be making that available soon. I'm pretty sure it will be 1750 with three games.
A friend of mine I haven't seen in a few years was going to be at Gencon, so I'm torn about going to this tournament. I would probably have more fun for less cash at the tournament, so I'll probably skip the con on Saturday. I might take Friday off work and go then.
I am faced with having to get more stuff painted for my Eldar. It's my prettiest army, so I want to use it over just running my marines. I have a few options for filling in the last 250 points. I kind of want to convert a seer council on bikes, but I'll be lucky to get that done in a month. I'll probably add two or three Vipers. I'm also thinking about upgrading my Autaurch to a counts as Yriel. He's not the greatest special character, but his b-bomb attack would have been very useful in my last tournament. Converting up some Fire Dragon Exarchs is also a possibility.
I still plan on trying to write up my DV aircraft rules tonight. I won't be able to do any play testing on Saturday as I had hoped. I'm scheduled to play some other games, and it's board game night at work.
A friend of mine I haven't seen in a few years was going to be at Gencon, so I'm torn about going to this tournament. I would probably have more fun for less cash at the tournament, so I'll probably skip the con on Saturday. I might take Friday off work and go then.
I am faced with having to get more stuff painted for my Eldar. It's my prettiest army, so I want to use it over just running my marines. I have a few options for filling in the last 250 points. I kind of want to convert a seer council on bikes, but I'll be lucky to get that done in a month. I'll probably add two or three Vipers. I'm also thinking about upgrading my Autaurch to a counts as Yriel. He's not the greatest special character, but his b-bomb attack would have been very useful in my last tournament. Converting up some Fire Dragon Exarchs is also a possibility.
I still plan on trying to write up my DV aircraft rules tonight. I won't be able to do any play testing on Saturday as I had hoped. I'm scheduled to play some other games, and it's board game night at work.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Not Quite as Planned.
Ever have one of those tournaments where you had all good games and they you look at the final score and you're down at the bottom. That's what the GP South tournament last weekend felt like. 4 good close games, but no wins.
I played the Mech Eldar army I've been building.
Game One:
I played against a vanilla mech marine army. A few tactical squads in rhinos and razorbacks, Auto-Las Predator, Las-HB Predator, 5 man Sterngaurd, Two speeders, and Cassius. The mission was victory points with three objectives counting at 150 vp each. The mission also used diagonal deployment zones w/ a 12 inch no-mans-land in the center.
I lost the roll to go first, and he deployed along his deployment zone. I hid all my skimmers behind a nice ruin in the corner of my deployment zone. I made my first mistake and didn't deploy my Falcon far enough into my corner to avoid his auto-plas predator on my right flank. The Falcon ended up getting stunned for the first two turns and then immobilized as a result. I speed my Wave serpents up my right flank and they ran into his stern guard. I dumped out my Fire Dragons and Dire Avengers to fight him, but it didn't work out so well. 5 man dire avengers squads are capable of doing exactly nothing. My Autaurch completely wiffed in CC; starting a trend that would go on all day. I ended up breaking though his units, but at a cost of all my transported infantry. The game was still pretty close at this point, as I had most of my skimmers left, one squad of Dire Avengers and the Farseer. Unfortunately the game went on for a 6th and 7th turn. My army wasn't standing up to the attrition very well. On the 7th turn he managed to take out two of my Wave Serpents that where contesting objectives. I had to use my Prisms to turbo-boost to contest on the last round. Unfortunately one of my Prisms rolled a 1 entering the terrain the objective was in and blew itself up. This was a 310 point VP swing for my opponent. I think I lost by about a 600 point margin. If It wasn't for that bad 7th turn it would have been a lot closer.
My army suffers in a VP scenario vs Marines. I have to blow his 170 point unit out of a 25 point tank, while he has to blow my 60 point unit out of a 145 point tank. My wave serpents are a little harder to kill than rhinos and razor backs, but I'm going to loose more points getting de-meched than my opponent. I can kind of understand where the KP idea came from, too bad it's a horrible solution to this problem.
If could have deployed a little better in this game, 6 inches to the right would have put my Falcon into the game. I could have also reserved my army, using the side board edges of my deployment zone to my advantage. I need to not get my Dire Avengers out of their Wave Serpents until they are blown out. And when they do get blown out, they need to run away instead of charge the enemy.
Game 2:
I played Evil Ted's Orks. He had 5 units of boys riding in Trucks, 3 Scortchas, 3 Buggies with rokkit launchers, a Battlewagon with some Burnas inside, and a WeirdBoy.
The scenario was interesting. There was one objective that a unit could join like an independent character in the movement phase and then drag it around. The main problem with that scenario is that you could only claim the objective in the movement phase. On the last turn, if you blast your opponent of an objective, you can't claim it, and you can't win. That's what happened to me, and it kind of sucks.
This game was chaos. We both had very mobile armies, and where fighting in literally every corner of the table. This was my slowest game and we only got 5 turns in. On the last turn both our armies where in disarray. I managed to jump a unit of Dire Avengers out of their serpent, and with help blow a unit of boys off of the objective. Unfortunately I couldn't claim it because of the reasons I already listed. This left us tied for primary and secondary objectives. The tertiary was table quarters, and those where all contested. I realized that he had some boys in melee with my stunned Fire Prisms. I let him roll his attacks, and he got lucky rolling a 5 and 6 for the holo-field damage results. Game lost on a 2D6 die roll.
Game 3:
I played against a Chaos Marine army. It consisted of two units of Thousand Suns in Rhinos, a unit of raptors, a Winged Demon Prince, 2 Oblits, some summoned lesser demons, and a Las-Las Predator.
The scenario was get to the opponents deployment zone. It used the funky diagonal deployment zone from the first mission.
I lost the roll to go first, but he gave me first turn anyway. I used it to blow away his oblits, and proptly suffered Karmic blow back. My dice where A-W-F-U-L after that. I had a huge advantage in the scenario and blew it away by getting up close and failing to kill anything for two turns. I also moved skimmers into terrain twice, and rolled 1's twice. I had three skimmers immobilized in No-Man-Land at the end of the game. I managed to get two of my skimmers in to his deployment zone and reduced his army to two immobile rhinos, an immobile predator, a unit of two TSM, and a unit of one TSM. At the end of the game he had one unit of TSM completely in my deployment zone, and another with his toe in. This left us tied for Primary and Secondary objectives. The tertiary was table quarters again. We were all contested, but he claimed that one of my immobile tanks shouldn't count because it was half in a table quarter contesting his TSMs. The judge had us dice it, and I won the 4+ roll. Game tied on a 1d6 roll.
I should have hung back and used my speed and range to etter advantage. Though if my dice rolled any where near average, I would have tabled him on turn 5.
Game 4:
Played Evil Ted again. Judge gave the option of playing someone else, but Ted was the best opponent I played all day, so we elected to play again.
Scenario was essentially capture and control.
Our armies did another number on each other. At the end of the game we had completely changed sides and controlled each others objectives. We where tied for Primary and Secondary objectives( AGAIN!). Tertiary this time was how many units you could get into your opponents deployment zone. He had 5 to my 3. Too many Orks to kill for my Eldar without a seer-council.
I would also like to note how ridiculously lucky his buggies where rolling that game. Every turn except one he managed to get a pen and a glance on one of my skimmers.
Final Thoughts:
I need spirit stones on some of my skimmers. Not sure where to get the points from, but I suffered several dead skimmers from getting stunned one round and then auto hit the next. My Autarch doesn't deserve her power weapon any more. She was involved in 6-7 rounds of combat during the tournament and didn't score a single wound. I took her mostly for the reserve bonus. I never went up against any alpha strike armies, and didn't need to reserve my whole force .
The biggest thing I learned during the tournament is that my Dire Avengers are not Tactical Marines, and I should not try to use them as such.
I had fun, I'll defiantly attend their next tournament when they have it. The tournament was a very good rough draft for what is looking to be very interesting and competitive format. They have only one scenario that needs major revision. I don't like how you can win the game by taking only the Tertiary Objective. I would also have liked to see a pure multi-objective game. I'm not a fan of the objectives as VP/KP scenario. All-in-all these are purely minor gripes against a very well run tournament. And for being a no-soft-scores event, it had the most painted armies I've ever seen at a local tournament.
I played the Mech Eldar army I've been building.
Game One:
I played against a vanilla mech marine army. A few tactical squads in rhinos and razorbacks, Auto-Las Predator, Las-HB Predator, 5 man Sterngaurd, Two speeders, and Cassius. The mission was victory points with three objectives counting at 150 vp each. The mission also used diagonal deployment zones w/ a 12 inch no-mans-land in the center.
I lost the roll to go first, and he deployed along his deployment zone. I hid all my skimmers behind a nice ruin in the corner of my deployment zone. I made my first mistake and didn't deploy my Falcon far enough into my corner to avoid his auto-plas predator on my right flank. The Falcon ended up getting stunned for the first two turns and then immobilized as a result. I speed my Wave serpents up my right flank and they ran into his stern guard. I dumped out my Fire Dragons and Dire Avengers to fight him, but it didn't work out so well. 5 man dire avengers squads are capable of doing exactly nothing. My Autaurch completely wiffed in CC; starting a trend that would go on all day. I ended up breaking though his units, but at a cost of all my transported infantry. The game was still pretty close at this point, as I had most of my skimmers left, one squad of Dire Avengers and the Farseer. Unfortunately the game went on for a 6th and 7th turn. My army wasn't standing up to the attrition very well. On the 7th turn he managed to take out two of my Wave Serpents that where contesting objectives. I had to use my Prisms to turbo-boost to contest on the last round. Unfortunately one of my Prisms rolled a 1 entering the terrain the objective was in and blew itself up. This was a 310 point VP swing for my opponent. I think I lost by about a 600 point margin. If It wasn't for that bad 7th turn it would have been a lot closer.
My army suffers in a VP scenario vs Marines. I have to blow his 170 point unit out of a 25 point tank, while he has to blow my 60 point unit out of a 145 point tank. My wave serpents are a little harder to kill than rhinos and razor backs, but I'm going to loose more points getting de-meched than my opponent. I can kind of understand where the KP idea came from, too bad it's a horrible solution to this problem.
If could have deployed a little better in this game, 6 inches to the right would have put my Falcon into the game. I could have also reserved my army, using the side board edges of my deployment zone to my advantage. I need to not get my Dire Avengers out of their Wave Serpents until they are blown out. And when they do get blown out, they need to run away instead of charge the enemy.
Game 2:
I played Evil Ted's Orks. He had 5 units of boys riding in Trucks, 3 Scortchas, 3 Buggies with rokkit launchers, a Battlewagon with some Burnas inside, and a WeirdBoy.
The scenario was interesting. There was one objective that a unit could join like an independent character in the movement phase and then drag it around. The main problem with that scenario is that you could only claim the objective in the movement phase. On the last turn, if you blast your opponent of an objective, you can't claim it, and you can't win. That's what happened to me, and it kind of sucks.
This game was chaos. We both had very mobile armies, and where fighting in literally every corner of the table. This was my slowest game and we only got 5 turns in. On the last turn both our armies where in disarray. I managed to jump a unit of Dire Avengers out of their serpent, and with help blow a unit of boys off of the objective. Unfortunately I couldn't claim it because of the reasons I already listed. This left us tied for primary and secondary objectives. The tertiary was table quarters, and those where all contested. I realized that he had some boys in melee with my stunned Fire Prisms. I let him roll his attacks, and he got lucky rolling a 5 and 6 for the holo-field damage results. Game lost on a 2D6 die roll.
Game 3:
I played against a Chaos Marine army. It consisted of two units of Thousand Suns in Rhinos, a unit of raptors, a Winged Demon Prince, 2 Oblits, some summoned lesser demons, and a Las-Las Predator.
The scenario was get to the opponents deployment zone. It used the funky diagonal deployment zone from the first mission.
I lost the roll to go first, but he gave me first turn anyway. I used it to blow away his oblits, and proptly suffered Karmic blow back. My dice where A-W-F-U-L after that. I had a huge advantage in the scenario and blew it away by getting up close and failing to kill anything for two turns. I also moved skimmers into terrain twice, and rolled 1's twice. I had three skimmers immobilized in No-Man-Land at the end of the game. I managed to get two of my skimmers in to his deployment zone and reduced his army to two immobile rhinos, an immobile predator, a unit of two TSM, and a unit of one TSM. At the end of the game he had one unit of TSM completely in my deployment zone, and another with his toe in. This left us tied for Primary and Secondary objectives. The tertiary was table quarters again. We were all contested, but he claimed that one of my immobile tanks shouldn't count because it was half in a table quarter contesting his TSMs. The judge had us dice it, and I won the 4+ roll. Game tied on a 1d6 roll.
I should have hung back and used my speed and range to etter advantage. Though if my dice rolled any where near average, I would have tabled him on turn 5.
Game 4:
Played Evil Ted again. Judge gave the option of playing someone else, but Ted was the best opponent I played all day, so we elected to play again.
Scenario was essentially capture and control.
Our armies did another number on each other. At the end of the game we had completely changed sides and controlled each others objectives. We where tied for Primary and Secondary objectives( AGAIN!). Tertiary this time was how many units you could get into your opponents deployment zone. He had 5 to my 3. Too many Orks to kill for my Eldar without a seer-council.
I would also like to note how ridiculously lucky his buggies where rolling that game. Every turn except one he managed to get a pen and a glance on one of my skimmers.
Final Thoughts:
I need spirit stones on some of my skimmers. Not sure where to get the points from, but I suffered several dead skimmers from getting stunned one round and then auto hit the next. My Autarch doesn't deserve her power weapon any more. She was involved in 6-7 rounds of combat during the tournament and didn't score a single wound. I took her mostly for the reserve bonus. I never went up against any alpha strike armies, and didn't need to reserve my whole force .
The biggest thing I learned during the tournament is that my Dire Avengers are not Tactical Marines, and I should not try to use them as such.
I had fun, I'll defiantly attend their next tournament when they have it. The tournament was a very good rough draft for what is looking to be very interesting and competitive format. They have only one scenario that needs major revision. I don't like how you can win the game by taking only the Tertiary Objective. I would also have liked to see a pure multi-objective game. I'm not a fan of the objectives as VP/KP scenario. All-in-all these are purely minor gripes against a very well run tournament. And for being a no-soft-scores event, it had the most painted armies I've ever seen at a local tournament.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tournaments and Things
I had good time at the GP south side tournament even though I didn't do so well. I didn't come in last place, so it's an improvement over the last time I went south to play. The tournament was well run, and all my games where fun and challenging. I have some minor gripes about the scenarios that I sent along to the organizer. I think after a round of revisions and they will have a solid set of custom tournament scenarios.
I'm currently analyzing what I did wrong in my games. When I get a good grasp of what I could have done better, I'll post battle reports.
I haven't got around to writing up the carrier rules for Decisive Victory yet. I downloaded Visual Studio Express 2010 and got into coding up a App to generate ship stats. I've been using the development as a way to codify all the values that I was essentially eyeballing for the few ships I created so far. Time permitting I'll have that app done sometime this week. I'm working in points and AA values into the stats for the app, so when it's done expect all the listed ships to change and several more get added.
When the ship creator app is done it should allow anyone to generate stats. If anyone would like a copy of the app and help out with stating up some ships, let me know.
I did put some thought into how to do point values for DV. I think I'm going to take the Warmachine route with ships costing small single digit number for points. When building a fleet you'll get separate points to buy destroyers, cruiser, capital ships, and support. Support will include land based aircraft, shore batteries, and submarines. So a typical game would be 5 destroyer points, 5 cruiser points, 5 capital ship points, and 3 support points. This would work out to be a typical fleet of 5 destroyers, 2 cruisers, 1 capital ship, and some assorted support. I also plan to allow you to use your points from one class at two for one cost in another. So if you have two extra cruiser points, you can use them to buy one extra destroyer.
I'm currently analyzing what I did wrong in my games. When I get a good grasp of what I could have done better, I'll post battle reports.
I haven't got around to writing up the carrier rules for Decisive Victory yet. I downloaded Visual Studio Express 2010 and got into coding up a App to generate ship stats. I've been using the development as a way to codify all the values that I was essentially eyeballing for the few ships I created so far. Time permitting I'll have that app done sometime this week. I'm working in points and AA values into the stats for the app, so when it's done expect all the listed ships to change and several more get added.
When the ship creator app is done it should allow anyone to generate stats. If anyone would like a copy of the app and help out with stating up some ships, let me know.
I did put some thought into how to do point values for DV. I think I'm going to take the Warmachine route with ships costing small single digit number for points. When building a fleet you'll get separate points to buy destroyers, cruiser, capital ships, and support. Support will include land based aircraft, shore batteries, and submarines. So a typical game would be 5 destroyer points, 5 cruiser points, 5 capital ship points, and 3 support points. This would work out to be a typical fleet of 5 destroyers, 2 cruisers, 1 capital ship, and some assorted support. I also plan to allow you to use your points from one class at two for one cost in another. So if you have two extra cruiser points, you can use them to buy one extra destroyer.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Pass on 'ard Boys
I've decided not to play in G2D4's 'ard Boys on Sunday. Its too soon after the last tournament to get the competitive juices flowing. Plus, I want to focus on getting my Eldar painted in time for the June 19 Game Preserve Tournament.
Speaking of my Eldar, this is what I've been playing at 1500 pts
Farseer w/ Fortune, Guide, Doom, Spirit Stones, Runes of Warding, Runes of Witnessing
5x Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent, TL Brightlance, Shuri Cannon
5x Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent, TL Brightlance, Shuri Cannon
10 Dire Avengers w/ Exarch, Twin shuri-cats, Bladestorm
Wave Serpent, TL Brightlance, Shuri Cannon
5x Dire Avengers
Falcon w/Shuri Cannon, Scatter Laser, Holo-Fields
Fire Prism w/Shuri Cannon, Holo-Fields
Fire Prism w/Shuri Cannon, Holo-Fields
It's performed pretty well. I only lost my first game with them, and have tied and won an equal number. I think I'm going to need more troops for the scenarios they are using down south. Plus the Deathspinner kit is coming out soon, and that might be worth changing the army for. I might pick up another Wave Serpent and run three five man units of Avengers in Wave Serpents. They big squad usually dies when they get out of their transport anyway. I''m thinking about also stripping down the Farseer to just having Guide and Runes of Warding and just sticking him in the Falcon. I've barley been hitting with 50% of its shots, so it needs a boost to start earning its place in the list.
Speaking of my Eldar, this is what I've been playing at 1500 pts
Farseer w/ Fortune, Guide, Doom, Spirit Stones, Runes of Warding, Runes of Witnessing
5x Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent, TL Brightlance, Shuri Cannon
5x Fire Dragons
Wave Serpent, TL Brightlance, Shuri Cannon
10 Dire Avengers w/ Exarch, Twin shuri-cats, Bladestorm
Wave Serpent, TL Brightlance, Shuri Cannon
5x Dire Avengers
Falcon w/Shuri Cannon, Scatter Laser, Holo-Fields
Fire Prism w/Shuri Cannon, Holo-Fields
Fire Prism w/Shuri Cannon, Holo-Fields
It's performed pretty well. I only lost my first game with them, and have tied and won an equal number. I think I'm going to need more troops for the scenarios they are using down south. Plus the Deathspinner kit is coming out soon, and that might be worth changing the army for. I might pick up another Wave Serpent and run three five man units of Avengers in Wave Serpents. They big squad usually dies when they get out of their transport anyway. I''m thinking about also stripping down the Farseer to just having Guide and Runes of Warding and just sticking him in the Falcon. I've barley been hitting with 50% of its shots, so it needs a boost to start earning its place in the list.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Apoc Tournament Thoughts
The idea of having an Apocalypse tournament occasionally gets suggested at G2D4. I usually cringe at the idea, as it comes in the form of a standard tournament with a high point value and super heavies. I immediately picture Aaron playing his bio-titan and killing everything while my super heavy fliers buzz around without a scratch on them. Apocalypse and Planet Strike were not written for a competitive environment, and if you told a GW designer you were going to use them as such, they would probably look at you like you just grew a second head.
Saying that, I think you could create a semi-competitive Apocalypse event with alot of careful planning and a good understanding of what Apocalypse is and what it is not.
First off, some logistical considerations:
Games with super heavies need space. At least 6x6 for 3000 points; 6x8 would be better. This would limit the event to 8-12 players unless a larger space than G2D4 could be found.
Time will also be a constraint. You'll be struggling to fit three 3000 point games into a single day. You are going to need to run it as a multi-day event, or impose some strong turn time limits. My thoughts are to impose 15 minute player turns, with 5 minutes to clean up any declared assaults. This would yield 5 turns every two hours. This would still require players to hustle on setup and between game activities.
Pre-submitted army lists(I'll talk about this more when I cover balance), and hard commitments from the players to attend is also a must. There's going to be a lot of planing required, no sense in doing it if every one is going to flake out.
Structure of the event:
I would split the players into order vs chaos and the tournament gets won as a team. The results of the games get pooled together to determine which side wins. The winning team should get some prize support, such as a dice cube or something in the 5-15 dollar range so that winning and loosing isn't such a big deal. This is important considering the balance issues. Give the best prizes based on a player vote for coolest themed army as this is basically a fluff event anyway.
I would run the tournament like a story campaign. Every scenario is selected for the specific player match ups. Wins and losses will take each player to another specific scenario against another player. Create a simple flow chart to assign the games. Don't enumerate every possibility as that grows exponentially vs tournament size. Do set up the flow chart so that there is no possibility of a player going into an auto loose game( i.e. the guy with no Anti-Air faces the guy with 3 fliers). Another reason why army lists need to be submitted before hand. Winners should still play winners if possible.
Don't score the games based solely on win/loose. Add story driven objectives that have more weight. Things like: Your HQ defends an objective against three turns of enemy assault(5pts). Make fulfilling fluffy based conditions the major objective for scoring points
I'd also have the results of certain games effect the tournament as a whole. Basically wins on certain tables grant assets to one side during the next game.
Balance:
This is the most important consideration. Just like when GW wrote the Inquisitor rules and left out the points, GW wrote Apocalypse and left out the balance. The tournament organizer is going to have to add it in himself. Some hard and fast rules are going to have to get made, and somebody is not going to like them. Unfortunately there are some things that are going to need to be nerfed for the benefit of all.
Allow no player selected assets. Some are just broken, and can really throw off the game. Add them to any scenarios with careful consideration. This unfortunately means no formations that grant assets either.
Allow allying based on the allies matrix. This is a great opportunity to let Chaos Marine players use real demons. Every set of units from a single codex should follow the Force Org chart, but super-heavies and formations don't count against it.
Lists should be pre-approved. Screen out any lists that will steamroll every thing else. Don't let people take eight strength D templates.
Build the scenarios based on the lists. Be fun, use the army specific ones from Battle Missions where you can. If you have to match someone with no super heavies against a guard player with a line-breaker formation of Baneblades give him some emplaced defenses.
Closing thoughts:
It ends up being more of a Campaign-In-A-Day than a tournament, but I think you could make a unique experience that captures some of the competitive environment of a tournament and the warm fluffy feelings of a campaign. It would take organization and a clear understanding of everyone involved that this is a FOR-FUN event, and to leave the A-Game at home.
You also end up breaking every rule of standard tournament organization. For any normal tournament I'm a firm supporter of playing the game as it is provided. No comp and no crazy scenarios or shenanigans. You pretty much have to take the opposite approach here, as the organizer cannot rely on the rules to make everything work.
Saying that, I think you could create a semi-competitive Apocalypse event with alot of careful planning and a good understanding of what Apocalypse is and what it is not.
First off, some logistical considerations:
Games with super heavies need space. At least 6x6 for 3000 points; 6x8 would be better. This would limit the event to 8-12 players unless a larger space than G2D4 could be found.
Time will also be a constraint. You'll be struggling to fit three 3000 point games into a single day. You are going to need to run it as a multi-day event, or impose some strong turn time limits. My thoughts are to impose 15 minute player turns, with 5 minutes to clean up any declared assaults. This would yield 5 turns every two hours. This would still require players to hustle on setup and between game activities.
Pre-submitted army lists(I'll talk about this more when I cover balance), and hard commitments from the players to attend is also a must. There's going to be a lot of planing required, no sense in doing it if every one is going to flake out.
Structure of the event:
I would split the players into order vs chaos and the tournament gets won as a team. The results of the games get pooled together to determine which side wins. The winning team should get some prize support, such as a dice cube or something in the 5-15 dollar range so that winning and loosing isn't such a big deal. This is important considering the balance issues. Give the best prizes based on a player vote for coolest themed army as this is basically a fluff event anyway.
I would run the tournament like a story campaign. Every scenario is selected for the specific player match ups. Wins and losses will take each player to another specific scenario against another player. Create a simple flow chart to assign the games. Don't enumerate every possibility as that grows exponentially vs tournament size. Do set up the flow chart so that there is no possibility of a player going into an auto loose game( i.e. the guy with no Anti-Air faces the guy with 3 fliers). Another reason why army lists need to be submitted before hand. Winners should still play winners if possible.
Don't score the games based solely on win/loose. Add story driven objectives that have more weight. Things like: Your HQ defends an objective against three turns of enemy assault(5pts). Make fulfilling fluffy based conditions the major objective for scoring points
I'd also have the results of certain games effect the tournament as a whole. Basically wins on certain tables grant assets to one side during the next game.
Balance:
This is the most important consideration. Just like when GW wrote the Inquisitor rules and left out the points, GW wrote Apocalypse and left out the balance. The tournament organizer is going to have to add it in himself. Some hard and fast rules are going to have to get made, and somebody is not going to like them. Unfortunately there are some things that are going to need to be nerfed for the benefit of all.
Allow no player selected assets. Some are just broken, and can really throw off the game. Add them to any scenarios with careful consideration. This unfortunately means no formations that grant assets either.
Allow allying based on the allies matrix. This is a great opportunity to let Chaos Marine players use real demons. Every set of units from a single codex should follow the Force Org chart, but super-heavies and formations don't count against it.
Lists should be pre-approved. Screen out any lists that will steamroll every thing else. Don't let people take eight strength D templates.
Build the scenarios based on the lists. Be fun, use the army specific ones from Battle Missions where you can. If you have to match someone with no super heavies against a guard player with a line-breaker formation of Baneblades give him some emplaced defenses.
Closing thoughts:
It ends up being more of a Campaign-In-A-Day than a tournament, but I think you could make a unique experience that captures some of the competitive environment of a tournament and the warm fluffy feelings of a campaign. It would take organization and a clear understanding of everyone involved that this is a FOR-FUN event, and to leave the A-Game at home.
You also end up breaking every rule of standard tournament organization. For any normal tournament I'm a firm supporter of playing the game as it is provided. No comp and no crazy scenarios or shenanigans. You pretty much have to take the opposite approach here, as the organizer cannot rely on the rules to make everything work.
Monday, May 3, 2010
May 1st Tournament Highlights
I took 4th place in the G2D4 tournament last Saturday. I won my first game against Dark Eldar. Lost my second game against Scott's Salamanders, and won my third game against Black Templars. I had some horrid dice rolling in the second game. My speeders failed to kill a Land Raider at point blank range two turns in a row, and I failed 3 out of 7 2+ Terminator saves.
I like how my army performed overall. I think I need to find a way to fit in two more land speeders. If I loose the Predator and find 50 more points I can do it. It's either that or take them out of the list completely. They just offer up to much utility to do that. It may be worth it to just swap out the Predator 1 for 1 with another speeder.
I had fun. It's been a while since I left a tournament wanting to play more 40k instead of wanting to toss my army into a dumpster.
Here are some picks from the tournament:
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