Why is the Tournament Scene getting flak, and do they deserve it?

[Rogue428]

I'll chime in here very quickly to relate my own experience. I find that I usually only get "fair" games in Tournaments. For a while, I only played exclusively in tournaments. Did I run into abusive lists and some jerks, once in a while. In my experience, I ran into abuse far more frequently at my FLGS to the point that I don't bother trying to get a pick up game in down there except against a chosen few. I found I got bogged down in rules arguments because people just flat out didn't know the rules. (A lot of them don't even own the rulebook or the codices except in pirated pdf form which they didn't even bother to read. They are playing some kind of game involving miniatures, but it isn't Warhammer 40K). I found that the people with their egos most tied to winning the game were much more likely to be local pick-up gamers than the average tourney goer.

Secondly, I like the modelling aspect of the hobby a lot. I love seeing other people's armies and well-painted models. On our 40K night at the FLGS, there might be 2 or 3 well painted armies out of about 40 people hanging out there. There are folks playing for years with stuff that isn't even primered. That's fine for them I suppose, that doesn't take away from their enjoyment. But it takes away from mine, when I try to get a game in, and someone is tailoring their list on the spot after seeing mine. "Oh you have terminators? I'm proxying stuff, all these flamers are really plasma guns, and these empty bases are blah blah blah". That gets annoying. I don't have to worry about that at a tourney. Everyone's stuff is painted. Most of them look good. Opponents can't tailor their lists before the game.

Third. I'm very busy now. It isn't easy for me to get games of 40K in. Most of my time is spent on the hobby aspect of the game. But I can take a weekend off and get 3 games in, in one day against some solid opponents. If I travel to a big event, that's even better since it means 5 or more games, plus some pick up games, plus I get to hang out with friends that I usually only see at the tourneys.

Now here's the trick most non-tourney folks don't know, because they're too committed to their stereotypical idea of the WAAC tourney player to bother finding out. Tourneys cost $$, national level events cost a lot of $$. If a person's only goal in going to the tourney is to win, they are going to be severely disappointed. There are so many things that go into the winning of a tournament that even the world's greatest 40K player ever can't bank on it. It is a dice game after all. If all a person was going for was to win prize support, for most tournaments, they'd be better off just buying the stuff outright, rather than spending money on traveling to the tournament. Most tourney players don't go there to win. Because we know better. We go to place well (hopefully), play a bunch of games a short amount of time, and hang out with like-minded people. (Wow, that sounds a lot like why people play pick up games at the FLGS, doesn't it?)

The game is about what one of my friends calls "Cooperative Competition". There definitely is a social contract when I step up to the table. Problems arise when people ignore that contract.

What I find a little sad is that so many people take pleasure in vilifying the tournament scene almost to the point you'd think we were enemies somehow. (just look at some of the responses in this very thread). We're all part of the same hobby and the same game. I happen to adore all the new releases and codices and dataslates etc. But I also don't want to spend a lot of money traveling to Vegas, or Adepticon or whatever, pull out my models that I spent a long time on, and then put them immediately away because someone just dropped a 15" Apocalypse Mega-blast on them.

It's all about expectation management. When Adepticon runs the Gladiator (which is a tourney that allows Apocalypse units), people don't complain about facing D weapons. If I'm playing at the FLGS, and someone wants to run a transcendant C'tan for fun. Sure why not?

Problems arise when expectations are violated and the social contract ignored.

One other thing before I leave you guys. I don't run into seasoned tourney players that are jerks. When I do run into a jerk at a tourney, it is often a person's 1st or 2nd tourney, and they are behaving that way because they think that's the way people are supposed to behave in a tourney. When I discovered this a couple of years ago, I found I could just step in and chat with the player for a few minutes and explain to them that playing a tourney game was no different than playing a friendly game. There was no need for arguments and being a jerk. Something to think about.

[DarkLink]

Yes. Several of the big gaming groups like the BOLS guys or Team Zero Comp are awesome people. Part of the reason I get fairly adamant about this is because trolls like savemodifier pop up occasionally with their 'anyone who has ever even thought about going to a tournament is inherently a bad person' crap, and I'm pretty good friends with a lot of these guys, so it gets kind of personal. Not that I really get worked up over what people on the internet say, but I'll throw in a rebuttal at least.

The aim of a game is to be competative, as long as winners and losers exist, it will be competative. The only reason it's so bad at being competative is lazy writing on behalf of GW. And also, the irony of you saying people are being entitled when you say "IT IS NOT COMPETATIVE" and saying the spirit of the game doesn't fit winning lists....

Yes.

Also, if everyone plays lists someone else wrote for them, as savemodifier claims, then who writes the list. Is there one random smart guy who secretly writes all the lists for everyone? Is he like 40k Santa or something?

But seriously, the idea of netlists is massively blown out of proportion. Sure, you'll see lots of wave serpents, because Phil Kelly sucks, but actual "netlists" with minmaxed 6x 5 dire avengers with wave serpents? Pretty rare. Enough to skew the reaults at the top tables, but the idea that tournament players just copy the latest list off the internet word for word is laughable.

[Eldar_Atog]

I meant that in the sense that just because you've had a problem with tournaments doesn't mean everyone has. So if you don't want to go to the, that's fine. I wouldn't go if I had a bad tournament scene, either. It happens that I do, though, so it bugs me when people paint a picture with such a broad, judgemental brush.

I'm sure there are plenty of great tournament groups. If there weren't, then no one would want to fool with it.

It also bugs me when people try to paint a picture with a broad, dismissive brush.

In my experience, most of the complaining about waac has nothing to do with the actual winning list, and everything to do with the fact that the looser lost and that makes the other guy's army cheesy.

Dismissing other people's concerns like this does nothing to help the conversation. It only makes it worse. You dismiss their arguements and concerns while insulting them in the same breath. There might be a couple of trolls lurking in this conversation but most of us are being honest about our experiences.

[DarkLink]

Chill out, dude.

I was referring more to people like savemodifier with the painting with a broad brush. I offered my experience as a contrast to yours, not as some sort of universal truth. I know there are bad players out there. I've personally found them to be few and far between, and my experience with a lot of the anti competitive sort has been that they lose to a better player, and then ***** about his army. Just trust me on that, I can give you plenty of examples.

My point is, just have fun playing the game, and if other people like to play it differently than you, then, well, don't be like savemodifier.

[Lord-Boofhead]

2) Warhammer Fantasy players have been dealing with army Comps for a long time now. Why not 40K? I am an avid Eldar player. I am fine if they put a 0-1 restriction on Wraithknights. Why, because I can admitt that GW in no way shape or form had tournaments in mind when rolling out the current models/rules. I do not think that units or items need to be banned though. Put restrictions when using said Items/units. For instance: you can take field 2 wraithknights but in exchange can take no wave serpents (remember only an example) Again, Warhammer Fantasy has tons of trade offs/unit restrictions and while some of the players still disagree with them, they get over it and make the best of it.

Sounds like you are describing 'Swedish Comp' which is from what I have heard is bearable.

The problem with Comp is it also gets in the way of Fluffy lists and badly thought out comp can actually screw some armies over for being them. Locally we have just gone back to comp in WFB doe to this problem. Comp was a dirty word. It was used and abused by army jumping WAAC guys. In the first big Statewide tourney 'magic was op' so it to a hit from the Nerf bat.no army was allowed to have more than 4 levels in total of magic. Lots of fun if you were High Elves or Tzeentch Chaos, you weren't allowed to use one of you main strengths. Empire and Dwarves however could feild their standard 4 cannons ect. Funny
thing was that the guy who wrote the comp rules was an empire player...

[DarkLink]

I've seen a Swedish comp list floating around, and it was idiotic. The list of what took comp hits or not was utterly nonsensical. Dunno if there are other versions out there that have done it better. But I can say that virtually any remotely competitive GK list (which is a mid tier codex now) would take massive comp hits, but my much, much more competitive Eldar barely takes any. Par for the course with comp.

Comp wasn't really made by waac players, but when a tournament impliments comp, it pretty much inevitably fails to actually comp anything meaningful, and then the waac players just shrug and write up a new cheesy list that fits in perfectly and continue on their way. I've seen it happen many times, especially considering that the big local tournaments in my area often have a significant amount of comp.

[Mr Mystery]

Comp wasn't really made by waac players, but when a tournament impliments comp, it pretty much inevitably fails to actually comp anything meaningful, and then the waac players just shrug and write up a new cheesy list that fits in perfectly and continue on their way. I've seen it happen many times, especially considering that the big local tournaments in my area often have a significant amount of comp.

This +1.

'Comp' achieves nothing. It doesn't eliminate dodgy armies, it just means the definition shifts.

The game is meant to be fun, and open to each gamer's own interpretations. Comp is to my eyes a bit of a hobby abomination, as the TO is essentially stating they know better, their way is best.

[DarkLink]

Every time I see a comp system, I think back to early 5th edition when I played demon hunters. Like I said, my local tournaments tended to be very comp heavy, which meant that I didn't go to to them. Demonhunters basically relied on you taking maximum Land Raiders as anti tank and transport. The comp system both banned duplicate units outside of troops and put a 25 percent cap on heavy support slots. It made it impossible to make a remotely decent list with demon hunters. But for those remember, demon hunters was pretty easily the weakest codex in the game. All the newer books were flexible enough that they could just tweaked their list so little and get perfect comp. So if weakest books get hurt most, and the strongest just ignore it, how is that a good system? I've never seen a comp system that didn't suffer those problems.

[Mr Mystery]

Necrons trump you on that one

Small points game? Enjoy your 460 points just to field a legal army!

And how would I field Necrons without multiple units of Immortals? They were, you know, kind of mission critical as units go.

And back to the opening topic. Is it really the scene that's catching the flak, or is it the players?

I feel it's the players. And there are those that deserve. Sadly, as with human nature, we tend to notice the lowest social denominator. GW in general suffers from this, as we're all considered by the wider world to be spotty little 'Erberts, because spotty little 'Erberts stand out, and are seen indulging in our hobby. What people won't notice are the well heeled people in their 20-30's nipping in to procure plastic crack on their lunch break.

[DarkLink]

Necrons were tied for worst with Daemonhunters.