Local Tournaments are getting weird

[Cossack]

There were three Grey Knights armies and Michael Sanford's won Best Appearance. He also came in three points behind me and if he'd have won that fight with my biker nob then he''d probably have the Best Overall trophy - it was that close.

One thing to remember is that the battles are SCENARIOS. You don't need the perfect army to defeat all comers, or rely on a specific unit to be competitive. You should have seen the look on my face when I realized I'd have to roll a dangerous terrain test for EVERY ONE OF MY ORKS! Yikes! I wonder how many dice I rolled in that game. Needless to say, what the Tyranids didn't kill I ran to death....

We were all happy, so that's what's important. No need for white knuckle gaming.

[DarkLink]

Care to post your Daemonhunters list?

Well, the details depend on the point level, but Grey Knights rely heavily on Land Raider and Terminator spam. Without several Land Raiders, you effectively cannot use Grey Knights, as they are too slow, are way too exposed to enemy fire, have no anti-tank, and in general will be completely at the enemy's mercy.

However, it's Necrons that can be really hurt by that comp setup. There are only a handful of ways to play Necrons, and most of them rely on filling up the elite and heavy support sections with

BTW - a Daemonhunter army came in - I think it was third place for Best Overall. It won Best Appearance.

So clearly the Comp stuff can't have been too hard on it

There's a couple of logical fallacies hidden in there

But anyways, winning Best Appearance and doing well on the Battle Points could easily put it in third, regardless of comp scores, as comp was a fairly small portion of the overall score. But that doesn't justify why there were comp scores in the first place.

I don't mind Sportsmanship scores (though I don't think they're necessary). I don't mind Painting scores (though they should be kept separate from battle point scores). But I hold comp scores in utter contempt. I have never seen a comp system that has both a good rational and a good execution.

Any comp system I've seen that isn't a purely subjective on behalf of the judges tends to either hurt the weaker armies more than the stronger armies (because the stronger armies have more flexibility in their powerful choices, meaning they can adapt easily and still have powerful lists, while the weaker armies are unavoidably hurt), or has a roughly equally nerfing effect on all armies. In which case, what's the point of having the comp score in the first place.

If comp scores are designed to give less competitive armies better odds, I've yet to see a comp system that accomplishes this (other than allowing different armies to use different points values, like they do in Fantasy. But that's because fantasy has huge balance issues that don't really exist in 40k, at least on that scale).

And if comp scales are designed to, say, make people take less powerful choices? Why? What if I don't own the models, because I don't usually use bad units? Why should the TO's be deciding what units you can take, and what you can't?




On a side note, it sounds like this was organized to separate out all the scores, with different prizes for each category. Which is a good thing. I like that part.

[Senekal]

Well, the details depend on the point level, but Grey Knights rely heavily on Land Raider and Terminator spam. Without several Land Raiders, you effectively cannot use Grey Knights, as they are too slow, are way too exposed to enemy fire, have no anti-tank, and in general will be completely at the enemy's mercy.

Really?

I wonder how Mike Sanford managed third overall (and only by a couple of points) with only a single Land Raider then? Honestly if you want to talk logical fallacies, well, you might want to find out the facts first, hmm?

What you describe may be the case at 'ordinary' tournaments. Astro isn't ordinary. "Ordinary" armies can sometimes perform well, as evidenced by the generalship scores of folks like Ray Nerpal's army - but he's also an excellent player and without that you'll never succeed as a general at Astro.

However, it's Necrons that can be really hurt by that comp setup. There are only a handful of ways to play Necrons, and most of them rely on filling up the elite and heavy support sections with

Really? I have fantastic success with my Necron army and it has no heavy support at all and only one elites choice (the much maligned pariahs, which I just love to death). I've won a number of tournaments with it and what's more gotten Best Sportsman at several despite the inclusion of the Deceiver.

The nastiest 'cron armies we've seen at Astro have usually been Troop spam but the only one that ever won was a balanced force played by a fellow named Todd some years ago.

I'm afraid your 'pronouncements' about how the game MUST be played simply aren't accurate - at least not in my experience which is clearly very different from yours. I would venture that it is probably also much more extensive given that Dallas was either the 21st or 22nd Astro I've run - I forget which. Oh, yes, before getting into that I was the Canadian National Champion at the GWGT. So I might know just a bit about how the game is played.

But anyways, winning Best Appearance and doing well on the Battle Points could easily put it in third, regardless of comp scores, as comp was a fairly small portion of the overall score. But that doesn't justify why there were comp scores in the first place.

No, actually it couldn't. Comp is worth only 20 points and is not subjective. It's actually really worth only about five or six points as even the worst armies seldom score less than a 14. So all you really get as an advantage is the difference. I don't think he had a perfect 20 either. The lowest comp army we've ever seen was an 11 (and that wasn't at the event he was playing at). His appearance score was pretty good and that would have helped. However his overall score was 165 points and out of that only about 25 were painting. So those particular factors would only have given him a leg up of around 30 of those 165 points against a completely UNPAINTED army which scored a zero - and there were only one or two of those.

I don't mind Sportsmanship scores (though I don't think they're necessary). I don't mind Painting scores (though they should be kept separate from battle point scores). But I hold comp scores in utter contempt. I have never seen a comp system that has both a good rational and a good execution.

Well, with such an attitude I'm certainly not going to convince you. You're welcome to your opinion, nonetheless we're very happy with our system and the results it generates. The overall impact on the final winners is usually very low - a couple of points mostly - and since the system is entirely transparent, the player has full control over that.

Any comp system I've seen that isn't a purely subjective on behalf of the judges tends to either hurt the weaker armies more than the stronger armies (because the stronger armies have more flexibility in their powerful choices, meaning they can adapt easily and still have powerful lists, while the weaker armies are unavoidably hurt), or has a roughly equally nerfing effect on all armies. In which case, what's the point of having the comp score in the first place.

<shrug> You're entitled to your opinion. In the close to 5000 games of 40k we've had at our events, we haven't found that to be the case at all.

If comp scores are designed to give less competitive armies better odds, I've yet to see a comp system that accomplishes this (other than allowing different armies to use different points values, like they do in Fantasy. But that's because fantasy has huge balance issues that don't really exist in 40k, at least on that scale).

And if comp scales are designed to, say, make people take less powerful choices? Why? What if I don't own the models, because I don't usually use bad units? Why should the TO's be deciding what units you can take, and what you can't?

We don't. You can take whatever you like. However if you load out your army with some kind of spam of one area of the force org, your army WILL be more effective. Therefore, it requires a slight handicap - mostly it just affects seeding for the first game and it means that if your army is more powerful you'll need to do slightly better on the table.

And if a player can't do a bit better on the table with an army that has three HS choices against an army that has only one - well that person is not a very good player.

On a side note, it sounds like this was organized to separate out all the scores, with different prizes for each category. Which is a good thing. I like that part.

There are eight in total, each rewarding a different aspect of the hobby.

However it sounds like an event like this may not be for you.

By the way, the event is 1500 points. Care to post your DH list for that point value?

[DarkLink]

Really?

I wonder how Mike Sanford managed third overall (and only by a couple of points) with only a single Land Raider then? Honestly if you want to talk logical fallacies, well, you might want to find out the facts first, hmm?

The logical fallacies thing was a joke. Hence the smiley. I understood what you were saying, even though the way that particular sentence had some fallacies in it, it would have just taken a more thorough explanation to do away with them.

What's the rest of Mike's list look like? There are ways to get away without Land Raider spam, but in my experience they require lots of allies, and lots of creative tactics and unit choices. Incidentally, what was the point size of the tournament?


And my statement of reliance on Land Raider spam comes from my personal experience. Land Raiders, Dreadnoughts and allies/ISTs are the only source of anti-tank in the DH codex, really, and I don't have the models for lots of allies/IST (actually, I can get a lot of Sisters, but they don't have much long range AT), and so for mobility, protection and AT I rely heavily on Land Raiders. It might be the local meta, but I haven't had much luck with any list that had less than two Land Raiders personally.

Basically, in my experience, Grey Knights and Land Raiders go together like peanut butter and jelly.

What you describe may be the case at 'ordinary' tournaments. Astro isn't ordinary. "Ordinary" armies can sometimes perform well, as evidenced by the generalship scores of folks like Ray Nerpal's army - but he's also an excellent player and without that you'll never succeed as a general at Astro.

Well, having a significantly different meta for the tournament could explain the difference between my theory and your experience. Experience trumps theory any day. But I'm not sure how well those armies would fare against some of our local players. We've got a lot of tough, nasty CSM players I've got to play against, so that would probably offer an explanation.

Really? I have fantastic success with my Necron army and it has no heavy support at all and only one elites choice (the much maligned pariahs, which I just love to death). I've won a number of tournaments with it and what's more gotten Best Sportsman at several despite the inclusion of the Deceiver.

The nastiest 'cron armies we've seen at Astro have usually been Troop spam but the only one that ever won was a balanced force played by a fellow named Todd some years ago.

Well, I'm not a Necrons player. There are other ways to run the list, but from the best of my knowlege the most competitive lists rely pretty heavily on either troop spam, destroyer spam, monolith spam (which is a big gamble due to phase out), or some combination thereof. And our local Necron player swears by Immortals over Warriors, so...

But, like I said, I'm not a Necrons player, so I'm not an expert on the best ways to run them.



However, I stand by my statement that comp hurts weaker armies more than it hurts newer, more powerful armies.

[DarkLink]

Oh, and a 1500pt army would look something like this for me;

HQ
GK Hero w/ Terminator Retinue

Troops
GK squad
ISTs in Rhino

Allies Sisters of Battle squad in Rhino (or a unit of Seraphim, because Seraphim are awesome)

Heavy
2x Land Raiders
GK Dreadnought



Roughly. The exact details, like number of members in the GK squads, and the like would change up. But above about 1250pts, I'll probably always fill up all three heavy support slots, and at 1000pts I'll have 2 heavy units.

[Cossack]

He had a Grand Master with Termi retinue, in a Landraider....one Grey Knights squad. A couple of veteran squads (one in a Chimera), an Inquisitor and an Assassin.

That's in my batrep link above, if you missed it.

[DarkLink]

Ah, yeah, I didn't look at the battle reps.

By vets do you mean allied IG Vets? Taking lots and lots of them is indeed one of the best ways to play DH. I don't care for it simply because I like actually playing GK models, as compared to one or two GK units and everything else non-GK. Though if I owned more IG models I probably would play a similar list to that one, though I don't use Inquisitors or Assassins.

[Senekal]

What's the rest of Mike's list look like? There are ways to get away without Land Raider spam, but in my experience they require lots of allies, and lots of creative tactics and unit choices. Incidentally, what was the point size of the tournament?

All Astronomi-con events are 1500 points.

Clay details it elsewhere. He clearly didn't 'spam' anything though. His comp score would have been either an 18 or a 19 (depending on how he bought some units). Pretty good for a 'weak' list getting hammered by comp.

And my statement of reliance on Land Raider spam comes from my personal experience. Land Raiders, Dreadnoughts and allies/ISTs are the only source of anti-tank in the DH codex, really, and I don't have the models for lots of allies/IST (actually, I can get a lot of Sisters, but they don't have much long range AT), and so for mobility, protection and AT I rely heavily on Land Raiders. It might be the local meta, but I haven't had much luck with any list that had less than two Land Raiders personally.

Basically, in my experience, Grey Knights and Land Raiders go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I'm sure they work fine that way but I would say that's more the local meta. As a guard player I find I lose more vehicles to close in attacks (meltas and assaults) than I do to long range shooting. There are exceptions of course but it's mostly true. Those S6 GK weapons tear tanks a new one in assault.

Well, having a significantly different meta for the tournament could explain the difference between my theory and your experience. Experience trumps theory any day. But I'm not sure how well those armies would fare against some of our local players. We've got a lot of tough, nasty CSM players I've got to play against, so that would probably offer an explanation.

Absolutely impossible to say without context. We had a couple of nasty CSM players at the event just past in Dallas. One of them went home with Best General - but he was GOOD according to those who played him and eminently deserved his award. One of the others got knocked out of the running for a trophy by a non-mech marine force. Our meta is different from the 'usual' enough that armies that aren't considered to be viable in many conventional tournaments become a lot better.

Well, I'm not a Necrons player. There are other ways to run the list, but from the best of my knowlege the most competitive lists rely pretty heavily on either troop spam, destroyer spam, monolith spam (which is a big gamble due to phase out), or some combination thereof. And our local Necron player swears by Immortals over Warriors, so...

But, like I said, I'm not a Necrons player, so I'm not an expert on the best ways to run them.

There are a lot of 'conventional wisdom' approaches to Necrons. I've fought the Destroyer Spam with my Guard and splashed it pretty handily. Troop spam is harder but in v5 has a hard time with vehicles. I don't have any Immortals at all, although I like the models and will probably get some some day.

My 'cron list is:

Deceiver
Destroyer Lord with Res Orb, Warscythe, Gaze of Flame and Chronometron

3 Squads of 10 Warriors (no upgrades)

1 Squad of 3 Wraith

1 Squad of 5 Pariahs

1 Squad of 3 Destroyers

That's it.

However, I stand by my statement that comp hurts weaker armies more than it hurts newer, more powerful armies.

Only if they rely heavily on maxing out a single element of the list. At least for our system. If that's the only way tha tyou think the 'weaker' armies can win, well, the person who has won more Best General Awards at Astro than any other (I think he's at six right now) mostly plays Dark Eldar and his armies usually have quite high comp scores. So, at least for OUR Meta, that wouldn't seem to hold true.

Change the meta and yes, you'd get different results I expect. But our comp was designed for our Meta.

[Senekal]

Oh, and a 1500pt army would look something like this for me;

HQ
GK Hero w/ Terminator Retinue

Troops
GK squad
ISTs in Rhino

Allies Sisters of Battle squad in Rhino (or a unit of Seraphim, because Seraphim are awesome)

Heavy
2x Land Raiders
GK Dreadnought



Roughly. The exact details, like number of members in the GK squads, and the like would change up. But above about 1250pts, I'll probably always fill up all three heavy support slots, and at 1000pts I'll have 2 heavy units.

That army would score you in at a 17 Comp out of 20. 'Standard' armies are expected to score 16-18 so you'd be right in the groove.

The system is here: [url]http://www.mts.net/~xian/astronomi-con/websiteV2/rules/composition.htm[/url]

The Guard army I was using for bye games scores in at a 19 Comp (2 HS choices) but it has a couple of very serious Achilles heels so that's pretty bang on. It won, or would have had they not been bye games, 3 games out of six, lost 2 and drew 1. However that's a better than you'd expect performance as we always put byes at the bottom of the swiss so that they don't impact the results. Against better players I would expect a more 2/2/2 ratio.

The comp score, by the way, is designed to reward players for taking 'a bit of everything'. That's intentional as that's how the Codices are designed to be used. Xian and I were GW playtesters for some years so yes - that was the stated intent of the designers, at least during that time. Loading up on one element of the chart is perfectly legal, but it makes the army more powerful/competitive and so creates a lower score. Not a lot lower, as you can see from your own score, but a bit lower as those armies are more powerful.

Also those kinds of armies work best with our scenarios (which were designed to reward that kind of play) so the Comp system also serves to communicate to players, subtly, which armies are likely to serve them best in our meta. My guard army, for instance, suffers from serious lack of mobility which can make some scenarios very challenging.

Regardless, we're very happy with it. It does what we want, is transparent and leaves the choices to the players while giving them a taste of what they are likely to expect. If you don't like it, hey that's fine. Like any comp system it does have some flaws etc. but we've been happy with it. YMMV of course.

[Cossack]

Those S6 GK weapons tear tanks a new one in assault.

They do a pretty fine job on Nob bikers too!