Goatboy’s Monday Tirade – The Perfect Tournament
Goatboy is back for another Monday 40k discussion. I’ve got 4 ways to make tournaments perfect!
As you know I got back last weekend from the Feast of Blades tournament in Denver. I go every year and I always have a good time seeing friends, trying to win games, and hopefully not getting my ass to badly beaten in blow up sumo suits. I brought a terrible list that when it works it just does not bring any kind of fun to the game. When it doesn’t work (which happened in two games – 9 rolls and 13 rolls not getting Forewarning) it sucks real bad for me.
But this isn’t about that list or how the games went. Instead I want todays topic to spit-ball some ideas about how to actually make these events fun and interesting. I am sure if you keep up with the event you saw a crap ton of Eldar/Tau lists. In fact some people were saying there were 60% Tau/Eldar in various combos out there! The Invitational didn’t have any Ork players and really all I saw was Eldar, Tau, Eldar/Tau and Daemons. I think the motto for the top tables were all about playing with ways to ignore your rules.
Which of course brought the dreaded word a certain sector of the internet hates – Comp. If all of these things caused bad games then we should find someway to mitigate or remove them from the game. This brings all kinds of terrible thoughts as certain people look at things more mathematically (Swedish Comp) and others just go on their gut feelings on what they think is too good. It becomes a poop storm at times and it makes me ask questions on better ways to try and get to the same answer without people feeling like they are forced to play “Some Dude’s 40k”.
I want to go over some of the things I have discussed to try and make for some more fun and interesting games. I want to start with the easy stuff that only effects the back end (rewards, prizes, etc) and then go up to the more challenging changes. I think something in the middle will end up being the best as it means less changes and still lets people play with their toys.
1. Spread the Prize Love
Let me say this right now – No one is making money off playing tournament 40k. No one is saying they can live beating ass on plastic warriors. The prize support is more of a thank you for coming to the event and making it something more then just a bunch of players ducking it out over foam trees and imagined relics of the grim dark. With this in mind it makes me think we should move away from a big fat sack of plastic crack you most likely don’t need and try to spread it out a bit.
I know the BAO did their event with the best general for your army. This would mean whatever Primary army you had in your list, if you were the highest in battle points, wins, dance moves you would end up getting the best general for your list. They made the prize pretty good with a Battleforce and I think something like that is a great excuse to bring out different lists to try and win. I know if I was the best Ork Player it would mean a lot more then just winning with another Eldar/Tau list.
I also think prizes should flow down to the entire top 8 of a lot of the events. It just makes losing out in the first round of the top 8 a lot easier as you feel like you didn’t just throw your whole event away. I am not saying we all get a bunch of gold diapers but it would be nice to get a blister or two.
2. Reward Diversity
I know this seems like the same as above but instead of prizes why not find a way to give lists points. I have said it before but no matter what you do someone will bring a dbag list to a “fun” event. There are people that just thrive on that type of attention they get by being the “bad” guy. I know sometimes people feel I might do that with lists but if it is too bad I don’t want to play it. I just like to see what the math does and if I can dial it back to create something interesting.
Let’s say you review the lists and at most you can get a max of a full game win. So now your nicer list is already a game win above the jerk head lists. In a 3-4 round event that is a huge advantage and mixed with paint it gives you a nice leg up in the event because you brought a fun and challenging list. This still lets all the players bring their toys but it also makes them have to rethink their options to try and get some advantage in the system.
I know an older store in the community used to give a full game win on having a painted army. This started to push people to having painted armies in order to win anything. I am thinking this might do the same and still allow those players to bring lists to practice and test with if they want.
3. Lowering the Point Cost
We have had a few articles talking about dropping the point cost on tournaments. The advantages are shorter games, easier armies to fly with, and the hope they limit those cheesy options due to the reduced magical army building number. I see the advantages of faster games being the only help with this thought as we all know the cheese we see now can easily be done in lower games. It just means they have less small squad troops and maybe an extra MC or two.
Tastytase over at BoK talked about 1500 and while it feels low when you look at how we played in the past it still gives enough points to make something workable. It does mean you have to force some things out to have enough troops to win all the missions in the new tournament environment but that should mitigate some of the more awful lists.
There was also talk about bringing back some of the old percentages to the game. What if your troop choices had to number 35% of your army. Your HQ could only be 15% and the rest of the army had to fall within the last 50%. Would this make for a better system as it still says you can play with your toys but you can’t take all the shiny bits.
4. Full on Comp
The final one is the monster in the closet. This is the one that causes the most amount of hate all over the board. I just want to say one thing – I don’t hate comp. I look at it as another “game” to play as you build a list a the outcome of it – usually a good game – means that it isn’t a dirty word. The biggest issue I have with it is how to actually implement in a way that is fair over all armies.
The easiest way is to tamper with the force org. Making certain things only a one of choice and limiting it to their initial place in the Force Org. For example, imagine banning duplicate HQ choices. The Nid player can only take one Tervigon as he starts as an HQ choice. Same with one unit of Mega Nobz and regular Nobz. This would also effect those pesky Wraithguard and Spirit Seers too. The poor little Screamer star doesn’t work so well with only one Herald. Flying FMC smash gets a lot easier to deal with when you can only see 3 MC’s at most. Hampering the Force Org is simple as it follows the rules without changing much. If you start at the initial build phase of an army its just easier to create a decent list that isn’t just a copy and paste job.
Another way to comp is to just find the broken bits and either “ban” or “hamper” them. You can do this by locking in certain abilities only work on that army. I personally think the biggest problem right now in 40k is how good the Tau Commander can be for all their battle brothers. They should have let you only take 1 Signature system and treat it like the artifacts from other lists. They should also only work on Tau units and not stack on top of each other. These small things would still make guys good but force players to pick and choose what they need during a game and not saying – screw it I eat all the cake. It is the same thing with Psychic spells as well as I think they should just work on your Primary force and not your ally even if you are battle bros.
Tournament 40k is here to stay and it is up to us to figure out what we want to do with it. It is a lot of fun and I just want it to be more then just picking the best toy and shoving it down your opponents throat. I just want to foster some discussions instead of just outright anger in the comments so try to be constructive on ideas. This is how we figure out better ways and still keep this game we invested so much time and money in revolving.
So if you ran the biggest 40K event in the world, how would you make it more fun and fair?
