EDITORIAL: Is the Tournament Scene A Scapegoat?
With all the fuss and general kerfuffle surrounding the release of Stronghold and Escalation, one party of our hobby is drawing considerable flak from many quarters at the moment. This is the tournament scene and its players. The question occurs, why is this?
A guest editorial by Denzark
In another thread, it was pointed out by Darklink, that tournaments are often little more than organized events. It is an excuse for like-minded chaps to get together and fight a few games on the trot. That in itself is not bad, is it? Couple that with the fact that often (most in my experience, YMMV) tourney players are highly enthusiastic, their armies are largely built and painted, they know the rules, they know the fluff, they are there for the same thing as you. It takes a level of effort to specifically head out for a tournament – as opposed to knocking around your FLGS and agreeing at whim to a ‘pick-up’ game. The shared experience with this mutually heightened level of investment with tournament gaming can be awesome. After all, no-one begrudges playing the beginner at the club, but at some time the novelty of a half built, half painted 750pt ork army, half of which are proxied by Imperial Guard, pales somewhat.
So where have the Tourney gamers got this reputation from?
I reckon there are several reasons:
1. Tourneys are the only places where you can be ‘ambushed’ by killer lists. ‘Hang on’ you say, ‘it’s a tourney, anything goes’. OK I get that. But, put it in perspective. If you play in your basement/mancave wherever, against friends, you probably know what sort of list is being thrown down – it may be a trial of a cutthroat list, but normally people would agree beforehand. Likewise, you have a choice in pickup games – If someone in the FLGS invites you to play a 3 suit list against your fluffy list, you can respectfully opt out. But in a tournament you get no choice. You are there to play and at some point the draw or the rankings system, will see you against a killer list that you have little or no chance of beating.
2. The point above seems sort of obvious. But this links to my next point. The tournament is the only habitat of the WAAC power gamer. That person who takes his enjoyment in pressing the autowin button. He gets some point of self worth from the win, he cares nothing for sportsmanship, he doesn’t banter during the game, his approach is almost autistic in disregard for social graces. You would not normally play this individual by choice, if you encounter him at a pick-up game, you would only play him that once as he is not fun. He gets a bad rep in-club and finds it near impossible to get games. But in a tourney this individual is forced upon you, hence my comment that this is the only environs in which they are found.
3. Tournament players can sometimes give the impression that the tournament scene is the most important aspect of the hobby. The level of irritation this causes can be similar to that expressed for the endless legions of Ebay sellers who claim they ‘pro-paint’. Just because somebody won an event that had x-level of prize support, does not make them the final authority on all matters 40K. Now I do not claim all tourney players claim such things. However, I think the small numbers that do seem to imply this, can easily give the others a bad name (this also applies to the WAAC Jobs described above). This is further magnified by the high percentage of ‘internet personalities’ who co-incidentally are active in the tournament scene. Like Commodus in ‘Gladiator’ getting tetchy with Senators whispering ‘Republic Republic Republic’, some people grow tired of ‘tournament tournament tournament’.
4. Now if the 3 points above are correct, the final point is the killer. Tourney players quite rightly would prefer a tight, balanced and unambiguous ruleset. 40K does not fit that. Escalation and Stronghold takes us even further away from that. Non-tourney players who couldn’t give a toss about a tight ruleset and are having the time of their lives with mad fluff lists, massive death toys and all these expansions (see Mr Mystery’s ‘Golden Age’ thread), take the tournament perspective to imply a criticism of the way they enjoy warts and all 40K. A non-tourney player may say: ‘Hang on GW doesn’t write tournament rules. How can you criticise them when they say the single most important rule is to have FUN?’. And because of the killer lists at point 1 and the WAACs at point 2 and the ‘noisy tournament players’ aspect at point 3, all of which do not make a FUN experience for a lot of people, the non-tourney players quite literally cannot empathise with the problems the tourney players raise. It is, a self-licking lollipop (or is that self-fulfilling prophecy?).
So who is right?
With the debate in full swing and to be maintained as we find out online which tournaments are picking and choosing which rules/supplements to limit, I can see this ongoing. For myself, I recently had to check my perspective. I regularly play at Throne of Skulls, and found myself planning a new army to be WYSIWYG, no proxies and no third party parts. When I was debating how best to achieve this, my normal partner was quite aghast I was weighing these considerations up against the rule of cool – why should I limit myself merely to meet entry requirements for a tourney?
(TL
R)
And so I came to the conclusion that both views are equally valid. Cutthroat at tourney, fluffy warts and all at home. Tourney players don’t deserve flak just for being tourney players, but only if they try and claim some kudos just for being a tourney player when all that really means was they had the time and the cost of entry in their pocket. But on the flip side, if the non-tourney crowd are growing a little sick of the negative debate (actually increased codex/rules output was what the internetz were demanding from GW for the last 3 years of 5th Ed), they can always vote with their feet and not respond on those blogs where the self-perceived elite are being opinionated. After all, there but for the grace of the God Emperor goes I…
What say you?
