Thinking of Running a Tournament

Hey Guys,

I was thinking about putting together a tournament. "The Kid" would like to see a tourney in action, and it would be a neat event for him to watch some people play 40k.

I was thinking a one or two day affair, triple elimination style tourney with a cap of 16 players or so with a nominal entry fee (I might put something towards charity or something, hadn't thought about that too much) and run it at Dragons Den. Maybe 1000pts per army to keep the games a bit quicker, and make last-minute-painting a bit less stressful for people wanting to try out new stuff.

I'd also like to review the new battles book that comes out this week to settle on some scenarios (ones that use standard force orgs).

Anyone have any suggestions about what to read to make it a great event? Anyone excited about coming to an event like this (should I bother doing it?).

I asked Darren quickly and he said I could use the backroom without much difficulty. I figure a month lead in and a word-of-mouth advertising is enough to get 16 players in, and if it's triple elimination with 2.5 hour matches, I could manage up to 32 players in Darren's back room over two days. (I realize that would limit out of towners though).

Chip in, I'm just tossing around some ideas here

Thanks,

Mark Horseman

I don't think you'd need 2 and a half hours for 1000 points. I have some of the longer games in the league and even at 2K i usually finish in 2-3 hours. 1000 points shouldn't take more than 90 mins, I expect.

Also if you're making it a tournament, you'll have to consider if you're going to have points/categories/awards for sportsmanship & painting.

I'd also suggest sticking to a single day, for those who can't come multiple days of the week.
In any case, I doubt you'll have problems getting 16 people.

Thanks for the tips. That was my main concern about splitting up over 2 days was the availability of players. With a triple elimination format, everyone would be guaranteed 3 rounds with an additional two rounds to determine finals. If each round is 2 hrs for 1000pts with a break for lunch and 15-20 min between matches, we could fit 4 rounds in a day, I think. It'd be stretching it. 9-11, 1-3, 3:30-5:30, 6-8 I'll draw up a couple options and see how many rounds are required for 16 players.

Back in the day, Tourney points were awarded for wins, ties, losses, painting, and sportsmanship, I imagine I'd do the same here, but ensure I have winners play winners so the games get more fun as the tourney goes on.

It looks like a 4 round event with an A,B,C, and D pool, with 1/2 the teams in a 4th round and everyone guaranteed 3 matches.

I would award bonus points to winning a "Final" match. We'd probably move the 6-8pm match to 7-9pm to allow for a supper break. The last match would be the finals, and then prizes given out directly after. I'd walk around and judge painting throughout the day.

Prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Best Painted, and Best Sportsmanship.

seems like a pretty solid plan. If you shorten the breaks to 15 minutes and only an hour for lunch then you might actually fit that 4th final battle in before 7 and everyone can be home for supper with the day over. It shouldnt take that much time to sort out the next lineup of battles. (i think ben from pa has a spreadsheet that sorts players based on win/loss. he's on the boards, so you can ask him).

Just a suggestion, things like best painted and best sportsman should be voted on by the players, like everyone votes during lunch on best painted, and at the end for best sportsman. Just a simple ballot box/hat and some papers are needed.

and 1000 points sounds like a fun value to have a tournament at, would there be any restrictions? or just use all within a codex?

I was thinking Standard Org Chart, no special characters, maybe bonus points if your list favours troops??? What do people do nowadays for comp score?

We used to penalize min-maxing (2-troops, 3-elites, 3-heavies in a 1500 point tourney)

In pa comp score is determined by your opponent after a battle is fought. In my opinion, that isnt the bes way to do it as the opinions on the composition is biased depending on the outcome of the battle. If a guy had a super list but you pulled off a win you might not think that list is super competitive anymore. or if you see a list and it is themed and has a story, but you make some tactical errors and get rolled, then the list now seems super loaded and built to win. long story short, i think comp scores should be based on a set guideline and judged by the organizers not the opponents. Sprtsmanship is obviously based on how you play the games and can really only be seen truly by the opponent.

I could keep the comp score quite simple.

Standard Force Org, 1 pt, >= 33% of points spent on Troops, bonus +1 pt.

3pts for a win, 2pts for a tie, 1pt for a loss. +2pts winning A-final, +1pt winning B,C, or D final. (the 4th match)

5 pts for Sportsmanship (by secret ballot), 5 pts for painting (either by ballot (everyone vote for their favorite army that isn't theirs) or judged by me).

When i lived in calgary i had the wonderful opportunity to join tournaments hosted by Rob Kuster. Army composition was always judged by him along the lines you were mentioning loremaster. But keep in mind with the coming of 5th edition, not all armies can be fun and competative by maxing their troops. (I might be wrong on this but i am covering some bases as the concern might arrise).
Best painting IMO should be judged by the judges or a predetermined trio so as to avoid favoritism (not that we are not honorable to let the gamers judge, but its good to cover those bases.

Sportsmanship should be graded by the players, but im thinking to make it simple to just make it out of 3 points. 1 point for terrible opponent, not fun to play. 2 for good, neutral game. 3 for outstanding game, had lots of fun.
Lastly, and i realize that it is ultimately about having fun, but it should also put out some decent prizes (depending on admission fee's).

But loremaster, i want you to know that i am very interested in this. I myself have been thinking of seeing how much interest there would be and run one myself, but im a guy that would rather play than host.

These are my thoughts. Hope they help.

When would you want to have this happen?

Good points Matthew.

I'm one of the "would rather play" types too, but I don't really know anyone besides Stash and Ryan Glover / Mike Voth, and I don't know how much those "old guys" still play!

This'll be a "fun" event, held probably April/May ish on a weekend day (or a weekday, as I still have some vacation to eat) with a nominal entry fee to cover prizes. If we charge $10 each, than I can have a $60, $40, $20, $20, $20 prizes (Winner, 2nd, 3rd, Best Painted, Best Sport).

As soon as I have some logistics worked out (for myself, and with Darren), I'll post it here and provide Darren with a signup sheet @ the Den.

As one of the posters above suggested, we'll be able to wrap this up in 1 day, 3 matches guaranteed, the 4th "finals" match ending by 7ish with Prizes handed out afterward.

I see what you mean about forcing point spending on troops. Forcing Marines to take two ten man squads is kindof lame when orks might *want* to take two nobz mobs and 80 boyz in a 1000pt game! (mmmm shoota boyz)

I totally think that the army's be built around the standard force organization table, but dont penalize army 1 because it ONLY has 2 troops choices in a 1000pt army if by tsking more troops would drop them into a "hard-to-compete" zone. Some armies just have better "troops" choices in terms of gearing options.

I did have one idea thats been nudging my mind:
All tournaments i have ever been in always stress to "bring all the rules for your army, all dice you will require (scatter dice) and all templates you need." but Never seem to enforce that rule. Have during sign up or something, 2pts or 1pt awarded to players that brought all they need. Or award those points after all games are played to weed out those that might try to squeeze by.

What do you think?

do away with comp score, or have impartial judges or judge panel, letting the guy you just trounced judge your comp score never works out he always feels like you're beardy, people are babies like that.

Robin has it here. I made the decision to put army comp in the hands of the players at my tournaments.
A- I'm putting enough trust in people to be grownups, we're all just playing with toy soldiers here.
B- On my forms I have it outlined how to score the other player to reduce the subjectiveness of it.

In 5th, you just can't have an "official" way of scoring comp. Should I punish someone because they're running a 6 dread army with master of the forge? Or prevent several army builds by saying no special characters? (Deathwing, Ravenwing, Ork Biker army, for example) Also, some armies can do perfectly fine with lots of troops. For example, Space Marines, or Chaos. You can make feasible lists using nothing but 1HQ and all troops. What about say, Tau Eldar or Necrons? Penalizing them because they pretty much need to field a good number of other slots just isn't fair.

If you can come to a tourney with a reasonably balanced list, do well with it, an have a fully painted army, and give a good game to the other guys you're playing with, then you deserve to win, not the one bringing the powerlist from hell that's just basecoated and a bad attitude

5 for painting, 5 for sportsmanship, ignore composition, but disallow special characters and require standard force org?
3 for a win, 2 for a tie, 1 for a loss, but only half the players will play a 4th round ("the finals").

Great guy that loses all his games but gets 5 & 5 for painting wins 13 points. Dude who wins all his games but gets 0 & 0 gets 14 points (+ a 2pt bonus for winning the "A" final) (basecoated only would receive a 0 from me, I'm picky)

I think we're getting close to a fun format here. I checked with "the great schedular" and a weekend in April seems quite feasible. I'll put a package together with a schedule and a format to solicit some more feedback in a little while.

Not to mention comp does absolutely nothing in rebalancing the game; you simply shift the "power choices" from one to another.

Now, this is something I'm quite confused on... Why are people worried about the bringing on of "cheesy" vs. "balanced" lists? If someone brings an unbalanced list to a tournament and gets bad matchups (i.e., the ones that their uber 9 vendetta 6 manticore list alpha strike BS doesn't work against)... they're gonna get rolled pretty badly. In fact, I believe that the TO should specifically gear their stuff against what it sucks against; thus is the penalty for bringing unbalanced stuff

On the painting aspect... I don't think that should influence your standing with relation to the overall tournament; it should be completely separate. A tournament is to test your skills as a general. You don't go to a painting competition to see how good you are as a general, with painting/modeling being the primary weight of the event, that's just plain silly. Keep the two aspects of the hobby apart so as to not make one half of it seem like the lesser of the two.

Simple fix? Require painted armies. If this is gonna happen in april, 1 000 points (in at least three colours) is not hard to do. Have a "best painted" award, but don't muddle the competitive aspect of the game with a completely different part of the hobby.


I don't like the limiting of special characters, that seems arbitrary and completely pointless.

Reviewing the Codexes, some armies highly benefit from special characters while others (Orks, for example) have special characters that no sane person would take.

GW has never really done a stellar job balancing special characters and most tourneys offered (even now) restrict their use. For a 1000 point game, I think "no special characters" is reasonable. I can be convinced otherwise though. Is there a specific reason they should be included?

Lore Weaver wrote:Reviewing the Codexes, some armies highly benefit from special characters while others (Orks, for example) have special characters that no sane person would take.

So? Some armies benefit from having a strong elite choice selection (tyranids, to a lesser extent space marines) whereas others have crap selection (eldar, tau, dark eldar, necrons, IG without allies). Some armies just have better choices, special characters are a part of that. Until GW updates all of their codices to the current standard, this will always be a problem.

And orks... man, orks have so many problems going for them special characters are the least of their concern. lol

GW has never really done a stellar job balancing special characters and most tourneys offered (even now) restrict their use. For a 1000 point game, I think "no special characters" is reasonable. I can be convinced otherwise though. Is there a specific reason they should be included?

This irks me, the fact that amateur persons like us think we can best GW. I had the same crusader attitude with D&D and thinking that I obviously have much more clairvoyance than Wizards... yeah, I would say 99.9% of the time it doesn't help. The same argument goes for comp systems... totally silly. To me, no special character comes across as particularly imbalanced, and the fact that this is 1 000 points only helps that point; they simply cost too much to give an adequate return. Go ahead, spend 20% of your army on one model. lol

I've been playing Warhammer since Rogue Trader, they've *always* done a poor job balancing Special Characters. I mean, look at 2nd edition Ghazkull. Brutal.

GW tourney's often restrict special characters too, so they know that balance is an issue there as well.

I'm with Lore Weaver on the special characters here. At 1000 points, you shouldn't need any. Period. There are some that are crazy good at that level (Vulkan, Shrike, Bile) and its best to make sure people don't take em. Just ask Matt K, when he brought BJORN THE FELL HANDED to a 750 game, and rolled me. No chance. Nada. Nothing.

On the painting aspect, I agree with HC. Painting is important, but some people have not practiced as much, or are intimidated by advanced painters. It would be unfair to penalize them. Fully painted as a requirement (not hard at 1000 pts), but the best painted should be a separate decision.

p.s= about the "crusader" comment HC, you of all people are one to talk. must I look up a "GW were thinking through their asses" post?

I hate to say it but I had the worst game ever at that torny b/c I had to play someone who didn't know the rules of the game, the rules of his codex AND he had to use my dice. Also he thought I had a broken list because he never played nids before so I got a 1 on comp and a 1 on sportsmanship dispite trying to help him understand simple rules (aka assaulting through a 1" squad to get the squad behind it.
As per sportsmanship I heard an interesting way to score it. After each game select the one player you had the most fun playing. So round 1 you opponent gets one point. After the second game decide which of the 2 were more fun to play and they get a point. Repeat for every game.

I've been playing Warhammer since Rogue Trader, they've *always* done a poor job balancing Special Characters. I mean, look at 2nd edition Ghazkull. Brutal.

note that that was second edition, which was full of gimmicks and the like. that one eldar guy (don't remember his name) who would generate a simply balls crunchingly stupid amount of power weapon attacks... yeah...

GW tourney's often restrict special characters too, so they know that balance is an issue there as well.

examples? I know 'ard boyz doesn't, and I'm under the impression that GW has scrapped their tourney system completely.

Just ask Matt K, when he brought BJORN THE FELL HANDED to a 750 game, and rolled me. No chance. Nada. Nothing.

I have to raise my eyebrow at this, all bjorn is is a venerable dread with an invul save (ancient tactician is meh imho). but he's over a third of the army's cost... man, I wanna see a battle report on that game, or at least explain to me how the hell that happened. lol

Paz wrote:
p.s= about the "crusader" comment HC, you of all people are one to talk. must I look up a "GW were thinking through their asses" post?

saying something is dumb is one thing - trying to change it is another.


EDIT: I suppose I should clarify my position. I am interested in this tournament, even if the points value is a bit lower than my taste. The special characters rule I disagree with on principle, I would never field a SC at that low of a points value. If the comp system is dropped there's nothing holding me back, since I don't expect to win and it's not like my painting is going to influence my position. lol

HC you were on here a month ago saying some rule was crappy and before anyone ever had a problem with it you wanted to create new house rules to alter it based on a lame blogger.

Rather than arguing against a guy who wants to put on a tournament why not make your suggestion and thats it. it is very unproductive to continue trying to force a point and it makes you come off as an ass once again.

Loreweaver, i do bleieve a painted *required* would be a decent way to go and have a separate judging/contest for best painted model or army however you want to do it.