November 2013 Highlander Tournament

Great turn out, everyone!  It looks like fun was had by all. I will get detailed results posted up after I get home tomorrow. The results that matter for circuit scoring, however, is as follows:

Best General: Mark H
Best Overall: Mark H (need to add a stipulation for next time)
Best painted: Dallas
Crowd Favorite Painted : Paz
Path of Victory: Mark, Aiden, Paz, Gavin.
Horseman Honorary Effort Award: Mike
Door Prize: Ben

Scores for Best Overall:
Mark H. -- 83
Mike B. -- 76
Tyson -- 69
Paz -- 68
Dallas -- 67
Gavin -- 66
Robyn -- 65
Ben -- 64
Ryan G -- 61
John -- 60
Ian -- 60
Tom M. -- 51
Ken -- 45
Dana -- 44
Jordan -- 39
Aidan -- 38

Scores for Best General:
Mark H -- 100
Robyn -- 82
Mike B -- 80
Gavin -- 76
Ryan G -- 70
Tom M. -- 60
Ian -- 60
Tyson -- 60
Dallas -- 52
Aidan -- 40
Ben -- 40
Paz -- 40
John -- 35
Jordan -- 30
Ken -- 30
Dana -- 10

Scores for Best Painted:
Note: The representative system used in the scoring metric looks at the whole army for the first 15 points (bare/primed/mostly painted/army wide 3 colour minimum), it then looks at a single model put forward as a represntative for the next 30 points, and finally it glances back at the rest of the army to see if you have a Display Base (1 point) and/or Magnets (2 points).  It should be noted that a great many vehicles do not have bases, and thus cannot score the 5 points available for basing, and the 4 points available for conversions is only checked against the representative model.

Dallas -- 41
Ben -- 40
Dana -- 38
Mike B. -- 35
Tyson -- 33
Robyn -- 30
Mark H. -- 29
Paz -- 29
John -- 26
Ian -- 24
Ken -- 24
Gavin -- 22
Ryan -- 20
Jordan -- 17
Tom M. -- 9
Aidan -- 4

Scores for Best Sportsmanship:
Dana -- 30
Ken -- 30
John -- 30
Paz -- 30
Aidan -- 30
Dallas -- 30
Ian -- 30
Tom M. -- 30
Robyn -- 30
Mark -- 30
Ben -- 27
Gavin -- 27
Mike B. -- 27
Jordan -- 24
Tyson -- 24
Ryan G -- 24

Average Sportsmanship Score: 28.3125

Votes for Crowd Favorite Painted:
Paz -- 6
Dana -- 4
Robyn -- 2
Mike B. -- 2
Jordan -- 1
Mark -- 1

Dana, Robyn, Ben and I would like to congratulate Dallas for the best painted win.
Astounding achievement man!

Edit: thanks for running the tourney tom!!

Paz wrote:Dana, Robyn, Ben and I would like to congratulate Dallas for the best painted win.
Astounding achievement man!

Edit: thanks for running the tourney tom!!

When you have forge world doing your conversions it makes things pretty easy. Right Dally?

Of note, only Mike scored the +1 point for display board.

Planes wrote:Of note, only Mike scored the +1 point for display board.

I thought he brought that to do coke off...

Great event Tom!

Path of Victory was fun.  <3 the Magnatism mission.

Edit: Dallas, I'll have to commission you to paint me some nids. I like my bugs dusty!

Good work everyone!
 
Just as a note Tom, you might have heard it already with your stipulation, but typcially you never double up on Overall, General and Painted. It's nice to spread the prizes around.. because if you have won overall, there is a very good chance that your in contention for the others as well, especially general.
 
Just curious though, why no sportsmanship? Im sure you mentioned you werent going to have won, but just curious why you decided against it.

With the metric I used for sportsmanship, there is insufficient granularity for a prize to be won. Oddly enough, a large portion of the player base got 30/30 sports scores, with the lowest score had in the category being 24/30. I do agree, though, that the core prize base will need to have exclusion clauses implemented. I realized that as I was in the middle of mathing out best overall. Good learning experience overall. While the lead up to the tournament went quite smooth, and the missions seemed to play out solidly, it was right at the end that got me. I think the Path system was alright, but I think from what I saw the Path of Vigilance should get dropped for something else.

I like the highlander format, the flavor was great. Thanks for letting me get in there at the last minute. distracted of late, so didn't realize that the tourney was starting before normal Saturday hours.

Personally, I think your trying to do too much with the whole Path thing, at the end of day i mostly just ignored it, as it was just a distraction from the mission objectives and contrary to sound tactical play with my army type. but to each their own,

as for prize awarding, you can always just go back to the old days of 1st 2nd 3rd, i'm not sure where this best of overall, best general, best painted crap came from anyway add everything up, scores, paint, sports, have prizes for the top three, everyone goes home.

But i ain't complaining, i got three games in, which is more than i get to play most months lately, so just keep running them guys

Thanks for running it Tom!

This is actually the big issue with sports. Its really there to penalize the bad sports, as if everyone is decent you end up with a huge number tying for first. Most events I've run have 2-3 guys with perfect sports score and 3 best opponent votes. 1 or 2 end up getting Best overall, or general, or something and it USUALLY sorts itself out.... but its always really a big tie.

the only thing i can say about seeing some of the tourny results over the past while is that, i do honestly believe that it would be much better if other then random door prizes, you allow only 1 prize per person. Other then that ,because i have not partaken in anything league related for awhile, i cant really add much to discussions on the subject

Was a really fun event, thanks for running it Tom. The missions were all a welcome deviation from the standard book missions we are used to and the highlander format for lists made it even better.

Now to buy a new dice cube.... 

Yeah, like I said before, I realized the prize flub the instant it became an issue. Plenty easy to fix for future events now that I know it is a thing. I am still fond of the concept of team terciaries as it allows people a shot at prize support even if they haven't gone 3/0, but I will admit it could use some tuning to make it mesh better with the missions overall, like having one objective per table also worth a terciary point in addition to the VPs it gives.

Truth be told, given what I saw for sports scores yesterday, I may full well just forego that score category next time, as everyone was super cool with each other, and it made no meaningful impact to the end scores. I am totally keeping the prep points, though. All of one person didn't have a score of 10 there, but that was the fellow who signed up the night before and simply wasn't able to get a list to me in time. Having people committed and locked in well in advance was great, and I know Darren appreciated having a general head count in advance.

I still have plenty of room to learn and grow as an event organizer, but I have to say, for a first event, things went remarkably smooth, with the mistakes only really nailing me hard in that last half hour where I was doing the math. I think I am also going to tweak the score cards for next time, such that a hard win is a lead of 5+ points and not 4+.

Rhaevyn wrote:as for prize awarding, you can always just go back to the old days of 1st 2nd 3rd, i'm not sure where this best of overall, best general, best painted crap came from anyway    add everything up, scores, paint, sports, have prizes for the top three, everyone goes home.

Roland wrote:This is actually the big issue with sports. Its really there to penalize the bad sports, as if everyone is decent you end up with a huge number tying for first. Most events I've run have 2-3 guys with perfect sports score and 3 best opponent votes. 1 or 2 end up getting Best overall, or general, or something and it USUALLY sorts itself out.... but its always really a big tie.

I agree with Rhaevyn, even though I really don't play any more. I understand the reasons for having best General, overall, etc, but why can't it be 1st, 2nd, 3rd?

Personally, there shouldn't be a prize for best sports, as Beau pointed out its there to penalize bad sports. Unless there is a mediator at each table to witness the game, and have a 3rd party grade sportsmanship i really don't think it should be there. Because I am sure it has happened to people before where they play a guy, and end up winning, but because he lost he is going to grade you low because its the last game of the day and he is playing for best general against you.... or something. It sucks, but its real, and rude, yet people do it...

And.. jsut a side note. I really do think it be beneficial to run a tally through as spreadsheet, leptop of tablet.

Ive been using a laptop for events for 10 years.. and the accuracy and speed is unmatched. We were done so early, but we needed a good 30-40 minutes for calculations at the end. My wife and kid were sitting in the car for 20 minutes becasue I relly though we'd be wrapped in 15 mins after we finished.

I can understand wanting to go "old" school, but it really takes to much time if you have to add everything up at the very end, and not as you go.

I think it would be a big mistake to take sportsmanship out completely. It doesnt have to be out of 10, but even jsut out of 3. Yeah, a lot of people are always going to get full marks, but theres still going to be the odd match or player who has a frustrating game or loses it and it should reflect that. Sportsmanship doesnt have to be a big prize, but I think it always important. Sportsmanship scores, coupled with "Favorite opponent " votes, can usually narrow it down to one player..

How did you calculate points for winners in the end? I just remember hearing you said about taking some 5"s, etc. Sounded like you had to do alot of calculations at the end.

1st, 2nd, and a 3rd would be neat for an alternate tournament, but I highly disagree on it as a norm.

In any good, regular game.. your opponent will not tank your sports score becasue you beat them. If you gloat or l;augh or get excited because your tabling them, then of course you will.

For the guys who place high in tournaments regularly, they win alot .. sure, but their opponents are also not tanking their sports scores..

But, the beauty is that with all the events going on now, we have more than ample room for different type of formats.. I wouldnt mind seeing a 1, 2, 3 style format.

I have the general math behind it posted in the original thread a good week in advance of the event, actually. The damning thing was converting numbers over to percentages for overall. I would have loved to use the spreadsheet, but not only couldn't I get the one I had to work, I have neither a tablet nor working laptop, thus making things problematic.

Planes wrote:I have the general math behind it posted in the original thread a good week in advance of the event, actually. The damning thing was converting numbers over to percentages for overall. I would have loved to use the spreadsheet, but not only couldn't I get the one I had to work, I have neither a tablet nor working laptop, thus making things problematic.

I can always get a computer for you Tom :-)  I have like... 8 lying around here that are in some sort of shape.  (although, fixing "ye olde" one might take some amount of effort, but it could be a tournament lappy).

Edit:  I do it by hand, but I build it all in a spreadsheet and then have spots for all the numbers to go and build a formula so it's easy for me to just fill in the blanks as the day goes by :-)

Edit 2: It was a good event Tom, I'm sure you learned a lot about running tournaments too.

Tom, I know it may seem like dropping sports would simplify, but I'd much rather deal with a 4 way tie for best sports than have ppl unhappy cuz a couple of guys acting like asses.

Thanks for the tournament Tom. I had a blast.

All this sportsmanship talk has me wondering who scored low and if they even know. I mean if they don't know, they can't know they need to improve.

Dallas, Robyn said exactly that in a different thread, and I think that's what need to happen.

We still have somewhere around half a year yet before a slot would likely open up for me to run another event, so there is plenty of time yet to hammer out all the details.

As for sports scores, average score should have been 21 across 3 matches. The fact that the lowest score across the entire event was 24 means that everyone received at least one 10, with two tens being the norm, and three being high end, but not uncommon. I will post all the numbers up when I get home. Just lunching at Denny's right now, cause that be tasty and Hobbit themed.

And I'm literally trapped in my house... And you get second breakfast

Bump for numbers.

As to painting: i got a bit of a gripe. I wasn't going to even say anything, but those numbers are crazy.

If you were basing painting on a single model, and a large proportion is leaned towards having a dynamic base and conversions, why not mention that when you were going around?  III hate to whine, and it's not like I expect any results changed, but a 29? Seriously? Wow.
I had plenty of dynamic based figs, and heavily converted ones too, if u had mentioned that would be making a big difference, I probably would not have chosen my stalker.
I stayed up till 3 am the night before, making sure all my figs were up to my maximum standard, I'm just finding it hard to believe my best work scores sooo much lower than Dallas' army.

Sorry dude, but those painting numbers make no sense, by any stretch of the imagination.