A couple of points.

[Primarch]

With the first (40k) tournament over, and another (WFB) on the horizon, I would like those who played or who are going to play to have their say in how things are run.

Firstly, how did people feel about the scoring system (and no whining about losing please). I know one player who didnt enter threw a hissy fit about the paint, comp and sportsmanship points involved. I think it all worked out ok in the end, though to be honest, the fact that Badruck missed a full game and nearly won the event tells me something is wrong with the system I used. No offence to the Madmiral, but you shouldnt be able to miss a full game and walk off with the title no matter how good you are.
Another blogger out on the web has given his thoughts here.

The second point I want feedback on is how to judge comp, if at all, in the upcoming Fantasy tournament. The rule set is brand new and I havent played any games yet. Getting a feel for the power armies and cheesey builds will take some time.
I was thinking of the following.
Players start out with 5 comp points
If they spend more than 750 in total on heroes and lords they lose 1 point
If they buy more than 3 cannons, stone throwers, bolt throwers or similar they lose 1 point
If they take more than 6 caster levels they lose 1 point
If they spend more than 750 on Special choices they lose 1 point
If they take more than 2 monsters or monstrous mounts they lose 1 point
If they spend more than 750 on core they gain 1 point

What do you think?

[Colonel Voss]

My only complaint is that it is so close to the time of the event it might be hard for people to adjust their points to match this.

[me_in_japan]

What Voss said, plus,

COMP
surely comp should be different for different armies. f'r example, if an Empire army takes swathes of canons and suchlike, surely that's playing according to the fluff? Likewise, if an elf army goes heavy on the magic, then again, what's not to like? I'm of the opinion that the game itself contains enough inherent comp to keep things fair. e.g. you dont want elf armies with lots of cheesy canon. Fair enough. I havent read the high elf book, but I suspect its a bit scanty in the canon department.

Adding additional restrictions outside of the rules and calling them "fair play" is a bit off, in my opinion. If your army keeps losing, then learn how to play it better, dont try to pull the other armies down to your level. By all means bitch about other army books being overpowered, but dont say "I get bonus points if you dont take some crappy units in your army, too". Even if the rest of the world says "Ogre Kingdoms suck. You'll never win a tourney with them" it doesnt matter. Youre not playing against the rest of the world, youre playing against the folks here in Japan. Nobody is that much of a hardcore gamer here. If you like Ogre Kingdoms, then by gum take em and learn how to win with em. (Even if that means waiting for a new army book...)


PAINTY POINTS
For what it's worth, I also disagree with a sliding scale of painty points. I think people should perhaps be penalised 1 point if they turn up with completely unpainted models on black bases, as this is just laziness, but to win/lose a tourny based on how pretty your models are is not fair. Of course, if someone has legitimate reasons for having an entirely unpainted army, then fair do's. e.g. "I just bought this entire 2000pt elf army last week purely so I could join this tourny" would be a fair excuse. "I was busy painting other stuff" would not be a good excuse, as the painter shoulve been painting his tourney army, not "something else."


OVERALL TOURNY SCORES
Finally: How to avoid people not playing the first round but winning:

loss=3pts
draw=4pts
win=5pts

3 games. total points available=15
someone plays and loses all 3 games = 9 pts
someone misses first game and wins 2nd two =10 pts

all it takes is for someone to not lose all their games (which, logically, MUST happen) to stop tardy-boy being a winner. In fact, he'll have to work hard to not come last (which is as it should be, as he missed 33% of the games.)

This system could easily result in a tie for a position. In that case it goes to either a play-off, or if the two competitors have already played, whoever won that game wins overall.

This system, simple as it is, also does away with the whole problem of the giving various points for different types of win (tableing, more objectives, all objectives etc). You either win, draw, or lose. That's it. Having people tied for points at the end is not a major disaster.

[Primarch]

Nobody is that much of a hardcore gamer here.

You've obviously never played Pike's tournament army. (especially since you dont even play WFB). He was heavily penalised for comp in the Kyushu tournament and unsuprisingly stomped every other player into the ground with ease.

My only complaint is that it is so close to the time of the event it might be hard for people to adjust their points to match this.

Generally we play about 2250-2500 points down at Kids Land, so playing at 2000 gives some leeway in army building, but fair enough.

Having read the article I linked to, I liked the idea of not using battle points at all.

Instead of using points to determine the final placing of players, I thought about the following system.
Rather than having an overall tournament winner, split the event into three categories.
General, Player and Painter

The player who wins all their games, or who wins the most games will be the winner of Best General.
E.g. Player A wins all 3 games, Player B wins 2 and draws 1. Player A is the winner. In the event of a tie, Victory Points (as laid out in the main rule book) will be used to determine who wins.

At the same time, each player rates their games afterwards on a sliding scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being Worst Game Ever, 5 being average and 10 being Best Game Ever. The player with the highest score wins the Best Player section.

At the beginning of the tournament, (or maybe at lunchtime), each player also rates every army on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being unpainted, 5 being average and 10 being Golden Daemon standard (similar to CmoN). The highest overall score takes the Best Painted title.

If someone claims all three then they are obviously the greatest WFB player in the country.

[Tau_Rebelz]

I like the 3 category idea. It allows players head to events and feel they can always take part and compete in at least one of the categories.

The goal of the General and Painter category is pretty much self-implied, but I'm a bit lost on the purpose of the Player category. Is the goal more aimed for ensure overall sportsmanship, players trying challenging or interesting armies, or just simply the enjoyment of that one game in general? Or is it a mixture of all those things?

It can easily be said that a player that decimates the opponent’s army will probably have more fun than the player that is getting decimated. Thus ratings could become based on the outcome of games.

I guess the question is, what am I looking at when I am trying to rate the game itself?

Lastly, my one suggestion after viewing the Obon tourney would be to have players write down their ratings on a piece of paper (maybe one formatted and printed for the event, I can help with designing if desired) and then handing it in at the end of the match or at the end of the tourney for tallying. The tourney went smoothly I felt, but while watching you run around collecting sportsmanship ratings, I thought things would definitely slow down once more players participated. Plus, there is a degree of secrecy that can be ensured to allow people to vote honestly.

[Primarch]

Personally, I think a close fought game is way more fun than a game which is no challenge at all. Rolling over your opponent's army on turn 1 leads to a boring game. When I played in the World Wide War tournament in Osaka, I ended up playing some local kid. By the end of the game I had killed all but 2 of his marines and all his vehicles and only lost 7 scouts. I apologised to him afterwards for such a terrible game.

To be honest, sportsmanship is there to balance out players needs to take the most broken, brutal units possible. Not everyone has hundreds of models to choose from and some players use the same models for every game. Getting rid of the need to table your opponents from the event means that players can concentrate more on having a good time with the people they play instead of focussing on grinding them into dust.

Wargaming is essentially a social contract between two people to have a good time together. If you dont understand this concept, play video games.

@T_R - At the 40k event, I did have a form ready to use, but decided to save on paper since it wasnt really necessary. As for collecting the sportsmanship scores, if anyone hadn't received the points, I would have been extremely suprised.

[Admiral-Badruck]

As an organizer of many a tournament not only in war gaming but in Soccer... and it always pays to have lotz of different things for people to win.. most goals, MVP, and best sportsmanship (least bookings) ....that said I think paint points are very good for tournaments and I would hate to see them taken off of any tournament I think it prevents a lot of crazy army builds, but more than that for me I do not mind getting beat up on be models that look cool... getting smacked around by gray plastic or unpainted metal.. well that sucks...

[Admiral-Badruck]

I am not cool with that Komp rule set but... i am by no means taking the best komboz in my list but I will get rocked... by this comp set... some Komp is done by what you take not what slots you fill up... or how much is spent on crap... Just have people post the list to you and grade them on the amount of cheddar or lack there of... 40k terms someone takes Allied Assassins with IG psykers... lame and broken.... or someone takes double lash and Khorne Terminators... very good lists but they are not fluff based at all...

[Primarch]

I'm not bothering with the comp. I'm probably going for the three categories for victory (winning games, painting and playing nice).

[Admiral-Badruck]

sounds like a good idea...