My First Adepticon, A Tournament Report

[Mikester1487]

19 hours ago, SlaaneshCultist said:

Awesome! I'm glad you had fun. KO, in my experience, are win big/lose big armies. A little bit of luck and it probably could have gone the other way for you! But it's always valuable to learn from and build on your experiences. Are you doing any other tourneys this year? I'm doing Nashcon in June and Socal Open in October.

I've only been aware of adepticon these past five years but have been looking to go to others since I enjoy it a lot.  As of right now no more tourneys this year, but I'd love to research some of these!  It helps that most anywhere is semi close being in Colorado.

[Stevewren]

Having an equal balance between gaming, sports and painting is very tricky. I think there is an interesting discussion that can be had because the gaming has so much variety due to lists and attitude. Some players don't mind not doing so well at an event so don't mind getting a low score as long as they have a good time. However sports scoring always seems to be about negatively labelling players: bad sport, least favourite game etc, and no one wants to be seen as a bad sport. Imagine if everyone got graded on sports and painting in the same way as gaming - someone would be the worst sportsman at a 100 player event, and someone else would have the worst army. That's a horrible label to place on a player. However being the worst 'gamer' is perfectly acceptable and you can even win a prize! 

Perhaps this is why the majority of players tend to get top or close to top sports scores, and painting checklists are relatively simple to achieve for anyone willing to put in some effort/time.

Therfore a lot of your variance comes from gaming. Having a perfect 3 way split seems to be very difficult to achieve. Please let me know if you have a way that can reward sports and paint in a positive way that allows a wide variety of score. I know The Holy Hammer events do it as a three way split, and the Warhammer Achievements scoring system also works well, but neither of these would really work at an Adepticon style event

[Ryan Taylor]

3 hours ago, Mikester1487 said:

I've only been aware of adepticon these past five years but have been looking to go to others since I enjoy it a lot.  As of right now no more tourneys this year, but I'd love to research some of these!  It helps that most anywhere is semi close being in Colorado.

You should come to the events ran in Castle Rock fairly regularly. Its great fun!

[SlaaneshCultist]

4 hours ago, Stevewren said:

bad sport, least favourite game etc, and no one wants to be seen as a bad sport. Imagine if everyone got graded on sports and painting in the same way as gaming - someone would be the worst sportsman at a 100 player event, and someone else would have the worst army. That's a horrible label to place on a player. However being the worst 'gamer' is perfectly acceptable and you can even win a prize! 

Oh I don't know. I for one would be happy to see the worst sport called out at any event. If you're giving 5 people who paid to be at the event bad games, I'd like to see you called out and not return. In a perfect world where everyone is a good sport and prioritize they're opponent's enjoyment of the game this wouldn't work, but we don't live in that world. 

As far as "worst army" goes, there will be multiple people with the minimum score, especially if it is a painting required event, so no individual will be singled out. Also, I much prefer subjective scoring in paint by a panel of people who have won best paint at major events in the past rather than a simple checklist. Or at least some combination thereof.

Again though, these are just my opinions on the type of events I would like to attend. I'm not writing some type of manifesto on the objective best practices for tournaments. I leave that type of demagoguery to others! 

[SlaaneshCultist]

9 hours ago, Trout said:

Any time you allow competitors to influence the scores of their competition, you are opening the system up to abuse. A logically minded competitor would naturally give the lowest score to the toughest opponent and the highest score to the easiest therefore helping them improve their own standing. Since voting tends to be in secret there is no social pressure to act in any way other than the most logical way. Perhaps a better approach is to make the voting public. If you want to give an opponent a bad sportsmanship score you have to stand by your vote; at least that way there's some social pressure to be honest rather than strategic about your voting.

I wonder if you thinking that this is the normal behavior at tournaments is the reason you don't attend them? I have a ton of experience both attending and running major tournaments, and while I'm not going to say that this NEVER happens, it is certainly not the norm. Far, FAR from it, in my experience. And as a former TO it would be pretty easy to identify someone who was approaching a system that way and call them out on it.

[Mikester1487]

I will say Alex does an amazing job at Adepticon. He and his team make it run very smoothly.  The second day always has those drop out issues but this year it was far more streamlined and easy to set up and go.  And even if you're not a top competitor the event as a whole is a great experience!  Made many new friends there over the past few years.

7 hours ago, Ryan Taylor said:

You should come to the events ran in Castle Rock fairly regularly. Its great fun!

I'm in the Springs so that's not too far of a drive to make.  If you could tell me the venue here or in a private message that would be great, thanks!

[svnvaldez]

1 hour ago, Mikester1487 said:

I'm in the Springs so that's not too far of a drive to make.  If you could tell me the venue here or in a private message that would be great, thanks!

Since this thread seems to have a lot of ears I will drop this here. AOS shorts has been doing a wonderful job compiling all major tournaments... There is a nice USA section and Castle Rock is on here... This doesn't even mention one day stuff but great for those wanting to start attending events and getting involved with your local tournament community. More people at tournaments the better IMO

https://aosshorts.com/age-of-sigmar-tournament-calendar/

[Antipodean7]

20 minutes ago, svnvaldez said:

Since this thread seems to have a lot of ears I will drop this here. AOS shorts has been doing a wonderful job compiling all major tournaments... There is a nice USA section and Castle Rock is on here... This doesn't even mention one day stuff but great for those wanting to start attending events and getting involved with your local tournament community. More people at tournaments the better IMO

https://aosshorts.com/age-of-sigmar-tournament-calendar/

Thanks mate - aosevents.org will also get you there

[Jamopower]

The fair play score system that I have always liked the most, and have used in the tournaments I have organized as well, is where everyone chooses the favorite opponent after all of the games and from each choice, the respective player gets some amount of points. In this system there are no "losers" and less possibility to tamper the scoring for advantage of the score giving player. I think that the psychological aspect of those scores being there is more important than the points as such. It can be just a tie breaker as well and the method for choosing the fair play award.

[SlaaneshCultist]

3 hours ago, Mikester1487 said:

I will say Alex does an amazing job at Adepticon. He and his team make it run very smoothly.  The second day always has those drop out issues but this year it was far more streamlined and easy to set up and go.  And even if you're not a top competitor the event as a whole is a great experience!  Made many new friends there over the past few years.

I'm in the Springs so that's not too far of a drive to make.  If you could tell me the venue here or in a private message that would be great, thanks!

Totally! If I haven't already said, my issues with Adepticon were minor, and just nitpicky. Overall I had a GREAT time.

[ledha]

13 hours ago, SlaaneshCultist said:

I wonder if you thinking that this is the normal behavior at tournaments is the reason you don't attend them? I have a ton of experience both attending and running major tournaments, and while I'm not going to say that this NEVER happens, it is certainly not the norm. Far, FAR from it, in my experience. And as a former TO it would be pretty easy to identify someone who was approaching a system that way and call them out on it.

i have french friends who did well at adepticon in the 2X1000, crushing all their opponent except one, while teaching them the rules (like, no, drycha can't have cover, and you need to be entirely on a scenery to have it).

They received no sport point (except from the other french team who were the one beating them, and those two didn't received any sport and painting point) despite being adorably cool and fun.

They even won the best army award... but none of their opponent gave them a single painting point. Despite that they made a fully painted and combined harmonized army with a fluff resume. They were a bit disappointed, even more when nearly all their opponent were telling them "you are cool, we'll give you sport points!".

People are most likely to give point to low ranked people, and nothing on high ranked one.

[svnvaldez]

To piggyback on @ledha here’s an article about one players experience with chipmunking

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2018/03/17/gw-grognard-chipmunking/

I personally know of a few guys who have no issues giving low sports when the system allows it. During the game you try to score the most VPs while giving up the fewest possible and they view sports scores the same way.

Paint as well, if asked to player vote for the best army they will pick armies that they know have not been winning games and not in the running for a high placing.

[Mikester1487]

3 hours ago, ledha said:

i have french friends who did well at adepticon in the 2X1000, crushing all their opponent except one, while teaching them the rules (like, no, drycha can't have cover, and you need to be entirely on a scenery to have it).

They received no sport point (except from the other french team who were the one beating them, and those two didn't received any sport and painting point) despite being adorably cool and fun.

They even won the best army award... but none of their opponent gave them a single painting point. Despite that they made a fully painted and combined harmonized army with a fluff resume. They were a bit disappointed, even more when nearly all their opponent were telling them "you are cool, we'll give you sport points!".

People are most likely to give point to low ranked people, and nothing on high ranked one.

That's awesome that they did very well in the team tournament.  For that day there are a lot of people who aren't full up on their rulesets at times and just go to roll some dice.  

I'm curious what you mean by paint points?   Your oppoents would not be judging the painting scores.  Only voting for which one they liked the most.

For sports I've personally never seen anyone tell their opponent what kind of points they are going to hand out.  And if they won the best army award I'm not sure that's achieveable without getting at least some small amount of  sports and paint overall. 

I will have to disagree with your last paragraph as I believe it's your conduct that truly will determine your soft scores at Adepticon.

[SlaaneshCultist]

6 hours ago, svnvaldez said:

To piggyback on @ledha here’s an article about one players experience with chipmunking

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2018/03/17/gw-grognard-chipmunking/

I personally know of a few guys who have no issues giving low sports when the system allows it. During the game you try to score the most VPs while giving up the fewest possible and they view sports scores the same way.

Paint as well, if asked to player vote for the best army they will pick armies that they know have not been winning games and not in the running for a high placing.

Lol. I'm pretty sure that my old WFB  group (Leadership 2) is the group he's talking about in that article. We had a reputation for "chipmunking" which, as far as I'm aware, originated from one guy with a problem with us who christened us the "West Coast Taliban", whatever the hell that means. That being said, if you talked to the TOs of the tournaments we frequented you would find out that that simply wasn't true. Indeed, several of said TOs directly refuted that guy's widely shared at the time blog post. As someone in the comments on that article pointed out, the perception of "chipmunking" is often significantly more pronounced than its actuality.

That being said, and again, I'm not saying that there aren't potential problems with Sportsmanship scoring. I'm simply saying that my (ongoing) experience is that it solves more problems than it causes.

[SlaaneshCultist]

5 hours ago, Mikester1487 said:

That's awesome that they did very well in the team tournament.  For that day there are a lot of people who aren't full up on their rulesets at times and just go to roll some dice.  

I'm curious what you mean by paint points?   Your oppoents would not be judging the painting scores.  Only voting for which one they liked the most.

For sports I've personally never seen anyone tell their opponent what kind of points they are going to hand out.  And if they won the best army award I'm not sure that's achieveable without getting at least some small amount of  sports and paint overall. 

I will have to disagree with your last paragraph as I believe it's your conduct that truly will determine your soft scores at Adepticon.

I agree. My team also went 2-1 at the team tournament, and I went 4-1 at the championship, and only lost one sports point in each of those. Now, that, in itself, is its own problems nd was kinda my original issue. I didn't become anyone's best friend, which is the actual definition of what a "5" score is, so I probably shouldn't have received or given those scores out (which I did several times), and which contributing to sports scores having such a minimal impact on your overall placements. If this particular team did really poorly, consistently, on sports, the likelihood is that people honestly didn't like playing them.

[svnvaldez]

23 minutes ago, SlaaneshCultist said:

That being said, and again, I'm not saying that there aren't potential problems with Sportsmanship scoring. I'm simply saying that my (ongoing) experience is that it solves more problems than it causes.

My stance is that if a TO isn't going to address upvoting in the pack then just separate paint, sports, and battle into 3 awards.  But on a whole I think that paint and sports are positives as well when implemented with care (No one wants to play vs grey armies, blatant slow players etc)

14 hours ago, Jamopower said:

The fair play score system that I have always liked the most, and have used in the tournaments I have organized as well, is where everyone chooses the favorite opponent after all of the games and from each choice, the respective player gets some amount of points. In this system there are no "losers" and less possibility to tamper the scoring for advantage of the score giving player. I think that the psychological aspect of those scores being there is more important than the points as such. It can be just a tie breaker as well and the method for choosing the fair play award.

I think @Jamopower has the right idea and the similar approach taken in the FHGT and GW heats packs.

Panel judge paint scoring and one vote for players best game.

[SlaaneshCultist]

30 minutes ago, svnvaldez said:

My stance is that if a TO isn't going to address upvoting in the pack then just separate paint, sports, and battle into 3 awards.  But on a whole I think that paint and sports are positives as well when implemented with care (No one wants to play vs grey armies, blatant slow players etc)

I think @Jamopower has the right idea and the similar approach taken in the FHGT and GW heats packs.

Panel judge paint scoring and one vote for players best game.

Agree re: panel judging for paint. I think checklists are too easy to manipulate and don't do enough to create field separation. They can also create absurd situations. No joke, I once lost painting points because I had painted every single model in my army to the same high standard, a higher standard than literally the best painted models of any other army at that particular tournament, but because the tournament gave points for "having your characters painted at a higher standard than your troops" I didn't get those points and didn't win best paint. Lol. I'm definitely not opposed to a combination of checklist and panel judging though.

I don't think you and I are ever going to see eye to eye on sports (which is totally okay) as I think our goals are different. I want bad sports held accountable in addition to good sports being rewarded, and I also view the composition of your list as part of your sportsmanship (it is an indication of how seriously you are taking the enjoyment of your opponents and directly impacts said enjoyment), especially if there is no other impact for taking a list that is built to exploit one of the abusable aspects of the game.

[svnvaldez]

46 minutes ago, SlaaneshCultist said:

I don't think you and I are ever going to see eye to eye on sports (which is totally okay) as I think our goals are different. I want bad sports held accountable in addition to good sports being rewarded, and I also view the composition of your list as part of your sportsmanship (it is an indication of how seriously you are taking the enjoyment of your opponents and directly impacts said enjoyment), especially if there is no other impact for taking a list that is built to exploit one of the abusable aspects of the game.

Completely agree, my views are not that of every player certainly and I don't claim them to be the correct views (they are just my views). In a tournament if I could finish a game in 30 mins give up zero models and take all of my opponents models while playing a clean and fair game I would be incredibly content.

 The following are written by two different players on how to play the game. Neither is write or wrong, but I admit the first is great for growing the community. However, in a tournament setting my view (and probably that of Joe K., Anderew S., etc) is the second and I prefer events with packs that incentivize the second.

 

1. Buy the models which look the coolest to you.

2. Paint them beautifully, and enjoy it.

3. Come up with an awesome narrative for your army.

4. When you lose, have a feeling of success knowing that you played with an army that was fun to create, and as a result had a good time anyway.

 (Note: I have nothing against tournament players, just not my cup of tea :D)

 

1. Buy the models which will help you win games.

2. Paint them however you like, and enjoy it.

3. Read the awesome narrative in your battletome.

4. When you lose, understand what you could do better next time, and even in defeat have a good time anyway.

I am a matched play player (Note: I have nothing against open and narrative players, just not my cup of tea :D)

 

 Nick Nanavati (LVO/ITC champ) wrote an article on how to win an event: Acquire the Army is step 6 not step 1 and I understand that is not everyone's view on the hobby. 

https://thebrownmagic.com/2018/04/05/7-steps-to-win-a-tournament/

 

[Skabnoze]

I prefer to live in a middle area between those 2 views.  But if pushed I would lean more towards camp A.  After mini gaming for over 25 years now my primary goal is for everyone involved to have a fun time.  I still generally play a game to win, but I don't do that at the expense of my opponent.  I also have multiple criteria for what units I select for a game (although I often purchase most everything in a range).  I often don't just purely select the best units in the book.  I will pick units because I like their theme, or a model I made or painted for them, or I just like the mini, or I think they are amusing.  I like synergy and I will keep an eye out for that - but squeezing the absolute max performance out of my toys is not usually the highest thing on my list.  I can have a great time with subpar stuff if the atmosphere is right.

[SlaaneshCultist]

23 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

I prefer to live in a middle area between those 2 views.  But if pushed I would lean more towards camp A.  After mini gaming for over 25 years now my primary goal is for everyone involved to have a fun time.  I still generally play a game to win, but I don't do that at the expense of my opponent.  I also have multiple criteria for what units I select for a game (although I often purchase most everything in a range).  I often don't just purely select the best units in the book.  I will pick units because I like their theme, or a model I made or painted for them, or I just like the mini, or I think they are amusing.  I like synergy and I will keep an eye out for that - but squeezing the absolute max performance out of my toys is not usually the highest thing on my list.  I can have a great time with subpar stuff if the atmosphere is right.

I agree. I can be competitive, but for me that means taking the stuff I really like and learning to play with it really well. I may tweak some stuff here and there, but I don't add models to my army just because they're effective, and if a particular build feels like its not at all fun for my opponents I won't take it. It's worked well for me with my Khorne (where admittedly I got lucky when they dropped the cost on Juggernauts enough to make them decent in GHB17) and I've done really well with them. We'll see if that works out at all with my Daughters! Heh.

[TheAdequateWargamer]

On 04/04/2018 at 8:59 PM, svnvaldez said:

 

I have always view sports and paint score as incredibly subjective and open to manipulation. With a 0-6 anonymous sports score I know plenty of players who give zeros to each opponent and honestly from a placings standing that’s the optimal strategy.

I'm sure the irony of cheating other players with inappropriate sports scoring is lost on some people.

[BURF1]

On 4/6/2018 at 6:02 AM, ledha said:

i have french friends who did well at adepticon in the 2X1000, crushing all their opponent except one, while teaching them the rules (like, no, drycha can't have cover, and you need to be entirely on a scenery to have it).

They received no sport point (except from the other french team who were the one beating them, and those two didn't received any sport and painting point) despite being adorably cool and fun.

They even won the best army award... but none of their opponent gave them a single painting point. Despite that they made a fully painted and combined harmonized army with a fluff resume. They were a bit disappointed, even more when nearly all their opponent were telling them "you are cool, we'll give you sport points!".

People are most likely to give point to low ranked people, and nothing on high ranked one.

What year was this? Because the last two years opponents didn't give painting points. Your friends might be feeding you some tall tales.

In fact, unless this is 2016(which used a 750pt SDK system and happened BEFORE the sylvaneth battletome) , this is completely impossible. Warhammer Design studio A won best army in 2017 and everyone who won an award that year got at least 19/20 sports points. This year everyone who was nominated for best appearance had at least 22 out of 24 sports score and the only person who got chipmunked who won and award was the best Chaos army  of Paul and David Fields, and they still got 17pts out of 24, so only 1 opponent tanked them.

There are a couple of other teams that got sports tanked but they all either had terrible paint scores or terrible battle scores and none of them got tanked as hard as you described.

Actually, I'm gonna say this didn't happen and either you or your friends are lying.

[SlaaneshCultist]

16 minutes ago, BURF1 said:

What year was this? Because the last two years opponents didn't give painting points. Your friends might be feeding you some tall tales.

There definitely weren't paint points this year. I didn't realize there used to be. I had just assumed that was a typo or something.

[BURF1]

3 minutes ago, SlaaneshCultist said:

There definitely weren't paint points this year. I didn't realize there used to be. I had just assumed that was a typo or something.

It wasn't a typo, there  have never been paint points granted by opponents in the Sigmar Team.  It's always been judged. They've used the same rubric since the tournament started. As I said in the edited above post, either he or is friends are being disingenuous.

[SlaaneshCultist]

Just now, BURF1 said:

It wasn't a typo, there never have never been paint points granted by opponents in the Sigmar Team.  It's always been judged. You can pull up the packet for every single year the tournament has happened. 

I meant I thought it was a typo/misspeaking when ledha talked about their friends not getting any paint points from their opponent. Like, maybe they meant sports points but just mis-typed it.