Events & Bolt Ons

[Aaron Schmidt]

I'm disappointed to hear a lot of push back about using realm rules and in some cases endless spells in tournaments. I'm not sure where its coming from. Based on my experiences I don't think organizers should be shy about using these rules. 

I've been to 2 events since the new AoS dropped. Both of them utilized endless spells and the realm rules. Both of these are bolt-ons, the game designed to operate with out them. However, I feel that their inclusion is kind of 'opt in' even when they are included in a game. These bolt ons really came up in varying amounts across the games that I played in these events, but I never felt there was a dramatic difference between when they were employed and when they weren't. Obviously a game where I used a realm spell is different than one where I didn't, but it didn't feel like a different game. It certainly didn't feel like I was playing a different game than my opponent. It just felt like an aspect of that game. In the games where my opponent was totally on top of the bolt on rules, or was using an endless spell and I wasn't weren't problematic for me. These cases certainly didn't lead to disparity in the game. 

I can sympathize with organizers who don't want the extra load of determining a realm, realm feature, or secondary objective between rounds. It would be a shame if it became standard for them to not even give it a try. Variety is the spice of life, and I won't skip an event if it doesn't use these rules, I would just hate to have the community trend towards avoiding them. It just doesn't seem necessary. 

[Dead Scribe]

I think for tournaments, you want standard rules that apply to all tournaments.  Competitive players want to play football and have football always mean football no matter what stadium they are playing in.

Football teams don't play New York style football and then travel to Chicago to play Chicago style football and then travel to Los Angeles and play LA style football.  They play football with the same rules.

The realm rules introduce a lot of random elements that hurts list building and makes optimized armies not so optimized, and I don't think that really has a valid place in a competition.

I think what needs to happen instead of everyone trying to shoe h orn things into "tournaments" is that there needs to be narrative events.  More narrative events for things like that where they belong better.  In my opinion.

My experiences as a highly competitive player that wants to play at the highest level with realm rules is that they are frustrating and don't add anything to the competitive experience.  They change the meta each time and you can't really optimize properly for them.  Random elements defeating competitive players will frustrate and drive away competitive players.

[Graftonianman]

The events that used the realm rules chose those that were not that unusual. I haven’t heard of any games at these events where the realm rules changed gameplay or impacted the outcome significantly. They merely add flair and variance. 

 AOS 2, when compared to old fantasy battle, has incredible variety built into the battleplans. This encourages balanced armies and fun. Realm rules add additional variety to these battleplans in a more controlled way to what existed in the community.

Many organizers were already adding additional rules to scenarios. Realm rules are an additional resource for organizers to create a unique and fair event. House-made rules and game effects are more at risk for un-balancing games. 

 

[Deadkitten]

So tourneys typically have a trophy for 1st place and then 4 more trophies for the best finishes for each GA.  Paint gets a Best Painted and MAYBE a Coolest Army.  I'd love to see a Narrative event that had a trophy for the best Painted/Coolest army for each of the GA instead.

[gjnoronh]

On 7/27/2018 at 2:20 PM, Dead Scribe said:

I think for tournaments, you want standard rules that apply to all tournaments.  Competitive players want to play football and have football always mean football no matter what stadium they are playing in.

Football teams don't play New York style football and then travel to Chicago to play Chicago style football and then travel to Los Angeles and play LA style football.  They play football with the same rules.

The realm rules introduce a lot of random elements that hurts list building and makes optimized armies not so optimized, and I don't think that really has a valid place in a competition.

I think what needs to happen instead of everyone trying to shoe h orn things into "tournaments" is that there needs to be narrative events.  More narrative events for things like that where they belong better.  In my opinion.

My experiences as a highly competitive player that wants to play at the highest level with realm rules is that they are frustrating and don't add anything to the competitive experience.  They change the meta each time and you can't really optimize properly for them.  Random elements defeating competitive players will frustrate and drive away competitive players.

While I understand your point and agree that high degrees of randomness turn off highly competitive players  I'll just point out that in Football it's a truism that playing foot ball in January in Buffalo or Chicago is very different then playing in a dome in a playoffs.  Some teams aren't built to compete in those conditions (timing passing offenses), some are (run heavy teams.)  Even in the modern era of pass heavy football there are still some teams that live more on the run (i.e. Seattle, Buffalo) then the pass.  There are certainly teams that deal with crazy weather more then others.    

My point being, in our analogy the rules change a little bit on what you want to call on offense  at 3rd and 4 in a blizzard vs a dome.  Some teams (the Patriots) are built to compete in almost any environment - e they are built in away that gives them a lot of flexibility

to adjust to the weather (and opposing defense) as needed.  Part of that is being a highly cost/productivity efficient team.     

That analogy probably carries true for army builds and how they deal with the realms.

That being all said I understand your point. The degree of randomness in AoS already turns off many 'competitive' players (double turns!!!) where we draw the line depends on the player I think.   I'd argue that dice based games tend to have a pretty high degree of randomness inherent.  

To the OP's point as an event organizer I'm still trying to get my head around the realms and the pros and cons of including them.   The points Dead Scribe raises are valid concerns as are the opposing ones raised in this thread.    I'm watching closely in these first few months to see if folks enjoy them or not in competitive settings.