Competitive Event Game Concessions

[gjnoronh]

18 hours ago, Sleboda said:

First off, shame on you for using the word "meta" Gary.

Now then, with that out of the way, let me be a little more clear in my thoughts (and this is a post to address your comments and those of others after you - yours is just where I'm starting, and besides, I like you and think I can speak honestly without worrying too much about annoying you  ).

In your post and those of others, I see the subtle swap of the word "event" for "tournament." My position is based pretty much entirely on tournaments, specifically. Heck yes, by all means, go to a Grand Get-together, Hobby Weekend, or other gathering of Warhammer fans and play with whatevs.  (I seriously do someday need to follow through on my threat to organize and run a Grand Get-together). But, and this is a big but, when you go to a tournament you (the general you, not you specifically Gary) you are entering into a highly specific thing. It's a competition where an overall winner is determined and, in most cases, your play and your choices have both direct and indirect impact on the standings of the other players in the event.

For instance, just to pick some low-hanging fruit, if I play against Timmy and get smashed 20-0 and then I quit before I play Sam, Sam will not get the chance to crush me like Timmy did and Sam's numbers will be impacted. Better yet, I'm a lulz player and I get to play Timmy but not Sam, whereas Sam plays against 5 opponents who are all mindful of what a tournament (tournament!) is, and thus Timmy gets a 'freebie' whereas Sam does not, it's totally not fair to Sam.

People who go and enter the specific event type tournament need to realize what they have entered and be respectful to the event itself and all the other players.

The only inch I give on this view is that you should pick the army (book/tome/list/source/etc.) that you like and then make the best list and play the hardest you can within that.  Please, please, please ... please note that I am not saying to cheat, be a ******, or anything of the sort.  I'm saying do the best you  think you can with the army book you've picked and participate honestly within the tournament. 

Most events have lots of open gaming space, painting contests that are not part of the tournament, and time to socialize. You don't need to ignore the idea of what a tournament is to go and have a blast! I've been to a few Adepticons where I didn't enter a single tournament and still had a super great time just meeting people and playing pick up games.

 

TL;DR: Tournaments are a type of event with specific parameters and a specific meaning that differentiates them from other types of events.  If you don't want to get engaged in the ways that make them different from other events, pick another type of event.

In other words, don't go to a movie and conduct a band practice.

Joe no offense taken bu I think you are way off base.   .  As noted tournaments are the most common type of 'events' there are others but they are a small minority for whats on offer in the Warhammer world as a whole.     I'm using the word interchangeably as there aren't many other options for those who don't live near Adepticon

To take your analogy further some folks go to the movies as an excuse to spend time with their friends, some folks go to the movies because they are deeply interested in the plot and connections with other works of film or literature, some are cinematography students looking to learn from a great film makers work,  some are using as an excuse to get the family out of the house due to cabin fever,   some just  to be entertained, some just for an excuse to be in alone the dark with their significant other. 

The movie theater doesn't really need folks to commit to one or the other thing before they come in, the other patrons probably don't need folks to be on the same page as each other (beyond some standards of minimal behavior), and the movie industry as a whole doesn't care why folks go - except in as much as they try to project what will sell tickets to the average film goer.     If someone conducted band practice in a theater it would be an issue but aside from meeting minimum standards of behavior there is a lot of room for differing approaches, desires, and even behaviors in the theater for a movie theater.  

 Most importantly if the movie theater only had the serious students of cinema in the seats - they'd go out of business and we'd have far fewer movie theaters and movies to attend - that analogy is  also quite true for the large scale warhammer events we are talking about.     

Giving good game (fun, polite, competitive, good looking toys)  is more important IMO then giving only 'competitive game.'  I get more complaints about 'jerks' then I do 'pushovers' from attendees.  The former group also tends to generate the most long term stink attached to the word 'tournament.'   

Adepticon isn't typical - it's the biggest event in the world AFAIK.   I run a big event (220-240 registrations) and I'm 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller then Adepticon and don't have remotely the spread of activities to offer they do.

But it might be  a question philosophically what events are for - in my opinion they are there so the attendees have fun, share their love of Warhammer with others, and hopefully walk away inspired to be better gamers (tactically, painting, or a more fun to play opponent or however else they define that in their mind.)  I think for some the only reason to have an event is to determine who is the best tactician.  That's not my take but that might shape how people approach this.   

 

But then why give an inch on books chosen?  I played Beastmen for a good chunk of 8th ed as I was having fun with them, they weren't remotely the most competitive army I owned and could have fielded.  The guy who takes Beastmen in 8th for the fun of it  is ****** with the competitive curve just as much as the Dark Elf player who is playing drunk all event.     The guy who plays the mediocre weak book player first round has an advantage.    Of course most tournaments pair on swiss and the guys who are there with softest  lists and aren't taking it seriously are usually playing each other by round 2 or so.   The system is usually designed to allow folks to eventually find the games at their level of competitiveness.  Particularly over the course of more rounds.  

 

[svnvaldez]

I don't know why we fight about this kinda stuff on the internet. At a tournament read the rules pack. Follow those rules. Here is the section in Cancon's rules pack (4pg: http://www.heraldsofwar.com/documents/ctg-players-pack-v2-2.pdf). It is an example of a TO laying out the rules properly. He states what you should do if you feel like conceding a game or dropping from the event. All players know this when they buy their tickets and if they don't like it they can opt not to attend.

Don't feel bad about conceding a game if that is what you want to do and there is nothing in the pack that says its disallowed or frowned upon. I wouldn't concede a game. If I concede there would be no chance to come back and my experience is a lot of games may feel over but often first turn alpha strikes are 1 trick and if you stick in the game you may be able to pull out a win.

[svnvaldez]

58 minutes ago, gjnoronh said:

But it might be  a question philosophically what events are for - in my opinion they are there so the attendees have fun, share their love of Warhammer with others, and hopefully walk away inspired to be better gamers (tactically, painting, or a more fun to play opponent or however else they define that in their mind.)  I think for some the only reason to have an event is to determine who is the best tactician.  That's not my take but that might shape how people approach this.   

Please stop this non sense of philosophical questioning of what an event/tournament is for... This is why we have and need a players pack. It lays out the rules of engagement for the event. Their is no judgement needed by anyone once the players pack is published. Players can attend that event for whatever reason they see fit as long as they follow the rules set forth by the TO.

[Galas]

In my local store we do a monthly tournament but thats more of an excuse to play 3 games in a day because many live in other towns and can't go weekly to play games.

Also prizes are given at random.

Even "big" tournaments like one I did this past June (Of 2018), it was the biggest of my region with 18 teams of 4 players. My team ended up in like 10 place, but I won one of the two big prices (A Imperial Knight Valiant).

Of course, there where actual trophies for the 1º, 2º and 3º team (And the last one), but the monetary prices (So miniatures, hobby add-ons, etc... were all done in a lottery)

[ianob]

My opinions on this topic are quite simple:

if someone doesn’t want to continue a game - for ANY reason - then you shouldn’t shame them for conceding. Competitive players may not want to play lost causes. Casual players may not want to play a “hard game they probably won’t win but might” because they don’t want the mental drain. Someone might be having a bad time at home and not want to finish a game they’re getting a beating in. Innocuous, competitive, or otherwise you can’t know someone’s reasons for conceding, and you have no right to. 

The other side of the question is do you have a responsibility to your opponent to give them a good game? Maybe, but that’s up to you. There is no “should”.

The only caveat here is that tournament rules have to handle concessions properly - at the least the conceding player should suffer a 2000-0 defeat and the opponent gets max everything. Although a more usual method to maintain a little more tournament integrity is to say “I’m going to concede, but I think this will happen” and you’ll make a rough agreement with your opponent as to how the game will likely end. And then you get to go to the bar early. Win win.

[gjnoronh]

On 2/15/2019 at 3:43 PM, svnvaldez said:

Please stop this non sense of philosophical questioning of what an event/tournament is for... This is why we have and need a players pack. It lays out the rules of engagement for the event. Their is no judgement needed by anyone once the players pack is published. Players can attend that event for whatever reason they see fit as long as they follow the rules set forth by the TO.

I think that's exactly what the post you were responding to said  the movie theater has expectations meet them and they don't care why you decide to attend the movies.   

The subsection you quoted just wondered if some of the log jam of this kind of discussion is because people are coming at it with very different ideas of what a tournament 'should be about.'   That discussion is material to 'what do we as gamers want our packs to tell people the right away to approach concessions should be.' 

[Milford Gamer]

I think a lot of it depends upon the person you are playing against. I have been tabled plenty of times and thoroughly enjoyed myself because the opponent was a great guy.  I have also been stuck playing "that guy" and dealing with every cliched behavior that goes along with that tag.  I would say that if the guy you are playing is "that guy," then tap out and save yourself the aggravation. 

[Bufkin]

The worst thing in the world is people who don’t “let” people concede.

The second worst are people who complain that people don’t concede when they “should”.

The third is people who insist on playing on if the game is over.

The hardest part is people who would like to concede but are afraid to do so since they are afraid that their opponent will be mad.

Its usually an advantage to concede in games you cant win. Ive lost several matches in a lot of different games from being exhausted and tired because the last game dragged on to long.

If concede I get a chance to take a walk, stretch my legs, drink something, breath fresh air and re focused…. Or just check on all the amazing tables, armies and talk to people. That will increase my chances to win the next game.

The only time I would play on is if I play something I haven’t played a lot AND im not tired so I wont need the extra break.  

[Captain Marius]

Do any TOs put a handicap on certain lists, say if its a copy of a list that won or placed top 10 in a previous tournament? That might level the playing field a bit and lead to fewer concessions. Or is that a whole other can of squigs?

[Sleboda]

There used to be this wholly misguided and arrogant idea of applying "comp" scores to armies at tournaments.

The idea was that if the TO personally felt the game was supposed to be played in a narrow, specific way (a common one, for instance, being that armies "should" get into combat rather than using magic or shooting), he or she would penalize lists built in ways they didn't like. This ordinarily took the form of a reduced score in the standings for the offending player, though sometimes particularly egotistical TOs would even disallow certain units from the event!

Fortunately, this awful practice seems to have largely fallen by the wayside and now participants are generally allowed to use all the tools at their disposal and let the games, and the skill of their opponents, decide if their lists were really all that.

[Requizen]

20 minutes ago, Captain Marius said:

Do any TOs put a handicap on certain lists, say if its a copy of a list that won or placed top 10 in a previous tournament? That might level the playing field a bit and lead to fewer concessions. Or is that a whole other can of squigs?

As the TO it's not your job to change the rules. Telling people that they can't bring an army or can only bring it with a handicap is pretty irresponsible imo (obviously there's houserules if a rule is broken without an FAQ, but GW is really good about FAQing things recently.

If you, as a TO, do not want to see a bunch of the same list, what you can do is utilize missions and Realms that are designed to be bad for those. If, for instance, big monsters are a problem in the meta (cough cough), then not using Duality of Death and instead using Escalation is a way you can make their road more difficult, and give a boost to armies that struggle against them. If shooting is a real problem, you can use Ulgu realmscapes to limit range. But these are done within the ruleset, and don't unfairly change the core rules.

[gjnoronh]

36 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

There used to be this wholly misguided and arrogant idea of applying "comp" scores to armies at tournaments.

The idea was that if the TO personally felt the game was supposed to be played in a narrow, specific way (a common one, for instance, being that armies "should" get into combat rather than using magic or shooting), he or she would penalize lists built in ways they didn't like. This ordinarily took the form of a reduced score in the standings for the offending player, though sometimes particularly egotistical TOs would even disallow certain units from the event!

Fortunately, this awful practice seems to have largely fallen by the wayside and now participants are generally allowed to use all the tools at their disposal and let the games, and the skill of their opponents, decide if their lists were really all that.

Joe you are putting an awfully negative spin on it.    Some regions that's what the majority of the players wanted (NE USA for example) for some editions of the game (7th for example) and some areas it isn't what the majority of the players wanted.

Speaking as a TO you are trying to run an event that as many people as possible will find fun and want to attend.    Some editions of Warhammer straight out of the box  were tiered very heavily in ways some communities found 'un fun,' some players on the other hand felt that anything that changed Rules as Written was 'un fun.'    TO's are just trying to balance what the different sections of their player bases want to appeal to as many players as possible in their local community.  There isn't a right answer just an answer that fits for those people getting together then.  

AoS doesn't seem to  to have any sub group asking for comp  (thank  heavens)  but don't think TO's aren't making conscious (or unconscious) decisions that might tip the scales in favor of some armies  by what kind of terrain they are putting on the boards or what scenarios they are picking.  Those matter as well.

[amysrevenge]

49 minutes ago, gjnoronh said:

AoS doesn't seem to  to have any sub group asking for comp  (thank  heavens)  but don't think TO's aren't making conscious (or unconscious) decisions that might tip the scales in favor of some armies  by what kind of terrain they are putting on the boards or what scenarios they are picking.  Those matter as well.

I don't want to point any fingers, but I think Total Commitment coming up more often that it would statistically should be considered backdoor Comp.

I disagree with Mr Joe quite often, but I feel (and have always felt) the same about comp as he does (and very publicly always has).  There are arbitrarily declared "acceptable" and "unacceptable" ways to ROFLstomp an opponent, and the acceptable ways are untouched while the unacceptable ways are ground up into paste.  There's nothing more fun or even less time consuming about being mowed down by Witch Elves than by Savage Orruk Arrowboys, and yet one of those is a lot more likely than the other to be effectively eliminated from contention by houserules, restricted composition, or even deliberate battleplan/realm selection.

[Captain Marius]

Did anyone watch the Flesh Eaters vs Daughters of Khaine game at the AoS Grand Tournament Heat 1 on Twitch? FEC player conceded end of turn 2 - after giving the DoK a good decking and penning them in, the survivors were still hard enough to kill the 2 terrorgheist kings and break the back of the FEC. Carrying on wouldve been a foregone conclusion, but it made me think of this thread!

[Sleboda]

@Captain Marius

Just wanted to let you know I appreciate you spelling out things once before using abbreviations.  Thanks!

[Deadkitten]

On 3/3/2019 at 2:41 AM, Captain Marius said:

Did anyone watch the Flesh Eaters vs Daughters of Khaine game at the AoS Grand Tournament Heat 1 on Twitch? FEC player conceded end of turn 2 - after giving the DoK a good decking and penning them in, the survivors were still hard enough to kill the 2 terrorgheist kings and break the back of the FEC. Carrying on wouldve been a foregone conclusion, but it made me think of this thread!

Heard about it.  Should go watch it.  Heard about the coverage chatter for Sheffield Slaughter about playing for Kill Points.  Again, all sorts of factors come in but seeing it on camera is interesting.

[RuneBrush]

Personally I believe that if somebody organising a tournament wishes to impose restrictions, that's entirely their choice.  If they want to limit the number of casters you can field, penalise slow players or utilise Kill Points for deciding ranks, they're the ones ultimately running the event (if you were organising a party you'd determine the food you provided).

However the opposite side of the coin is that it's down to us as players to decide if we want to go to the event based on those restrictions/rules.  There's so much choice out there for AoS events now that if we don't like something a TO has put in place we can simply go to a different event.  Equally TO's shouldn't feel peer pressure to run things in a certain way - I know that if I were to run an event one thing I'd love to do is to tweak the victory conditions of all the Battleplans, but I do know that it'd be a really Marmite decision 😉

[Dead Scribe]

The problem with TOs making their own version of AOS is that there is no standard.  If I go to another city I want to play AOS, not someone else's abomination of AOS.  I spend my money on an army that is good at AOS, not someone else's abomination of AOS.

[HobbyKiller]

Personally am not a fan of conceding especially early on but I get that some people just want the pain to end and would rather go and watch another game / talk to their mates.

 

[Sleboda]

10 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

.  There's so much choice out there for AoS events now that if we don't like something a TO has put in place we can simply go to a different event

I take it you're not in the US?

The large distances and times between events actually make voting with our feet an unattractive option.

Like the saying goes, there's no such thing as bad pizza.

In other words, even if you really don't like the event's rules, you'll often go anyway because at least it's toy soldiers. It ends up creating the false impression that people were ok with the house rules when really they just had little to no options.

[King Taloren]

@Sleboda has a fair mark on it. There aren’t too many tournaments around locally or not often enough to keep consistent gaming going. 

Gets bad also when your FLGS decides to stop giving your group tables and basically half kills the sigmar group for no reason. We had twenty people consistently for years and suddenly they decided that they wouldn’t reserve tables for our group anymore. Not sure if our TO will try to do one with the store or if we are waiting on one of the other local ones to open up some more space.

For now to play have to go to tournaments out of town. 1.5 hour drive at least to make it worth the drive to get guaranteed games. Though I can’t say we have bad rules down here. Most are fairly basic outside the one guy who runs 1.5 hour tournament games.

[Retro]

10 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

There's so much choice out there for AoS events now that if we don't like something a TO has put in place we can simply go to a different event

 

27 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

I take it you're not in the US?

Not in Perth Australia either. That said I don't think I've ever seen any ridiculous comps 

[Mikester1487]

My game on Wednesday made me think of this thread. Opponent brought in a khorne list from some event in aus after I said I'm practicing for adepticon give me your best shot!

So on the bottom of turn one he put his blood thirster of insensate rage into my sequitors and proceeded to kill my lord arcanum, a 5 man sequitor unit, a Knight vexillor, a lord relictor, and 6 sequitors from my 10 man unit with 5 attacks and outrageous carnage. 

If that was an event I'd call it right there. I still had enough to hurt him a little. But with the three places of power scenario it was gonna be a not so fun slog of watching me remove models every combat phase.

[gjnoronh]

6 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

The problem with TOs making their own version of AOS is that there is no standard.  If I go to another city I want to play AOS, not someone else's abomination of AOS.  I spend my money on an army that is good at AOS, not someone else's abomination of AOS.

So your local gaming store has no terrain over 2 inches high and just a handful of pieces per board.   The next tournament you go to has multiple pieces that are big enough to block line of site to Bloodthirster - fliers on top of these pieces are completely out of range of counter charges from non fliers and there are large areas requiring substantive vertical movement to go up and down to get to objectives.  Are you playing the same game in those two locations or is the 'meta' going to shift significantly?

Your local gaming store just uses book missions, you go to Blood and Glory one of the larger tournaments in the world and secondary objectives are now part of the determination of winner and loser of the event.  Are you playing the same game? Will the same armies be good? 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/10/01/a-new-kind-of-matched-play-scoringgw-homepage-post-3/

Some events jumped right into full realm rules rolling randomly at the start of the game, some events didn't use them all at least early in AoS 2.  Is it the same game?

You wouldn't believe the number of times I set up for a friendly game and my opponent says "Mysterious terrain I never use it." 

Lots of players have never open  the Scenery Warscroll Compendium  on the GW website much less used the rules from it.  

My point being there is a lot of variance in how people's local groups and tournaments play the game without 'comp' a lot of those choices have a substantive effect on the 'meta' of what's good and bad and the tactical complexity of the game.     I don't think there is a single right answer on how people should play I just think it's important we realize how incredibly different games of AoS may be from each other despite theoretically all using the same rules.   

 

@Sleboda   Joe I can't speak for the country but I think a lot of TO's are looking for feedback pre and post event.   I've got a formal feedback process built into the rules packet at my event but in my experience even informally TOs are listening and tweaking based on input.     You may choose to go anyway to an event you don't like the rules pack for but most people are open to (polite) feedback and suggestions.  They want to make the event the most people will want to attend.   

[svnvaldez]

11 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Personally I believe that if somebody organising a tournament wishes to impose restrictions, that's entirely their choice.  If they want to limit the number of casters you can field, penalise slow players or utilise Kill Points for deciding ranks, they're the ones ultimately running the event (if you were organising a party you'd determine the food you provided).

However the opposite side of the coin is that it's down to us as players to decide if we want to go to the event based on those restrictions/rules.  There's so much choice out there for AoS events now that if we don't like something a TO has put in place we can simply go to a different event.  Equally TO's shouldn't feel peer pressure to run things in a certain way - I know that if I were to run an event one thing I'd love to do is to tweak the victory conditions of all the Battleplans, but I do know that it'd be a really Marmite decision 

I believe that the TO should not advertise that the tournament is matched play if they are doing this, advertise  yourself as a narrative or open play event (You could even call it organised play if you want to invent new terminology). Matched play rules are layed out in the core rule book.  If a tournament is calling itself a matched play event I expect to play matched play.

Matched play guidelines start on pg 308 of the core book and continue to 311. Matched play has been supplemented with 2 community articles (the one titled "HIDDEN AGENDAS" and the one titled "ORGANISED PLAY RULES GUIDELINES"

When I read post on this topic I wonder to myself if people even bother to read to the Core Book front to back.