The attraction of Tournaments (any system)

[Idiotproof Dalek]

So as someone who is very vocal about their disgust with the concept of Warhammer tournaments, I'm nonetheless fascinated with those who, whilst they are capable of playing a fun 'beer and skittles' game and having fun, still feel the need to compete in tournaments and I would love your feedback on the topic.

To summarise, my issue with Warhammer tournaments (not any other game, just WFB and 40K)

1. Warhammer isn't even remotely balanced - it's basically Anti-Chess. I have no problem with the idea of chess tournaments - both players have exactly the same pieces that do the same things and both have exactly the same chance on that basis of winning a match. The variable is your skill and experience. In Warhammer a large part of it is 'Listhammer' which can be dictated by several things:

- Models you are able to afford (mitigated somewhat by proxy rules). People who can't afford to spam are inherently disadvantaged before they even set up.
- The army you choose - GW seem not to playtest these days and army balance, although good at the start of 8th has deteriorated to the point that some armies have an inbuilt advantage before seeing the table in competitive play. (looking at you WOC and DE), This reduces Warhammer to Rock scissors paper but if you haven't paid £100's for that rock, you're stuffed. You also feel like a chump for picking an army based on aesthetics or background and not what everyone else has.
- Makes me think that there should be separate tournaments for DE, WOC etc, and the rest of us who aren't WAAC automatons can have our own, fun competition. Everyone meets up in the bar afterwards!

This results in:

Same old armies being taken - even in casual play I don't seem to ever face any armies that aren't WOC....by far the most popular choice. Variety suffers.
Same old lists - orcs played as green empire, WOC chariot and Chimera spam etc. This becomes cliquish and seeps over into casual play, as people look aghast at your lack of Rock Lobbas/double steam tanks/double frost phoenixes etc and is just really really boring....

Lack of individuality as the internet allows anyone to take the same old netlists - those of us who prefer to work out armies as we go alone, tinker and modify and learn by doing are penalized, as the internet knows all the best stuff and you ignore it at your peril!

Consequently a vast and sprawling range of models and troops is reduced to a mere fragment, with the same people taking the same lists over and over, instead of the wealth of stuff there is out there. Imagine having all the colours of the spectrum but choosing to paint exclusively in shades of beige....

2. Skewed incentives. Ah you might say, but comp helps to manage the above problems and keep abuse to a minimum! Except the need to WAAC and break the game applies to whatever set of restrictions you can come up with. Ban double Ogre cannons and the !@%$#%@s will spam scraplaunchers or Yetis. Ban Gutstars and get stupidly large units of Maneaters with poison and handguns. The tournament mentality is 'if it moves, break it'.

These skewed incentives also lead to:

Conserving victory points in turn 6, rather than attempting all or nothing heroic charges which can lead to amazing stories to tell in the bar afterwards. This mechanical way of playing impoverishes what should be F.U.N.....

Behaving defensively with aggressive troops.

Slow play by all shooting armies to restrict the number of turns a close combat army has to get points back.

The need to play speedily means people remove units before rolling the dice, so you never get to talk about 'that time he totally flubbed his Skullcrusher attacks on my direwolves and they actually took two wounds in return'.

Conga line reforms into buildings, chariots deployed sideways to gain an extra 1/2 inch of table on the first move, and many other things contrary to the spirit of a table top representation of what a real battle/skirmish would look like. If Warhammer didn't have that element of visual representation then I wouldn't be bothered by this - a board game makes no claim to visual representation and is basically a compilation of rules in the way that Warhammer is not.

In my mind this is totally opposite to the point of playing a game of toy soldiers and is far more suited to sports or games like chess, where there really are no other elements to the game than winning. Warhammer has so much more involved in it, fluff, narrative, modeling, painting,  it seems to me to be criminal to ignore these in favour of the thing it does LEAST WELL.
It's like possessing a top of the range laptop and using it as a doorstop.




In short, I really can't see any reason to distort Warhammer to fit a tournament model as it destroys so much of what the game is about (IMHO). Maybe in the past this may have been more viable when things were more balanced (I'm thinking when all the armies were in one booklet at the beginning of 6th - Ravening Hordes)

Maybe I've been scarred by the attitudes of WAAC players in casual pick up games - I had a particularly bad time in 7th, when it really was the case of choosing anything other than DE, Daemons and automatically losing.
It seems that GW itself does not intend it's games to be used in this competitive way and it does increasingly seem as each army book or ruleset comes out that it's a case of trying to fit a square block into a round hole. Or maybe GW want everyone to go as cheesy as possible?

What do you fellas think? What makes you go to tournaments?

[katarr]

I think the problem here is you are approaching this from the angle that those of us who do to tournaments don't have "fun" and "feel the need to go". We don't we a need we find it fun for many reasons most of them individual.

Some enjoy the competitiveness of it and after playing with this style of play for 3 years now it is very clear that despite luck and netlists being an issue there is a very notable difference in player skill on the scene and some people will find it fun to get better at something they enjoy alongside enjoying it a in a very friendly competitive environment.

Some go more for the social aspect of it as it is largely a very similar 50-100 people going to these tournaments from all over the country is is fun to meet up push toys around and get drunk whether you decide you want to play well or bring a mad army.


Your post seems to suggest that if you are not playing the game in a narrative sense then we are playing it wrong which I very much dislike the suggestion of because its a game and anyone can play it how they want - I do not think playing it fluffy as you do is playing it wrong. I enjoy both types of games on big scale nonsense and small scale competition.

Yes netlists are a thing and comp can restrict models that are accessible in the range but you can usually take whatever you please you just can't take 8 chariots 2 chimera and 2 units of 3 Skullcrushers usually. When this is the case the good players are the ones that find a new and interesting way to play an army and win because of that and because every single person on the scene will say there are good players, bad players and average players. Good players can get beaten by bad players due to luck but across the course of 5/6 games they will come out on top which means both sides are happy the bad player lucked out and beat someone good and it doesn't ruin placing for someone looking to finish in the top ten.

Most tournaments prohibit nonsense like conga-ing into buildings and the silliness that surrounds that concept. Yes that extra half inch feels silly but you are looking at from a completely different perspective that those that also enjoy tournaments. You see this as a visual representation of a battlefield and feel that tournament play takes away from that feeling which is true however, a tournament player knows they are pushing around toys but this is just a representation of a strategy for a game - the aim is never the narrative in this situation. Sure if something epic happens or the battle seems to have this abstract narrative everyone will appreciate it but your and their goals are not aligned at all.

I hope this makes some sort of sense to you because I would say yours came off a little judgy when everyone is happy doing their thing. 

[Pip]

To add to what Sam said...

The pay-to-win argument I find a little odd.  Firstly, there's no firm correlation between army cost (in £) and competitiveness. A lot of very powerful armies have a very low model count; conversely an all-Goblin army with 500 models can be utterly rubbish. Secondly, even if it were true, it's far from a unique problem - with most competitive sports, if you can afford to pay for nice equipment and good coaching you are at an advantage. If tennis can get away with it I think Warhammer can be given a pass too.

Netlisting is a problem and does make the tourney scene more dull than it could be... but in any system like Warhammer where list-building is part of the game, you have to be able to write a good list or a bad list, and when it comes to playing competitively the bad lists are going to get weeded out (even if there were no netlists, no-one would bring an army to a tournament consisting purely of 10-man Free Company units and a single Level 1 wizard). The internet just facilitates the spread of the most robust lists, because communicating those good lists is so easy now. There's still enough variability in the rules that you do get mould-breaking lists and sometimes they do really well because they are playing a field where predictable netlists are over-represented. There was a guy recently who won a 40K tournament with a Tyranid list that was basically all Lictors, Genestealers and Spore Mines, it was great to read about.

Finally, I'd just agree with Sam that there's no one way you're 'supposed' to have fun playing Warhammer. A narrative-heavy, beer and pretzels (or gin and... fruit? in my case) game is great fun, but so is a competitive duel of wits. I enjoy either, I just have to be in the right frame of mind. I've run a couple of narrative campaigns here at OG and they've been great fun, a million miles from tournament style... but I've also greatly enjoyed myself at several tournaments. I can't in good conscience say that either kind of game is "doing it wrong" - it's just a game, after all.

The most important thing is not to try to play by rules about which your opponent doesn't know. Warhammer is an abstraction. The rules have holes, there are balance problems. You can play with a million gentleman's agreements about how to skirt around them, you can play with none, you can aim for a middle ground; as long as you're both on the same page, I think fun can be had by all.



On an unrelated note, when you talk about the other elements of Warhammer - one of the reasons I go to tournaments is to see the fantastically painted armies of people from outside my gaming group. There will always be a few (most tourneys have a "best painted" trophy) and they are often stunning. If I win or lose early on in a round I'll tend to wander around the tables staring at people's models, stealing modelling ideas.

Are you around this Thurs? I have to be down the club to pick up some Carnosaurs, I'll happily give you a friendly game and maybe talk about this a bit more.

[TkaiC]

I have played in a grand total of 1 big Warhammer tournament (London's Calling) and, I think, 2 Waarghs.  I have very few wins to my credit.  I also played in one 40K tournament, Pillage.  I did win some games there, but not enough to move beyond mid-table mediocrity.

I have yet to have a really bad game.  My worst game was against a chap playing Dwarfs who didn't actually want to be playing.  He bemoaned the state of Warhammer, GW's pricing policy and overpowered units (my Abom had just eaten his Lord, Runepriest, BSB and quite a few Hammerers so...understandable) but once he realised I don't give a flying monkey about winning, he lightened up and we had a good chat as I tabled him.  Nice bloke. 

I accept the nonsense of 6 dice spells, spam units and "My lord has a 1+ re-rollable armour save and a 3+ re-rollable ward because I get to laugh when the ones come out.  We're rolling dice, bad rolls happen and it's hilarious.  I fully accept I wouldn't enjoy playing against some WAAC nobber, fortunately I haven't yet.

A tournament is quite time efficient for me - I have so little free time, and such a volatile schedule during the week, that I don't game anything like as much as I'd like to.  A tournament means I will get to play, probably, 5 games.  This is great.

You get to meet new gamers/see people you rarely do.  As Sam said, there's a big crowd of regular tournament players and, as per my main point, all the ones I've met had been a good laugh.  You also get to see some pretty armies, some interesting lists and so on.

So, I can see why you wouldn't want to play someone who's not fun, and tournament play encourages people to take it seriously.  I refuse to* and have been rewarded with fun times.  And a mother-chuffing trophy.


*Albert came up to me at London's Calling and told me he and his clubmates hold my giant pink mouse (as Doomwheel proxy) up as the example of worst proxy ever, shouldn't be allowed, etc.  I remember the fact that last time we played, my Plagueclaw catapult sent his bunker unit of halberdiers containing a lvl 4 and BSB off the table in Turn 1 before I Cracks Called his Steamtank off and said giant pink mouse removed his unit of Demis.  Power to the Pink Mouse.

[Idiotproof Dalek]

First of all, sorry if I came over as judgy, I felt that I was just stating my case as to why I dislike tournament style play and I stand by that in all details. I genuinely want others' perspective from the other side of things, thus I asked for it. In fact I thought I was being quite evenhanded and open minded so I'm intrigued as to how it came over as an attack.

Nowhere did I state that I thought that there was only one way to play and that it was mine, only that IMHO, tournament play takes a large and expansive thing and reduces it to a limited aspect, which is then called 'the game'. I feel aggrieved by this in my turn because everywhere I look there are people who indeed think that this is the game in it's entirety and I come up against this when seeking opponents. I certainly do my best to use a vetting process so that I can get a like minded opponent, but when the culture is dominated by the tournament mentality this can be difficult if not impossible sometimes. I don't ever remember it being quite this bad in my 26 years of playing the game.

If the tournament mentality was left at tournaments and did not intrude elsewhere, I wouldn't have an issue at all - if competitive play was all there is to the game, as with many other games then tournaments would resemble casual play and there would be no problem at all. Or if the mentality didn't seep into casual play we could have 'each to his own' and agree to differ.

I should add that I in no way play 'narratively', I don't ignore the element of attempting to build an effective army list, insist that everything be part of some sort of story, or take an army of entirely Common Goblins and then wonder why I lose! I just have a problem with taking an unbalanced game and putting it into an ultra competitive setting as I feel it's a mismatch that favours those who are rich, unscrupulous and willing to break the game. Which, needless to say I am not saying YOU are! If you have fun doing this, I have no problem with that. What intrigues me most are the people who frequent tournaments, have boring/unfair/ frustrating games, come bottom of the pile consistently, yet keep going to them!


So once again sorry if this came over as an attack, it wasn't my intention. I just wanted to canvas opinion that is different to mine for the purposes of my own enlightenment.

[Idiotproof Dalek]

Thanks for your replies gents! All interesting reading! I accept all your points and would once again reiterate that nowhere did I say that the practice was WRONG, I hope my arguments were a tad more nuanced and complex than that?

[katarr]

Yeah I wasn't having a go back at you sir was just a bit of a vibe I got from the post and I was clearly mistaken.

Just to add one more thing, the act of people "breaking" or "abusing" the game rules is pretty few and far between in tournament play - you get a reputation as that sort of player and become less welcome I guess. I have only been to 3/4 big tournaments and have yet to have an opponent I didn't have fun playing so I think storied outliers maybe has given you the thought that people regularly have issues at tournaments which I don't think is the case based on my experience.

I think if someone is going to tournaments coming consistently bottom of the pile I think they are going for a different reason, more social etc like Tom (sorry dude) and me most of the time who if they end up at the bottom the system sets you up to largely be playing against like minded people who are just there messing about with toys.

[Pip]

I think if someone is going to tournaments coming consistently bottom of the pile I think they are going for a different reason, more social etc like Tom (sorry dude)

Hey, Tom's the only one of us who's taken a trophy this year!

I was so close to the wooden spoon at Downfall... so close...

[katarr]

Is that the guy that didn't turn up the second day ?

[Pip]

I don't know - if so I was robbed!

Of course as usual I shamelessly blame the dice.