Rankings – Effect of Tournament Type

Following up on my previous post I've wondered what impact the type of
tournaments has on the rankings.  To start off I should outline what I
mean by tournament types.

From my perspective there are 3 distinct types of tournaments.  They
are all valid, but each plays to a different set of player strengths.
The first type of tournament is the Hard Core style tournament, think
'Ard Boyz or Adepticon.  It's all about the tough lists, rules as
written, generalship and scoring is all about the battle points.  I
won't disparage anyone by mentioning specific players that compete
well in this environment, but you know who you are!  J

The second type is the Hobby style tournament, think Whoops.  I've
never actually attended one of these tournaments so I'm only going by
what I've heard from the net.  They focus more on the narrative and
hobby side of Warhammer.  Players take them much less serious and they
may include significant rules changes, more random zaniness and
possibly non-Warhammer elements.  I genuinely don't have a clue what
would work at this type of tournament or be able to give an example of
someone that excels in that environment.  To that end though, I
imagine that this type of tournament wouldn't have much effect on
serious, competitive rankings.

Finally, there is a third tournament type that combines the best from
the previous two types which I dub the Holistic tournament style.
Think Brawler Bash.  It's about the sum of all the parts; battle
points, sportsmanship and painting all make up significant portions of
the scoring.  Hard armies, D-bags and unpainted armies are welcome but
are not in themselves an auto win button.  It's not uncommon for this
type of tournament to have a comp system or at the very least
incorporate some sort of banding system.  To win this style tournament
you have to be a genuine "Triple Threat".  Joe Rogers and Dave
Bednarek are two guys that come to mind.  They are excellent generals,
awesome painters and all around nice guys.

Now I'm not going to get into the age old debate which style
tournament is better.  I'm a firm believer to each his own and all
that.  But what I'm curious about is does the type of tournament a
player attends have any effect on the rankings?  At face value I would
say no since any differences are mitigated by having to convert the
scoring into the standard template found on Rankings HQ.

Not one to leave things alone we should dig a little deeper.  I think
we do have to consider whether a players strengths meshes well with
the type of tournament.  A prototypical alpha male, power gamer who
dislikes the hobby and social aspects of Warhammer would feel a little
out of place (didn't say unwelcomed) at an event like Mid West
Rampage.  As such he may not place as high as he potentially could at
a tournament like Adepticon which focuses more heavily on the game
results.

Next we should consider a players army composition.  The type of
tournament strongly dictates the army composition restrictions in
place.  This could range from no restrictions, all the way to the ETC
style composition so popular in Europe.  Comp restrictions can change
the very definition of what a legal army list is and in some cases
punish players that bring subjectively "hard" lists.  The net result
is that a player will have to consider the comp when selecting his
army and developing his list.   Ultimately this may help or hinder the
player's finish depending on the degree that either his list or play
style have to change to accommodate the comp restrictions.

Lastly consider that different types of tournaments attract different
types of players.  Is it possible for a tournament to attract the
"right" kind of opponents to make it more winnable for other players?
I realize that this gets more difficult as a tournament gets larger in
size do the normal randomness of initial match ups.  But I've seen
examples of how a real power gamer can do really well at reasonably
sized Holistic tournaments provided they can get past the comp mongers
and manage their soft scores.

Realizing that I've rambled on for far too long I will cut it here.
If for nothing else at least rankings gives us something to talk
about!

More Rankings Non Sense

So I was looking at my ranking this morning and who should I see sitting right above me?  Non other than Mr. Garage Hammer himself David Witek.  Not sure how to take having the Richard Lewis of Warhammer ahead of me in the rankings!  :)

 

Rankings - Tournament Attendance Effect

I spent a couple of minutes this morning on Rankings HQ and it got me thinking about rankings.  Specifically what do they actually tell you?  A vocal friend of mine commented to me that rankings tell you who went to the most tournaments, not who the best player is.  Strangely enough, there may be a Nugget of Knowledge ^tm in there.  Or maybe not when I consider the source.  J

 

Rankings HQ uses the best 3 tournament scores over the last 12 months to calculate player rankings.  So you would need to attend a minimum of 3 tournaments a year to put yourself on equal footing.  Every extra tournament you attend could further improve your ranking by allowing yourself to eliminate a poor showing or use a good finish based on an excellent set of match ups.  If you look at the current rankings you would have to drop all the way down to 17^th place before you found a player with only 3 tournaments.  However, you can also find a plethora of players buried in the rankings that have a large number of tournaments under their belts. My take away from this is that attending more tournaments can potentially improve your ranking, but you still have to be a good player to capitalize on it.  At the end of the day the best players are the best players because of the extra time spent on their craft, which includes attending more tournaments. 

 

Consider this a down payment on a longer discussion on rankings I'm hoping to continue in the future.  I would like to look at things like the subjective nature of soft scores, match ups and a few other things along the way. 

I decided that the chain mail didn't come out that well as it's almost too small of a scale to be really discern what it is.  Plus, there is no chain mail on any of the TK models.  So instead I took my hand at trying scale armor instead.  Made with the a slightly larger "C" tool.  The difference is that it's made sort of like shingles if that makes sense.  Here the first attempt.  Fortunately, no matter what I end up doing on the Cold Ones only a small portion on the outer facing side will be visible.  :)

 Here is a shot with the comparing the chain mail to scale mail.

Tomb King Cold One Tutorial

Just a quick note that I've completed the tutorial. 

Chain Mail - First Attempt

Working on the Cold One Chariots I decided to try my hand at sculpting chain mail.  Scouring the Internet I gleamed a few tips and was pretty confident that I at least had a shot to make it look half way decent.  Here are the shots from my first attempt. 

To build my "chain mail" tool I took a hypodermic needle and filed away one side so that it formed a "C" shape when looking at it from the end.  I then mounted it into an hobby knife handle.  I added the paint to make it easier to identify which direction the "C" was facing.  To sculpt the chain mail it was as simple as pressing in a row of "C"s in a straight line across the surface and alternating the direction of the "C"s on adjacent lines.

While I'm happy with how the chain mail came out I'm leaning towards switching to some sort of plate mail for the remainder of the cold ones. 

Army Building 103

A couple months ago I detailed the basics of how I've gone about collecting my armies over the years.  To sum up it's buy everything and then buy more of it.  The net result is I have a ton of models spread over a few huge armies.  Over the last few months I've realized that this approach really has not helped my efforts to be more competitive both as a player and a painter as it has limited my opportunities.  I've decided to flip the script with my next army (after I get bored of adding to the TK).  My next army will be High Elves based on the theme I detailed last year.   With the theme in mind, but before I paint a single model, I will develop a competitive list using proxies.  One the list is finalized I will get to cracking on painting the army.  I'm also going to set a limit of 3K on this collection just so it doesn't get out of hand!  No idea if that will work or not, but it's worth a try.