The Ninth Realm #27
Show Notes
1-12-17
Introduction
-This week we have Reece, Jason, and Scott!
-Corrections from last episode. Scott is very sorry and full of shame
New and Rumors
-Pre-orders for Battletome Disciples of Tzeench will be available starting on 1/14. Get yours from Frontline Gaming at 25% off! Order by emailing us at orders@frontlinegaming.org or calling us at 888.781.5120
WHAT IS THIS?
Review of Scott’s AoS Event and why Reece didn’t show up.
Upcoming Events
- Claim the Tower! Age of Sigmar Tournament, Green Tower Games, Santa Clarita, CA, January 14th, 2017
- Aos January 2017 Tourney, Game Haven, St. George, UT, January 21st, 2017
- Windy Realm Event 2, Everything Games, Buffalo Grove, IL, January 21st, 2017
- Empires at War, Game Empire, Pasadena, CA, January 21st, 2017
- Age of Sigmar Tournament I, Brooklyn, NY, January 21st, 2017
Thanks for the clarification on the LVO Megabattle – can’t wait! Great podcast! :p
Forgive me if I missed the part, but I am just confused on something that was discussed here. What is ‘soft scoring’? And why is it controversial?
Soft scores are when Paint and Sports are added to a final Battle score to determine a winer/winners at an event. These systems also often include an a secondary level for Best General(most battle points), sportsman (votes for best player), And painted army (points for painting). Each category is given a different weight (30/30/30; 50/25/25; 60/20/20…). This often means that the most wins or the strongest wins does not get the top positions.
GW’s rules pack for LVO has a mechanic where the best painted gets a minor victory added to his score and anyone wanting the top prizes must get at least one Favorite opponent vote. This is not how I normally see soft scores done but it is how GW is running this years event.
link to the event pack: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tKORiA_YiQPR5W4vryL4ZiFwFjzNMtxmviqSdXPY2C8/edit
Sorry, it is seen as controversial because of how it can effect scoring. Some players believe that the hobby as a whole needs to be part of finding the winners to an event. Others believe that you should only count Battle results for scoring and that paint and sportsmanship should be separate from a final first, second, or third place winner.
Soft scores are often subjective but can be honed down to mitagate swingy scoring. I often come down on the need for soft scores but have limited experience in running event.
I like when soft scores are taken into account – if you want to battle for gameplay, you can always go for Best General, but if you come to an event with 3 color minimum models that were just thrown together to make the most powerful list, you shouldn’t be able to get Best Overall when the dude who did nearly as good as you also has a top tier painted/converted army.
But everyone wants different things out of tournaments, so you can’t make everyone happy 🙂
Exactly. There are lots of different ways to play the game. Soft score inclusive events at their core want to encourage total hobby immersion and good sportsmanship (which are great ideals) but in practice can create situations where you win or lose based on things you have no control over such as others’ opinions of you, how others perceive your painting ability, etc. It opens the door to subjectivity which opens the door to at the least the perception of collusion and impropriety.
Yeah, I think Best General should not take any soft scores into account, so you the people who care about such things have no reason to complain. And then maybe even break it down further to Factions, something like:
-Best Overall
-Best Overall Painted
-Best Overall Sportsman
-Best Overall General
-Best Overall Death
-Best Death Painted
-Best Death Sportsman
-Best Death General
-Best Overall Order
-Best Order Painted
-Best Order Sportsman
-Best Order General
etc, but that would be a lot of prizes you’d need support for. Not a big deal if you’re just doing plaques, though.
To be honest, I really like the 30/30/30 scoring. I attend the Harvester of Souls in Washington every year. It too is an ITC GT. They do equal thirds scoring as well. But painting is voted by event judges. And I don’t think they do any favorite opponent votes necessary for winning anything. The Harvester is my favorite event because while it doesn’t discourage power meta lists, it just doesnt reward them as much. I find there are more friendly casual and beautifully painted lists at that event than any other I have attended.
A lot of people feel that way, Jared. There’s nothing wrong with using soft scores at all, it’s just not to my taste as an individual but I can go to a soft score event and still have a blast.
I like soft scoring as i think the alternative is lots of rules alterations, which i’m not a fan of at all.
I think the best way to do soft scoring is simply to give people a few list at random, and have them score them from how fun you think they’d be to play against. Have them maybe rank each list from first to last based on what list they think is the most fun and worst fun to paly against.
Basicly at the LVO it’s 6 games??? So you give everyone six random list to judge. Then you give everyone a sportsman ship score to be revealed at the end of the tournament.
Then give prizes for:
Best General (best score)
Most Sports Man:
Best painted:
Best competitor (combination of best sports man and genral):
Best overall: Combination of all scores. (as some people can’t paint, or some folks could just comission thier whole army).
and make Best competitor and best over all the big prizes.
I personal hate softscoring in The age of commision painted armies, its just to pay to win for me.