Hey everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to stuff your head with stuff I know!
I’ve been playing in tournaments since late 2nd edition and really hit my stride when 3rd edition started. I played in all of the Los Angeles Grand Tournaments and a couple in other cities. With the recent happenings at the Las Vegas Open champs, people have been talking about bringing back the sportsmanship score that Games Workshop used to use (and some old tournaments, like Broadside Bash, still use).
All this will do is bring back the “chipmunking” that used to happen during events. “Chimpmunking” was when a player would give their opponent a low score, either in sportsmanship or army composition, because they either lost the game, or to help their clubmate. There are plenty of examples of collusion ruining people’s fun at tournaments. And since you asked, I have plenty of examples.
There used to be a group of good fantasy players that would win a lot of events that they attended. They were also excellent painters so they had the hobby side covered. To fix their sportsmanship, they would give anyone they played against, win or lose, the lowest sportsmanship score possible. This would ensure that, as one of their players progressed, they would outscore everyone on the sportsmanship portion of the tournament.
There was a local player, in order to cancel out the effects of people scoring sportsmanship honestly, convinced many of the area’s players to score their opponent’s at the max level (BEST GAME EVER!!!!!!) . This caused the sportsmanship scoring to be worthless and caused the people that actually did score their opponent’s accordingly to be viewed as a blight on the community.
After games there would be some tension between certain players due to them being able to figure out who gave them the low sportsmanship score (The individual scores were kept secret, you were only shown your overall score). This caused some undue tension after a tournament, or the next time theses players met. It even can cause uncomfortable car rides back from a tournament in San Diego (that’s a story to tell in person).
So what do we do? I honestly don’t know. People have been bandying about various ideas. Some seemed to have merit, while others seem to remind me of those bygone days. To be honest, I haven’t seen a real need to go back to the days of “chimpmunking”. I actually hope something happens. I think there are plenty of organizers that can come up with something. Hey, you can even throw some suggestions down in the comments section on how I can improve my sportsmanship score(I’ve only won the award once in 18+ years I’ve been playing. Just don’t suggest I actually be nice.
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