In roughly 60 hours my time at Adepticon 2010 starts, so this is my last blog post until after the event, I highly doubt I'll have time to do any online reporting during the event so my post Adepticon coverage wont begin until next week, until then just a few thoughts on my Saturday and Sunday activities and Adepticon as a whole
Saturday- Warhammer Fantasy Championships
With over 120 players this is biggest and best Warhammer event in the USA. This is my 4th time playing and it's outshined every GT, or other event I've been too. The caliber of players here is top notch, my goal is only best my score and standing from last year (28 out of 119).The big curve ball this year is WPS compostion scoring, after cries of last year from people who brought broken, shitty lists and got tanked on their player judged comp score. This the event returns with 3rd party composition system, you know you own compostion score going in. so no complaints right?. Wrong. Alot of people don't like WPS because it heavyily penalizes them bringing the ridiculously overpowered and broken lists they are accustomed to. WPS is designed for 2000 points so you also have the additional factor that alot of people just can't handle being taken out of their comfort zone at 2250. This event is going to be anybody's match this year and best overall will really be the best player of the day. As Battle Points and Hobby Scores will have a big impact on the final outcome as they should.
Personally I like WPS, its best 3rd party comp system I've seen that fixes the GW problem of writing rules to sell models NOT for competitive play. IF you want to include all Army books you need system to balance out the armies, while I like the UK/AUS Masters system as well, WPS is what we've been using here. Not to say it doesnt have its loopholes. A friend recently pointed out some exploits within WPS among older armies you just don't see that much for instance Wood Elves can take 20 waywatchers (special scout, Killing bow,BS 5) without penalties making a seriously broken, but high scoring ,WPS army .(seriously who even has 20 waywatchers they are\ 24 points each!) There are others that I wont bother getting into.
While I hope people will play to the spirit of the event, inevitably some wont and will to try to loophole or exploit WPS with nonsense like above. The only player judged score this time around is 48 points of Sportsmanship. Even thou the rules specifically say not to- you can bet people will use these 48 points punitively against people who might be very nice but just "aren't very sporting" we'll see if sportsmanship becomes the "Comp" of this years event..I not saying it will be, I just see the possibility. In the past I have been highly critical of Sportsmanship point giveaways and the same holds true here. If this event had a simple Favorite opponent ranking system that'd be a great system that offered a "real" Sportsmanship score. As it stands I am really curious to how Sports scores play out in this event.
Overall I am going in with best attitude I can and look forward to having a great time I expect very hard lists, but I expect fair lists..WPS is about give and take, playing 2K is about give and take a great time, whether this WPS experiment works on this big a level we will see, I look forward to writing about it post event.
my full display for this years Championships, again I have three wizards out but am only using two depending on what lore I choose, the also a sign that goes in front with relevant info it just wasnt done at time of the photos.
Sunday- Warhammer Team Tourney
The team tourney is a new one for me, I haven't gotten around to this one yet although for many folks I know it's their favorite event of the weekend. Out of the blue a couple weeks ago my friend Jeff from Minneapolis, (of Warbringers club). called me up and asked if I could fill in for his partner that ended up not being able to make it to Adepticon this year. Given Jeff has won the WFB Championships 3 of the last 4 years as well as winning just about every event he plays in, who am I to say no?. I was like, you bet!. (Regardless of Jeff's Warhammer pedigree I would have done it anyway because he's just a great guy). Given no time to build anything from scratch we're left with just using our existing models. So we are Going with Empire and Bretonnia with an all Cavalry theme. Just when I though all those Empire Knights I have were not going to see no action this year, along comes this! Since theme and army design do play such a big role in the TT final scoring, I don't expect us to score highly in theme/painting department as our stuff individually looks good, but its doubtful without the usualy "build to suit" planning thatr we'll meet the "cohesive force"criteria of the event. This is just going to be fun one for us and we are looking forward to the good time, this is a no pressure event for us and with Jeff driving the bus we are bound to win a few of our games. Once its over, I'll be sticking around for the final awards, picking up my Rogue Demon entries and heading home.
(my first TT army 22 models plus a stank..not something I'd normally run at 1000 points ever
but in combination of similar Bretonnia force it works, or so we think.)
I have recently gotten emails with a couple great suggestions for articles, expect them both right after my Adepticon Reports. Thanks for reading people!.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Pre-Adepticon Report # 2
Posted by JPL at 2:01 PM
Labels: Adepticon, Tournaments
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5 comments:
We've seen WPS at a couple of local tournaments, but only as a cut-off point, not for scoring.
So your final score isn't affected. You just aren't allowed to bring an army that scores below a certain cut-off points. I don't mind it used in this way.
But for scoring, the WPS is so full of questionable and biased scorings that it affects the final score too harshly based on the authors' perceptions of what they want everyone to play.
Typically this rewards players for taking stupid army choices, and penalizes them for taking anything effective. In some cases, we've (locally) been collectively dumbfounded at some of the particulars.
Armies also seem to be scored only in the context of their own army book, and not in the context of the entire collection of books. So, for example, the best options from Army Book A are penalized, even if they don't even approach the power level of the best choices from Army Book B. If you remove the most powerful stuff from two unequal army books, you still haven't equalized the gap between them.
Some armies seem harder hit. I don't play WE, but (other than your example of a glitch above) they seem to be penalized for taking any sort of typical WE army build. Like the system wants to force them to play with a focus ranked melee units, when that's clearly not the intention of the book as written.
I wouldn't even normally need to worry, most of my tournament armies score pretty high on the WPS. But I still dislike the system.
Last fall I went to Marauders Mayhem. I scored phenomenally high on the WPS as I took an Empire army of almost all infantry. I lost more games than I would have won. If WPS scoring had been used (it was only used as a cut-off, as I mentioned above) I might have finished near the top.
The game is Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Not Warhammer Fantasy Accounting. I'd rather place high (or win) based on pushing figures around a table and rolling dice, not how well I worked the comp system.
Yeah, It only used as a predetermined comp score..so if you bring a WPS 15 army..your comp score is 15..and that's it..people can exploit it as I mentioned, but hopefully most will play to spirit of the event..overall while people always seem to question penalties against their own armies (I do with Empire as well) from my personal experience WPS makes for a better event in terms of what people are putting on the table.
Whether it works with 120+ players is another story..my opinion may change on Monday.
Nice looking army. I don't know what WPS is, but then again I haven't played fantasy in a decade.
Good luck!
It's a third party system that assigns a score to each army based on what you take.
Generally you gain points by taking stuff that is generally considered to perform poorly, and lose points for taking stuff that is generally considered to perform well.
Since it's based on a certain group of people's opinions on what they believe an army should look like, it's largely subjective.
The concept, if I understand it, is to limit the "powergaming" and make games more "fun" but since the system is biased, it has a great deal of potential to punish "fun" armies as much as "powergame" armies.
Well its open to interpretation on how you use it, in this years Acon case its being used as your hard comp score in lieu of player judged comp. some people use WPS purely as a barometer for entry. the whole penalty bonus system revolves around trying to create balanced armies not as ,I've read from random idiots, "just penalizing good stuff, and giving bonuses to crappy stuff" that's a simpletons view point that's not even close to reality. Having used it now over several tournaments I am a convert, as even tough armies can't be ridiculously overpowered. (loopholes aside) I'd argue its not biased as the overall goal of allowing a system that can include all army books to participate seems to work. we've been using here for a couple years on and off at major events and the overall consensus is- it works which is why its being used this year. I find most critics of WPS are people who are just reading it and making assumptions and not seeing it in practice across an event or just cynics who prefer Ard Boys type events who no comp system will ever please, not saying your either, just saying. I'm myself am
curious to how it plays across this wide a field. also the core system was even tweaked by Acon organizers to make it more friendly
for lower tier armies.
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