Winning isn’t the ONLY part of the hobby. but there is more going on at 40k events lately. Are we all just Win-at-all-Costs gamers or Fluff-Bunnies?
This article is a couple years old now and was written by the venerable Mike Haspil, but it still applies to players and their armies today.
As I’ve recently been organizing tournaments and events at my FLGS, I’ve come across a curious phenomenon. I’ve begun to run into gamers who have not encountered a tournament that wasn’t based on the win/loss criteria. I don’t currently run win/loss events so this had led to some confusion and bad feelings on the part of some tourney players.
Get Good: Why People Hate You, & Your Army
That’s what prompted some thoughts on our recent podcast and for this article. There appear to be large deficiencies awakening in our wargaming hobby. It seems that people have categorized players into two areas. The Win-at-all-Costs gamer and Fluff-Bunny. Like all simplifications, this is all wrong.
Clearing the Confusion
Before I continue, perhaps some definitions are in order.
A win/loss tournament: Wins count for a lot of points. Losses count for no points (or so few points that they are negligible). In most win/loss tournaments, there are no points awarded for army composition, theme, paint scoring, sportsmanship, etc… Really, only winning the games count.
If there are prizes for other aspects of the hobby (Painting, etc…) they are usually doled out as separate compartmentalized prizes sequestered from the main tournament itself. I would consider the Independent Tournament Circuit (ITC) tournaments to be good examples of the win/loss format.
A hobby-centric tournament: awards points for winning the games, but factors in other hobby scores such as theme, paint scores, army composition, and sportsmanship. Losses in a hobby-centric format are not nearly as damaging as in the win/loss format. Often, there will be a spectrum of victory ranging from major defeat, through minor defeat, draw, minor victory, major victory. Each stage carrying with it a set point value.
Prizes for the top performers in different categories are awarded and the prizes are not compartmentalized. Often this system will include a Best Overall or Renaissance Man category. Awarding the player who scores highly across all aspects of the hobby. The Bringing-the-Hobby-Back (BHB) Format and GW’s old Rogue Trader Tournament (RTT) format are good examples of the hobby-centric tournament format.
ITC Stepping up to the Plate
There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. Neither is inherently better than the other. But currently, one format is inarguably more popular than the other. That has largely to do with the ITC. Now perhaps I should take a moment to talk about the ITC. I enjoy the ITC and after Games Workshop’s abdication of responsibility for maintaining the game (FAQ’s and Errata’s) and withdrawal from organized tournaments, the ITC really stepped up and saved the tournament scene.
The organizers and judges behind the ITC Faq and format can’t get enough praise for doing this. I’ve said before that after the advent of 7th Edition 40K if it weren’t for the ITC, I don’t think I’d still be playing the game. The tournament scene is flourishing because of their efforts. That having been said, it isn’t the only way to play competitive 40K.
Win/Loss Tournament Format
In the rise of the win/loss format since 6th edition 40K, we’ve lost out on other aspects of the hobby. Painting has suffered. Especially at the local level. In GW’s RTTs, you had to have armies painted to a 3-color minimum or you couldn’t participate. As RTTs went the way of the dodo, local tourneys began to relax standards to not turn away participants. The standard became that if your army wasn’t painted you were ineligible for awards.
Now, it’s not unusual to see participants in local tournaments fielding unpainted armies. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) used to be a requirement also. Meaning that the models in your list and the majority of their equipment had to match the models on the tabletop.
This has long gone by the wayside and given way to scratch-made proxies. These are usually for some of the most expensive and overpowered models in the game. Theme has gone away nearly completely and remains only loosely relevant due to the constraints of the Allies Table. Participants have little to no incentive for fielding accurate painted models in lists that fit the background material of the game. How do we fix this? Start rewarding players for theme, modeling, and painting. The hobby-centric format we used to have.
In it for Yourself
In the quest for all-encompassing victory, the social relation between players has taken a significant hit. The game has become less about a group experience and more about an individual experience. Nearly anything is acceptable as long as it helps a player achieve victory. An opponent’s tabletop experience seldom matters at all. The idea that your opponent’s experience is every bit as important as your own, has fallen by the wayside.
This is a subset of a tiny hobby. Miniature wargaming is really a small group of hobbyists and among those hobbyists, 40K is a subset of that. Just meeting a fellow 40K player should cement you as BFFs. And yet in recent years, that’s not what happens. Folks view each other as adversaries instead of best friends. The hobby-centric format helps to address this. When sportsmanship values and army composition values enter the mix, it forces players to at least consider their opponent’s involvement.
Being “That Guy”
Exploiting rules loopholes has become more than commonplace. It’s gotten to be completely normal. Imbalanced and overpowered units have been spammed in lists since the game’s inception, but now it’s become a sort of arms race where players feel their armies are doomed if they don’t maximize these units. Or if they don’t field the latest Forgeworld Rending Pony, they’ll automatically lose.
Which, given the expense of the hobby, of course, has given rise to brisk trade in “counts-as”, proxies, and bootleg figures. While decisive victories are greatly desired in actual warfare, they shouldn’t be the end goal of a social game. Yet, when winning is the only thing tourneys reward, winning becomes all that matters.
Reward the Hobbyists & Players
While winning is part of the hobby, it isn’t the ONLY part of the hobby. So then why should it be the only portion rewarded? Consider the average player. What percentage of hobby time does he or she spend on assembling the models? Painting? Reading codices and rules to field a force? Versus actually rolling dice on the tabletop. As it turns out, most people end up hobbying more than actually playing. But we as tournament organizers have been rewarding the smallest piece of that pie?
There’s room in the hobby for different formats. With the ITC having salvaged much of the tourney scene, and with GW’s recent about-face with regard to their engagement with the community, the time has come to bring some hobby love back to tournaments. (Ideally, I would love to see GW support of a revamped Rogue Trader Tournament scene, but that may still be a ways out). But this is where we enter the Danger Zone, my friends.
As tournament organizers, we need to be exceedingly clear on what format we’re going to run for our tournaments. When a hobby-centric player enters a win/loss environment and gets decimated that’s not a good thing. Likewise when a regular win/loss player enters a hobby-centric format and finds themselves not in award range due to poor painting, theme, and composition scores despite their victories.
This makes no one happy and that hurts the hobby instead of helping it. I feel that the win/loss format is already missing out on many hobbyists who don’t enjoy that playstyle. But what about win/loss players entering the hobby-centric format? Bringing their win/loss capable force into the hobby-centric environment is not ideal. So how do we tailor lists and set criteria to maximize the enjoyment of all participants?
No points for second best?
Consider this scenario:
Well, you’re a regular win/loss tourney player and can claw your way to the top tables of your local scene pretty regularly. You’re used to trading blows against other adversaries with beatstick lists using the craftiest combinations in the game. In the system, you’re accustomed to winning and that’s all that matters. You might not remember what it was like to play the game competitively for the joy of the hobby at large.
Now, your local FLGS is holding a hobby-centric tournament with scores for painting, army composition, theme, and sportsmanship. You’d like to play in it. However, you realize that your normal tournament list might be too overpowered for this particular tournament’s meta. Which would create some feel-bad experiences on the tabletop and hurt some of your scores. What do you do?
We’ve got some quick guidance for you that will get you back on the tabletop and having a blast in more hobby-centric tournaments in no time.
Follow These Steps
- The first thing you should do is take your list and lay out your army on the table. Look at it as a prospective opponent might assess it.
- Is everything painted? No? Then fix it. 3-colors are all you need. (Colored primers, dry brushing, dipping methods, and washes are your friends here). You’d be amazed at how good you can make things look with just 3 colors. No one says you need to be in the running for Best Painted overnight. Before each tournament, go through this ritual again. Touch up and augment. Add details such as eyes, unit marking, etc… Before you know it, you’ll have an impressive looking tabletop force in the running for the top painting award.
- Are your units modeled accurately? There isn’t an overuse of proxy models? Remember this is a tournament, not a playtest. While using your scout snipers to represent Wraithguard might work during a playtest, that won’t fly at a tournament.
- Is the list exploitative? Does it take advantage of a rule loophole or spamming the same unit? If you answer, “Yes”, you probably need to tweak your list.
- If you took that loophole/unit away and replaced it with a similar pointed unit, is the list still playable?
- Would you consider some elements of your list overpowered? (Cheesy, Beardy, Broken, insert slang phrase of choice.)? If you answer, “Yes”. You might have to tweak your list
- Does your list/army represent and honor many aspects of the hobby (Modeling, Painting, Story) with conversions, great looking miniatures, compliance to the game’s background material or to some background material you’ve developed? If the answer is, “No”, fix that.
- Would you have fun playing against this list? If you answer, “No”, you ABSOLUTELY need to change your list.
TL;DR Version
It takes a great hobbyist to beat their opponent and leave them with a smile on their face and talking about how great a game it was. (Some of my favorite games of 40K that I can remember, were games that I lost!) To do that while having a Balanced List, AND having it well modeled and converted during a tournament…that’s the height of the hobby. It doesn’t take a great tactician or list creator to spam the same imba unit over and over and then drop 3 colors on it. Anybody can do that.
Be excellent to each other. Play nice.
How one achieves victory is at least as important as the victory itself.
This list above is just begging for two more entries to make it a nice round 10 items. What are two more criteria you would add to the list? Let us know in the comments of our Facebook Hobby Group.
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About the Author: Michael Haspil
