Problems I Forsee With Feast of Blades

Sir Biscuit talks in blue.

So, there's this upcoming tournament in Colorado, that seems to span every store in the state. The idea behind it is to have an actual kind of statewide championship, where the players who do well at their individual locations go to a finals and duke it out for the title of... winner, I guess. Site's here. But whatever, it's cool. I have to say, a truly incredible amount of organization and effort has gone into this tournament, and I'm really impressed by what they've managed to put together. Beyond that, I'll save my positive remarks for the end, because there's also a lot of shit I hate about this tourney. To entertain you all, I thought I would go ahead and write up my thoughts about it.

These are the things I am hating on:

It's battle points

Which is actually okay, because I don't really see an alternative for an event this size that spans so many different locations. What bugs me are the scenarios and that there might be continuing scores.

There's been no announcement about whether the final score at the end of the championship is round 1+2, or if they're separate. Hopefully, separate, otherwise a good/poor showing at the home store could massively effect your final score.

We'll get to the scenarios in a minute. In fact, we'll even talk about designing battle point missions.

Sportsmanship will be on a 1-10 scoring scale, it will also be 10% of the overall points.

1-10 scales are bullshit. It's too many numbers, and thus your variance goes up hugely due to pointless factors. Really, what is the difference between a 6 and a 5, or an 8 or a 9? Depends on the person, and what they “feel” each score means, because we simply cannot process that many numbers. Do 1-5, it's small, gives people an actual middle they can choose, and forces larger dividing lines between scores so that people actually have to think about it more.

Also, I don't like soft scores in a tournament that claims on all it's posters to be about finding "the best player in Colorado". Say what you want, but don't bullshit me and pretend it's some hardcore all-about-the-play event when the game's worth 70% (20% painting, 10% sport).

Round length is 2 hours, the finals will also be two hours.

2 hours for 2000 point games? You have got to be kidding me. That means you need 12 minute player turns to even reach the end of 5. Now yes, this is doable in an ideal match, where both players are up on all rules and can make their choices and movements as fast as possible, but if anyone's not (especially likely in the first, open-to-everyone round) then you just aren't getting the game done. Hell, stalling for a simple 4-5 minutes over the game can make sure that you don't ever see turn 5, if cheating's your thing.

1st and 2nd overall are the people who get to go to the finals, while best general is only first alternate.

Again, if you're going to bill yourself as a hardcore tournament to find the best in Colorado, don't make it so best general doesn't qualify you. It should be 1st overall and best general, with 2nd overall as the alternate. I don't like that the best player from my store might not qualify to fight in your finals for ANY reason.

Alright, on to the practice missions that have been released:

Note that these are (probably) not the missions that will actually be used in the tournament, though the missions that will be seen will be very similar in structure. I'm going to go over why I hate these missions, and then at the end we can talk about how you can design better ones.

MISSION 1: THE BIG PUSH!

Deployment: Dawn of War. Daemons of Chaos deploy as per Daemonic Assault rules.

Special Rules: Deep Strike, Scout, infiltrate, Reserves, Random Game Length. If you get that far.

Primary objective: Modified Kill points. Use Killpoints modified as follows. Note: Tabling your opponent WILL get you max points for this objective.

-Troops: 1 KP okay

- Dedicated transports 150pts or less: 1KP sure

- Fast Attack/Elites/ Heavy Support/Dedicated Transports over 150pts: 2KP all worth two? What about armies that really need to take these choices to be effective? And what about armies that don't? Space wolves come out awesome on this KP mission, 'nilla marines are screwed with all their low-cost low-survivability units in these slots, not to mention nids who pretty much HAVE to max heavy support and elites to get a reasonable army. Also, a ruling that hates on Sanguinary Priests.

- HQ: 3 Kill points HQ choices are generally built for assault. It's part of the whole heroic combat thing. We can't hide them, so I guess this would even out... except for the armies that can easily keep their HQ choices alive, like Guard or Tau. They're suddenly at a pretty nice advantage because of this.

- Special Characters are worth an additional KP on top of their normal value. (Eg; Vulkan=4, Abbadon=4, Tellion=2, Chronus=3 lol, Zagstruck=3, Col. Straken=4).

This makes no sense. Special characters are balanced by their increased cost, and don't need a smacking on top of it.

For fun, me and a buddy added up our lists with this system. He plays hybrid guard, I play mech marines. He came in at 23 KP, I came in at 25. All glory to the armies with awesome troops choices!

- 9 or more kill points: 20 victor /0 loser

- 1-8 kill points more: 15 victor /5 loser

- equal KP: 10 each

A 9 KP lead is hard to get, even with these modified rules.

Secondary objective: Table Quarters. Note: Tabling your opponent WILL NOT get you max points for this objective.

Capture more table quarters than your opponent. (Can only be captured/contested by non-vehicle troops)

- captured more table quarters than your opponent: 13 victor /0 loser

- captured the same amount as your opponent: 7 each sure, fine, sounds good. A tie should probably be worth more, though.

Tertiary Objective: Highest value unit lives. Before the game begins declare which of your units is the most expensive (do not add the cost of a dedicated transport to the cost of the parent unit), though a dedicated transport may qualify itself. Note: Tabling your opponent WILL NOT get you max points for this objective, your most expensive unit must survive in order to claim these points!

Did your highest Value unit live through the entire game?

-Yes: 7 - No: 0

Kind of another big "fuck you" to special characters, and also Land Raiders. In any army that runs one, you can basically count on losing this objective. As if it weren't already impossible to keep them alive to the end of the game... also, sort of strange to have an objective that it doesn't benefit your opponent to deny you, but we'll talk about that in a minute.

Modifiers: Note: Tabling your opponent WILL NOT get you max points for this, you need to actually complete each bonus!

-Did you kill all your opponents Heavy Support? If they had none you automatically get +1

- Do you have more units (of any type) in your opponent’s deployment zone than they did at the end of the game? +1 Favors assault armies, and not something anyone would intentionally shoot for unless they are hard winning the game otherwise.

- Do you have more than half (rounding down) of your troops units left alive at the end of the game (not counting dedicated transports)? +1 Round up. Aren't these supposed to be kind of hard to get?

- Did you reserve at least one unit? +1 I actually really like this one. More people should reserve.

- Did you kill all you opponents Fast Attack? If they had none you automatically get this point. +1

See, BP modifiers are where you should put the crap like "did x unit survive". "Did any of your fast attack survive? If so, +1 BP" is much better than "you dun killed 'em", because it might actually have an effect on the way people play, instead of being incidental.

MISSION 2: SLASH AND BURN!

Deployment: Pitched battle. Daemons of Chaos deploy as per Daemonic Assault rules.

Special Rules: Deep Strike, Scout, infiltrate, Reserves, Random Game Length.

Primary Objective: Seize ground. There are automatically 5 objectives. FAQ clarifies that the players place them, as normal. I guess this is okay, since one goes in the center automatically. Note: Tabling your opponent WILL NOT get you max points for this objective.

- Place 5 objective markers, one objective marker goes in the center of the table. Then alternate placing objectives.

- You have captured 2 or more objectives more than your opponent: 20 victor/ 0 loser 2 gives a massacre? Quite a difference from round 1.

- You captured 1 more objective than your opponent: 15 victor/ 5 loser

- You both have the same number of Objectives: 10 each

Secondary Objective: Kill Points. Note: Tabling your opponent WILL NOT get you max points for this objective.

- Standard kill points

- You achieve more KP than your opponent.

13 victor / 0 loser

- You achieve the same KP.

7 each

Tertiary Objective: Killed your opponents highest value unit. Before the game begins declare which of your units is the most expensive (do not add the cost of a dedicated transport to the cost of the parent unit), though a dedicated transport may qualify itself. Note: Tabling your opponentWILL NOT get you max points for this objective, you must destroy your opponent’s most expensive unit in order to claim these points!

Did you destroy your opponent’s most expensive unit? -Yes: 7 - No: 0

Poor, poor high priced vehicles and HQ's. As if you didn't have enough trouble surviving.

Modifiers: Note: Tabling your opponent WILL NOT get you max points for this, you need to actually complete each bonus!

-Did you kill all your opponents Elite Choices? If they had none you automatically get this point. +1

-Do you control the objective furthest from your table edge at the end of the game? +1 What if two are equidistant?

-Did you kill all of your opponents dedicated transports? If they had none you automatically get this point. +1 Sounds fun, might actually make people finish off immobilized stuff.

-Did you use scouts/outflank/infiltrate? If you have no units capable of any of these, you automatically get this point +1 Aww, yeah, didn't bring the units, got the prize anyway.

-Do you have no units in your own deployment zone? +1 lol wut? What if there's an objective there? Is this a "you lost, have a point" kind of thing?

I do want to make clear that although I have problems with the way the event is structured, I am also very happy that it exists. An extraordinary level of dedication and work has been put into this thing, and I'm a huge fan of the club that's putting the whole thing on. ultimately, my goal is to provide helpful criticism, not belittle the event or individuals. (I leave that to the comments section, of course.) I'm definitely blessed to be part of a community that can put on an event like this, but maybe next time, better mission structure?

My next post, up soon, will detail how to design a BP tourney properly. Till then, readers!