My approach has been one of fault tolerance with my club up north and it's worked fairly well for us, so I am approaching events in much the same fashion -- look at the issues with others, and eliminate those things from being an issue. Akin to an old saying I once heard about smart men learning from their mistakes, but wise men learning from
everyone's mistakes. Since we're gearing up for a lot of events in 2014 I'm paying particular attention to this whole idea as it pertains to event running.
First, you have to look at the issues. Then, you have to eliminate the possibility of those things being issues. Refine and repeat.
Right off rip you have two huge problems: "Super heavies/Strength D is bullshit!" crowd versus "Why can't I use my super heavies/strength D!" crowd. Easy fix -- some events allow the expansions, some don't. Theme goes a long way; a backstory to the event instead of three one-off daisy-chained missions gives a good reason why one thing might be in place and other things wouldn't. Theme is what makes certain things seem silly to take.
I could think of lots of crazy ideas for this:
- A tournament in which you have a sideboard army that uses the stuff from the expansions, for example, with a theme of calling for help). You could also ring a communal sideboard for a player; build a good couple of super heavies for the group's events and then simply pair people based on what they have, Strength D people fight Super Heavy people and people with neither fight other basic armies. The one mismatch, you give one of the guys the ringer bonus stuff to use.
- I've also seen you guys have some great success with bracketing; you could easily make some Lords of War-centered objectives that are in addition to the normal mission, and bracket players based on that.
- Invent up some ground level assets to use in the event that are as powerful as a super heavy might be, and then simply give those to players with no super heavy.
- Give slight advantages in-game to armies that choose not to use certain powerful elements of the game.
But that is addressing one big issue. Tournaments in general have other long-standing problems that I think need addressing at the fundamental level before approaching the thematic level.
The number one problem I see right off the bat is rubrics. Rubrics never keep up with the game, it changes too much and too severely (or should I say...the PERCEPTIONS of the game change too much and too severely). I did away with all rubric-based scoring of any kind for our events as far as sportsmanship or appearances go. Rubrics always have the writer's preference ingrained in them by hook or by crook, too, so this eliminates two potential problems instead of just one.
Some people will say, "what if the other guy zero scores me?" Simple: drop soft scores that are significantly different from the others and replace them with an average -- this is done by a computer algorithm, so no bias, just pure math. Get the average with the bad score, without the score, and with an average instead...check for X% difference...if the average with the bad score is greater than X% different then the average without it, use the one with the compromised one. Done all by computer automatically, of course.
Some people will then say it won't work because it's too subjective. What ISN'T subjective about a game of 40k? You could play a one-sided game against a super strong army and have the time of your life or you could play a total newb that you crush and it is the worst game you've ever played. The hard and fast numbers of winning and losing just don't fly on their own; the player experience (which is SUBJECTIVE player to player) should be taken into account. Once you do this you have players trying to have a good game, instead of just a successful one.
Soft scores can make a difference but we also don't want them to make too huge a difference otherwise a person who is wrongfully judged can get screwed, even if you use the clever math. But numbers don't lie. There are guys out there (a few on this forum
) who are going to hate these ideas because they unfairly make them lose due to soft score points. But when we sit down to play a game of 40k, it is about more than winning -- events should reflect this. And I'm sorry, but not every time you get a bunch of 1's and 2's in sportsmanship means the event was broken.
Just some free thinking and rambling here, don't mind me.
