Next week, the 11th Company will be live video broadcasting the top tables at the Nova Open starting next week Thursday roughly at 4PM Eastern time. http://www.ustream.tv/user/the11thcompany

We will have the players wear wireless mics, so you can hear their discussions during their game. We will have between game interviews with various attendees and guests, and have the channel open for players wanting to broadcast their game live before and after the tournaments during open gaming.


Please join us in the chat room while watching the broadcasts live Thursday August 30th - Sunday September 2nd, or catch the archived broadcasts after the event. We would greatly appreciate it if you shared the above information on your blog/podcast/forums or shared with your friends.

6th Ed. Readings

Interesting Changes I've Noticed so Far:

http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/interesting-changes-t3826.html

Contentious Rules Fixed (and not)

http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/contentious-rules-fixed-since-last-edition-and-not-t3825.html

Today will be the Day

I should get my 6th ed. rulebook in hand today and start reading for what will be our 6th ed. episode to be released next Wednesday.  I haven't been this excited about the hobby in a very long time.

Mostly what has me going is that so much has been introduced which is going to shake up the foundation of the game, that I'm not even sure where to begin with building lists.  I'm certain that I'm going to stick with the Necrons for the rest of the year and possibly into the next year.  If I feel like I need to give my Orks some play time, I can always ally them in.

Speaking of allies, I was very worried at first about this, but now, not so much.  I'm actually very excited now about the possibilities that this is going to add to the game.  I do wish they had banned Special Characters from ally contingents, but it's pretty confirmed at this point that they didn't.  There are a lot of questions running about of how some things are going to interact, but hopefully, that will get resolved.

Further, I'm really hoping that tomorrow we will see a flood of FAQs to bring all the books up to date and to answer a lot of lingering questions that I have.  Overall, though, my mind is going crazy with the number of cool things that are coming back into the game.  I think some old and dead codices are going to be right back in it.  Armies like Demons I think are going to be down-right scary if they hit vehicles on a 3+ all the time.  Combine that with being able to wreck vehicles with just a multitude of glances, and that's going to bring new life into that book.

Bring on the 6th!  I'm ready to play.

Learning to Accept Allies: The Stages of Grief

Much to my continued /facepalm, the rumors about allies becoming a big part of 6th Ed. 40K continue to grow stronger.

We still aren't totally clear about how they will work, but already, I've definitely gone through the stages of grief over the issue.

Denial:


Nah!  No way this is going to happen.  Remember, it wasn't that long away that the design team went to the effort to remove Allies from the Sisters of Battle and Demonhunters PDFs by re-publishing their codices as PDFs, minus the ally pages?  They released them FOR FREE!  FREE people!  FREE!  GW never does that.  They hated allies so much, that they decided to fix the problem with a FREE release!

There's just no way we would revisit this.  And look at these crazy rumors!  They are saying that we are going to introduce allies, but we are going to limit who can ally with who!  That would just be so ridiculously unfair.  There's no way this can be right....

Anger:


Okay!  Have we totally lost our minds, here?  Does nobody remember allies from before?  Imperial Guard and Space Marine players cherry-picking the best units out of ANOTHER book simply to shore up their designed weaknesses while nobody else could do that?!?!

Do nobody remember every Guard player taking a freakin' inquisitor just to get the Emperor's Tarot, a Psychic Hood, and a nearly impenetrable Deep Strike defense so that Leaf Blower could dominate the tournament scene for over a year because of it?!?!  Nobody at all?

Nobody remembers people cherry picking a Grand Master out of Grey Knights for psychic defense and a clearly abused Force Weapon rule to bypass instant death?

Come on people!  Almost nobody builds a list to play for fluff reasons!  Can we get over this already?  People take what works, not crap.  And what will work is some broken, crazy combination gained by some Imperial player because he can ally with everyone!  Awesome!  Let's give every Imperial army Psybolt Dreadnoughts!  Let's give them all Coteaz and a bunch of cheap henchmen, Rune Priests for ultimate psychic protection, Vendettas, Manticores, Purifiers, Paladins, Draigo... Sanguinary priests?  I mean really?

Depression:


All this time getting excited over a new edition, and now, it's going to be totally ruined by something so stupid.  This is a blantant attempt to sell models, and now, our game is going to be ruined because of it.

Bargaining:


No big deal, right?  Tournament organizers will surely see how dumb this is, and we'll just all decide to exclude allies from events, right?  Surely, nobody will think this is a good idea and actually allow it to happen!

We can control this craziness!

Acceptance:


Well, at least everyone is going to get some kind of shot at coming up with interesting combinations.  Maybe this will actually improve the game creating a wide variety of builds for a wide variety of books that might not have otherwise been used.  The amount of variety this could potentially introduce could be mind boggling and a lot of fun!

It'll certainly be better than seeing the same 5 armies over and over.

GT Appearance Scoring Pt 3

What follows will be a ridiculous over-analysis and serious effort to turn something mundane into a ridiculously complex discussion all in an effort to prove the following point:

- To be as correct as possible when calculating Best Overall, your Appearance Scoring system should contribute its points in exactly the same way as your Generalship Scoring system.  (Likewise for Sports if you count it)

For those of you interested in all the intricacies and what amounts to a simple concept being blow out of proportion to make me sound smarter than I really am, read on!  Otherwise, skip to the next article where I will discuss my proposition for what our Appearance Scoring system will actually be for consideration and input (when that article is available of course).  The goal of this article is to lay the ground work behind the thought process that will be used to upgrade our Appearance Scoring solution (and eventually Sports Scoring solution) to ensure that is useful, as accurate as possible, and just as important, contributes fairly to Best Overall.

Oh yeah, this is going to be really long, too!

An Unbalanced Best Overall


Recall that Best Overall is truly intended to find the most talented participant in the room.  It combines the person who brings it the most in Generalship, Appearance, and for us, Sports.  If you let one of those categories contribute to the Best Overall score in such a way as to "crowd out" or "boost" the value of another category, you are now, most likely inadvertently, favoring one category over another in some small but potentially tournament changing way.

As a disclaimer: Having an unbalanced Best Overall is not necessarily a bad thing nor am I suggesting it is.  Plenty of people think that, for example, Generalship should count for the majority of Best Overall points while soft scores contribute less.  For us, however, our goal is treat them all equally.  This being said, it also just so happens to turn out that if you aren't ensuring that your contribution is happening like you think it is, even a skewed Best Overall may still not be delivering the results it is intended to.

It's a lot easier than you might think to have your score contributions be unbalanced.  The reason is that it is generally very simple to come up with a very good scoring mechanic for a given category, even a very smart one, BUT the magic (and pitfalls) happens when you try to combine them.

I can get overly philosophical which I like to do, but I'll cut it short with a quick example.  Let's say you want to compare Apples, Oranges, and Pears (which, funnily, is exactly what we are trying to do here!).  To do so, you have to define what it is about them that you want to compare.  Straight up, you can't compare them, but you can compare common things ABOUT them, like their height, width, flavor, color, and so on.  That's all good, but a problem will pop up if you try to combine what you are measuring about these things to define a Watermelon (makes perfect sense right?!).  For example, let's say our Watermelon is the combination of the HEIGHT of all the Apples, Oranges, and Pears I have.  That's easy, then.  Just add up all their heights.  Done!  However, if I told you that a Watermelon MUST not be comprised of more than 33% Apples, Oranges, and Pears, respectively, can I be certain now that measuring each of my fruits is a "fair" contribution to the height of my Watermelon?  Pears seems to be "taller" on average than Apples (just made that up).  So, based on that, the more Pears that go into making your Watermelon, the taller your Watermelon will also probably be.  By this simple analogy, Pears contribute more to the Watermelon than do the other fruits.  Thus, your TALLEST Watermelon will GENERALLY (not always) end up being comprised of more Pears than Apples or Oranges if the total number of Apples and Oranges and Pears can never exceed a certain value.

Yeah I know... so anyways...

Here's an example of just how easy it is to design a Best Overall system that is unbalanced.

Let's say you score Generalship on Win/Loss (which we do!).  Let's say that Generalship's contribution to the Best Overall category then is the Number of Wins / Number of Losses.  So, the guy who wins all of his games contributes a full 100% of Generalship.  The guy who loses all games contributes 0%, and everything in between.  Great!

Let's say that your Best Appearance award is on a scale of 0-400 like ours was last year.  Everyone gets scored based on a rubric.

To calculate Best Overall just using those two categories, you contribute each equally.  You get the % of total Generalship and add that to the % of total Appearance.  So, if I went 5/1 last year, my contribution to Generalship would be 83%.  If I scored a 137 on the Appearance Rubric, my Appearance contribution would be 34.25%.  Now, my Best Overall should be 1/2 and 1/2, so (0.5) * 83% + (0.5) * 34.25% = 58.625% of the total Best Overall points available.

Now, here comes the monkey wrench!  There are so many ways this system can fail to fairly produce that Best Overall score, and I will try and list a bunch in a bit.  For now, let me just insert one to prove the point.

Generalship's contribution to Best Overall in this example is very RIGID.  Think about it this way, for our 64 man GT this year, contributions based on the Wins/Games system will ALWAYS be like this at the end of the day:

1 - 100% (6/0)
8 - 83% (5/1)
15 - 66% (4/2)
20 - 50% (3/3)
15 - 33% (2/4)
8 - 17% (1/5)
1 - 0% (0/6)

The thing about Generalship is that this will ALWAYS be the case.  It doesn't change no matter the other factors in the room such as the AVERAGE PLAYER SKILL, the DIFFERENCE IN SKILL BETWEEN ONE GUY AND ANOTHER, and also important, it's IMPOSSIBLE for 2 guys to contribute 100%.

The same cannot be said of our Appearance Scoring method.

Just for an example, I checked our Appearance Scores from last year, and the average score in the room (after discarding 0's) was 241/400.  Hrm.  This could have an effect on Best Overall, couldn't it?  Indeed!  Because the average person in the room is now contributing 60.25% to the Best Overall category while the average General is contributing only 50%.

Thus, at the end of the day, Generalship scores MATTERED more when it came to our Best Overall than did Appearance Scores.  The reason why that is true is because the upper level Appearance Scores were less meaningful than the upper level Generalship scores because the average participant scored higher than middle of the road.  So, whereas Generalship has a granulation of 50% between middle and top, Appearance had one of about 40%.

Did it matter?  How would I know?  Well, I decided to check.  To do so, I decided to convert my Generalship Scores and my Appearance Scores into Z scores, comparing the values to their averages rather than our rubric.  My Best Overall didn't change at all.  He DOMINATED my GT anyways, scoring extremely high in all 3 categories.  However, my Best Overall 2nd-5th DID matter.  They were swapped around slightly, and you could see that the guys with higher Appearance Scores suddenly start to bubble up and just BARELY edge people above them who had a higher Generalship score.

See, all of this doesn't much matter so long as the spread between your participants is LARGE.  However, when it gets tight, those little decimals can mean differences in placement.

I would bet, if I had more than 50 people, my average Appearance would have approached 200.  I say to myself, oh well, it's a wash right?  Well, turns out, just "reaching average" isn't all that is required.  There are just a seemingly endless amount of potential ways in which Appearance Scoring can create problems, almost all of which spawn from the fact that a Generalship score is so RIGID while an Appearance Score is potentially (not necessarily!) FLUID.

Here's a short list just off the cuff of things that will cause a potential imbalance:

• Does an Appearance Rubric always produce an average result for the average person?  What happens if everyone shows up at your tournament with an army they paid to have painted by Blue Table Painting?
• Does a rubric produce enough granularity even if it does have a consistent average?  What happens when 49 people show up with *yawn* and GREGOR TEH AWESOME!!!1! shows up with an army so cool it blinds you just to look at?
• Does a rubric allow for ties for the top score?  Our Generalship rubric doesn't.
• Using my above example, will my Appearance Scoring system have a way to contribute values other than 0%, 17%, 33%, 50%, 66%, 83%, and 100%?  If so, it can unbalance my Generalship scores.
• Does a rubric allow for ties for the bottom score?  Our Generalship rubric also doesn't.
• Is a rubric skewed to allow people to earn easy points while only granting small point values to the hard to get stuff?  (This is done to make Appearance Scores attainable in a lot of ways).  This will skew your Appearance contribution causing Generalship to matter more.
• Does the difference between the BEST army in the room and the 2nd best cause the contribution of their scores to a gap less than or greater than 17%?  Generalship does not.  (E.g:  99/100 = 99%.  98/100 = 98%.  For Generalship, top place is 100%, 2nd is 83%.)
• Does an Appearance rubric always produce a 0%?  Generalship does.
• And lots and lots more.

One pitfall I kept running into all week long as the volume of problems kept seeming to increase no matter how much I tried to be creative with upgrading our Appearance scoring was that I kept wanting to dismiss them for practical or logical reasons.  This would amount to thoughts like:

• "yeah, well, it's not realistic that people will show up with armies like that..."
• "it's not realistic that I'll get that many ties"
• "but we're talking such a small number here, it won't really matter"
• "I can design a methodology which will fairly overcome that"

The real back breaker thought is this one:

• "well, it's okay to have 2 people share the top spot if they both have awesome armies!"  (this one is insidious because what it is tempting you to do is not treat your Appearance scores as worthy of competition as you are your Generals... which means you aren't really believing they are equal)

Yesterday, I had it all worked out where my new Appearance scoring methodology was going to be to examine Z scores compared to an average of the room.  I had written all my arguments why this was the best method using all the thoughts from above to show why, realistically, that was as good as it gets.  I was prepared to finish up my rubrics, design my post rubric judging methodology (read tie breakers), and press on.

This morning, on the way to work, though, I think I finally solved the problem in a much better way.

I've hinted at it repeatedly here as I wrote this article.  The best solution I have come up with, which I will extrapolate on in the next article, is to make the final result of your Appearance scores to produce a contribution which will exactly mirror your Generalship's ability to contribute.  That is, whatever you do to get your Appearance rankings, when you go to translate them to Best Overall, the way in which they contribute should come as close to exactly matching the way in which your Generalship translates and contributes.

In other words, rather than adding up your Apples, Oranges, and Pears to get Watermelons, instead, convert your Apples, Oranges, and Pears into Grapes first, then all you need to do is write a formula to convert Grapes to Watermelons.  

The key is to model it after your Generalship because your Generalship is as close to a rigid, fundamental truth as it gets.  This isn't some kind of genius discovery or anything.  It's just the logical conclusion that should have been (and probably is to most people) obvious to begin with. 

The plan, then, will effectively be the same thing as if I started pairing players together at the table, a judge walks up to score both armies on Appearance, declares a winner, and then match them up with their next opponent.... just like Generalship.  Now, it's not going to be exactly that because there are things we can do that are much easier and also eliminate some flaws in how Generalship is calculated, but that's the over-arching theme for how it's going to work.  

And when it's all over, the contributions will be just about identical and Best Appearance will still be the best army in the room.

This will also have all sorts of side benefits which includes things like being able to set your appearance rubric however you like, skewed, straight, average, or more importantly for me, able to incorporate a level beyond a rubric all the while not unbalancing your contribution to Best Overall.  The only real factors then will end up being, just like our Generalship does already, no ties and everyone gets ranked.

(What the specifics are going to be is still being worked on :P)

GT Appearance Scoring Pt 2

Wow!  Since I started with the first part in this series, which amounts to an introduction to what I want to do with Appearance Scoring at our GT, I have discovered that the Rabbit Hole gets very, very, deep indeed!  It feels like what started out as an innocent review of the system has now made my head explode!

Where to start?

Well, since I've now come up with 4 different topics which all surround Appearance Scoring and Best Overall scoring, I'll go ahead and introduce them here.  From there, I'll talk about a simple conclusion for each, and then, I'll address the granular specifics behind each in their own article.

• Best in Class, encouraging good participation
• Appearance/Sports Scoring based on the competition rather than an arbitrary rubric.  How much better did you do versus everyone else in the room, not against some unproven, mostly arbitrary, non-researched number.
• Judging Appearance Scores with a rubric and BEYOND.  Truth is, rubrics really suck at determining whose army really is the best.  They are very good for weeding out contestants but very BAD at classifying the best.  We can do better.
• Redefining how to calculate Best Overall.  Turns out, when you really get to the bottom of the Appearance Scoring rabbit hole, the entire notion of Best Overall and how it is calculated begins to change.  More to come!

Appearance Scoring Rubric, Attainable Appearance Scores, Generalship, and Encouraging Better Participants... AKA  Best in Class


In the first part of this series, I had originally wanted to modify the Appearance Scoring rubric so that it was attainable for most people, rather than serving a purpose of only to granulate the best from the worst in the room.  Why?

1)  First and foremost, because at it currently stands, most Appearance Rubrics set a bar for the Best Overall category which is insurmountable by the average hobbyist.  Best Overall, after all, will combine your Appearance and Generalship scores.  Thus, if you aren't an above average hobbyist, once you lose a game, your ability to place in Best Overall just went along with it.  So, for the average and below, it's all about winning your games.

2)  Because of that, if you know you will never be a top notch hobbyist, this provides zero encouragement for you to even bother getting serious about painting your army.  The reality is, you either win on Generalship alone or you pack it up and go home.

But it doesn't stop there!  The same exact two points can be made for people who don't have a lot of Generalship skills.  If they know they will never be a top player, if they spot an army that's better than theirs, well, they can pack it up right there!

What's even worse than that?  What if you know you will never be a top notch player nor a top hobbyist?  Well, other than just being social, which should be a strong motivator for anyone with their head in the right place about attending GTs, there isn't much encouragement for you to show up to begin with.

Does this sound like a familiar drum beat?

Well, good grief.  All I wanted to do was encourage people to paint better, and all of a sudden, I'm opening up a philosophical can of tournament worms.

So, part of my misconception about Best Overall is that one of its intents is to reward people for all aspects of the hobby.  That part is true, but the misconception is that I had thought it to be designed for the average hobbyist to be able to compete at a high level because he could bring some Generalshiip game and some Appearance game.  Turns out, that's not the case.

The reality is, Best Overall rewards the most talented person in the room.  It is still as utterly unattainable to the average hobbyist as Best General or Best Appearance.  The truth is, Best Overall will always go to the person who is highly above average in the room in all categories, or utterly exceptional in one category while being average-above average, at a minimum, in another.

Thus, if you can't be above average in every category, no point in trying for Best Overall.  Thus, for guys like me, that makes us really not want to spend to much effort, tournament wise, on making sure our armies look good on the table.  Likewise, for those exceptional hobbyists out there who barely know the rules of the game, they just show up to go through the motions of a game of 40K, while in reality, trying to win Best Appearance, and generate a series of lop-sided or generally un-challenging games for their opponents.

In both cases, everyone loses.  The issue is that we really do want to encourage people to bring their A game, even if their A game amounts to other people's D game!  We all win in that case.  We get better looking armies at our tournaments and funner, more challenging games for everybody involved.

This is, of course, an unrealistic ideal, but if you don't try, you definitely won't succeed.

Best in Class


Through the power of math-fu and a little thought, we can take some steps to make a meaningful tournament goal actually attainable to average player.  We all love winners.  So, you aren't going to just give out a booby prize.  The guy still has to earn it.  And by earning, that means he will still have to be ABOVE AVERAGE.  So, how is this going to work, again?

As said in the last article, one of the genius ideas given to us by the NoVA Open is putting people into Generalship brackets on Day 2.  This allows them to compete for a meaningful Generalship prize with their peers.  It creates an actually attainable Generalship goal for the average player.  Very cool!

Now, what if we also created an actually attainable Appearance Score and Sports Score for the average player that can't be completely over-shadowed by the talent in the room?  Then, we could combine these three scores, and presto, we have a new prize class which is basically Best Overall 'for the rest of us'.  I'll call it, Best in Class.

We take your Generalship score from the games you play in your bracket only.  Great.  This is you versus your peers.  This excludes earlier games where you may have clubbed or been clubbed as the case may be.  Average versus average, at least in theory anyways.  Check!

Next, we generate an Appearance Rubric 'for the rest of us'.  (Or more realistically, we add a cut score to our current rubric)  This new rubric encourages you to bring a great looking, table-top quality army, one in which anyone, with enough effort and time, could actually do if they felt so inclined, sprinkle in just a little reference or two for some talent, and there, an actually attainable appearance score that lets everyone compete towards a "great table-top quality" rather than towards "BLOW YOUR FREAKIN' MIND AWESOME!".  It also just so happens to lay out the road map for what a good army should have in it... you  know... for those of us who are artistically clueless.

I didn't invent this Appearance idea.  Other GTs did.  They did it when they started introducing appearance rubrics which make the first 90 points easy to get, and the last 10 difficult (or the first 15 and last 5.. or whatever).  This way, your top talent still gets a higher score, but the score they receive won't blow everyone else out of the water.  Or, maybe you just set an appearance cap for Best in Class, which is what I am leaning towards right now.

THIS WILL NOT REPLACE BEST APPEARANCE NOR BEST OVERALL.  Keep that in mind.  You will still need another way to do this, and that's to come in more articles.

Last by not least, you look at Sports scores which our Sport Scoring system already normalizes for us.

Now, you have a path to reasonably attain a high Generalship score by only counting games against your peers, a path to reasonably attain a high Appearance Score by providing a clear, easy to follow, rubric with attainable goals, and a path to reasonably attain a high Sports Score because Sports is already normalized with most people getting average to begin with.

Best in Class.

Thoughts?

GT Appearance Scoring Part 1

This week on the podcast we are starting a 3 part series on Appearance Scoring for our GT.  The reason is that I am trying to come up with a smart way of accomplishing a few goals with Appearance Scoring at our GT.    What we ultimately want is a way to encourage people to a high, table-top standard, encourage players to compete for the Best Overall category, and finally, of course, provide a great atmosphere for the true Best Appearance competitors to really show their stuff.

Now, before I even get started, I suppose I should start with a disclaimer.  For some reason, anytime you start talking about Appearance and Sports scoring, some groups of people feel the need to exclaim that this kind of thing is too subjective and should really not be scored.  Let me go ahead and take care of that now.

Appearance Scoring is subjective?  THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!  Now, that we got that out of system, let's move on and see if we can apply our collective brain power to solving the problem rather than simply stating that there is a problem.  (As a more serious life lesson for any who haven't thought about this yet, the money, power, and women go to the guy who finds solutions not to the guy who points out problems.  We are all smart enough to recognize problems.  We AREN'T all smart enough to solve them.)

  

We just finished recording for this week over an hour of back-and-forth conversation revolving mostly around the starting concept of Appearance Scoring.  Although a good portion of that conversation may very well get edited out for the rambling and circular talk, I found that conversation to be VERY useful to me when determining what it is exactly that I want Appearance Scoring to do at my GT.

1)  Reduce "butt-hurt" that gets associated with Appearance Scoring.  Nothing generates "butt-hurt" at a tournament quite like Appearance Scoring.  People get down-right hostile when they feel like their army should have scored higher than it did, ESPECIALLY higher than that guy's army over there!

2)  Encourage people who will NEVER be the BEST to still strive for a high table-top quality.  

3)  Encourage people (just like me!) to honestly compete for Best Overall, instead of just hanging it up because we know that our Appearance Scores will not be adequate enough.

4)  Create an arena where the people who CAN be the BEST a place for their work to be truly graded at the level they need, rather than at the level of the "rest of us".  Do this, while not making it impossible for the "rest of us" to win Best Overall.

5)  Give players an honest way of knowing up front how they will perform, Appearance wise.  To me, this is just like players knowing what the tournament packet is before they show up with their army.

So, it's no secret that I'm a total fan boi of the NoVA Open.  The NoVA Open concept has blessed us with two very good ideas when it comes to tournaments which need to be reflected on at this point before continuing to talk about Appearance Scoring.

Best Overall Category - NoVA calls this Renaissance Man.  (I prefer Best Overall because it sounds a lot less pretentious to me... I said I was a fan boi not a drone. :P  Also, if you haven't bought a 2012 ticket yet, you should.  They don't have a whole lot left.)   Best Overall, in my opinion, in the best overall thing to happen to the Indy tournament scene.  The concept is that the top winner of your tournament is not the guy who wins all of his games.  The concept is that your top winner is the guy who most ably reflects all aspects of our great hobby.  Thus, this combines elements of Generalship, Appearance, and for us, Sportsmanship.  So, to win Best Overall, the top tournament prize and spot, you need to bring you game not only on the table-top, but also in the hobby.

Brackets - Another NoVA brain-child which I find to be genius.  This concept is that in a multi-round GT, you will use the first half of the GT to essentially qualify for what will become your actual tournament brackets in the second half.  This way, when you actually start to compete to win prizes, awards, etc., you are doing so against your PEERS rather than having ZERO chance to compete because the people who are the Best Generals just drown everyone else out.

So, what does this have to do with Appearance Scoring, and more importantly, who cares?

What I want is a method for EVERYONE to be able to compete for Best Overall and not simply get canned because they can't paint very well.  This is important for people JUST LIKE ME, whose hobby skills BLOW.  You see, this is no different than the guys who feel like they can never win on Generalship because they will never be as good as others.  They don't want to swim with sharks, but let me tell you, NEITHER DO I.  At the end of the day, we should model bracketing in some manner that let's us all compete and more importantly, HAVE FUN.  

Second, the goal is Best Overall.  Being able to compete with your peers increases your chance of scoring the coveted Best Overall.  If I have an honest shot at winning Best Overall because I don't have to paint like Rembrandt, I might actually make an effort to do so.  Likewise, if a true hobbyist has a shot at Best Overall by learning how to use his army, he might actually TRY rather than just hanging it up.

So, what direction are we headed in this series?  

What I would like to see is the creation of an Appearance Scoring rubric that is designed for the average guy.  Something people like me can strive for.  This score is what will ultimately apply to my Best Overall ranking.  This will encourage guys like me to give it an honest try, and at the end of the day, we all win because guys like me will start showing up with good table-top quality armies rather than half-assed paint jobs.

Second, since the Appearance Scoring rubric will be for the average person, I expect anyone with a serious shot at a Best Appearnace to easily sweep past the rubric.  These guys get a top score in painting, which they should, and THEN, they go off onto a separate path for Best Appearance.  This leads into a much more subjective grading system performed by their PEERS.  (More on this later).  This way, they get the judgement they deserve rather than a silly rubric which will have the audacity to compare their master pieces to guys like me!

Conclusion

In Part 2, I'll start talking about the formation of a rubric as well as what happens to the Best Appearances.  I'll also continue the discussion around Best Overall because there are some subtle problems with scoring Best Overall to a rubric but not Best Appearance, mainly not giving ENOUGH credit to the Best Appearance players towards the Overall score.

11th Company GT 2012 November 10-11th

Once again, we will be hosting the 11th Company GT 2012 on Veteran's Day Weekend in Myrtle Beach South Carolina.

http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/the-11th-company-gt-2012-myrtle-beach-sc-t3743.html


Date: Nov. 10-11 (Veteran's Day Weekend)
Length: 2 Days / 6 Rounds (Tentative 6 Rounds)
Tickets: $60 http://www.tangtwo.com/11thcompany/tournament.cfm
Max Participants: 64
40K Edition: 6th
Points Level: Tentative (likely 2000 TBA)
Format: NoVA Open Format (including Day 2 Brackets)
Mission Format: Tentative (likely NoVA Open unless dramatic 6th ed. changes)
Location: Clarion Hotel and Conference Center, Myrtle Beach http://clarionhotelmyrtlebeach.com/
Group Rate: Ask for the 11th Company Group Rate

BAO Format Scorer Beta 1.3 Update

http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/post32294.html#p32294

Beta Version 1.3 Updates

- Dramatically changed the Sports Scoring application.  Final scores are now calculated by the computer rather than collected.  The algorithm used to calculate takes into consideration the average score a given player produces.  The goal then is to seek players who score well above average.  This helps out greatly with issues of players who always give away scores that are to high or to low.  To represent, the Sports Scorer now expects you to select Final Round when you are going to the final round. As players enter in their last round questionairre, it poduces the final file.

- Sports Scores are critically collected during the last round rather than afterwards.

- Sports Scores are now correctly imported into the main program.

- Created password box now which hides passwords as typed.  Helps with security.

- Added 4th category to the scorer which handles a player getting tabled.  A tabling is an auto-win.  Previously, there was no way to signify a table.  All scoring algorithms have been updated to handle a tabling score.

- Fixed issue with Appearance Scorer where the last item on the first category page had a duplicate entry.

The software has now been used to run 2 small RTTs.  These updates came from that experience.  Overall, the software worked very well, and there we no issues with players entering in their own data.

NoVA Open Promo Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW9S2Ll1xJ8

It's the continued innovation that the NoVA crew puts forward which what makes it one of the premier tournaments in the country.  You might think the video is silly (I thought it was actually very professionally done!), but you just have to appreciate the effort and the idea of it.

Great work guys and see you at NoVA.

Kill Point Denial Codex Review: Chaos Space Marines/Chaos Demons

Before I even begin, I am having as much trepidation about all the horrible 6th ed. rumors floating about, and would like to add a preface to this entire article series that in 2 months, none of this may even apply.

We don't even know if Kill Points will be a part of 6th ed.!

In other news, once again, the purpose of these review articles is just to examine what is available in the book with an eye towards potential use in a KP Denial build.  Keeping in mind that we are generally looking for high positive kill point potential, durable units, and a speed element.

Chaos Space Marines


Your capacity to build a CSM KP Denial list is about the same as Space Marines.  You have some very worthwhile and interesting options, and you will see a lot of overlap in concept here.  For that reason, this makes for a good pick for today's article because it will reinforce thoughts from the Space Marines article.

HQs:


Just in general, CSM HQ choices don't really add much to the army except for a beat-face commander.  This is true of everything except Lash, of course.  Lash is still a good buy!  It's a great buy for KP Denial because you can use it to get KPs off of infantry but also to keep assaults away from you.

Sorceror - Because of Lash, this is probably the most efficient KP denial pick, just at a cursory glance.  Take lash, put him in a squad.  Good to go.

Named Characters - Again, for KP denial, none of the named characters really add much.  For this reason, you are pretty good to take whatever.  Personal favs are Kharn and Abbadon.

Demons Princes - Demon Princes are the big NO-NO in this case.  Why?  Because they can be easily targeted and killed by enemy shooting.  Best left at home.

Fabius Bile - Mr. Bile deserves some special attention in this case.  The reason is that he can turn plain old CSM into Fearless units.  Fearless is always good, especially for an army that can be swept and can't regroup if below 1/2 strength.

Elites:


Chosen - Chosen are a tempting choice from the Elite selection because of their ability to outflank.  Rather than picking up speed units, units which can outflank are sometimes just as useful for late game contesting.  The only down side here is that you generally want to outflank them in a Rhino which will give up an easy KP.  However, with Chosen ability to pack so many assault weapons, marks, and combat potential, they have a good positive kill point potential.  Overall, it's not a bad thought, but not a great one either.

Terminators -  Just like with Marines, Terminators are durable.  Further, Chaos Terminators can pack 2 x Reaper Autocannons in a 10 man squad for 350 points.  You could also afford a Mark at that point to up them to a 4+ invuln which is nice.  Overall, though, it's still a normal Terminator.  These guys can get much better thought at a back-field KP denial roll if you team them up with a beater in the HQ slot, like Abby.

Troops:


The CSM book has a very interesting tidbit in here in the Troop selection that you won't find anywhere else. 20 Man Fearless Units.  It's like taking a Horde of Boyz but with a 3+ save and fearless.  All of your choices here are fearless, even the normal CSM if you take Fabius Bile as your HQ.  20 Man Squads aren't a requirement, but they do have a lot of positive kill point potential.  Chaos Troop choices are also pretty good at CC which is a good bonus, and just like with Terminators above, if you put a beater in the back-line, that's a serious deterrent to the enemy wanting to close in on you.

Chaos Space Marines - If made fearless by Bile, now you can pack a heavy weapon in up to a 20 man squad.  Gives this unit great positive kill point potential, Strength 5, and a lot of attacks.  Not great but worth considering.


Berserkers/Plague Marines - Fearless, decent CC, potential for huge squads.  The only problem here is lack of something long range to reach out and touch the opponent, but they could still have a role in objective holding or just being annoying.  Plague marines can carry some Plasma guns for a potential shot or 2 at light armor.  Plague Marines are also tough as nails.

Thousand Sons/Noise Marines - Both of these units, in bunches, can bring some pretty good anti-infantry fire to take out those small MSU squads that are so common.  They can also both have a long range weapon for potential light armor shots.

The bottom line for CSM, though, is cost of the units.  Everything is going to burn up points!

Fast:


Bikers - Just like with Space Marines, you have access to Bikers, some that can even be T6.  The downside is lack of an attack bike.  So, you might be able to use this as a speed unit, but it's kill point potential is going to be low because it lacks any ranged punch.

Heavy:


Havocs - An obvious choice here.  Huge squads and 4 heavy weapons.  Great positive KP Potential here.

Obliterators - Not as durable as one would like for KP Denial but do add a lot of flexibility with long range potential and deep striking potential.  They may end up giving up a KP, but any experienced CSM player will tell you that Oblits can usually earn their KPs before they go down.

Overall:


As we already know, the CSM book lacks a lot of useful tools for a KP Denail list.  However, it does introduce a great concept of taking HUGE squads and swarming the board.  There may be some potential here to Horde the board like Orks can do and control objectives simply by covering them up in bodies, letting the units with high KP potential pick up the slack for you.

Bottom line, though is, I'm not sure you could really effectively point it out.  Overall, I think there may be some merit here but probably not ideal.  I wouldn't know either without play testing.

Demons have a few things going for them in the KP denial department, easy access to fast units, easy access to BIG units, and ability to control the board with some lethal close combat abilities.  Combining these concepts, I think you can do well with Demons in a KP denial scenario.

HQs:


Fateweaver - Probably what everyone will jump to!  Fatey can be a good buy, but he can also be a bad one.  The problem with Fatey is that he will be your opponent's target #1, and he will give up a KP.  The upside is, of course, while he's there, he makes you tough.  In my opinion, I think he's a crutch.  You can probably do without.

Heralds w/o Chariots - Because Heralds can be ICs, they can hide in squads.  Because Demons can make some very durable squads, this makes these guys as a HQ choice, durable.  Specifically, I like Tzeentch Heralds as a KP denial idea because they can add BS 4 Bolts to a Rhino killing party.  They can also bring some anti-infantry fire as well.

Elites:


Fiends - Fiends have some potential here simply because they can be a fast element.  Charging a unit on an objective late game contests it.  Being a demon, you are fearless and will live for a round against most opponents.  Downside to fiends, though, is they also give up KPs.

Crushers - Just a brick of a unit.  Can absorb a ton of shooting.  Because of that, these guys can also sit near mid-field and present an enormous CC threat.  Basically, they create a Threat bubble that is hard to remove.  Because of that, this gives relative safety to shooty units which CAN pick up KPs, like Horrors.

Troops:


Horrors - I think that Horrors are the way to go, just in general.  The reasons are many.  First, they can be in a squad of 20.  That 20 man squad can put out enough fire power to kill a 5 man infantry squad.  Second, bolts are obvious.  Third, because you can hide Heralds of Tzeentch in these squads to add more bolts.  What you end up with is a brick of a unit that has a great positive KP potential.

The downside to Horrors is they can be assaulted and tied up.  Not a problem for Demons!  That's why you include a brick of Crushers or Letters who will baby sit these units.

Letters - Same as Crushers above.  Take a brick and create a big threat.  Keeps the enemy away from Horrors.

Bearers - Decent tar pit potential.  Horrible KP potential.

Fast:


Khorne Dogs - Fast unit, just like fiends, but in a bigger squad.  Not a bad choice.

Seekers - Again, very fast.  Big squad.

Screamers - Probably my favorite pick.  The squads aren't as big, but they have a 4++ can can turbo-boost 24 inches.  This makes for a great contesting unit.  Being fearless with a 3++ (after a boost) basically means you can't dislodge them late game, even with assault (because of 4++).  Great choice here for a speed unit.  Not to mention, they carry melta bombs and so themselves can pick up a lot of KPs in a multi-assault or against Dreadnoughts.

Heavy:


Nothing to see here!  No, a Nurgle Demon Prince is not durable. :P

Overall:


I'll pony up a list on this one because I think, unlike with CSM, there is a potential here for a pretty good army to examine.

HQ;
Herald of Tzeentch + Legion + Master + Bolt
Herald of Tzeentch + Legion + Master + Bolt
Herald of Tzeentch + Legion + Master + Bolt
Herald of Tzeentch + Legion + Master + Bolt

Elite:
8 x Crushers

Troops:
17 x Letters
18 x Horrors + Bolt
18 x Horrors + Bolt

Fast:
12 x Screamers
12 x Screamers

Weird looking!

The bottom line is, you are going to drop mid-field.  You are going to put your Heralds in with a Horror squad and start plinking away at Transport with Herald bolts while swamping infantry with the rest.  (Split fire from Legion and Sorcery).  When that unit gets low, move the Heralds to the next squad.

Your letters and Crushers are simply there to keep the enemy away.  Most armies can't advance into a combat potential that rough.  (Think about it, your opponent will want to advance on YOU.)

Screamers are there to hang out till late game and fly out to contest.

Hopefully this list points out some concepts.

1)  Great positive KP potential.
2)  Ability to control the board with a big threat bubble.
3)  Speed units to contest objectives late game.

Downsides


Some armies will have enough bullets and bodies to overwhelm you.

BAO Format Scorer Beta Version 1.2 Released

http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/post31187.html#p31187

Fixes:

- Corrected known issue with Player Passwords being set to admin password when editing players in roster.
- Corrected known issue with Admin password being reset while editing players!  (Oops!)

New Features:
- Added "Remove Password" feature to both Roster Editor and main program.  This is intended for people who will not have players entering in their own data OR if you are just playing with the software.  Under Password, select Remove Password.  This will tell the program to stop prompting for passwords at each juncture.

- Added DEBUG Menu.

- Added Create Roster under DEBUG menu.  This will create a Tournament Roster automatically up to the specified number of players and rounds.  This will allow you to very quickly create tournament rosters without having to create them by hand.  This way, you can test/play with software easily.

- Added AutoFill under DEBUG Menu.  Use this in a round to automatically generate scores for all players in the round.  Use this to help you test/play with the software so as not having to hand key scores each round during your test.

Kill Point Denial: Lists Intro and Space Marines

Before I get to talking about potential for different codices, I wanted to do a little introduction to the type of lists that you will see.  Each list will contain hard to kill units, units which are designed to grab easy kill points, and units which are designed for speed in contesting objectives.

Past that, most of the lists I am going to offer are merely concepts.  I have no clue if they will actually work as I have not played them all.  What I am doing is building lists around concepts, intended to exaggerate useful tactics or points.  If you really wanted to use a specific codex to build a kill point denial list, I would put a lot more thought into it than the little glance I am taking to show points.

Accordingly, I can all but guarantee you that most of the lists I will present here are probably terribly inefficient and also not very good.  To further prove the point, I will point out areas where I see weakness in the list along with strengths.  The idea here is a learning experience (for both you and me, really) not an exercise in providing you with powerful lists, something which I won't even guarantee is possible with every codex.

My path forward here will be to identify some very good choices in each codex and explain why.  Then, using those choices, construct a list that shows concepts, discussing its strengths and weaknesses.

Space Marines


One of the older books, Space Marines has a lot of sneakery that can be applied to kill point denial.  Just at a n initial glance, here are some units which really catch my eye for a KP Denial theme:

HQs

Korsarro Khan - He allows you to take bikes as troops and outflank.  First off, troop bikes are awesome because they are both your speed element and potential scorers.  They also bring a decent amount of anti-tank capability for each kill points.  Furthermore, Khan will allow to null deploy and come on where the enemy is weak.  Great choice!

Darnath Lysander - 4 Wounds, 2+/3++, and Eternal Warrior.  For those Paladin fans out there, I see a lot of potential here for a model that can join a unit, and be used to absorb those one off S8 and Ap2 shots.  Not to mention, he's a beast in combat.  A model like Darnath causes your opponent to have to bring something bigger than just an above average assault unit if he wants to dislodge you.  Grey Hunters just won't cut it!  He also has Bolter Drill which could be used in combination with normal terminators for anti-infantry positive kill point potential, and he also brings bolster defenses which can be used to increase cover saves.  All around great choice!

Marneus Calgar -Not as good as Darnath, but again, Eternal Warrior and a beast.

Librarian + Gate of Infinity - Very good choice!  Gate of Infinity could be used to run away from the enemy or used to contest objectives late game.  This package allows you to avoid dying as well as pigeon-hole an objective on the last turn.  The psychic hood doesn't hurt either!

Master of the Forge + Conversion Beamer - Here's a unit that has an incredible range on a weapon that can easily gib a tank.  This is a good thought as we can stay out of enemy range and still potentially pick up an easy kill point or two.

Elites

Terminators - 2+ save and ability to carry 2 x Cyclones in a 10 Man squad.  4 Missile Shots are great at picking up easy transport kill points.  Also, combine that with Storm Bolters, and we have a pretty good squad at taking down 5 man infantry squads for easy kill points.  Durable and positive kill point potential.  Throw in Darnath, and you are cooking with grease!

Assault Terminators - One of the major weaknesses of most KP Denial lists is what I call the "Storm Raven Charge".  These are generally GK or BA lists that charge forward to deposit a lot of scary assault units.  Bad if you don't have something to blunt them!  This is that something.

Troops


Tactical Squad - 10 men, and a long range tank busting weapon.  Not a bad choice here!  Have a decent kill point potential and ability to run, hide, and score.


Scout Squad - Camo-cloaks + cover = kill point denial at its finest.  Cheap, scoring, go to ground for a 2++.  You can also take a missile launcher for the potential, not great, at killing a transport.


Bikes - Another great choice!  Able to carry a multi-melta that can move!  Able to carry plasma weapons that can move and fire, thus being able to potentially pop a rhino and stay away from the enemy.  More importantly, they can turbo for a 3++ to contest and because they score, even claim!  Probably the best choice.


Fast


Bikes - See above.

Assault Marines - Again, 10 men with potential to move fast, stick around in a fight, and potentially grab a transport kill.  Not idea here, but workable.

Heavy


Devastators - 10 x men with 4 ranged anti-tank weapons.  Great positive kill point potential!

Concept List: (2000)

HQ:
Darnath Lysander
Korsarro Khan + Moondrakken

Elites:
8 x Assault Terminators w/ TH/SS
10 x Terminators w/ 2 x Cyclones

Troops:
5 x Scouts + Camo Cloaks + ML
5 x Scouts + Camo Cloaks + ML
8 x Bikes + 2 x Plasma Guns + Combi-Melta + Attack Bike + MM
8 x Bikes + 2 x Plasma Guns + Combi-Melta + Attack Bike + MM

Kill Points: 8

Positive Notes:

- You can potentially null deploy the whole army to deny your opponent many rounds of shooting.  Deep striking terminators, whole army outflanking, walking on, etc.
- Darnath goes with the normal Terminators most of the time.  He can absorb one off wounds.
- Khan and Bikes can outflank.  Come in via reserves, mostly outflank.  Bikes can take pot shots at transports at 24 inches to earn easy kill points, or turbo around terrain to stay alive.  Great for late game contesting!
- Khan can also break off late game to turbo-contest by himself or be used to wreck a small 5 man squad on a back-field objective!
- Scouts are great for holding your own objectives if needed and have a 2++ if they go to ground.
- The assault terminators are there to protect you from a "Storm Raven Charge" or very fast moving assault army.
- The normal Termies have 4 missile shots for easy transport killing and a lot of storm bolter shots.

Negative Notes:

- Against a very fast moving assault army, or drop army, you may find yourself in trouble as you have little to hold them back with.  This would be a case where you need 2nd turn and to null deploy.
- Against an army that brings a tremendous amount of anti-infantry, this type of list doesn't quite have the durability I would like to see.  It will be durable against most lists, but there will be some to which it is not.
- Won't play well against another KP Denial style list.

General Feelings:

Not a very good list!  It does point out some very useful tactics though!

One that is really worth mentioning is the idea of using Khan to break off an late game contest.  Using ICs for this capacity is generally great because it creates another unit you can contest with.

You can also combat squad your bikes if you feel like you can survive enemy fire to add even more contesting potential.

Many KP Denial lists have a "fire base" that needs to be protected from fast moving assault.  Your assault terminators and Darnath are there for this reason.  Your normal terminators will be a fire base (not bad in assault either!) and will need some amount of protection against certain list styles.

Kill Point Denial #5: Playing to the Concept

So far in this series, I have discussed useful definitions, why KP Denial lists work in multiple objective missions, and a few of the more important unit choice concepts like durability, positive kill point potential, and speed units.

The last article before I start examining possible Kill Point Denial lists in Article #6 is to talk about playing to the concept of the list.  This is the most important aspect of the concept.  If you take a Kill Point Denial style list but are not prepared to play to the concept, it will most likely either net you a very boring game or not much success.

The basic game plan of Kill Point Denial is to gather a few kill points, generally very low amounts, while not giving up any of your own.  This will easily win your the Kill Point portion of a multiple objective mission.  The second concept is to either tie all other objectives, attempt to win one more objective, or let the opponent have one, tie one, and win on a tie breaker which is generally victory points.

There are some fundamental play tactics that go into winning the game in one of the above ways.

1)  You are generally in control of the flow of the game.


The reason why you are generally in control is that you are most likely already winning the game before it even starts on kill points.  From there, you are building your plan to either tie or win a second objective.  In this manner, you will often have the capacity to direct where the battle will be fought, what objectives will be contested, and where your opponent will end up moving.

The reason why this is generally true is because your opponent is already on his back foot.  The advantage and confidence of going into a game knowing that you have most likely won if nothing else happens is tremendous.  Furthermore, generally, your opponent has built his list, play style, and had practice games which revolve around "how do I kill my opponent?"  Except against very seasoned players, this puts you at a further advantage because most opponents won't even know where to begin to react to an opponent that is actively seeking not to die.  For example, in order for brutal assault units to work, the enemy has to be engaged at some point, which, with careful practice you will realize, is hard to do when you are running away from them.

As a point, it is almost always in your favor to go second because you want to control the game.  This way, you can see where you opponent will place his easy kill points, know where to blunt or counter your opponents moves, and more importantly, give you the last turn so you can use your speed units to contest objectives at the very end of the game while not giving up kill points.  The last point there is the most critical.

2)  Kill Point Denial doesn't really kill stuff


This is a fundamental principle more than anything else.  You have to clear your mind of all the strategy and tactics you have developed over the years about how to most effectively annihilate your opponent.  Most of us have a repertoire of tricks, traps, and tactics that we have learned on how to best put our pieces into position to maximize the damage they do to the enemy.  We have learned basic concepts like target priority, combined attacks, and bating traps used to knock our opponent's models off the table in the best way possible.

Kill Point Denial style is an entirely different kung-fu.  Useful tactics here don't revolve around destroying the enemy.  Useful tactics revolve around preventing the enemy from killing your units and ways to contest objectives.

Things like setting up screens, move + run AWAY, hiding weak units behind terrain, turbo-boosting for last turn objectives, using assaults to drag opponents off of objectives or to position yourself onto them for contesting, bating your opponent to one side of the board, keeping your opponent out of range, etc. are all ways in which Kill Point Denial works.

One of the real advantages here, as listed above, is that you will be playing a different kind of game than your opponent in most cases.  You also have the advantage of generally having had a lot of experience playing the type of game your opponent wants to play.  This means that you are generally much more capable of predicting what he will do than he is predicting what you will do.  (This of course doesn't work against very seasoned players.)

3)  Setting up Objective Opportunities

As stated earlier, one of the key components of Kill Point Denial is the last turn objective contest/grab.  This isn't always the case, but in a lot of lists, it will be.  To effectively do this, your mind set needs to be one of setting up Objective Opportunities.

For example, one very useful tactic I have found is what I call the bait and switch.  Take a core part of your army to one side of the board, generally out of range of enemy fire.  For a "kill 'em all" player, this means he will move to that side of the board to try and kill you.  This generally sets up objective opportunities on the other side of the board for your speed units.  More often, what will happen is your opponent will end up leaving a very weak unit or two to hold objectives while he advances on you.

Another very important tactic is using the fact that the game will end to stop your opponent's forward aggression.  For example, one very popular Space Wolf list that I commonly run into, what I call the "Kopach" list, generally involves a bunch of Rhinos with larger squads of Grey Hunters backed by Long Fangs.  (There is usually a scout squad or 2 as well).  This type of list really relies on you to stand your ground to fight with it.  If you, however, run from it for several turns, eventually, what will happen is that the Space Wolf player will be forced to stop his forward movement in order to back-track or guard objectives that litter the board.  He may continue with a couple of units, but this significantly weakens his front and makes it now very risky for him to send just a portion of his army into the fray while the rest is trying to take objectives in turns 4+.

Armed with that kind of knowledge, you can begin setting up the avenues with which you will contest objectives with your speed units or attempt to force a tie to win on Victory Points.  (If shrugging off 15 missiles a turn for 5+ turns isn't very easy for your army to do, you need to revisit the toughness of your list as a whole)

The important take away here is to think about how your opponent will play and how to set up opportunities for you to take or contest objectives late game.  This combined with point #1 is usually the major power behind a kill point denial strategy.

Conclusion


Just like any other strategy, there is no guaranteed win behind the entire kill point concept.  (That should be a given.  If there was a perfect list and perfect way to play, we'd all be doing it.)  Kill Point Denial lists and strategy though will generally produce very close, "skin of your teeth" style games where you eek out wins on the last turn through objective contesting.

If the concept of playing a very strategic game of 40K intrigues you more so than the concept of annihilating your enemy, it's something that is worth a shot.  If not, you may find KP Denial lists to be very boring to play as there generally isn't a lot of action in the games until the final turns.

BAO Format Tournament Management Suite Beta 1.1

In further testing of Beta 1.0, I found a critical error when scheduling tournaments for greater than 10 players. The algorithm used to schedule players was causing the program to run out of available memory trying to find the best possible of all possible scheduling permutations.

So, I revisited the algorithm as a whole and came up with a much smarter method which will still work through all possible permutations to find the best scheduling match possible but does so in order rather than all up front, thus no memory issue.

This method of scheduling I call the "bubble" method. The concept is to first "pure" pair all participants by their current battle points. Then sort that list.

Then starting at position 0, begin working the way down the list, finding the first possible match (as in not played before and not in the same group). When found, mark for both. Move to next position and start searching down the list again with the next position + 1. Continue doing this. If a conflict occurs where it is not possible to find a match, bubble up to the previous match and re-match the previous but starting at the last match + 1 in the list. Continue this process till a solid schedule is found or until you have completely bubbled back out of the list. If a complete bubble occurs, perform the same algorithm, this time only rejecting "played before". If still bubbles out, reject only "groups". If still bubbles out, scheduling is impossible so just return the Pure pairing.

I corrected a major issue where player passwords were not being correctly accepted to enter in scores.

I also added some more notifications to file creations to inform you of what kind of file you are creating rather than just showing you a save file dialog.

Download Beta Version 1.1 here:

http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/bao-format-tournament-management-suite-t3611.html

BAO Format Tournament Management Suite

Over the past couple of months, I have been building the tournament management suite that we will be using to run the 2 RTTs at X-Con 2012 in May.

This software is designed to run battle points (can do win/loss as well with some creating scoring) tournaments which use the Bay Area Open GT Format for utilizing all 3 book missions in play as objectives for a single mission.

This suite also handles Sports Scoring, Appearance Scoring, Generalship Scoring, and Best Overall, including a lot of variations and options.

The entire suite is also designed to run a completely paper free tournament which can be nearly hands off for a tournament organizer, allowing players to register themselves, enter in their own round scores, sports scores, and collect appearance judge scores, using various applications and files, into the final scoring portion of the main program.

A very rudimentary document is included in the zip file which explains most of the details.

This software is currently in Beta Version 1.0. It's working, but I haven't fully tested it yet to work out any bugs. Also keep in mind that I didn't idiot proof it either. So, there are several ways I'm sure you can crash the program by doing inappropriate actions.

Feel free to use. If you find any bugs, send me an e-mail: 11thcompany@tangtwo.com

I will release a new version when I finish full out testing and bug fixing.

Here's where the zip file is:

http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/bao-format-tournament-management-suite-t3611.html

I should mention these are .NET applications. So, will require .NET Framework 4 (probably) and most likely won't work on a Mac, as I don't think there is a .NET Framework download for Mac? Dunno! Not a Mac guy.

Kill Point Denial and Multiple Objective Missions / The New Power List Pt 4

In part 4 of this series, I will cover two more principles of building an effective Kill Point Denial list. Part 1 of this series introduced the concept and definitions including the key point that Kill Point Denial relies heavily on the Multiple Objective Mission format. The second article discussed the reasons why Kill Point Denial has great advantages in these style missions. The third article introduce the first principle of Kill Point Denial, using and identifying units that are "tough" and won't give up kill points.

Positive Kill Point Potential

Not giving up Kill Points by utilizing some tough units is only part of the process. To win at Kill Points, you still have to have a way to claim your own. When you combine a list's potential to not give up kill points plus claim some, you need to have a strong positive kill point potential. This is a more or less subjective measure on a list's ability to pick up some kill points while not giving any up. This is subjective because it varies from match-up to match-up, based on dice rolls, and a whole lot of other factors. (What does't in 40k?)

Increasing your Positive Kill Point Potential

One good way to do this is to include units which are very good at taking down light armor. Since the 5th ed. paradigm is to run heavy transport lists and since transports are generally "not tough" (see article 3), they give up easy kill points. Thus, one way to pick up easy kill points would be to specifically target these style vehicles with your list. The concept is you snipe out a few easy transport kills which ups your kill points while not giving away any and gain a substantial kill point lead. At that point, you are free to focus on other objectives or just running away for the win.

Another good way to pick up some easy kill points is designed around units which can take down small, 5 man squads with solid anti-infantry fire. Again, this is abusing the MSU paradigm. Since you know that a lot of your opponents will be utilizing small squads in their lists, design some anti-infantry shooting around taking them out easily. This is basically the same concept as aiming for easy to kill transports but just aiming for troops instead.

GENERALLY, aiming for transports is the smarter option because this will deny your opponent mobility which is tactically good for avoiding assaults as well as competing for another objective in the mission.

Foot units like 10 man devastator squads are both tough due to squad size as well as add a lot of positive kill point potential in their ability to take down light armor. It's very easy for 4 lascannons, for example, to kill a Rhino, netting a quick KP. The enemy has to dump a lot of fire into devastators to take them out, and when things get scary, they just pack up and run for terrain. ALL OF THAT creates a positive kill point potential.

Second Objective Plan

A solid KP Denial list should find winning at Kill Points to be extremely trivial through a combination of list and tactics. However, to really be successful with a KP Denial list, I have found that you absolutely need to include a plan for how you will score a 2nd objective in a multiple objective mission.

The reason for this is that this gives you options to win the game rather than just tie. Overall, then, this increases the tactical flexibility of your entire game plan.

Second Objectives change from tournament to tournament. How will you know what you need to do? Read the tournament primer and make a decision. Here are a few tips.

Speed units are a great way to contest and/or control objectives. This generally includes unit which can turbo-boost, move flat out, or are "tar pit" style units with 18-24 inch charge ranges. These units excel at doing things like contesting your opponent Cap&Control objective on the last turn to force him into a loss on that objective or simply contesting Seize Ground objectives to PREVENT your opponent from winning on that objective. Basically, units which can quickly re-deploy elsewhere on the battlefield while also using their speed to make them "tough" to avoid assaults and shooting with terrain.

(KEY POINT: Always remember that in multiple objectives, the game is not just to claim objectives but you can also win by denying your opponent the ability to get objectives)

Outflanking, back field, and reserve manipulation units are also very good here. Again, this tends to focus on contesting objectives. Just be very careful that you aren't giving up easy kill points just to have an out-flanking unit. Also, Deep Striking works very well here.

A more advanced tactic is the tar pit unit, just in general. These are the types of units which can engage in a close combat that will essentially last the entire game. Thus, they don't give up kill points, but more importantly, they prevent enemy units from moving away from the combat. This has many benefits if deployed properly. The first is, if you can tar pit a unit on top of an objective, the objective will be contested for the rest of the game. Likewise, if you can tar pit key enemy units, you can prevent them from getting to any objectives on your side of the board to assaulting your units.

The Short is, you need a plan

The key to the principle here is having a plan about how you will go about getting that 2nd objective. More importantly, it is having a plan above and beyond just winning the game on kill points.