Looking back
at the Da Boyz Team Tourney, I’m surprised how much list tailoring and the pairing
mechanism influenced the game balance. You might say that’s a fairly obvious
revelation (come on, you knew that you were playing at a team event right?),
but I think that there is a definite difference between the theoryhammer view
of a team event I had before hand and the reality of playing in one. Before the
event, I was confident in generating a well-rounded all comers list that could
play multiple rolls. Now, I can definitely see how designing a specific list to
fill a specific roll would have been more beneficial. Chalk it up to experience
over theory.
Pairing is also another mechanic that can throw a monkey wrench into your plans. Talking to my teammates, I think we all agreed that things could have gone differently if we put more thought into pairings. It wasn’t as simple as (X army > Y army). We all had favorable matchups in mind, but I think our opponents did well in depriving us of good options. They were also rock solid opponents.
Pairing is also another mechanic that can throw a monkey wrench into your plans. Talking to my teammates, I think we all agreed that things could have gone differently if we put more thought into pairings. It wasn’t as simple as (X army > Y army). We all had favorable matchups in mind, but I think our opponents did well in depriving us of good options. They were also rock solid opponents.
So, what could
have been done differently? I definitely see how attacker and defender lists
can benefit the team. Being able to generate a list that handles a specific
problem was something we lacked. For instance, Hyv3mynd took it for the team
and faced down 2 Dark Eldar armies. I’m not sure we had the tools in our arsenals
to handle the DE. Next time, I maybe one of us will bring an army tailored against
mobile shooting. I think that there was a ‘team building’ aspect of the event
we may have missed out on. Instead of 4 guys coming together and playing what
we usually play, team building, where we focus on strengths and complement our
weaknesses, could factor into our overall strategy.
All of that
said, I’m not too sure what else I would change. My first two games were
fantastic and really close. I don’t know about you, but the close ones are my favorite.
My third game was a complete tactical failure on my part, but was still pretty
good because of my opponent. In the end, ‘The Grand Stategery!’ finished near
the bottom of the battle points (lol, we may have entered the sub-basement of
battle points). At the end of the event, I had to cut out early and drive a
teammate home. While driving, we were talking about the event and how we were
both a little disappointed in our performance. Before it could turn into a pity-party
Hyv3mynd called to tell us that we’d missed the awards ceremony and our team
managed to snag the Best Sports award! Combined with the good games, it was
great day.
Thinking about
the event itself, my only criticism of the event concerns the missions and how
they were scored. The missions weren’t bad, they were pretty much old 5th
ed objectives, but they lacked the flavor provided by the new edition. I was
really surprised how small additions like Slay the Warlord and First Blood
change how the game feels. The missions felt a bit bland, which is fairly weird
as I was happily playing them just a few months ago. I suppose it shows how
good the new mission structure is.
In terms of
the scoring, each team could score 80 points per round, 20 points per player.
If you won big, you could score the full 20 points. If you tied your game, each
player would score anywhere between 3-7 points each. In a few of my games, the
combined score of my opponent and me added up to 12 points. If you had a close
game, both players would get low scores. To me, the close games scored both
sides like losses. It didn’t seem right.
That wraps up
the team event for me. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be covering the Fantasy
side of the GT, the Local Invitational tournament, and I’ll be posting a few
game aids for download. Thanks for reading.
-Crispy
What a weird scoring system o_O
ReplyDeleteWe have an interesting one for "Brothers in arms" tourney. It's close to rulebook, but differentiates the poins. Victory is 12-16 points. Draw is 11-9 points. Loss is 4-8 points. The number of points depends on the combination of primary and secondary (first blood, linebreaker...) objectives scored.
And, at last, all the losses are counted and substruct/add from 0 to 4 points, making the system a 0-20 point system, where the sum of your and your opponents scores is always 20 points.
Yeah, normally that is the case, and from the website's description of the event, that's the way it was supposed to be. I'm not sure what happened in between to weird things out.
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