 Hello everybody if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer weekly coming to you with an Early show because we are joined by a very special guest today that I am happy to have on the show Colonel cabbage. How you doing buddy? I'm doing great. Thanks. How you guys doing? Couldn't be better Joining me as always is my forever and only co-host. He's here. It's Tyler Tyler, would you like a funny story? German About five minutes ago ten minutes ago. I'll be generous ten minutes ago Tom Texted me and said what are we talking about tonight? Like come on buddy But to be fair to Tom he's been heads down this week his hobby time has been Ridlentless painting to get ready for a holy havoc this weekend So, you know with the upcoming tournament crunch is always a time So I I was like nah, man, you keep painting. It's good. We got this covered dog I told him he didn't just let it hanging for the next five hours. No, that would have been very funny But but no I did tell him straight up. Yeah, it's it's all good So As people roll in we're gonna start of course, we're gonna talk about Tournament Warhammer today talking about what makes tournaments great talk about how to make a great tournament Maybe that's what I should have called this how to make a great tournament. I don't know I went back and forth on the name of this and maybe I'll change it afterward but if people think of a better a Better title, please do as you guys we go through the show because we're gonna talk about the elements of tournaments What makes it a positive thing how to run the best tournament for the players, right? That's what you're wanting You're wanting the players to have the best time. Yeah, and and sort of how do we get there, right? What are players like? What do we not want? What makes them for the best environment all that kind of stuff Is what we're gonna discuss. It's gonna be a good time And Charlie is a to extraordinaire so more than about that. I've only done a couple That's that's a I they've all been very highly highly Reviewed and so that that gives us some good information to work from I think we've all three of us have played a fair number of tournaments as well So we know what we like and don't like All right, but Tyler take us into some news buddy. What do we got? Oh So rumor engine as always It's looking like some kind of bug. It's been a big bug here. I mean obviously my brain goes towards civil math or tyrannids Charlie you got any guesses and what the heck? Yeah, I think this is Either the red terror From tyrannids or it's a new lictor slash death leaper from tyrannids. They've got those sort of mandible things And those are really old scopes. They are Right horrendously old I Tend to agree this like like don't be wrong They could throw us a wacky curveball and it wouldn't surprise me that much right? This turns out to be some kind of weird like bug head adornment on the back of a Model like an AOS model and I'd be like, yeah, sure. Why not, you know Like I would have never guessed when they showed the close-up of the little bug hatching from the egg or whatever in a rumor engine My guess would have never been sylvaneth trumpeter Sylvaneth flutist, yeah, yes, exactly right So, you know like sometimes they'll throw you some curveballs But I I agree with you like it we have to be due for an update to those models. They are ancient ancient models Maybe it's like a grot holding a mandible that's torn off and it's just gonna hit someone with it Yeah, and the only thing gives me pause is the second one up in the top corner going like like this up in the corner that piece, you know That almost makes me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes me think like oh, it could be a wacky headdress Oh Right because you could see the legs like going out Like in this kind of a thing. You see what I'm saying like imagine. That's the lowest left Headdress piece you with me like imagine as a face Right here off to the side off to the the right of the current image. Yeah And it's almost like a bug Pointed iron halo is the best way I would describe it. Yeah Yeah, I think there's that you can see the little crook of an elbow though right on the right-hand side though I think that's just another another joint could be yeah, certainly could be you're absolutely right These could be you know could be just a joint I'm just saying like if it was going to be a curveball if it's that I'm going to look super smart whenever this model comes out Like oh, yeah, that's that's exactly what I meant Steve said I am very loud. Okay. I'm very loud Why am I very loud? I don't seem very loud There we go. I'll turn myself down a little. Hopefully that's better everyone. All right What else we got? Yeah, we had the warm up and day and What we got quite a few previews I know you did a show on that on saturday with tom and he was a jev. Yeah, john in there. I think Yep, tom and john joined me for the reaction show. That's right Yeah So I don't know how much we want to talk about that. Well, I look my opinions have been well stated But we haven't gotten opinions from either of you. So charlie. You're the guest hit us up first uh I was got a uh, I was playing the tournament when it was happening as a spare player So I kind of missed it at the time. Yep, but I sort of word filtered through that there was a new nergal tone I'm with you vince. I'm not really a nergal guy. He's he's bottom rung on the chaos gods for me But I kind of I'm happy it's coming out because I sort of see it as a necessary step on the road to the next beast of chaos book Sure It's not a happen beforehand. Tell me if this is good everybody by the way my audio I'm really trying to like my mic isn't near my face. It's not it's it's this far away So but that's fine All right And I have it way the gain way down, but we'll see we'll see I can keep adjusting I'm not trying to red line and blow everybody's ears off Yeah, I mean nergal is clearly the I agree. It's the lowest rung But I I think we were all hoping it was going to be a beast's book because we felt like That was needed like nergal had gotten a lot of love and attention recently Yeah, but it ended up going the dock route of like well, this will probably Be a big change It'll roll the new models in and some of the new rules will carry over and there'll be a lot of new rules and stuff like that But whenever when has GW ever done then the order of need? Literally never I mean and if you think about that that's not that surprising because like That was the oldest book there. I like I shot the gain way down. We'll see if this enough Um Nergal is the oldest book. Yes, but also if you think about it, they have to start the book process what 18 months Two years maybe for initial planning out, you know something like that like probably 18 months ish You don't know what the state of the meta is really going to be by that point Yeah, so it's it's hard. It might be a case where they just decide There are too many rules spread across too many books for nergal at this point Let's just put them all together Chuck it out the door Yeah, yeah uh Well, I saw I saw a relian is building nergal. So that's all the confirmation I need It's going to be powerful. I don't even know if he's still play testing, but just by the mere fact Osmosis or otherwise that relian is building a nergal army. That's all we need There it is. That's that's your confirmation Uh, okay It seems potent that disease rule. We haven't seen it yet, but that sounds pretty potent be be close to people and take border wounds For the rest of the game. Sure. My eyes already don't like that. Yeah. I mean my guess is that's going to be the uh The the allegiance ability though. That's the trick, right? Like yeah It'll be like the wheel will go You'll you'll have that and your your uh, your summoning points basically, right and that's That's where it will be. Those are your allegiance abilities The the mortal wound passing thing and then this is how you get your Nergal grossness all over the board My guess is they'll revamp some of the points calculations to make it more straightforward Uh, as far as like counting it. Yeah, and then that's it. That's that's your allegiance abilities, right? And then everything else everywhere. It's mortar wounds everywhere. Yeah Everyone's a scraggler Why not? Why not? It's just it's it's scraggler out the army. Yes indeed. Yeah, you get a scraggler. You get a scraggler All right anything else from the uh, the weekend that grabbed your attention there charlie Uh, the red goblin rob was talking about it today as well about how there's a new red goblin model There's a new book and things and I was just thinking We had one last year like so we're getting annual red goblin models now And yet I still have to endure people pushing marauders and salamanders at me Can't they put those molds into other stuff rather than annual updates for a christmas model? It does make you wonder. Yes, uh Like I have to wonder why You know, like I I like fun models. Don't get me wrong. You know, yeah, yeah Uh fun models are good But the But at the same time boy, oh boy, you're not wrong. Like I look at my skaven and I'm like We could use some love. So, you know, but that's fine. I get it It's easier to make one fun model likely than it is to make uh to redo An army that's in need of that much help and love. So all fair So probably like hundreds of thousands of pounds for a mold or something, right? Uh, so they're using the the way they do the molds their their molds depending on the size of the thing Probably cost somewhere between like I can put it in usd. I don't know the translation But probably cost between 30 and 80 thousand dollars per mold For like for for a mass produced plastic of the size and quality that they're doing it Because you have to like diamond cut the steel with it. It's a very it's a very like It's a very complicated process to get a mold that's sharp and that effective And it takes really highly skilled engineers to like people to do that. It's not it's not a um easy process Is what I'll say Yeah getting visited here So it's fun for one Who's who's on from the uk is it oan jackson? No, it's not oan jackson Don't don't be mean to charlie this is That's So she can't stop herself. I'm sorry. All right, I'll take him. Okay. I love you here We're sure none of us compared oan so yeah, yeah You have long time to go. He's a singular force in the universe a celebrity above all else. So it is what it is Yeah, I went to see him yesterday as house and I felt I felt pretty honored to be there And also I enjoy how much he hates this Oh It's all kathy's fault. She walked in once and just out and like just out of nowhere pulled that out and it was great I'm so glad it's followed him around It makes me endlessly happy um, okay Uh, cool anything else that we want to talk about from the weekend. I do have the red goblet by the way cool bottle It's fun. He's fun. Yeah So yep. All right, cool. That's right. Train looks really good with four cry Yeah, it does. I I'm very excited about that new terrain. I think it looks really nice so Hopefully we'll see uh I like I love that we did the preview show the wherever day and then like the next day It was like and also next week you'll pre-order this like whoa That was a fast turnaround. You really were keeping that one on the down low So yeah, fine. Good enough for me All right, shall we talk shall we move on gentlemen to the next thing because I don't think we have any other news, right? That's it. That's it. Look at that fastest news segment ever Uh, all right, let's talk pick of the week charlie. You're the guest you go first Yeah, I said you um an article written by uh, man called peter h really says his non-diplom is the blind general And it's a little bit older from the end of august, but I thought it's worth highlighting. Um it's about a guy who And unfortunately suffered macular degeneration in his mid 20s from his early 20s to mid 20s leaving him, I guess mostly blind um And he was playing 40k Until this until this happened and then recently he's been trying to get work out a way to get back into the hobby um He talks about in this article he talks about the struggles he's facing and what he's doing to sort of mitigate those For instance, um They had to pick out a color scheme that would work for him for his armies with macular degeneration Not sure if you know much about it. I think you lose a lot of your central vision But you still have some vision on your peripheries. Okay, um, my grandmother actually had it and for some reason She's quite eccentric, but she always Said that she could see the television best with binoculars. We had no idea how that works But um, they see you see better from the sides than the center Okay, and in the article he talks about purple being one of the colors he can see more clearly So they had to pick a purple color scheme for his army so he could pick up the models and then he's got um Someone who goes with him. I think to measure distances and move models And basically do callouts of where things are But doesn't do any decision making so he can then make decisions on what to do And like help him roll dice and things like that. That's quite interesting Yeah, interesting world view into how how the hobby can be made accessible to people Yeah, that's fantastic That article is linked down below. So it's in the description. Check it out. That sounds that sounds wonderful And I love the idea that like a certain color Was more easily Visible to him. That's that's fascinating. Like I have to wonder what was going on there. So that's really cool Okay, very good. It's only short, but hopefully we'll get some more from him sometime. Yeah, absolutely Tyler what do you got for pick of the week for everybody? Yeah, nothing anything as inspiring. Interesting as that, but I really enjoyed the talking iron jaws with Donnie Gerlitz one of the Detroit gt fellas Had coach adam on last week. So, yeah, we're just really good show Can't get enough discussion about it. I mean, there's been a lot of discussion about the new book About some iron jaws, but yeah, I enjoyed that one. Donnie. I think he went 5-0 At michigan gt with the new book. I believe Wonderful. Oh, yeah Yeah, I it's a aos coach, by the way, uh, that's that's what you're talking about with uh, I don't think you mentioned coach's name But yes, this was coach's interview with him. Uh, that is also linked below. It was a really good interview and, uh my I'm worried Tyler I'm worried These pigs are too cheap. I'm worried. Oh, they're way too cheap I'm worried these pigs are too cheap and too good for what they are like. It's It's a problem. I don't want to see everything in that army shoot like I don't want collateral collateral damage because the pigs Yeah, I don't want to see a bunch of stuff go up in points Just make the scrolls worse like you could take away our red and two on the pigs. It's cool I'd rather just have the stats of where they were. I didn't need that Go away. They're so good. They're five points cheaper than than bullcores It's uh, it's not a favorable comparison for the bullcores. Let me say let me say that Yeah Neither of those units are where they should be Right, right, so Mmm, I'm worried, but I'm going to enjoy this couple months of uh, of it being like this. So I guess Yeah, I you know I the thing about iron jaws that I worry about is the new player experience Like they have made an army that's so fast and so brutal Uh, I have to I have to new I have to like I have to put the josh brolin emphasis on it right like they're brutal um And you know, it's so fast and so brutal to new players that You know somebody who really doesn't know how to chaff properly or set up because you're like, oh, I'm playing a game Oh, I'm dead What happened there? You know, it's all in an army that can one to two drop quite comfortably without Losing any power right, so Yeah, they set in a slightly weird space maybe sort of a similar space to sons of behemoth in age of s2 Where they're pretty brutal to new players, but the knight will necessarily go the distance in a tournament every time Completely agree. There's this like there's this Very dangerous line where an army can be You know completely handleable by sort of players who've passed a certain knowledge threshold like alpha melee Is not a thing that wins five games in a tournament like just it barely has ever Unless it was so crazy overwhelming because we've always had chaff and movement tricks and stuff like that and now in 3.0 It's even worse. So you've got redeploy. You've got Unleash hell you've got all sorts of you got all that defense, you know, you've got options to protect yourself And so, you know alpha melee is is even worse Than always like it's it's an actual worse strategy as far as winning competitive games But they're so brutal and how they compete that if you're a player that isn't at that knowledge level where you know how to fight them They just kick you in the teeth Right. Um, so like yeah, it's it's very hard to 5.0 with that kind of that kind of a strat It's not I mean like they're perfectly competitive if played in a more careful way At the higher like and they do have that those multiple settings But the problem is there's this huge gap in knowledge between highly competitive people and casual people Right and the casual people just aren't ready for what the for the thunder as it were Right. Yeah Yeah, I'm looking forward to us doing the our in-depth show. I mean like we talked about last time we brought this up What's the fellow's name who did the show with rob that amazing powerpoint Leo Yeah, it's like well god leo's kind of leo and rob kind of covered it But I do think yeah, there's still some mileage there to be explored And yeah, I don't know if I've ever played an army with that level of raw power Like even you know, like daughters of k and I was playing the nod 15 You know, it's only 10 as I would tell everybody only 10 snake bows and rat they not the full band And this ij felt just even crazier than that list And yeah And it was it was a lot of power A lot of power coming in. Luckily for me, he's sort of alpha into my herdstone range So I kind of slapped him back pretty hard We spent about two hours on turns one and two while the army had about six models each Yeah Dr. Scots. I'm just going to call you doctor. Dr. Scottavis Whatever Don't come to me for pronunciations in the chat said alpha melee is mega npe because you literally dominate your opponent It doesn't grow the game. It's bad for the game. Like this is the problem It's challenging for new players But if you want a melee only army to actually succeed in the game and be competitive It has to be that threatening To at the competitive level because right because truly competitive armies generally play a mixed strategy Know how to Like know how to mitigate such a thing with easy chaff and movement options and don't find that kind of a thing threatening So it's challenging, right? That's the challenge Can you have an army that's actually remains competitive with a melee only strategy? This is the corn iron jaws, you know, all these kind of army problems They solved it last time with corn by making it like a johnny ridiculous overlapping Ballet army, right? It's sort of this synergistic dance And but it's a hard line to walk right because if you if you tip the wrong way you end up with I don't know like beast of cast for example Oh Right And so yeah, I'm playing playing. I've told you events playing against experienced players I've yet to have a successful and I'm done like Supposed to been done months ago with trying to alpha melee It's it's like the most tempting army to try to alpha melee with obviously because it's so powerful And even when your opponent apparently creates a perfect opportunity to do it It still hasn't worked out just in terms of how how these games play out and all the different ways that you can counter it Yeah, just anybody with a little bit experience like it's not that difficult to counter alpha melee in my experience On the other side of the table. It's really fun. Just watching the iron jaws play. I say I really shouldn't take the turn I could just hit you Oh my god, yeah Well, especially yeah, if you're not the one drop and a lot of times Of course, they're going to give you the first turn and so you're like staring at your opponent. It's like, oh my god I could do this I could do this It's like usually it's the worst thing for you to do Yes Yeah, there there may be a battle report channel that I like to talk about with an instance of this I'll just say that if you want to if you want to see this Play out in a in a popular youtube channel recently So I was 15 drops more most of a whole field. So I had no stress Let's put my stuff down and relax. What happens happens Oh, yeah, it's an incredible way to play all all day, man. You can counter to play the whole field Yeah Oh Yep. All right. So let's move on from that. But yes, good good stuff. It was a great discussion Uh For my uh pick of the week our buddy hooves of doom friend of the show is back and has a wonderful episode on the anvil of apotheosis And the sort of origins of the linguistics of it. I love this kind of stuff he digs into a lot of like real history and and uh shows where like the inspiration and the etymology of these words and stuff come from Uh, so it's just a cool episode. Like I love it's a very hooves makes very unique content In this way like exploring this kind of linguistics and stuff. So, uh, I'm down for it So check it out. All of everything we've mentioned is linked down in the description And I just saw that we are joined by the oh and jackson in the chat And uh, oh and you miss my wife who already asked about whether or not you were here when she heard there was a uk Yeah, she got really excited So there we go Okay, uh So, uh Let's talk about some hobby time guys Charlie what you've been working on man. What's on your what's on your uh table? well after Toing a few events I needed to play a bit So I signed up to be the stair player or the war in the mortal realms If anyone drops I play that sort of thing And so that was an opportunity for me to try out my my new beast of chaos list with five doom bulls So I I started painting my special doom bulls from zealot miniatures. So I got This chap who's my arcane tome shaman doom bull here Then I've got This guy we get a white thing for you This guy he's got the cleaver of the brass bull nice nice and then I've got this chap Who's got the mutated nile blade? Oh, I like him Yep, and then when they die they turn into chaos spawn You had me up until chaos fun, but okay Uh, I was painting those chaps so I could have wizzy wig doom bulls With no amulets anywhere near the list Fantastic. I man. Here's one thing I will say in all the time I played beasts uh Having your heroes that die pop into chaos spawn and just suddenly be there just be like Is one of the most fun rules interactions or effects in the game It's wonderful because the people are so happy. They killed your guy and then you're like, yeah, but He's a spawn now Exactly And I love that in the lore the spawn doom is the greatest form of life So it's their version of apotheosis So they're thrills that you've killed them and turned them into a spawn Exactly if you look at the difference between like the in the slaves of darkness Path to glory table or whatever right It's it's the it's the worst result. It's like the old snake eyes. You're cursed to spawn doom for the beast of cast They're like, no, no, no, this is where we're going buddy. This is the gold state Yes, exactly Yeah, I don't know if you Charlie if you if you read any of the like web comics they do but if you watch That's fine. They have a they have a web comic I enjoy called never chosen And I have to give that yeah and recently they had a funny little aside Where the beasts of chaos like a minotaur and shaman are sitting around They're like we need to get more people to believe in our our religion or to come join us, right? And and well, how are we gonna do? He's like, they're like, what's your religion? He's like will we worship this goat? He's just like a regular goat And they're like, well, nobody's gonna worship a regular goat And so the shaman's like, I'll hide weird prophecies around the Around the world and then it cuts the two nergal guys who find this ancient prophecy or like, this is the one true lord We've got to go find this goat I did see that I enjoyed it. Yeah So yes But yeah, I played that that was fun I managed to get two wins and then I had to drop two even the numbers on day two But uh, it was still great to take part in a bit Then yesterday I went and to the Erwin Jackson's house To meet Darren Watson and we did a little play testing for his his uh His upcoming nomad feast master's book. Oh my gosh. Yeah The halflings are about to roll I'm so excited And I got to play the nomads against my own beast of chaos army and that was a lot of fun and Knowing what my army does I was pretty terrified with Darren through Chimeras and gorgons in my face right the top of one That's amazing. I can't wait to see what he does with that. I'd like to see that project come to fruition It's it's such a labor of love and it's the coolest thing Uh, halflings are an untapped resource in the mortal realms like You know, we know they survive. We know they're around they get mentioned sort of every so often like let's let's get it Let's get them going here people like a little bit of jocularity is good. Let's have some fun Right, and it was a great fun to play and I think you'll everyone will enjoy it when it finally makes makes the makes the table fantastic I guess a printable scenery their latest Kickstarter or whatever is sort of hobbiton themed halfling themes So, yeah folks should check that out. Yeah, the website today and yeah Some cool looking stuff is is Darren Generally an aggressive player I watched a battle report with him and he played very aggressively and very well with seraphon It was quite impressive just like He was using skinks brilliantly and you know double moving and blah blah blah Super series I think it was yeah, but it was like yeah, I was the table boss for that game and he was in the zone Really, yeah, it was just like boom boom boom and but very aggressive Yeah, is he usually like that or just army less? Well, I think when he's in the tournament he gets he zones in right He's ultimate focus, but the game yesterday was just a big laugh and we were joking and chatting and things Yeah, nice. Yeah, he's a really nice guy fantastic Tyler obviously you didn't paint anything I'm gonna always open with that until you actually paint something and we get you into What is a very enjoyable part of this hobby that you could absolutely do and are more than capable of But you didn't yeah, did you get any games? Yeah, I'm still testing away on mid-shell friendly storm cast so and join the pain of 400 points of judicators 10 judicators versus You know six long strikes like everybody else is doing sensible folks And yeah, man like judicators versus long strikes like that. It epitomizes our whole really all of us We've been talking about this golf between four up base and three up base. Sure Because you basically can't Judicators had anything with the three up base. Sure, but she felt really good about rolling sixes And uh, yeah, it's painful. So Now I got a game and against the lovely I sent you a A bad words in front of vernguard last night just out, you know, randomly. Yes But I had the pleasure of six vernguard at nights at the empty throw and plus another three And yeah, yeah, that's that's uh, that's not fun at all Wait 280 for three vernguard right now Something like that 285 whatever it is. It's too cheap It's it's absurd what you can do with the vernguard right now and nights just absolutely absurd They're strong by long strikes then But not tempted by long strikes with the crossbows. I'm trying, you know I mean, obviously. Yeah, that's the play. Yeah, that I'm trying. Yeah The the list is trying to trying to be a special snowflake as always with the with the storm cast list And not and not press the easy button. The more that I play, you know, storm cast though charlie. I'm I am wondering if Long strikes are as maybe a bad, you know as mpe You know toxic The as they appear on paper like I think you can definitely obviously lean into it heavily Uh, I yeah, I mean I finally have a special magic to make more six appear than usual right Yeah, yeah I think a way to tone them down is to not do the one drop that that way you don't have the potential, you know double turn On the table, which would be just from that one unit of six 36 shots that you could put out before your opponent does anything It's kind of like a reap as to events. It's like a repeat of that vanguard chamber one drop You know, like so I feel it maybe that'll help tone them down a little bit if you don't play a minute one drop, but Yeah, the Uh, the list was bashed bashing is incredible events. Oh, yeah Oh, I'm I'm so excited for him to get him on the table. I can't wait to convert rat bashtier Rats chin rats chin as I will call him. Yes. He's going to be amazing Just the chat of Chad storm cast rats like he's he's ready to go um I mean, he's not it's not even been close and dressed in prime versus him in my test game. So that's amazing I do really like my yin rats a conversion though. So I you know, I got a we're gonna gonna paint her up. So That honestly that I've getting the first thousand points and I got a lot of I've got to do like two more battle line units That's the problem because I I have like three different battle line units painted But they don't they can't all be battle line simultaneously in the current army I'm playing that is to say like I have one always battle line and two battle line if for in different scenarios Yeah, it's fine for the thousand point term and I'm doing this weekend but uh So like I've got what my perfect scenario would be get my second unit of indicters done a second unit of Annihilators done in a second unit of fulminators done that way I can sort of combine them and use them however I want Um, but what I really just want to do is start painting all the big characters And I know if I start go down that road. I'll just I'll never look back It'll it'll get to the point where I I can't paint the big guys anymore Or I can't go back and paint the little guys after the big guys. I should say um The I want to answer a question that came up here drew Craddock said why do people run baron guard in squads of six with nice the empty throne wouldn't the new coherency rule make that Less appealing no Because six is a 30 wound hero effectively as they can pile in from six inches So it does a 22 inch direct range running around the table and yada yada yada and the coherency doesn't really matter They can still all fight if you have the log with when you have the luxury of the six inch Piling and their ridiculous move the fact that they can run in charge and retreat in charge through their garbage six inch Piling artifact um a rule that should be struck from the game and should have been unmade in 3.0 and yet somehow squeak through its toxic and shouldn't exist um this place Right, but like And you can run in what I call the chicken feet formation, which is this right right So they rotate the round that's still round if you rotate the oval you get angles Yeah, so this is this is chicken feet formation, right every one of my fingers here is a baron guard and so they can all still get into stuff I've had all six get into one inch reach, but all six got into 10 vindict in dictors Yeah, and the six inches it makes it a lot more manageable to get the six in right And so you know the reality is plus if one dies Which is not actually as common as I would like but it happens If especially if you have some kind of mortal wound shooting, that's the literally they're only achilles heel Um, so I mean, you know, hey raptors decent handling that Yeah, yeah, you're back. Welcome back Um, yeah, but but high render and or mortal wound shooting is obviously one of their weaknesses But when one dies then you just pop into normal formation and you're like who we ride Just like that's it I like that you said if one dies Yes, if if not well, no, I've I've been through whole games against that army where zero died despite me giving it a You know the college try Yeah Yeah, so, you know I can like are you The fact you can get the reroll hits and wounds apparently from mark of chaos on the On the shrine on the wagon And you know as a backup to demonic power and you can just do in sync Safe stacking and they can do find a stour on a unit of six fair. It's just like it's I mean, there's like a little much I think there's seven or eight different versions of potential plus one save available to slaves to darkness and it's not unusual to have You know six of those in an army And so like having them be on two up ignore all rend is It's like, okay, it's table stakes, right? So, you know and 30 wound heroes turns out decent um, yeah Weird thing there Uh, I'm glad I'm glad this earlier time is like I see a lot of people saying yay. I get to catch one live Well, hey everybody welcome. I'm happy to have you here live I we I would like to do this show at this time more often. It's just often challenging because you know life and stuff Um, but hey, we're glad to have you all here and don't forget to hit like and subscribe and do all that fun stuff So hit that like button two people hit the down like to hit the dislike button before we even went live And I was just like, okay, I guess they just don't like the idea of tournaments So but I'm very glad that this time is more friendly to everybody over in in europe and such like that I love having everybody here live. So hello everyone who's not normally gets to be here live Um, my hobby time this week has been busy as I'm working on Some stuff. I can't show I finished up something that's a surprise for someone this weekend Uh, so I can't show that either. It's in that case back there turned around backwards Um, I've uh, I had to make the book for my army So like I actually went and made a booklet with uh, finished up my My rat cast for this tournament Got pictures of all of them made a special book for them. Um, had to write like a 5000 word story Uh for skig uh for my for my warlord. So he now has his own his own fiction Uh, and nobody wants to read that but I wrote it anyways. So there we go The to asked for a story you ask you get uh, so I had those printed uh, and uh Picked those up today Just getting everything ready and packed up. So for for uh, for the big tournament this weekend I got I got I still got to break down our ridiculous um Our ridiculous display board. So that's my that's my next step after the show tonight is to bubble wrap that All up and pack it so I can actually safely transport it to the tournament Oh Display boards how I hate you. Okay, so Uh, yeah, I know like I just got a bunch of things I can't show. What a great what a great section for me, right? Oh, there's there's one that wasn't on our list that we should yeah display boards Should they be a thing in the past for tournaments? Oh my god, or like Please don't don't make it part of the core like Requirements for getting like baseline points Like if you want to do display board as part of trying to go after an award You know fill your boots, but I would really like it if our display boards were just like everyone will display their army on a standard war cry Unfoldable board and I'd be like, yeah, great fantastic You know like because that's the thing even if it remains for best painted Then I'm still going to have to do it up and I do one of these these things a year And they're just like incredibly time intensive and huge and hard to transport and then when I'm done I don't know what to do with this ridiculous two foot by two foot by Three foot tall thing that I've constructed right Yeah, and I want to I want to be the best, you know, like that is it is like be best It's part of my instinct with painted like it's part of what I want to do I want to make a hobby project that's truly memorable for people, right I just hate that that this has become such an indelible part of that as opposed to sort of the miniatures or whatever So it also takes a lot of space on the display tables so much If you're a to paying to hire tables, then that could be annoying if people take up loads of table space. Yeah Yep Uh, okay um All right, so Let's get into the topic today gentlemen, shall we? All right Okay Can you all hear my dog when it barks like that in the background? I don't know if you can hear that or not We'll see Yeah, okay. Yeah, she's a good dog. She's very mouthy all right Let's talk tournaments Uh, so let's bring up our presentation here There it is. By the way, everybody. I promise in future weeks. I will get back to Uh Stuff that I can show what I paint. I promise um Okay, so warhammer turnies. Let's start with our uh, let's start with our little introduction here Boo boo. Sorry summary. All right. Here's my here's my statement Uh There is a great deal of variance in the way turnies are run Right, we all accept that now. I don't think that's a bad thing I'm just gonna state that as one of my first principles that I don't think that it's a bad thing that to's Largely get to decide their own fate can make different tournaments create different experiences. I think that's very positive Uh, and I think that in the end, you know, there's a sort of meritocracy to it if you Uh, if you have put a bunch of rules on your tournament and no one shows up Well, there you go. You know kind of shows instantly whether or not it's going to be a thing like over the years One would hope that tournaments that are run well grow and tournaments that are run poorly die And but it has an impact on the players participating And so I think what we want to do today is we want to talk through I have a list of sort of things here like scoring systems awards soft scores painting requirements round timings match ups proxy scenery ephemera All sorts of things that we think make for a good tournament as a sort of baseline of If not a best practices Then at the very least the sort of items you should consider as a to and the type of things you should look for as a player So if you're a player and you're thinking about the type of tournament experience you have How these decisions made by the to are going to marry with your experience right because if you're looking for something soft and Fun and like very narrative or that that maybe isn't just full of like, you know The hardest edge stuff and you look at the the list and it and everything in the tournament seems to be incentivizing Hardcore play that's not going to be a fun experience for you, right? I'm using sort of a straw man just to make the example clear But I think that this is uh, you know, this is clearly Sort of wear it what I what I want to avoid and arm people with so Charlie you recently as you mentioned we're doing a lot of towing. So what were your sort of first principles? What was your what were you going for? What was your goal? How did you think about setting the? You know the answers to your to take to questions How did you set up this kind of stuff right when it can step anything that's on the screen here or whatever? knows I I'm fairly new in a way to running tournaments. Um, doing my big first big ones this year and a few small ones before that um, I think I was sort of focusing on getting my my pack My game my pack solid was the main concern I had at the start um When I was sort of Got the uh, the name of the episode today what makes tournaments great my my first thing I wrote down was people People make tournaments great and as long as There's a lot of logistical work that goes into running events getting tables and mats and terrain and foods and toilets and signage And making sure people signed up and have lists and things that's all work that needs to be doing done But assuming that's done to a passable degree People will pretty much have fun with whatever happens Because they're just going to enjoy interacting with other people Or not is the case may be sure a lot of that work is going to not really be Reflecting on what how well you do as to As long as you can get it to functional Then people will have a good time And once you've got that you can get to get rolling you can start making improvements tweaking your pack making terrain packs Um improving player experience tightening up your system that sort of stuff So for me it was basically I want to make sure I've got a pack that's simple clear functional and Will be you know, there's a step like a baseline that I can work from And once I've got that and I've sorted all the logistics side I've got that Sorted and I know what I'm doing with that then I can start building for the future. I think that's where I am at now I've got two Big tournaments under my well medium sized tournaments under my belt now and I'm now I'm looking how I can build Nice, okay, awesome Tyler, what about you? What are your first principles this kind of thing like what are you looking for? How do you think about this? Yeah, the point about people I mean, that's yeah that goes without saying that that's certainly the the first critical one I mean, that's like we both have loved Nashcon over the years in particular, you know, we've we've That's the event you and I have gone to yeah I mean as a point of fact All of the tournaments that I attend and make a thing to attend every year are the ones where I know It's all the people that I love and want to see and hang out with and I know it's run Well that the to is a good person and and I want to support the kind of Goals that they have several tournaments I go to are involved with like charities or something like that, right? So it's that kind of thing, you know, like it's a good person running it There's good people there. You know, you're going to have a good time, right? So I think that is critical and I think stuff like that, you know, it's not in my it's not in my my presentation But like the holy events so holy wars and holy havoc what I'm doing this weekend run by steve herner A big portion of that is is is charity, right? Like you You he allows for sort of extra kinds of purchases. He has a big raffle the money you donate goes to charity Right. He allows for this like tournament reroll die. You can buy you get this one little special dice It's a special color. It's made there and you can buy it and then you can reroll any one non priority roll in each game Okay with that one little die. It's it's a little thing But and all that money goes to charity by the way, like that's all directly donated to his local like to his To local charity to to actually housing homeless people feeding people who are in in desperate need. It's fantastic And it says a lot, right? Like I like participating in that because I'm like, oh cool I get to play warhammer and help the world be a better place. That feels pretty good Right. Like that's that's a real win. So that kind of that kind of ephemera. I think can be really valuable Yeah so like Yeah, I find that tournaments tournaments don't need to have special sauce Though personally I am biased toward it. It seems More drawn to tournaments that have intriguing special sauce That are doing something unique in some way, whether it's charity or it's con schemes and two less formats or it's Brendan malnick's Wide array of awards that you can win where he's really leaned into You know creating broader incentives for you know Serving broader player interests or a broader array of player types And you can go down the list. I'm sure there's you know similar ones UK and around the world that we can we can point to Yeah, I really find that intriguing personally. Yeah Yeah, there's there's a lot of elements. Yeah in terms of first principles so What so one on this list stands? I mean we've got a number that are more of the nitty gritty, which I know we're going to get into a lot of the nitty gritty here I think the scoring system to me is a very important one There can be yeah some some real variants And the sort of quality and my interest in a tournament in that regard That gets into also soft scores, which have got on this list And you know, that's always been an ongoing debate in the community Should we have tournaments that are more purely scoring around battle points Or should we still continue? You know, we generally have this best overall and best general as like that top tier or sort of You know, like it's that its own category into itself best overall and best general Then you know, you've got best painted best sports and everything else Uh, you know, should we still have that separation should we still have best overall with soft scores? Or should we be doing something different should we be orienting around more of like a bracket system that rob and charlie and others have been talking about So I think that to me that's a really interesting kind of part of the conversation right now in the community and where we are Trying to figure some of this stuff out. Yeah So let's I mean you you already prompted it. So let's let's get into it. My friend. Let's uh, let's talk about it. So scoring systems Uh, let's do it. So, uh Let's talk scoring systems because this is one that I think can be interesting regardless of whether or not you go to plan to win Okay And what I mean by that is We're going to talk about awards later on And my honest answer is I care a lot less about awards than I do about the scoring system Like I want to see good awards and we'll talk about what I mean there But like almost no matter what your awards are A minority of people at the tournament Are going to win those awards Right that that's just what it is Right, like It's there you're if you got a hundred people even if you have a broad set of awards What 10 people or something might walk away with it, right? So 10 of your population now now it matters to them It's a huge deal and we all like it's great and fun and you love winning stuff But the scoring system is something everybody feels every player in that tournament every round Absolutely. Yeah And so that's why I think it matters And so, you know, you've got we've got a couple different items and charlie I'm going to come over to you here and get some initial takes on this You know overall scoring you've got this sort of standard concept of win loser draw right and And those can be scored in different ways a win is worth x a minor win is worth this You know draw is worth this and so on and so forth, right? That's kind of the General way that that gets broken out And then there's also been talks of like the 20 o differential system and some use for that Even as a primary scoring method though, it can also be a secondary All right, and then we've got all these ancillary concerns because the reality is We do not play enough games of swiss to really finally get to a precise field, right In the general size of our tournaments smaller tournament sure But like once tournaments creep up there past basically 60 people You you're going to have distinctions. You're going to have overlaps things like that, right? And so there's all these other ancillary items that could also Help stratify out the tournament and so on and so forth So how do you think about this as a whole? Uh, when it comes to this scoring, what do you see as the advantages disadvantages so on and so forth? I mean the first thing to say is that no scoring system is perfect Like obviously and as you said the more players you get the less accurate it's going to be Um, because you know a winner could very easily with if you have a a field of 300 600 players like you do in 40k The winner could have a very easy run just by Avoiding all the other top players So you've got to try to pick a system that's The best you can at the time and how you feel it's going to work Um, you've got the win-loss draw of the 20o. I think The merits there are merits of the 20o, but I think the win-loss draw For me has to be the first primary. I think the 20o system Just causes too many problems for the players um People get a bit disgruntled. I won three. They won two why they higher than me Sure You know about the basic level and then also it can just kind of make weird results where You lose table one game five and you drop to 30th place somehow Yeah, thinking like how did this happen? You know We were we were talking charlie before the show about so first off this you know disclaimer We were also noting about how much we were blown away by War in the heartlands. Yeah And mark and liam and steve foot and everybody else involved with that tournament. It was remarkable top to bottom Annoyingly good So there is a butt coming for better or worse and this is just you know an opinion and That's the whole point of this discussion is that Trying to figure some of this out. I'm actively trying. I told you charlie I told you I'm actively trying to figure this out because we've got our first two-day grand tournament finally happening locally next year in may and So when I saw their standings with war in the heartlands Of course, it was a little odd because like ben harper Who took sylvanath and a winter leaf sylvanath list for that matter wasn't the moth mallow range damage range projection list It was winter leaf melee, you know get in there and have get some work done He went four and one with sylvanath I looked at where he was. It's like I came in where he was way down there It's like this guy's four one with sylvanath Must have had a number of close But because the way the scoring system was he had a lot of close games I would guess, you know, he wasn't wiping people out as you wouldn't expect with that list So it was a hard fought four one. So I did find that a little strange as an example of yeah The there is value in the 20. Oh It goes back to the point you made mince about, you know people like having a huge field If you've got a hundred players at your event 99 of them aren't the winner Right, right. Yes so And we've got to think like if you're on a to you're in the events business now You're an event organizer. You're an events business Uh hospitality in some way, right You've got to provide an experience That's good for a hundred people not the one percent The what the guy who won or the girl who won right the person who won right You've got to you've got to make a pack a scoring system Awards an experience that caters to everybody, right? Yep. Um There's someone once said to me like why are you giving out pity points for losing? That's like that's totally the wrong way to think about it. You've got to say, okay You play your game the game has value But I'm incentivizing you to keep playing the game because I'm giving you something for losing And it's not pity. It's giving people a reason to keep playing Bad games bad matchups a reason to come back for the next round A reason not to stay in bed day two when you're hungover You know You're giving out incentives to people the awards or incentives That's an important part of it, but most people don't win awards either So you've got to give a reason for people to keep playing games and that's when you use a 20-oh system It gives you something for your effort Right. It recognizes your effort. It recognizes Well, there are obviously limitations to the army type as well But it's it's about giving an experience to every player at the event Not just the people who win the brackets Yeah, and so that's why I think they chose the 20-oh system. They put it in the pack It was there players signed up knowing that was what's going to happen So, you know, there aren't any complaints. There shouldn't be any complaints about it because it was forewarned Um, I think the win-loss draw system is better because it avoids those sort of Bad feels feels bad, you know, you get some feel bad moments If you have the 20-oh is the primary if you have a win-loss draw is the primary you can sort of People understand that a bit more They sort of respect the win-loss draw a bit more and they're happy With then they can look To their secondaries and think yeah, this is what I got And because with the draw you're gonna have those brackets going to be filled with people because it's such a It really doesn't differentiate people because it's so I guess tertiary Yeah, like I said with the example of Ben with and I'm sure there were some others But I I feel like yeah with if the 20-oh is the primary I can punish those who choose to take a mid shelf list But who try to overperform with it, you know, it's part of their psychological profile. They're taking a challenging list I feel like that's a way of punishing them, you know If you're not doing it by the way, let's let me let me jump in and just let's lay this down So when we talk about primary versus secondary, right, let's lay this down for everybody. Okay So what we mean when we say primary is the the the number that you're writing down as your points for the round, right? i.e When we get to the end and if I am in the excel spreadsheet that everything is being tracked in or the software or whatever and I hit sort Highest to lowest, right? This is the primary sort And when your win-loss or draw the advantage is it's clean Right, it's super clean a win is worth a win is worth a win A loss is worth loss a draw is worth a draw minors and so on, right? Like there are set numbers You perform this well you hit this bar. It's it's a pass the post system, right? You pass the post you get that amount of points It's predictable It creates stratification that you can understand, right? Yeah, because you're going to look at the list and be like yep That person's up at the top They went five and oh and then this and then this and then this and then yada yada, okay The downside of it is It can feel like like and because as you said, there's no perfect system These both have positives and negatives, right? The downside of win-loss draw is that it can sometimes feel like you have nothing to play for Right, if it if it is the only thing alone You feel like oh well actually I why even bother to keep playing right I lost game one. I can't win the tournament now Right exactly like it's if that's what it is like I might as well just stop and you see this Happen a lot in 40k where people will just Uh um You know where people will just be like Okay, drop like if people just drop I would see this in magic all the time Right where people will drop out one game and just stop they just stop playing, right? So and there's other ways to to keep incentives going besides just the primary scoring structure But this can be a contributory factor the uh The 20o system The advantage if it's primary is that there's kind of always a reason to Uh To keep playing right because if you can draw the game closer, even if you still lose You could push it to like oh, it's an 11 9 Ie your score every both players are scoring a total of 20 points is what that system breaks down to right So you 11 9 or 10 10 or 7 13 or whatever, right? And the advantage is that okay, I can push For a closer game and I still get more points, right? I played a good game. I played till the end. I get more points, right? There's a there's a direct reward there a compensation for it Yeah, which makes sense Keeps people playing keeps people interested. There's a reason to show up Even if you think you're gonna lose the game, there's a reason to keep participating There's a reason to keep playing the games, right because you can kind of yeah push above The downside of 20-0 as the primary is that it tends to punish In two different ways one the way you just said tyler, right where if you have if you want to take A sort of mid shelf list if you're trying to outperform Right if you do super well with beasts of chaos Again, I'm going to keep hitting them charlie because you're here, right? Yeah But like if you go for one with a beast's army on a win-loss draw system You will you look like a hero because you're probably in that top 10 Yeah But if you go for one with a beast's army in a 20-0 system, you're probably like 30th place You're probably mid-pack because let's be honest those games. I mean, they're just not going to be blowouts Yeah, right. They're going to be one through careful play Through board control through playing to the the the objectives to like very precise trading Right and knowing exactly what your stuff is worth like playing the the big brain beast's player Which is how beast players have to play to win right now, right? They don't have like a button. They can just windmill slam To blow the enemy off the table. It doesn't exist So they will end up with a bunch of 11 9s and 12 8s, right and meanwhile There's going to be somebody who's three and oh Or three and two. Sorry three and two Who's going to outscore them because they had three games They were playing giants and they just like raffle stomped their opponent Right and and it's like oh good the three two guy beat me by 15 points Fantastic Right, even though I went for one and that's a feel bad and that can happen The other downside is it can sort of unintentionally punish really good players who accidentally get paired against each other Right. So if you have two like top shelf players or really just two equal skilled players who come against each other, right? They will tend to 11 9 like that's just sort of the modal outcome You know, I think of like the game that uh jack Armstrong played against uh, benjamin right and You know that was a you watch that game That was such a precise Careful back and forth measured game. It was like always destined. You could tell on turn two it was an 11 9 or a 12 8 Right, it's never going to be anything nobody was going to blow it the other person off the table They're both too good. They both have too much skill at navigating even with limited resources, right? So as I mentioned many times just the way the game works now in 3.0 We're going to have a lot more of that which is generally a good good to be celebrated. Yeah So the the problem with it is then those when you have it's not just for good players You get matched against each other though that is true. It's when equal skilled players Or you know equal footing players match against each other skill matters a lot more at the high end of the curve and a lot more at the low end of the curve and blah blah blah In the mid tier your army matters a lot more, but um You know when that happens suddenly those people fall in the ranks for reasons they played the best game of warhammer That 11 win represented a lot better warhammer being played than the guy who got 20 points Yeah, that's the challenge Right like if if your points are meant to represent the quality of the game of warhammer you played It's not accurately reflecting that reality, right? You just have strange systems where strange strange things where The player who wins goes up and plays a harder opponent And they have another tight game that the player who loses goes down faces an easy opponent They get the blowout and they just leapfrog back up again, right? Right exactly. So that's and that's ultimately my problem with the 20-0 system. So to me like The challenge is that I like 20-0 as a secondary. I think it's interesting Uh as a I think it's interesting as a secondary system. I don't think it is a primary I want to address something in the comments real quick Nicholas bordes said don't they also neutralize and win draw loss? No, they don't for for this reason if I win by one point So when when jack beat benjamin, he won by like a couple points, right? But that's a win if he satisfied a major win or a minor win It's a win and it's worth whatever that is set to in the in the tournament pack, right? If it's 15 points or 25 points or whatever arbitrary number of points the to is picked, right? And whereas the minor loss is worth seven or five or Whatever or the loss is worth zero or again, whatever arbitrary number like because it's a pass the post If they hit that post they earn all of the potential credit Right and minor losses and draws are actually very hard to achieve even in 3.0 Like let's be honest with ourselves. How many times do you actually see true bullet to bone draws? Right It's not it's it's like there's so many fallbacks of like if this then it's a minor like this is how you win If not then this is a minor win if not then this is a minor win if none of that then it's a draw Right like I hit a draw at Nash con and it was like we had to play the tightest game of warhammer ever We ended on the both completing the grand strat both having the exact same number of battle tactics Both getting the exact number of points on an extremely varied scenario over five rounds, right? Like everything just completely fell into place. But that was I was the only one with a draw in the event me and my opponent Out of five rounds times 60 people The anecdotally for what it's worth. I'm curious to try that this is your view It does seem we have more draws than ever, but I agree that uh, yeah, that's that's to do the tournament software Um Which we can touch on later on if you want But um the way the tournament software we're using right now is set up. It's drastically increase the number of draws um, because we tournament software is ignoring the minor wins minor losses and the the way you get to those and also there's also a a idiosyncrasy in the way that they set up the tournament software for us Where the way you calculate the differential is you take the difference in victory points between the two players Divide that by two and then round down And so if you win by one point one point that want that uh, not they get half the not point five then round it down to zero Gotcha interesting interesting. That's why you're seeing what draws Yeah, and I will say like in general 3.0 is still I like if you ask me it has on the whole Has the number of draws increased in 3.0? Is that a more likely outcome? Because scores tend to stay more even especially if using the newer scenarios Yes, right? Like I think that that's true. There's a material increase But it's a material increase on an almost infinitesimally small number, right? Like less than one percent of all games in a tournament are still ending in draws right now I would say that uh draws by the way you played If you played yeah, if you played true draws to the way the ghb is run that I would agree with you Yeah, it's really really hard to actually get draws right the way that we've been using the tournament software We actually end up with probably Three or four per tournament with like 30 to 40 players They're actually like more common than you expect But that's again because of the tournament software Because pairings or let's go pairings. Yeah Gotcha. Yeah, and uh the way I explained it to them They didn't they didn't end up implementing the way I asked them to do the majors and minors and Rounds down for everything except a one-point win that didn't make it through the translation into the software But actually I'm kind of enjoying more draws as a to it's a lot more interesting And players have generally been Um reasonably happy that like it's just a one-point game after they've rewracked the turn their hair up for five rounds Okay, I guess that's a draw then, you know, we are close enough It is interesting should we cast a wider net on that kind of thing? Yeah, it's it's it's interesting like what does How you know because the rules by how you define victory and what counts as a win ultimately determines that right like Exactly. Yeah, like that's an arbitrary set of rules, right? Yeah, exactly and it's in the pack so the players know it and then in my tournaments I make sure my speech at the start says you need to win by two points because of the software Be aware win by two or don't complain sure It's kind of like a uh, isn't that a thing in Is that a thing in like what ping pong or something don't you have to win by two or I don't know? It's something like this in this lots of racket sports. You got to win by two clear points Yeah, otherwise you keep playing, right? Yeah, those are not sports ever played So I'm not super familiar with them, but I seem to remember that being a thing. There you go. Okay um all right, so You know ancillary items, right like Because then if you've you've stratified people in some way through the primary and then the question becomes as we mention These larger events which we all hope to get back to around the world having these large events very soon Let's be honest depending on where you are in the world. They may already be happening. Maybe not But we all hope 2022 brings us many big events and sees the trajectory we were getting there Now I don't ever want events to be 40k big. I'll be honest. I don't want it I just don't like I love the community growing I'm glad to see so many people come into tournaments and having a great time and learning that It's not all people that are jerks and just want to like win at all costs. That's not what tournaments are about Tournaments are about fun. Like it's just hanging out with your buds and having five incredible games or wherever with awesome people I would highly encourage I should have started with this at the beginning But I'd highly encourage everyone to go check out a tournament. It's funny because slight aside miniac Scott Was like dying in the world not being a tournament player, right? Like he's like, oh, no I don't I don't war game blah blah blah blah, but then he got into a song of ice and fire And he's been real into it and he put up a little video about oh, I went to my first tournament That was a super small local tournament But unless he had a great time and that was the whole point He was like people weren't just net listing like crazy. It wasn't what I thought Right, and I think people have a bad perception of it to a large degree Um All my games of tournaments unless I'm playing tom are fantastic and I it's always Tom's the only bad game I ever have All right, so you then becomes important to break up that stratification, right? We have the general segmenting, but then how do we decide how we go forward, right? Who's actually above who in the sort like as anybody who's ever worked with excel knows you've got a primary sort You often have a secondary sort to make sense of the data, right? Yeah, we've we've divided a hundred people into five groups. Obviously the groups are pretty fat, right? Yeah, exactly, right. It's that it's that easy So then what are the kinds of things charlie you like as the sort of secondary sort, right as as that tiebreaker items What are the the things that you found are usable doable? reasonable I like the differential system the 20-0 differential system a lot as the secondary it Like I said it it incentivizes Losing players to keep playing the game I was a big proponent of the schemes that you introduced In a us2 because I wanted things that losing players could do in the game because if I was going around my tables I could see someone was getting pumped by a strong army and they looked pretty sort of tired And so stunning they're like, uh, I've really got to sit here and endure two more hours of this, you know I can't do anything about it Or they would just say okay, you've won the game take 20. Oh, let's go You know There wasn't a reason for them to take the points because the points didn't matter The victory points in the game didn't matter at all if you don't have more than the opponent So why keep playing if you're getting pumped and it's not really an interactive game, right? If it's a thriller you want to keep playing because it's thrilling if it's not it's, you know Human nature sort of mostly it's hard to enjoy getting thrashed by someone else So I wanted something that my players could do in a losing position to keep them interested Invest in the game and invest in the tournament And that's why I used the schemes you you had and I adapted them to my system Um, I think the 20-0 system does that as well Um, not as well as the schemes used to do because they used to have prizes for the schemes and the schemes are generally more fun I thought but the 20-0 The system gives you points For losing and that helps you can save players. Look if you score good points You can still be topping your bracket even if you lose You're not going to win the tournament It gives players stuff to do that the other reason I like it is it incentivizes people to finish five turns right Because if you don't play all five turns you cannot score high points Right, right and this will be this will tie into my choice of the tertiary Which will be total victory points Okay, uh, you need to play all five games so that you can get Um As many victory points as you want as you can and also to to increase your differential or recover some differential If you're in a losing position You've got to play all the five turns to get all those points give yourself the best shot of winning your bracket Because there's probably going to be two two players or more with five wins You're going to make sure you're the best player and if you're not finishing games, you're not going to be that best player So I think that's a soft incentive to get people to finish their games in time Yeah, I have to say I support that. I like both that secondary answer to tertiary In the past I'd always been a fan of strength of schedule coming from sort of magic tournaments and strength schedule is very common There right the the the challenge with it in this scenario is strength of schedule is often pretty opaque Right. It's often pretty complicated to calculate. Um, especially if the software is not set up to do it and And like it's it's hard to understand exactly what it means to you personally whereas The two items that you're talking about right like using 20. Oh is the first differential and then using total vp as the second differential Sort of secondary and tertiary as it were right. Yeah it It gives you a Clearer picture of what you're on about like why to keep playing as you said the soft incentive right like it's helpful It's calculable. It's understandable. Yeah, right And so that's why I think I've come around over time to to moving away from strength of schedule and onto something like Those particular secondaries and by the way, I think you could Slot in other things in that tertiary spot other than total vps Yeah, like I could also see just number of battle tactics completed being one right or something like that Although, um, that's going to be based on us making a decision later on um the You know, but you could there there could be choices you make like that right for those sort of tertiary items They're all knowable I've got sort of two points. I like to make a few if I may um on strength of schedule I think the challenge restricts the schedule is that it looks amazing After the tournament's finished right right and in the early rounds. It doesn't really mean anything. Yep Um, and so you're still going to have really weird sorts Whilst you're placing matchups during the event at the end of the event You're going to have a whole picture of what happens, but it rounds one two three. It really doesn't ring that much Um, so you're going to struggle with the sorting Why why doesn't it mean much because yeah, go ahead So yeah, Vince you explain a bit of someone else. Yeah, because your strength of schedule hasn't built enough Right, like strength of schedule is based on the understanding the win-loss ratio effectively of everybody who's playing And when you have less data, you will have a bunch of people who accidentally won games Right. In fact, yeah, like consider round one around two if you like if you're just A sort of moderately decent player you barely know what you're doing But you know enough and you just happen to fall into two basically nubs and raffle stomp Right, like you look like you have a strong strength of or you sorry Somebody who faces you in round three looks like they're going up against a strong strength of schedule at that moment But by round five because that person might then get boom boom boom Just like knocked down three rounds in a row. All of a sudden their strength of schedule is going to wildly swing Right and like for example with an under open I had two gets players and they drew each other round one and it was 20 Like that get player who got 20 points is not going to really have a high strength of schedule by the end of round five But in round one he was right up there And I guess 20 of system has the same issues with the with the accuracy That strength of schedule the point is not that It's going to schedule is less accurate than 20. Oh, it's that it takes time to build up the strength of schedule Accuracy of a time so I don't see it as a benefit At during the matchups during the event And the disadvantage I think over the 20 of system is psychological And that's the players feel like they can't affect their strength of schedule But they feel like they back themselves to get the points in the game Oh, yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense to me. So yeah, I've been having this discussion with Carl one of the managers who's going to be The main organizer for our tournament next year about strength of schedule and it it still hasn't clicked me He's a fan of it and we've been having this back and forth So yeah, no, I resonate with your last point there Charlie to come back The other the other negative I would say it's something final flash said in the comment I do agree with it is drops can often make strength of schedule Oh, yeah, it's a big problem as well now. I will say that's less of a problem in aos because Most tournaments don't have a huge number of drops. Um, it's not that they have none It's just like most tournaments don't most aos tournaments don't drop a great number of people for day two Um, like most aos players are 35 year old dads right and They're away for their weekend. This is what we came to do. There's no other option. They're not there's nothing else going on You see it a little more at like the big con tournaments Because it's like, oh well, I could drop and go play something else or do something else or experience the convention If it's a standalone tournament, especially for aos, I think you know It's actually pretty you're very very limited drops in most cases The danger is when you get a spicy matchup in round three two big players match up round three one of them loses And so they don't come back day two and the player who won their strength of schedule plummets Yep, and they can't win now. Yep, exactly. That's that's the downside when that kind of thing does happen It's a huge problem. I think it's good. I use it as the fourth differentiator because then I need something super granular But I don't think it's going to get there Um, but I'll talk about why I like the vps as the third one and that's again to do the software When I was talking to bcp about making the software for the differential system I was thinking really hard about How I want toos and players to interact with the software if it's too complex they will not use it It needs to be dead simple Uh, so I I I decided that I wanted the players to only have to track one piece of information The victory points they have in the game So when they finish their game, they type in how many victory points each player has Right. Yeah, just that information nothing else. Yep If someone's got 30 and the person's got 20 the software knows which numbers higher And it can divide the numbers to make the differential and it can record the raw score And the players do nothing. Yes, you just type in your number Boom everything's done for you And if you do more complicated than that And they should be tracking their battle tactics and ground strategies during the game But that's just more points of failure Right down the line. I just want the players to type in one number and it's done Yeah, that makes sense So Vince you made two points about your concerns with the 20 The differential system as a primary You're concerned about, you know, how it might hurt those who take more challenging lifts Mitchell lifts And you're the points, uh, which I'm forgetting off hand What does that change much in relation to this as a first tiebreaker as a first secondary? No, I think it largely solves most of my issues when you move it into the secondary Right because then the world will still feel like it like it should when you do the primary sort, right? The beast player who goes for one Still comes up Sixth place or whatever that happens to a mount to or whatever and and and has and gets the recognition for the what they what they Hard fought earned, right? Yeah, and When it's when it's a secondary and it's just deciding sort of matchups within bands Or or whatever, you know, we're deciding sorting within bands. I supposed to be the better way to say it overall Um, it's You know, yes, sometimes you might end up Uh, it might end up breaking against you, but it could just as often break in your favor Right I'm still not still not perfect. Still not perfect. But yeah, that is perfect And people should experiment with other systems. I've actually wrote down some questions though that Uh, if you're thinking about making a system for your tournament, you should probably think about What is your input? What data do you have to players or you have to import into your system and how much data do you have to import? How do you input it? Is it you or is it the players? Do you need to convert the data into something else like tournament points? How are you going to sort it? That's the primary second tertiary How granular are you going to get? How many are you prone to errors? How many points of failure do you have? Right And then how do you do this at scale? And it's the last point, which is really the killer if you're trying to scale up your event You can have a complex convoluted system involving historical strength of schedule like mr Like yes meatball says But if that's good for like eight players down your club But if you're doing a hundred players, how do you calculate that? You're going to have to have a really solid piece of software And have players inputting their own scores things like that. You got to think about that At scale and that's a big problem Right. Yep All right, the last one on this one I want to keep moving was I wanted to talk just very quickly about battle plans All right, so because I think this is also leads like the battle plans we choose are We'll often inform the scoring system. Let's be honest, right some battle plans. Oh, yeah It this is a very related topic Because some if you're using a 20o system will just cause runaways Right and we call it be much more likely to achieve 20o some are much more likely to cause 11 9s and so on and so forth So charlie, what are your if you had to pick your battle plans that you think are tournament worthy out of the current ghb What's what's some of your list like what what are you going for? I've got a top Five and then three extras. I love it. Hit me First blood. Yep. Check average gains check power struggle Okay, the vice. Yes ferrule foray. Yes And then the secondary group Which power struggles on the border really is tectonic interference survival of the fittest and veins of guh And they're the ones I'd swap in for fun because it's not fun having the same five tournaments every event you run Yeah, they're running several a year I So, uh To be clear power. You didn't say power in numbers, right or did you? I think I said power struggle. Yeah, but yeah, not power in numbers, right? No. Okay. Good Yeah, you're allowed to stay on the show Yeah, no, like I I think your list is literally my exact list. I don't think I would like yeah, I tectonic interference and veins of guh would both fall into that second tier for me where Okay Because I think they're interesting. They're different. I actually don't mind the center action It favors some armies and not others that can make pieces like go track really powerful when you can just kind of march around and hold Two points really affectionately, right? Stuff like that, but there's there's give and take about it the the interesting thing about The both of those for me because they're, you know, whatever it's yada yada, right? They the way that they create points and sort of some amount of randomness I was playing veins And you know, I had a strong middle right presence Into round two Right where I was like so and the objective came down on the right side and I was like, yes I got this one on lock like right it comes down on the right drop point. Yeah Yeah And I'm like and but the other part the player basically had the left side There's nothing over there at the moment, right? Like I was holding the only objective I had strong presence had a good like echelon Right formation like I was in I was in play. I was in the zone Now I knew the risk was going into round three. What happens if both drop on the left side. I'm screwed Right, yeah, he's gonna hold him I'm not going to get over there with enough force to take him away Right before he just starts running the score up because the nature of that one also runs the score really high like later rounds are worth a lot of points Sure enough Boom boom both dropped on the left and I just it was became un-catchable Right because I couldn't I couldn't repivot away fast enough And I you know, you might say well, that's a bad choice on your part Vince to only cover two out of the three points and not three out of the three points But like I guess sure that player only had one out of the three areas covered right And they won the game And it's like, okay, you know is what it is. That's that's why it hits the second tier for me because sometimes it It could cause weird luck flukes But I think it's still a good scenario. Yeah same with tectonic. Yeah On average like that needs to calculate what you're saying the the way that veins of gore Scores should even it out on the whole but you will get those kind of games periodically Yeah, I find that veins of gore has a lot of big blowouts Yeah That's not necessarily bad Because you could as a to you probably want to structure your Your battle plans, you know in an order where you start off with the looser battle plans like veins of gore And then you want the really tight ones at the end for the games that are really going to matter And then you have first blood which is so basic You either put that game three because you think everyone's brain is going to be fried Or you put it game four because you think everyone's going to be hung over You want to give them a soft ball for the morning? But um I've mentioned to rob before it's probably worth doing someone someone doing a show on battle plans because I think it's a bit of a problem. There are like five solid ones Yeah, everyone wants to run right It sounds like and like one of those from the mid tier It's like you run those five and one of those from the mid tier swaps it. Yeah, exactly. That's what happens Yeah, we need we need to do this. So I've been Our event it's going to be happening probably a month before the new season I'm in the mindset of you know, thinking about what can we do that's different people are going to be We're going to be the talent of jhp 21 Maybe take some of the prior battle plans and prior ghbs that really stood out And do some testing trying to do some working to translate them into 3.0 And so I've started that a little bit. And so, you know, what would they look like? What's the what's the base one out of the core book that you just played? I'm trying to remember its number or its Yeah, rise Rising power. Yeah, rising power is a good one in the core book. Actually, I quite like it Um, it's kind of an interesting it's got an interesting shape to the objectives uh Yeah, like So, I mean, there are other options around that we tend to Not think about I mean the problem is it doesn't have conceptions of like, um It doesn't have the any conception of uh, primary objectives or whatever the heck the thing is I can't think of the name right now where you can't burn them in round three, but that's fine Yeah, which I really like on that one. I mean, I think that's part of it. Yeah, should we expect relocation or Tyler? This has all been part of Tyler's long con to get relocation or back in the game Yeah, I know I think yeah, that'd be fun Yeah, I find that valuable because I I tried like a direct port reasonably a direct port of some of the I mean, let's take the forcing the hands and The blade's edge were the two new ones that we got in last season and just trying to directly port them over I found them less compelling A straight port in 3.0 So I'm trying to like figure out why and I found that true Was some of the other ones that were classics focal points like the original diagonal deployment focal points where yeah the West and east if you held both three points north and south held both three points middle always two I thought that was the best generally speaking focal points But anyway, it didn't it wasn't translating as well as I had hoped to 3.0. So anyway, yeah, we'd find that interesting But yeah rising power is fantastic three in the middle One in each quadrant in your left quadrant 15 over 11 up vice versa on the other side So you've got five objectives. That's good in this edition. We've talked a lot about that You know death star is a very much a thing What the power per square inch is very much a thing, you know, six baron guard arc you on whatever And it helps with that and the fact that you can't burn I found that also helps as well And yeah, it's got a little wrinkle where the one it's like technologic interference the one the one two three four five six one of the ones in the middle Whichever one it is it's worth two objectives rather than one But it's still the classic hold one hold two hold more Yeah, it's just worth two objectives Which is a really interesting mechanic right by taking the one it counts as two And which one counts as two is random across but that's across the middle board They're sort of a safer when each of you can grab So it just leads to this really interesting trade back and forth like rising power was a really cool idea in the core book And it's one that there's like it was actually the first thing I played for 3.0 as I mentioned to each other because I had that that before I had the ghp obviously and I it's one of those things I think could could actually make in the list like I think it's a super quality scenario We tried adding a purple sun to those those uh special plans now we're talking now We're talking yes to start throwing in and the spells now. I'm now I'm in I'm back on board. Okay Yeah, it had I really like the the layout of it It was making good part of the challenge I was finding with some of those other battle plans Is just trying to make good use of the smaller boards in terms of the objective layout And kind of where you're intended to play on the board I mean obviously some of our missions We've just got three objectives usually right in the middle and it's less interesting all the sequel That's like a starting point But I did find that compelling about rising power It's making more use of the board in general and with and with the five objectives. Yeah, it was it was cool. Yeah All right, let's move on. Let's talk about awards. Oh, who doesn't love this? Let's talk Awards. All right So Charlie I need to pay I need a piece of uk specific information. Okay. Okay Because I think this is where there's a difference Between the us and the uk, but I'm not sure maybe I'm wrong. Maybe my perception is wrong In most tournaments in the us You have A pyramid of awards Okay, so what I mean is you have best general best painted best sports And then sitting above them Right is best overall which aggregates all three together But those three don't feed each other at all best sports is determined solely by some kind of sports voting mechanism Painted is determined so it is solely by some sort of painting judge mechanism General is determined solely by by battle points, you know what you did in the game Whatever your the previous discussion we had around scoring systems Best overall is whoever took all three Okay. Yeah My perception of a lot of the uk scene is that they don't use that distinction Is that a correct perception or not? Like do you guys have that same split of the idea of a purely battle award and a a A big tent award. I guess. I don't know what I would call it I haven't been to a huge number of tournaments Or a huge number of different tournaments. I've been to like a number from the same orchestra around the london area Um, those tournaments have all had sports painting and Uh, gaming all separate Without the overall winner or I think the footy k to call it the renaissance man or something. Sure Um, I haven't seen one of those at a uk tournament the overall winner I've only seen them sort of split or possibly combined Gotcha. Yeah, because I think that a lot to me Like I'm gonna just I'm gonna say that I've got a strong bias here Okay And my very strong bias is that assuming your tournament is of any reasonable size Okay, like if you've if you've gotten across the line of 40 people, I don't know pick some number like that right somewhere in that range Then you should have a best overall a best general a best painted a best sports and a best in each alliance Like those should be the core uh Eight awards that are there And Moreover, you shouldn't be able to win multiples of them Okay, like I'm gonna put a strong flag down here to start this discussion Like if you win one of those things you don't win One of the other of those things So what's the rationale because that's that's also been part of the debate Yeah, I've been looking around and the standard is that you don't win multiple And but we've been having discussion about whether that's you know, whether we should do the the other way What's what's your case for not doing it for not allowing multiple sure Um, yeah, I can defend it like this. You ready? um Okay, if I go I'll use a painting thing, but I could use this in a lot if I go to golden demon And I'm fortunate enough to put the gold entry in one of a category Right like I get the the gold single figure. I can't also win silver All right, like that's my award. I got it. It's that one. That's that represents the work you did Right, that was it You know, like you have like you have the awards don't need to overlap because you uh Because you're trying to recognize As many people as possible if you have somebody Who is best general and they're in death great. They got their award. They're super happy Right, they've like it's just it's that simple. They are like. Yay. I'm best general They don't you know, what a what a great day for them. They don't need that best death trophy represents like Uh a diminishing marginal utility to them right But if you but if but if best death has to be someone separate Right, and you hand out best death to like the person who was effectively like the best death Who wasn't that guy who wasn't best general that person's like yay. I did really good, right? I'm the best death player like you've made it's it's a simple thing It's a human factor. I guess is my best argument I would like to make two people very happy who spent a lot of money and time and showed up to this event Instead of just one Right, is that pretty standard how you guys? Uh, no, I think we generally have overlapping prizes But I I do actually quite like your argument Vince because like I said about the scoring system Um 99 people don't win and I want to give as many options As many incentives and as many prizes to different people as possible Because you want to make as many people as possible happy Basically at the end of the day So I like that idea of one prize only I've written it down here Because I think yeah awarding more people is good It gets people to come to the event. It's not the only reason they come but it it drives some people Absolutely, I mean, I think you know if somebody can come in and just hoover up awards Right like if that's a possibility It's kind of sucky for everybody else And and and moreover, I don't think it represents like I said, there's a diminishing margin utility for the for the Single person who's walking away with like a handful of trophies like I guess good on you You know like yeah, what what's their actual happiness level in the difference between winning best general And best death versus just best general. It's minimal Yeah, right So, uh, you know my my general feeling is that eight award structure Represents everything the hobby is meant to be and spreads the awards as the to the to the Largest number of people possible who have who have displayed Uh What do I say like they have displayed An amount of merit that is worth recognizing right like some part of this is meant to be meritocracy and so We we have recognized a bunch of different hard work from different people right, um You did you you kicked butt and you ended up in sixth place It just so happens Randomly that the person who took best general is also playing death like you that sucks Right. If they had a roll of the dice if they had showed up with a different army And one if you're like which by the way, whenever you're in a tournament with somebody like jack Armstrong or somebody like that Or uh, or like bill susa, you know, who knows what they're gonna show up with They're gonna be in the top echelon regardless and they can just roll a d4 for alliance, right And so they're just gonna like allowing them to just Hoover up multiple awards. It's just nonsense Yeah, right Um, I want to spread the most happiness to the most people make it the most worth it and it is aspirational Right. Yes, because then it does keep more people getting back who might have been on the cut and say Hey, it's something to shoot for I'm gonna get to that thing Yeah, we're absolutely about to go on this spreading spreading as much joy to as many people as possible, right Yeah And so like to me that's just I I feel like this is one of those things that should just become standard across the board Um, like I I will most of the things we'll discuss. I don't have a hill I want to die on You know, like I'm open to a lot of different takes. This is the one This is my one like this is the hill I want to die on I I think best overall by the way the reason it exists You can call it renaissance man if you don't if I think some people had previously had issues with the term best overall Fine I don't care right like I don't what's in a name could be a lot could be nothing Super cool. Yeah, you can call it renaissance man. You can call it all around her. You can call it You know Person who's pretty good at all three things. I don't care, right? Holy matter. Sure. Yes, exactly Like I don't care what we call it. I think rep rep like one of the reasons that award to me Represents so much is because if you have somebody who has tried to achieve excellence In all of the different aspects of this game and to me those are the three chief aspects, right? You're playing the game You're painting the figures and you're interacting with your opponent as a human being and as a good person To have a game because it's a two-way street. If somebody's really standing out with all three of those that should be recognized Right as as something special So even if you don't want to think of it as a pyramid you can think of it as a flat system before fine. I don't care Right. Yeah, I have seen tournaments where someone who did really well Gaming and Well with painting requirements at least nothing exceptional, but they met the painting requirements But then they did terribly at sports Who you would have thought would have gotten like See, I've always viewed best overall in the name get into the hobby six years ago As the awards, you know, as you said and then over time I viewed best general Basically in that same category at my mind But it's probably fair that it's really in some ways best overall And then you have that second tier of painted sports and general and you know I could see that but anyway, if you're getting an oscar for best actor or best supporting actor You're walking away with an oscar. Okay, like I just want to get this just Let's not let's not worry too much about the the idiosyncrasies of it Let's just get some trophies and some people hands and recognize excellence. Yeah, I was I was going to say that I think Like one person one trophy is probably a good idea And I think but I think and is and the concept is get as many trophies as you can to different people I think you can pretty much have whatever trophies you want as long as you spread them up and down the board So there's stuff that everyone can go for And that's why I guess we'll talk about it in a bit But that's why I put the underdog awards in there one of the reasons. No, let's let's I think so, okay I've I've given my rant. I've said my piece. Let's talk about special awards because I think this is the Like underdog generals within brackets monster slayers special things like this Second and third place recognition turny specific stuff for special things you're doing to me This is just as important, right? Like every tournament should have some of these things going on Because this does cater to the middle of the tournament to everybody else to all the players to give everybody something to play for, right? Quick story at nashkon David had a special trophy Which was a weapon that by the way the the image behind this slide is the nashkon trophies from one year It's all of the swords. That's what david gives away like full real Swords, they're these right here It's these okay and so You can like you it's pretty awesome to go up and Can't you like a full-size sword is an amazing thing? But anyways, he had one that was for monster slayer Kill the most monsters at the end of the game. You reported how many monsters you killed in that game That's a way that's what that's how you won that award kill the most monsters a very simple thing. Okay And The person who won was very much in the middle of overall results right But they killed 20 monsters over the course of five games The nearest competitor beneath him was 12 and everybody was like what like we were mind blown This dude went in with a mission. He was going to walk away from every table Like I will kill every monster on this table winner lose. I know what I'm here for right And that's what he played for and he walked with the trophy and I was like that dude earned it It was amazing. Like what a great moment for that Wonder if there are games where his opponent said I'm going to cast metamorphosis. Are you gonna unbind? No, no Hugo nuts I would start the game by saying I will never unbind a metamorphosis. Please go ahead freebies So, yeah, I mean, you know, like The uh You know, I love stuff like this. So At any rate, I want to throw it over to you guys now What do you what do you think about this kind of special stuff? Charlie Start us off because I you had like the underdog that kind of thing comes from from you and your your Yeah, I put the underdog awards in there because I wanted a reason for players to bring the lower tiered armies or the lower win rate armies um Because it's it's really tough going down the bottom there with some of those those armies like it's a real slog And for some people they enjoy it Like I I quite like playing beast of chaos obviously I obviously I do like playing beast of chaos because all the time I like that I have to play out of my skin and every game is a five turn thriller But for some people they just get pretty battered with their night horn or their gifts They put a lot of love in and I want to encourage them to bring those armies Right and I had an ulterior motive. I figured this was the only way I'd ever get to the award A gaming award to a beast of chaos player So I put it in that just for that and guess what no one's turned up So I still haven't done it Sorry that that book's gonna come eventually Charlie. Don't worry. It'll yeah I've got an alpha beast award waiting. There you go Uh, but you know, we had the gitz players come. So I've got the biggest git award And we've had a couple winners of those The last event was quite funny because I had two gits Goombas white git players turn up to fight it out for the biggest git award and they paired up round one Just we we will decide this one shall stand one shall fall not messing around game one. Let's go Yeah, and then my favorite title of the award is the night horn one, which I called the riken or the winhaler Nice But I think they're they're really worthwhile putting in the packs Yeah, and again, it's about like some part of a tournament Is about having fun with a bunch of people, right? I mean like let's not lose the thread here. Okay and You know, there's like the people who are showing up to super participate hardcore That's why they have those eight awards. They're there. They're good if you play hard You win hard you get one of those big you you can you can aim to the big awards like merit has been rewarded, right? Yeah But at the same time having these other things Encourages people up and down to still play their games to play to the best of their abilities to to to have a good time Right to and to walk away feeling like that was awesome Like yeah makes that that you know that gits players day, right? They proved they were the best to get like Yeah, I showed up with gits. I knew I wasn't going 5-0 Right that wasn't in the cards Right, but it gives them something to play for that that to me is like all the incentive I need to say that those kind of things are valuable Right, if it's making if it's making more people happy and engaged and aiming for stuff and playing hard then it's a win Yeah That's that's what it feels like to me. Tyler as you know, you want a diverse So diverse list of armies, right, right? Yeah, the worst case is everybody shows up and it's you know You've got these huge groupings around a few few armies or a few types of armies. Yeah, it's terrible uh Tyler anything uh, what what what uh What did we what did we not cover there? On the underdog award charlie one personal tweak I might make is to Have one awards and then have a list of actions that are eligible Of course, those would be the underperform so just basically just do one that's a little bit to do it Yeah, but that way I can't guarantee beast get one if someone But I I tried to pick one from each grand alliance So sylvaneth was on there then they got pretty good and now they're going down a bit So I have to think about who can be the order underdog They're all pretty good right now Yeah, they are. Yeah Yeah, the other one I wanted to discuss I did see in your latest pack You have moved to best general within brackets of that bracket system Which when I first read that My brain was like well that seems a little odd this idea of having you know Because again, I've always thought about best general as one of the most prestigious awards that you could get at an event And yeah, it's uh, and then you know, is that devaluing the idea of best general So I was just curious to hear more about the thinking behind best general within a bracket I don't think so they do it in 40k and that's where the idea came from because I'm I'm I'm I'm a sort of a to who who comes in and does tiering for warhammer tournaments Which is like a events business that specializes in tournaments and they did this for their 40k side I think it encourages people to keep playing hard after they've taken their loss Right, if you lose if you lose a game you you cannot win Best general you're just out right So you're giving people reasons to keep playing and it also feeds into the 20 year system It encourages you to fight harder points Because you can win your bracket. Okay. I've lost a game, but I'm gonna win my bracket Okay, I lost a second game. Sure. I can keep I can keep aiming to win my bracket And like I said before there's a soft incentive to play all five turns Not slow play because you can't you can't win your bracket if you slow play and just squeak a win Mm-hmm And it could just be you know as we're discussing it. It's probably just a framing or branding Issue for me where you know, if you named it best in bracket best in class something like that It would probably change that. Yeah easy. Yeah, my brain would appreciate that. Thank you And I'm pretty sure this is how nova does it with 40k because I think they have eight Brackets that are based on that because they it's a big long series of games because nova 40k is like Six to 800 people or something and saying playing every every year and I'm pretty sure that's exactly how they do it Charlie exactly what you just described and like in the award ceremony. They're like best in bracket eight and seven and six Yeah, exactly. And it's like And and everybody gets to come up and get their their award and it's like, yeah, they they were all playing for something, right? Yeah, yeah I would also be interested, you know, I don't know to what degree you guys have chatter around participation trophy culture We certainly have that in the united states over the years and I do wonder if there are a folks listening who feel like This conversation is getting too far in that direction I mean, I look at a event like I mentioned brendan melmick's brucey brawl and brendan's got this massive list of awards it's very intentional though and No Anyway without getting a lot of the details of the of that aspect of the united states culture Do you Find that that's a conversation that you guys have over there about like is there a line of going too far with too many different awards or I don't know about if there's a general conversation I think there's points to be made about cost at this point Where I think possibly in the us you have a lot of big event spaces that probably aren't that expensive to hire out Because uh, the cost of land is just lower. You got loads more space Hiring a space in london. Firstly, it's quite difficult to find a space that can actually hold enough people And if you do it's enormously expensive So you're going to have a lot of your budget taken up with a venue and then you've got to hire tables And maybe people don't think about how much cost to hire tables with people don't table hire companies Do their business with weddings And other celebrations effects style events. They don't usually work with War gamers that need specific size tables six by four Or smaller now, but um So they they make tables that are maybe half the size we need or a third the size we need So if you're trying to get you're trying to sort out If you've got 40 players, that's 20 games, right? Mm-hmm. So one of the venues we're working with their tables are four by two feet So you need three tables for a game, right? We've got 40 tables. That's 20 game 40 players That's 20 tables. Sorry 20 games. You need 60 tables Like that's a lot of tables to hire And so you can blow so much of your budget on hiring tables because you need 1.5 tables per player And then you've got to pay for whatever vehicle was going to bring the tables to the venue And that can run thousands of pounds if you scale up to large scale events I think at the LGT we had something Like 1200 tables, I think for that event Yeah, I mean they were expecting They were expecting a 640k players. We had all of them turn up Then you need two per table two two tables per game That's 600 tables for that event alone Right, so and then you have to pay thousands of pounds to transport them. So After all these costs, there's a there's a point where you think How many prices can I actually put in here without sponsorship? And companies ending products over So you've got to start thinking, okay If you've got budget for prizes, you've got to think about how good do I make the prizes Versus how wide do I spread the prizes and there's a balance to be had And if you're trying to some TOs take a loss And they're happy to do that because they think it's part of their hobby But I think they should do really And if you're trying to make If you're trying to make a business out of running events, which I don't think is a bad thing because Trying to professionalize it a bit Get it if you can professionalize it a little bit you can start trying to bring the stands it up in some ways If you're trying to make a business out of it, you just can't take a loss You can't do that on multiple occasions, right? You can have lost leader events, but you can't keep having lost leader events You've got to make money back at some point So I think Right now we're having a big discussion about the cost of tournaments And about how that needs to probably go up So that part-time TOs Can actually not take losses on themselves And then TO businesses can sort of start trying to professionalize it and create an even healthier tournament scene So that's the sort of the first discussion we're having right now And I think prizes is a little bit part of that But um, yeah, yeah, no, that's good. Yeah Uh, yeah, that is a distinctly uk thing By the way all of that because yes, like here not only do we have space you can generally rent it cheaper But it's also they're gonna they're gonna facilitate everything for you Right, like yeah, they're gonna provide all of the necessary sort of setup Now you're there's a cost to it like it's all rolled into the singular cost of the thing, right? But you don't have to like the the venue will generally have all this the stuff you need, right? Yeah, but I mean the problem is that if you hire a school here, they've got tables But they don't have the number of tables you want, right? Sure. We were talking to the school They said how many tables do you want? We said, oh, we've got about uh, 60 players And they said, oh, you're great. Well, you can fit five people around this this table here, right? That's not how this works, right, right? Yep, yep Uh, all right, let's you know real quick I think coach brought up something interesting that I that I think is worth touching on here before we move on I do want to I do want to keep moving but to me the Like I'm always a yes trophy person. I want a trophy. I don't care if it's a little cheap acrylic thing I like it. I like having the thing I want to think to memorialize whatever I earned It's I don't necessarily need to be a great cost But I like the look of a nice clean clear acrylic trophy Let me just say that or a sword. I'm also pro sword Uh, but something looks cool Uh, I don't want people to break the bank, but I want something that looks cool And so the so coach raised the question of what about other prices going along with it, which, you know Packed like kits price support, you know, like here's a dominion box. Here's this here's that right I I don't think I have a problem with it if you can get somebody who can donate that stuff That's fine. I think I'd rather use those kits in a different way We'll talk about later than I would just give them away to people who want stuff Um, but I'm I'm not opposed to it The one thing I would never want to see is like cash prizes in aos never ever ever in a million years Please do not ever play like let's never play this for money Okay, can we just not and just because it will ruin the game faster than anything I could imagine so um Either you gentlemen have any thought on like when hey, here's your trophy But also here's a Here's a you know, bck start collecting because there you go, you know that kind of thing Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's pretty common certainly in the states tournaments that I've seen and yeah, it's usually a sponsorship It's donated, you know flgs is often getting involved and I'll coach also mentioned door prizes. I know we've been talking about that a lot just and as a way of an opportunity for Anyone to win something at the tournament Yeah, I'm much more like like those kind of kits that get donated My honest answer is I'd rather give them away randomly through a raffle that can draw in more revenue Or just door prizes or you know, whatever right like that that way again It's more incentive for everybody like oh, you had a crap weekend He went one and four you thought you had a good army It just turned up and you got your teeth kicked in a bunch of games But hey, here's a here's a cool kit and it's like oh neat. Okay. I feel good now All right, like it can just again. It's just this I like it as sort of a random either raffle or door prize or that kind of situation Yeah, that can work. Yeah So it's not that I'm opposed. It's just like you already won I don't know. Did you need that? Did you need this? They often don't want the kit anyway, right Right, like it's just kind of an extra thing Especially when it's sort of a dictated thing like oh for Best general we've got the dominion box. It's like, okay. Well, I don't play stormcast And I don't have any attention playing cool boys. Thank you for saddling me with all this extra plastic You know what I mean So especially when they're sort of allocated that way where like the big prize goes to the big winner It's like well the big winner might not want that Right, but somebody else in that room might be thrilled about getting that thing Right, so if you have it kind of open One of the things steve does I mentioned the raffle at holy Uh having in holy wars everybody has to bring a kit Okay, so we if you donate the kit it's worth like a it's worth tournament points So you show up with a gw kit and we all donate it into a big pool So let's think like a potluck. Yeah So everybody who's playing in that tournament shows up with a kit in hand and we all donate those in and then Steve also has some stuff that's that's donated as well So kind of it's an enriched pot. Yeah And then he sells the raffle tickets and you go up and you pick in order So the first person that he draws pick of the litter they pick one thing second person Next and so on and so forth, right? And that's a good way. That's that's a fun way to do it So Yeah, I like that. I know we got to move on One last question you guys views on that we didn't touch on the second or third place That's another thing we've been considering. I don't see that a whole lot, but to see it periodically Should absolutely be around if the tournament's big enough Yeah, we tend to do second third place in the uk, I think Yeah, I think it makes sense like, you know, again for the same like Most other competitions when they award first place, they also recognize Second place third place runners up of some kind right like It's just woman. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's just kind of it Does that make sense to you for a 32 player event or is it more like 40 50 64 player event No, in the uk you get nearly every tournament has a second or third place and you just scale the prices If you have price support you scale the price support Yep, cool. Yep. Okay Let's keep moving. Let's talk soft scores all right Yep, that's right. We're going to talk about soft scores again for some reason. We already covered a little bit of this Um on our initial discussion, but here we go Uh, every every couple years. I've got to have a soft score. It's just like written into my my warhammer The content creator contract is that I have to talk about I'm like sentenced to this Sisyphean task of talking about soft scores every few years Sports Basic checklist something like the face hammer code which Tyler I'll have you go into in a minute Uh, like a one through five scoring as a tiebreaker Uh, you know, it can be another interesting tiebreaker out there I see a lot of people use it to determine sort of overall final ties. They'll use sports in some way um but What's your tyler you want to explain the face hammer code and kind of what that that has to do? Yeah, so a lot of tournaments that I've seen they will have a sportsmanship checklist So as part of your players pack at the end of the game You will have say like five boxes to tick off And one will be like did your opponent show up on time? Another one is did your opponent display any form of cheating? Uh, and there's five boxes and each box is worth a point. So that's generally become the standard way I don't know charlie that uk events or how you've done it love to hear your thoughts But that's generally become what I would say the standard way that we've done in the Over here and then the painting awards will be sort of another layer on top of that You know, that's where you get like judging some like minutes will go around and judge they Didn't do that. They kind of did that in a different way where they face hammer oriented explicitly around the players code You know that now we now get at the start of the general's handbook And it was something like three options The player followed the players code if yes, they get three points if they like sort of followed it I mean i'll be characterizing that correctly, but you know some level that was not quite three points It was two points and then zero points if they basically didn't didn't follow it. They broke the players code So I that's the first time that i've seen that where someone has explicitly oriented Basically the sports minimum requirements or sort of sports Core scoring in terms of turn overall tournament points around the players code explicitly and I just wanted to have some conversation about that Uh, I've not I've seen the various different sports systems Um, some of them more convoluted than others or complicated than others um I tend to run a fairly simple one because like I said at start I'm just trying to get my core system down and then I can tweak it later. Um, I tend to run a favorite opponent vote Um, well, I just I just asked the players to give me one person They thought was their favorite opponent And you do that after round five, right like basic Yeah, yeah, maybe as I scale I'll need I'll find the need for more granular scoring for this kind of a thing as a as a mean as to sort of police player behavior Possibly because that's sort of like a soft reminder to players to follow these guidelines Um at the events I've run so far. I've had no issues with sports at all So I haven't needed that Another system I've had is that my club the London War gaming guild They run a 40k tournament called the fun and fluff tournament Which is sort of an adapted highlander style 40k tournament Where you bring a list that's supposed to be fluffy and fun to play against And after each round you rate your opponent's list on how fluffy it was how narrative it was and how fun it was to play against And there are awards for those at the end There are all sorts of ways you can skin this cat and I think You don't necessarily have to make a complicated one unless you as a to have found that you have Problems that you think a system can solve Um In which case go for it But otherwise, I think you can keep it fairly simple in some ways Yeah, so just to clarify you you haven't if I understood right you haven't had any kind of like Sports checklist like did your opponent do x y or z in in the game? You haven't really done I may have played in a tournament where that was the case um We take off things I know that some events have that and you rate your opponent out of five or something for sports But I think sometimes that can have an sort of adverse effect where you create pressure where Not scoring someone five is actually quite a big deal Yeah, so yeah, actually I want to jump in here I hate the one to five scoring system because it becomes an uber rating thing Right, yeah like The normal way that a one to five thing you would think it would work would be three as an average game five Is your best game ever one is your worst game ever whatever something like that, right? But these all just become uber Reviews instantaneously where it's like if you didn't get five stars. It's five stars or your or nothing, right? Yeah and And by the way people who just show up to events and don't know that that's the culture will screw that up unintentionally Right, it'll it'll be their first tournament and they'll just be like, oh, yeah, that was a good game Okay, that's like a three good game, right? And they just kind of mark the middle number They think they just told that said told the to that their opponent was perfectly nice and they had a fun game and they happily play again, right and And it only gets worse by the way if then I've also seen to is try to label the one through five Where it's in like one worst game ever you does your opponent had several problems and two it's this and three It's this and four it's this and five. It's an amazing game that blew your mind Your incentive structure for those of you who are in the know are still yep Every game was my best game ever and I you know, if I was trapped on a desert island I would want this person there and this army and all we do for the rest of our Our god-given lives was play this game over and over again, right? It just doesn't make sense and I don't think it's doing anything I think the basic favorite opponent Right like is a good way to go Yeah Uh, and to me I I do like the idea of sort of a very simple basic checklist or something like it Even a one like I It's objective standards, right of like were they on time? Did they play without rules violations? You know, like did they display the appropriate level of grace? I mean, whatever, you know, I don't care You can pick three to five simple things oriented around the player code or not They're just reminding everybody. This is a two-way street game Both players have to be here to make it happen We should be being fair and where the assumption is you when it's framed like that Then everybody knows to check every box every time because there are three objective standards Yep, they were on time. Yep. They brought everything they needed to play. Yes. They they didn't cheat great Yeah, okay Fine like you would expect those three boxes to be checked every time and if they didn't you as a to would want to know Right if somebody was violating that in a major way and so it creates a just a record of it at the time That happens for audit purposes almost more than anything else, right? It's the baseline It's not meant to represent standouts have been to represent baseline Yeah, so then you have a separate metric for the award. I'm guessing correct Yeah, like that doesn't count in the award like if you get like if you cheated you can never win the award Best like it can knock you out of contention Right, like if you're a cheater, you don't get the best best sports award period, right? but The the award is based on how many people voted you their favorite game or or whatever right like that kind of Yeah, I quite like the other of favorite opponents. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely That's what Dave Griffin does with Nash con. Yeah, he's got I'm looking at him here. He's got more questions that you have to tick off And you have to achieve a minimum number over those five rounds to be eligible For in this case best overall, but yeah, the events they're the ones you all said And then the final one did your opponent play in a timely manner that allowed the game to finish To its natural conclusion that is at the end of time for the round There was a clear win loss or agreement was able to be reached on the outcome of the game It's you know is the one that is I find the most Notable of I mean the other ones are pretty straightforward Did your opponent show to the game on time as your opponent prepared for the game? Everything they need to play and did your opponent follow the rules? Okay. Did they not cheat right and yeah So to me those are the three questions, right? Like there you go I think other things you just fine You can you can set other expectations about the type of tournament you're running But to me it's just like that's just baseline stuff You're just trying to make sure that everybody's it it's like one of those things that Okay, if you prompt people it changes behavior Right like if you there's been a lot of psychological research into this like if you prompt people with sort of Bible verses or something like that here in the states or you know sort of religious Text they'll tend and then you ask them moral questions. They'll tend to answer more morally Right, like if you prompt people to act ethically if you remind them that ethics is a thing They will tend to then act more ethically when presented with decisions right So I think that there is a value to that but but it shouldn't be used to determine best sports that just gets into a whole bad area Yeah coach brought up a question about Sports scores in relation to best overall, which kind of gets into potentially what you're mentioning Which is that you know, I've had heard these stories over the years of people deliberately voting down Someone on sports to impact their best overall, you know potential or viability And I don't know if you guys have heard anything like that or We did sense I have the best of rules, so I haven't heard that Okay Yeah, I don't I don't know that I've ever paid attention to it. I don't pay attention to that sort of thing Is my honest answer like okay, well coach if you have any yeah more thoughts on that Yeah, it's me. It's it's been some anecdotal stories over the years But yeah, I haven't had haven't seen anything like that personally. Sure where it's being meaningful, but all right Let's talk about the thing I care about the most painting So here's here's here. Oh now we're in my sweet spot. I mean, this is obviously a huge incentive to me, right? Yeah, but I but at the same time I also recognize that like At the same time, I also recognize my privilege What I mean by that is I don't have kids Right. I have a very stable job like I have a very uh Very respectful and loving partner who gives me time to you know Who respects my time is what I should say and give it to me. She respects my time that I take In in working on my hobby. That's a that's a heck of a luxury. I've got Right and a lot of people aren't in that position. So my ability to like take an army to a high level I can spend 40 hours a week of working on painting Right or something insane like that. Most people don't have that kind of time You've also got the drive to do so. Yes. Yeah, it's 100. Yes and You know, some people have the drive and not the time Yeah, right. And that's that's tough. And so I'm absolutely sympathetic to this So to me when I think about painting I've noticed a lot of people like some events use these sort of checklists Or that sort of thing right where it's like you've You know, you get a painting score and blah blah blah blah and all of this And I think that's often a lot of hay for not a lot of value okay, because Ultimately what matters in my mind is There's going to be a best painted it could be first or per second third. I don't care like it can be like that Right, you can recognize excellence in painting I like a player vote a favorite army because there's two separate things Yeah, like an army that could win player favorite might never win best painted and vice versa. Those are two completely separate things right and And I like them being separate. I like I like being able to be having Someone be recognized by their peers for something cool. They made Even if they're not the best painter in the world. Who cares they did something really awesome recognize them, right? So to me kind of the checklist thing is sort of like I don't know. It just feels overdone The way I did it. I'll explain how I paint judge events since I I mean I paint judge Many big events in the u.s, right? When I did dash count this last year, here's what happened. I took a notebook I went around and I examined every army Okay, I did one pass through the hole and I made a note of every army that caught my eye I sat there and sat with every army looked at each big. Well, it was all they were all displayed And if I thought they were were like a potential Right, then I would write them down And I don't need you. I don't need a checklist to know that Okay, I know what good painted is. I know what bad painted is, right? Now again, that's a luxury for David. He's got me to to to do this, right? But David's also a good painter himself. He could do it. He doesn't necessarily need me That gave me a first cut Which was about 10% I try to cut to 10% of whatever the population is, right? And then we have those people all bring up their armies and they can like hey, you're recognized as like You know one of the cut you're sort of a finalist people get to display their armies in a nice little place So it's recognition even if you don't end up winning one of the words people get your army goes in like a special place And then I took more time with each of those and determined One two three, you know, like best in show style like I'm walking along the row of dogs, right like and And to me that works Right like now as a point of fact often when I'm judging the best of the best I will score things out with my own scoring system that I have Uh, and then and I like I have a weighted scoring system I'll use but that's for me personally All right, I could just as easily do that number free So I just I think the checklist thing is is like which goes to my other thing I don't I think three color minimum is the stupidest thing you can put in a pack. I don't think it means anything You should just say painted figures You must bring painted models Okay, if someone's a jerk who wants to show up with just like everything clearly just like I slapped paint around Ha ha ha like they're gonna be a jerk. We if you say three color minimum, they're gonna be a jerk If you say painted it doesn't matter. There's always ways to cheat who cares. You're not winning anything It doesn't matter. You knew what you were doing Okay, it's not hard for me to take an airbrush and go three color minimum. No problem Everything's blue everything's white from slightly above and then I shoot some red from on top Boom call it the bomb pop army. I'm ready to rock Right like if you want to be a jerk, you can be a jerk. You can't stop that bad actor and who cares Right who cares they were never in contention to win anything. What are we doing? I want painted armies, right? So it should just be an assumed minimum Show up with a painted army where the models look like painted models. If you don't know what this means contact me But don't be stupid Like I yeah, that's that's I I have a lot of opinions on this I guess Yeah, the painting rubric I've and trying to put together a pack It's not I've been having that debate like do we need a painting rubric and in general my sense has been no It it is like like I said, it's uh A lot of hot air it how much for work. Do you want this a too? Right It's an insane amount of work, right? Like adepticon for years used this very Complicated painting checklist and they had to have an army of volunteers walking around to score 200 armies when it's like most people just end up at 20 Or some number around there, right? It's like jeez. What's what's that? What's the payout here? Yeah, that what's the the the cost benefit Uh, just doesn't make any sense to me All right, and by the way, I aether cast. Hey aether cast. What's up, buddy? Uh over here is saying, uh, I always thought it was a shame not to have other hobby related awards best conversion best basing Best display board stuff like that which I um Holy havoc this tournament. I'm going to is a largely narrative and hobby focused tournament They have like four different hobby awards. They give out. I love hobby awards. I love recognizing people who do other cool stuff So yes, I'm okay with that as well I think that would fit into the special category above that we mentioned like a lot of the when we were talking awards A lot of them we focused on were more gaming related, but I think you could have ancillary Hobby related awards just as easily Yeah, I'd love to have some of that but there's only so much bandwidth. I have sure sure all fair Perfect. So some tournaments. I've seen they have what you described vents as just like this Standard that you have to achieve to keep your toys on the table and to play the event And then they'll have bonus points that are available that go to an overall score that can potentially help with your You know best overall or whatever score just help like your overall tournament points And then of course they have the best painted favorite choice What do you guys think about that of like Available bonus points for those who bring armies that could go toward a best overall is that ideal is Yeah, if there's the concept of best overall, it's exactly how it should work That that points is what factors into that thing, right? It shouldn't ever factor into best general. That's two completely separate things right when those two get mixed up It's a bad day. You get people leapfrogging in weird ways. That doesn't make sense Generals meant to test skill against skill Right, like that's what it's there for don't stay in your lane painting, right, right? Yeah Yeah, that's that's it should just I I don't think it's that complicated I'm not minimizing what you're saying I just mean like go ahead go ahead Charlie I'm going to use that in the dress general in one way, which was for my local club we Ran a poll for what we should do for some one day events We did should we allow people with unpainted armies to play in a small one day events And if yes, should they get any penalty or not? for running unpainted and The they had choices of must like I don't care at all people can do what they want to Everyone must be totally painted to some in the middle and the majority of our members said Yeah, unpainted is fine, but some sort of penalty And then we switched that in our pack to a bonus for being painted because it's better to incentivize and punish So we were running a 20 year system and we were running three to four games So you can get as an aos 2 Um, and we gave five points Five tournament points if your army was fully painted Not enough to upset everything but a little boost Sure, and then we also put five points Five points if you name your general that's like a read the pack reward Awesome I love it and yeah to me it's like the In that kind of thing especially with one dayers I'm all for it like you should kind of blow the doors on one dayers in general right like With the one day thing that's where you want to bring people in so I'm you know This is when I talk about like show up with painted stuff. That's for like a gt, right? Like one dayers need to be an on ramp that's welcoming to new people in the hobby and stuff like that So it just makes sense to say sure if it's not paying that's fine And by the way, I charlie you and I are again sympatico like never penalize when you can incentivize Right. Uh, just make it a positive utility instead of a negative utility. It's it's pretty straightforward. Yeah Okay This one goes without saying about the painting but just to say it's like obviously anybody that's playing a commission army and And or borrowing an army. Yeah should not be eligible for the best painted or or any of that stuff Yeah, I mean, I I feel like it should be known by now in the community, but I still do see people who Don't follow that rule, which is very weird. I do not understand why I don't get it What do you think you're holding if you commissioned an army and you're holding a best painted award? You're holding a lie I don't know what what positive what potential benefit do you get out of being such a weird person? Like, you know, if that's you and I find out like it's a simple answer. Please don't come back to our events. Thank you That's absolutely right Um, so yeah, you know, it's just like By the way at a gt I could see allowing unpainted even at a gt level I could see allowing unpainted stuff or something like that But if you if you fail if you cheat or if you show up with unpainted figures You get bracketed out of losing the top awards. Could I see I could see that as like a structure? Yeah, like Um, so as also an incentive like you cannot win these awards If you show up with unpainted or or crap or cheat or whatever like you will just it becomes a hard gate so Yeah, I I once uh It's not spotted a couple unpainted like the sort of four unpainted models in one an army They looked at the player and the eyes were totally bloodshot think paid on their fingers Just get it done for tomorrow. Just yeah Demonic Teddy said send the trophy to the commission painter. Absolutely if I ever found out I'd be like give me that back It's going to someone else who painted this they get it You didn't get this Okay cool Let's talk about round timing. Um, this this should be a fun one because we've had some people already mentioned this So let's talk about round Timing or time to play the round or I don't know whatever whatever you want to call this How long should a round be chess clocks? How does the round start? Do you set expectations or like a sample round breakdown? What happens when you call it early or players allowed to talk through their games? You know like do you do you get the points for rounds on play such as battle tactics all that kind of stuff? so I'm going to say one thing real quick here And then I want to hand it over to everybody else and takaloy. It's going to be the exact opposite Chess clock should never be part of this game ever Ever ever ever I hate them. I hate the idea of them. They they like great Hey, I love it when suns just win out of hand too. Why not make it easier for sons of them at nirons just to win You know, it it's a very weird incentive structure for very simple armies It punishes things like gets and beasts for no reason whatsoever uh It it just creates a bad incentive structure because some armies are simply slower because the way the game is designed In chess clocks work because both people are Playing with the same amount of things and the same pieces that do the same thing and the same number of them This game is not designed with that expectation around it and trying to fit it on there. It just doesn't work um People should play at a time But like a chess clock just puts a very unnecessary pressure on people who by the way you want to make tournaments really Uh, you want to make sure that nobody new ever comes to tournaments and we don't grow the tournament scene Bring chess clocks in it's a great way to do it because then everybody who thinks that tournaments are just whack people Trying to win and taking everything way too seriously. Well, you just proved them all right Like I understand that there could there there is a cohort of people uh Namely like final flash and takahoy apparently who wants chess clocks but But that's and like I get it. I hope somebody does a tournament specifically for you Like I would love to see a tournament. It's like this is the super hardcore grinder event. It's chess clock It's everything only show up if you mean it right like cool. Like that's your tournament speed I hope a to wants to run that But like as a general rule no get that out of here Right, it doesn't belong in there like the scene doesn't grow with that kind of thing It's unnecessary pressure on an already extremely high pressure game with a lot to remember Etc right so there you go Um, that's my general feeling on that piece. That's the only piece I have a strong opinion on here and it's real strong So a lot of thoughts on this but Charlie let me give the 40. Would you have an idea? Uh, I don't really agree with the events. I think they're quite intimidating um for new players And like you said, there's sort of like a different amount of time involved with each army But uh, takahoy is one of my assistant to my club. So I'm gonna have an interesting chat later on That's funny Um, all right, so let's talk about let's let's move through this round timing How long is should the rounds be in a os 3.0? Go ahead. I'm leaning towards so this is one of the debates right now It's 245 or it's three hours now by the time that we get to may of next year I think we may be at a two hour 45 As we stand right now if I were doing a tournament this weekend today two in a player like Charlie's doing next month I would be doing three hours For multiple reasons. That's 30 more minutes And what was the standard for a long time in warmer fantasy? Certainly in a os in my experience getting back in the hobby six years ago. We generally most of my turns up into been 230 230 it's not enough time with 3.0 the way the game plays. It's more active interactivity in every turn Which is cool Yeah, three hours to me is the new standard Yeah, I think it's got to be three hours right now. Uh, we are Encouraging players to play all five rounds because of the scoring system we've we've introduced The scoring matters. It's quite hard to figure out scores for people that drop out That can seed the game So they're going to go to all five rounds So, yeah, I think it's got to be three hours. The game is just slower. It's just slower right now Um, so you need the three hours, but I am in favor of talking things through and I want the talk through to happen in the round time That's what I so I told players the last event. I've given you three hours It's more than other events, but I want the talk through in the round time Uh, we'll get into it. I have some concerns with the talk through Yeah, so we can get into that. Sure. So let me like let's I want to actually talk about the talk through from both sides Okay, yeah because I also like Three hour rounds right now. I actually like them in general And I think it's fine like I think shaving 15 minutes off or 30 minutes off or stuff It's just too hopeful and it puts people under undue stress and stuff like that. This isn't meant to be a stressful thing um I would do I agree with you completely charlie that we want people to finish their games if you have three hour rounds You get a lot less talk throughs. That's number one. Yes, right. Yeah Number two, I actually want to normalize players talking more at the beginning of the game As well All right where people allow for a little discussion Uh back and forth of like, hey, this is my name. It's my army. Here you go. Here's my list You got any questions about how anything works? I'm happy to explain You know, like have you played this army before this your first tournament? like there's a lot of Little discussion that can take five or ten minutes at the beginning of a game That if you allow for it, maybe as people are setting up, you know You can be doing it as you're putting models on the table or something, right? And Uh Like that beginning discussion can be so valuable like it can set expectations. You mentioned like bill susah Tyler, right? I think this was bill who said he likes to have this sort of initial discussion of like, hey Just so you know, if you make a little mistake and you catch it in the round I don't have a problem with you taking it back, right? Like you if you're if we're still in the same You know phase or whatever you're like, oh, I forgot to do this thing. Can I do this thing? Yeah, sure, of course, you know, I'm like, I'm gonna there's a friendly game We're gonna we're gonna play a good game warhammer here that kind of thing, right? And I think allowing for the three hour round lets people have that That discussion at the beginning, which I think is hugely valuable for expectation setting I'd like to know that It's somebody's first tournament game. I'm playing against them or whatever, you know or that kind of thing I'd like to let people know that like i'm gonna play a cool game with you. This is fine You know, it's not the end of the world. This isn't the freaking world series over here, you know, or whatever Yeah, and you need to build in time for people to go to the loo by drinks have chats things like that That's gonna be because they don't want to do that anyway I've run 1000 point events where you played for 90 minute rounds It's tough. They've got to play fast And you can see the bar doesn't take much money and they're not that happy So you've got to have some time for people to do things that people have to do Hmm Yeah, so to me it it It allows for like going to the three hour round, which by the way does not create that much of a delta In win the things ending right It just allows for More people to finish their games people to be more comfortable To have the discussions at the beginning and to minimize the talk through at the end, right? Yeah And to me the talk through at the end is sometimes necessary and and sometimes it's obvious Sure, there's always going to be weird situations like it has to be a thing where both I don't have a problem with the talk through as long as both people completely agree to it And I like your point charlie of like doing it within the allotted right time Right. Yeah, don't play to the minute whatever if it's one round left And this person has one fig on the board and I've got five units on the board and I haven't used run three Uh yet, right? I'm gonna go I'm this will be my battle tactic next round. Do you agree? There's no way you could stop it. Yes. Okay, cool I'll have those two points next round. You're gonna sit there. I'm not gonna kill that unit. You'll have this thing That'll be the end score. Does that make sense to you? Yes, like most games where I've had to do a talk through are pretty logical And if we didn't We if we couldn't agree. We're just like, okay, well then we call it where we are Yeah, that's it Yeah, and the key is that with the 20o system, you're competing against other players points So it's not you're not going to have a system where you just both give each other max points because it doesn't work with the 20o system You're compared points your opponent gains points that you don't gain Right, so there's a problem before where if you run a pure victory point system Then you can just talk through the game. Okay, we both score max points. Therefore. We both do really well That can't happen with the 20o system. So the talk through has to be negotiated and both players agree in it because it's competitive Yeah, and I think the one of the problems is like tyler I know you've had some some questions about the talk through and I get it. There are pitfalls here, right? There are But I think the problem is you also can't stop it You know, I mean like it is also part of the culture like people will It's it's the end of round four. You've got 10 minutes left You're like, look, we don't have time to play another round, but I think we both know where this is going How do you feel? What do you think's gonna happen? Blah blah blah like it just Happens you can say don't talk through your games. People still talk through the games right because Yeah, I have mixed feelings Right, I mean, I definitely agree that the culture and it's This is more of a recent development We've been having some recent discussion in our local community about this Part of it is related to concerns over Our personal experience we've been having going to tournaments and seeing a lot of players not finishing their games In general getting the feeling that quite a few aos 3.0 tournaments so far Have had quite a few people not getting past a round three even But generally round three and round four not getting into round five real quickly charlie What was your experience with your event so far? Are you were you having a meaningful number of games not getting to found that there were a number of games in my first London Open that were stuck at sort of ground three around four and it was going over time and Might they were submitting the results too late So I kind of honed in on that a bit in the next one and being a big speech at the start Like you need to finish your games within the three hours. I need a result at three hours Within the five minutes afterwards. Otherwise you risk being scored double loss Because I need to move on with the event If you need to talk through you can talk through But you need to do that inside the round time. I'm not playing dice down. I'm playing scores in And it's up to you guys to figure that out between yourselves And the other point is that in my event. I'm using bcp and the players self score They enter their own the results in Which makes it a lot easier for me But they've got to negotiate that Yeah, so one potential concern that we've been discussing is potential for I've got the word collusion in my head. I'm that's exactly the right word, but you know what I'm getting at and Then also, I you know, I I do have I never I've always been I mean personally as Benz knows I'm a very analytical player. He's always trying to make optimal decision Uh, I I see a lot of Richie and myself when I watch Richie play from just play. Sorry Richie Where you know, he's also very analytical And point being that I've I didn't really have a problem with 1.0 and 2.0 in games getting finished I have had a problem in 3.0 Or it's been I've been self-sat. I almost every loss that I've had in 3.0 tournaments Mostly I've just been because I didn't get my game stone. Whereas it probably would have turned around I've had experiences where my opponent wasn't comfortable You know, it looks very obvious to me that I'm going to get the game But I was the one who didn't get us to round five Make the game very clear and he wasn't willing so we ended up being a draw or or a loss But anyway, yeah, we've been discussing these issues quite a bit recently Yeah, so what about on the one on collusion? What are you guys? I realize I didn't quite answer your last question either in the second round and opened after gave the talk I found that every game finished except A couple each every round there'd be sort of a handful that were in the middle of round five When the time happened and they went a few minutes over just finishing that fifth round off But otherwise I the second tournament I had everyone finishing More or less in time in three hours. Yeah, and um Because they're being used to the system now. They knew they had to get through to the end to get the points And because the system is competitive if I get points, you you don't if you get points, I don't You can't really collude on the points because it's a zero sum game, you know Yeah, I think that the the combination of um the combination of allowing for the longer round and setting and prompting people right um Like prompting people with the expectation that you should be finishing your games Again, the same the same reason you prompt people for sports you prompt people in this People will tend to act in the way you prompt them to act like humans are sort of social animals like that, right? and so You know, I think when you when you get into those two things you just minimize it This feels like the kind of thing that that you can't attack directly like attempting to regulate it will fail We have to attack it through ancillary ways To to to lighten the load of the problem, right? Yeah Like and you can tell players at the start if you do not finish your games. You will not score highly Right, right. Yeah, right. Yeah, take a look take a look in the comments Try and thought if you're being analytical and taking more time not finish the game You're sort of punishing the player taking less time. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the obvious thing and I'm some In my personal experience has actually been the the exact opposite It's been almost every game that I've lost at a tournament has been a form of self-sabotage Because we didn't get to either rounds four or rounds five when the game not just Eagle talking like the game probably would have turned my opponents the game would have turned around so they actually were benefiting um me taking up too much time And then them getting the win or getting in the draw because we couldn't you know, we didn't get through all the rounds but yeah, I mean all is equal and We you know, I do I do feel like though we have been I have been seeing at the tournaments I've gone to which none of these would like get in 3.0 more issues with With time than I ever had before and especially with new players like I played some new players in 3.0 and oh my god Like it's been a real problem One game we Anyway, I had to say something to somebody because he was going so slow And with with what he was trying to do. Yeah, but yes, so some of this relates to the whole We've been having discussion this week about chess clocks and all of that and You know, I know Vince you clearly have a very strong opinion on it. Mm-hmm. I've never really tried fire. Yes, correct I um, what's that? I said kill it with fire You'll fire. Yeah, I've never tried it. It's I'm open-minded and curious about Certainly a common perspective that if you introduce Chess clocks is going to have these ancillary consequences. It's going to change culture It's going to it's going to have these negative externalities like it's going to be associated with it And I don't know if that's true. Like I don't know I haven't I haven't tried it. I haven't seen tournaments try it I have a lot of 40k players. I know I know we all like many people like to bash on the 40k culture and all of that I'm good friends with a lot of 40k players. They love their tournaments You know They don't see like when you talk to 40k players that when I talk to 40k players for the most part they Are not expressing this narrative that I hear of 40k community and culture and players And the way that they talk about why they like chess clocks and what chess clocks has done For their environment where they were having issues with time and chess clocks really cleaned it up but you know Would we experience a major cultural change? We're saying the 40k tournament based cultures what you're aiming for So I'm saying I don't You I don't Haven't tried it. You haven't tried it. I don't know if tournaments that have tried it You're assuming that if we had if I run if Charlie runs or if we run an amos tournament Month At whatever and we do it that it's going to have all of these negative effects. I don't know that's true There's ways that you can account for it. Well, first thing where I remember Let me jump in there real quick I understand the experiment you're talking about right like you're saying I would want to see it in practice before I judge I think the challenge with that is You are definitely going to hit more negatives than positives with more people upon initial uptake okay Like because it is simply because change is a thing and change management is a thing And we've done nothing to help people with the change manager there other than saying we're doing clocks now Okay So almost by nature it's going to create negative externalities right away like instantaneously What you would actually need to do is have it for some amount of time where it did became where it did become normalized Right and where people did get used to it because that's when you might express the positives Yeah Like uh once it is because like what happens if you're using like a true clock What happens if you you're letting it run whatever whatever it must say it has to be like the physical slappy slappy clock from chest You're using something like that right And then you forget because it's both new to you and you forget and it keeps running and it's in your opponent's turn And you're like ah crap. It's the 10 minutes on was I got 10 minutes off my time and it's your turn right because those things will happen left and right at the beginning right And uh and like Those those mistakes will happen left and right, which will just create negative externalities at the beginning When it's normalized You won't have as many people make those kind of mistakes because they expect it You know people who go to chess tournaments the clocks don't make those kind of mistakes because it's part of how they play the game Right, I would also point out that that like separate discussion the best Chess player in the world and the best speed player chess player in the world are two different people Okay, because it's it is a very different skill set to be able to play chess very very fast Right and to be able to play chess sort of normal is it where I guess whatever um You know so my point is is that like no, I'm not saying I think it would be the end of the world Okay, and I do think you could express positives the challenge is you'd have to normalize it within some group for quite a while To get it to be normalized and to begin to express all the positives and there are positives right, but There's also like and there's a set of people who are in the comments who are like You know, they love it man. They're in Like they're they're in for it because they like how it makes them aware of their time Yeah, like I feel it doing the thought x in my head. I feel like that's what it would just do to me and I welcome that like Hyper aware that I can suffer from analysis And have been trying to get better especially in 3.0 to stop having tournament games that I lose because I don't finish them in time Like I'm tired of doing it almost every single damn game has been lost because of me because of that So anyway, I I'm curious about whether that would help and like I said the stories that I've been hearing from 4k community It's been largely positive. I get there are some critiques Although, you know when we talk about them where we don't play 4k. We're not a part of that Tournament scene, you know, we have our stories. I'm not sure how often they actually map over to reality Um, I tend to like a lot of the 40k guys who play tournaments and like they seem generally like pretty You know guys and gals they seem anyway without going down that road. But yeah, I just We haven't ran the experiments. I'm curious I don't know of any aos tournaments. I hear like a huge amount of resistance in the aos community to even thinking about the idea of chess clocks But it's just sort of a premium fashion statement, right? But I don't find that it's often that what I would consider informed or Or based on personal experience based on actual experience to me. It's a lot of stories in people's heads Sure, they're telling themselves. Sure Sure, are you enjoying that? You have any thoughts on this Charlie? Yeah, I'm kind of in the middle of you guys here where I see I see where both of you are coming from um like Because I I also work with some 40k guys and they're pretty used to it now It's just in the events that my the warm tournaments who I work with run They run 40k events chess clocks are standard for every player And they're used to it now But you know, you do have um some players get wins because they've timed out their opponent Which uh, it doesn't seem quite right to me in some ways I understand why it happens because they just use up too much time But it also doesn't seem like that that a satisfying conclusion to a game But that's going to start happening Um, and I don't like it as a barrier to entry and it just uh, it's sort of a weird feeling about it Which I think is where some of the community is at But I would be interested in having an experiment and seeing how it goes as well um On the other hand to be selfish. I don't want the hassle Of organizing it It's a lot of work to get it up from running And we'll see and right now the tournaments are almost there. I think for timing Yeah, I feel like we have that bit of a problem that we need to introduce this this powerful antibiotic, right? Like this is a heck of a this is a heck of a drug. You've just tried to introduce into the system Is when I'm not sure that there's that much of a disease, right? Well, I certainly agree with that like three hours Everybody all the sequel should be getting their games in in three hours periods like absolutely and sometimes it just doesn't happen Like we can say it's it's not me not my army, but it happens to everybody sometimes And I think what I try to do is litter my pack with little small incentives To get the games done and it seems to be working and I'll see how it goes I would also point out one other potential challenge I would want to know when the clock is exactly switching back and forth Okay, because especially in 3.0 There's a lot of back and forth activity So like is it taking off my time when I do any kind of reaction to you? Right. So every time I have to roll a save every time I have to like every time If I redeploy if I only shall if I whatever whatever, right? Like there's a lot of potential interactions of dice, you know I move my face could be a nightmare Like how much I unit I move my unit redeploy hit the clock And they've got a that's their thinking time. Did they want to redeploy then they call it hit the clock back to say no I don't want to redeploy. Okay. Now I move the next unit redeploy No, okay move redeploy. No like that could get kind of crazy That's that seems fair Like well and and that's when by the way like if so so which leads to my concern and again I know there's people who want this they're in the chat. They're all very vocal and that's fine. I love you guys I'm glad you all enjoy this. Like I said, I hope somebody does run a tournament like this but my challenge is There's like there's a lot of back and forth And I don't think I'm being overtly granular I think that this is simply like if I have to pass it to you because now you need to make saves And you've got a re-roll saves and you've got wards Right cool. I'll pass it to you and then and then it comes back to me. That's a lot of chances for for error right And again, it's going to inequity in equitously punish certain armies. These are not Equal forces some armies do just take longer to run Period like significantly Through choices that's not of that player's control like suck at lumeneth players you get to lose I guess a lot more games. I guess it would bring down the lumeneth win percentage. So hey, that's a guy There's a positive um But like the lumeneth player didn't decide to design their book like that Right with like where they have counter spells and interrupts everywhere where they would need to take control of the clock Right Oh Well, I appreciate that discussion on this. Yeah, because it's definitely one we've been having locally Maybe one other issue charlie. How have you been handling concessions? Maybe we talked about it when a player concedes in terms of scoring So like we're in round They were in round three and I've fed up because you've been destroying me with 50 sentinels and We don't get through round four and five. What happens? I think I I'm not sure if I've written this up yet or not. I think I need to write up a protocol for this which would be something along the lines of the player who concedes scores zero no more points from then on and the player who who um Well, maybe they score zero and then the player will then play on and get um They'll score as many points as they can feasibly in the remaining time Something like that. Um, I need to sort of work out a metric for that But I found that there have been very few concessions because Players say look man, you've won the game, but we'll just we'll just talk through the last turn. So you get the points you need Sure, okay Yeah, that that's Is aligned with my experience as well But yeah, but I've seen some variation in terms of how tournament packs handled that And yeah, I'm just curious if you want to density of any thoughts on that one Uh, no, I like charlie solution. I think that's right. That's exactly right. Yeah Like it makes sense Like if somebody concedes and it's pretty obvious that you're going to be able to go through and do like x and y and z Sure, like as a conceding player, I'd be like I would actually just tell people Look, we can call it. It's obvious to me. You're going to get this. You're going to do this Good, you know Again, I think some part of this has to be the culture of being gracious players Yeah, right. Like that does need to still always be part of this And that comes down to that first point about people make great tournaments Right because they can also ruin it too, you know But most of the time the people are really good and they play for the right reasons and the right intention And it's the negotiation the games negotiation And it goes well Yeah, yep End of flame All right, good discussion. That was good Uh, okay Uh, all right folks, I just I don't I don't just agree with him at all times No No, some people Yeah, somebody said in the comments you agree with me too much, but that was a good that was a good pushback. All right Uh, okay Let's talk scenery gentlemen Uh, we talked about terrain in previous things Charlie, how do you think about terrain? Tyler and I have had long discussions about this already How what you see as the big challenges? I've got this picture here, by the way from this came from Warhammer world, right? This came from Uh, yeah. Yeah, Steve Wren. Yes. He was heading up. Yeah organizing for Warhammer world events Yeah, he put together these awesome images maps of like impassable impassable uncover and Wildwoods and stuff like that, which by the way, Steve Wren is an absolute hero Um, he's the he is the man. He is my absolute hobby hero. The man is he's great and great great person great guy So at any rate, I love this He has a whole bunch of these like little pictures and packs of that kind of defining everything for this cool terrain He's made for tables. It's fantastic Um, charlie, what do you think about scenery? What are the outstanding challenges with terrain? I think it's pretty important. Um The challenge of the terrain is you've got to make a system that affects the game Uh, in a positive way without getting in the player's way That's the main thing the system's got to be smooth so that players interact with it naturally and fluidly But it doesn't have zero impact at all. It's got to influence the decisions players make But not take over the game not getting the way not cause weird interactions But direct them to move certain ways. So when I was playing my pack with daniel my assist one of my assistants he He he was sort of putting we also got a table out and put down objective Markers in all the spots they could possibly be And then we started placing down pieces of terrain And to try to see like what kind of flow with this board have um Kind of similar to To chat you and rob had vince about if you make terrain here on this map It creates this kind of flow And we sort of put the pieces down and tried to sort of think What we're trying to make a universal plan actually so that we didn't have to reset tables every round And the players didn't have to reset tables And so we were trying to find setups with the pieces we had where we like every any scenario you put at it There'd be some nice flows that weren't too obvious not big firing lines garrisons wouldn't be in really overly influential places Uh, we weren't accidentally blocking more crushes from moving anywhere at all things like that and And yeah, we'd like daniel brought out a more crush of plates and every time he made a ball He just put the plate in every spot It's like okay that fits um And you mentioned verticality Yeah, as well like try to cut that down as much as possible It makes a very interesting game in games that are granular like war cry But it's just a pain in age of sigma most of the time And it lets people do pretty janky stuff janky things where you can't be charged Or you have to assume that models are higher but they're actually on the bottom because you can't fit them Right So and also if you can put things on top then you sort of ruin a lot of the flow you're trying to influence Right if you make things impossible And obscuring then you have to you're directing players. Okay. You need to interact the scenery in this way. Yep And the pictures are really good. We did pictures for the training pieces We have because we want players to just look at it at a glance. I understand what this does. I can move on with the game Yep, the big challenge I had my first tournament My first London Open was that players weren't sure how to interact with the scenery because I hadn't directed them And then I told some people what I told the players that asked me what to do And the players that didn't ask me played it totally differently And so I had sort of some players playing it as I wanted it with impassable pieces And other players with Marathi on top of huge stacks of huge mountains that couldn't be touched Right. I thought this is not this is not good. I need to make this clear and obvious Yeah, I mean we've said it before I'll say it again impassable was the trick that was missed in the base terrain rules amongst amongst a few other things like calling Calling obscuring terrain wild woods, but sure whatever Um Like they had the right idea wrong name. I won't bust them up too bad for that I love that Steve decided no no, we're just like we're just going to go ahead and use impassable Like gw opened the door when they started slapping impassable around on faction terrain So now it's just a thing right we could just bring it in all we need to And and I agree like to me the verticality challenge just gets painfully annoying and the solution is just like, okay Uh What we're gonna do here is Uh Things that have a lot of verticality are either impassable or garrisonable which effectively makes them impassable because you can't land on them Right unless you're garrisoning. Yeah, exactly. So they just become those two things the more flatter things that it's not, you know It doesn't really matter, right? Like yes, the verticality is like this You know in size and it's like, okay fine. The thing is kind of it's sitting there, but it's maybe sitting like this No problem any other model could still walk up to it You know, maybe the base is a little wobbly as it were but it's it's sitting right? I can take my hands away from it It sits in the space. It's not I don't need to I don't need to make a dice tower To hold up one side You know or do something magical it just boom there it is right I think once you make simple fixes like that you really and then when you have garrisons by the way I mean garrisons represent their own challenges. They're fairly complex and people don't really know the rules But and they definitely need to stay very far away from objectives Like they should not be within six inches of an objective Uh, which can be challenging so like garrisons to me are Uh, are there are like a fine enough thing if almost like in the pack You just have written the rules for garrisoning on like the last page Because yeah, they were a challenge People just don't remember those rules. It's complicated It's here at the interaction between moving in moving out what's allowed. What's not blah blah blah How many I have to tell a few players during the event you can't be there. That's a garrison. You can't be on that right and then one one Top player Experienced player said well, you've made up loads of rules for this pack. Nope. These are all in the core rules This is what garrisons are exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's a challenge, right? So I think keeping garrisons away from objectives is important too. Yeah You just don't want to let somebody be able to be like This corner of the the pyramid is within six inches of the objective And all the and so and I put 30 dudes in there. So now I've got 30 people on the objective and it's like, oh, okay Sure sure Yeah Seems reasonable Yeah, I'm excited to see there's more pickup the just play event that's happening this weekend I was looking at that pack today Which any and company are doing miniatures must be able to be placed on the table at all times Have a use of the impassable train rules will support the easy implementation of this. So yeah, it's catching on charlie. Yeah awesome I love it. It's a lot of work. I'm glad it's people are liking it Fantastic I think this is what we're on agreement on and we've all touched on it before but it was worth restating the core principles here So definitely Okay, cool. Let's keep moving nothing to nothing too crazy about this one. Let's go to the last one The special sauce. Oh, yeah. All right. So the special sauce Um I like as you said tyler. I too am attracted to tournaments that have uh Some kind of special sauce about them, right? These are all bonus options. This is just meant to be kind of a basic list But you could do there's a hundred other things that could be on this list Um There's absolutely no reason why I have a picture of a lumineff guy next to the line that says to comp by the way that's total That's complete happenstance um No grand strats or battle tactics outside of those in the ghp I've made my case before on this in previous shows We should just all adopt this rule and like I Yeah, I want to put a gun to the head of gw and say release 25 versions of these or zero That's the correct number. There's the only two numbers Okay Six or five or eight is not a correct number. It's stupid Get rid of them Um grand strats battle tactics outside of the ghp just shouldn't be used until everybody has them The appropriate number is all or none Uh came up last night. I could have gotten my fifth battle tactic last night But I would have had to pull from them sort of like nope. I'm good Yeah, I had to put a metaphor from the story. We just felt like cheating like why am I I just get a bonus one because I guess this is what I happen to be playing like well, what what fun I'm round five. I'm sorry. Yeah, sorry beast player who's had to wait forever for a book And as near as we can tell we'll be waiting a lot longer and no white dwarf article in the clip anytime soon apparently I guess just you get to lose. I don't know what to tell you man So I'm about to maybe I'll ban them till the beast book comes out. There you go. There you go um And then I have like alternative format options self-imposed restriction awards We talked about like nuzlocke and stuff like that previously. Yeah, that's something things to do Where it's like if you if you bring a list that could cope, you know sort of Coheres to this specific restriction set Uh, then there's a special award just for that two list format like what nashkon uses I love the two list format. I really do presents a lot of fun Um sideboards are sort of a lesser option of that sideboards are really hard In really hard because like how do you make that swap? Equivalently as tough. How do you mark it on? Your list and stuff like that. It gets really tricky. Um, but whatever we talked about raffles and door prizes earlier And then to comp but yeah, charlie. What do you think of when you think of special sauce or or these other kinds of options? Yeah, I think that's good to have variety. Right. I was I I really liked having more variety In a os2 I found the 20s system a little bit uninspired in a os2 possibly because there was such Such a sort of I win I get 18 at minimum and so It ended up feeling kind of lackluster for being on the losing side So I wanted more stuff in there. That's why I added schemes, which is sort of I guess Um a secret sauce kind of thing as well So I'm all up for people Putting those in experimenting. I'm running some fairly standard tournaments at the moment because I'm trying to build up a base I could play a base right now But uh, absolutely. I want people to experiment try weird stuff out Um, I'm going to a tournament next month in badminton cafe where everyone makes a 2000 point army And then you get a gotrek on top of that, but you have to theme your gotrek to the army so I'm I've got this guy and I try to make a gotrek ungawson from my visa chaos army And that's going to be fun. So I'm happy. I'm really excited to try out other formats Yeah, and I think these can be little things that are impactful in the overall take or they can be small things that like The game still plays a normal the tournament still plays normal But then there's this sort of like side thing going on like there's there's a great range here, right of potential special sauce Yeah, exactly. Yeah Tyler what about you? It's been interesting seeing sideboards go away, you know, that was big early on when particularly when we were Creating our own comp for the game prior to the ghp 2016 back in the day But we haven't seen that much. I haven't seen a tournament do a sideboard equivalent in a very long time I don't know if you guys have seen anything It's just really hard, especially now that you're in like five point increments and weird model Like it's just it's hard to do Like it's not like, you know, with magic, it's simple. You get a 15 card sideboard you swap one for one Right, like, okay, there you go. Yeah They're really not a thing in the UK I've played in one which is for a friend's birthday tournament. He ran a tournament for his birthday He's actually running it this month too with a sideboard, but other than that, I've never seen it in the UK I was thinking about so, you know, Vince, we've had this discussion about the two list format a lot of people Some people don't like it. They feel like it provides too much opportunity to Cover all your bases, you know, that's benefit of a single list and I mean there's We don't have to go down that rabbit hole. We've had that debate before but there's both sides of that It's kind of the point in part about it. You know, arguably you're missing the point when you make that argument But anyway, what about a sideboard format where instead of 2000 points as your alternate list you get like You can change up to X number of points as your alternate list. Sure. It's still two lists But it's limited as to how much you can alter the second list Yeah, sure. Exactly. Sure. If it was like list one Both lists must share 1500 points. You have 500 points of flex, right? So you've got list one second list you can change up to 500 points. Great. It's contained. You're still either using list one or list two Right, like, yeah, great fine That's effectively still the two list format, right? But it's but it's but it's with an extra bit of Twist on it, right? It's it's the two list format with a lemon twist and yeah, I'm fine with it That's fine. I mean anything you do is going to be marked if you're thinking about stats for the game It's going to be marked as an aberrant stat, so it won't be included in all the statistics You might as well just go wild and do what you want because the players players won't care It's not being marked as a serious statistic. So just have fun Yeah Yeah, yeah So to me, I mean, this is always something I like to experiment with I don't feel the great need to like I don't I don't feel the pressure to be a data contributor to an overall stat set So like if the tournament's doing something fun and interesting that I like cool fine If it's a good tournament that's run by good people and it's played pretty normal also fine Yeah, absolutely. It's this isn't like a requirement. It's just a bonus option. It's exactly that Yeah Like rob and I made the scoring system so we could create A baseline of stats and like a system that could be distributed far and wide as like a a basis A standard for which people can look at and adhere to and we can create good stats If you're gonna go outside that go crazy. Have fun. Right. Yeah Like don't be concerned that your events too weird You're already outside the bound of the standard thing we've issued. So just have fun right and I think In the same way I said I I hope that the people who really love chess clocks get their hardcore chess clock tournament Like I mean that by the way, I'm not being sarcastically just because I hate it not every tournament needs to be for me Right, there is a cohort of people who would really enjoy that sort of thing That can be a special sauce for this tournament, right? Um, that's fine Um, it's not going to be one I attend, but who cares? That's fine doesn't we we could get a 40k player on some time and have But incidentally, yeah, I feel like you know over the years there are a number of topics that I find 40k players are more in tune with than the aos community I'd be interested to do a show where we have somebody from the 40k community on To talk about some of those things this might be one where maybe we can get a little more informed Alternate perspective. Sure. I always recommend, uh, daniel Who plays 40k and aos competitively? He plays 40k with chess clocks aos as well, and he's mr zinch over here Uh, he he's the guy that sort of Re-revolutionized change host back in the aos 2 So maybe you can do a zinch show and then chat about that with him. Nice. Nice. I love that idea very good One thing not on the list that I don't know if you had this We are Going to do it is the whole attacker and defender roll off. Yeah Right now. Yeah, if anybody doesn't know the attacker is essentially getting all the benefit in my opinion The attacker both picks sides and deploys first. So if you're both a one drop, cool The attacker gets all the goodies As opposed. So yeah, how am I in my pack because I've pre Set the terrain and that's the only benefit defenders get I've really just really rewritten that rule If you win the roll off, you can either choose the side or choose the first drop picked Yeah, simple. It's a little thing, but it's it's I I agree like I can't believe that they wrote into the standard rules that the defender does terrain stuff like They have to know how tournaments work, right? Like they they've seen a tournament And you just walk up to the table and be like Start playing three card money with their mountains. Hey, what are we doing here guys? Come on now. And then when do you roll for the mysterious terrain rules? Right, like do you roll it and then the defender moves the pieces around right? Do you move the pieces around then roll it yet another thing that should never be like it all like Tournaments, you should just walk up to the table and terrain is labeled, right? Like this is how the terrain acts This is what it is. We've we've pre-labeled all of the terrain knock yourself out, right? And and I love your then then again it also can make that that The role you're talking about splitting more impactful Right because by choosing the side and the other person chooses the drop and so on and so forth then like yeah You get the benefit of the side well the side's more impactful if you know that like oh this side has a You know arcane piece of terrain. Yeah, cool cool beans, but then you don't have the drop choice I had taken out the mysterious terrain for simplicity, but I think I'm going to put it back in now I think it just makes it much more interesting Yeah, it's it's a good point. It's a great point on the The attacker defender. Yeah, I mean, it's usually all that arcane and yeah, the chance of getting that You know might really Might persuade you to go in that rat. I've also seen tournaments that will announce Okay, every table all of our tables this round game three are using Sinister everything's sinister This this rounds. I think that's kind of interesting as well, you know, if you don't maybe have You want to have the hassle of pre labeling everything like it can be a bit of a hassle doing that Like that could be an alternate man. I want to be playing slanesh when when the when the uh damned call goes far Uh, because then it's just like oh Hello depravity farm. Um I do not want to play all sinister with beasts Hey, do you have an army with crappy bravery? Not one down Definitely those stack I suppose I've never thought about it because I've never played on a table. It's all sinister But I'm pretty sure sinister is just if you're near if you're within an inch of it You take neg one bravery So if your beast unit was spread between two pieces of terrain, which is entirely possible that you'd be within one And just what I always want to do with angles, right? Then you get neg two bravery like you could have you could have Oh, yeah, bravery too. Yeah I'm not saying it's a good idea. It's just an option. I think it's yeah, it's interesting But I I I think I'll just let players roll it out. It makes weird tables sometimes, but that's part of the fun Yeah, I think the uh, I think the lumeneth players over there with that spell where you have to roll above your bravery Just going like well easy out Move in easy out, you know, just like whatever Yeah, yeah Like it should be pre-labeled by the way the the existing list of terrain sucks Just let me say that I know of old terrain I gotta sort this out now. Yeah, yeah pull out the the all the other fun ones they got rid of Um, can we just get six interesting things? He can keep the names the same so we can all keep our dice and stuff But maybe could we just get a list where all six options do something of relevant value instead of just fishing for arcane? Maybe basically. Yeah That's minor ask here at the end of the show All right, gentlemen. This was a great discussion charlie. Thank you so much, buddy. I know it's a little late Absolutely. It's been great to have you on tyler. Thank you as always sir I meant good times We hope this was helpful for all of you and thinking about the tournaments you want to go to and what you like and To is out there everything about running one This could be for you know Hopefully some of this is thoughtful for even if you're just doing a local little one day or something like that in the shop Cool like think about this stuff. Hopefully this is helpful Don't forget to hit that like button click like it helps other people find the show subscribe if you haven't already We're here every wednesday. Obviously That's that's the whole thing. Uh, but thank you all. I loved all the chat loved all the interaction in this episode. You're all awesome Uh The oh, yes. Thank you. Sorry final flash that and mystical good point. Um Now that it's plus one to pray. Yep, but anyways hit that like button as always We'll see you next wednesday