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Postcards from the Edgeby Jon Blyth"Four legs good. Two legs bad." - Animal Farm I spend a fair amount of time on the Warhammer Player's Society (WPS) website. Their discussion forums are informed and entertaining, and it's a good way to keep up with the latest news and ideas within the Warhammer world. (And it's a darn site better than GW's own discussion forums, which seem to populated by twelve-year-olds who are always posting stuff like "here's my great new army-killing special character what I just made up the rules for - what do you think?") One thing that has grabbed my attention recently at the WPS is the series of rows going on about tournament scoring. To enlighten the uninformed (or generally uncaring - PH), here's some things you'd need to know if you were thinking of entering an official GW Warhammer tournament. Theme - your army has to have a raison d'etre. This should come in the form of a story "what you have wrote" that the judges can read. It will explain where your army came from, what it's doing, and why it's made up of the units it contains. And your theme has to be apparent through the way your army looks. So if you're fielding an Empire force, you'd better make sure it's painted as per wherever in the Empire it's supposed to come from; and you'll need names for all the characters and units; and a bit of back-story about them. If your army doesn't have a coherent theme it will be marked down. An all-cavalry elf raiding force? - fine, nice theme. Here's what I've bought so far to make up an army? - sorry, not much of a theme there. Comp - (composition). Linked to your theme, your army has to be made up of the correct units according to its background. If you're fielding a steam tank, you'll need to explain why you've got one. Four repeating bolt throwers are perfectly legal in a high elf army - but would you're force really have all of them? Fourteen magic dice - should your general want that many? Comp is designed to stop players just picking the best choices from their army lists - so two giants and a wyvern would be severely frowned upon in a 2000pt orc army. Oh, but you've explained why in your story? - tough, it's still no good from a composition point of view. They're looking for balanced armies - no overkill. Appearance - points are awarded for how good your army looks. Nothing really new here, it's been a staple of tournament play for a long time. Poor-to-average painting means you'll be marked down. Oh, but if you're heavily into figure conversions you'll get extra points - good news for gamers with plastic, bad news for those with metal figures. And you'll need to bear in mind WYSIWYG. If those skeletons on your army roster are wearing light armour, you'd better make sure the figures are. No armour on basic skeleton figures? Tough - you'll need to convert ALL of them so that they have armour. GW only - fairly basic this one. If you're playing in an official GW tournament - don't bother to turn up with non-GW figures. The judges will confiscate them and melt them down in their portable furnace. (Ok the last bit isn't strictly true, but you get the picture). Sportsmanship - oh dear. This praiseworthy attempt to stop "power-gamers" seems to have backfired. Sportsmanship points, awarded by players to their opponents, are apparently handed out nowadays to nice people who get their butts kicked and take it really well. Don't expect to get any points if you are polite, helpful and friendly but rather good at beating opposing armies to a pulp. All of the above (especially in the USA, but creeping in over here too) is causing a few raised eyebrows and/or short tempers in the wargaming community. Reports are widespread of great players who win all their games by huge margins and finish in the bottom 10-20% of scores when everything is totalled up. Opinion seems to be split over what tournaments are really about. On the one hand, you have people who say that it's about everyone having a great day out and the best army wins. (Note that it's the best army, not the most successful one). Others maintain that it should be about the best player lifting the trophy (not necessarily the best painter, modeller or Warhammer-lore expert). So, who's right? I don't know - but I have my own ideas. Take, for example, my 2000pt orc army. I like playing it and it's been pretty successful to date. Theme? It's just a mob of orcs. Comp? I take night gobbos so I can hold up a flank with fanatics; the units of boar cavalry are hard - I don't care if they balance well with the rest of the army; the only reason for the black orc mob is to cut down on animosity disruption. Appearance? My painting is ok, but not stunning, and I don't have the time or the skill for intricate conversion work. I also painted the units at different times, so they don't have a completely uniform look. As for WYSIWYG, there's no way I'm modelling spears onto 40 savage orcs that are already painted and varnished; my night gobbos are really common gobbos with a mainly-black paint job. GW-friendly? Ok on that score - but I'd probably have to explain that to a judge, as the figures are from a lot of ranges stretching back over 15 years. And I'm never going get any points for sportsmanship. It's not that I'm not a nice guy; I just play to win in competitions, thank-you very much. There you have it; you can make up your own minds. Just be sure your army is up to scratch if you're thinking of joining the competition circuit and want to do well. Me? I'm looking forward to our next "local" tournament. Some GW players look down their noses at the "unofficial" events and heap scorn on the "rules-lawyers", "beardies" and "power-gamers" who attend them. I say, bring them on. A 2000-point limit creates a level playing field, so get slaughtering the opposition. You should be able to tell the winner at the end of a war. (And best-looking-army gets a best-looking-army award). |