Tournament Scoring Idea: Originality

[Malorian]

This was an idea I came up with a little while back that I'm starting to like more and more and I was wondering what the good ol Warseerites think.


Originality!

This is something not really covered in any tournament I've ever seen.

Sure it's kind of wrapped into sportsmenship scores and army comp but typically this just keeps players away from the very top builds.


My idea would be that for each section you would get a point if you have a unit that no one else has:

-For caracters it's simple. (If you are the only one that took a goblin warboss then you get a point)
-For units the gear counts too. (Orcs with shields are different than orcs with spears)
-Note that unit size and other options do not matter.

Overall this would give each player the ability to pick up 5 extra points and would encouarge them to go for different and interesting units rather than just taking a step down from the best.


Thoughts?

[kenotic]

As long as it isn't a restriction, I don't give a damn. =)
If I go to a tournament, the only prize I want is Best General.

[Urgat]

I can already tell you people won't like it: how does that tie in with their mastery of copying optimal lists on the web?

[T10]

Well, it's a carrot, but I don't think the players will work as such. After all, if one player is the only one to run a certain army then all his units are "unique", while if two other players with orc and goblin armies took the carrot and picked the Goblin Warboss then neither gets any credit for being original.

Then there's the whole book-keeping of comparing army lists to find which units are in fact unique.

Finally, the number of individual unit and character types are ultimately limited while the number pf players is not.

It's a great sentiment, but I see some obvious theoretical pitfalls.

[Urgat]

Well, it's a carrot, but I don't think the players will work as such. After all, if one player is the only one to run a certain army then all his units are "unique", while if two other players with orc and goblin armies took the carrot and picked the Goblin Warboss then neither gets any credit for being original.

Then there's the whole book-keeping of comparing army lists to find which units are in fact unique.

Finally, the number of individual unit and character types are ultimately limited while the number pf players is not.

It's a great sentiment, but I see some obvious theoretical pitfalls.

Yeah. It'd work better if you awarded bonus points for risky armies (100% night goblins, wood elves, whatever). But I'd assume that's covered by sportsmanship usually, no?

[Badbones777]

I think it's a very good idea. While I do not go to tournaments, if something workable along these lines could be implemented
it would probably be a good thing for them overall.

[Havock]

Hard to implement.

3 Orc players go "well, spears are original, I'll take them"
/cue them not being very original.

[The Low King]

Hard to implement.

3 Orc players go "well, spears are original, I'll take them"
/cue them not being very original.

Thats the point though....if everyone changes their list to get the extra points (with the exception of the one guy who decided to be sneaky) then you have automatically created more diversity and forced people to think more about their lists rather than take the standard internet build.

[ewar]

It's a nice idea and would hopefully prevent silly net-listing (something I've always thought was stupid).

However, as has been pointed out, I wouldn't want to be the person policing it for a 150 player GT...

Plus, it definitely penalises some armies - my Bretonnians would be screwed!

[Havock]

Thats the point though....if everyone changes their list to get the extra points (with the exception of the one guy who decided to be sneaky) then you have automatically created more diversity and forced people to think more about their lists rather than take the standard internet build.

Depending on your meta, of course. We only have two or so netlisters here, except for newbies, but I can forgive those. Let's not kid ourselves that there is an enormous amount of originality one can do if you want to stay competitive.
Sure, I can take Forsaken and a mix-match of trolls, ogres and nurgle marauders led by a cabal of level 1 mages and it will be original. It will also, however, suck so very bad.

If you want to give less attention to 'winning' just make 3 price positions: overall winner, best army (ie. sportsmanship) and painting. Now everyobdy sees they can win just as much by having a cool list and playing nice -and thus being elligible for the second one- as the one bringing hardcore lists. Likewise for painting.

[T10]

I don't know if there is even a reason for this call for "originality". Are we all using the same armies? Are we really? Maybe it's just me and my group, but I don't see much of a "norm" that desperate,y needs to be devisted from. What I do see is a lot of optimization with regards to selection and usage of magical items and special abilities. I think that's more an expression of "being smart" than it is lack of creativity and originality.

And even so, what you personally consider to be original isn't necessarilly the same in the eyes of your peers. For example, I like to use Savage Orcs with bows. It's a true novelty, really, and very few make use of this option. But to any opponent it's still just a horde-sized unit of Savage Orc Big 'Uns with a character with the Crown of Command and a Shaman with the Lucky Shrunken head. And when I've used this unit in a few battles (dozens, really) the novelty wears off.

[Ender Shadowkin]

Original types of lists are hard to gage, because differnt groups tend to augor in to differnt types of build based upon the Meta of the group you usually play. It would be interesting top ding people that take the obvious list off the internet, but there will always be people who stumble upon the same list on their own. In my experience most of the people who go to tournies are not pouring over internet battle reports and lists, so they would really have no clue if they were being original or not.

[Balerion]

Wouldn't it turn into an arms race with players trying to anticipate what their opponents will be bringing to score the "unique" points, and then trying to neutralize/counter it by bringing copies of those expected uniques, and trying to fit in their own unexpected inclusions?

I don't play tournies, but wouldn't it be more effective to give some extra points based purely on the number of distinct units in an army? ie. you get one point for having 9 different selections, two points for having 10, three points for 11, etc.

[bluemage]

This really punished players who are using older army books as they don't much of a selection that are worth taking. Also when you start taking sub-optimal you're reducing your chances of winning the tournament. I would also expect that the extra points you give to people with "unique" units won't be near the top table anyways.

[nurgle5]

Why not look up netbuilds for each army and reward those who don't use them?

Last tourney I was at almost had more double-Slann and VC helm-hordes lists than players. I also recall a GT back in 2007 or 2008 where nearly half the players present were using Wood Elves (all using a double treeman build to boot). Four of my six games were against the woodies .

[Lord Inquisitor]

I'm afraid I don't see it working very well. It seems very labour intensive to check as you'd have to cross check all the lists. For small tournaments you wouldn't have a lot of duplication of armies and even at big tournaments if you're the only one of two people who brought wood elves you stand a lot more chance of getting originality points than any of the 15 daemon players.

Seems to me a simple comp score will do the trick nicely.

[t-tauri]

Moved to tournaments.

[nurgle5]

For small tournaments you wouldn't have a lot of duplication of armies.

Dunno 'bout that, the tourney I was talking about earlier only had 15 WHFB players and as I said, most of them were running very similar looking Lizardmen/VC lists (there were two WoC armies, a Chaos Dwarf army, a High Elf army, a DoC army; and pretty much the rest were Lizardmen/VC), but your mileage may vary.