Well, let's start from the start, you get 3pts for a win, 1pt for a draw and 0pts for a loss, you also get points based on how many of your opponents nominated you as their favourite opponent of the weekend. GW's method for ranking you in the tournament is (as best as I can tell) the following; the average score across all the players who used the same codex is compared with your tournament score and the difference is you "ranking score". For example I scored 12pts for my 4 wins and 1 point because someone thought I was a good opponent. The average score across the 7 Ork Players at the tournament was 11 so that gives me a ranking score of 2. Mick scored 13 points as well but the average score across the 11 Space Wolf players was 8 so his ranking score was 5.
Using the above methodology Mick placed 6th and I placed 44th out of a field of 129 players. It's GW's tournament and they can score it how they like (also I knew this would be the case going into the event so I'm not complaining), I'm just not sure what that system tells us in the final standings. Except, possibly that if you do well with an army that other players did not manage to do well with then you are likely to do well in the overall standings.
Where this gets iffy is when someone with a 4-1 record wins the tournament with Daemons while the only player with 5 wins finishes 8th, so you're not really in control of your final placing.
Let's just take a look at where we would have finished if the rankings were based on your results with the codex ranking score used as a tie-breaker. In this case Mick would have placed 11th and I would have got 19th. The 5-0 Dark Eldar player still only manages second place though because an Ork player with 4 wins managed 5 best game nominations and so ended up with 17 total points to beat him by a single point. So it comes back to the age old issue of soft scoring vs generalship but all I can say to that is that if you know how the scoring is done before you go to the event and buy the ticket anyway don't complain about the rubric after the fact.
What I take away from this tournament is that I played well and managed 4 wins, I had 5 great games against 5 really nice opponents and I would definitely buy a ticket for another Throne of Skulls.
Just in case you're interested, here's how the codexes break down in terms of number of players and average score:
| No. of players | Codex | Avg Score |
| 6 | Black Templars | 9.83 |
| 13 | Blood Angels | 6.62 |
| 5 | Chaos Daemons | 9.20 |
| 8 | Chaos Space Marines | 8.38 |
| 1 | Dark Angels | 7.00 |
| 12 | Dark Eldar | 11.17 |
| 7 | Eldar | 8.00 |
| 14 | Grey Knights | 7.93 |
| 11 | Imperial Guard | 7.00 |
| 6 | Necrons | 9.50 |
| 7 | Orks | 11.86 |
| 17 | Space Marines | 7.41 |
| 11 | Space Wolves | 8.18 |
| 3 | Tau | 7.33 |
| 7 | Tyranids | 11.57 |
Whoa - Xenos and Chaos make up 7 of the top 10 scoring codexes? =)
ReplyDeleteBorrowed your stats for a post of my own + linky. Great job at the tourney and thanks for taking the time for the recap!!
ReplyDeletewhats so shocking? That some people actually rely on skill and tactics to win instead of autowin armys?
ReplyDeleteWell done, guys! Whichever way you slice the stats, 4 wins apiece is a remarkable result for a tournament, so you should be feeling very proud of yourselves. And I bet you're glad you took Orks now, Andy?!
ReplyDeleteAs for how the tournament was scored, well, I guess it does help to get older codexes represented on the tournament tables, as you're really competing against your own army/codex, which prevents that mythical 'codex creep' from effecting an army's effectiveness. Still, it would be nice to know your final standings in the whole thing! And as for 'niceness' scores, I'm all for them - it helps to keep things friendly in what can be quite a competititve environment.
G.
It's a bit of a farce when you can be the only player to go 5-0 and not win...
ReplyDeleteI ended up chatting to Ben, the Dark Eldar player, quite a bit, as I'd ended up next to him in the queue to register, then next to him on the first Saturday game.
ReplyDeleteHe was pretty laid back about the entire thing, and, in his attitude towards the favourite army score was "Well, I'm a Dark Eldar player. I don't expect to get any points for sportsmanship..."
Bluntly, if you want to win the GW ToS, you have to pick an army you expect to be under-represented or not do well, and then do very well with it, preferably in an entertaining and enjoyable way. The amount of "meta" considerations to take into mean that winning deliberately ToS is going to be a lot of gaming the _system_ and not gaming the, well, game...