As you may know, the boys and I have been running a number
of tournaments across GW’s three gaming systems. We started off in January and
have run events ranging from 8 to 38 players. Across all of these tournaments,
we have used a similar system of scoring, judging and general approaches to how
we interact with players. Here are some of our hints:
1.
Get a support judge. Running the show by
yourself might be what you want to do, but the entire operation is made much
easier if you have some help. It is also particularly important when it comes
to rules disputes between players. TWO T.O’s giving the same ruling will lessen
the impact upon you when the complaints start to roll (which they will).
2.
Get a proper timing clock. At some stage in your
event, a player will complain that they were not given ample time to finish
their turn. You will need to constantly remind players about the time remaining
and make sure you enforce a “last turn call.” Some players may take it upon
themselves to “quickly” finish another turn to get the upper hand. Keep it the
same for everyone, no matter how hard someone may complain (which they will).
Announce 30 minutes remaining and 15 minutes remaining at a minimum.
3.
Prepare for complaints. This fits into two
categories. Firstly, complaints against you will happen. The majority of
players will be fine, but there will always be one or two that won’t be happy
with a ruling that you have made. If something goes wrong in the tournament,
such as a particularly unique FAQ question, put your ruling in writing with the
players pack. Otherwise it is best just to not argue with players and let them cool
off (usually the complaints start flying with losing players).
Secondly, complaints against other players.
This is a difficult one to handle. Accusations of cheating are particularly
hard to prove without you actually being there. If a player comes to you with a
complaint, you should ask them to spell it out to you in private. There is no
need for them to be wildly shouting accusations across the table at someone. If
you believe that there is a genuine case of cheating, you should continue to
watch their game intently. Most “cheating” we find is simply a misunderstanding
of the core rules – intentionally or not.
4.
Sportsmanship. Getting this scoring system right
can be a challenge. Initially we ran it as a 0-4 scoring system where you would
rate your opponent each round. However, any form of non-criteria based scoring
will leave the doors open for players to mark their opponent down for tabling
them. 90% of the time this won’t happen, however even those 1-2 cases can
distort the tournament scores enough to make it unfair. Instead, ensure you
have a criteria based system. In our case, you automatically start with a score
of ‘2’ and apply negative modifiers for unsportsmanlike behaviour (with a valid
reason). Such as rolling dice out of view, not measuring properly, slow play,
or become abusive when you challenge an action (works both ways, if you
approach an action with abusiveness you will get marked down). This essentially
means that everyone will have the same raw sports score if they all have no
issues. So what’s the point? Well, all of our Best Sports nominations give you
an additional 2 points. This means that in a 4 round tournament, your maximum
sports score is 16/16. Meaning that the players that are properly nice will be
rewarded for being so.
5.
Paint
scoring. Luckily for us, we had Adam from Adpaint help us out with the creation
of a proper paint scoring sheet. Our initial one turned out to be RUBBISH. Now
we have a criteria based scoring system which marks on effort and technique rather
than overall skill (which is what Best Painted award is for). It means that if
you apply simple additional steps like highlighting, washing, dry brushing,
basing etc, you will be given the points irrelevant of how good it looks.
6.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, use some form of device with
spreadsheet capabilities. You don’t need to go out and buy the latest tournament
pairing software to run the event. We use Excel. However, something equivalent to
it will work. The one function that is invaluable to you is the ‘Sort’
button. Make sure you are sorting the
entire document and not just a particular column.
Furthermore, make sure to place a “matching
number” next to each player. What this means is that the first two players receive
a 1 next to their name, and the second two players receive a two. Like this
(ignoring that there are no other scores):
Round 2:
What this means is that when you do the
next round pairing, you can look back and check to see that there are no double
ups. For example, if in round three, you look back and see that there are any
two double ups in numbers, then those players have already played each other:
In this case, round 3 shows that both sets
of players have already played each other (indicated by the doubling up of the
1’s and 2’s in the first round).
7.
Try to be transparent about scoring. The absolute
last thing you want is for players to be skimming over the scoring sheet to
find out that they should have been scored higher for something. In fact, if
players ask for their scores, make sure to hide the Sportsmanship tab. You can
tell them that they may have scored low on sports, but you cannot be giving
away who had scored them lower. In fact, you may choose to not publish scores
at all. This can save you a lot of trouble as players will be scrutinising your
system (good painters will want higher % on paint, but battle players will
always complain about “soft scores” – meaning paint and sports).
Hope this helps.
-Out.
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