Composition score

Yeah...Comp Score. For those of you who do not know what Comp score is, it's a way scoring a tournament that involves how many wins the player has, how well their army is painted, the overall theme of their army, and if they were a good sport or not based upon their opponents review. Before, I tear this system a new one, let's review; What is a Tournament? A Tournament is a competition to see who is the most skilled in a certain field, they have them for all sorts of things like sports, tabletop games, video games, writings, and even painting. In tournaments victory is the goal of all those that participate in it, so each contender would bring their very best stuff. keeping that in mind lets look at composition scores.

Player Skill: This is what a warhammer 40,000 tournament should be all about; two players, two armies, one board, and dozens of dice. Each player tries their hardest with the armies that they have spent years perfecting, and now are at the peak power, and only he who is a truly better player will come out on top. Lots of people believe that the winner would depend on the army, this is true in some respect, some armies are better than others; but if a veteran Tyranid player who has optimised his list, and knows his army in and out will beat a new player with a optimised Guard list. Chum and I have come to a conclusion that a winning army is 60% player skill, 30% army, and 10% dice. So if your a skilled player with a competitive army the only thing that can mess you up is dice. The player's skill should be all that is taken in to a tournament. Luckily though a player's skill still counts for the majority, or at least half of one's comp score. This include mission objective the player has achieved, and how many hims he's gotten.

Judge Score: This is where it gets stupid.In a Composition score tournament a judge will look at your army and give you a number of points based on a set of Guidelines. Lets say that I brought a optimised Tyranid list to a tournament that used composition. So I got two walking Tyrants with tyrant guard, 3 elite Carnifexs, some genestealers, 2 big carnifexes and some 3 zoanthropes with warpbalsts. So I show the judges my army, and the first thing they'll notice is that my army is painted very poorly, and because of it they will give me a low score. So now I have a lower chance of winning a tournament because my army is ugly. If you don't think this is a bad thing lets look at the reverse setting. Some one enters a beautifully painted Tau fire warrior into a painting competition, but some one else brought a obviously not as well painted land raider to the competition. And under the new rules, these models will be half marked on their painting and another half on who wins in a fight between them. And so eve though the fire warrior was painted extremely well the landraider won cause its' a land raider.

After they took off points for my lack of painting skill they'd look over the list again and see if it matches the fluff of the 40k universe. They say that the Tyranids are an unrelenting tide of tooth and claw, which my army isn't. however I quickly counter with the information that Tyranids adapt to any situation, so I was okay their, but for other armies like Orks, in which they have to stray from their fluff to be any good this would be a problem. Then they'll judge me on if my army has any repetition of units, cause in comp tournaments the judges want to see a variety of units. So they look at my 4 different creatures and give me a bad score, and then the person behind me gets a perfect comp score because he has raveners and spore mines in their list, two of the most useless units in the Tyranid book. They also give u a good score if your using units that they don't see in your army. THEIR IS A REASON THAT SOME UNITS AREN'T USED, THEY SUCK!!! now for the final area of Judging and it's my personal favorite

"In the Judge's opinion was this army built to win at all costs."

WHHHHAAAT!!! It's a goddamn tournament the point of the event is to win at all costs. A tournament is to pit two players against each other and see who's better. The judging system is a way to make all the participants equal, like communism this sounds good in theory but isn't in practice. All this does is stick a big Middle finger in the faces of all competitive players, cause how dare they be more skilled than someone else.

Player Review: Sportsman ship is important in every competitive outlet, if some one is a really good sport they should get rewarded, like having a sportsmanship award that's separate from the tournament victory. Also if some one is a asshole they should be penalized, like no longer being able to participate. They key to determining sportsmanship is to have those running the tournament looking over the games and observing who's being naughty and who's being nice. This doesn't work however if your opponent is submitting your player review, because it's abuse able. For example lets say I completely destroyed some scrub, and I was perfectly polite about it, but he was angry that he lost and that I brought a "Spammy power-gamer list" so out of spite he would give me a horrible review, thus reducing my chances of victory despite being a good player. Also their are those who go to tournaments as a team, some times this isn't a bad thing just a bunch of friends going to a tournament together and giving their group so they can yell something when they win. However their are some groups that will give bad comp scores to anyone that isn't on their team and give their team mates perfect scores. And this is completely legal if a judge found out he couldn't do anything about it cause their are no rules against it. That would qualify as not cool. so the as you Can see the only way to take sportsmanship into a tournament is to have a third party do score them.

The composition system is an attempt to make all participants in a tournament equal, Like communism this is good in theory but not so much in practice. All it does is stick a big middle finger in the faces of all competitive players, cause how dare they be more skilled than some one else right?