The Australian Masters

So I have snagged an invitation to the Australian Masters at the end of the month. In fact I snagged two invites, one of the auto-invites based on the Australian Rankings (I finished #11 - not bad given I only attended 3 Oz events and had to rely on one of the smaller sized NZ events for my 4th score) and one auto-invite as the #1 in the NZ Rankings.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to accept the Aussie invite so that the NZ one passed down to the next NZer. Grrrr!

Still I'm very happy to be going and I'll be looking to finish better than 10th out of 16 (my result at the 2008 Australian Masters). If I can finish in the top half I'll be overjoyed.

The system being used is one of Comp-Battle where your Comp score is added to your battle score each round.

Here are the particulars of the Comp Scoring:

For 2010 we will be reverting back to the classic Masters pier judged voting.

• Players will judge and vote the composition of prior to the event for every other player's army.
• Gavin and myself will also cast a vote resulting in 17 votes.
• The highest and lowest scores will be removed leaving 15 composition votes for each player.
• The 15 qualifying votes will be added together to derive the composition modifier.
• Each army will awarded 10 base points per round to represent the composition component of their tournament score. Their composition modifier will be added to their base points to get their composition score for that round.
• The maximum composition points a player can receive is 15. The minimum is zero.

Example 1:

Player A submits their army and receives the following 17 scores:

0, -1, +1, +0.5, 0, 0, -0.5, +1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0, +0.5, +0.5, +2.0, -0.5

The highest (i.e. +2.0) and the lowest (i.e. -1) scores are discarded leaving 15 scores. The sum of these scores is 2.5. The score of 2.5 is the players composition modifier. This is added to 10 to give them a composition score of 12.5 which is added to their battle score each round.

Example 2:

Player B submits their army and receives the following 17 scores.

0, -1.5, +0.5, 0, -0.5, -0.5, -1, +0.5, 0, -1, 0, 0, 0, -1, 0, +1, -1.5

The highest (i.e. +1) and the lowest (i.e. -1.5) scores are discarded leaving 15 scores. The sum of these scores is -3. The score of -3 is the players composition modifier. This is added to 10 to give them a composition score of 7 which is added to their battle score each round.

Note that in the two examples above if the composition modifier is greater than +5 it will be capped at +5, and similar the composition modifier is capped at -10 at the other end of the scale.

The following are guidelines for players to consider when marking army composition:

Very Soft (+2): Highly themed and forsaking most of the tougher choices available in the army book.

Soft (+1): Player as made an obvious attempt to bring an army that is

Standard (0): This army is considered a standard army for a competitive tournament such as the Masters. Good solid tournament army that will be a challenge to play with and against.

Hard (-1): A tough list that has a few strong combinations and potentially pushing the envelope in some areas.

Very Hard (-2): The player has gone all out to put together the strongest army they can. This will be one of the toughest armies in the field. Not a rejection but close.

Note that 0.5 fractions can be awarded if you think an army sits between two categories.

Rejection: This army does not belong at tournaments.

If an army receives 5 rejection votes from the players (and organisers) the it will be rejected and the player will be asked to resubmit. If a player is asked to resubmit their list then when the players vote on the new list any positive votes (soft, very soft) will be discarded. Therefore the best composition score a resubmitted list can be awarded is zero.

Note: a player's composition adjustment will be added/subtracted to their battle score after each round during the tournament. Their adjusted battle points will be used to determine the draw each round.

On the WargamerAU boards the campaigning has begun in earnest! We are being regaled by some of the comfirmed participants about how soft their armies are and why they should be scoring positive comp. And from some of the comments I'm guessing an army of Skaven Clanrats led by two naked characters would struggle to get a positive score.

Call me cynical but I'm going to wait until I see the lists before I start drinking too much of that Kool-Aid! I'm yet to be convinced that you can make a Slaan soft when he has Becalming and Rumination....and Light is not a weak lore. Similarly a Dwarf army that stops a magic phase dead and is backed up by the Guns of Navarone ain't no candidate for beatification.

The lists have to be in this weekend.