40k - FOB NZGT - Bringing The Hobby Back

So I decided to resurrect "Fields of Blood" - the NZ Grand Tournament - last week and since then I've been sitting down with some of the smartest minds in the land deciding what to do.

"Let's Bring The Hobby Back! We Need to Game Like It's 2003!"

Knowing that the art of the salesman is to give the people what they want, this is exactly what we are going to do!

Back in the day when behemoths ruled the 40k gaming world, the apex predators were those that could marry their gameplay with their soft scores. It was not enough to just crush your opponents, you had to do it with a smile on your face while carrying them for five turns. Hobby points were also important - three colour minimum was not going to cut the mustard.

And so in a return to those glory years....we've come full circle and we bringing it back.

Battle Scores (40%)

Still the biggest influence on your placing. There are six games and Gameplay can vary from 0-40% which means that one win is effectively worth 7% of your total score.

Sports (25%)

Effectively the default score will be 18%. If you are pleasant, play in a timely fashion and aren't a dick then you'll score at least that. That means there is an extra 7% up for grabs - the same as a win. However it won't be easy to get. Only one person can score 7% and to do that they would have to be judged Favourite Opponent by each of their opponents. For each Favourite Opponent vote you get an additional 1% with the player who scores the most getting an additional 1% for Best Sport.

Presentation (25%) 

We'll be using a checklist whereby a score of 26% can be scored. However the checklist cap will be at 20%. The additional 5% will come from a mix of Player Choice Votes and Judges Picks. This will only be open to people who have painted 90% of their own army. How will we know? We'll ask people. Assuming you didn't paint your own army but it ticks the normal boxes for a nice tabletop army as per the FOB Painting checklist then you will score 20%. If you pick up a Best Painted vote then you'll get an extra 1%, Those in the Top Three Players Choice will accrue another 1% while Players Choice will get an additional 1%. Judges will vote and a Top 5 army will get 1% with Judges Choice scoring a final 1%. Someone could score the extra 5% but I think we can agree they'll probably deserve it.

So by this stage if someone has six wins then for another player to leapfrog them in the Overall Standings they'd also need between 4-5 wins.

The final part of the equation is as follows:

Army (10%)

No doubt this will be the most controversial part of the scoring....because it is subjective. A panel of judges will look at your list using a two part methodology each worth 5% - Theme and Choices.

Theme is how well your army fits in with accepted 40k canon. You'll have a hard job convincing us that Mortarion and Magnus ever fought together in defence of a Renegade Artillery Park. However if you have a standalone Blood Angels list then the Theme component won't be hard to achieve. Similarly a Tyranid force that mixes Hivefleets will be a hard sell.

Choices is the other component. Your list may cross the Theme hurdle but using Space Marines as an example, if all your Troop choices are Scout then I'd want to see Scout Bikers and I doubt Guillimane would be leading them. If your Eldar list has three units of Dark Reapers, then I suspect Maugan Ra is leading them rather than Eldrad etc.

The key here is to bring a list that gives your opponent an enjoyable game rather than is a Frankenstein monster created in the maths-lab at Caltech or MIT.

So there you go......a tournament so hobby you'll feel like a Red-Shirt screaming "Waagh"