Format
Organizers of October edition of Tabletop Simulator Warcry league decided to experiment a bit and created a very unique format that, unlike other formats I’ve seen, heavily impacts the approach to the games. Because of this I believe it deserves discussion and solid analysis. The most important innovation is basing standings on Victory Points instead of number of Wins (with number of Wins as 1st tiebreaker and sum of opponents VPs as second) and this (together with the mission selection) is what I will focus on here. If you want to check all the details, then everything about the league is available HERE.
Format Strengths
Never Surrender – With VPs being your main focus, there is (almost) never a reason to surrender. As long as you can try to score any VP its in your best interest to play, even if you are getting crushed by your opponent
Winning is not enough – the best possible score isn’t simply a win (or a major win), its gaining more Victory Points than all other players. With no “less than half winning warband dead” requirement for major victory (that is often used) there is no pulling punches and players are not only fighting with their opponents, they are constantly competing with all other players.
Elite vs Horde balance – The selection of battleplans used (thanks to TOs for using my Mark of Chaos battlepack for opening round, if you want to check it out its HERE) presents an interesting challenge for listbuilding as you need both numbers and power projection to maximize your score. Having secondary scoring that rewards killing chaff attaches opportunity cost (in theory) to running many squishy models while at the same time objective missions still require having as much bodies as possible. The selection of missions is solid and will work in any format.
Format weaknesses
You don’t play to win – This format doesn’t make winning the game your main goal, winning is just a byproduct of trying to achieve as many VPs as possible. It may seem similar, but this subtle change has huge implications. There might be a situation where you have a choice and you can either prevent your opponent from scoring significant amount of VPs which will lead to your victory or going for more VPs and drawing/losing in the end. I don’t think the option B should be viable in a healthy, competitive system (I know it’s not always the case in this system, but in most cases it is). In “standard” games you care about both attack (scoring points) and defense (preventing your opponent from scoring points), but here the defense value is greatly diminished by limiting the value of Victory. The fact that second tiebreaker is opponent VPs makes it even worse as for as long as you win its better for you to have your opponent score as much points as possible, so its almost only about offence.
Competition vs Cooperation – The fact that its in both players interest to have as much points as possible may lead to a situation when players help themselves to get as much points as possible (not only ignoring defense, but making scoring easier for the opponent and receiving similar thing in return). This moral dilemma when on one end you have optimizing your score for standings and on the other one competitive integrity is not something that has place in a healthy system. Especially as some players may know each other or are even friends (why crush your friend when it’s against best interest for both of you?).
It’s not ONLY about skill – The other problem in constructing standings based on VPs is that the amount of VPs gained per game is not only a result of a winner skill. I will use an example here – let’s assume that there are 2 players, player A is the most skilled player in the tournament (They both decided to play in October edition of TTS league) and his friend, player B is an experienced player that usually ends slightly above middle of the standings. In the first round player A meets a strong veteran player and after excellent game wins 17-13, player B meets an unexperienced player that tests new list and easily wins 27-7. In round 2 (kill mission) the skill of opponents is matched, but player A plays against Stormcast build around defensive abilities and wins 9-7 when player B at the same time meets Nighthaunt where he can kill resurrected hunted Briar Queen twice to end up with 15-11 Victory. After 2 Rounds Player A that had to use all of his tactical genius has 26 points and player B that played well but had a lot of lack with pairings has 42 points. I don’t think I need to continue this story to point out that the path to win the tournament for the best player is completely different here than in more “standard” format. It’s obvious that luck and matchups will always have impact on tournament result, but I think that basing scoring on VPs might often lead to situation where “solid player that had the most luck with opponents/matchups wins” instead of usual “one of the best players that had a bit more luck wins”. Additional contributing factor to the mentioned problem (outside of players cooperating instead of competing that I mentioned in previous point) is a defensive player. Meeting a player that focuses a lot on preventing opponent from scoring points in this format is a disaster that will be a huge problem to overcome as simply winning is not enough to stay relevant in fight for 1st place.
Uneven Number of Players – I don’t think that a fair BAY score that will satisfy most of the players exist. At least I’m not smart enough to figure it out and I feel bad for TOs that would have to deal with it as they are stuck between rock and a hard place.
Some balancing mechanics are gone – I mentioned in format strengths that there is a nice balance between horde and elite archetypes. The problems listed above make the opportunity cost of running chaff not an actual cost (opponent scoring more points isn’t a problem as long as you score enough points. It might even benefit you). The mission lineup is still great, but I think it would shine a bit more with more standard format.
Closing words
I do believe there is a “simple” solution that will make “defense” matter in this system – negative points. As scoring is the highest priority then preventing the situations where you lose points elevates defensive tactics to similar importance it has in other formats. The idea is very simple, but the actual implementation seems extremely difficult, so I will leave it here.
I think that the TTS league format is a “bad answer to a good question”. I believe TOs have identified important issues and areas for improvement that exist in more commonly used formats, but I fear that the conditions that are required for this format to correctly function might not be fulfilled in an online league with vastly different approach (fun or playing to win) and skill level (both in game and llistbuilding) of players. I wish TOs and all the players all the best and I’m sure that it will be a great experience for everyone, as fun during such events is almost unrelated to the format used.
TLDR: When VPs matter more than Victory then factors out of player control have unproportionally big impact on standings. Focusing on scoring as much VPs as possible is also removing the importance of preventing opponent from scoring points which is a big part of the game.
Overthinking Warcry 