{"id":3318,"date":"2015-06-23T10:23:25","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T14:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/?p=3318"},"modified":"2015-10-24T23:22:02","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T03:22:02","slug":"tournament-of-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/2015\/06\/tournament-of-blood\/","title":{"rendered":"Tournament of Blood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday we held our monthly 40k event at Redcap’s<\/a>.\u00a0Six players came out despite being summer break for the colleges, Sunday, and Father’s Day to boot. Armies\u00a0featured Space Marines, Blood Angels, Khorne Daemonkin, Chaos Space Marines, Chaos Daemons, and Tyranid. A few more photos than those here are in the gallery<\/a>. Full results are on the event webpage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Michael's<\/a>

Michael’s excellent converted Knight ally stalks the ruins for its Tyranid masters.<\/p><\/div>\n

Missions<\/h2>\n

This time around the core of the event was a straight\u00a0competition, rather than the alliances and deliberative pairings we’ve been doing recently.\u00a0Matchups were all paired\u00a0individually in pure tournament fashion and the missions<\/a> straightforward. The one note with them\u00a0is that I’ve begun experimenting again with players choosing continuous versus final objective marker scoring for their primary objective. It seemed to work well within our overall format,\u00a0which already\u00a0gives substantial strategic options via the choice of secondary objectives. An\u00a0even mix of players chose each\u00a0primary objective mechanism, a good sign.<\/p>\n

Colin also made the point that our\u00a0Maelstrom missions should always include our Meatgrinder (kill Troops), Assassination (kill characters),\u00a0or similar\u00a0secondary objective options, to help counter armies overtuned for that format—namely\u00a0the updated\u00a0Space Marines. I\u00a0had been doing so as part of the overall goal of balancing\u00a0primary missions oriented toward ground control with several kill points options (alongside a ground control option to double down on that), and vice versa. I\u00a0had not though thought of that specifically as a way to help neuter\u00a0those armies a bit, so it was a good observation to\u00a0keep in mind.<\/p>\n

The Tournament of Blood<\/h2>\n

Keeping with our goal of including narrative components<\/a> or other side tracks alongside the tournament competition, we did run one small thematic aspect: The Tournament of Blood!<\/em> Each player got a card of achievements their warlord could work toward throughout the day. At the end of each game they marked off particular accomplishments for their boss, and were scored separately and a prize given purely on those points.<\/p>\n

This seemed to work out pretty well. With the players\u00a0warned in advance, most of the chosen warlords\u00a0came ready to\u00a0fight. I do think though that there’s enough diversity among the achievements\u00a0for\u00a0factions that don’t have characters suited for\u00a0direct combat to still score well. Several account for a support oriented or backfield command role, and ultimately those players can just focus on the primary missions anyway.<\/p>\n

In the end there was a good distribution of achievements scored. Obviously they\u00a0mostly tracked with overall success, but some players did focus more or less on the achievements. The second highest player in the general scoring came out last on the\u00a0achievements, while the second highest warlord came out second to last in the general scoring. The two of them just had different priorities and capabilities, exactly what we’re trying to support.\u00a0The latter in\u00a0particular came\u00a0out\u00a0specifically for this\u00a0event because his warlord’s a\u00a0great character with a whole background story and such that he wanted to have fight the others, so I considered that a\u00a0success.\u00a0The one minor presentation tweak I have to make is having a place\u00a0to scribble the warlord character’s name on the card, for the post-event storytelling.<\/p>\n

\"Warlord<\/a>

Warlord achievements in The Tournament of Blood.<\/p><\/div>\n

Titles<\/h2>\n

So, with that, we announce the titles for the inaugural Tournament of Blood:<\/p>\n