Tournament Rules?

So, I"m thinking of running a Mordheim tournament at a local gaming con. (Fields of Honor, in Iowa)
Tournament rules aren't a big problem for the games themselves. I'm doing Mordheim with all FAQ's and RR7 plus my own minor modifications on armor, shields and the spear.

I'm more interested in how you determine a winner of the tournement/campaign.

Warband rating seems obvious but that just entails getting $$ and buying lots of models and hired swords.
W-L record is obvious too but doesn't seem to account for everything you want to do.

Anybody run one of these things? What did you do? Suggestions? Thoughts... Random Flames?

I haven't run one, so take this for whatever you think it's worth: If it's a tourney at a con, with only a few games for each player, I would think keeping it straightforward with win-loss record makes the most sense.

I have seen over a longer campaign that people use more complicated scoring systems -- something like 50% from win-loss record, 25% from warband rating and 25% from total wounds scored (to encourage more aggressive play).

Fields of Honor -- is that in Des Moines? I attended a con there about 12 years ago, I think. Had a good time, won the painting competition for best fantasy monster. We even played a Space Hulk mission, if I remember right, and we (the Space Marines) got slaughtered.

There is a Spring Version of Fields of Honor (usually in the fall) Yes in Des Moines.
I have contacted the new coordinators to see if they might want me to run an event. I've thought of Mordheim because of my love and that between a friend of mine and me we can bring a good 8 warbands so even if people don't have the figs they could play.

Fields is more about historicals and such. the best Gaming store here closed and the remaining one has such a bad rep that the coordinators won't touch 'em.
I ran 40K Rogue Trader tournaments there in the past but go out of GW's garbage games. (The core ones)
I've kicked around Necromunda too. I can bring quite a bit of that as well.

I was thinking of a good half a dozen games played. Push players to resolve things quickly make it fun and worthwhile.

"Earned" experience i.e. warband's total experience points at the end of the tournament less starting experience points? Some book-keeping involved and not without flaws, but it would tend to reward players who win, achieve scenario objectives, take enemies OOA and keep their chaps alive.

True, it would negatively impact warbands that have models that do not earn experience. Unless it was experience earned as a function of Experience earning warriors.

Hmmm, starts to get complicated ...

I'd have thought that as long as the players knew the victory conditions up front, they could build their warbands accordingly. The undead could load up on ghouls, the witch hunters could skimp on the warhounds etc.

Tournament + Mordheim ... that immediately gave me a headache. But you already commented on that in oyur initial post.

We tried to achieve something like this by introducing rules for warband objectives in the Border Town Burning supplement, where players can actually win a campaign, but those narrative campaigns are too long for small "tourney" or gettogethers.

I think if you want to determine the winner by some statistics then you would definately need to do quite some bookkeeping. Earned experience (Undead?), warband rating (giant rats = cheap w/ +5 each) and all those factors each favour different warbands and so such a system would have be done quite cleverly to be fair for fall. My best advice is to just count the wins because if you assume that all warbands are balanced (yeah yeah I know) then at least all have the same basic chance of winning, while all those other factors suit some warbands more than others.

I am curious to see what you guys come up with. This would be a most interesting topic to have people discussing.

How many rounds, or how many games per player, are you looking at? I think the overall scope of the tournament will play a large role in determining the winning conditions.

Maybe just give a simple condition, like earning most money. So u just go for maximum unspend gold at the end, or encourage pple not to sell their wyrdstone and go for maximum wyrdstone shards.

Both seems wounderfull fluffy to me, and the ability of earning gold (collecting wyrdstone) is the major balancing indicator of mordheims campain rules. Also it adds some nice strategie desicions for the players last battles, as they may save some money for the final cashing up instead of investing in fighting power.

I would suggest to force everybody paying upkeep for HS and DP after the last battle as those might be a little powerfull for short investment in the final act.

Good suggestions thus far. I just realized this convention is the weekend of my daughters B-day so doing this is probably out. Don't let that end the discussion. I think its fairly interesting.
If I were to keep this to a 1 day event. Start at say 9:00 am. Play a game in 60 min with 30 min for after game stuff and letting games finish up? Hmmm with an hour for lunch that's just 5 games. Not much of a campaign feel.

Over a whole Weekend (say 2 game days) You could probably add say 3 more games. 8 games? Or if you could find people that wanted to play the same thing all night too do a one day marathon. 8 games is a good stopping place.
Few if any groups would have warbands that had henchmen receive their 3rd advance. Keeps the Warbands close in power. 8 games is enough to develop some interesting heroes and effective though not too powerful youngbloods and lads.

W-L might really be the way to go.

Perhaps I could throw in some of the larger multiplayer scenarios as fun diversion.

With my daughters B-day I will probably try and run something on Sunday. Perhaps a boardgame bit. Dark Tower? Hmmm....

However you score, you might consider creating the starting warbands
yourself - that way you can try to balance them. That probably won't
work if you are planning for a lot of players and need them to bring
their own models.

You could have each round with a different objective, and the warband
that wins gains a point; or, if you can measure a second place winner,
1 point for second place and 2 for first place. Additionally, you
could have everyone individually rank the warbands - excluding the band
they ran - in terms of which they believe were the most
characterful/effective. The highest ranked warband also gains a
point.

Another approach would be to set up a series of collaborative
missions. You start with multiple tables, and each game you have fewer
tables and more players per table, but everyone can only run warriors
who survived the previous battle. You and assistants would need to run
the opposition forces. Mordheim can work pretty well with allied
warbands all moving at the same time, taking their ranged shots at the
same time, and all resolving hand to hand at the same time - one big
allied turn, followed by the bad guys' turn.

I think that perhaps the simplest and most logical solution for a "winner" is to either a) come up with a campaign objective (retrieve some object, kill some enemy, prevent or carry out some chaos ritual, etc. etc.) or b) to judge by a straight win/loss record. The biggest problem I see with W/L is that there are likely to be at least a couple people with the same record, which means you'll need some fallback criteria such as overall xp, or maybe just the leader's xp, money earned, etc.

Maybe go with warband rating for the tie-breakers?

Why don't you make a ladder tournament, with some groups at first, that then run into finals?

MeanBone wrote:

Maybe go with warband rating for the tie-breakers?

I would say so, except I think warband rating is really unbalanced in the current system - you have to find some way of taking equipment into account since it clearly effects how good a warband is.

I am seting up a tournament right now. I will allow all 2002 RR "legal" bands. We have 14 players, if all show up from our Thursday nighth campaigns. We are on our second 10 week campaign now. Before we have our third campaign, we will try a tournament. I'm thinking we might start with a slightly experienced band, a few extra gold and some added skills/stat increases from the one-off game play section (last page living RB). I'm thinking of using the bands as created for the whole 1 day tourney, say 4-5 games. So, no time consuming exploration/after game antics.

This is a revised version of our Victory Point system to track nightly winners in our campaigns:

Your warbands success in the tournament will be determined by the number of Victory Points it has acquired. These points are scored as follows:

a) For each regular scenario win, you gain 9 Victory Points. For a tie, you gain 6. For a loss, you gain 3. Games will be timed, if there is no defined winner when time is up, the game will be considered a tie.

b) In addition, if you win as an underdog, you gain your experience bonus as VP.

c) If you warband is testing to routs you lose 1 VP from your total. You could win the match after you lose 25% of your warband, thus you would still lose one point because you are testing to rout.

d) If your warband takes an enemy Leader OOA, you gain +2 VP.

e) If you warband takes an enemy Hero OOA, you gain +1 VP for each.

f) If you warband takes an enemy Hired Sword OOA, you gain +1 VP for each.

g) In some scenarios, you can fulfill Special Objectives that give you extra VPs. Other items and conditions may also give you VPs.

Victory point totals will determine the winner for the tournament. All points are added from games played. The highest total will be the winner for the tournament. Tie breakers will go in the order of:
Total of Wins
Number of enemy leaders taken OOA
Number of enemy heroes taken OOA
If all those are equal, a die roll will determine the overall winner.

sounds good to me! you should make a battle report about your tournament mate!

I like it all except the last point:

"If all those are equal, a die roll will determine the overall winner."

If it is a tie, let it stand as a tie. I would be very frustrated if my warband battered its way to a tie for first out of a 14-player pool, and then came in second because of a single die roll! What's wrong with a tie?

Alternatively, you could have a death match between the two warbands.

Or, have a reserve tie-breaking factor - perhaps the warband that had the fewest heroes taken OOA over the course of the campaign.

Well, on campaign night for about 18 nights now, we have not gotten a tie for only 2 games a night. So I really don't think we will have to worry about even the first tie breaker. Of course there would be nothing wrong with a tie.