Bloodbowl mentality - please read

[Punkpogoer]

My2cents;

Stalling is just another tactic to the game, we may not like to be on the receiving end of that stall but that's how it goes. At the recent Spike tourny I had a stall used on me, but it was well warranted(I was playing necros, it's a 1-1 tie, my 2 wights and 2 werewolves are in the reserves box, if he scores right now he gives me 4 turns to come back and tie it up. That's a good tactical play).

Running the Clock on the other hand is completely different. If you have an event where games have a time limit something must be done so players cannot use up the actually time to bring the game to a halt. Be it timers or whatever.

The flip side of it at the same tournament due to my having changed races to my "non-goblin" speedsters I found I got low Sportsmanship scores for "Running the score"

Wow! I'm sorry to hear this. Unfortunetly that sounds like a poor sport on the loosing end of that game. Warpstone handed me my worse loss of the Spike tourny 4-0 and he was one of the funnest coaches I went up against. So unfortunetly it reflected on your sportman score, Da Scum, but it was really a "reflection" on your opponent.

[generaljason]

My2cents;

Running the Clock on the other hand is completely different. If you have an event where games have a time limit something must be done so players cannot use up the actually time to bring the game to a halt. Be it timers or whatever.

Well, I'll be getting a tool and die guy to design a "Football Clock" very similiar to the Chronus Digital Chess clock, specifically engineered for Blood Bowl to unveil at Spike 2009. This will clear any of this up. For the most part, I believe that most slower players only take longer because they are completely unaware of how long their turns are taking.

Under a 2.5 hour time frame, both coaches will receive 4 minutes per turn (16 turns x 2 players =32 turns; 32 turns x 4 minutes = 2 hours 8 minutes.) Each coach will be given an additional 11 minutes each for the match, on top of whatever time they accumulated for shorter turns. This way every game is done with 2.5 hours, with the slower player being penalized instead of the player doing what he has to do.

[SillySod]

I'm pretty new to the tournament scene but have found all of the players to be great fun (with only one exception). Possibly one of the key reasons for this is that BB stands up to rules abuse pretty well, everything is very precisely defined.

Best definition of sportsmanship in the thread...

Did I enjoy playing the player and sharing evil jokes with them?

Did we equally cheer success and bemoan failing no matter which team it was for?

Do they encourage and cheer on when things are at the darkest before the fouling? Even so far as to suggest an even better course of action for the opponent?

I think it sums it up perfectly. If a move or tactic is clearly game legal then its not poor sportsmanship, rather its an expected behaviour (you could argue that its what the game tells you to do). You can argue about degrees of lameness but stalling is clearly a game legal move and a tactic employed to win, if its painful then just make sure its over quickly, perhaps after the game you can give your opponent chance to test your defence properly.

Why the fear of people playing the game to win? Obviously winning at the exclusion of fun is no good but it really dosent have to be like that, even with cut throat (but legal) tactics. If people arent really trying to win then it becomes more of a roleplay, which is fine but it dose make me wonder why your event is called a tournament

Anyway, response to the original post:
1 - inconsistent dice rolling that favours the inconsistent person is clearly cheating. Obviously this has no place in BB.
2 - stalling, you describe something pretty lame (and sub-optimal tactically too) but its not really a big issue.. just get it done and move on, the game was probably washed out by dice more than the opponent.
3 - obvious abuse of tournament rules rather than game rules, show them the door fast

[gken1]

Be realistic: what player - rugby, amarican football, soccer, or whatever sport there is - would ever restrain himself from scoring if he has a clear path to do so?!?

This actually happened last year for the Philadelphia Eagles - Brian Westbrook had a breakaway TD but stopped at the 1 yard line and fell down so that his team could kill the last 2 minutes of the clock and give the opponent no chance to score.

As for stalling - yes there is a difference between stalling 1 turn and 4+ turns. I will stall one turn without thinking twice. A 4+ turn stall - I'll try and trust my defense.

Happened in my last game at the spike - I was tied 1-1 on turn 4 and decided to score and actually play vice just moving turn markers. It gave my opponent a chance and we were all there to have fun. It could have cost me the win but that was a chance I was willing to take

My defense held and I won

[Dave]

I think one of the problems we have here is the definition of stalling. I think Ian and Gken1 hit the nail dead on. There's (in my opinion) a HUGE difference between 'taking a turn' and 'shutting down the game for four turns.' The former is a bit of a challenge and the latter is a bit of a bore.

Still, when you play dwarfs you may well be forced to take that time, on the other hand, when you're in the position to score after 3 turns you may very well have done something wrong, you should reach that point in about 6 turns, not 3.

Sportsmanship is a different story altogether and I think it has no place in BB. Sometimes you may very well have disastrous dice and lose 6-0. Those are t he games I usually do not really enjoy because I don't have any control over the flow of the game at all.

I won' thave played a fun match but does that make my opponent a jerk for taking advantage of my mistakes and / or crap dice? No!! Not at all!! I may give him full sportsmanship points for a game like this but I'm quite sure there's others who won't.

This means the sportsmanship is flawed straight away. The only solution I ever saw was (again) Ian's: Everyone get's full sporsmanship unless he's been voted as being a jerk (probabely unsporsmanlike) twice or more (I think it was something like that) and that resulted in a certain loss of tournie points.

[DoubleSkulls]

The Eucalytpus Bowl has worked for the past few years is that everyone scores their opponent out of 7. 4 is a "normal" opponent.

You lose 25 points for a sportsmanship score of one, and lose 10 points for a two. You get 10 for a loss, 25 for a draw and 50 for a win). So those are fairly significant penalties. The organiser talks to everyone who awards a 1 or 2 to ensure there is a justification.

My intention is to prevent anyone ranking well who has been a jerk. Upset your opponent enough he'll mark you down - and be willing to justify it - and you probably deserve it.

For everyone else there is a separate sportsmanship prize which is determined by the sum of the deviation of your scores from the average of your opponents. So if I awarded 3,4,5,5,6,7 for my six games the 3 would effectively score -2 for the round.

I prefer tournaments where the organisers do something publically to state that sportsmanship is important. It doesn't really matter what so long as you make people understand that it is a game for two people to enjoy.

[thechosengobbo]

Hmm, I'd see another way of doing things as scoring out of 5. 3 is average, and each coach is only allowed to give out a single 1 and a single 5. This is the system that I am told is used to great effect in Aussie Warhammer tourneys (See, I SHOULD plug the PodHammer podcast here, as that's where I heard of it).

Makes people really think about how they award the sportsmanship scores. Oh, and have them all scored at the end, so you don't give away your 5 in the 3rd game and then play someone who is a MUCH better opponent in the 4th.

[El Hombre]

Can just be me, but I don't really remember my first opponent after game 5...

[Old Man Draco]

Can just be me, but I don't really remember my first opponent after game 5...

You can't even remember your first opponent after the first match!

[pelle]

Can just be me, but I don't really remember my first opponent after game 5...

You can't even remember your first opponent after the first match!

You are not the right person to comment. You cannot even rememebr your opponent when you are still playing him...

[El Hombre]

@ Draco: can't remember playing you , so how would you know

[hoomin_erra]

Can just be me, but I don't really remember my first opponent after game 5...

You can't even remember your first opponent after the first match!

You are not the right person to comment. You cannot even rememebr your opponent when you are still playing him...

Draco can't even remember where he left his transport!!

[voyagers_uk]

[Darkson]

That can't be Draco's - it's only got two wheels.
I thought this was more his style?



(I want one of these when I get to Draco's age!
)

[hoomin_erra]

Not the bike Simon....