Balancing Races in Tournaments

[Corvidius]

I love the fact that different tournies have different rulesets, it gives each tournament a different flavour. Saying that, when running a tournie I keep things as basic as possible because it allows people to focus on the games basics.

[spubbbba]

I should probably post my thoughts here rather than de-rail the Eurobowl thread further, since I won't be attending that tourney.

I think Bloodbowl tournaments should always aim to be fun, none of the games made by GW are designed to be truly competitive and BB even less than others as we have races that are supposed to lose more than others.

I am a little concerned that the "big" tournaments could go down the competitive route as I think that is bad for the hobby as it was with 40K and Fantasy. When the tourney scene got more hardcore there more and more people only wanted to play the standard tournament scenario in normal games. Using white dwarf lists or a more scenario based game were frowned upon for fear that the other player would get an advantage from the unfamiliar. It also led to bad feeling for fluff players if their local group ended up going down the tournament route and only wanted to bring their nastiest lists.

I am rather disappointed that the top ranked players seem to be so afraid of change, if you truly want to find the best players or team of players then I think you should mix things up a bit. In my opinion a truly great player or team can adapt to use different races and rules. If you can only compete when using a few top races in the same set of house rules then I don't think that is particularly impressive.
I'm sure if someone from Cyanide or FUMBBL starting throwing their weight about the tactics section claiming to be the greatest BB coach as they had a 90% win rate that wouldn't go down well. If it then transpired that said big mouthed coach only played in the challenge division using low TV zons against team with no tackle or block such as chaos then they would get a serious ribbing.

The danger of the tournament scene becoming more competitive is that you pretty much make half the races pointless since they have a huge disadvantage at low TV. You also run the risk of discouraging or alienating new players.

I am more in favour of weaker teams being given bonus points or something similar for winning, that way taking them is a calculated risk.

[Glowworm]

Dont see a problem with the way things are currently, different skill sets at different tourneys are fine.

I honestly believe that most people choose thier teams because they want to play that race/ build, if they have several "favourites" they may decide that a particular ruleset favours one team over another.

i do however believe that any tournament which promotes team play (as i a group of coaches in a team) the WC for example, should also make sure you dont get a team of players all with the same race, apart from that i like the different rulesets that are currently available from 1.1 with 1 skill post match to here's extra gold and skill points go mad!!

[DoubleSkulls]

@spubbbba - its interesting what you say. I think you may not be aware of the direction of change. A few years ago all the tournaments used to be "vanilla" with nothing to specifically help one race over another. Now it seems that its only the big tournaments that keep that format and many of the others having something to try and level the playing field.