How to become a champion

This weekend I'll be joining the other fifteen qualifying players at the Masters, one of the key events in the UK Malifaux calendar. This will draw a line under the 2015 competitive season, and crown the new UK master in the process.

Competitive play is once again in the spotlight, so I want to share a few thoughts on what I think we should be aiming for as players in 2016.

There's a common misconception that the purpose of competitive play is to determine who the best players are, while that's a thing it does, that's not it's purpose. The purpose of competitive play is to encourage more people to play more Malifaux.  This is the reason the rankings system heavily rewards continuous participation.

Competitive play encourages increased participation in a range of ways; creating opportunities to play, rewarding play, showing off (advertising) the game, and by creating champions for players to follow and emulate.

The men and women I'll be stepping into that room along side on Saturday morning have earned their places among the best players of 2015 and have nothing to prove. All of them are top players worthy of winning the title. That said it's important to understand that not every champion is in the masters, and not everyone in the masters is a champion.

In my years playing the game competitively I've met many people who aspire to stand shoulder to shoulder with champions of the game. Much like many people misunderstand the purpose of competitive play, many also misunderstand how to become the such a champion. They make the mistake of believing the way to do this is win more games, more events, and ultimately be highly ranked and qualify for masters. This line of thinking can be counter productive, and detrimental to both them and the game.

In trying to win more games players can look for short cuts, looking to push the boundaries of the rules and acceptable behaviour. They're drawn to play only the most powerful options, pressing the same buttons by rote, chasing a win rate over fun, this narrows their understanding of the game, making their play brittle in a changing meta.

Over time I've come to realize that you don't improve by trying to win more games, you improve by learning to be better, and there's a big difference between the two. To ascend to the point where you're successful on the table, and respected by your opponents off it, you need to be good at game and good for the game.

It's only by improving as a rounded participant in the hobby that a player can hope to gain both the game skill and the respect of their peers necessary to be called a champion.

When you look at the true champions of our game; Joel Henry, Mike Marshall, Greg Piskosz, and David Brown, these aren't the people winning the most games or events.  These are the people who win without bending rules, who are always fun to play against, and who go above and beyond for the community and hobby we all love.

That's not to say victory isn't sweet, playing to win isn't noble, or success shouldn't be rewarded. These are worthy things, but being a champion takes more than martial prowess. it takes statesmanship.

So no matter if we're inside or outside the masters this weekend, and regardless of where we each aim to be this time next year; let's all aspire to be both better at and better for Malifaux in the 2016 Season.

Let's all aim to be champions.

Obligatory end of year post

2014 is drawing to an end and I'm looking ahead to 2015. Updating the event calendar for my team mates there are already as many tournaments as there are weeks in Q1. Which is fairly amazing when you think about it.

The next major event in the is the masters in mid-January which promises to be both the toughest and most fun event of the year. I'm not expecting to do overly well at the masters, I'm off form and I don't think I have the right tools in my box for that field. That being said I'll give it a shot. 

Priority wise though I'm going to focus on the 2015 season rather than the Masters. I always view masters as a prize rather than a contest and with the 2015 season looking to be the most competitive yet I think that's where my focus needs to be.

I've a rare week off work over the Christmas break so I'm planning hobby to get my new Marcus crew properly off the ground and the practice games to make it worth playing at events.

I know a lot of players look to switch to a new faction with the new year but I feel I've so much left to explore in the Arcanists that I'm going to stay put and give those a try.  Plus the more Kaeris I play the more I want to play, she's one of the most fun masters I've ever taken.

My new years gaming resolution is to keep more of a record of my games, more on that soon, and also to qualify for the masters again next season.

That's it from me, have a happy new year and I'll see y'all breach side! 

The Masters

The UK Masters was this weekend, there's already a lot of great coverage of the weekend on twitter (see my last post) and on the new show from the Malifools; Fools Daily so I'm going to keep this short. Masters is at once the end of the previous year's season and the first of the new year. 

My weekend began by driving a car I'd owned for less than an hour on a 125 mile road trip to Craig 'ukrocky' Johnson's house to rest up the night before the event. I awoke on his sofa the following morning to tipple threat of; winning a signed rules manual on facebook, the forum demanding I do some moderation and a hamster trying to kill me.  Needless to say this led to some confused early responses.

Once awake and after my tournament companions had quickly undercoated some models required for the day's play, we set off. This was my third masters and as always the atmosphere was phenomenal. It was great to see a number of new faces experiencing the event for the first time. To players who've never experienced the level of play at a masters event it's hard to describe.  These were some of the toughest and most enjoyable games of Malifaux I've ever played, and judging by conversation with new players and old hands alike I was far from alone.

I made it through the group stage on Saturday before succumbing to Luke Cocksedge by a point in extra time of the quarter finals on Sunday. I was thrilled with the weekend and it only remained for me to watch Craig be crowned UK master, beating Greg Piskosz into second place.  Greg is a newcomer to the scene and a great player, and also the only other player to beat me over the weekend.

Craig's Secret Weapon

Some comment is being made of the fact all four finalists had Lynch with them, if not necessarily using him for every game. While I'll admit he is clearly very strong I think this may have been helped by the knockout quarter final game of Turf War being played with the scheme pool; Vendetta, Make them Suffer, Bodyguard, and Assassinate. This pool is a nightmare for a number of crews but works well for Lynch and this may well have contributed somewhat to the results over the weekend.

For my own part the event exposed some key weaknesses in my game I'll need to plug if I'm to remain at the top tables much longer.  I've been relying on Ramos too heavily and need to branch out more to cover those few games he's ill equipped for. I also need to broaden my crew selection before SmogCon, and want to experiment with a more aggressive version of Ramos.

I should also say a big thanks to Dave Brown for running the event, everyone who played in the open event on the Sunday, and the event sponsors;

KR Multicase, Sarissa Precision, and Counter Attack Bases

I use products from all three of these companies and have never had anything but a great experience with them.  So that's me signing off for some much needed sleep and hobby time.

League of Extraordinary Henchmen 'side event'.

The UK Tournament System

So the 2013 season is over and the community is looking forward to the year ahead. I'm grabbing some much needed hobby time before we kick in again with Masters in late January.  I've finally finished re-painting my twenty Arcanists, with the new plastic Joss replacing the old one.

The new Arcanist plastics look great and many of the models are great improvements on their old metal counterparts. I must say the huge new beasts in the Marcus box have convinced me to paint that crew next rather than the ‘Tina crew I had planned. I’m gripped by the call of the wild.

               

Following some recent questions I've had from new players I thought I'd use those post to give a quick explanation of how the wider UK Tournament system works and is scored. 

Events themselves are scored following Gaining Grounds. Firstly players score three tournament points (TP) for each game they win, one TP for each draw and nothing for a loss.  So a player with two wins a draw and a loss scores (3+3+1+0) 7TP.  

Where players are tied on TP they are ranked by victory point difference (VPD), this is the difference between the victory points they scored and those scored against them.  So if a players results were; 10-5, 10-5, 4-4, 4-8 they would score (5+5+0-4) +6VPD.  In the event of further ties players are then ranked by total victory points (VP) scored during the event, so in the above example; (10+10+4+4) 28VP.  This gives us the final standings for the event.  Some events deviate from this system but that’s fairly rare.  

The results of the event are then fed into the national rankings system.  Players need to sign up to Rankings HQ in order to have their results displayed in the rankings tables.  Each event is worth up to one-hundred rankings points to a player, based on how they finished and how many players attended the event.

The maximum score of one-hundred rankings points is available at events of twenty players or more. The maximum score is reduced by one for each player short of twenty the event is. So an eighteen player event is two short of twenty and therefore ninety-eight points is the maximum score. 

The player who wins the event scores the maximum and every player below her scores a reduced proportion of this.  So in a twenty player event first place would score one-hundred rankings points, second would score ninety-five, third would score ninety and so on down to twentieth place who would score five points.

Players are then ranked based on their three best scores in a rolling twelve month period. Making the best possible score thee-hundred points, although in the years the rankings have been running only two players have ever achieved this.

Once a year an invitational event, known as the Masters is held. The winner of the previous Masters event is invited along with the fifteen highest ranked players who are able to attend.  The winner of this is crowned Malifaux Master for the year. I’ve attended several Masters and contrary to what you would expect I’ve found them to be some of the most relaxed events I’ve ever played.

This year's Masters is accompanied by an open event anyone can enter. At the time of writing there are fifteen players signed up for the event, so it promises to be a fun one if you're looking to start your gaming year with a bang.

So that's how the UK system works for those interested. I hope Santa brought you what you wanted and I wish you all a happy new year.