Why I'm against objective comp systems

This issue comes up almost as often as the general attack on composition, a lot the subjective composition system (tiering, panels, peer marked) and their inevitable level of inaccuracy versus the known outcome of objective composition systems (rewards/penalties for certain elements or a yes/no exclusion style rule).

I’ve certainly made it known where my preferences lie and that is with the subjective system. This is not because I think this because the subjective system is always perfect it is because I know that the objective system is fundamentally flawed.

The reason that composition is there is because there is a view that the game lacks balance in a tournament setting. The objectives of the composition system are in my view; stop abusive armies attending, and add some measure of balance to the game. The idea of “balanced” or “hard but fair” composition is a concept that is dependent on combinations within the entire army and the gaming environment it is to use the cliché many shades of grey rather than black and white.

On the most part the people that play at tournaments have a level of competitiveness in their nature. Evidence of this is borne out in the fact that we actually care what we score and that we care wether or not we get the right composition. If people truly weren’t competitive then they wouldn’t even look twice at their score.

It is because of these two factors that I believe and objective composition system is not only flawed but counter productive.

An objective system that simply draws a line in the sand views everything in black and white it is utterly incapable of shades of grey, hence it can only ever accurately apply to something that fits into the black or the white category (which you’d want to think subjective composition systems would be able to also judge effectively).

Then layer on top of that the system is based either on the points costs or the classifications (core/special/rare etc) of the models. This in particular I find perplexing given that the system is there because we don’t think these classifications or points costs lead to balanced armies.

This black versus white when combined with competitiveness then inevitably leads to exploitation. Having played under these systems it quickly becomes evident that people begin to push towards the optimal build or the build which some how side steps the restrictions and allows them to field an army which is substantially more competitive than many of your opponents. This will inevitably lead to an arms race as people who showed restraint, and lost, will now emulate this behaviour (game theory anyone?).

What is more concerning is that those that are most likely to have been the culprits which the fielded abusive or unbalanced lists that lead to the creation of composition systems are those that are the and most likely to exploit the new objective system and are probably going to be the most adept at it.

So in introducing this system rather than taking away an advantage and creating a level playing field it actually adds a layer of constraint onto those who did not need a composition system to keep them in check whilst providing an advantage to the players most likely to abuse it.

I believe that the sustained use of an objective composition system in the Australian scene would be a sizable regression to the current soft score influences and drive us towards a more competitive UK model. I believe this because that is where we have come from and I certainly hope that none of these systems get enough traction to send us back there.