The composition campaigners

This is a little vent post (I promise not to count it towards my resolution) about what I believe to be one of the blights on warhammer in Australia that is unfortunately the by product of a positive part of the hobby, composition campaigning.

Effectively it is getting your opponent to focus almost exclusively on the strong choices you haven’t taken rather than on the strong choices you have made with the likely outcomes, if successful, being that you get a better comp score than you otherwise would have.

Over the past few years some people have been very adept at it, some have been far too obvious and some have suffered, unfairly, from not practicing it. It is unfortunately a practice that I view pretty much tantamount to cheating your fellow tourney goers and at the very least an affront to the intent of the system.

It pops up in many forms the on the day chat the opponent is one that is only useful for peer game by game marked composition. For the more seasoned there is the planned campaign, usually wagered via their blogs or internet forum/s whilst posting up lists or, for the exceptionally crafty, simply whilst giving advice on others army lists.

Perhaps my worst first hand experience was when I saw a young player look at his opponents list and was horrified, but then I watched on from the next table as he was slowly talked around by his opponent to giving a good composition score has he had it explaining what hadn’t been taken and that his troops could “only” do this and that.

It is probably because of the prevalence of this that I speak out so often about VC and daemon lists, the major proponents of the comp campaigns at the moment. [Note this doesn’t mean every, or even a majority of, daemon/vc players are comp campaigners treat each case on it’s merits].

I’ve know people who previously agreed with my views on the under costing of VC/daemons but have now, having bought one of those armies, have coincidentally changed their views? Hmmm…

I know it’s a draconian solution but I’ve gotten to the point now that from here on out – you talk to me in a favourable manner about why your army deserves a certain comp score and you’ll getting marked down. Sure it isn’t the intent of the system but neither was cheating the rest of the field by attempting to unfairly influencing you soft score.

Vote no to the composition campaigner