Two more decisions made for KoW Masters and the leaderboards.

Mixed Game Events

If an event combines two games, such as Vanguard and Kings of War then only the Kings of War portion is eligible for rankings. The points awarded for Kings of War are what players will be ranked on for the purpose of ranking points. If an event cannot cleanly separate these points then it cannot be ranked.

Furthermore, the other game cannot influence the Kings of War game in any way. It cannot give a player additional artefacts, bonus units or any other unfair advantage. If the event does this then it is not eligible for ranking points. It can still be listed on the calendar as with any unranked Kings of War event and results can be added (though again only for Kings of War points, not combined), but players will receive zero ranking points for the event.

Soft Score Events

First I need to define the difference and give examples of soft scores and what I refer to as “hard” scores.

Hard Scores

“Hard” scores are bonus tournament points that are achieved through simple yes/no questions that do not give any indication of quality.

For example, it has become common to give bonus tournament points for players who have a fully painted army in order to strongly encourage painted armies but not exclude those who have not yet finished their army. There are no additional points given based on the quality of the painting, merely that it has been painted.

Another example is a bonus “hard” score for submitting an army list for checking ahead of time. For Northern Kings events we usually award +5 tournament points for submitting an army list by the Sunday before the event.

Soft Scores

These are scores that mark the quality of what has been achieved outside of generalship, usually hobby and sportsmanship. The better painted your army, the more bonus tournament points you achieve for example.

Handling Soft Scores for ranking

Ranking points on the leaderboard will be awarded based on the gaming score and “Hard” scores only. Soft scores are ignored for the purpose of ranking points.

In addition, events which use soft scores must publish a player’s gaming rank at the event alongside their overall rank. The event can absolutely consider the overall rank to be the “true” ranking of the event (that is the purpose of soft score events) for the sake of awards and prestige, but it must be clear at the end what a player’s gaming/battle rank is too and therefore what the ranks will be on KoWMasters.

The final tables shown at Four Foot Snake events are a perfect example of how to handle this since they show both the overall player rank on the left and on the right hand side is the battle rank as well:

A future website update will allow us to show both the player’s overall rank and battle rank on soft score events. This will only be visible on soft score events and a message box on the event page will make it clear what the difference is.

To re-iterate, hard scores are perfectly fine. Keep doing things exactly as you currently are. There was only one soft score event last year, Another Four Foot Snake thing, and so far there isn’t a single soft score event in the calendar for the upcoming season.

Decisions, decisions

Undoubtedly there will be people happy with the decisions and some people unhappy. Neither of these decisions received unanimous votes but did receive majority votes. These decisions are an example of why I set up the committee in the first place since there was no-one to make them previously.

New Formats

New event formats are interesting. However, please check with the Masters committee before advertising that it will be eligible for ranking points. We can’t imagine every single event format that someone could ever run and have a 50 page document listing which formats are and aren’t ranked.

If you’re doing something outside of the norm then ask us if it will be ranked. Speak to a representative (doesn’t have to be your region rep if you’re more comfortable approaching someone else) or email us collectively at kowmasters@kowmasters.com. Tell us about the format and how it will run, and we’ll discuss eligibility for ranking points with you.

Website Maintenance

I’m getting tagged in more Facebook posts and getting more PMs on Facebook asking me to make updates to the site such as uploading results and adding events.

Please email them to kowmasters@kowmasters.com.

I get a lot of Facebook notifications and I get a lot of private messages. Unless I’m at my PC and not doing anything else right that second, it’s not going to get done that second. And then it will get forgotten about. Especially if I get the notification or PM at midnight when I’m stumbling home from the pub.

The email inbox is the maintenance work queue.

It’s also not just me doing site updates; I’ve been training George how to maintain the database too. We share the requests that come into the inbox between us. If they’re just coming to me then they’re not being seen by George.

Finally, please email the inbox to get an event added to the calendar. I tend to click “Interested” for any event I could potentially get to, but I don’t check to see if it’s already on the KoWMasters calendar. Send it in regardless of whether I’ve clicked Interested or not (or even going). If it doesn’t get sent in, then it’s very unlikely to get added.