This week’s Fantasy Thursday article explores the composition scoring system that will be used at the Cheddar Bowl III. The system is different from the WPS or similar systems in that a player doesn’t really know his exact score when he walks in the door. The debate about whether or not this is a good thing is not the point of this article. What is the point is to try and apply the written rules to my army in order to get a sense of how I will be scored.
To start, here is a quick run down of my army list for the event.
Daemon Prince w/ wings and ASF 345 pts
Herald of Nurgle w/ lvl 1 110 pts
Herald of Slaanesh w/ lvl 1 & BSB 135 pts
Dark Emissary 265 pts
16 Bloodletters w/ full cmd 222 pts
16 Bloodletters w/ full cmd 222 pts
27 Horrors w/ full cmd 354 pts
18 Daemonettes w/ full cmd 246 pts
18 Daemonettes w/ full cmd 246 pts
14 Plaguebearers w/ full cmd 198 pts
10 Furies 120 pts
An army’s composition score starts with the army book being used for the tournament. Daemons of Chaos are considered a tier 1 army, which means that the base score for them is 4/10 or four out of ten points. In comparison, my future Beasts of Chaos army would be 8/10 or eight out of ten points. According to the Cheddar Bowl III website, “Tier placement is solely a starting point. The judge (or panel) will assign a modifier to your base comp score to arrive at your final comp.”
The guidelines are vague for how an army is judged, but there are some general and army specific criteria that have been provided to help guide participants towards a better score. The first general guideline centers on the number of power dice in the army. According to the site, “7-9 Power Dice, 10+ PD may result in heavier penalties.” I am reading this to mean that the standard is 7-9 dice and that having greater than 9 power dice will result in a point deduction. If we look at my army, I have two base dice, one for each herald, four for the dark emissary, and two for the horrors. (I believe I may have missed one or two dice, but the point here is that I have hit the magical threshold.) Since the rules state that I will be heavily penalized, I am going to consider that to mean a two point deduction.
The next general guideline is regarding the use of standards. The rules state that, “Standards taken when appropriate (in blocks of infantry / hammer units)”. All of my non-character units with the exception of the furies have standards. I have been told that this is a bad thing, but frankly I don’t usually listen to the folks that give that kind of advise. Reading the guideline, this means to me that I am doing something that is a disadvantage to my army, so therefore I should receive a bonus for taking so many standards. I will hazard a guess that I will have earned myself one bonus point.
The last guideline is regarding dragons, which is not an issue for me as my army doesn’t have that option. With the last general guideline not applying, I figure that my base composition score is now 3/10.
As mentioned earlier, there are also some guidelines that are specific to each army book. The first one is regarding the use of a greater daemon. Since my list doesn’t contain a GD and instead uses a daemon prince, I am going to call that a bonus and give myself a point.
The next guideline is regarding the use of flamers in the army. The wording of the guideline states that I should be wary of how many of them I have in the army. Since I have none, I think I am safe. The same guideline is also stated for flesh hounds. Again, since my list is composed of mostly core units, I figure I don’t need to worry about this penality.
When it comes to the listed bonuses; large infantry blocks with command, mono god armies, less than 3 characters, and no rares, I have one of the four criteria. I am going to assume that this will translate into another point for me.
So skimming over the army specific criteria, I believe that I have earned two bonus points and now have a composition score of 5/10. What this score means is that each round, four in total, I will earn 5 out of a possible 10 points in additional to whatever points I earn during each game. Another way to put this is that I need to have solid wins each round, but I am not looking for massacres in order to compensate for the points lost due to composition.
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