Victory Points and Tournaments

Victory Points missions and victory point based tournaments can loosely be divided into three types:

Absolute victory points – Your total score is added in each game, regardless of what you lost, i.e. its irrelevant whether you only had one dude left, you score 2000 if you wipe the opponent while one of the other players may score only 1500 points even if he wiped ¾ of his opponents force without losing a man. Often these are divided into range bands and the range band is used to produce a ‘tournament score’
E.g.:
Victory Points Earned Tournament Points Earned
0-500 5
501-1000 10
1001-1500 15
1501-2000 20
Generally these tournaments have give-away names, like TOURNAMENT OF THE BLOOD GOD or similar. Fortunately for Eldar players this is a pretty uncommon tournament scoring system.

Differential victory points – Your score is based on the difference between your VP’s scored and your opponents’. Often these are divided into range bands and the range band is used to produce a ‘tournament score’
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 10 10
151-400 12 8
401-800 14 6
801-1200 16 4
1201-1600 18 2
1601-2000 20 0

Win/Loss Victory points – As it’s’ name suggests. You either win or you lose based on the total VP scores of the two players. Essentially this is a special case of differential victory points with a bracket that looks like:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-2000 10 0
Or something similar (some still have a “draw” as any value between 0-150 VP)

It’s important which one of these systems is in use since they favour different armies markedly.
They even favour certain compositions of those armies differently.
Absolute victory points for example (which is not commonly used as a primary method of scoring in a tournament but is often used as a tie-breaker or count-back mechanism) is horrible for Eldar.
Win/Loss victory points is a LOT more feasible for Eldar, you can win by playing a denial game, and certain units become a lot more valuable (War Walkers with shuriken cannons are very user-friendly in this context, they are often able to take out far more than their value before being wiped and are actually bloody annoying to completely wipe)
Differential victory points are workable for Eldar, but take a close look at the range bands and their implications for tournament scoring.
For example:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 10 10
151-400 12 8
401-800 14 6
801-1200 16 4
1201-1600 18 2
1601-2000 20 0
This system looks ok on paper right?
Well, it IS ok, if you want to screw some armies, benefit others, and reduce sportsmanship at your event.
Why?
Well, if I’m an Eldar player, I’m pretty sure I’m unlikely to manage anything upwards of an 800-1200 VP win. It’s very unlikely even in the first couple of rounds against weaker opposition. I simply don’t have the tools to do it.
If I’m a good guard player though and I’ve got a decent gun line (or a good tau player with a decent gun line) and I’m against a poor player.....well I can get 20-0. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely doable. I can certainly get 18-2.
So, we’re assuming the two generals are of even skill, both with a best of from their respective codex, both against a similar level of opposition; the system automatically favours one over the other. Over the course of a tournament this can often be enough to ensure that a person who goes undefeated...can be beaten for generalship by someone who lost a game. In my opinion not the desired outcome.
The more heavily the tournament points are biased towards a wipe-out, the more difficult it is for Eldar to perform well. Often the scoring system seems to be thrown together with little consideration and you will see things like
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-150 4 4
151-500 5 3
501-900 6 2
901-1500 7 1
1501-2000 8 0

Now, the points differential between getting a massive land-slide victory and a close win is only 3-4, as opposed to on the earlier example where it would have been 8-10
Unfortunately now the differential in percentage between a solid win (900-1500) and a close win (150-500) is a lot higher. What you almost never see is something like this:
Points differential Tournament Points Scored
Win Loss
0-250 10 10
251-750 13 0
751-2000 15 0

Now, if you win 5 big wins and lose one, while I win 6 straight, you don’t win. Yet size of win matters still for players with equal win loss records. Obviously the numbers above are randomly selected and it’s an example purely for concept. But the thing that makes it look unusual is that the loser gets nothing.
Giving points for losing is something tournament organisers love to do, I understand the reasons, and there are even a few I agree with. But if you are going to do it, PLEASE think very carefully about the implications for the tournament results. Tournaments where the difference in points between a win and a loss is small will have their overall winner determined by painting and sportsmanship generally, tournaments where the differential is large, will have their overall determined by generalship.
Beyond that, tournaments with a small differential will tend to have controversial generalship decisions, tournaments with a higher differential will tend to have clearer cut generalship decisions. That said, you may still run into situations where someone has won all of their games by the skin of their teeth and thereby wins general over someone who took a landslide in five games and drew or narrowly lost the last.
So hopefully the TO has designed with that in mind, has come up with a scoring system that ensures that whichever he WANTS to win out of 5-1-0 and 6-0-0 wins, whoever he WANTS to win out of 5-0-1 and 6-0-0 wins and may even (if you’re lucky) have considered what should be better between 4-2-0 and 5-0-1 (which is tricky, one guy is undefeated but didn’t WIN two matches, the other guy has won more matches...but also lost one)
If the TO has NOT considered these things, then you should. Look at the scoring system; determine what will win and what wont. Do you think from the missions that you are likely to win 4, and force a draw in two? If so, where would that put you? If that’s the best you can see your army managing and it doesn’t beat 5-0-1, are there things you could do that would change your outcome in the two missions you think will be draws? Could you possibly get the tools to win one of them at the cost of a guaranteed loss on the other?
The players have the information before they attend, so it’s on you as the player to make sure you understand the scoring system and what it means for the army you are bringing.
If you turn up to an absolute VP tournament with an Eldar keepies-off force (10 AV 12 hulls for example) then you can’t expect to win. You don’t have the guns.
Conversely if you turn up as Tau to an all objectives tournament using a force with two fire warrior squads and a couple of kroot squads, your odds of winning are not good. That same force may do VERY well at an absolute VP tournie though.

As a final thought:
Even WHEN you are going to lose games is worth considering. If you know the order missions will be played in, have you considered stacking your army with the tools to win the later games at a cost of being slightly weaker early? It’s far more likely (though not guaranteed) that the first round or two (possibly the whole first day) will be unseeded in which case you stand a good chance of running up against much easier opponents. Opponents you might be able to beat with an army that couldn’t win that mission against a good opponent.
In recent Tournaments here, the idea of using ‘seeded’ first rounds based off RankingsHQ has just started to take off. If it continues then most players here at least will not be able to depend on an easy first game.