So i ran my first tournament yesterday under official FFG rules and it was much fun and ran comparately smoothly when i sorted out the tournament program technical difficulties i have used.

We were 14 players in total, 3 rounds at 60 minutes each and after everything is done we had 2 first places with 15 points each, a couple of second places with 10 points and so on, i.e. we had multiple players with exactly the same points.

This could be a major problem when it comes to official Store Championships and giving out prizes in general because how do i make the distinction when players have exactly the same points?

I've thought about an extra fairness points category where players can award points to their opponent depending on how fair they were during the game (letting them go back to announce an action when they forgot it and such things) but that has other drawbacks because players sometimes use this to "downvote" their opponent to get ahead themselves, i've seen it happen in other tabletop games that had this system.

So any of you have some ideas how to fix this?

Maybe 4 rounds of playing could sort this out a bit or some change to the 0-3-5 system depending on some squadron list factors.

There is a system in place so that either Tied first play off, or they work out who overall played against the "higher skilled opponents" and that person wins out right, we had a similar thing happen yesterday where two of us were on 200 points.

Remember too that only outright wins award 100 points, if you go to time and you have 33 or more points than your opponent you get a modified win and then ofc there is a Draw and then a loss for 0 points.

This could be a major problem when it comes to official Store Championships and giving out prizes in general because how do i make the distinction when players have exactly the same points?

I've thought about an extra fairness points category where players can award points to their opponent depending on how fair they were during the game (letting them go back to announce an action when they forgot it and such things) but that has other drawbacks because players sometimes use this to "downvote" their opponent to get ahead themselves, i've seen it happen in other tabletop games that had this system.

So any of you have some ideas how to fix this?

Maybe 4 rounds of playing could sort this out a bit or some change to the 0-3-5 system depending on some squadron list factors.

You really needed an extra round for being over 8. The general rule is powers of 2 - 2^3 = 8, so 3 rounds for 8 players, 4 for 16, etc. At some point you probably cut it off and go to elimination.

Barring that, the official method is Strength of Schedule. Add up the scores for the opponents of each player (e..g. I played A (15 points), B (5 points) and C (10 points) my SoS is 30) and rank by that as the tiebreaker. There are LOTS of problems with SoS, though - many people really don't like it, and are quite justified in that. When I run events, I use differential (points killed minus points lost) as the tiebreaker instead. It captures quality of win along with quality of opponent, and does the job well.

Please don't try and add some sort of "sportsmanship" score. For one, it's entirely subjective. For another, you should not be penalized for not letting your opponent cheat . Sadly, for a lot of gamers that's really the definition of sportsmanship - if your opponent expects you to follow the rules, he's a poor sportsman. I honestly blame GW for most of that - they created a very popular system with such a poor rules set that playing by them is seen as poor sportsmanship. That's fine, for those who subject themselves to that, but it really doesn't need to start bleeding in here.

There is a system in place so that either Tied first play off, or they work out who overall played against the "higher skilled opponents" and that person wins out right, we had a similar thing happen yesterday where two of us were on 200 points.

Remember too that only outright wins award 100 points, if you go to time and you have 33 or more points than your opponent you get a modified win and then ofc there is a Draw and then a loss for 0 points.

See.. that's what i get for missing an entire section in the official tournament rules

Thanks, that would indeed be the solution to the problem i was having.

Just have a second table with points killed minus points lost for the ships costs. Add these up for all the games and you can use that as an easy tiebreaker.

hockey style "shoot out" lol

there is a major flaw with the modified win. Its not good for the winner or loser.

For the winner you only gain 3 points, for the loser, you're strength of schedule goes down. there is no reason not to concede if you're going to lose.

I think the points should be:

5 for a win

3 for a modified win

2 for a draw

1 for a modified loss.

Hold up a second. Since when did strength of schedule mean points won by opponents? I've always interpreted that to means your opponents went 3-6 or whatever. Which always brings up another point - does the bye count in the SoS? I tend to not include it, but one could make the arguement for including it.

Last weekend I did not play well and only won 1 game. But due to FFG's tie breaker policies, several people ended ranked ahead of me that hadn't won any games, just the bye. Including the person I beat. Not like that makes a difference really once you're talking about 5 point tie breakers, but it's not only applicable there.

Let's take FFG's example of a 64 player tourney. There should be 4 rounds of swiss followed by a cut to top 8 (source: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/organized-play/support/op-flyer-booklet.pdf ). Ignoring ties and modified wins, that means that there will be 4 folks undefeated, and 16 that are 3-1.

So, the question becomes which 4 of those 16 get to make it to the top 8? At first pass, you would think the 4 that were 3-0 before the final round, but that doesn't actually make sense - if some of those other 12 lost in rounds 1-3 to the same guys that are 4-0, they shouldn't be handicapped at all for that loss any more than the 4 that lost in round 4. And since we have 4 undefeated that played three other rounds each, it is possible for all of those remaining 12 to have played and lost to those 4, not likely, but lets go with it for a moment.

Player group A are the 4 undefeated. Player group B are the 4 that lost in round 4 to A, and player group C lost to Ain round 1. After round 1, C are all 0-1, with a SoS of 1-0. Groups A and B are both 1-0 with SoS of 0-1. But now they're matched up against other winners, who they beat. So they are 2-0 and have a 1-1 SoS. Meanwhile C is 1-1 and has a SoS of 0-2.

After round 3 A is 3-0 with a SoS of (2-1 + 1-1 + 2-1 + 1 unknown game) 4-3+1u. B is 3-0 with a SoS of (0-1 + 1-1 + 2-1 + 3u) 3-3+3u. But C is 2-1 with a SoS of (3-0+0-2+1-2+1u) 4-4+1u. Now round 4 happens, player group A wins again, moving on to 4-0 with a SoS of (3-1 + 1-1 + 2-1 + 3-1 + 3u) 9-4+3u. Player B loses and is left at (0-1+ 1-1+ 2-1+ 4-0 + 6u) 7-3+6u. And finally player group C is left at 3-1 with a SoS of (4-0 + 0-2 + 1-2 + 2-2 + 3u) = 7-6+3u.

So while either group CAN win the SoS tie breaker, player group C who matched up against the eventual "champions" in the first round is at a huge disadvantage over player group B. They need all of their opponents to win their remaining games to put them at 10-6. And group B needs to lose 4 of 6 to put them at 9-7... and god forbid that they end up tie at 10-6 because there's no tie breaker defined to address that.

So, moral of the story - make sure you come with the best folks because the tourney rules suggest to avoid pairing players that came together against each other in the first round.

And while the case could be made to support winning the previous level so you get the bye, you have to believe that player group A would be doing the same thing, so then it really becomes a 3 round tourney as far as the top dogs are concerned. At least for regionals. Nationals should have quite a few well respected players that don't have a bye.

This has been answered but with 14 players you needed some kind of extra round or you need a measure of win quality. Starting with 14 means 7 "undefeated" at the start of round 2 and then 3 or 4 "undefeated" still at the start of round 3; at the end of round 3 you can easily have 2 "undefeated" players. If you have them duke it out you should have an undisputed winner otherwise you need to look at a bunch of somewhat subjective measures.

Buhallin voiced a strong opinion AGAINST a "sportsmanship score" that could be awarded and he's right. If you forget to do something and then ask me to let you go back and do it later then YOU are the poor sportsman for asking but you'll probably call ME the bad sportsman because I wouldn't allow you to do it. Perhaps there should be some big penalties for poor sportsmanship, like say doing things that delay the start of a game, but good sportsmanship should be expected and is its own reward.

When it comes to SoS I've always believed it should be looking at who beat you instead of who did you beat up on. A different game system (DDM) but in one tournament I lost two games in a pure swiss environment. I lost in the last round to the guy who went undefeated for all five rounds and I had lost earlier to a guy who had just lost to that same person; my problem was the guy I beat in the first round never won a game and my second round opponent only one the first game which totally kills any SoS comparisons.

I guess the point is that SoS isn't always great because if you happen to get matched against someone that can't win they drag you down when you had nothing to do with all of their other losses.