Finally had our first tournament in the FLGS. It's been a bit long in getting people together, even so we were only four people playing. Now there was a bit of loot for everyone, but the tournament rules does not scale very well to such a small tournamet.

They state that the players are placed based on (in descending order for tie-breaking):

A) Tournament Points.
B) Strength of Schedule.
C) Extended Strength of Schedule.
D) Randomisation.

Now with only four people you play three round, meaning that everyone will have play each other once. Incidentally this also means that anyone tied will have identical Strength of Schedule, etc., basically increasing the likelihood of it being decided by a coin toss in the end. Of course we all had fun playing the matches, but it would be nice to have a reliable method of tie-breaking in tiny tournaments.

Am I missing some mathematical detail glaring me in the face, or is there no way to reliably win a 4-player tournament except by winning all your matches?

We had ended up with two players at 6 points and two players at 3 points. We decided not to call a winner, but rejoice at a shared 1st place and a shared 2nd place. I did, though, consider what would have been the preferred tie-breaker, rather than randomising it if we had really needed to break those ties (sorry, Vader, no TIEs were broken during this recording). I would suggest either looking at the result of any matches between the tied players or making a Margin of Victory, such as used in other FFG tournaments, but which of these is the better? Or should both be used in a given order before the final default of randomisation?

Incidentally I did actually calculate our MoVs - just as an experiment - and it would have been different outcomes depending on whether we had used MoV or the result of mutual matchups as tie-breaker.

With a 4-player tournament (everyone playing everyone else once) I would probably rank it this way:

1. Wins/Losses.

2. Total points scored in games (ie, if you won 40 -29 and 40 -20 and lost 23 -40 and 19 -40, your points would be 122 for the tournament). I think it would be VERY rare to have people tied for total points after 3 rounds.

I'd go with the winner from the match between the tied.

Honestly, in a 4 player event, it would just be easier to go 2 rounds and the winner is the undefeated player. I would probably use total VP scored, then total VP allowed for the next 2 levels of tie breaks.