From my understanding at a tournament where there is an odd number of attendees, the person with the lowest ranking gets the BYE except for round one where it's allocated at random.

My issue is that it works against skilful players and less skilful players. Let me explain.

In my last Nationals with 29 attendees (3 rounds), one of the best players i knew landed the BYE round 1. He continued to 10-0 his last two games but because there were others with three 10-0 victories he was pretty much robbed of a chance of top3 making top5 instead.

On the flipside in a local tournament a month later we had 9 attendees. This time the person with the least skill got the BYE. So in round two he was matched with a higher skill level player who got 8-2 or higher and is going to pretty much table the BYE player for another high tournament point win whilst everyone duked it out for 2nd place pretty much.

maybe its just me thats had badluck with BYEs and i don't know a solution to suggest either. Thought id share.

It's definitely frustrating at times. In addition, I've had frustrations in the past with really new players "feeding" better players at a tournament, at times giving up even more than 300 points thanks to a total wipe out and some objective points. At the same time, I've benefited from those players too. I always cut and run if things start to look really bad, I don't just throw my last ship or two into the opponent just because.

The issue isn't with the 8-2 Bye, it's with the fact that with 29 players only playing 3 rounds is completely insufficient.

With only 3 rounds none of the Top 5 players have been forced to play eachother, you are essentially forced to end the event with likely 4 undefeated players.

It's almost farcical to expect to crown a winner with that format.

Would more evenly matched opponents help the situation? Yeah. Everybody wants to go 10-0, but let's say everyone was more even. Does that mean you'd see less wipes leading to less undefeated runs?

The issue isn't with the 8-2 Bye, it's with the fact that with 29 players only playing 3 rounds is completely insufficient.

With only 3 rounds none of the Top 5 players have been forced to play eachother, you are essentially forced to end the event with likely 4 undefeated players.

It's almost farcical to expect to crown a winner with that format.

I agree with this as well very much. You can't have 30 people determine a winner with only 3 rounds. Well you can, but there is a lot of room to debate.

Yep getting a buy is generally rubbish all round for everyone. Not least because we go to events to play games, and a buy takes 1/3 of your games away!

In many other wargames tournaments the TO either is, or has on hand, a ringer player. Sometimes they can qualify for prizes and placings as normal, sometimes they bring a soft list and play the lowest ranked player each time. Personally I like any of these options over a buy, no matter how competitive the event.

The round times are very generous for tournaments at the moment. We could easily have 4 game events in a single day (this might change with wave 2 though, we shall have to see). After that we need to start looking into two day tournaments, its been a thing for decades in other games.

If you run a direct elimination with 17-32 players you would need 5 rounds, ideally with Swiss Seeding you need two more rounds than this to allow the rankings to come close to what they should. After 5 rounds the winner will start getting easier games, but the idea of adding two more rounds is to give the guys that come second and third a chance to bounce back up after their 5th round loss, for 33-64 players using Swiss we would need 8 rounds.

As such I think there is a trade off being made. The question being asked would seem to be what can be done about it?

If you can extend the number of rounds to be played as to provide the theoretical number of rounds required then you will not have the problem, after 8 games there will be just one player on 8 wins and if there isn't then you can use a whole slew of tie-breaks that would be better than the tournament points. First one being the result of the game where those two players played each other. If you can't avoid the "luck of the draw" then perhaps you reduce the sting of it by having more frequent tournaments and use a chess style scoring system to rank players.

I quite enjoyed the relaxed nature of the Australian Nationals, so smaller more frequent tournaments would be an idea.

The official tournament rules for Armada dictate that if you have more than 16 players you must have a 5 round tournament.

The official tournament rules for Armada dictate that if you have more than 16 players you must have a 5 round tournament.

No, the tournament rules pack states up to 32 players is 3 rounds and 33 plus is five rounds. That is for a competitive or premiere level event. Casual events, the number of rounds played is up to what the TO decides fits the needs of the tournament and players.

No, the tournament rules pack states up to 32 players is 3 rounds and 33 plus is five rounds. That is for a competitive or premiere level event. Casual events, the number of rounds played is up to what the TO decides fits the needs of the tournament and players.

I like it when we can make modifications to the system to have potentially a better system, or a more fair/balanced one when we find that some issues are coming up and we can self correct.

Except you have to have a standardized system for FFGs event season. You can not have, for instance, individual Regional locations running thier events in different formats.

But they do have to revisit the fact that in the 20-32 and 60+ player events you just are not playing enough rounds to crown a winner. You just end up nearly arbitrarily picking a winner amongst a group of undefeated players that have not yet had to play each other.

Hang on, i think the current system works fine for a tournament with an even number of players.

The issue is the 8-2 BYE condition for the odd player out in the odd attendee numbered tournaments.

The BYE right now, robs the chance of a good player getting top3 and makes a lower level player feed a higher skilled player.

The system isn't that great tbh in the first place. I don't know of any system however that has a truly satisfactory way of dealing with byes. The biggest issue imo with how armada handles it is the use of MOV to decide overall winners. If it used a more traditional 3/1/0 or 5/3/1/0 win/draw/loss system byes wouldn't be as huge of an issue. (Underlying your problem being that byes in large events arnt rewarded fairly due to lack of rounds, is the issue that you can go undefeated and still be 3rd-4th in a 8 man event)

Your issue specifically is fixed by just going another round or two to give the top 5 a chance to play each other, but on a broader scope MOV shouldn't be the tournament decider.

Yep, my bad I just remembered it wrong. Little chance of a tournament around here having 16 players, much less 33, any time soon.

Hang on, i think the current system works fine for a tournament with an even number of players.

The issue is the 8-2 BYE condition for the odd player out in the odd attendee numbered tournaments.

The BYE right now, robs the chance of a good player getting top3 and makes a lower level player feed a higher skilled player.

Ok so award the Bye 10-0, and then what ends up happening? You still have the event winner decided from a group of undefeated players off of fairly to completely arbitrary criteria. Hell the player that wins could be the player with the Bye, having only been forced to only actually win two games.

If a the requisite number of rounds were played out then neither of your issues would be issues. The "good" player with a Bye would not be out of contention because they got stuck with the Bye as they can simply just win out. The "bad" player feeding his second round opponent also wouldn't matter as the fed player would still have to win out to win.

It all comes back to the fact that full events aren't being played out and this ends up yielding little competitive integrity.

It also means that the number if viable Fleet options is more narrow then it needs to be as players have to not just win, but score big while doing so. A list that can beat every other list, say 90% of the time, is still not tournament viable if it only scores 7-3 or 8-2 constantly.

You just end up nearly arbitrarily picking a winner amongst a group of undefeated players that have not yet had to play each other.

Except that it's possible for the people with defeats and draws to finish higher than some undefeated players. It really comes down to who tables their opponents the most and if they draw or lose only go 4-6 or 5-5.

I love the game, but their OP has a lot of work that needs to be done. Here's to hoping that they do.

they need to just finish the tournament

tree, with single or double loss elimination till only one player is left.