Buffalo Tourny Take Away

By F0RGED, in Star Wars: Armada

If I'm reading your system right, it's akin to first past the post? In other words, I could win three games by 1 MOV and beat someone who tabled their opponent twice and lost by 1 MOV, so that the "winner" had MOV of 3 and second place had MOV of 799?

Basically yes. Right now you have to play for the table, which is 100% based on rolling buckets of hits and boiling all of the strategy in the game down do "are you in my arc oh good pewpewpew". So that guy that had those 3 wins, by any definition, has 3 wins. Wins WINS. As in, to win. The other guy has 2 wins and one loss, LOSS. As in, didn't win. By how much he didn't win by is irrelevant.

Again, if two people are 3-0, and 4 people are 2-1, and two thousand people are 1-2 then we can look at the MOV. So those two 3-0s get their final standing by MoV, so MoV gives us a 1st place and 2nd place. Those four 2-1s MoVs give us a 3rd-6th place. And those two thousand 1-2 give us 7th-2000th place.

In this way MoV would still matter when it was needed to break ties but ultimately winning the most means you win. If I were a less lazy man I would link Charlie Sheen here.

Fluff-wise, that doesn't sit well with me. An overwhelming victory in war is worth far more than a narrow one. Having just "win" be the only item means that a stellar player earns the same reward as a mediocre one. It also means dice play a MUCH bigger role in close matches (like the final round that started this conversation). IIRC, you're very much against dice deciding things. With first-past-the-post, a single anti-squadron roll could determine the whole tournament whereas with the current system, it's the difference between 5-5 and, well, 5-5. Wouldn't the 10-point spread achieve your goal of avoiding luck determining the game better than FPTP?

Edited by SomeKittens

If you get 3 more objective tokens you then another player then you are going to win that game by more then 4 MoV, and therefore not conclude at 5-5. How is what you are saying relevant to my post?

Because a 4 point difference in MoV is essentially a draw, and it is very much treated as such. It should just be called a draw as to not give some illusion that it is more then that. If you and your opponent score the same points out of a round it isn't anything but a draw.

I completely get what you are saying here, in that in an overwhelming majority games that wind up being this close (at least in my experience) it very much feels like a draw. But maybe its just something hard wired in my way of thinking at this point, if you and I play a game, and that game is not golf, and I have more points at the end, I won.

Now, I've come around to the belief that this MoV does work for armada tournaments, and I think will work even better now that the squadron game has opened up some and Riekaan is a thing that happens. So I'm not in any way advocating all wins are equal. But I would kind of prefer if 5-5 had an MoV of 0, and 6-4 was MoV of 1 to whatever FFG decides when they put the new rules out. But that's very much a personal preference, and as I've already said, games that are close enough to be called at 5-5 in this game are generally extremely even, so having them declared a draw feels fine.

I'm not sure I'm following your logic.

The way games are scored encourages smart aggressive play. The larger your margin of victory the more tournament points you get. This is a known quantity going into a tournament, or it should be. Fleet design and play style should take this into account to maximize your chances of winning the tournament.

Dice are, well dice, and the bane of my existence. The only way to avoid them in games is to play games that don't use them, and this game ain't one of them. In fact, it seems rather large quantities of dice get thrown in this game. Mitigate them through fleet design and smart play all you want (and you should), but they will still find a way to screw you some of the time. The only full proof armor against them is never to throw them, but where's the fun in that?

I'm sorry, please don't take this the wrong way, but that is complete nonsense. Full proof armor against dice IS smart play. If I brought the tools necessary(my fleet list) and have the ability to out fly you then even with bad dice Getting a 6-2 isn't outside the realm of possibility.

How does that logic not work? I out play you, I win, but not as much as the guy with the hot dice who didn't play as well. Made mistakes, wasn't punished for them and never rolled a blank and as far as the system is concerned he is the better player. When in reality he is the better die roller. But since that isn't a skill he is actually just the luckier of the two. Not good design. Again, just so everyone is clear, when I say design I refer to the tournament system. Not the game system.

The system for scoring tournaments in Armada says some wins are better than others. That's just the way it is. As players we need to consider the scoring system when designing our fleets and playing our games. If we do, we are less likely to be victimized by the dice, but it can still happen.

After a loss, if I can look back at the game and find things I could have done better that could have possibly prevented the loss regardless of the dice, I'm satisfied with the randomness of the game. I feel like Armada gives me sufficient control of my destiny. Even so, the dice can influence a games outcome. That's why we roll them, otherwise we might as well play chess.

Edited by Starbane

Hey gents, its very simple I think. The system works great cause to "just win" is not as important at "how you win". If it was all about winning you would take a bunch of speed 4 ships loaded with def upgrades and a killer hero squad, go kill your enemies 8pt tie fighter and then run the rest of the game. This also is more realistic or Star Wars feeling. The rebs did not take out a Star Destroyer in the battle of end or and then hyperspace away with a victory. FFG has done a great job of making this game about attacking not turtling like a lot of mini games out there. BTW, no snow yet hear in Buffalo.

If you want to complain about fairness, May I present the fact that a team from the NFC East (currently the tire fire of the NFL) will make the playoffs while others with winning records will likely miss the playoffs.

While we are all throwing our opinions in about Game Wins vs MoV Points...

I'm of the opinion that MoV feeds the 'Min/Max' beast. Players may be more inclined to create 'Turbo Brute' lists instead of 'Nuance Tech' lists.

Proudly, I haven't been drawn to the 10-0 'Min/Max' listing seduction. Although I still make lists to win, my focus is winning each individual game and not the Tourney. Oddly enough I have been the top gun more than not. Not bragging here. I just think its kinda cool how it worked itself out that way sometimes.

Starbane, brother, this isn't about your win being better than my win. That is fine. That is what I want. This is about your loss not mattering to me not losing at all. That is the issue. Tied for game wins? Great, refer to by how much they won by, absolutely. But a system that punishes for bad dice isn't well thought out. What I mean by that is, I have a fleet capable of tabling, I play smart and with enough aggression to table, but fail to, not because I didn't set up enough double arcs or play my fighters right but because I just couldn't roll hits. At that point the tournament is over. I can't fall back on good tactics, I can't out play my opponent. If I don't table and someone else does regardless of how well anything else went I am out. Not a good system.

This speaks nothing to the possible collusion that can occur. For instance two friends going to a tournament, friend A does bad and friend B does okay. So in the 3rd round friend A lets friend B get the table which puts him into the running when otherwise he wouldn't have had a shot. I have seen it plenty in other tournaments systems where it isn't designed from the ground up for it.

Edited by Darkfine

You seem to be saying that the only reason 10-0s happen is because of lucky dice and 6-4 results are always close fought matches or thrilling come from behind wins. That's not the case. While achieving a 10-0 does require players to take calculated risks, it still requires a fair amount of skill to execute regularly. And while the aforementioned results can lead to 6-4 splits, 6-4 results can also easily occur from highly defensive play in which nothing much happens over the game and victory is decided because a corvette was ever so slightly misplaced.

FFG had problems with an overly defensive metagame in X-wing for the better part of a year in which the dominant list were large based ships playing keep away while taking pot shots with turrets. I highly doubt they have any desire to repeat that in Armada.

And frankly, it's possible to game any system through collusion. The fact is that people who want to game the system are highly motivated to figure out how to do so- and it only takes one of them noticing something a designer missed to crack the whole scoring system wide open, even if the designers themselves spent far more time on the system. The best solution has always been to rely on the discretion of TOs to punish collusion, because the nature of most cheaters and unscrupulous players is to adapt to rules changes.

Starbane, brother, this isn't about your win being better than my win. That is fine. That is what I want. This is about your loss not mattering to me not losing at all. That is the issue. Tied for game wins? Great, refer to by how much they won by, absolutely. But a system that punishes for bad dice isn't well thought out. What I mean by that is, I have a fleet capable of tabling, I play smart and with enough aggression to table, but fail to, not because I didn't set up enough double arcs or play my fighters right but because I just couldn't roll hits. At that point the tournament is over. I can't fall back on good tactics, I can't out play my opponent. If I don't table and someone else does regardless of how well anything else went I am out. Not a good system.

This speaks nothing to the possible collusion that can occur. For instance two friends going to a tournament, friend A does bad and friend B does okay. So in the 3rd round friend A lets friend B get the table which puts him into the running when otherwise he wouldn't have had a shot. I have seen it plenty in other tournaments systems where it isn't designed from the ground up for it.

Let's examine the case of 2 imaginary players, player A and player B. They are playing in a tournament. Player A was inspired genius in rounds 1 and 2 tabling his opponents with very little loses of his own, gaining 10-0 tournament points scores in both rounds. Player B wasn't so bad himself, scoring two 8-2 rounds. They meet in the final round. Player A is stunningly brilliant again and out playing player B who is doing ok, but is clearly being out played. Unfortunately for player A his dice have gone ice cold while player B's have become golden. Despite being thoroughly out played player B manages a 6-4 split in the final round.

If I understand you correctly, awarding the tournament to Player B is just, because he went 3-0, even though everybody including player B knows player A was the best player that day. It was just super hot rolling that got player B the 6-4 split with player A. However, fortunately for player A they were playing Armada which awards the tournament win based on tournament points and he edges player B 24-22. The crowd cheers because justice was served and the best player won despite some bad luck in the final round, yea.

This scoring system combined with luck can go either way, it can save the day for the best player or award it to someone who got super lucky. Your acting like only the latter is possible.

There is luck involved in the game, we are rolling dice after all, how can there not be? To me, this tournament scoring seems pretty fair and the game itself rewards superior play more often than not. Therefore, I'm willing to accept the statistical out fliers that will happen from time to time where luck is the deciding factor in victory. Just my opinion, ymmv.