Looking for advice on how to set up a small tournament.

The tourney will only be for around six players. That is roughly the number of active and interested players in my area of Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.

It has been posited that I should run it as a round robin, but I'm not sure how to score it from there, or really anything after that.

All I have so far, is that really. I've never run anything like this before, so I'm just not familiar.

Last thing, this would be a one day tournament for sure.

Thanks in advance for any advice, links or guides on how to do this kind of thing!

Why not just run it as a normal tournament following the tournament rules ? With that number of players it's only three rounds with no top cut. Easy enough to do. But there's also software like Cryodex or the iOS X-wing TO app you can use to help you.

And the normal Margin of Victory calculation sorts out any tied points. You will get a clear winner at the end of three rounds. The last tournament I ran, we had 8 players and just ran three rounds. Each player was given a number (from 1-8) and I put 8 ID tokens into a hat and each player pulled one out and played that number. Any double ups just drew again. Worked out to be the easiest method at the time and there were no complaints.

What do the players want? Round Robin would be 5 rounds and everybody would play each other so no question on how you fare against different lists. It also takes longer, roughly 8 hours versus 5 for the 3 round tourney.

Follow the scoring in tournament rules and it should be fine either way.

Thanks very much for your help!

I don't have an iOS device. Only Android/Win10, but Cryodex should work.

The round robin is long, but half of us have never played together, having only just met via webz. We thought it would give everyone a chance to meet and play each other at least once. As you say though, the RR format would be time consuming for sure...

I will give the official tourney rules a look and see how it maths out. I didn't realize their format accounted for small groups! (clearly I'm not a competitive player)

As long as this is just a friendly event rather than a sanctioned event like a Store Championship, and as long as everyone's okay spending the day playing X-wing together, I would strongly recommend round-robin as a format for six players.

Things are progressing on our quest for a tourney. Right now, we are proposing round robin Swiss for 6 players. Really, at that number, we all end up playing each other anyways. Either way, based on points, we'll have a final between the top two scores and they will get a prize. Since this isn't "official," we are just doing a small base ship.

My new question is whether to use the FFG point system or not. My co-organizer is proposing just allocating 3-2-1-0 for match points, and I was wondering why FFG uses 5-3-1-0 instead?

Thank you for your continued input.

Things are progressing on our quest for a tourney. Right now, we are proposing round robin Swiss for 6 players. Really, at that number, we all end up playing each other anyways. Either way, based on points, we'll have a final between the top two scores and they will get a prize. Since this isn't "official," we are just doing a small base ship.

My new question is whether to use the FFG point system or not. My co-organizer is proposing just allocating 3-2-1-0 for match points, and I was wondering why FFG uses 5-3-1-0 instead?

Thank you for your continued input.

I think they found it creates a better point spread for determining the cut. With your round robin, and a 75-minute game time, that's going to take the best part of 8 hours to play through, including the final. You need to ensure that all the players are up for that, because that's quite a long day, even for X-Wing.

I ran an eight player tournament that was only three rounds, and with the FFG points system, we had a clear points leader after the three rounds. And I didn't bother with a top pair match. I decided at the beginning that it was the player with the most points after three rounds was the winner. Even then, it took around five hours to run.

Another factor might be time. Do you have to do it all on one day? If you can split it up or make a weekend of it, play 3 rounds the first and 2 the second time with a final if you want. If the objective is just to meet each other and have fun with a little bit of a prize at the end, I would take the opportunity to maximize that aspect of it. A long grueling day will become less fun toward the end. You do take a chance that someone that lost the first three rounds might not come back, but maybe they won't. If you are all having a good time, just getting the chance to play together will outweigh the downside of splitting up the game time. If you have to do it in one day.. well, you have your options there too...

Unfortunately due to time and outside factors (read jobs, families, scheduling, blargh), we will be doing it in one day, though I do appreciate the toll it may take on some. Perhaps a forced lunch break away from the tourney location would be nice, just to break it up.

Unfortunately due to time and outside factors (read jobs, families, scheduling, blargh), we will be doing it in one day, though I do appreciate the toll it may take on some. Perhaps a forced lunch break away from the tourney location would be nice, just to break it up.

I imagine that would be essential. What's the old say? "You can have too much of a good thing."

Even if you love the game, a full day of it is still pretty demanding.