As it stands, it seems FFG wants to eliminate a top 8 cut entirely, as you have to amass some 40+ people to an event to break away from a top 4. If you're playing more than 4 rounds, a top 8 is absolutely necessary to work out the disparity in luck and skill.

As it stands, you have to be damned near flawless to make a top 4 cut. Store championships, being a lower prestige event than regionals and its ilk, should by definition be easier to make the cut.

Just throwing this out there. I've seen a lot of cases where the top 4 has a dropout, I think top 8 would see a lot more of that.

Just throwing this out there. I've seen a lot of cases where the top 4 has a dropout, I think top 8 would see a lot more of that.

Well I have been to 5 store championships and have seen no one drop at top 4, so there! My anecdotal evidence counters yours.

I think FFG's goal is to maximize the playtime for as many players as possible while keeping the event duration to something that can be run in a single day.

I agree that it's better to have a wider cut in X-Wing to help shake out the bad dice matches.

A wider cut is probably fairer, but the need to play more matches, and particularly more no-time-limit matches makes a smaller cut preferable for me in principle. IN practice I have yet to make the cut at any tourneys. This weekend, for sure!

I'd far prefer to end a day having played 5 timed and 2 untimed matches rather than 3 untimed matches, especially when it's the last match that's the most important.

Isn't the current system engineered to get most of the X-1's into the cut in most tournament sizes? A top 8 is going to land the cutoff more solidly in MoV-determination. Point-hoarding would have more value. No thanks.

Edit: I am wrong. My tourney was an outlier.

A wider cut is probably fairer, but the need to play more matches, and particularly more no-time-limit matches makes a smaller cut preferable for me in principle. IN practice I have yet to make the cut at any tourneys. This weekend, for sure!

I'd far prefer to end a day having played 5 timed and 2 untimed matches rather than 3 untimed matches, especially when it's the last match that's the most important.

A wider cut is probably fairer, but the need to play more matches, and particularly more no-time-limit matches makes a smaller cut preferable for me in principle. IN practice I have yet to make the cut at any tourneys. This weekend, for sure!

I'd far prefer to end a day having played 5 timed and 2 untimed matches rather than 3 untimed matches, especially when it's the last match that's the most important.

Only one match at any tournament is untimed, and that's the final.

Fair enough, I thought all the top cut matches were untimed.

Either way, over the course of a packed day, fewer matches, for me, are preferable to more matches.

Played five 75-minute rounds with a top 8 cut on Saturday. It was brutal. Ended up praying we didn't make the cut so we could actually get home at a reasonable hour.

as a real reply to this post I have seen more than a couple stores cut off registration at 24 to even stop a 5 round/ 4 cut tournament day. If you start at noon that is a long day with travel.

Top 4 is fine.

as a real reply to this post I have seen more than a couple stores cut off registration at 24 to even stop a 5 round/ 4 cut tournament day. If you start at noon that is a long day with travel.

Then don't go? you know what you're signing up for when you register. A part of winning is being able to physically handle the demands of tournament play on top of the actual game.

Top 4 is fine.

Why, when 8 has been the rule for so long? With 40 players, there are plenty of people deserving of having the chance to win the event, but for some reason they lose out for having not completely dominated the entire day.

as a real reply to this post I have seen more than a couple stores cut off registration at 24 to even stop a 5 round/ 4 cut tournament day. If you start at noon that is a long day with travel.

Then don't go? you know what you're signing up for when you register. A part of winning is being able to physically handle the demands of tournament play on top of the actual game.

So you're saying tournament play/competitive events shouldn't be as accessible as possible, and that anyone who's not willing to potentially stay to 9-10pm+ shouldn't bother going in the first place?

I'm fine with the top 4 cut. 4-1 record with a good MOV will almost always get you in, otherwise a long day takes even longer.

as a real reply to this post I have seen more than a couple stores cut off registration at 24 to even stop a 5 round/ 4 cut tournament day. If you start at noon that is a long day with travel.

Then don't go? you know what you're signing up for when you register. A part of winning is being able to physically handle the demands of tournament play on top of the actual game.

Really? We are playing a freaking board game. I'm not qualifying for the olympics here.

Furthermore that wasn't even the point of my post, it was to show that a lot of stores dont want to start early/stay super late and so they are restricting participants.

I like the current setup: you either need to win all your games or have a few good victories and not get steamrolled in the game that you lost. If you manage that then you get into the finals.

I for one think a cut to top 8 and only 4 rounds of swiss would be the best option for store championships with the appropriate number (lets say 20), but that's tough record wise on some players. I think this works well scheduling wise as well though. Make sure players come with a full belly, play the 4 rounds straight through, do the cut and have a break, and then finish off after that.

Every tournament I go to, 4 rounds is more than enough X-wing for a day, and it's pretty clear you have a shot/are not making the top cut at this point, so players just drop before the 5th round (if there is one) anyways. Having 4 rounds and cut to top 8 at least gives a majority of players hope throughout the whole run.

Having said that though, I have never seen an undeserving player benefit from a cut to top 4, and that alone for me is enough to feel a top 4 cut still works fine, even if not what I would prefer.

as a real reply to this post I have seen more than a couple stores cut off registration at 24 to even stop a 5 round/ 4 cut tournament day. If you start at noon that is a long day with travel.

Then don't go? you know what you're signing up for when you register. A part of winning is being able to physically handle the demands of tournament play on top of the actual game.

Really? We are playing a freaking board game. I'm not qualifying for the olympics here.

Furthermore that wasn't even the point of my post, it was to show that a lot of stores dont want to start early/stay super late and so they are restricting participants.

Stores also know what they're getting into when they sign up.

I know the length of tournaments has been a big factor for some of my group when it comes to the store championships. The closest ones have been at least 60-90 minutes away. Which isn't bad in and of itself. But coming at the end of nine hours of gaming and likely at or past midnight? Different story. And yes, car-pooling is an option, but what if I don't make the cut and my ride does?

Isn't the current system engineered to get most of the X-1's into the cut in most tournament sizes? A top 8 is going to land the cutoff more solidly in MoV-determination. Point-hoarding would have more value. No thanks.

No. If you have 40 players or less then the goal of the new structure is to NOT allow all of the X-1 players into the cut. In some scenarios, more than half of the X-1 players will NOT make the cut.

Top 4 is fine.

Why, when 8 has been the rule for so long? With 40 players, there are plenty of people deserving of having the chance to win the event, but for some reason they lose out for having not completely dominated the entire day.

By your reasoning, if they had instead made the cut the top 16 players that would have been even better than the long-standing top 8 cut.

But better at what exactly? At reducing the chance that someone flukes their way into a winning the championship?

The new format makes it easier to run tournaments. It will introduce a risk that some "better than mediocre" player may miss the cut, but that probably isn't going to change the outcome for very many tournaments.

I believe that making the tournaments easier to manage is probably more beneficial to the game in general (edit: than) making it more statistically satisfying (however negligible or significant that may end up being).

Stores also know what they're getting into when they sign up.

Stores also have to pay not only for the kit, but for the lights and salary of whoever is working there late, maybe even over time.

Demanding that they spend more money to host a tournament is going to mean fewer tournaments over all, which is quite frankly good for no one.

We have found that certain limits of attendance makes certain builds better than others. If you have 16 then there's no cut, and MOV doesn't matter at all, just wins. One person at 4-0 is going to win the whole thing so having a ship that just doesn't die may have been a better strategy (rebel regen).

We had one store run a 20 person tournament with a top 4 as suggested and a couple of the x-1's didn't make it, making MOV a much bigger factor. That store also should have cut to top 8 to get all the x-1's. Another store had 33 people, and strayed from the "cut to top 4" and did a full cut to Top 8, it worked out VERY well! All the x-1's made it in and a 1 or 2 of x-2's made it. That store started at 8am, and the tournament was done by 9pm with lunch round, break before cut, etc.

I don't have a single, quick response to this. But I do have a long, boring one... (wall of text incoming!)

I think X-wing tournaments are already long, and getting longer as the game gets more popular. 8 rounds is about 11 hours of play at minimum. As Luke C said, if you add one break for food and a couple of travel hours after the tournament, you're easily at a 14-hour day--often starting at noon.

And yeah, maybe that's what you're signing up for when you enter a tournament, but that doesn't mean it's fun (or safe) to get home exhausted at 2am. And it doesn't promote particularly strong play, either: who wants to watch a championship match that starts at 11:30pm and features a pair of hollow-eyed, mistake-prone zombies?

Setting that all aside for a moment, I think you're right. The cut is extremely generous at 17 players (almost a quarter of the people who show up!) but noticeably restrictive at 40 players. 1-2 of those players at 40 will be undefeated, which means as few as 2 players at 4-1 will get in. That's going to be demoralizing for a lot of players, and in a game as noisy as X-wing, it also sharply reduces the likelihood that your cut is actually capturing the best people there.

And it also goes against the entire point of a single-elimination cut. Basically, it's bad for finding the best player, but it adds some randomness and some excitement back into the mix by forgiving an early loss (or even two!) Basically, it's good for morale and for keeping players interested. But if the cut is so small that it excludes most of the players with even a single loss, you might as well play one more round of Swiss and stop.

(It's also a little bit weird how quickly the number of rounds "steps" in the current guidance. With 40 players you run 7 rounds total. It goes up to 8 rounds for 41 players, and then to 9 rounds at 45.)

I think the current system is intended as a compromise between fairness and manageability. And I think it more or less works that way... right up to about 32 players. (At 32, cutting to the top 4 eliminates just one 4-1 player.) I really think OP should be looking at different tournament mechanisms for larger tournaments, because trying to split the baby is just going to get worse as the game continues to grow.

My recommendation would be to change the structure to double-elimination at 33 players; store owners/TOs can cap attendance if they don't want to deal with that. It's a lot more fair, in that it relies on the results of head-to-head play rather than tiebreakers.

(Even better would be round-robin groups of 4 or 6 followed by Swiss or even single-elimination play, but that has some serious downsides unless you're certain you'll be capping attendance at a convenient number.)