... what does it give you in terms of points and score?
Some of us in the UK are unsure if it gives you the standard Bye, an 8-2, 129pt MoV victory, or a full 10-0 victory.
Can anyone comment based on their experience at official 2016 Regional Tournaments?
Reading the Posts...
Its a Crapshoot.
The rules state that a "Bye" is 8 and 129 MOV.
TOME, the official software, OCCASIONALLY (but not always) Classifies it as 9 with a higher MOV...
But, as I said... Total Crapshoot.
You'll have to try to find out on the day wether TOME is behaving or not if you want to try to abuse for as much points as possible with the bye or by playing...
You'll have to try to find out on the day wether TOME is behaving or not if you want to try to abuse for as much points as possible with the bye or by playing...
So, I've always maintained that I'd never use a Bye because, for me, the joy is in playing the game, not winning it. Then someone on the UK Facebook group just said it was a full 10-0 win and I was like "Wait really? That changes everything..."
But, no, I still plan not to use it.
You'll have to try to find out on the day wether TOME is behaving or not if you want to try to abuse for as much points as possible with the bye or by playing...
So, I've always maintained that I'd never use a Bye because, for me, the joy is in playing the game, not winning it. Then someone on the UK Facebook group just said it was a full 10-0 win and I was like "Wait really? That changes everything..."
But, no, I still plan not to use it.
It is certainly not a 10-0 win... Under any circumstances. That's a Concession, not a Bye.
The only two its been so far is "Standard Bye" of 8-2 129... And Special Bye of 9-1 (???)....
It might depend on which version of TOME is used, but again, I don't reall yknow....
Again, at Pittsburgh it was 9 point byes for the First Round Bye. That being said, that did not in any way affect the top 8 score at the end of the tournament. The only difference was 4th and 5th would have been tied in points, and 4th had the head-to-head tiebreaker.
I don't see any reason why taking the free win, either 8 points or 9 points would be a negative for you. It's one less game of risk for a bad matchup.
I don't see any reason why taking the free win, either 8 points or 9 points would be a negative for you. It's one less game of risk for a bad matchup.
It's not a negative except in the context that I'm going to an Armada tournament to play Armada. Sitting out for a round feels rubbish - I was previously the subject of a Bye at a Store Champs due to odd numbers, and it was crap.
I held onto mine at the Vancouver regionals in order to use it at the Tacoma regionals.
I'm not the only one from the Portland/Vancouver regionals to do so, I believe. I wonder if that'll mean a bunch of us scouting the competition during that first round.
I got to read the document in the tournament kit and it says to use the Bye as described in the tournament rules which is 8 129
there is no rule anywhere that says otherwise
I kinda makes the Bye useless unless you know there will be a lot of good payers and your hoping that they will get paired up and knock each other out in the first round. but what usually happens is the good players get paired up against baby seals first round and they are sitting on 10 and your on 8 
I think they need to rethink regional Byes they just don't work in a 3 round tournament
I got to read the document in the tournament kit and it says to use the Bye as described in the tournament rules which is 8 129
there is no rule anywhere that says otherwise
I kinda makes the Bye useless unless you know there will be a lot of good payers and your hoping that they will get paired up and knock each other out in the first round. but what usually happens is the good players get paired up against baby seals first round and they are sitting on 10 and your on 8
I think they need to rethink regional Byes they just don't work in a 3 round tournament
If you really are the most superb player, with an expectation of 10-0 or 9-1 victories from any probable opponent in the first round, then it's certainly a bad idea to take the bye.
Among us mortals (I got my bye by preying on a club of baby seals at a small-ish venue), there's a decent chance we'll get paired with someone who's good enough to avoid being 10-0'd, 9-1'd, or 8-2'd. Also, if you're in the competent-but-not-great category of players (as I am), then getting an 8-2 with minimal MOV keeps me away from the top table in Round 2, where I'd be the baby seal that gets clubbed.
Taking the bye also affords us the opportunity to scope the competition
Part of this also depends on the size of the tournament.
The larger a tournament is, the more likely you are to need to score highly to finish at the top. The bye in a 4 person tournament vs. a 400 person tournament might have very different values.
The other issue is that you are overwhelmingly likely to be matched against another bye user in the second round, so if your view is that the best players are taking byes, then you have to consider that you might be auto-matched against them. This is good if you are confident you can beat them, but bad if you are not confident you can beat them, as Mr. Hasselstein said before me.
TL;DR: too many unknowns, it probably doesn't matter.
All BYEs, whether from a Store Championship or a random assignment to an odd-numbered player are supposed to be worth 8pts and 129 MoV. If a TO allocates a different amount of points than this they are in violation of the official rules, and FFG takes adhering to a standard set of rules during tournament season pretty seriously.
While TOME sometimes has an error that awards 9pts for a BYE, it's the duty of the players and TOs to correct this software error.
im using mine cuz i will be late to the event and worked it out ahead of time to use the bye and show up for round 2. i did have to submit my fleet list ahead of time which is fair.