Hi gang,

So I see plenty of tournaments happening -- what kind of tournament rules are people using? Single Elimination? Double Elimination? Swiss? If you play Swiss, how are you doing victory points and then tiebreakers? What kind of time limits do people have in their rounds? What do you do when a game goes to time with no clear winner?

Thanks!

There are not official tournament rules or support for this game yet. I expect/hope to see this from FFG in January or February.

I was in a tournament last week. About 14 players. TO organized it as swiss. 40 minute games. If at timed called their was no winner, the player in process of their turn finished their turn then each player took one more turn. Player with highest total HP remaining got the win. Overall I thought it was a good system. Most games finished and those that didn't there was usually a clear "leader" in HP. All of my games finished before time except one, which I won by one HP.

I was in a tournament last week. About 14 players. TO organized it as swiss. 40 minute games. If at timed called their was no winner, the player in process of their turn finished their turn then each player took one more turn. Player with highest total HP remaining got the win. Overall I thought it was a good system. Most games finished and those that didn't there was usually a clear "leader" in HP. All of my games finished before time except one, which I won by one HP.

4 rounds?

I was in a tournament last week. About 14 players. TO organized it as swiss. 40 minute games. If at timed called their was no winner, the player in process of their turn finished their turn then each player took one more turn. Player with highest total HP remaining got the win. Overall I thought it was a good system. Most games finished and those that didn't there was usually a clear "leader" in HP. All of my games finished before time except one, which I won by one HP.

I'm not exactly a fan of dealing with time outs with HP. For one, mill decks just always lose. But there's also the part where everybody does not have the same amount of HP. It could easily boil down to someone decided to bring three characters instead of eliting two of them, and that's a sh*tty reason to win.

I was in a tournament last week. About 14 players. TO organized it as swiss. 40 minute games. If at timed called their was no winner, the player in process of their turn finished their turn then each player took one more turn. Player with highest total HP remaining got the win. Overall I thought it was a good system. Most games finished and those that didn't there was usually a clear "leader" in HP. All of my games finished before time except one, which I won by one HP.

Finish the turn then 1 more turn each? Why not just finish out the current round?

4 rounds?

Yes 4 rounds.

I'm not exactly a fan of dealing with time outs with HP. For one, mill decks just always lose. But there's also the part where everybody does not have the same amount of HP. It could easily boil down to someone decided to bring three characters instead of eliting two of them, and that's a sh*tty reason to win.

HP left is probably not ideal, but its what they came up with. It didn't seem to cause any big problems. That rule was posted days in advance of the tourney so you could build your deck and style to suit it.

Finish the turn then 1 more turn each? Why not just finish out the current round?

Finishing the round probably wouldn't have added too much additional time but I think they were trying to wrap up each round on time.

I'm not saying any of this was perfect. I didn't make the rules. I was just passing along the details of the tourney. I'm sure when FFG post the official tourney rules people will find faults with them as well.

i would do it as counting points taken (like a miniatures game). may make 3+ squads better when going to time, but theyre not that hard to kill. it also means you have to be careful that your more higher value characters arent killed either. Mill will never be favored in a game thats mostly about killing people. That and theres no way to do it right anyway. also, i too would have let the current round end though as part of procedure. I imagine thats what will happen with FFG tournament structure as well.

TIE broken.

TIE broken.

He is here 'till Thursday, eat the veal.

No reason to bother having a way to count a winner after time is called. If neither of you have beaten your opponent, the game is a draw. Simple.

Tiebreakers over the duration of a tournament (Swiss being the best option) is easy. First breaker should be opponent match win %. After that, it will depend on how tournaments end up being structured.

Common trends so far seem to be leaning toward single-game matches, which makes additional tiebreaker numbers based on damage / cards harder to do without warping the format. That said, match points + OMW% is usually all you need for a given field, so for events at the local level, that should suffice just fine.

When you get to large / major events with a lot of people and an expectation of very precise standings, there may need to be an additional breaker used. We'll have official rules to look toward come May, after FFG Worlds.

Any tie-breaker in any game I've played inevitably shifts the balance of what lists are good or bad. This isn't inherently bad, and typically this shift is rather small; but if ties become common it may have an unhealthy effect on the meta. I wouldn't anticipate that "health remaining" as a tie breaker would suddenly make players choose to run three regular characters as opposed to two elites, but it does hurt mill decks which already don't seem to be particularly strong. There will never be a tie-break criteria that is perfectly neutral and doesn't subtly benefit one type of list over another. Still, this is preferable to a format where folks can draw (or ones where if there isn't a clear winner, both players lose).

Any tie-breaker in any game I've played inevitably shifts the balance of what lists are good or bad. This isn't inherently bad, and typically this shift is rather small; but if ties become common it may have an unhealthy effect on the meta. I wouldn't anticipate that "health remaining" as a tie breaker would suddenly make players choose to run three regular characters as opposed to two elites, but it does hurt mill decks which already don't seem to be particularly strong. There will never be a tie-break criteria that is perfectly neutral and doesn't subtly benefit one type of list over another. Still, this is preferable to a format where folks can draw (or ones where if there isn't a clear winner, both players lose).

Opponent match win percentage doesn't have any adverse or influencing effect on viable deck construction at all.

If draws due to timing out are common enough to screw up the tournament math, then round times need to be increased (round times will get tuned during the first few months until the 'right' number is hit upon), or players need to be faster.

The ability (and inevitability) of having draws as a part of the tournament scoring structure is a feature, not a bug. There's nothing undesirable about it being an option.

You could always score it like football* - 1 point for a draw, 3 for a win.

But then the balance is always hard - doing tiebreakers can influence playstyle before the game has really defined itself and draws can encourage slow play at a time when players will generally have only so much experience to play at a decent speed.

*soccer

Any tie-breaker in any game I've played inevitably shifts the balance of what lists are good or bad. This isn't inherently bad, and typically this shift is rather small; but if ties become common it may have an unhealthy effect on the meta. I wouldn't anticipate that "health remaining" as a tie breaker would suddenly make players choose to run three regular characters as opposed to two elites, but it does hurt mill decks which already don't seem to be particularly strong. There will never be a tie-break criteria that is perfectly neutral and doesn't subtly benefit one type of list over another. Still, this is preferable to a format where folks can draw (or ones where if there isn't a clear winner, both players lose).

Opponent match win percentage doesn't have any adverse or influencing effect on viable deck construction at all.

If draws due to timing out are common enough to screw up the tournament math, then round times need to be increased (round times will get tuned during the first few months until the 'right' number is hit upon), or players need to be faster.

The ability (and inevitability) of having draws as a part of the tournament scoring structure is a feature, not a bug. There's nothing undesirable about it being an option.

In terms of math, I agree! But as you note, time still presents a problem; and some decks will be slower than others. In that sense, "slow" decks are still adversely effected by being forced to tie-breakers, where as "fast" decks won't have that issue. Attrition or Mill based decks that need to play the long game are more vulnerable to losing tournament points through draws and tie-breakers than Aggro decks, which would lead the meta to prefer Aggro decks over Attrition or Mill. I don't think we would notice really sizeable shifts here, but the tie-breakers are still subtly impacting what kinds of decks can excel.

In terms of human interaction, draws present another problem. Essentially, in larger tournaments which use Swiss for scoring and then have a cut to single elimination (the format FFG uses in other games), players can manufacture draws to their benefit. In instances where playing the game could result in one player failing to make the cut, but both players drawing allows them both to advance; they're better off not playing the game and going for a draw instead. This was a big fiasco in X-Wing, where the advent of intentional draws resulted in many of the top tables not playing the last round of Swiss and just agreeing to the draw, gaming the tournament system for their own benefit. Of course, banning intentional draws is an option -- but enforcing it, especially if draws are common, is not very easy. Even outside of collusion, draws allow players to advance by playing not-to-lose as opposed to playing to win. It can create issues with slow play towards the end of tournament rounds, which gets into ugly issues of sportsmanship as well. A strict Win/Loss system prevents a sore loser from trying to sabotage his opponent's record with slow play.

If Destiny tournaments have a different structure, then draws may not be as problematic. But I also know draws (and intentional draws) are a common part of the competitive scene for other CCG's. I think a strict W/L scoring system is much cleaner for tournaments, and it's my preference; but that means some sort of tie-breaker system to split hairs all the way down and that will inevitably upset some folks when they lose by one point of Health.

If people want to play a deck that easily / frequently risks going to time, then they need to play it faster. Different decks (and archetypes) require different skills to pilot well, and long-playing decks require that the pilot be able to play fast.

I am well aware that (for reasons that I completely disagree with) people saw IDing in X-Wing as a problem. FFG's 'fix' to completely remove draws from the system was to have a simple roll-off so that there could not be a draw, and that players could not agree an outcome. The easiest analogue to the solution used in X-Wing would be that you roll off using only the character dice for each non-eliminated character (like rolling for Battlefield at the start of the game) and whoever wins that roll-off wins the game.

If having draws in your system is causing people to play slowly in attempt to reach a draw instead of a loss, then that's a matter for judges.