I heard that there was an extra round before the top 16 on day 2 at European Nats on the Boardwars podcast, can somebody explain how this works?

We did a cut to top 22, 1-10 automatically made it through to top 16.

11-22 then played for the remaining 6 places, One game with the winner going through to top 16.

I'm not sure where the format came from but I liked it, it gave more people the opportunity to come back the next day and everyone seemed happy with it.

Seems like a cool approach.

I really like that. Also incentivizes players to win as much as possible to get a bye and not throw games because of letting a friend win or not playing to not reveal command cards near the end of swiss. Plus it gives space for a few more players (thinking especially at Worlds) who probably deserved to be in at the end but got ousted becuase of strength of schedule not in their control.

There are some players that make it out to the USA and Canada premier events that would not be ok with deviating from the format laid out in the FFG tournament rules for swiss rounding. Also, not everyone wants to play over 2 days.

In saying that, I think it's pretty cool what you guys did. You can reward those that come back for day 2 (that want to play for 2 days) with an honest chance at making the top cut.

Isn't it inspired by similar structures used in large X-Wing events the last year or two?

I like the format a lot. Makes the strength of schedule tiebreaker more forgiving, while simultaneously rewarding you for doing really well

30 minutes ago, Cremate said:

Isn't it inspired by similar structures used in large X-Wing events the last year or two?

Well they definitely don't want a regular swiss and cut due to time, but I think you're right in that they do something funky sometimes. However, everyone still plays all of the swiss games and rankings could change by the final round.

5 minutes ago, Fightwookies said:

I like the format a lot. Makes the strength of schedule tiebreaker more forgiving, while simultaneously rewarding you for doing really well

That's true. We don't have MOV like X does.

18 hours ago, Cremate said:

Isn't it inspired by similar structures used in large X-Wing events the last year or two?

Yes it is, there was great feedback on that previous years, so it got expanded into as many games as possible.

7 minutes ago, GilDK said:

Yes it is, there was great feedback on that previous years, so it got expanded into as many games as possible.

Not on the aforementioned episode of the podcast, I didn't get to add to the chorus how great an idea it was.

I still have my doubts about the +10 minute rule for finishing the last round after time has been called. I wonder if you ever got to trigger it or whether its mere presence got everyone to get their stuff done in a timely manner?

4 hours ago, Cremate said:

I still have my doubts about the +10 minute rule for finishing the last round after time has been called. I wonder if you ever got to trigger it or whether its mere presence got everyone to get their stuff done in a timely manner?

I tell everyone at first that if you're not getting at least 3 rounds each game, you may be a slow player. You can tell when games are slow, as often the other player has a look of frustration. So, I stand beside them and sometimes drop hints like "What round are you guys in?". Depending on the answer I'll say "You may want to speed up a bit". When it's near time, I announce that people please finish up their rounds. Otherwise I let them complete the game. If it's the same people every time, the player should get a soft warning to speed up. In saying that, in our community, we only have 1 slow player and he knows he's slow due to anxiety. I talk to him before the games to remind him that I will enforce a time rule if he doesn't play faster. I still get complaints, but I don't find he's egregious. All-in-all, I'm against stopping the game short. Just don't allow repeat offenders to dictate the pace of the tournament.

On 6/20/2018 at 4:26 PM, Cremate said:

Not on the aforementioned episode of the podcast, I didn't get to add to the chorus how great an idea it was.

I still have my doubts about the +10 minute rule for finishing the last round after time has been called. I wonder if you ever got to trigger it or whether its mere presence got everyone to get their stuff done in a timely manner?

To the best of my memory, I think we had maybe 3-5 games in total stopped at the end of 10 minuttes, which I dont see as that much out of 6 rounds and 65 players

2 minutes ago, GilDK said:

To the best of my memory, I think we had maybe 3-5 games in total stopped at the end of 10 minuttes, which I dont see as that much out of 6 rounds and 65 players

Honestly, win or loss, I would have been very upset if that had happened to a game I was in.

For better or worse, having sprung that rule on us, I found it much easier to be a little bit more direct with my opponents throughout the day, about the need for them to keep the pace.

Remember that we called out times both before rounds ended and during the 10 minutes to make sure players new where they stood, and in most cases you know when time is called what is needed to win, if possible and should just play for that, in some cases the game is over because one player is to far ahead.

Any news on the medals yet @GilDK ? ☺️

Ok, so basically you had 6 fishtail matches to get into the top 16 unless you were top 10.

I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.

Why top 22 instead of top 24 with top 8 locked and bottom 16 playing off for the other 8 spots in top 16? The 10-12 split seems kind of odd to me.

How did you seed the top 16 matches?

Did any of the #11-16 players after Swiss complain about having to fight to keep their spot in the top 16? Seems like it could be a potential feel bad to find out you made top 16 in Swiss and then get booted out of the actual top 16 due to a bad matchup/luck in the playoff round.

2 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Why top 22 instead of top 24 with top 8 locked and bottom 16 playing off for the other 8 spots in top 16? The 10-12 split seems kind of odd to me.

Looking at the format it looks like everyone who was X-2 qualified for the cut, which I'm assuming worked out to 22 people here.

2 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Did any of the #11-16 players after Swiss complain about having to fight to keep their spot in the top 16? Seems like it could be a potential feel bad to find out you made top 16 in Swiss and then get booted out of the actual top 16 due to a bad matchup/luck in the playoff round. 

I'm going to guess since people should have known the format going in, that there probably wasn't any complaints (nor should there have been).

I would love to see tournaments move to this format in general, honestly. Tie breakers to decide who makes the cut sucks, and SoS is one of the worst tiebreakers to use.

And if I'm not mistaken FFG had announced in the article on the prizes for Europeans/North America, that everyone with no more than two loses would go on to day two; which this structure fit to the T.

Okay that make sense then to have all the x-2s qualify for a day 2 elimination round. Assuming the top 10 players were X-1 or better, that makes it a lot less arbitrary then, although it would suck if there were an odd number of x-2s and an x-1 was forced to play for the spot in the top 16.

21 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Okay that make sense then to have all the x-2s qualify for a day 2 elimination round. Assuming the top 10 players were X-1 or better, that makes it a lot less arbitrary then, although it would suck if there were an odd number of x-2s and an x-1 was forced to play for the spot in the top 16.

I think, if it's either an X-2 player not making it to day 2 or an X-1 player having to play an extra game, that decision is not hard to make ...

You are correct in the above, that is how it was made and clarified for players at the introduction and confirmed during day 1 of gaming.

On 6/22/2018 at 6:12 PM, RoyalRich said:

Any news on the medals yet @GilDK ? ☺️

I will remind Alec about it later today, and post an update as soon as I have one.

On 6/23/2018 at 12:39 PM, DerBaer said:

I think, if it's either an X-2 player not making it to day 2 or an X-1 player having to play an extra game getting knocked out of Top 16 by an X-2 , that decision is not hard to make ...

Framing is important here. You're assuming that the X-1 is automatically beating the x-2 in day 2 and just "playing an extra game". But the x-1 player might get put on the 1 map out of 6 where they have a terrible matchup against the x-2s list, or just roll horribly all game and basically got screwed out of their top 16 finish due to variance.

I'm not saying that's wrong, it's just not quite as simple as you're framing it. However perhaps my framing is off because in my mind Top 16 > Day 2, and thus an x-2 making top 16 over an x-1 doesn't quite sit right with me, but maybe other people see them as being equal.

21 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Framing is important here. You're assuming that the X-1 is automatically beating the x-2 in day 2

I don't think I've said that with a single word. And actually I didn't assume that.

Actually, I'm a big fan of the real Swiss system, not of that system, that FFG calls Swiss. So no cut and when exactly 1 player is X-0, then the tournament ends.

But IF we have to have a cut, then it's way better to have that at a given X-1 or X-2 than on a faulty SoS or whatever. This is at least a little bit in the spirit of the true Swiss system.