Imagine you are the TO of a tournament.

You're running a 3 round tournament. This tournament is super prestigious. Winner gets 2 SSDs, gets their picture on a future card, and gets to be in the next Star Wars movie. And a peanut butter pizza.

After 2 rounds, alot of people have dropped and there's only 3 people left. (Tomorrow is national Peanut Butter day and lots want to get to bed early so they dropped to prepare their bodies for the immense peanut butter passion).

Persons 1 and 2 each have 20 points - (2 super dooper wins). These two are both high level players. Margins of victory are both very high, over 370 each game, but NOT the same total score.

Person 3 has 9 points. (terrible loss and the 2nd round bye). Person 3 just started playing like 2 days ago so they are doing really poorly.

You begin the final round - Normally, it'd be down to Persons 1 and 2 for the win. But you can't give person 3 the bye because they already had a bye.

Turns out person 1 has a slighter higher MOV, so person 2 gets the bye. This pretty much assures person 1 the ultimate win.

Now imagine being Person 2 - missing out on that sweet sweet peanut butter pizza - all because person 3 already had a bye!

Bummer player number 2...

Also may I ask why?

that's Armada!

Scold the **** out of the punks that dropped

34 minutes ago, Crabbok said:

Imagine you are the TO of a tournament.

You're running a 3 round tournament. This tournament is super prestigious. Winner gets 2 SSDs, gets their picture on a future card, and gets to be in the next Star Wars movie. And a peanut butter pizza.

After 2 rounds, alot of people have dropped and there's only 3 people left. (Tomorrow is national Peanut Butter day and lots want to get to bed early so they dropped to prepare their bodies for the immense peanut butter passion).

Persons 1 and 2 each have 20 points - (2 super dooper wins). These two are both high level players. Margins of victory are both very high, over 370 each game, but NOT the same total score.

Person 3 has 9 points. (terrible loss and the 2nd round bye). Person 3 just started playing like 2 days ago so they are doing really poorly.

You begin the final round - Normally, it'd be down to Persons 1 and 2 for the win. But you can't give person 3 the bye because they already had a bye.

Turns out person 1 has a slighter higher MOV, so person 2 gets the bye. This pretty much assures person 1 the ultimate win.

Now imagine being Person 2 - missing out on that sweet sweet peanut butter pizza - all because person 3 already had a bye!

Comedy option. Player 3 has learned his lesson and spends the whole game as 2nd player running his ships away. 7-4 loss for him.

Player 2 wins the tournament! But left after finding out he had the bye...

43 minutes ago, clontroper5 said:

Also may I ask why?

No major reason. I had a bye in a small tournament today and it got me contemplating improbable situations involving byes.

1 minute ago, BiggsIRL said:

Comedy option. Player 3 has learned his lesson and spends the whole game as 2nd player running his ships away. 7-4 loss for him.

Player 2 wins the tournament! But left after finding out he had the bye...

That would be something wouldn't it. At least Player 2's body would be ready for Peanut Butter Day.

Technically, on dropping below the player threshold the tournament ends and all three players lose.

I've had fleet patrols before where we had 5 players in a 2 round tournament.

Imagine: Player 1 beats up Player 5 for a 10-1. Player 2 and 4 nearly tie. 6-5. Player 1 and Player 3 (bye) have to play. Player 2 can't play Player 4, so Player 4 gets a bye (13 points total) and Player 2 plays Player 5.

After 2 rounds: Player 1 wins a close game 16 points total. Player 3 and Player 4 both have 1 very close loss, and a bye, for 13 points, and are tied when seeded by MOV, SOS gives it to Player 3 who lost to Player 1. Player 2 wins by 7-4 over Player 4, and thus is at 13 points, but has the lowest MOV as he had to clear 140.

So final standings by pure wins, you have:

2-0 - 1st

0-1 - 2nd

0-1 - 3rd

2-0 - 4th

0-2 - 5th

In all seriousness though: The correct answer to this problem is pairing the 3rd player up against an opponent who is dropping that round, then defaulting them victory for a no-show opponent.

As the TO, play against the third player yourself.

37 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

In all seriousness though: The correct answer to this problem is pairing the 3rd player up against an opponent who is dropping that round, then defaulting them victory for a no-show opponent.

Interesting concept - but suppose everyone has already left. (At stores near me, when you submit your score sheets, you declare if you are dropping for the next round), so in this case you'd effectively give some new player 2 byes in a row.

I've played in a 3 player two round tournament. It was a lot of work to win without getting a bye!

You have 3 players left. Either p1 and p2 should play or everyonrshould play everyone. 1v2 1v3 2v3. Only 3 games!

7 hours ago, Crabbok said:

Interesting concept - but suppose everyone has already left. (At stores near me, when you submit your score sheets, you declare if you are dropping for the next round), so in this case you'd effectively give some new player 2 byes in a row.

In order for everyone to leave before the final round everyone else not in contention would need to leave prior to the end of the previous round. If this occurs I consider the event a critical failure of the community itself and I'd seriously consider if the local community deserves your time and effort. I also might need to pull both leading players aside at the end and make sure that something in their gameplay or list design wasn't driving players away. I know a local player who willingly soft banned Riekaan Aces from his list rotation because it actually killed competition events in his area.

The bigger issue is this: events of this magnitude are designed to drive interest in the game. If nearly all your players have left prior to the final round without an exclusive cut to the final table your event has failed in the worst possible way. At this point, you should be apologizing to all three players for running such a shoddy event, and sticking to the "official" format should be your least concern.

Give the first a SSD and the picture.

Give the second the other SSD

Let the third be part of the next most awesome debate topic.

And keep the peanut butter!

Also, how are you funding 2 SSDs as prizes and only having 3 players stick it out lol.

We had a 30ish player tournament to put up one as a prize (pre-ordered for the person), and everyone stayed for that except one player who dropped due to a family obligation.

And as someone with a Peanut allergy I'm mock offended that that would be a prize

But I get that it it was all just about setting up the situation.

Here's one: 4 Round Tournament

1 player has won all 4 games, but close victories, all 6-5 (total of 24 tournament points). The tournament winner lost to them Round 1, but then cleaned up all three remaining rounds (say 10, 8 and 8 for 31 points total).

You have a situation where the winning player has less wins, and lost to another player who went undefeated all tournament.

But that's why I love the Armada system, as the amount you win by matters, and a super close win is USUALLY not enough to matter.

1 hour ago, Crewgar said:

But that's why I love the Armada system, as the amount you win by matters, and a super close win is USUALLY not enough to matter.

Ironic, as this is also why I loathe the Armada system. Clubbing seals with a 10 point win is always way better than narrowly eeking out a 6-5 win over an incredibly good opponent.

This wouldn't matter so much if Armada tournaments had a lot more rounds, but since events are typically only 3-4 rounds there's a huge potential for King Making (or Pauper Making) to play a role, since one's Armada opponent controls to a large degree what sort of win they can get.

For Example:
Opponent A is tired, hungry, and looks across the table at Player A's fleet. He sees a fleet that has a big innate advantage over his own and knows he cannot realistically win the match. Opponent A can either:
(1) quickly and recklessly throw his fleet into the opponent and give out a 10 point win and then go home/eat
-or-
(2) painstakingly and patiently play a game of avoidance and denial that doesn't allow his opponent to get more than 6 points


I've flat out heard a player at an adjacent table say "Well, the only way either of us can make it is if we get 10 points, so I'm just gonna throw the rest of my ships into your fleet since I can't win" and I've similarly seen players play the avoidance/denial game because 5 points is better than 1 point (myself included). Either way, Opponent A has more control over Player A's Score than Player A does. And that strikes me as an inherent weakness in the system, but given that Armada has necessarily so few rounds, there's really probably no better system, sadly.

1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I've flat out heard a player at an adjacent table say "Well, the only way either of us can make it is if we get 10 points, so I'm just gonna throw the rest of my ships into your fleet since I can't win"

If I heard that I would report it to the TO immediately (and I'd want it reported to me if I were the TO).

On 1/6/2019 at 6:06 PM, Crabbok said:

You're running a 3 round tournament. This tournament is super prestigious. Winner gets 2 SSDs, gets their picture on a future card, and gets to be in the next Star Wars movie. And a peanut butter pizza.

After 2 rounds, alot of people have dropped and there's only 3 people left.

Open both SSDs and give them to the player in first, then pit him against the other two. He gets to keep each SSD that survives; they get to keep each SSD they kill.

Player 3 will be me soon.

I am going to my first tournament (and its a regionals) in a few weeks and nervous as Hades about it...

53 minutes ago, Admiral Theia said:

If I heard that I would report it to the TO immediately (and I'd want it reported to me if I were the TO).

I agree completely, but in a discussion about Armada's scoring system on these boards about... oh probably two years ago... I raised this very issue and noted that it seemed a lot like a "collusion" violation and that it can wreck the tournament for other players. But the vast majority of respondents did not agree with me, and some people even countered that a player avoiding/running to try and limit the game to a 6/5 is actually a worse offense (despite the player having a strategic incentive to want a 5 point loss instead of a 1 point loss...).

Basically, I think we'll find the community has different opinions about the choices players make that control their opponent's score. But I think what we cannot deny is that the opponent has a very big influence on the possible score of the game, and that seems to inherently skew events with few rounds and the tiered scoring system that Armada employs.

Heck, I've heard players talk about theoretically running a single CR90A with Engine Techs and all the best defensive upgrades just to run away from battle for 6 Rounds. If you can pull it off, you get an assured 6-Point Win (since you're Player 2 and can ensure objectives won't offer any points). If you did this three times, you'd get an 18, which might get you some of the lower prizes. You'd also be sticking your opponents with 5 point games, likely keeping them from getting Top 4. In practice, this probably wouldn't work against quite a few fleets, but the fact that Armada's scoring system allows for such absurd meta-strategies to even be considered is part of the issue.

1 minute ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I agree completely, but in a discussion about Armada's scoring system on these boards about... oh probably two years ago... I raised this very issue and noted that it seemed a lot like a "collusion" violation and that it can wreck the tournament for other players. But the vast majority of respondents did not agree with me, and some people even countered that a player avoiding/running to try and limit the game to a 6/5 is actually a worse offense (despite the player having a strategic incentive to want a 5 point loss instead of a 1 point loss...).

Basically, I think we'll find the community has different opinions about the choices players make that control their opponent's score. But I think what we cannot deny is that the opponent has a very big influence on the possible score of the game, and that seems to inherently skew a game with few rounds and the tiered scoring system that Armada employs.

Heck, I've heard players talk about theoretically running a single CR90A with Engine Techs and all the best defensive upgrades just to run away from battle for 6 Rounds. If you can pull it off, you get an assured 6-Point Win (since you're Player 2 and can ensure objectives won't offer any points). I you did this three times, you'd get an 18, which might get you some of the prizes. You'd also be sticking your opponents with 5 point games, likely keeping them from getting Top 4. In practice, this probably wouldn't work against quite a few fleets, but the fact that Armada's scoring system allows for such absurd meta-strategies to even be considered is part of the issue.

So long as the player is acting in their own best interest, I would be okay with an action, so long as it doesn't require coordinating, and I can't see any situation in which purposefully losing more would do that.

As for that last, unless their opponent is **** new, it would be near impossible to do, because as second player you'd get last-firsted by something that can kill you without caring what defensive upgrade you have. And then it will happen again the next turn.