Here are the overall rankings for the Top 10:

1st Corey Faherty (baragwin) 64 points

2nd Erick Butzlaff (finitesquarewell) 58 points

3rd Greg Atkinson (Dobbler) 56 points

4th Jonathan Benton (longclaw) 51 points

4th Chad Baumgardt (chadwick537?) 51 points

6th John Deatrick (Fieras) 47 points

7th Brett Zeiler (IntentionallyAnonymous) 46 points

7th Rick Branagan (?) 46 points

7th Chad Jamnik (?) 46 points

10th John Kraus (Deathjester26) 45 points

Corey is the overall because, stupidly , the octo- and quarter-finals of the Joust tournament DID NOT contribute points to your overall point total. Corey was 6-0 (the only one) and Greg was probably 5-1 since he was 3rd seed. Greg didn't start gaining points again until the Semis, which he won so that put him at 6 (point contributing) wins for tournament, and he lost the finals. Furthermore Greg did not beat anyone at the final table of the Melee since he was 4th (0 points), whereas Corey beat 3 other players and got the full (10) points.

I think Greg should be overall too (and he would be if the octo- and quarter-finals counted), but you know FFG's motto:

F-F-G: Doing dumb stuff with smart things!

Was the justification for not counting the round of 16 and the round of 8 because it would have created a lack of parity in terms of total possible points between the two events? I don't know how FFG handled points, but just using standard tournament scoring, it seems that they should be equal while counting all rounds. Was it three rounds of multi before cut to top 16? If so, that's 50 possible points if you took first at every table. In joust there were 6 rounds, so thats 30 points, plus four elimination rounds makes another 20 points possible if you won out the entire tournament. Seems equal, so why not count the rounds of 16 and 8 in the Joust?

I think it is clear that they didn't use standard scoring though, because of the final totals of the participants...how did FFG score it, and why not use standard tournament scoring? I am not trying to be critical of the system, I will reserve any criticism until I know what system was in place. Whoever knows the details of the scoring, would you mind posting?

Well, FFG's scoring for melee is stupid to begin with (as is the modified win) - so nothing they do surprises me. IMO, it should simply be best average finish - not how many points it took to reach that placement in joust or melee - that gets rid of any problems with the # of participants skewing points totals.

I always thought they just added up your placing in melee to your placing in joust, and whoever had the lowest was the winner

Nope, its based on points earned, but apparently in only certain rounds I'm also hearing there was more points nonsense that affected the top 16, final ranking, etc. Don't know any specific details though.

So, if you made it to top 16 as the 15th or 16th player and ended up winning, you would still have less points than the person who seeded 1st into the cut?

weird.

I heard yesterday that had all the rounds counted and points been given as they *should* have been, Corey and Greg would have tied for overall. Is that right?

Anyway, I definitely think Greg deserves some sort of official recognition. Of course, so does Corey, who won the melee and went undefeated in the swiss of the joust. If I heard correctly yesterday, he had already beat Brett in the preliminary rounds, but drew poorly in the octi-finals?

Here is the way scoring worked for the Championship events at Gencon:

Melee -

3 rounds of random table pairings. Players placed 1st - 4th at these tables and accumulated points depending on their placement at each of their three tables. After the three rounds, the 16 players with the top points accumulated made the first "cut". These points counted towards the overall championship. The players were then seeded at four tables of four, in pods like this seeds (1, 16, 8, 9)/(2, 15, 7, 10)/(3, 14, 6, 11)/(4, 13, 5, 12). The winner of each of these tables advanced to a final table of four. However, placement at the round of 16 tables did NOT count towards the overall championship scoring. At the final table, scoring was added to the overall championship accumulation of points.

Joust -

6 rounds of swiss pairings. Players accumulated points depending on their finish of each game. After 6 rounds of swiss, the 16 players with the top points accumulated made the cut. These points counted towards the overall championship. The players were then seeded at 8 tables (1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, so on and so forth). The winners of this round advanced to the next round, but the games did NOT count towards the overall championship scoring. For the Elite Eight round, the winners advanced to the next round, but the games did NOT count towards the overall championship scoring. For the final four, the winners advanced to the final game, and the points did count. As well, the winner of joust championship got the points from winning that game.

So in a nut shell, here are the points awarded for each event

Melee Top Table finishers -

1st - 10

2nd - 6

3rd - 3

+ Players got to add their points from the 3 random pairing rounds

Joust top two finishers -

1st - 10

2nd - 5

+ Players got to add their points from the 6 swiss rounds.

If you won everything in melee, you would get 3 x 9 points for the three random pairing rounds plus 10 points for the final table giving you 37 points total. If you won everything in joust, you would get 6 x 5 points for the six swiss rounds plus 10 points for getting first giving you 40 points total. Are those point totals correct? If so, it seems somewhat balanced between joust and melee and slightly tilted in favor of joust. You could get 30 swiss points in joust. vs. 27 in melee. The points for the final table favor melee a little bit, but the max you could get either way is the same.

It seems like a reasonable system to me. There are going to be oddities with any system that tries to average together results from two completely different formats.

Twn2dn said:

Twn2dn said:

Yes the deck was built to beat the Robert deck (blade, Ghaston Gray+noble, Cyvasse, Ellaria). He didn't draw those until Robert was chained up and leyton was on the table.

schrecklich said:

The issue is that games were played where players did NOT get points. So if someone lost in the sweet 16 round of joust, and another player won made it to the final 4 of joust but lost then, they both got the same points.

Some quick thoughts on the weekend:

Congrats to Erick, who was a round and a friend away from winning the melee (and likely his third straight overall world championship). I expect he'll start a new streak next year.

Congrats to Greg, who had the most dominant performance of the weekend: two finals appearances in two of the biggest tournaments of the year. As people have noted, it's pretty clear he deserved the overall title. He and Erick are definitely the game's best.

Congrats to Brett, who crushed me in the top 16 by playing his deck flawlessly. Great game, and congrats on winning it all.

baragwin said:

Obviously significant congratulations go to you too Corey! You bring home the Melee title and the overall title and you only played in two games throughout the entire championships where you didn't win (2nd during one melee swiss round and your loss to Zeiler). That is incredibly impressive! Anyone can argue the point system (myself included), but personally I played in four different games where I did not win (I lost two different Joust games, 2nd at one Melee table and 4th at the final table).

Congrats all around! It's unfortunate that there has to be a decided winner among such great players. I was very impressed with Dobbler, who undoubtedly has the most inventive and creative builds in the game right now (that is, creative builds that win) - it was sad to see him get a poor hand in the melee table and get some bad discards, without which he could have gotten back in the game. He's a great player and great guy.

But Corey definitely deserves it. He's not only a great player but builds awesome decks. I can't wait to see what cards he will bring to the game.

And as a final note, congrats to Twn2dn who represented Targ very well in the final 4 of joust. I love underdogs, and to those who said that Targ is not a contender in joust, you have to see him play.

I'll leave a lot of discussion for my tourney report, but I'll mimic Corey and through out some quick thoughts.

Of course congrats to Corey for scoring two world championship titles. No matter what anyone says you played incredibly this year and our top 16 game could have gone very differently. At least in that one I drew characters that could take attachments unlike in our preliminary round game

Congrats to Greg. Once I heard that it was the two of us in finals I knew that no matter what happened it would be a fun game. After going from having to be perfectly seriously in my other top 16 games I could just relax and imagine it was just the two of us playing at Meta. It was a great game (even though I had to beat you twice since I Darryled all over the place) and I wouldn't have cared much who got the win.

Thanks to all of my opponents from all of my melee and joust games. You guys are the reason I play Thrones and I didn't have a bad game throughout all of GenCon. Even when I got smacked around by Corey in our preliminary joust game I still had more fun than I ever had playing in any Magic tournament.

Intentionally Anonymous said:

Our game did feel just like our games at Meta, didn't it? Except for the fact that your deck finally didn't crap out against me. It seems at Meta, your decks always crap out when I sit across from you!

Anyways, congratz to you big Z! You are now the ONLY person to have a Joust championship title and a Melee championship title!

Here's a question: what if, hypothetically, you came in around 57th? Could such a person find out his ranking? (hypothetically)

Dobbler said:

So how would you change it? Maybe give 3 points to 3rd and 4th in Joust and 1 point to 5th through 8th? Giving straight up match points for the top 16 matches would give the elimination rounds of joust a lot of weight compared to melee.

schrecklich said:

There was an elimination round in Melee that was also unscored. If you score that round, and score the first two elimination rounds in Joust, it all balances out.

5 total melee games (3 preliminary, top 16 and top 4) equals 50 points if someone win every one of them. 10 total joust games (6 preliminary, top 16, top 8, top 4, top 2) equals 50 points if someone win every one of them. Seems pretty equal to me.

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure why you wouldn't just score all of the rounds, I mean they're all games in the tournament contributing to the determination of a champion...

It seems like a bit of a judgment call to me. Do you treat the elimination rounds as just more swiss rounds or do you treat them as their own separate entity? I can see arguments for either choice. Scoring every win gives players credit for each match won. Scoring the elimination rounds differently does not punish players as severely for losing in the elimination rounds.

If you score the elimination rounds just like the swiss, then Corey, for example, effectively lost four matches by losing in the round of 16, ending up with a joust record of 6-4. Given that he went undefeated in the swiss, this seems a bit harsh. I can see the validity of the counterargument though.

I think the World Champion title is kind of arbitrary any way. Given that there are already nicer prizes for Joust and Melee, it seems like the point of it is to reward a player who did very well in both Joust and Melee without winning either competition. With that the case, I think the prize should be renamed to something more neutral and awarded to the highest rated player who didn't win one of the other titles. I think most players would rather see a new card from a third unique player, rather than two cards from the same player.

fhornmikey said:

If it were up to me all that would matter would be how well you did in the cut rounds. The preliminary rounds are just that, something you play it to get a spot in the playoffs.

papalorax said:

I can definitely see it from this perspective as well.

Dobbler said:

~~~~what? no overall title? loser