What has been the procedure in Regional Events in the event of a draw during an Elimination round.

The packet is a little up in the air in that it says you are eliminated once you lose, but only the winner advances.

I'm going to be TOing a Regional Saturday and wanted to know if this has come up for others. My intial thought was in regards to having advance someone was to give the higher seeded player the win in the case of a Draw.

In our past two tournaments we've had 3 Draws so I had to come to some solution for Saturday.

I've no idea what the official position is but could you add 15 minutes of game time on the clock (enough for one more round), or go to 'sudden death' where the next player to destroy a ship wins?

To me going with seeding seems open to abuse - the higher seeded player could try and run down the clock by running away which would make the game less fun for everyone.

commuterzombie said:

Draws also happens when both players destroy each others last ship at the same time. You solution doesn't address that, which has been the main source of draws so far. Sudden Death is inherrantly too adventageous to certain builds

70-80 minute rounds? on a 3 by 3 board? I don't think running at the start of the round is viable in that circumstance.

if there is a tie after regular time has elapsed, you total the points remaining in each players build. The more remaining points wins.

If there is still a tie, you look at the strength of schedule that each player played against. The player with the harder combined total of points flown against wins the tie (i.e. if one played against 3x100pt list (for 300 pts) and the other was 100 and 2x99 pt lists (for 298pts) the player who played against the 300 points total wins the tie and advances.

It details this in the tournament rules section (which I don't have open ATM so I may have missed a step above, but Im pretty sure that it plays out this way for determining who wins during a tie).

Sergovan said:

I'm sorry to sound rude, but none of this is correct, or found anywhere in the tournament rules.

A draw happens under two circumstances. The first being all ships on each side are destoyed per the simultaneous attack rules. Or that when time is called that both players have destroyed an equal amount of points. Remaining points is not figured in anywhere in determing a draw.

SoS is only used to determine standing when you have players with tied match point scores, it never figures into the elimination rounds. Furthermore, that is not at all how strength of schedule works in this game. It has absolutely nothing to do with the total amount of squadron points you played against. Your SoS is determined by the total match points accumulated by the opponents.

I do not know where you got any of that from.

Back to the topic. I'm not confused by what constitutes a draw. Only what happens when a draw occurs doing the Elimination Rounds of a tournament as it is not really addressed in the rules. No mention is made and the only part that kind of speaks to the issue states:

"In the championship bracket, players are eliminated from the pairings once they have lost a game. Only those players who have won continue on to
the next round."

So while only the winning player advances, you aren't eliminated until you lose. Kind of leaves issue unresolved.

ScottieATF said:

Like I said, I didn't have the rules open and so I was only partialy right.

Each player having killed the same amount of points or have the same amount of remaining points is essentaly the same thing. I was going for the points being equal to make it a draw.

I did point out that strength of schedule was one avenue to break a tie and I knew it dealt with points (and then I went off on my own tangent as I didn't have the rules open in front of me, that'll teach me).

My question is, if there are methods to break a tie and determine a "winner", why wouldn't they be used for determining a winner in the elimination rounds? My understanding would be that you could not "tie" during an elimination round then and would determine a winner with the currently established rules for breaking a tie.

So I reread the rules and saw this under breaking ties in "Organised Swissplay Rules" from FFG website in the organized play area:

If players have identical Match Points at the end of the tournament , the TO should use the following tie breakers to resolve the rankings–

1) Head-to-Head: If one player has defeated all opponents with the same total number of Match Points, that player is ranked ahead of the others in the same Match Point group.

2) Strength of Schedule: Calculate each player’s strength of schedule by summing the total Match Points of all that player’s opponents. The player with the highest strength of schedule wins the tie. This method breaks the tie in favor of the player who faced the most challenging competition over the course of the entire tournament.

So the rules for breaking ties happen during preliminary AND elimination rounds.

I hope this helps clear things up (and no more adjucating rules for me without quoting them first)

ScottieATF said:

You're absolutely correct, I hadn't considered draws due to mutual destruction via simultaneous attack. To clarify on my running away point, I was referring to a situation where two players had killed the same number of points so far, and seen that there was 15 minutes remaining on the clock. The player who knew that he was going through at this point has a decision, run for the far side of the board for the last turn or keep attacking to win. I think we all would prefer a situation where he was encouraged to risk all in one last desperate round rather then running away for the win on a tie breaker.

I've had a look at the official docs and these are the suggested tie breakers (for Swiss rounds but in the absence of any other rules you have to assume that these are applied to draws in elimination rounds too):

From http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/x-wing/support/faq/2013-Feb/X-Wing_TournamentRules_V1.2_web.pdf

Personally I prefer 'Sudden Death' if it's possible for the game to continue but as written these are the tie breaking rules.

You are both jumping to SoS while ignoring that, it's only applied to standings not the winner/loser of games, and that even if you were to apply it in this case there is no reason to conclude that two players paired in a elimination round have identical match point totals. Why would you jump to a tiebreaker when there isn't a tie in points scored?

@Sergovan

Just be aware that points remaining and points destroyed can lead to two different outcomes so you do not want to confuse the two. If you go into a match 99pts vs 100pts, and you both kill 50pts, now you have 49pts vs 50pts remaining. Remaining points don't figure in, so it would still be a draw. So while remaining points can often lead to the same conclusion, it is not essentially true that it will, so its best to disregard remaining points to avoid confusion.

ScottieATF said:

Scottie, you're absolutely right that in the tournament rules as they currently stand these tiebreakers are only used during preliminary rounds to determine standings. I think what is being suggested is that in the absence of a clear ruling they could be used to determine which player moves on.

There is some method being used in the elimination brackets to determine ranking. Consider the results of the Regional last weekend at FFG: Doug, David, Troy and Jacob were in the semis. Doug and David won to meet in the final, and David defeated Doug. Clearly David is first and Doug is second. But who gets third, Troy or Jacob? There is some mechanism in place to determine this since Troy was awarded third and Jacob fourth. It could possibly be match points from the prelims (since it is not clear that match points are awarded in the brackets) or it could be SoS. I don't know for sure but I strongly suspect that SoS was used. I would say that in the relatively rare circumstance you describe, SoS would be the best option to go with to determine the winner.

FWIW, I submitted this question to FFG via the rules link. If I get an answer I'll certainly post it here.

ziggy2000 said:

But why would you jump past match points scored, and go straight to SoS. That makes no sense.

Why would you ever skip over the match points scored in swiss and go directly to the SoS accumulated in swiss? You are essentially rewarding the win based on a criteria no player can control, over thier score which is the primary way success gets measured in the game. So why jump past the match point score? I agree if it's still a tie you go to the SoS tiebreaker.

And there is no reason to suppose that SoS from swiss was used in that case, when the 3rd/4th place could have easily been determined by either standing entering the elimination (higher seed takes 3rd) or based on only SoS from the elimination (whoever played and lost to the champ gets third) or they could have played a game to determine that.

In regards to something like seeding for the NFL draft, teams eliminated in the same round of playoffs, are ordered based on regular season record, then SoS if needed.

Ultimately why use a tiebreaker (SoS) when the score it is meant to tiebreak (match points) isn't tied?

Actually, looking back on it, it was probably seeding. They did not play a game to determine it, and Troy lost to Doug in the semis, not the ultimate champion. I know he was seeded higher than Jacob. I do not remember the match point totals. So your original thought to use seeding as a tiebreaker is probably the best and easiest solution.

ScottieATF said:

I think the answer to his question is that because the Tournament Rules don't mention this as a potential tie breaker anywhere. If I were a TO trying to make this call I would prefer to apply an existing rule from a separate but similar area rather than invent one.

There's also the chance that everyone in the top 4 will be on the same points total (I've read reports where people have needed 4 full wins to make the cut, with even one partial win putting them out of the running). That said I don't think that this is a bad idea for a tie breaker, FFG could easily revise the rules for clarity and add this in as another criteria.