At the Chicago regional we very nearly experienced a very bad situation.

Going into rd 4 I had 12 points and 2nd place had 10 points. I had 3 full wins while second place had 2 modified wins and 1 full win. Obviously, we get paired in rd 4. We get to talking about our points and it dawns on me that I can win the tournment with 14 points and a modified loss. I would have finished with 14 and my opponent would have had 13. I win the tournament at 3-1 with 14 points and my opponent would finish 2nd at 4-0, seems odd.

With these tournament rules it is entirely possible to win a tournament with a worse record than your opponent because you have more points. I am sure this is rare but it doesnt seem right.

Also, it was a moot point because I got a full win anyway and finished with 16 points.

Should a person be able to win a tournament wtih a worse record but more points?

What do you guys think?

the problem you are having is you are putting modified match wins as good as match wins when they arn't
after the 3rd round you had won 3 matches therefore 6 games whlie your opponent had won 1 match and 2 modifed match wins so had won 4 game and lost 2 game

we can't be using the old win-lose when talking about match results as it isn't good enough for us we should be using win-m/win-m/lose-draw-lose and then you'd be 3-0-0-0-0 and your opponent would be 1-2-0-0-0

the old win-lose is fine if you are talking about game results as you'd be 6-0 and your opponent would be 4-2

therefore if you had had a modified lose instead of your win after the 4th round your match results would of been 3-0-1-0-0 and your opponents would of been 1-3-0-0-0

and your game results would be you 7-1 your opponent 5-3

and this doesn't even factor in the slim chance of a game draw as thats only by going to time

The tournament rules are faulty as a whole, we did not have your situation but we had an equally awkward one. Jon can talk more about it if he wants but essentially due to the "tie breaker" situations pop up where sith, who is dominating the board does not want to control the force so that it can blow up objectives while the LS player does not want to commit units to the force so that his opponent wins TO FAST. It was really weird really clunky and in general REALLY really stupid and goes against the way the game was designed to be played, at any point in a game if its in your ADVANTAGE to not play well and loose faster something is really really wrong.

They need to think of some new Tie breakers or something because to see the game just really break down into silliness its really sad to watch a player essentially try to loose faster because of the style of deck his oponent plays is just kind stupid.

I have less of an issue with the points as they represent an "over all" type of victory as a whole you cleaned house and struggled less then your opponent but it still seems REALLY weird. I would mind if season two they took the tournament rules back to the drawing board.

magni

As a side note im glad to see lots of sweet new empire zerg pods on there way, maybe i wont have to play sith anymore :-) OR maybe sith can get some more blast damage so the point become moot.

magni

Did you guys not have a top cut? If you cut to a top 4 or top 8, this is really only an issue for people who end up being on the fringe.

zachbunn said:

According to the tournament rules there is no top cut with 9 players, playing 4 rounds should yield a clear cut winner.

I'm with Valdrain, the win/loss point structure works pretty well. The tie breaker for getting that modified win bonus point is sometimes problematic, but in general works pretty well. Also, it's worth noting that while the Sith Control decks may destroy fewer objectives than an aggro deck, they're also better at keeping their own objectives from being destroyed.

TGO said:

Where in he rules does it say that? I see nothing that gives an absolute minimum player size in order to have an elimination bracket.

The tournament rules heavily favor aggressive decks. That is the real problem with them. And, I don't say that out of bitterness; I won a tourney, and still think that the tournament rules are awful.

TGO said:

According to the tournament rules, there are no concrete guidlines for formating. I recently made a thread on that issue. Your TO could have decided to do a Top Cut if they had wanted as the tournament rules only say "larger tournaments" but do not define what constitues a larger tournament. Also the number of Swiss rounds is left entirely up to the TO as well.

I think all Regionals should have a Top Cut, however.

TGO said:

You are looking at record incorrectly.

By game record in such a situation you would have 7 wins and 1 loss and your opponent would only have 5 wins and three losses. The tournament system rewards game wins more the round wins, and frankly it should. Round wins when players split is based on a never going to be perfect set of tie-breakers. Now the fact that they are imperfect doesn't matter so much because the reward for them is small, half the points of a game win.

So the real question should be should a player win a tournament with a markedly worse game record because he scored well on slightly arbitrary tie-breakers? The way the system is designed that doesn't really happen, which is good.

The main issues in the tournament format is the warping nature of the tie-breakers on elimination rounds. Those rounds should always be best of three. With the pairings in the third match up to the player that won the tie-breakers. Because you end up with silly situations like a LS player never attacking, never commiting to the force, just to prevent objectives from being destroyed because winning the game is irrelevant if he won his first with strong objectives scored.

the current rules on blowing up objectives might make sence when every deck build has the ability to do it. But that seems to go agenst their themes so … whoever developed the sith cards was not part of the tournament rules discussion.

FFG puts an Organized Play "A guide to running your event" in the game night kits and I think the regional kit.

It has a chart that says

2-4 players = 2 rounds

5-8 players = 3 rounds

9-16 players = 4 rounds

All of the above to not require a top cut

17-32 = 5 rounds if no top cut - min 3 rounds with a top 4 cut

33+ = 6 rounds with no top cut - min 4 rounds with a top 8 cut

It also says that you can run more than the minimum number of rounds before you cut to the top 8.

TGO said:

I think that chart is really poorly thought out at the high end. The min. rounds for swiss + top cut is to low. You will be making huge cuts from the same scoring group based on SoS. Also giving the option for the two larger brackets to not have a top cut, in this game with this scoring system, is just silly.

But as those guidlines note pretty clearly, everything is left to the TO.

ScottieATF said:

Agree. I would cut to 8 with even as few as 12 players, given how tight the scoring turns out. With 11 or fewer, I would always cut to 4. The cut ensures that the best players play each other in the end instead of having a top player get eliminated on SoS or on one fluke loss in swiss.

Vaapad said:

I think cutting to 8 of 12 is a mistake, you don't even have to have close to a winning record (round or game wise) to make that cut. You have to at least make the swiss portion mean someything or you might as well do single elimination all day

in MPLS we did 3 Rounds then cut to top 4 with 9 players - its just more fun to have a cut.

Magni

ScottieATF said:

First, I mis-spoke. I would cut to to 8 with more than 12, ie 13-plus. I imagine that doesn't change your concern much. But if you go to 4 of 13, I still worry about SoS playing too large a role. I mean, you could easily have, say, a 14, 13, and then a bunch of 12's at the top, with one or more 12's missing the cut. Is it not better to avoid that at the expense of having 2-3 lower scoring players make an elimination round?

divinityofnumber said:

I agree. It's going to be difficult for me to develop any sense of eagerness prior to a tournament for this game, until I'm able to play the decks I want, without having to suffer some arbitrary disadvantage built in that doesn't exist during casual play. It gives me a sense that I don't have complete freedom to play what I want, which drives completely against the biggest reason I - and I assume most people here - play CCGs/LCGs. I tend towards an aggressive playstyle anyway, but in an environment like a tournament where I'm meeting tons of new people, I'd like them to know that that's my attitude as a player, not a role the tourney rules have forced me to adopt.

I understand the sense it makes to have a match play system for this game: there are two sides of the Force and two seperate card pools that a player should play over the course of a tournament. I agree with those that say that it creates some wierd situations. For example, this weekend I played in a tournament where I lost my first two games, scoring zero points. I won the remainder of my games in the tournament, but still came in fourth because the second and third place finishers split games in two rounds (they each also lost two games over the course of the tournament), each scoring two more tournament points than me.

If the game were set up similar to Decipher's round system, where every round you played each side of the Force, it might solve some of those problems. The system is simple, each game is one half of a round where players play both sides of the Force. At a random assignment inside of your tournament point group, players play one side of the Force in the first game of the round. After the first game is complete, the pairings are realigned, and players finish the round by playing the side of the Force not played in the first game.

First, there would be less emphasis on agressive dark decks, but would award them based on the nature of the game - the dial ticks when objectives are destroyed. DS control decks would also have a place, as it is just as viable a strategy to ride the Force struggle and defend objectives. The LS would be unchanged, their goal is to destroy objectives, but would gain the advantage of the "alternate" win conditions introduced in the core set - i.e. Trench Run introduced by the LS and Heart of the Empire introduced by the DS.

Second, it would eliminate entirely the need for a tie-breaker point. Whether or not they kept a system in place for timed games would be up to FFG. This would always reward people for winning games, and reduce the disparity that happens when those who lose an entire "match" to zero. There are advantages and disadvantages to having a full/timed win point system and outside of the context of my current post.

Third, it would move people of similar skill levels together faster. In a four match tournament with 12 participants, you will only see 1/3 of the players, and it is possible that after those four rounds, your second and third place finishers have not played against each other at all. In our specific case this weekend, the guy that got second place vaulted himself there from because he got paired down twice in the last round (he had already played me and the 1 & 2 were playing each other). With a match play system, the maximum number of opponents you will face is fixed at half the number of games played. In a round system, the minimum number of opponents you will play is the number of rounds (assuming that by the end of the tournament you were paired against the same opponents twice). It should be noted that it is very difficult for this to happen. In the end, you will play more opponents, reinforcing the SOS tie-breaker system and setting up a clearer winner.

Lastly, if the two best players play each other in the first game, it does not mean that one of them will get 1st and the other 4th merely because of a random assignment. This means that if each game were scored individually and then the pairings realigned, the top players would stay at the top, and those players who suffered early losses to the top players - if they kept winning - would find their way to the top by the end of the tournament. Those who had early wins but failed to continue their winning would naturally settle toward the middle or bottom.

Just some thoughts.

Early on someone posted the exact decipher rules on FFG, I can't find the old post but it would be great if it popped up again if anyone can find it. After reading it and being an old player from the CCG days I think it is a much better system.

One: All the above post and more.

Yeah, I posted it at some point as a way to bridge the gap between the game's release and the official tournament rules. I'm not near as upset about these rules as you guys seem to be, but if you'd like to find them, they're posted on starwarsccg.org (posting from phone so I can't link).

MasterJediAdam said:

I think the real issue here is that they're rewarding points based on winning one of two games. That just seems silly, imo. Score the match, not the individual games. Use the same tie-breaks (dial, objectives destroyed) and whoever either wins both games or wins with the tie breaks gets 2 points, whoever doesn't do that gets 0 points. True draws get 1 point (and happen very rarely).

Simplfy.

cephalgia said:

I do not like this solution at all. Someone could win a tournament and still lose half of their games, while other players go undefeated until the last round where they lose a tie break and finish lower. I don't think that makes sense.

I also don't like the fact that half of every event needs to be single elimination in order to determine a winner. A top 8 cut in a 13 player tournament seems kind of rediculous. And it is not all that fun for those that don't make it. No, I think the decipher format was better. No scoring ambiguities, the "top cut" happens naturally in the Swiss pairings and all the players still get to play, and you aren't put at a distinct disadvantage for playing certain deck types.

The top cut thing is a different issue. There's no reason to need it even with this tournament system given enough rounds of swiss. From what I've seen, it's more player demand than anything that leads to silly top cuts.