Organized Play

[silverclawgrizzly]

Just throwing this out for discussion, and I ask that it be polite discussion not a debate. The organized play format hasn't been updated in years, if changes were to be made what should they be?

Keep in mind that many tournaments by necessity have to be timed and that certain strategies, cards, and play styles are exceptionally strengthened or weakened by this.

[Kelanen]

Keep in mind that many tournaments by necessity have to become and that certain strategies, cards, and play styles are exceptionally strengthened or weakened by this.

A missing word? Timed?

[theasaris]

The most important thing in my opinion is a fairer scoring system for times matched where wins by mage death and timed wins are differentiated more than 4-3-1-0. This is the current system used in German organized play:

http://forum.arcanewonders.com/index.php?topic=18360.msg87272#msg87272

[silverclawgrizzly]

I'm a fan of updating the scoring system. I'm thinking 6 for a win by death , 2 for a win by time, and 1 for a lose by time. Wins should always count more than points in terms of determining qualifiers of course but points are useful for breaking win ties.

[DaveW]

Why give any points for a loss on time?

Also, what method of determining the winner on time is used?

[Kelanen]

Why give any points for a loss on time?

The problem with the current system is that it if one mage is in a losing position, it incentivises them to just cling onto life, and concentrate rather less on winning. That said, being able to stop the opponent from killing them does feel like it should be worth something.

If you awarded nothing for a modified loss though, you just reverse the position, where a winning player then sits back and doesn't need to try and finish his opponent off, just play defensively, and force them to take all the risks.

Both are about as bad. I think the answer is definitely to increase the difference in points between outright wins, and modified wins/losses. I'd favour proportions something like 6/3/1/0 but I'm not sure if it does something screwey with the maths if you don't split the same number of points amongst the players in all circumstances. I suspect it will affect tiebreaks and pairings, and so you may need to do something like 6/4/2/0 which is arguably worse than the current scheme.

[zot]

note the difference in a tie can be as little as one life. perhaps both mages are near dead even. so a non death tie should count for something for both players. however should two tied wins equal or greater than one outright win? at gencon of this year they actually used the points as

7   win
3   tie win
2   tie loss
0   loss

 and it seemed to work very well. turns out the cutoff for top four was 20 points. i had 19. the top four players had at least 20 points.

now i think they counted win/loss record for pairing rather than top points facing off. even still seemed to work out fine.

[silverclawgrizzly]

We rolled to see who faced in the top four pairings as three of the top 4 had the same number of points if I remember.

We could have looked at opponent records....but there was a D 12 right there.

[Brian VanAlstyne]

Yes two wins by whatever method is better than one win.

[silverclawgrizzly]

Dave asked a question about how the winner is determined on a match that goes to time. There's no way to do it I like but normally it's who's got the most life left.

Now with that said I'm a firm believer that the card Restore is a problem. I'm an advocate of removing all dissipate tokens at the end of a match and then checking life totals. Restore was very much not designed with times tournaments in mind. It's very very easy for Holy mages to snatch a cheesy win.

Other thing I want to point out. There are to the best of my knowledge no "official" organized play format rules on this site anymore. Nor are any provided by AW.

[zot]

Yes two wins by whatever method is better than one win.

   the general consensus has been no on this question. the feeling is that ties are not as good as kills. because otherwise it incentivizes stall tactics rather than kill tactics. it is called mage wars, not mage survival. so outright wins count for more as a result. with time limits there is no real way to get around any tactics/builds/mages gaining some edge. and given the time limit, kills are favored over ties.

[Kelanen]

Now with that said I'm a firm believer that the card Restore is a problem. I'm an advocate of removing all dissipate tokens at the end of a match and then checking life totals. Restore was very much not designed with times tournaments in mind. It's very very easy for Holy mages to snatch a cheesy win.

I completely agree with this.

[silverclawgrizzly]

Kills count for more points than a tie. However if in three rounds I won two by time and you only get one win by kill then I'm still ahead.

Priority in my view should be wins then points.

[RomeoXero]

Pretty much in agreement there. If i win by outlasting 4 times and you win by killing 4 times, you should probably have more points than me. But we BOTH should be in the finals asy that point because we both won 4 times.

[SharkBait]

Yes two wins by whatever method is better than one win.

   the general consensus has been no on this question. the feeling is that ties are not as good as kills. because otherwise it incentivizes stall tactics rather than kill tactics. it is called mage wars, not mage survival. so outright wins count for more as a result. with time limits there is no real way to get around any tactics/builds/mages gaining some edge. and given the time limit, kills are favored over ties.

To add to this (warning, personal opinion incoming  ), I don't consider it a win without a kill. No kill = a tie game regardless of life remaining. If a mage has one life left at time, the other mage doesn't deserve any more points than the mage who has one left. Priority SHOULD be wins over points assuming wins are only counted for kills .

Just my 2 flameblasts