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As the title says, what is your opinion on the ideal number of games in a tournament?

My thoughts:
For me it's five.
1: I'm a fan of the take on all comers style lists, and think more games=more opponents=more chances=you need a wider variety of responses. This in no way is an attack on the specialist lists. In fact, that's part of why I like my ToAC list. Those specialist lists are a real challenge and force me to play the board at a higher level.
For example. My current IG list crushes Elite infantry through volume of firepower, range, and speed which allows me to get the charge often (I've always had 20-30 rough riders, now DKoK cavalry, which is good on the charge, bad otherwise). However, maybe my next opponent is a DG combo. I'm going to struggle now to do enough damage, so I need the mobility to gain VP's and outlast. Anyway, you get the point.

2: 3 games fits in a day, but for me it isn't enough to guarantee a variety of opponents (in skill level and army here). I have won and lost a few, 3 game tournaments on the luck of the draw (which will never change, but more games may mitigate this).

For example: I ended tied for second in a tournament because of a tie. This tie was a decent game I completely dominated. The issue? It was the mission where the Objectives "float" (8th edition) and my opponent won 15 of 16 roll offs to see where they went. I destroyed his army, controlled 3/4 of the board, and tied because he got 3 objectives the first two turns by floating them into the very corner of his deployment zone, before my slower sisters could get there. I give him credit for using the mission to his advantage and managing a tie (this guy was both good and fun, and I'd play him any time). However, if I had won just 1/4 of the roll-offs, I'd have creamed him... (in the same tournament I got a freebie win first game against a 13 year old, who was fun, but had no chance due to a combo of basic starting army and few games played. I was able to max score)
Example 2: I lost another tournament on total score, when I had the correct army to crush the army that eked me out. I never played him. (at 1250 He had a 9 grot cannons, huge flash gits, grot shield list. I had the speed to charge his cannons turn 1, the firepower to destroy his grot shield and open gits to tank shots turn 1). His comment on getting first were "Glad I didn't play you..." This guy also deserves credit for playing with skill.
I have won a tournament the same way, by not playing the Imperial Knight guy...(Again 8th, and I had a space marine biker list that would have struggled)

3: (which is more points than people bother to read but...) This one is a bit less important. However, almost every tournament I've played (really maybe 10-15) there have been a half dozen tables with average scenery, and usually 3-4 that looked great and I wanted to play on. Most times I miss playing on a table I wanted to. More games in no way guarantees this, but it does increase the chance. The same exact comments can be applied to players or armies (and often both together, I do love a fun player with a cool army).

probably wanna post this in the Tournament forum.........

I've never thought 40k is especially well suited for tourney play & that opinion hasn't changed any with 8th/9th ed. IMO if you're playing tourney hammer you're already playing the game wrong & deserve whatever crap results you'll get.
I'd say have at it & knock yourselves out....

Unfortunately though your tourney crap (and the crap fixes for it) spill out of that environment & into non-tourney play. Both officially & unofficially.

So my answer to your question? Zero games in a tournament.

Well, in a one-day tourney its 3 games
and in a two-day tourney its 5 or 6 games.
Just from experience.

Generally when I've played it's been 5-6 games over two days. That seems about right.

In fact, to me it seems like that's a very settled thing in tournaments. One day tournaments are much rarer and tend to be at conventions that are not primarily wargaming focused, so that people can go and do other stuff afterwards.

Scenery is the bigger logistical challenge for most tournaments. Having a board populated with enough thematically appropriate, visually nice and tactically interesting terrain is a huge challenge for any tournament organiser, and the bigger your tourney the more tables you need to organise. Usually compromises have to be made.

The best number would scale with the size of a tournament because you ideally want a number of games that would mathematically guarantee 1 outright winner. That being said a lot of people don't want to play in 3 day tournaments, its tiring and only really applicable to the players who really want a chance of being crowned winner.

So in practical terms even the massive tournaments will default to 5 or 6 games over 2 days.

ideal amount of games

2 day event
day 1: 4 games (break after 2 games)
day 2: 2-3 games (break after 2 games)

1 day event
3-4 games (break after 2 games)


1 day events with 3 games and lunchbreak after the first game are the ones I never really liked
specially if you had to get lunch somewhere else

but overall 4 games a day is tricky with 2k 40k, hence why I prefer smaller army size or other games for tournaments

6 games across a weekend is too much imo. Yes, you get better chance to separate competitors but it is too draining.

for me it is not the amount of games but the time for a single game that is draining

4 hours including setting up and moving around for a single game is way too long and 2 games a day are already too much
2-2.5 hours and playing 4 games in a row is less of a problem

There is a lot of factors that affect it but for me its the duration of round times. If you have 3 games in a day at between 2.5 to 3 hours plus breaks and time at the beginning of day 1 for registration it starts to become a battle for endurance more than skill for me. I once made a mistake of taking a high model count army to a 2 day event and the damage it did to my back was enough to make me not repeat that.

There is a balance to be struck between what is best for the results and best for the players.

I like 2 day 5game tournaments. 6 Game tournaments will make me take Knights just to still have fun and play easily.

It also depends on the size of game.
With 1,000 point Incursion games getting the same support as 2,000 point Strike Force games, I would love to see how well an Incursion tournament setup would work.
At that size, you could comfortably run more games in a day.

3 unless it's multiple days.

Thanks for some thoughts.

1: @Einlazer: Oops, yeah totally forgot about the tournament forum...my bad. Sending a mod a request.

2: @: all the players who love the 2-day...I am there! My local tournaments seem to mostly be 1 day, 3 game, 2.5 hour time limit tourneys. Useful, but I'd rather see 5 games over 2 days.

3: @Blindmage: My favorite tournaments have been the 1250 point ones (I know, 9th has chosen to make hard breaks for CP and such at 1k and 2k, but I really like 1250 or 1500. It's enough points to get your troops in and then really have some choices to make for your more specialist units).



As to that first post...so typical Dakka.

One Day Tournament: Three games at 2,000-ish points. Maybe Four games if 1,500 points. They typically play a lot faster.

Two Day Tournament: Five games at 2,000-ish points. Six if 1,500.

If I'm at a gaming convention (Gencon, PAX Unplugged, Adepticon) I like a one day tournament so I can go do other things, hang out with friends, meet new people, shop, play in another tournament, etc. etc. It's hard to sink more than an entire day into a 40K tournament when there is so much other stuff going on. If I even play in a tournament. Like Gencon? I'll never understand how people can travel from all over the world, pay stupid amounts of money for travel, hotel, tickets and then spend all their time in Hall J playing nothing but 40K. I can do that at home. The only plus would be playing against new players and armies.

If it's a dedicated 40K tournament, I like minimal time between round one and two, then a lunch break between two and three, and if it's four games in a day, I like a nice break to catch my second wind between three and four.

Just my two US$0.02 after 20+ years of tournaments and conventions.

 Tamwulf wrote:
One Day Tournament: Three games at 2,000-ish points. Maybe Four games if 1,500 points. They typically play a lot faster.

Two Day Tournament: Five games at 2,000-ish points. Six if 1,500.

Yup, this right here.

There are two options for the ideal number of games in a tournament:

A) Available play time divided by reasonable time for game, rounded down
B) The number of games necessary to have a single undefeated player

Any option other than these two is not optimal.

 alextroy wrote:
There are two options for the ideal number of games in a tournament:

A) Available play time divided by reasonable time for game, rounded down
B) The number of games necessary to have a single undefeated player

Any option other than these two is not optimal.

This ^

Option B is better, but not always practical with large events.

Week, I think the correct number need to change on the point level: should be the maximum number of comfortable games you can have.

I don't think tournament have any values in terms of scoring/leaderboarding (that's why any sports have championship instead, and use tournament either as a pieces of a larger championship or as final closing events).

So, they are an occasion to play a lot of games in a short period of time.

1500 points and up to five/six games are those who I would prefer

Depends on the intention of the individual event. If you want a clear-cut single undefeated winner, you need an appropriate # of rounds (i.e. 129-256 translates to 8 rounds).

If the intention is a fun time over a couple days, 5-6 is fine, as long as it's clear to attendees your "winner" will be determined at least partly on subjective grounds. Which is ok if well communicated.

So it would be important to know what kind of tourney you are talking about in order to answer with the correct or ideal # of rounds.

MVBrandt wrote:
Depends on the intention of the individual event. If you want a clear-cut single undefeated winner, you need an appropriate # of rounds (i.e. 129-256 translates to 8 rounds).

If the intention is a fun time over a couple days, 5-6 is fine, as long as it's clear to attendees your "winner" will be determined at least partly on subjective grounds. Which is ok if well communicated.

It's still possible to have non-subjective tie-breakers for a shorter event than necessary for an undefeated winner. It's just going to end up relying on things like strength of schedule or average margin of victory, which may still be out of the hands of the folks at the top.

I generally think 3 games per-day is a good number with each match being allotted 3 hours of time (for 9 hours of gameplay per-day). Breaks should only be about 30 minutes between games. That gets you to 10 hours for the day. Start at 8:30 A.M., finish at 6:30 P.M.

What would be really fun is if we had at least one large tournament that was single elimination rather than the Swiss pairings system commonly employed. Be fun to see what lists make the deep runs (this would entail the finalists playing quite a few games while half the tournament goes out after just one, however).

I think the length of time for a single game of 40k is one of the things that makes it bad for tournaments (among many other reasons).

That said, ideally you want either the number of game required to leave one player undefeated, or a system with a round-robin followed by a single-elimination set of games for all players with a certain record or better

The issue with a single elimination tournament is that requires a non-negligible number of round, a precise amount of participants and (but that's easier to manage) something to do for those who lose.

Any tournament of 32 people will require 5 round.
On the other hand, final will be much more felt by everyone since you'll have a direct relationship with those in the game (while usually you could have not even indirect anything to do with the finalist) and it scales up faster (with the double of the time, 10 round, you could have 1024 participants).

It's a neat idea all things considered.

3 for a 1 day is good, 5 for a two day.

I always need to recover on day two, I just wish they would start about 1-2 hours later on Sunday so you have more time to recover. I don’t like 6 because that is either 3 and 3 or 4 and 2 and that is a LOT,

3 in one day is good because it’s just a way to get more games in with a packed schedule.

Five games over two days is the sweet spot these days and I think two games on the second day is a good breather after three games on the first day.

I was surprised when I started playing tournaments how tired I was by the end of the first day and it causes mistakes. Six games would kill me, even though you do settle the field a bit more.

Just for energy level, no more than 3 a day. Playing more than 3 games in one day at an event is really tiring. I don't think I could play four games in one day, that'd be killer.

I like one day 3 game events.

for two day events, I like 5 games, as then you can play two on the Sunday and get a head start on the drive home.

This is assuming 2000pts. If the tournament was 1000pts, and shorter games, I'd be happy playing more games per day. I played 12 games at an underworlds tournament on average, and it takes around 5 or 6 hours and feels fine.

I like 3 and 2. 4 and 2 if we're doing 6 games. Anything more than 6 games needs to be over 3 days. Generally 3-3-2 if you're doing an 8 game set up.

If the games can be kept to two hours then 3 in a day is about my limit, but even under one hour then after 5 I'm kinda clocked out.

Umbros wrote:
6 games across a weekend is too much imo. Yes, you get better chance to separate competitors but it is too draining.

Back in 2nd edition, a lot of the local tournaments here were 8 games over a long weekend. It was awesome, but exhausting. It also tended to limit how many events there could be in a given year, since there are only so many long weekends...


While I understand the value of one-day events, three games has never seemed like enough for a competitive event, so my preference is still for 5 or 6 games over two days, but rounds need to be 2 hours or less, so game size should accommodate that.

 alextroy wrote:
There are two options for the ideal number of games in a tournament:

A) Available play time divided by reasonable time for game, rounded down
B) The number of games necessary to have a single undefeated player

Any option other than these two is not optimal.

Given the lack of player fatigue as a consideration I'd say this is a bit too much simplification. Unless you mean to imply changing the value for 'reasonable time' from day to day.