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Just stumbled across an idea I had a few years back about how to run a friendly tournament/event.

The objective is to create the best possible games with the fewest *bad* matchups. It incentivizes participants to build their army specifically to appeal to other players.

I’m curious what the folks here have to say about it. Comments/feedback/criticism welcome!
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Player's Choice Alternative Event Pairing System

The objective of this event pairing methodology is to incentivize players to bring an army to the event that the other players will find most desireable to play against.

Here is how it works.

1. Tournament participants are required to display their models and present their army list for inspection by the other players 30 minutes prior to the first game.

2. Based upon their inspection of the armies and lists, all players will assign a rank for each opponent based upon the desirability of their army as a prospective opponent (1= best, (number of players - 1) = worst). An individual player can assign only one army a particular rank (only one army will be ranked "1", only one "2", etc). The criteria the players use to assign these ranks is entirely up to the individual player and their particular preferences (painting, composition, etc.)

3. Using the rankings established above, the TO will determine the relative desirability of each potential match and assign a desirability score. For example, if player A assigned player B a rank of "3" and player B assigned player A the rank of "2", The desirability score of pairing of player A vs player B is "5" (3+2).

4. Once every potential match has a desirability score, the matches are sorted by that score best to worst. Pairings involving players who ranked each other relatively more desirable will be at the top of the list and players who ranked each other relatively less desirable will be at the bottom of the list. At this point figuring out the pairings is simple. Just start at the top of the list and work your way down. the top pairing will be automatic. Every subsequent pairing is automatic provided that it does not conflict with an entry higher on the list (in which case it should be bumped to a later round). Pairings proceed in this fashion until every player has a match established for every round in the tournament.

5. Tournament scoring can be based on whatever you like win/loss, points- whatever.

If you run the numbers, you will find that the players who bring the armies that other players find most desirable as opponents will be the players with the most say about who they play in their pairings. This is a powerful mechanic that will have a major impact on the meta-game once its implications are clear to participating players. For the first time, players are incentivized by the tournament organization itself to bring armies to competitions based upon what potential opponents will find fun to play against.

What about those players who really enjoy playing the power-gamer lists? They aren't any worse off than before. They will probably be matched against more competitive lists as the fluffier armies will likely rank "hard" lists as less desirable opponents. The playing field is leveled by self-selection.

Here some additional benefits:

* There is no composition system.

* There are no painting requirements or scores.

* There is no need for the TO to fumble with brackets between games. All pairings can be established before the first game.

It is interesting. For a friendly group, maybe. For actual tournaments of strangers with prizes...not sure.
Because...(and this is no attack on competitive play or players)

What about the player who only wants to win, so looks at the other army and ranks based on how easily he can beat that army. A lot of people define "fun" and "winning" as synonyms, or more accurately, the second as a requirement for the first. Many arguments on this site have revolved around that in various forms ranging from I must win to have fun to no chance to win eliminates a chance to have fun.

The issue the other threads that have been covering tournament scoring problems are trying to solve is the players who manipulate the scoring system for the prizes (which includes simple winning % before someone argues that). This system opens that up completely. A player who shows up with a competitive but not a recognizable net list may not get low rankings from players running fluffy lists. Therefore that player can choose his match-ups by simply ranking the army his will crush 1, and so forth down the list, regardless of any other aspect of hobbying, the player, etc.

Because 40k has zippo real balance, match-ups can be extreme. This will be taken advantage of by players who see only the competition and any edge as viable. Since that is a recognizable % of players who go to a tournament, it will happen.

I suspect you'll end up with the opposite of your hope, and fluffy players placed against hardcore players.

Thanks for responding. Although it is possible someone could make a list that *fools* a few people, I feel like it’s unlikely that such a strategy would work with enough people to make a difference.

Pairings are generated based upon the combined desirability score of both potential opponents. As such, while it is true that a player can simply rank other armies by how easy it would be to beat them, the matches they want will only likely occur if potential opponents feel similarly about the matches. If they don’t, they will rank other opponents higher resulting in different match-ups.

Unless so-called power gamers can somehow deceive the rest of the players about the true nature of their list, they are likely to be pushed into matches near the bottom of the rankings where they will play others who brought less appealing armies.

One critical consideration is that this would be a HUGE faff.

Even a small ish tournament might have a dozen people that you need to consider and rank.
Then the TO needs to take in all that data and input it to the system (you'd pretty much require an algorithm to efficiently do the maths).

I admire your approach, I see that you have very good intentions. This might work for a small club event.

The issue I see this system running into is social preferences. Think about it like picking teams for dodgeball on the grade school playground. You are going to have participants choose their friends first and the unpopular kid last (no matter how amazingly cool his army may be).

I do like this approach and its nice to see someone actually trying to do something about the current issues.


As always, we need feedback. Someone with enough reach has to actually try this on a big enough scale to see if it works.

If you can get some smaller locals to run it this way, and it seems to work well, then by showing this proof to some of the bigger TO's you could convince them to give it a try.