Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

In ITC's W/L/D system, you're damned the second you lose a game as you can never catch up to someone who goes undefeated, no matter what their margin of victory.

You assume that's unintentional? They specifically moved away from 20pt scoring because it promotes armies designed to table opponents as brutally as possible, to a more objective based game where a good player with a more take all comers army can snatch a win from the former. You can still bring an army designed to table people, but it gets balanced out by forcing you to play to the mission. ITC missions aren't perfect, but you're mistaking a feature for a flaw.

 DarkLink wrote:
You assume that's unintentional? They specifically moved away from 20pt scoring because it promotes armies designed to table opponents as brutally as possible, to a more objective based game where a good player with a more take all comers army can snatch a win from the former. You can still bring an army designed to table people, but it gets balanced out by forcing you to play to the mission. ITC missions aren't perfect, but you're mistaking a feature for a flaw.

There's a second issue with a straight-victory points format, any time you're dealing with a "progressive" objective mid-game scoring system, which is that it doubles the negative effect of slow play--a longer game will inherently result in more points being scored than a slow game, so if you get slow played, your score is being damaged even if you win (because you won 5-4 while the guy on the next table won 10-9).

There's a middle ground to be had, which is the +/- comparative scoring system Adepticon used last year, which worked really well.

Each player starts with 15 points, and you add/subtract the end-game score differential from there. In the 5-4 vs. 10-9 situation above, both submitted scores would be 16-14. This also eliminates the other worry--people aren't forced to play to grind their opponent into dust, because winning by more than 15 points is irrelevant, and it's usually pretty obvious when you've reached that point. It's a really simple implementation that functions as both a score cap and a score normalizer.

At the LVO you have scale - so you might be able to look at alternatives. This could include splitting the LVO into 2 sub tournaments like Magic's Classic and Standard

1500 point 2:45 hr matches 3 games per day (e Sports format - Standard)

2000 points 4 hr matches 2 games per day (Hard core format - Classic)

(and a 2* 1000 doubles tournament, and a team tournament, and 30k and a narrative event)

 RFHolloway wrote:
At the LVO you have scale - so you might be able to look at alternatives. This could include splitting the LVO into 2 sub tournaments like Magic's Classic and Standard

1500 point 2:45 hr matches 3 games per day (e Sports format - Standard)

2000 points 4 hr matches 2 games per day (Hard core format - Classic)

(and a 2* 1000 doubles tournament, and a team tournament, and 30k and a narrative event)

The big advantage of making a split like this is the ability to have a different Army Comp for the two events so that all players are welcome, but the Events are appropriately competitive. For instance, you could allow the Tua'nar Supremacy Suite in the 2K Hard Core Format. I would actually advocate you up it to 2,500. Meanwhile the 1500 point format could ban certain problematic formations, and units without fear that players won't be able to play with their toys.

While this is all good in a general case, it only hides the underlying problem that unless they can fit more than three rounds a day, the LVO event is very limited in terms of how many players it can support. Yes, having two formats is good, and would take stress off of one, but one will always be more popular and always runs into the problem we have now.

The other option is to do what Magic basically did when they got too big in their Vegas event and that was to pod the tournament into essentially four regular tournaments that fed into one for day two. Though three rounds isn't really all that much to do that with, though if you do, and can make the rounds short enough, you can make day one the hell day where you play five rounds and top X from each pod make it to day two only. Heck, this wouldn't be needed at all with that many rounds until much later.

Then again, Magic didn't have to do this until they hit over four thousand players in one event.

Ultimately, no matter which way you go, you'll eventually have to increase the number of rounds in the event if you expect it to keep growing. You can only hide it with all these tricks for so long.

 Tinkrr wrote:
While this is all good in a general case, it only hides the underlying problem that unless they can fit more than three rounds a day, the LVO event is very limited in terms of how many players it can support. Yes, having two formats is good, and would take stress off of one, but one will always be more popular and always runs into the problem we have now.

The other option is to do what Magic basically did when they got too big in their Vegas event and that was to pod the tournament into essentially four regular tournaments that fed into one for day two. Though three rounds isn't really all that much to do that with, though if you do, and can make the rounds short enough, you can make day one the hell day where you play five rounds and top X from each pod make it to day two only. Heck, this wouldn't be needed at all with that many rounds until much later.

Then again, Magic didn't have to do this until they hit over four thousand players in one event.

Ultimately, no matter which way you go, you'll eventually have to increase the number of rounds in the event if you expect it to keep growing. You can only hide it with all these tricks for so long.

How many days did that Magic event run? That is one honkin' number of people!

Ahhhh, slept for about a day, yesterday, finally getting back into the groove.

Thanks for all the awesome feedback, everyone! We're actually quite pleased with our format in terms of round structure as it is and for the foreseeable future. Until we cap 512 players, our current format is mathematically sound. It will result in a top 8 scores, which typically will feature nearly all undefeated players.

As you never get 100% of the bracket full, it does leave room for players with a tie or even a loss to make the finals. This year was bizarre, we had so many ties, far more than in years past, but the system still worked just fine in determining who the top 8 scores were. Even the final game was resolved to the final tie break: victory points, without a hitch.

In that regard, we're quite comfortable with the system. Adding rounds isn't really an option without adding a day to the event. 40k quite simply takes a long time to play, which is one of the biggest limitations of it.

Finishing games is an issue in organized play and always has been. It's just interesting to get the 3rd party perspective from having it streamed to really put a spotlight on it.

For me, the sensible thing to do is go down in points. There are of course pros and cons to that, but in the big picture, I think the pros outweigh the cons. More games finish on time to a natural conclusion, the day doesn't have to be longer than it is. That's a net gain, IMO.

However, everyone likes writing lists at a larger point value. We have seen this trend time and again. It's just ironic that folks then get mad that their games don't finish, haha. You don't get both, unfortunately.

Two days. I think the final number was just under 4.5k, because it had to be capped at that as they didn't have enough judges. It was an impressive event, the biggest I've ever been to.

Well ok, it was three days, day one was check in and a free event (minis masters) for everyone who registered. I opened a free hundred dollar bill in that and paid for dinner with it D:

A suggestion I have come up with is a more detailed score entry system. The system used was fast and super easy, BUT after looking through the records I noticed what looks to be collusion on some games regarding score. Notably at a top table in particular where the players "tied" and somehow each received 7 victory points in a mission that was impossible to receive 7 points on a tie. If you're going to collude and cheat the score system to both make top 8, please cheat better. You know who you are. The scores are on the record. The tie may not have been collusion, but giving each other 7 points was definitely a no-no.

I think putting a system in place where players select the victory conditions from a list would help eliminate the temptation to cheat.

Until we cap 512 players, our current format is mathematically sound.

Well ok, can I see the math behind it? Not because I don't trust you, just that I'm curious as to how this actually works.

This site helps. http://swisstriangle.net/

essentially with 512 players or less, after 6 rounds your guaranteed no more than 8 winners of all 6 games.

 kloma wrote:
This site helps. http://swisstriangle.net/

essentially with 512 players or less, after 6 rounds your guaranteed no more than 8 winners of all 6 games.

You do know that shows 9 rounds, at 300 - 512 players...

Six rounds for 64, and seven for 65. It follows Magic's Accelerated Swiss system for selecting Top 8 alone, at every point except the jump from 9 rounds to 10:

CHART FOR APPROPRIATE NUMBER OF ROUNDS OF SWISS TO SELECT THE
TOP 8 PLAYERS FOR SINGLE ELIMINATION:
Number of Players Number of Rounds

17–32 players 5 rounds of Swiss
33–64 6 rounds of Swiss
65–128 7 rounds of Swiss
129–226 8 rounds of Swiss
227–409 9 rounds of Swiss
410+ 10 rounds of Swiss

At six rounds, with 300 people, you have like 5 undefeated and 28 competing for the next best record. That's almost exactly what we saw in the LVO, 6 people undefeated (5-0-1 or better) and then 19 or so people at 5000+ points which is 5-1-0 or 4-0-2, only shrinking slightly if you remove the 4-0-2 people.

it was about getting to top 8 stage not overall winner (6 rounds) The format changed to single knockout for rounds 7-9.

At 512 players or less they cannot end up with more than 8 players on 6 wins after 6 rounds, which is what they're aiming for.

So basically their growth goal is "if you lose or tie a round, you're out of contention for top 8."?

That's a super bleak prospect for players, and can be horrifyingly demoralizing :/. You really should aim for a buffer of 1-2 losses for players, as it creates a lot of motivation. I mean that's why in Magic you have the "0-2 drop" bracket, because you're not necessarily out of contention at 0-2 but you're so close to it that you might as well drop and play side events as it's better over all EV. More so, in Magic, events have a day 2 qualifier if they're large enough, so you can go X-2 and make day 2, which you need to qualify for and it's usually only like 200-300 players.

 Tinkrr wrote:
So basically their growth goal is "if you lose or tie a round, you're out of contention for top 8."?

That's a super bleak prospect for players, and can be horrifyingly demoralizing :/. You really should aim for a buffer of 1-2 losses for players, as it creates a lot of motivation. I mean that's why in Magic you have the "0-2 drop" bracket, because you're not necessarily out of contention at 0-2 but you're so close to it that you might as well drop and play side events as it's better over all EV. More so, in Magic, events have a day 2 qualifier if they're large enough, so you can go X-2 and make day 2, which you need to qualify for and it's usually only like 200-300 players.

Can you point to other 40K events that allow for a 1-2 round buffer for players? We're accustomed to playing in events that are single elimination at best, if not having multiple undefeated players and using battlepoints to determine the winner. Any 3 round RTT would have to cap its player base at 4 players to have a 1 round buffer (and 8 for a natural victor). Most 3 game RTTs are 16+ players. With 2-3 hour games there isn't time to do what you're suggesting.

We could have a world championship for Killteam, but I don't see people clamoring for 400-500 point games.

Again, the best thing to do is PRACTICE, in my games we have a timer going for 2 hours 45min, that way we can rush eachother

 punchdub wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:
So basically their growth goal is "if you lose or tie a round, you're out of contention for top 8."?

That's a super bleak prospect for players, and can be horrifyingly demoralizing :/. You really should aim for a buffer of 1-2 losses for players, as it creates a lot of motivation. I mean that's why in Magic you have the "0-2 drop" bracket, because you're not necessarily out of contention at 0-2 but you're so close to it that you might as well drop and play side events as it's better over all EV. More so, in Magic, events have a day 2 qualifier if they're large enough, so you can go X-2 and make day 2, which you need to qualify for and it's usually only like 200-300 players.

Can you point to other 40K events that allow for a 1-2 round buffer for players? We're accustomed to playing in events that are single elimination at best, if not having multiple undefeated players and using battlepoints to determine the winner. Any 3 round RTT would have to cap its player base at 4 players to have a 1 round buffer (and 8 for a natural victor). Most 3 game RTTs are 16+ players. With 2-3 hour games there isn't time to do what you're suggesting.

We could have a world championship for Killteam, but I don't see people clamoring for 400-500 point games.

With 2:15 hour games you can manage 4 rounds a day. At 7-8 rounds, with 350 people, you at least have a reasonable chance of top 8 being X-1, at 6 rounds there are 6 Players undefeated , and 32 at 5-1, that's a pretty bad chance. At least with 7 rounds, you have 3 undefeated and 19 competing at X-1. I'm just saying, at least 5/19 is much better than 1/16, since one is 6% of the X-1's and the other is 26% of the X-1s. If you push it to 8 rounds, you're looking at 2 undefeated and 10 people at X-1, that's a good feeling, you can lose one and still have a good chance. Even at 400 players you're only going from 10 at X-1 to 13 at X-1.

Time wise, you're looking at 2:15*4 = 9 hour day, as opposed to 2:45*3 = 8:15 hour day... If you drop it down to 1500 points and to 2:15 rounds, you can easily make it much better without exceeding a normal work day in terms of hours played. Yes, there are still things like registration and player meetings, but you can streamline those to be more online based and such, so that you don't have to eat up very much time at all with them.

Edit: And if you're doing 7 rounds, as opposed to 8, it's 9+6:45 = 15:45 hours, versus the current 6 rounds of 16 hours... It's just more inviting to new players, an easier barrier of entry, and a better top 8 break.

GreaterGouda wrote:
A suggestion I have come up with is a more detailed score entry system. The system used was fast and super easy, BUT after looking through the records I noticed what looks to be collusion on some games regarding score. Notably at a top table in particular where the players "tied" and somehow each received 7 victory points in a mission that was impossible to receive 7 points on a tie. If you're going to collude and cheat the score system to both make top 8, please cheat better. You know who you are. The scores are on the record. The tie may not have been collusion, but giving each other 7 points was definitely a no-no.

I think putting a system in place where players select the victory conditions from a list would help eliminate the temptation to cheat.

Which mission specifically? Because there are a few (such as Mission 2) where a 7-7 is possible (one player wins Relic, one player wins Maelstorm and both can score Warlord, Line Breaker and First Strike).

PanzerLeader wrote:

GreaterGouda wrote:
A suggestion I have come up with is a more detailed score entry system. The system used was fast and super easy, BUT after looking through the records I noticed what looks to be collusion on some games regarding score. Notably at a top table in particular where the players "tied" and somehow each received 7 victory points in a mission that was impossible to receive 7 points on a tie. If you're going to collude and cheat the score system to both make top 8, please cheat better. You know who you are. The scores are on the record. The tie may not have been collusion, but giving each other 7 points was definitely a no-no.

I think putting a system in place where players select the victory conditions from a list would help eliminate the temptation to cheat.

Which mission specifically? Because there are a few (such as Mission 2) where a 7-7 is possible (one player wins Relic, one player wins Maelstorm and both can score Warlord, Line Breaker and First Strike).

No ITC mission can possibly end in a 7-7 draw. There is always a binary tertiary objective (currently.) the relic (mission 2) doesn't have linebreaker. It has table quarters, which you only get the point for by having more table quarters than your opponent.

I saw an 11-3 score on one of the rounds as well, which is another impossible score. I don't think these were malicious though. The players were probably confused on one of the tertiaries and whether or not both players could score it.

 niv-mizzet wrote:

PanzerLeader wrote:

GreaterGouda wrote:
A suggestion I have come up with is a more detailed score entry system. The system used was fast and super easy, BUT after looking through the records I noticed what looks to be collusion on some games regarding score. Notably at a top table in particular where the players "tied" and somehow each received 7 victory points in a mission that was impossible to receive 7 points on a tie. If you're going to collude and cheat the score system to both make top 8, please cheat better. You know who you are. The scores are on the record. The tie may not have been collusion, but giving each other 7 points was definitely a no-no.

I think putting a system in place where players select the victory conditions from a list would help eliminate the temptation to cheat.

Which mission specifically? Because there are a few (such as Mission 2) where a 7-7 is possible (one player wins Relic, one player wins Maelstorm and both can score Warlord, Line Breaker and First Strike).

No ITC mission can possibly end in a 7-7 draw. There is always a binary tertiary objective (currently.) the relic (mission 2) doesn't have linebreaker. It has table quarters, which you only get the point for by having more table quarters than your opponent.

I saw an 11-3 score on one of the rounds as well, which is another impossible score. I don't think these were malicious though. The players were probably confused on one of the tertiaries and whether or not both players could score it.

I stand corrected. Misremembered.

Im pretty sure every ITC mission can end in a 7-7 tie.

There are some weird situations where both players can get a binary point, and in that situation it is possible to tie 7-7. In my last game my opponent and I got simultaneous first blood. that game ended 11-3. But First Blood is the only binary point both players can achieve that I recall. When you cheat at the top you screw over all the other players below. One of the three way tie top 8 guys could have made it if it were not for collusion. If you cheat, cheat smart I guess so I won't catch it.

 Tinkrr wrote:

With 2:15 hour games you can manage 4 rounds a day. At 7-8 rounds, with 350 people, you at least have a reasonable chance of top 8 being X-1, at 6 rounds there are 6 Players undefeated , and 32 at 5-1, that's a pretty bad chance. At least with 7 rounds, you have 3 undefeated and 19 competing at X-1. I'm just saying, at least 5/19 is much better than 1/16, since one is 6% of the X-1's and the other is 26% of the X-1s. If you push it to 8 rounds, you're looking at 2 undefeated and 10 people at X-1, that's a good feeling, you can lose one and still have a good chance. Even at 400 players you're only going from 10 at X-1 to 13 at X-1.

Time wise, you're looking at 2:15*4 = 9 hour day, as opposed to 2:45*3 = 8:15 hour day... If you drop it down to 1500 points and to 2:15 rounds, you can easily make it much better without exceeding a normal work day in terms of hours played. Yes, there are still things like registration and player meetings, but you can streamline those to be more online based and such, so that you don't have to eat up very much time at all with them.

Edit: And if you're doing 7 rounds, as opposed to 8, it's 9+6:45 = 15:45 hours, versus the current 6 rounds of 16 hours... It's just more inviting to new players, an easier barrier of entry, and a better top 8 break.

That's not a bad idea, but I think you're missing a key point about 40k events. 40k isn't Magic, people aren't going to events just to make the finals and win. They go to play against new opponents, see cool armies, enjoy the general convention atmosphere, etc. I'd guess that beyond a small number of ultra-competitive players, people would rather have additional time for their games than try to fit 4 in a day just so one loss doesn't knock you out of contention. I'd go as far as to guess that something like 75% of the people who attended the LVO championships this year had no actual expectation or intention of actually making the top 8, myself included.

 Tinkrr wrote:
So basically their growth goal is "if you lose or tie a round, you're out of contention for top 8."?

That's a super bleak prospect for players, and can be horrifyingly demoralizing :/. You really should aim for a buffer of 1-2 losses for players, as it creates a lot of motivation. I mean that's why in Magic you have the "0-2 drop" bracket, because you're not necessarily out of contention at 0-2 but you're so close to it that you might as well drop and play side events as it's better over all EV. More so, in Magic, events have a day 2 qualifier if they're large enough, so you can go X-2 and make day 2, which you need to qualify for and it's usually only like 200-300 players.

They're trying to build an actual, genuine, competitive tournament league, not run a kindergarten soccer league with participation trophies for everyone. If you go to compete, you need to accept that if you want to win, you need to, y'know, win. If you go to a tournament to purely have fun and not care about winning, then you need to expect that you probably won't take top 8.

Moreover, this is not magic. In magic, luck of the draw means even a good player with a good deck can lose purely on luck, far more frequently than in 40k. Magic events need to be designed to allow enough rounds to accomodate that. 40k is much less susceptible to this, and due to the length of the games it's impracticle to have a sufficient number of rounds to run it like a mafic tournament. Magic is a poor comparison in that regard.

If both players have their most expensive unit cost 200pts and both players kill it they both have killed the most expensive unit....

If both players kill each other at the same initiative for first blood they both score it...

IF the most quarters held by any player is 2... and both players have 2.... then both players have the most....

If the most units in the center of the board is 2 and both players have 2 in the center then they both have the most....

neither player has more than the other player both have the most in that game. All the missions read most not more.

But thats just how I read english. Your mileage may vary.

 somerandomidiot wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:

With 2:15 hour games you can manage 4 rounds a day. At 7-8 rounds, with 350 people, you at least have a reasonable chance of top 8 being X-1, at 6 rounds there are 6 Players undefeated , and 32 at 5-1, that's a pretty bad chance. At least with 7 rounds, you have 3 undefeated and 19 competing at X-1. I'm just saying, at least 5/19 is much better than 1/16, since one is 6% of the X-1's and the other is 26% of the X-1s. If you push it to 8 rounds, you're looking at 2 undefeated and 10 people at X-1, that's a good feeling, you can lose one and still have a good chance. Even at 400 players you're only going from 10 at X-1 to 13 at X-1.

Time wise, you're looking at 2:15*4 = 9 hour day, as opposed to 2:45*3 = 8:15 hour day... If you drop it down to 1500 points and to 2:15 rounds, you can easily make it much better without exceeding a normal work day in terms of hours played. Yes, there are still things like registration and player meetings, but you can streamline those to be more online based and such, so that you don't have to eat up very much time at all with them.

Edit: And if you're doing 7 rounds, as opposed to 8, it's 9+6:45 = 15:45 hours, versus the current 6 rounds of 16 hours... It's just more inviting to new players, an easier barrier of entry, and a better top 8 break.

That's not a bad idea, but I think you're missing a key point about 40k events. 40k isn't Magic, people aren't going to events just to make the finals and win. They go to play against new opponents, see cool armies, enjoy the general convention atmosphere, etc. I'd guess that beyond a small number of ultra-competitive players, people would rather have additional time for their games than try to fit 4 in a day just so one loss doesn't knock you out of contention. I'd go as far as to guess that something like 75% of the people who attended the LVO championships this year had no actual expectation or intention of actually making the top 8, myself included.

First of all, can I has yo' list and placing for the data base?

Second of all, Magic is very much the same for most people, in fact I'm guessing something like 3000 people at that event didn't expect to get to the top 8, but I'm sure it helped a lot to feel like you have at least a shot of making day 2 until you lose three games, which takes quite a while. I don't generally go to win the event, I went hoping to well day 2 at best, which only something like 400 people make out of 4000, but that only requires going X-2 day one. Trust me, even if you don't go to an event to win, you get really pumped when you're looking at it and you might just make it after a few rounds, when you still have that buffer, and you just feel awesome. That's the carrot on a stick that grows events, that little bit of hope that you might just be the X-2 that makes it, or maybe the X-1-1, or even if you just place in prize which is paid out to at least the top 64 in magic.

I mean it would be insane to go into an event with thousands of people and truly expect to win it, but the more rounds you have, the more chances you have of playing games you can win. Even if you think of it as just going for fun, right now if one round in the day is simply bad for you 33% of your day's event is just scrapped, whereas in Magic, it's ok if you lose a round to something bad, you'll always have more. Just imagine how it must feel to be Nick Nanavati, you win round one with 6 points so you're already at a bad start and then have a bad game two, you're pretty much out of the tournament. I'm not saying he was the only one wronged in that, but the impact of a single game going in that poor of a manner feels a whole lot worse when there are 6 rounds instead of 8 rounds.

The impact of the mental aspect of having so few rounds in so many days, should really be considered. Here's another thing to consider, if you make day 1 hell day, as in it's 5 rounds of 2:15 hour games, that can in fact draw in a lot of people who don't expect to win the event. It's a lot easier to look at something like the LVO, plan to attend day 1 for the super hardcore gaming and get it all out then, and then drop for day 2 when you scrub out and go have fun in Vegas. That's a major draw to a lot of these two day Magic events, you burn out day one and then have fun where ever your traveled to on day 2 when you didn't make it. Also you can totally have day 1 be those 5 painful rounds, then day 2 is a total of 3 rounds, which are now shorter in time, meaning you free up more time for players who do play day 2 to have fun in Vegas. I'm completely serious, letting people get their fill of 40k in day 1 if they so plan, can go a long way to attracting newer more relaxed players. Magic does much the same in that day 1 is like 10 rounds and day 2 is 6 rounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarkLink wrote:

 Tinkrr wrote:
So basically their growth goal is "if you lose or tie a round, you're out of contention for top 8."?

That's a super bleak prospect for players, and can be horrifyingly demoralizing :/. You really should aim for a buffer of 1-2 losses for players, as it creates a lot of motivation. I mean that's why in Magic you have the "0-2 drop" bracket, because you're not necessarily out of contention at 0-2 but you're so close to it that you might as well drop and play side events as it's better over all EV. More so, in Magic, events have a day 2 qualifier if they're large enough, so you can go X-2 and make day 2, which you need to qualify for and it's usually only like 200-300 players.

They're trying to build an actual, genuine, competitive tournament league, not run a kindergarten soccer league with participation trophies for everyone. If you go to compete, you need to accept that if you want to win, you need to, y'know, win. If you go to a tournament to purely have fun and not care about winning, then you need to expect that you probably won't take top 8.

Moreover, this is not magic. In magic, luck of the draw means even a good player with a good deck can lose purely on luck, far more frequently than in 40k. Magic events need to be designed to allow enough rounds to accomodate that. 40k is much less susceptible to this, and due to the length of the games it's impracticle to have a sufficient number of rounds to run it like a mafic tournament. Magic is a poor comparison in that regard.

We're not talking about participation trophies, we're talking about making it an actual competitive sport where one bad game based on luck doesn't knock you out completely. The less rounds, the more luck impacts the tournament.

Yes, the game with countless dice rolls on both sides, all kinds of random abilities and conditions, and so forth, is less random than the game where the only random aspect is what you draw and then have full decision making after that. I always enjoy how condescending you are, so please, let me roll for the mana cost of my Lightning Bolt, then roll for how much damage it deals to you, and now you can roll for how much damage you negate. Seriously, the random factor in magic is significantly less over three games per round in comparison to 40k.

With 2:15 hour games you can manage 4 rounds a day.

We could do 30 min rounds and have 20 rounds a day with plenty of time for lunch, too. But 40k plays at certain point sizes, and those point sizes necessitate minimum time limits. The format used in 40k events is dictated by practicality, not by what magic tournaments do.

@Tinkrr

You must be new to competitive 40k as a concept, which is no big deal. It is not possible to run double elimination 40k tournaments unless you extended out the entire event another day or two, the game takes too long. Every major event runs on essentially a single elimination format. It's just the way it is. The math on it is super simple, just take a look at any single elimination tournament bracket format. It's nothing new.

That's why we have Best Of awards as it gives you something to fight it out for if you aren't in the hunt to win it all.

Battle Points is an alternative that theoretically allows you to lose a game and stay in the hunt but it also encourages a very brutal style of play that turns many players off, and you can have situations where someone can go into the final game already having won the event. Swiss, single elimination has risen to the top as the preferred format because it works. And, as you will almost never have a full bracket, there is always at least a few folks that make it into the finals without a perfect score. It's actually more forgiving that it looks on paper. Perfect example, LVO this year had a single undefeated player going into the finals. The more of a gap between where you are and the top end attendance of the bracket, the more players that make the cut without a perfect record.

And we used to run 4 round days, it sucked, honestly. Too much 40k. The current system is what we've arrived at after years of trial and error. Of course it is not perfect, but it's come out of a lot of practice as the most enjoyed format.

And Sean is correct, while extremely rare, you can get a situation where both players tie the binary tertiary point. However, it almost never occurs.

So here's a question then, what happens two years down the line when you do hit that 512 number?

They gak their pants than immediately hire hobos to make a bunch of terrain.