Tournament Setups

[sann0638]

A short summary of how BB tournaments are set up - feedback welcome!
http://www.thenaf.net/2016/02/rules-and ... urnaments/

[Joemanji]

A few notes:

Tournaments are more often referred to as 105/130 than the 1050/1300 example you gave.

Identical star Players are not usually allowed to face each other. The standard BB rulebook states that neither plays, and as far as I know my NAFC rules last year were one of the first to errata this to 'both play'.

Your description of a 'resurrection' tournament seems to assume some knowledge of what this is. No mention of not using the post-game sequence for example. For a newbie (the only reasonable target for this brief article) a proper description might be useful. Copy and paste from the NAFC if you like.

Your tier list is not necessarily standard, I have seen just as many events with four tiers. By including this without qualification you imply that it is somehow the norm, which I'm not sure is true.

Your description of scoring doesn't include the most sensible one (2/1/0 broken by Strength of Schedule). This is increasingly becoming standard and even encouraged by the NAF. On a personal note I'm uncomfortable with your implication that bonus points are somehow "more transparent", because I think they are bloody stupid. I'm surprised at this one from a maths teacher!

[lunchmoney]

Identical star Players are not usually allowed to face each other. The standard BB rulebook states that neither plays, and as far as I know my NAFC rules last year were one of the first to errata this to 'both play'.

I've always allowed twin stars to play against each other.

Your description of a 'resurrection' tournament seems to assume some knowledge of what this is. No mention of not using the post-game sequence for example. For a newbie (the only reasonable target for this brief article) a proper description might be useful. Copy and paste from the NAFC if you like.

Plus it might be nice to note where the term "resurrection" comes from (which I assume was the Blood Bowl Resurrection tournament in GW HW, happy to be corrected on that front).

[Itchen Masack]

That's weird. I've not seen many, if any tourneys referred to in the 105/130 format. Maybe its beacuse I hang about in the less desirable places that use 1050/1300 or even the 1,050,000 (which has always struck me as a pointless waste of zeros)

Also very few, if any, of the tourneys I've been to stop the same star player being used by both teams. Maybe i need to get out more

[lunchmoney]

Your description of scoring doesn't include the most sensible one (2/1/0 broken by Strength of Schedule). This is increasingly becoming standard and even encouraged by the NAF.

"most sensible" is open to debate.

Tournaments are more often referred to as 105/130 than the 1050/1300 example you gave.

I honestly couldn’t say which is more prevalent, but I prefer 105/130 etc.

Your tier list is not necessarily standard, I have seen just as many events with four tiers. By including this without qualification you imply that it is somehow the norm, which I'm not sure is true.

Yep, 4 tiers have even been spotted by one of the podcast people viewtopic.php?f=34&t=42223

[Darkson]

Don't know if it has never come up, or just the participants never bothered to ask me, but I'd have always allowed it as well.

[Edit] Regarding duplicate Stars.

[Joemanji]

Your description of scoring doesn't include the most sensible one (2/1/0 broken by Strength of Schedule). This is increasingly becoming standard and even encouraged by the NAF.

"most sensible" is open to debate.

Most things are. I would win.

[Joemanji]

Don't know if it has never come up, or just the participants never bothered to ask me, but I'd have always allowed it as well.

[Edit] Regarding duplicate Stars.

I've seen people allow it before (because it intuitively makes sense). But I don't think I've often seen it written down in a rulespack. And without that, I've often seen people default to the rulebook 'neither plays' without even consulting a ref.

[Loki]

Don't know if it has never come up, or just the participants never bothered to ask me, but I'd have always allowed it as well.

[Edit] Regarding duplicate Stars.

I've seen people allow it before (because it intuitively makes sense). But I don't think I've often seen it written down in a rulespack. And without that, I've often seen people default to the rulebook 'neither plays' without even consulting a ref.

Interesting point, BUBBA would also fall into above description i.e. as TO I would allow 'Twin Stars' but do not explicitly include in tournament info... off to change that now

[lunchmoney]

I've seen people allow it before (because it intuitively makes sense). But I don't think I've often seen it written down in a rulespack. And without that, I've often seen people default to the rulebook 'neither plays' without even consulting a ref.

Good point. I'm going to make sure all my future rules packs have that mentioned. Cheers

[Purplegoo]

There are always going to be things that jar with personal experience in what is a very short summary of a widely varied and movable feast. You are going to be open to ‘well, at my tournament, this happens’; specific examples are always going to ride against a (perhaps overly) concise, out of context generalisation. Whist I have generally heard team build TVs described as ‘one oh five’ or ‘one ten’, if someone else used ‘one point one’ or ‘one thousand one hundred’, then I’d know what they meant, and my world would not stop spinning. The semantics are pretty trivial. Joe’s builds in areas such as this, star players, etc. are helpful, I’m sure a man of his extensive travel and years as NTO / NAFC organiser give him an insight few others have.

The area that really irritates me (in general, not just here) is tournament scoring systems. Scoring at NAF events is my absolute personal bugbear, and something with a NAF badge on it not giving an example I see as the ‘correct’ version in this summary makes me grind my teeth a little. I’d rather this piece not steer new TOs down the all too common path of ropey systems.

We all attend BB events to have a laugh, meet friends and have fun, no-one spends time and money travelling to win first and foremost. That is a given, and I wanted to get in before anyone else did. However, these things are ‘tournaments’, so something as trivial as getting the scoring system that determines final placings right should be pretty easy, and isn’t really an area for flair or innovation. Keep it simple and correct.

Blood Bowl is not football. A win should not be valued more highly than double a tie. We have no spectators to please (Jimmy Hill be damned), and the mechanics of our strategy game are often not suited to pressing for a win over a tie if behind at the half (for instance). Indeed, scoring systems that value a win as more valuable than two ties can very easily encourage coaches to play badly, which is counter intuitive.

Bonus points are a plague. Again, rewarding poor play (pushing for 3-0 at the expense of consolidating a victory) or rewarding a good Swiss draw twice (woo! I’ve drawn 16 Snotlings, I’ll win. Woo! Not only will I win, I will collect loads of bonus points equivalent to a whole tie, when those two guys playing out a fantastically coached 0-0 will just get a bad draw’s worth of points) is the sort of thing that shouldn’t happen.

BPs are easily dismissed with a wave of the hand as just a bit of fun, but all too often they impact tournament results more than they should. Rather than adding transparency, we are too commonly left in a situation where the proper tournament winner on 5/1/0 is awaiting a handshake, only for the guy on 4/2/0 (or worse) that killed everything to become the shock winner, to the surprise of everyone following the top tables. Whilst no-one goes home and punches a wall, everyone looks at each other and says ‘well, that’s a bit crap, sorry buddy. See you in a month or so?’ and the winner is left ashen faced. It’s perverse that we go out of our way at tournaments to crown incorrect winners. Nothing in a rulespack is really sacred; skills packages, tiering systems, gold to spend should be, and are, all up for grabs. But intuitively, the scoring system should be the one thing that is bloody sacred. Bonus points for sendings off, indeed.

2/1/0 / SoS tie breakers is very slowly creeping in as ‘standard’ at both flagship events and some smaller tournaments. Like democracy, it’s not perfect, but it’s the best system we’ve got by some distance. I can accept 1000 /500/0 with a point or two for TDs and CAS if you must, but why meddle with something so simple and elegant?

So, er, TL:DR, at least put the best system in, like?

[Joemanji]

Excellent summary Phil. To back that up, here is a brief argument I used when discussing this with a prospective TO :

I also tend to think bonus points in general only over-reward good luck rather than good play.

For example :

A) Coach A draws Ogres with his Wood Elves. He win 6-0, and his reward for a fortunate draw is an easy win and a boost to his tiebreaker.

B) Coach B draws an amazing coach using Wood Elves with his Dwarfs. The Wood Elves score in 2 turns, and the Dwarfs only option is to play for a 2-1 win. Putting the ball in early to search for 3-1 would be suicide, as the Wood Elves will just score again easily. Despite playing against an amazing opponent with the best team in the game, Coach B manages to secure his 2-1 win.

C) Coach C plays a mirror match with his Orcs. He scores in his drive because his opponent snake eyes a GFI. He turns his opponent over in the second half because of a quad skulls. He wins 2-0 without it being much of a game.

Who is more deserving of bonus points?

As there is no objective way to award bonus points for playing well rather than being lucky, my opinion is that they are best left out of the mix. They tend to just offer double rewards for good luck or random events.

The other big argument is that if (as someone is sure to claim) they only go to tournaments to have a gay old time and don't care who wins, why do they care if there are bonus points or not? If you split up tournament goers into two loose groups of 'competitors' and 'funsters', then the best system is the one that the competitors like because the funsters don't care about who wins anyway (or so they claim). The best system is the one that makes the most people happy. Something like 2/1/0 with SOS fits the bill best IMO because it brings the most happiness to all concerned, not because it is somehow more hard nosed or makes the event more competitive in nature. Casualties are still recorded for those who are interested, and every event awards a 'Most CAS' award. So coaches who like to play for that still can.

[RoterSternHochdahl]

Amen!

On top: TDs and CAS can even kill it as tie-breakers. The only disadvantage of SoS is for shorter tournaments with 3 or 4 matches.

[sann0638]

Oof. What an impressive can of worms. Will adjust accordingly!

[lunchmoney]

Oof. What an impressive can of worms. Will adjust accordingly!

The scoring debate has happened before. I see the argument for 2/1/0 (as eloquently put by Mr Goo) and I can see the argument for others. At the end of the day, though, everyone who goes to a tournament (either as a competitor or a funster) should be aware of the scoring system (and tiebreak method) being used. Where would we be if every tourney used the same system?