Sucks to be the bubble boy.

You won a regional though. lol. I've still not hit top four. In my regionals, I am 11-7 in all games, 7-2 in my last two regionals. And still no top 4 lol. I will make a campaign to be the best minis player to never get a top four in a regional. :D

Ask anyone there - I was not happy to get the first round bye. I hate getting byes. I'd rather play every game.

Believe me, Christian - I feel for you. I have barely missed the GenCon top 8 three times now. Beating someone who made the top 8 twice.

My squad has a really hard time with squads that can out-active, have a large movement breaker (lancer, intuition) and/or a ranged defense (especially the uber ranged defense - energy shield), and can bring in a Muun.
In other words, separatists.

I honestly think I could have beat any other squad there.

So it could also be argued that I was unlucky to face my worst matchup (Christians squad - practically the perfect counter to mine)

You could say I was unlucky to get the bye.

But all you can control in this game is how you play. Not the dice, not the matchups, not the tiebreakers. I am very concious of always having squads that I believe can achieve 3 pt wins everytime.

If you don't get all 3 pt wins, then you need to go undefeated.

There are very powerful squads out there that don't consistently get 3pt wins. IG swarms, Weir with no speeder, etc. Very tough, but they play too slow.

Part of a squad going all the way is being concious of this.

Swiss is an imperfect system. Especially with lower numbers of players. A 4 round tournament really doesn't sift through enough to be entirely accurate with places 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc.

In fact Swiss bracketing is designed to do 1 thing well - find a winner get to an undefeated as quickly as possible. It does this very well.

We have kind of a goofy system. We start with one bracketing system, then switch to another for the top 4 (or 8).

You have to play well all around all day to make the top 8 in a larger tournament, and perhaps get a little lucky. In a smaller tournament you need a little of both, or go undefeated.

Then - it's different in the top 4 (or 8). It's often about match-ups and luck. In a way it's kind of unfair to have someone go all through Swiss undefeated, and then have them LOSE do to someone else's luck or a perfect counter-squad matchup. And THAT scenario has happened to me multiple times in regionals (yes, I'd be into the double digits for regional wins otherwise).

Unfortunately, Christian didn't go undefeated (though he spanked me). Nor did he get all three pt victories. That's 2 strikes against him. If he had done EITHER of those, he would have made the top four. People are overlooking the LOSS. He lost once, AND got an incomplete victory.

He probably did "deserve" to be in the top 4, but it doesn't matter with the system we have. With the imperfect system we have - there is only one thing that can't be argued - and that is that Weeks deserved to win. He went undefeated in Swiss and the finals.

Believe me, I know how frustrating it is. I had a chance to go all the way this year if I had slipped into the top 8 at GenCon (I had already beat 1 of them, and matched up favorably against most of the squads) but I got 9th. The system was accurate where it ranked me, because I had 11 pts and lost to Weeks who had beat me. Had I got 3 pts in my final match, I would have gone instead of Weeks, even though he beat me. And I bet he would have acknowledged that though it would suck, it would be correct. And the only thing under his control that he could have changed would have been NOT LOSING 2 MATCHES, and NOT GETTING A 2 PT WIN.

I'm not getting down on anyone here, I am quite empathetic of the situation. I have had to deal with it quite a bit myself. These are conclusions I have come to and it's the framework you have to deal with. These are the rules, (and I think they are best for the game we have), so you need to construct teams and play in a way that gives you the best advantage within those rules.

Christian you did have a great squad and played great. I have no doubt you will place at a regional this year.

Seeing as Daniels build will probably be a common one my suggestion is to tweak your build to find a way to turn it into a three point win. You don't want to have a squad that can't score three point wins on common things.

Yep, then I would of had 9th place. It came down to head to head between us and thankfully (for me anyway :)) I won that match.