I wouldn't call 18-14 a tiebreaker, but that's just me. If it's 18-18, the tiebreaker is the player with a piece closest to the center of the map.

Last year, the playoff game between Skybuck and OR Echanis was similarly low-scoring. I think Bill managed to kill a single piece of Jack's in the entire game, and then he sat still in gambit for the win. The fact is that right now, nobody has any real incentive to eliminate his opponent's entire squad in a *playoff* game. As long as you're not stalling or slow-playing, you can legitimately win by killing a single Ugnaught and locking your opponent out. After winning both his quarterfinal and semifinal matches this way in the Championship last year, I remember Bill saying that he was totally willing to look at changing the victory conditions for playoff games to prevent this sort of thing in the future, but that as long as things are the way they are now, what he did was legal. He was right. The hard thing here, however, is finding a way to create true incentive for players to fully engage each other (which is very risky, and apt to lose you the game if you're not careful) in a playoff game. Maybe one solution might be that in the Semis and Finals, the player in the match who had scored the most points in his previous game (ie, Quarters or Semis) gets to automatically win the map roll (or get a +8 bonus on the roll or something). That seems like a decent incentive.

TJ: yes, winning with a score that hasn't reached the build total is technically called a tie breaker. Neither player has "won" (ie, full defeat or reaching the build-total) and so it's a tie, and the score is the breaker.

I did not relish losing with out a fight but the matchup simply wasn't going to go the smash and shot route against the Rebels. As I said, if I had aggressively ran my pilots up the tempo control would have just killed me quicker. The matchup had a great deal to do with what happened in our quarterfinal match.

It's not exciting by an long stretch but it is mentally challenging, it was 7:30 on Saturday night after three straight days of well let's be honest partying late and rising early; so speaking for myself I wasn't probably as sharp as I was in Swiss. Neverthess I gave it my best shot and I came up a bit short this go round. What I'm trying to say is the game situation can be very different based a number of factors beyond the opponent and the matchup.

I can't say enough how happy I am to see a Thon squad in the top 8. :) Congrats to everyone. The only thing I will say as a person not present at the con this year to watch an 18-14 game is this. Long ago every championship level game would end like this. Or at least 70-80%. We never intended to make it a complete change over that would fully eliminate tie breaker wins. I don't think there is any system that could do this anyway. I have absolutely no problem with a single game going that route, we've always said that some match ups dictate conservative play in a championship format. What we wanted to do is make that the narrow exception rather than the rule that it once was in Star Wars Minis. Think 2007-9 when championship games were regularly being won 35-25 all gambit points scored by reinforcement pieces.

Oh and had I been able to attend this year I was thinking of running an old school B&B squad for fun. So I'm not sure I'd have been much of a factor. 2 years of comprehensive exams, exam prep, TAing, and dissertation research hasn't left a ton of time for Bill to play minis.

Interesting, but I think it would be entirely unrealistic, unless you dropped the time limit for playoff games (which I think is a bad idea).

I agree, but it does nothing to address the point of the playoff games ending with less then 20 points.

but you do make a good point with bringing faster paced squads to make sure at the least you get 1 point.

Anyone have links to Tim or Ben's squads? I'll add them to the first post if so.

thereisnotry: You posted a link, but I think the squad is still private because I couldn't follow the link.

I doubt you're in the minority by thinking that we should be playing for 200pts the whole time. I agree, and I tend to prefer squads that reward an aggressive playstyle. I dislike low-scoring games, where true engagement never happens.

The 3/2pt win system works well for the Swiss rounds (though I agree that the 3/2/1 system would be better)...but in the playoffs, all of the incentives for a 3pt win are entirely nullified. We need to add some kind of incentive for true engagement in playoff games, or it won't happen. If I'm playing in the playoffs and I can guarantee myself a win by being more cagey, rather than possibly losing by going all-out, I guarantee you that I'll hold back at least a little every time. Now, if you start to add more incentive for full engagement again, I'll be much more likely to take bigger risks.


As I suggested earlier, one option is to give a +8 bonus (or whatever) to the Map Roll to any player that achieved a full victory in the playoff round prior to the current one. So for example, if I'm playing in the semifinals and I had a full victory in the quarterfinals, while my new opponent had a tie-breaker win in the quarterfinals, then I would have a +8 bonus to my Map Roll. In the playoffs, those rolls can be very important. [Furthermore, I suggest that if neither player had achieved a full victory, then the player who scored more points in the previous match would get a +4 bonus instead. And if both players achieved a full victory, then they both get the +8 bonus...thus cancelling each other out.]