Tournament Finals and Seating Selection

Khalid1988 wrote:

Bloodartist wrote:

Kushiel wrote:

It's quite strange to me that the climatic finish of a series of VTES games is the one time when the random seating rule of every other VTES game is violated.

Tournament seatings are not random. Archon actually follows a very deterministic table to determine seating out of what I understand is order of registration.

Personally I would much prefer if the seatings were properly random, since it would most likely create less issues.

Not true. The order players are inserted into Archon can be randomized, thus making the seating on first round random. The rest of the rounds follow Archon's matrix of ideal swapping of people from table to another based on number of rounds and amount of players.

Exactly. There are ways to randomize the Archon preliminary registration.

Back at the 2000's when I was a Prince, I noticed that introducing the players in Archon strictly following the order of arrival could be very problematic.
So, I adopted the following procediment:

• 1st - At every tournament that I run, I waited till the majority of players arrived and the limit time for registration (in the first round) have expired.


• 2nd - I get all the players to row D20 or D10 dice. And introduced the players into Archon respecting his respectives dice results.


• 3rd - Any late arrival would be registered observing the order in wich that players made to the tournaments place. And in any case that could not be made a clear distinction. Thase late arrivals would row dices too.

This avoided any attempt of table positions combined between players, that would travel together.
May be that is not the best solution. But worked very well for me through many years. And the players never complained about that.
And to be true. Me and my friends used the dice solution even before we began to play in official tournaments. Was only a matter of returning to the basics as son as the "order of arrival" thing presented a possibility to generate problems.

1st round seatings must be randomised, as per the Archon instructions:

7 Enter all Player information into the "Methuselahs" sheet.
- 'Player #' = From 1 to N, where N is the number of players in the tournament. Assign a random number to each of the players. This number will be used throughout this program to track the players' ratings, monitor the players' tournament ranking, and determine table seating positions. This is a required field.

The remaining rounds should follow the best seating recomendations - some of the reasons why this is a good idea have been exposed in Ankha's post. The odds of getting a random seating that conforms to all of the seating recommendations are actually pretty low (like 1 in several thousands low...), that is why the optimal seatings tables have been pre-calculated into the Archon.

Yes, this actually means that any player can know who he will face in the 2nd and 3rd rounds just by learning the full seatings for the first round. But this is a minor issue compared to the ones that the optimal seatings solve, and it should not matter anyway because you will have to play-to-win in every round regardless of your results in previous/latter rounds.

Now in regards to the topic, I'm conflicted - on one hand I think the current seating procedure for finals gives a big advantage to the top seed, a disadvantage to players who do not know/have not played other finalist decks, it's confusing to the players (eg: only the top 3 seeds actually have any choice in the seating order), and it may be contributing to finals timing out.
OTOH it's a cool metagame for the finalists, and a random seating risks putting the top seed in a unwinnable position, which seems unfair.
OTOOH, the nature of VtES and random seatings in previous rounds mean that luck contributed to the top seeds getting to that position, so why should they get a further advantage in the final?

Maybe it would be best if we just do away with finals altogether...

Pick one:

Players pick seats based on ranking

or

Ranking breaks ties

Please not both. Huge advantage to higher seed which is often separated by tournament points.

I agree with skimflux. Its not and easy issue to solve.
Back when I was trying to help players who wanted to be competitive, I stressed the following points from my years of VtES (when I was fortunate enough to play in high level play):

- Many times the Final is the 4th game in a row, after hours and hours of exhausting mental exercise, one or two meal breaks, lateral talks, etc..
Many times in noisy atmospheres.
Players cannot be in peak mental and emotional stamina.
This can only be changed by players practicing long game sessions. Or going to a lot of tournaments (not easy in small communities).
Answer: play more.

-Finals have a particular context that, for the many reasons that were said here and in the Facebook thread, makes players be more careful and conservative.
We all have personal feelings towards this, but I think there are MANY other aspects of the game we can focus our effort.
I was mocked in my country for trying to play the "final seating game" that the sweds created. Ignorance is a factor here as well.
I think the answer here is for players to be aware of the particularities and be ready for the changes a Final requires, both in play-style, as in seating choices.
Should decklists be public?
We can build them easily with Amaranth.

I think if we provide certain sub-par strategies with better tools, the game will speed up and that will also help to speed up Finals as a result.

DJHedgehog wrote:

Pick one:

Players pick seats based on ranking

or

Ranking breaks ties

Please not both. Huge advantage to higher seed which is often separated by tournament points.

Agree completely, with the caveat that I think tiebreaking is a much better reward for seeding than choice of seats.

A question for people who like the current system: Do you see it as a feature of this system that players whose games in prior rounds ended quickly get an advantage over those whose games didn't (regardless of how well they did in those games)?

Kushiel wrote:

DJHedgehog wrote:

Pick one:

Players pick seats based on ranking

or

Ranking breaks ties

Please not both. Huge advantage to higher seed which is often separated by tournament points.

Agree completely, with the caveat that I think tiebreaking is a much better reward for seeding than choice of seats.

A question for people who like the current system: Do you see it as a feature of this system that players whose games in prior rounds ended quickly get an advantage over those whose games didn't (regardless of how well they did in those games)?

In what way? Being able to watch other tables and effectively scout decks is some advantage, but every round beyond the first has that happening. Also, the 5 finalists typically discuss seating and what each is playing while choosing seats, which is legal as long as all 5 players are present.

Of course, due to current rules, stealth bleed decks in finals often stand a greater chance of entering as top seed, thus an outcome where 3 different players get vps and the game times out typically goes better for them than some Carna wall at third seed. But that's just by VP allocation, outside of tables going quickly by happenstance.