Tournament Finals Structure Promotes Stalling

I would imagine I would not be thrilled with a 2/2/1 split in the finals being given a random die roll to determine who wins. Not to say it's ideal that you can know you will win by engineering a 2/2/1, but it's interesting.

Of course, could limit the random winner thingy to only games that time out, then you only need to worry about 1.5/1.5/.5 or .5s or something really weird (Life Boon, Withdrawing). So, you get people to finish games.

I should try to figure out a way to build more aggro decks given my personal limitations just so my games end. But, I've probably forgotten how to play such decks, so I'd just lose more often than I already do.

Earlier performance in previous rounds is a solid way of breaking ties.

It also promotes maximizing your VPs in the preliminary rounds making you less eager to try to maneuver your friends/ decks you deem suitable for finals opposition to the finals.

Exactly what problem are we trying to fix here?

The TWDA currently lists 54 decks from 2018 with the vp count from the final table. The breakdown is

5vp: 5 decks
4vp: 18 decks
3vp: 15 decks
2.5vp: 4 decks (still a GW deciding the winner)
2vp: 3 decks
1.5vp: 8 decks

For 2017, the TWDA includes 65 decks with the final VP score, and in 46 of those the winner got 3vps or more in the final, and only 7 decks are listed where the winner had less than 2 vps (people can extract the detailed breakdown themselves).

This of course excludes those tournaments for which the TWD entry does not include the deck list, the last couple of reports which have not yet been published as part of the TWDA and all the tournaments that don't generate a TWDA entry, but the easily available data hardly seems indicative of a major issue.

drnlmza wrote:

Exactly what problem are we trying to fix here?

This of course excludes those tournaments for which the TWD entry does not include the deck list, the last couple of reports which have not yet been published as part of the TWDA and all the tournaments that don't generate a TWDA entry, but the easily available data hardly seems indicative of a major issue.

That is great data. What we would need to see in order to truly determine if we have a "problem" is the seed of the winning player.

My hypothesis is: A majority of #1 seed players win tournaments. I believe the benefit of choosing your seat combined with the tie-breaking means an overwhelming advantage for the first seed. This advantage can be reduced and still benefit the best player without making 1st seed a much higher incidence of victory.

drnlmza wrote:

This of course excludes those tournaments for which the TWD entry does not include the deck list, the last couple of reports which have not yet been published as part of the TWDA and all the tournaments that don't generate a TWDA entry, but the easily available data hardly seems indicative of a major issue.

But we have the Archon files for all of these events.

DJHedgehog wrote:

My hypothesis is: A majority of #1 seed players win tournaments. I believe the benefit of choosing your seat combined with the tie-breaking means an overwhelming advantage for the first seed. This advantage can be reduced and still benefit the best player without making 1st seed a much higher incidence of victory.

Using the raw Archon data, we could easily determine this.

Ankha, is it possible to get a dump of all of the Archon data or the data as it exists in the ratings system and answer these questions and concerns with stats?

Isn’t it natural to assume that the player with the best skill/deck is both top seed and the winner?
The statistic isn’t very useful on its own.
What would be of interest is whether that player won in a tie-breaker or by VP.