X-Wing Regionals Warm-up

This post was intended to publish a couple of weeks ago, but writing it proved more time intensive than I expected.

March 10th a group of us from Dark Star are going to the Regional X-Wing Event at Kirton Games in Crediton. Being stand-up guys, they organized a warmup event February 10th, and a few of us went to that. Nine of us, in fact. We figured it would be great practice against a wider field, and we were right.

There set up is pretty good, and they stream whichever game is at table 1, right the way through to the finals. They do this for most of their events, which makes their Twitch channel worth checking out. Round 1 saw me put on table 1, giving me the first feature match. I figure this is an opportunity to go through the game afterwards and look at what I did, what mistakes I made and where I went right with an observation of my decisions as they happened. I rarely do full reports on here as I never take enough notes nor write the post with the game full enough in my memory.

The List I Took

•  Colonel Vessery, Ruthlessness, TIE/D, Tractor Beam, Twin Ion Engine MK2
• Countess Ryad, Push The Limit, TIE/x7, Twin Ion Engine MK2
• Nu Squadron Pilot, OS-1 Arsenal Loadout, Long Range Scanners, Harpoon Missiles

Vessery double-taps to reduce the defender's agility, pushing damage to other ships with Ruthlessness and messing with their positioning where possible. Ryad is a solid ace, providing target locks for Vessery and being a killer in the late game. The Nu pilot is a flanker/distraction, with Harpoons to help it hit hard.

Greg Jones' List

• Dengar
• Dalan Oberos
• Jakku Gunrunner

Told you I was terrible at taking notes/memory. Which is a shame as his list deserves to be seen. Some nice tricks and heavy hitters. He was also a gentleman to play against.

The Video

The video is here; https://www.twitch.tv/videos/227563585 
I'll be timestamping and making comments from this point on.

00:47:23
 Here is where the footage starts. We are just setting up and he is looking through my list. I've only flown against a Kimogila once before this game, so I'm not sure what to expect.
00:50:10
Here is where Obstacle placement starts. He's brought Debris, so I try and position them down one flank. Asteroids make the Tractor Beam better against small based ships, as if I can move them onto one, it can deny their shot that turn. It's also more likely to do damage. Mostly though, I want the Obstacles to be densely packed enough to allow shenanigans, but loose enough to be an enticing space to dogfight in.
00:51:54
I start deploying my squad. I put the Star Wing at the top as a flanker and the Defenders together at the bottom. He puts the Gunrunner in the centre (using Hyperwave Comm Scanner to set up after me) and the other two ships to joust my Star Wing.
00:53:30
My thought here is to bank the Star Wing in towards the centre of the map, and put the Target Lock on Denger to attempt to push him away. The Quadjumper movement wasn't a concern, as I was moving after it. This meant it's ability to Tractor as an action wouldn't come into play for a couple of rounds yet. Meanwhile I move the Defenders up the flank, intending to turn them in next round.
00:56:10
I hadn't anticipated such an aggressive move from Dengar, especially the Barrell Roll to get into range. I should have moved more cautiously with the Star Wing, and he may have chased it, allowing the Defenders to get behind him.
00:58:15
"I guess". I considered not shooting Denger, because of the retaliation shot he would get. However, if I didn't fire the Harpoons now, I might not get another shot for a few rounds, and I had to get the Star Wing out of trouble to do so. Of course, it doesn't hit. That's been a trend both in my testing and during this event. The Star Wing has done far more damage with its main guns than with the ordnance, even with reloading.
01:01:11
Obviously, my hope here was the Slam clearing Dengar, so I can start to turn around and come back for a fresh pass, once the Defenders have gotten stuck in. What I got was a block. Ryad has a shot on the Quadjumper and so does Vessery. I use these shots to put a hole in the Quadjumper and start pinging off Dengar's Shields. That's why I don't move the Gunrunner.
01:08:53
With the Star Wing stressed from a crit, I figure my best move is to do a 1 straight, which will clear the stress and hopefully leave Dengar bumped again. The Defenders will move into firing positions and hopefully I'll have some good shots this round.
01:10:51
Confession time - I had completely forgotten that the Quadjumper could reverse, so this caught me off-guard. It turned my planned bump into a harmless flyby by tractoring the Star Wing before it could move. Then, the Asteroid kills the Nu Squadron Pilot. This does allow me to now 180 Ryad  though. I Barrel Roll to get a better vector through the Debris next round and have a shot if Dengar comes too fast into the middle.
01:15:11
I wasn't expecting the Sloop from Dengar, but it makes sense given where the Kimogila went. I also wasn't expecting the Kimogila to fire Harpoons at Ryad rather than the Bullseye Arc shot against Vessery.
01:17:00
I hit the Kimogila with the Tractor beam and consider my options. Ruthlessness puts another damage on Dengar, and will so again if I leave the Kimogila where it is. Likewise, I can put it onto the Asteroid. This will give it an extra defense die for the follow-up shot but if that hits, it's another damage on Dengar. That would be 4 Shields stripped without firing a shot. It would also make the Kimogila's next move be through the obstacle, risking more damage and denying it an action.
Instead, I pull it forward, hoping to give Ryad a shot, but failing. This does allow the follow-up shot to pop the Gunrunner with Ruthlessness though.
01:19:15
Well, Ryad goes across the Debris, denying her actions this turn and she's pointing the wrong way. Vessery K-turns over her and I was hoping for the minimal damage this round. The Kimogila K-turns as well though, giving Vessery a shot, and Dengar lands on the Asteroid. Triple Evade saves Ryad from the Kimogila's shot, and Vessery lives it limping with a Major Hull Breach. Ruthlessness deals 2 damage to Ryad, leaving her on 2 Hull
01:24:23
Now the typical K-turn round from both Defenders, tokening up as Dengar should move in between them. Dalan hard turns away from the fight and Dengar, having predicted the obvious move from Ryad, moves in to finish her off.
01:26:29
Dengar shoots Vessery at range 1, which is followed by my second consecutive triple Evade roll. It was a fine idea, as a retaliation shot probably finishes off Ryad, but my dice disagree. Vessery then hits Dengar with both shots, using Ruthlessness to finish off Dalan who is still in range. The primary weapon's Ruthlessness puts Ryad to 1 Hull though.
Ryad finishes Dengar off, and the retaliation looks fatal. Obviously, I roll triple Evade for the third time in a row, giving me a comfortable win.

Takeaways

I need to up my knowledge/retention of what other ships are capable of. Being caught out by the Jakku Gunrunner was inexcusable. I need to catch up on purchases so I can sit down and look at the Kimogila, but the Quadjumper is a ship I have flown a few times and reversing is its unique feature.

I should also have flown the Star Wing more cautiously when Greg deployed to joust it. I didn't expect such aggressive flying and this compounded with the lack of memory of the Quadjumper to cost me a ship. Luckily, the Defenders are solid, especially against ships with low agility, and pulled it back.

Event Result

I went 2-2 and came 15th out of 24. My next two rounds were against two of the Dark Star lads, both of whom made the top 4 cut and my final round was against an interesting list comprised of T-70 X-Wings. A middle of the road result. Meanwhile, Dark Star put 2 players in the top 4, one of whom won the whole event.

Going Forward to Regionals

I'm enjoying the Defenders, but struggling to find a decent third ship. The Star Wing is interesting to fly, but I end up doing more damage with its main gun than I do with the Harpoons, which is frustrating when I'm paying 6 points to have multiple shots in a game. I need to figure out what to fill the remaining 24 points with, and time is running out. I will find something and hopefully perform better than I did at the Warmup.

Thanks go out to James Fox at Kirton Games for running the event and Pete Yarwood for driving us down there. I also found being on stream for a game valuable for analysing how I fly ships and seeing what alternate decisions I could have made.
I can't wait to play in the Regionals. They are currently expecting 105 players, 14 of whom are Dark Star players. Hoping for good results for all the team, placing as many of us as possible in the Top 16 cut. I guess we will see on the day.

Let's Go, Dark Star Marauders!

Net-Decking

A contentious point for many players of competitive games, today I'm going to talk about net-decking.

What is Net-Decking?

The most amusing definition I found was on Urban Dictionary

Netdecking

The process of stealing a tournament winning TCG/OCG/CCG decklist from a discussion forum and replicating it. Implies a lack of creativity and desire to do nothing other than win in the player.

Clans are notorious for this, particularly like the lamers who make up the Yu-Gi-Oh clan "g3n3s1s".

Go to any tournament for this type of game and you'll see a lot of it. The winning decks will always have a great deal of cards in common.

by Hino-Kagu-Tsuchi December 20, 2004

 Also referred to as Net-listing for games that don't use cards, it is building your deck/team/army by copying someone else's list from sources found on the internet. This can be from articles or videos talking about the game, or from scouring tournament results. Often, it involves using the complete list but sometimes it's using the majority of the list while adding your own spin either to personalize it, because you think of a better idea or to hide that it's been copied from the internet.

It's a simple process. You watch/read coverage of an event, see something you like the look of and then copy it to try yourself. It was successful and by playing it maybe you can find some success too. you play it against your friend or take it to a local event and are met with disdain. What went wrong?

The Downsides of Net-Decking

Firstly, many people don't like it. There has long been a stigma to Net-decking. It's seen as a crutch, a thing that people do when they care more about winning than they do about fun. It has gained a reputation that it passes on to anyone who does it, in any game.

I've long heard it dates back to the early days of Magic the Gathering. When websites like The Dojo started talking about deck construction and reporting on the decks that did well, the internet was still in its early days. To have access to those lists was seen as giving you an advantage that was considered unfair. Everyone else was trying out different combinations of cards to find out what worked, and you were taking a shortcut.

Deck builders were putting in hard work to find winning decks, and then you were simply copying their product in an effort to copy their results. You wanted their victory without having to put the same amount of time in to earn it. This is the underlying assumption behind the tournament stigma. This creates bad feeling.

Secondly, if it has done well at a tournament, it may be of a power level that doesn't feel welcome at a casual game. Some people are trying out "fun" ideas or less powerful things that they like the flavour of and don't want to face the latest tournament tech.

Tournament winning lists are usually keyed at winning the event by minimising variance, being efficient and limiting the opponent's ability to interact with its game plan. For an opponent just looking to play some cards/push some models around, that doesn't give them what they are looking for. This is an extension of the stigma above but applies to non-tournament games.

While almost everyone plays these style of games to win, a lot of players put their own qualifiers on how they want to win. When these ways are luck-based or inefficient, their matchup with the tournament list becomes a slog that often feels unwinnable, regardless of their actual ability to win the game. This creates bad feeling.

Finally, just because a list won an event, doesn't mean it is going to play itself. There may be tricks and synergies that are important to its performance, but not immediately obvious. Many of these games require in-game decisions that are often complex, and familiarity with your list is a boon.

If you are after tournament success, you will still need to practice with the list. It is clearly doing something to be successful, and you want to work out what that is before you take it to an actual tournament yourself. Likewise, if you want to make changes to the list and put your own spin on it, you need to understand how it works so that your changes don't destroy it from the inside out.

Without this knowledge, the list won't perform as well as expected. It won't produce the results that you want. This creates frustration.

So is Net-Decking bad?

Is it the worst thing a player can do? There are many people that will tell you it is. It has such a stigma across many games that people will deny doing it, even though their list matches the recent big-money winning list 100%. People will berate net-deckers, complain if they enter an event with them and grouse about their existence.

They are entitled to their opinions, but I would say they are wrong.

For the first downside; why is research frowned upon?

I liken Net-Decking to building a desk or cooking a meal. Sure, you could look at every card available to the event, try them out in every possible combination and settle on the deck you want to play that way.  You could also grab some wood and start building a desk with a variety of tools until you find the best techniques to build the desk you want. You could throw various ingredients in a pot and taste-test different mixtures until you find the one that tastes best.

Conversely, you can buy a cookery book and follow a recipe from that. You can research design techniques to make a sturdy desk. You can see what people are playing in events and do well with and follow their tips. We live in a world where rather than doing everything from scratch ourselves we can turn to others for advice, teaching or doing the task for us. Why should list design be any different? Plenty of people like to talk about what they have had success with, and how they got there. People also like absorbing this content and using it as a stepping stone to generate their own success.

There are likewise many people who enjoy making their own lists and forging their own path to victory, with little to no input from others. There are people who enjoy finding success with under-utilized cards/units/models. These are all valid approaches to gaming, and no approach is better than the others. If you are doing it the way you enjoy, then more power to you. The stigma needs to go away, there are so many facets to learn when competing at a game that short-cutting list building doesn't replace all the other things you need to learn to find the success. For most people, these games are hobbies and time is short.

For the second point, the casual game, here is where things get murky. What defines a game as casual rather than competitive. Within these gaming systems, the point is to beat your opponent. Should you not try as hard as possible to do so?

That depends on what your opponent and yourself are expecting from the game. As I said;

"Tournament winning lists are usually keyed at winning the event by minimising variance, being efficient and limiting the opponent's ability to interact with its game plan"

These lists are fine for running in a tournament. You and your opponents are attempting to beat each other, often with prizes on the line, and probably should be running efficient lists and minimising variance. This will often give you the best chance of winning and is the appropriate place for such lists.

These lists are fine for practising for a tournament. Again, you should expect to face such lists and they are what you want the most practice against.

A game to spend an afternoon playing with a friend on the other hand? You need to talk to your friend and discuss what you both want from the game. Maybe they want tournament practice. Maybe they have a list they want to experiment with that either explores a mechanic or a theme of the game.
This probably isn't the best time to use a list that limits their ability to interact or circumvents portions of the game rules. Again, maybe they want to test against that sort of list, but it's always best to talk.

You want to enjoy the game, win or lose, and so do they. If you both have differing expectations for the play experience, then one or more of you are going to come away dissatisfied. Smashing someone in a way that doesn't let them actually play the game won't feel good to them, and if it's a game you are after it won't feel good to you. Your mileage may vary if you are after smashing your opponents like that all the time, but don't be surprised if finding non-tournament opponents becomes difficult.

Sometimes it's good to take your foot off the gas, play a list that's less honed for tournaments and have a game. You may find a new facet to the game that you enjoy. You may even find something underplayed that has become good in the new meta without the majority realizing. And just because you are playing a less powerful list doesn't mean you have to play to lose.

Finally, Net-Decking won't compensate for a lack of fundamentals. As an extreme example; you could take the most powerful list in any game and hand it to someone who doesn't know the rules of the game. Having the tools won't help without the experience of how they work. You need to analyse the list, work out what the synergies are, learn the plays, etc.

Look at the source of the list. Did you pull it from event coverage? Maybe there is an interview with the player who ran it. Did you get it from a website? Maybe it came with a guide to how the list played, and how it was built. Don't just grab the tool, grab the instructions as well.

This is especially important if you are planning on making changes to the list. There are various, valid reasons to make changes. Maybe the meta has changed since the event it won, and you believe it needs to adapt. Maybe you perceive a weakness in the list that you can remove. Maybe you have a favourite card/unit/model that you want to include and you need to find room for it.

Play the original list first. Do the full research. Only by knowing how the list works can you decide what to change. You don't want to remove an innocuous-looking piece only to find it's integral to one of the combos and the other pieces don't work without it.

As a related side note; if you want to do well at a competitive game, you need to know the fundamentals and be good at them. If you aren't getting the success you want, go back and look at them. Maybe it's card sequencing, maybe it's positioning, maybe it's relying on too many low probability events. If you can work out what the problem is, your game will improve.

End the Stigma

Net-Decking shouldn't be ridiculed. It's part of the hobby, especially in competitive games. If you are after a casual game, discuss this with your opponent to avoid dissatisfaction. We all play these games to play these games and enjoy ourselves, we shouldn't be making each other feel bad about the way we choose to play.

Tournament Structure - How I Run My Events

A lot of players I come across don't have a full understanding of the tournament structure when they come to events. Some of this is due to inexperience, but it's often due to not really looking into what's going on.

A lot of tournament systems use what is known as the Swiss-pairings system.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format which features a set number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than in a round-robin tournament. In a Swiss tournament, each competitor (team or individual) does not play every other. Competitors meet one-to-one in each round and are paired using a set of rules designed to ensure that each competitor plays opponents with a similar running score, but not the same opponent more than once. The winner is the competitor with the highest aggregate points earned in all rounds. All competitors play in each round unless there is an odd number of players.

A lot of games use this system for their events;

• Badminton
• Bridge
• Chess
• Curling
• Debates
• Esports
• Go
• Scrabble
• Trading Card Games
• War games

These are just some of the more well-known examples. So, how does it work?

The Swiss System
 

Once you get more than 4 players, it is usually unfeasible to have everyone face everybody else in the event. Time is always a factor in tournaments, both for Organiser logistics and Player endurance. So this system was created for a Chess tournament held in Zurich in 1895, which is where its name comes from. It even has a provision for having a Single Elimination mini-event afterwards to cement a winner.

It also ensures that during the rounds, no player faces the same opponent more than once. Even if they end up matching your record later in the event. The exception is if a top cut is done after the final round. You can totally face someone during the single elimination that you've already faced during the regular rounds. 

How Many Rounds?

The number of rounds that an event should have depends on the event attendance. It uses the Binary Logarithm to determine this. Without getting heavy on the math, it actually gives a perfect number of rounds so that if you reach the maximum number of players for the round limit, only one player will be undefeated at the end of the event.

As you can see from the table above, up to 8 players gives you 3 rounds. 9-16 gives you 4 rounds, and so on. Essentially, an extra round allows for double the maximum players of the previous amount. If you play fewer rounds than recommended, then more than one player is likely to end up with an undefeated record. If you play more rounds than recommended, then you can not only end up with no players undefeated, but the pairings start going weird.

Round One

For the first round, everyone comes into the event fresh (events with a seeding system are an exception). Nobody has a win/loss record at this stage. So the way you pair the first round is by randomising the players into pairs, and that's their opponent.  Then the first round is played.

Some events will look at the list of players and try and avoid pairing people from the same playgroup against each other if possible. This is to allow them to face new opponents, as nothing sucks more than travelling a few hours to an event, only to play the same guy you play at home in the first round. Most events won't do this though.

Round Two Onwards

From the second round, you are paired based on your win/loss record. That is, you should be playing against someone who has won as many rounds this event as you have. That is, round two, it pairs all the people that won round one against each other, and all the people that lost round one against each other. And this repeats as the rounds progress.

In round four, the players with three wins are paired, the players with two wins, the players with one win and the players with none. So your opponent should be having a similar day to you. Theoretically, they should also be close to you in skill level. This stops someone who is currently undefeated having an "easy" match against someone who has yet to win a game due to inexperience/poor deck choice/ unlucky day.

Tiebreakers

Within your win/loss bracket, you will usually be paired based on Tiebreakers. These are a system that differentiates players with the same record. You will be matched with someone whose tiebreakers are closest to yours, where possible. The only time you won't is where that would cause you to face someone for a second time.

They can also cause you to be paired up/down. If there isn't the maximum number of players, then there won't be an even number of people within each bracket so the person with the strongest tiebreaker in one bracket will be paired up into the next bracket against the person there with the weakest tiebreaker, again without repeating a pairing.

Different games systems will have different tiebreakers, dependent on the system. Magic the Gathering uses the average of your opponents win/loss records. Warhammer 40K uses the points scored in the game. Some smaller events will simply determine randomly who is at the top of each bracket.

Draws

If your round ends in a draw, this alters things slightly. As a draw is better than a loss but worse than a win, it alters your win/loss record. Most games cope with this by assigning a points value to each result, typically 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss. For example, end of round three somebody with three wins will have 9 points, somebody with one win will have 3 points and somebody with two wins and a draw will have 7 points.

These are called match points and determine what bracket you are in for pairing purposes. Everyone with the same number of match points is in the same bracket.

Draws usually happen because matches are timed. Either the players didn't finish with a victor determined or they didn't even have time to reach a conclusion. I want to talk about this more in a future post, as it heavily factors into the issue of Slow Play.

The Winner

At the end of the recommended number of rounds, one player should be undefeated. If you are stopping here, they are the winner. They will have the most match points as well, to make it easier to spot at a glance. If due to factors such as time constraints, you've run fewer rounds then the winner is the player with the highest match points and the strongest tiebreaker.

The exception to this is if the event has a single elimination cut.

Top X

If the event is having a cut, then it will usually be announced at the start of the event. Sometimes this is determined by attendance, other times it's fixed by the standard of the event. At the end of the final round, the players that progress to the top cut is decided by their standings. Players are ranked by match points and then by tiebreakers to let you know who came first, second, etc.

Those players will then go on to play a number of knockout rounds until there is one player left undefeated. Top 4 is two rounds, top 8 is three rounds and top 16 is four rounds. If you lose a round at this stage, you are out of the event.

The final standings are also used to determine prizes.

My Events

Typically, my regular monthly events are small events. I run 3-4 rounds dependent on either attendance or game system. Warhammer 40K requires a long time for each round, so I limit the events to 3 rounds even though the attendance normally calls for 4. I pair my events using the Swiss system and use whichever tiebreaker is appropriate for the game. Some games even have their own software available, which makes a lot of the work easier.

For larger events, such as Store Championships, I also do a top cut. This depends on attendance but is normally factored into the event timing. This can often lead to someone being knocked out by a player that they beat in the regular rounds, often referred to as the "Swiss Curse". These tournaments are rarer though.

By having everything use a similar system, it makes it easier for players to understand what is going on during the tournament. Also, if there is a top cut, they can see their progress and how many more wins they need to ensure they make it.

That was a bit drier than normal, but its a dry topic. Hopefully, I've made sense and tournament structure is now easier to understand. Post any questions in the comments