Greetings everyone, this weekend I bring you a guest article written by Larry Essick, the TO of the recent tournament, Siege of Augusta. In this article Larry discusses his different scoring system, and why he used it, enjoy!
The scoring system for Siege of Augusta was different from those used in other events. Net zero system are those like 15-10-5. They are sometimes adjusted for attrition or objective pluses and minuses. Net sum systems build towards a preset value and reward players for roflstomping their opponents, claiming all of the attrition, and all of the objective; pluses and minuses.
Siege of Augusta used a strict won-drawn-lost scoring system, no modifiers. I chose to score this way because I wanted a system where a player with 5 wins could not lose to a player with 4 wins, and some other result.
Kings of War is a game based around scenarios. A player can sacrifice the majority of their army to win the scenario. In a net zero system this can result in a win score that is less than a draw score. In a net sum system draws are seldom worth more than a win but a major victory score combined with a good draw score can surpass the scores of close wins.
The reality of Kings of War is that some players are better than others. The reality is that some armies are better than others. The reality is that some army builds are better than others. When a player beats a superior opponent with a better army and better army build it is probable that it is a narrow win and not a shellacking.
If both players win all their other games, that better player with the better army and better build could drop down to lesser opponents, stomp them, and then emerge at the end of the tournament with a higher place finish than the person who managed to beat them.
I wanted to take all of that out of the equation. I wanted players to play one another and to treat every win exactly the same way. In the words of Al Davis, “Just win, baby.”
I limited Siege of Augusta to 32 players. With 32 players if a person wins every game, they will be the only one left with a perfect record. Behind them will be 3 players who have lost just 1 game. Of course, in Kings of War there are draws. That came into play with the final results.
Draws are the complication. Draws should be worth more than a loss. I did not want 5 draws to be worth more than 1 win and 4 losses. I wanted to reward the player who managed even a single win over the one who did not. To reflect that, wins were given 1 more point than the total number of rounds. In this case, wins were 6 points. Draws were given 1 point. Losses were given 0 points.
In retrospect, maybe I should not have done that. Maybe I should have permitted 5 draws to be worth the same as 1 win and let strength of schedule sort out which player deserved to be considered the higher place. In the future I would probably do that, giving wins a value equal to the number of rounds, draws 1 point, and losses 0 points.
Siege of Augusta began with 30 players. A total of 73 games played out of a maximum of 75 possible. In those 73 games there were 6 draws. That is 8% of the total number of games played. I felt it validated my desire that players just play to win so those who do win are rewarded.
In round 4 the top players had win-draw-loss records of 3-0-0, 3-0-0, 3-0-0, and 2-1-0. The player who had a draw in an earlier round made up for it by winning and it put them ahead of players who had 2 wins and 1 loss.
In the final round, 1 player was 4-0-0, the other 3-1-0. Whoever won would be champion. Jeff O’Neal beat Austin Carrigan, to finish 5-0-0. Austin dropped to 3-1-1. His draw kept Austin off the podium. Instead of 3 players with 4-0-1 records, there were only 2. Austin’s draw dropped him to seventh place behind 3-2-0, and 2 others with 3-1-1 but stronger strengths of schedule.
Again, this validates my entire objective with the scoring system. Wins were worth more than draws, draws were worth more than losses. The players who took a lump were rewarded by just going out and winning games. There was no space to play against the scoring system. Players had to play against one another.
From my point of view, it was an overwhelming success.
I must admit I’m not 100% clued up on the scoring system that’s used normally as I’ve not been to one in a while, but this system seems completely logical to me. The ratio of points between a win and a draw seems rather high, but if your intention is to discourage players from holding the game to a draw it certainly fulfills that.
One thing I’m not clear on though is how you rank players with the same points total at the end. If its a 5-game season and you don’t play everyone else there there’s a high likelihood of several players having the same point total at the end of the tournament. Obviously in sport (which your system is based on) you can use goal/points difference as the decider, but as KoW isn’t decided on ‘goals’ what do you use to determine who was better out of two tied opponents?
I’m not certain if the author of the article will see this, so I will answer for him, and also just give some perspective on why this scoring system isn’t usually used.
Ties are broken by strength of schedule, so the better placing your opponents, the better you will do on ties. I believe traditionally this is done with the program the TO uses, but basically if I face the opponents that came in 1st, 4th, and 12th, vs. someone who ties me but faced opponents that came in 14th, 18th, and 20th, then the second player’s games most likely were easier, since their opponents did worse, so they lose the tie.
I personally, am not a fan of a true Win/Loss/Draw scoring, because Kings of War games are rather long, 2 hours ish usually. Sometimes I can tell my opponent has one by turn 3, maybe not how much, but they have won. In W/L/D there is no reason for me to keep fighting to deny them 2/5 objectives, if I know they will still get 3 easily.
So lots of scoring systems are made to create a gradient of victory both to encourage players to fight to the last. In addition, in a 5 game tournament over 2 days, if I lose the first game, I know I cant win the event, for some people, especially if they had a rough game, this may be enough to drop from the event. So lots of scoring systems allow the possibility to recover from that loss by smashing your remaining opponents, letting you still feel “in” the game until the end.
Obviously all scoring systems come with positives and negatives, but I thought I would shed light on some of those points 😀
Ah, that’s an excellent point, I hadn’t considered that!
I have a lot of experience from Magic: the Gathering tournaments so my ideas might be off but one issue I see with the large disparity between a draw and a win is this:
Imagine you are playing against a friend and the game is shaping up in a way where a tie is the natural end result. If you draw, you both end up with a single point, basically destroying your chances of a good final result since a draw is basically the same as a loss. So what do you do? Easy, one of you concedes the game, rather than report the correct result. This can be done by a roll of the dice or something similarly random which hurts the integrity of the tournament.
Of course, this then extends to not just playing against friends, but against a random person as well: if you’re headed for a draw, wouldn’t you rather have a 50% chance of getting a free win? For this reason, I think a simple 3-1-0 scoring system is better. It still rewards winning but doesn’t punish draws to quite the same level, leading to a smaller incentive to cheat the system.
@Pete: you can use your opponents’ scores as a tiebreaker. For example, calculate the average number of matches that each player’s opponents won. So if I played against 5 people who ended up going 2 wins, 3 losses, my tiebreaker score would be 5*2/5*3=10/15. If you played against 3 people who ended up going 3 wins, 2 losses, and 2 people who went 4 wins, 1 loss, your tiebreaker would be (3*3+2*4)/5*3=13/15 so you are placed higher.
Good point on the draws, and completely agree 😀