DBA Tournament at Valhalla 19 (Aldershot) - 16th June 2019

Apr 1, 2019 11:06:56 GMT hamilcar said:

Mar 25, 2019 0:03:12 GMT macbeth said:

I bet Phyrrus wished that this was the case in his battle with Rome

I am sure Hannibal echoed the sentiment

There are many ways to score games - we want to keep it as simple as possible, with the main objective of enjoying the games and worrying less about the points. also to encourage aggressive play, so the games get finished in time!

In fact I agree, but whenever I see or hear the issue of eventual victory MUST go to the player who wins the most games I can't shake the image of Phyrrus, Hannibal (or Napoleon in later periods) complaining that they won every game up to the last only to have the someone else be awarded the trophy

In fact the system that I use at my tournaments is

Win = 8 Points (flat rate score regardless of whether the winner took out an El General with a lucky Art shot in bound 1 or there was a line of Kn slamming into a line of Wb 8 element massacre)

Non Winners 1 point per element killed (to a Max of 3) regardless of type (double elements get no extra/Hd,SCh get no less); 1 point for killing a general; 1 point for taking a camp or city; 1 point for the game ending

So the loser could conceivably pick up 6 points - however I would love to see the incident of a player killing 3 elements including the general, taking the camp AND still losing the game - in general a loss ranges from 1 point to 4 points

An Unfinished game has each player ranging from 0 to 5 points.

I find this works well - in general over 6 rounds 5 wins and a massive loss ( 5x8 + 1 = 41) beats 4 wins and two close losses (4x8 + 3 + 3 = 38) and no winner is penalised because they had to grind away to get their 4 kills to win whilst another player managed to catch a line of Wb in the open with Kn and killed 8 elements without raising a sweat.

The winners are kept together so a Swiss Chess draw pits them against each other until (like the Highlander) there can be only one whilst the losers are graded and sorted making the chance of equal points at the top end less and less likely.

Way back in the early years of this century when I started running DBA competitions I first tried using the Campaign Prestige points system from the old (DBA1 and DBA2) campaign system - (1 point for each element killed over and above the elements you lost +2 for killing a general, +2 for taking a camp/BUA) but that led to the very occasional instance of the loser (who killed a general or took a BUA) scoring better than the winner.

I then moved on to scoring by strict body count (elements killed) and the usual bonus for killing a general or taking camps/BUA but it led to the occasional massive shift in the lead when someone killed 6-8 of the enemy whilst the previous leader killed a general in the opening move so ended the game with very few kills.  Someone suggested that the system was open to collusion with players agreeing to a narrow but bloody result (ie 8-7 or more) in advance <how I scoffed!!!>

I only wish I could be over there to join in but Canberra to Aldershot is a bit of a hike.  Someday I hope to get north of the equator and pick up a tournament or two

Til then

Hope it goes well

Cheers