Finals are boring. Pt. 3: Rules for the finals

I think it would be wrong to change finals' rules too much from the preliminary rounds' rules. The criteria for victory should be as similar as possible, I think. The rules are fine. Your Problem 3 is only a problem if everyone plays into the first seed's hands, which they have no incentive to do. I.e. the winner of a time-out played better than the losers of a time-out, that seems fine to me.

Decebalus wrote: - If there is no GW in the finals, the 1st place goes to the sixth player. (He is innocent, that the final was boring. You would immediately see, that the first five player start playing agressive.)

I love that.

Xaddam wrote: I think it would be wrong to change finals' rules too much from the preliminary rounds' rules. The criteria for victory should be as similar as possible, I think.

But they are already completely different. During the rounds, every VP counts. Not in the final, it's TW or nothing. During the rounds, if the table times out, everyone loses. Not in the final, someone still wins.

I think the only times seed should factor into the finals is...

initial sitting

and

a 2: 2: 1: split

if the game goes to time and no player has at least 2 vp, it continues until someone does and then ends.

Top seed gets final choice in sitting and that should be enough.


As another option we could just say top seed wins, play no finals and start a new tournament.

Set more aggressive win-conditions. Most of the suggestions you have given are about setting more penalising conditions when people are not playing aggressively.

"A tournament cannot be won by a player who has less than half of the VPs which were available in the final. i.e. In a standard 5-player final, the tournament winner must have >=2.5VP. In the event that no player is eligible to win the tournament, all finalists are considered to have ranked in 2nd place."

That should spice things up. To get better than 2nd, you need to take out two players before the time limit. Of course it does favour bleed and flick decks... but oh wait... Dominate already rocks...

Other option for more aggressive win condition : lower the value of oust as time go on. Something like that :

0-20m from start : 10 VP
20-40m from start : 9 VP
40-60m from start : 8 VP
60-80m from start : 7 VP
80-100m from start : 6 VP
100-120m from start : 5 VP
Timeout : 4vp for surviving methuselah

So, the "top seed" position is more or less replaced by "faster oust", which seem to lower the value of stalling.

Needlessly complicated.