League Play-off Rules

Does our list have to be in pre-game? or is it just show up on day 1 and that's your list from then on? anything else I should know about for play off special rules?

Are people really sold on the idea of getting a points-based advantage for playoff position? I realize I'm not even a member of the league yet, but it seems to me that a regular playoff bracket seeding (1 plays 8, 2 plays 7, etc.) is all the advantage that would be necessary.

I mean if the ranking system represents player skill in any way, it seems a little excessive to be granting the better players a further advantage.

I understand the need to make those points you spend the whole league accumulating actually count for something, but +points just seems a bit... off for a playoffs system.

I'm not saying it's horrible because I don't want to be the douchey guy who comes in and tells you that you've been doing it wrong all along, but maybe some justification could convince me?

I think going to a win/loss record would be a better measure of skill. However there's ways to stack the deck in either way and it would be a less friendly league because you could avoid playing players that will beat you (like I'd avoid playing matt cuz he woops my ass) and then you'd need to schedule games so that everyone played every opponent etc and it would become alot of organization that would take away from the fun aspect of the league.

I enjoy the way the playoffs presently work, altho I'd like to play the xcam rules where you win by having 4 control points and the next person to match your 4 points plays you for 1st place in an apocalypse game (picking teams if needed) and the loser takes 2nd place. That way it would encourage playing a volume of games and the only way to get a control point is to win a control game which means that you can't lose your way to the top either. The problem would be that the league would have a floating end time that would be whenever 2 people got 4 control points.

However since very few people have control points in a fairly large amount of time I would say that maybe it should be easier to get control points? I know there was already a discussion about this and I don't really have a lot to add to it.

I would definitely support one of the other league types, as I really don't see the attractiveness of gaining points that need to be spent, but which also determine player ranking.

I would also like as little interference in the games (in the form of re-rolls/extra points, etc.) from the league standings as possible. I want to be beaten in a regular game. I am somewhat open to scenarios, but I want it to be an even fight with the regular rules. I think that those sorts of things belong more in campaigns than competitive leagues. While I have nothing against campaigns, I did think this was a competitive league and not a campaign!

But that's just me, and I haven't even signed up yet... (perhaps when I get my FW order organized...)

the way i see it, x-cam is just like our escalation league but with a bunch more rules and a lot more micro managing by robyn. since coming to stoon, it was the league style i've liked the most.

i picked up the planetary empires campaign box and read some of the rules and read the campaign GW ran in the WD. That type of play i think would be quite enjoyable as you get a few little special rules depending on what territories you had as well as you can play any type of game like planetstrike, etc.

To decide playoffs we could just pick the people with the most territories.

I liked the current league. I could have played myself out of the playoffs too, but I couldn't find anyone to accept a control challenge in the last couple weeks. I sort of like the all-or-nothing aspect of the control game. An early control point is very valuable, so it should be risky to attempt to attain one. Maybe 15 strategic points for each player for a control challenge? I still like the way the recon points work. If a person wants to avoid playing recon games, he will have to play a new guy every 3 games for the recon bonus and/or fully paint his army! A campaign would interest me as well. I picked up a Planetstrike box set too. But I don't think it's a great format for a league. It would be fun for 4-6 guys who know each other and could meet semi-regularly.

Well I am very interested in planetary empires, however I agree with Tim that it isn't something that would work for the league.

However, I would like to continue playing the xcam rules, and making the control point games cheaper would help alot, and maybe don't consider strategic points when determining position for play offs. This way more people would be playing control point games and the only use for strategic points would be to spend them on control challenges since strategic points wouldn't count for standings within the league, it would actually force people who want to play in play offs to gamble for the control points.

To help with having one person not having too many control point advantages maybe cap how many can be used in one game, or don't allow control point advantages in play offs, honestly the benefits of control points, in my opinion, are minimal and don't take away from having a competitive game (although maybe that's because all of my games I either utterly dominate or get completely annihilated). Either way I'd like to see a play off matchup where everyone has at least 1 control point, then get rid of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd ... points advantage and the advantages would be based on your control points (Maybe not the rerolls if people find that unfair, maybe award 10pts or something for each control point). This means there won't be a clear 1st and 2nd etc before the play offs but does that really matter if there's no standings based point bonus?

If theres 8 people and the top 3 all are tied for 5 control points, then each of them get 5 control point advantages (rewarding them in some manner for their hard playing throughout the league) and the bottom 2 are tied with 1 control point they'd only get the one advantage.

Hopefully some of these idea's are useful as I'd really like to see the xcam league be played again, and really like the idea of each game having more meaning to it than points on a leader board.