I agree there Ulrik, a sort of 'swiss system inside a swiss system' where the stongest teams play each other, matching the strongest players in each team. Note where there are 6 teams, then each team plays once against every other team. Also, for the first game, this will rely on some form of nomination of the playing order in each team.

I agree with Ulrik,

"Players don’t matter. Only teams matter."

If you go for swiss, it should be based on teams.

Who plays whom is not as important, because if your team has a "weaker" player matched against a strong player, your team will have a strong player matched against a "weaker" player of the opposing team as well. So the team score shouldn't be impacted too much.

And I would prefer to use other things like "armies already played against" instead of "relative player score" to determine which players are matched. I do not mind to play against 5 good players, but I mind playing 5 times Necorns (or whatever).

And I prefer the teams not to have any influence on who plays whom. This adds another level of meta play, that IMHO is not relevant to playing Epic and which in the worst case may even be the source of discontent.

Conversely I rather like teams having influence over it. It gives the team format a unique extra layer of planning as without it the team format seems like it's four individuals who happen to share a points score, you're not leveraging the fact that you've got three friends with you who may be better at certain types of game/opponent.

From what I've read about how it works in the bigger ETCs (Warmarhordes, Fantasy, 40k) I must say that I absolutely agree with brumbaer. "This army is the one we put out first, it must be able to *draw* against all opponents. And this is the army we select when our opponents offer this kind of army, it will guarantee a good matchup and will probably massacre him."

It's an added layer of complexity, but (without having played in such an ETC!) it looks to me that the real effect is to make the actual games more boring. No thanks.

Yes, I can see where the issues comes from in an environment in which there are more Rock/paper/Scissory match ups with known advantages for one army over another.

If the current Epic environment has things to a state where army X vs army Y is going to end only one way the vast majority of time then it;s probably best to avoid having team influence. If it's more open and clever choices of matching might give a small edge rather than a huge one then I prefer having team influence.

Edit: E.G.:

From here http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/racevrace.php

Looking at Steel Legion the overall win ratio is 32%, but against Gazghul's Warhorde it's only 28% and against Biel Tan it's 37% so you'd probably want to send your Steel Legion player against the Biel Tan opponent rather than the Gazghull player. It's a small difference, rather than a huge one allowing the Team nature of the tournament to allow some tinkering rather than leading to ROFLstomps.

Dunno if Epic is in a situation to allow that to be the case though.

Having been to a couple of team events were round matching was taking place it was actually a bit of fun and added to the 'banter' before each round. I think the nature of Epic lists mean that there aren't any really obvious auto wins you get in Warmachine.

I don't see how a random draw protects people from playing against the same race more than once per tournament, or protect from having a less fun game from time to time?

I hope whatever the UK team come up with emphasises the team aspect over individual players.

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Yep, most of the problems with the ETC (as someone who's done it) are down to the unbalanced nature of games like Warhammer, where you've got two major elements causing issues - first off are the fact that generally you have a couple of 'must take' armies, and more specifically must take lists, so it's easier to develop counters. Secondly, the scoring system used can be abused due to being based on VP's rather than things like Goals. Additionally, a bad rules set that's not really made for tournament play doesn't help either...

The basic element of matching players is pretty fun, and tbh with Epic in my opinion if you try and game your lists to be good against a specific army or two, you're just asking for trouble - especially as certainly from experience, even in the ETC you never get the matchups you'd really like and you generally have to settle for something that's at best 'not terrible'. Balanced 'all comers' armies are, as with any Epic tournament, the way forward imo - team element or no. That and plenty of practice with the list against a variety of other opponents and lists, and perhaps some steady tweaking to get it to fit your playstyle properly is what i think will get results.

Well, if people have tried it and found it fine I wouldn't mind trying it as well.

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- Ulrik

I wouldn't mind an element of this, would be interested to see how it works - just alternate between teams to nominate a player until all players are nominated?

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Add another meta by "the enemy chooses one of three tables"

So, one player chooses his opponent, but he/she chooses the table. This repeates until all matches are set

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Sounds like the process could end up taking quite some time.

As an pretty active competitor in Sports i must say that it was only the lesser skilled athletes that moaned about seedings and matchups when tournaments are on.

The better ones just focused on doing their thing and didn't care about who they where matched up with.

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And then you have stuff like two teams both trying to lose in the Olympics to get easier opponents in the semi-finals!

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- Ulrik

I would have thought that one team puts forward one player, and then the other team selects his opponent.

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- Ulrik

If the TO factors in 10 mins per round for the match up process there is no harm, and it really doesn't take that long.

What normally happens is Team A puts one list forward. Team B then puts two lists down, Team A picks one of the two and Team B picks the table. Then Team A puts 2 lists down to play the second list Team B put down. Team B pick one of those, Team A picks the table. etc.

It really doesn't take long.

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