Ties as losses for postseason seeding

[mattgslater]

What do you think of this scoring system to encourage overtime?

The first tiebreaker for playoff seeding is victory points. You get one VP for each game you play in which you earn an MVP award (that is, if you don't concede you get your VP), and one VP for each game you win. That way, the decision to take the tie has no strategic advantage: if you don't think you can win in OT, the only thing you're risking is your health, as the loss is what you'd have anyway with the tie.

This way, there's no mandatory overtime, and yet coaches won't be incentivized to take the tie. We have been treating OT losses as ties, but it's a lot of record-keeping, and not all our coaches understand it. Can you think of any reason not to do it this way?

BTW, the one point for playing bit is because we play no more than 12 games before our tournament, and we've found that the correlation between games played and team ability is stronger than that between TV and team ability, because some teams rely on TV disparities, but even those teams need development to win.

[Aliboon]

Didn't even read it. Just no.

[Darkson]

Nope.

A wins a win.
A ties a tie.
A loss is a loss.

[Smurf]

I've been to OT several times.

In league play at the end of 8 turns a draw is a draw. In a end of season cup championship, I'm considering the tough attitude that if it is a tie at the end of 64 turns of game play then it is a coin toss to decide a winner. Just to keep the it going, after all you don't want to end it on a coin toss.

I use a ranking system, which if you are using the 'traditional' GW spread sheet allows you to add in a few more formulas:

1. sum all the TDs in the goals for field (against is not important... it's your team sheet). If someone is removed from the roster and they have scored TDs just use +n in the field.
2. Do the same for cas caused
3. Left of this column note in ascending order: Games, number, won, number, lost, number
4. And some where put a not for 'Hall of Fame or Honour' and note the number of members who have left the team.
5. If you want make a text box noting the team members who have hung up their strips and a brief summary of the achievements.
6. In the right had corner create a formula to note (=sum(x(the team value field)/1000)/n wins(+n of losses (use field number) +n of your honour (use field number))) This will give a rating that allows a bit of movement up and down.

This gives a ranking system that dictates the lowest # is best and the top 8 got to the tournament.

Because we have between 8-10 players we do play up to 3 teams, you can take a additional providing you drop one. This allows players to play their various teams. I found a problem with a runaway leader board and decided that you can only challenge teams with wins equal or greater. This means no picking on the bottom guys... they can scrap it out and eventually be forced up the pole to play bigger players (goading is allowed as long as the challenge comes from below).

So the way I have done it is for the teams to scrabble up the pole to get into the top 8. Wins are important and loss and injuries matter too.

You can then link all the teams to a spread sheet that will note their stats and can be 'updated' by using sort button.

[mattgslater]

Nope.

A wins a win.
A ties a tie.
A loss is a loss.

Great argument, man. Got some reasoning?

Of course a tie is a tie. It counts as a tie for winnings and FF, and goes down on the team's WTL record in the second column. But is there some reason it has to be worth more points than a loss? Does W+W+T+L really reflect a coach/team's ability less efficiently than W+W+W+T?

I've been considering some system that hates on ties without doing it officially (like 3 for a loss, 4 for a tie, 7 for a win), but even this tends to trigger people's "bad math" bug and they don't take overtime even when there's plenty of time to keep playing and no good reason not to. It leads to people playing for the tie and feeling satisfied with it, which really bugs the sportsman in me.

I'm suggesting this for fluff. At least in the US, most sports coaches consider ties to be like losses even when the math doesn't work out that way; taking pleasure in a tie is an admission of inferiority. For instance, in the NFL, which uses win%, a 9-6-1 team (WLT) is really kind of like a 10-6 team with poor tiebreaker status, but the coaches, players and media will refer to the team as a 9-win team. It's also not without precedent. In pro hockey, an overtime loss is treated as a tie.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but it's been vexing us to no end here. Yeah, your personal objective may be to drink beer and play board games with your buddies, but in the context of that board game, you're supposed to play a hyper-competitive win-or-die-trying role, that of a football coach/GM. You're also supposed to do the best thing for your team. When those aren't compatible, you have to pick one, and since you're not actually a hyper-competitive football coach, you will always pick the latter.

Playing into this is the inherent discouragement in BB towards playing OT. Because either coach can call the game over at the end of regulation, the coach with the fewer players never wants to play OT, so there is never any OT. Me no likey. I see this as cowardly, and there's no place for cowardice in sports. If you're afraid of your opponent, you should be penalized for that, no?

What about putting "wins plus games" as tiebreaker #1 and "fewest losses" at a lower tiebreaker? That way, ties are infinitesimally better than losses; no number of ties will make up for the W left on the table, but at least it's something.

I'm not talking about tournaments, by the way. I'm talking about regular season matches and scrimmages, for non-elimination seeding in a tournament.

[mattgslater]

One thing I should probably have mentioned: all teams are guaranteed a seed in the postseason. We don't have enough coaches to exclude anybody from the tournament. You're playing to start higher on the ladder and be less subject to elimination, and potentially to pick your opponent in the final four. Also, the burden of victory in the ladder rounds (before the final four square off) is on the lower-seeded team.

[Darkson]

Nope.

A wins a win.
A ties a tie.
A loss is a loss.

Great argument, man. Got some reasoning?

That is the reasoning - if a tie was a loss, then it wouldn't be called a tie.

Like you say, maybe cultural, as growing up in a country where most team games could end up in a draw (at least until recently), I don't see why there has to be a winner - if you weren't good enough to win in regular time, tough.

If it's the lack of O/T being played, then just houserule it that O/T has to be played, or is played if one coach wants it.

[Aliboon]

Nothing wrong with drawing a game, I don't see why someone is a bad sportsman if they are happy with a tie. Cultural thing maybe for yanks, but it's nothing to do with fluff, so don't dress it up like it is.

Enforce overtime if it really bothers your league, but then your coaches will just be whining that they have to play overtime, which often down to who wins the toss, you may see it as cowardly, but I prefer not to see the game's result not be hugely influenced by the toss of the coin.

It also depends on what team you play, if you're playing some nice resilient orcs, then yeah on average you'll be outnumbering a skaven/elf team at the end of the game. If they AV7 coach doesn't wanna get his team more mangled, does that make him cowardly or sensible? Or is the orc coach a coward for taking an AV9 team?

[Smurf]

We play OT all the time... only in exceptional circumstances is OT agreed not to be played.

In league play the result is the result.

But in a cup tournament, for example we are playing for the Thrudd Sponsorship, if in the Quarters, Semis, Finals there is a draw at the end of OT it's going to the undramatic coin toss.

New season, our standard league rules apply and we have played for 3 minor trophies and next year we are going for the Spike!

[mattgslater]

Okay, so if you accept that your coaches are Americans and grew up watching sports where ties were rare and thought-of as losses, and that your coaches talk about playing OT more but never actually do it... then is it a good idea?

@ Aliboon: I see what you're saying about teams playing from down-men. But the answer to that is, most good elf coaches can make it happen with seven, and if you're down below that, maybe you deserve the de-facto L just as much as the opponent does for not securing the W despite his numerical advantage.

As for fluff, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is Nuffle Amorical Football, no? And played in "Amorica" no less, where football ties are rare and mutually undesirable.

I'm no fan of mandatory OT, except in championship rounds. It might be different if there were money on the line. I just want coaches to feel a little twinge of sadness at calling for the tie.

@ Darkson: Does your criticism (a tie should be better than a loss) remain in the face of these?
a) A tie is better for winnings and FF
b) "Fewest losses" is a late tiebreaker (that will probably never see use)

Also, in lieu of "fewest losses" as a late tiebreaker, what about "strength of W/T" instead? This can be defined as the total VP of each team you've played and not lost to, after the match. That could even be the #2 tiebreaker.

[Aliboon]

As for fluff, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is Nuffle Amorical Football, no? And played in "Amorica" no less, where football ties are rare and mutually undesirable.

Please, that reasoning is tenuous at best, I can't say I played first edition BB when the fluff was started, but Rugby Union is the nearest real life equivalent to BB in play, (if not initial defensive/offensive set ups)-They'll batter lumps out of each other for 80 mins, then if it's a tie (not common, but not mutually undesirable), then fair enough, it's not celebrated like a win, but both sides will accept they weren't good enough to win it in normal time and will take it, (if a team has come back from a load of points down they'll generally be pretty happy though).

And yeah, 7 elves can score easy enough IF they win the OT toss. But stopping an 8 turn grind if they don't?

To be honest I don't quite see the problem, you say your coaches want to play OT, but never do. Surely if they wanted to play it, they would?

[mattgslater]

Funny how that happens. A lot of things are like that, comes up especially in politics. When you're talking in generalities, it's easy to say, "yeah, I wish we went to overtime more often," but then when T16 ends and you're looking at needing a 3 on the Winnings roll to make that key purchase and having already used your Apothecary and TRRs, it's a different story. There are a lot of times when even a coach who would rather go to overtime just can't justify it in his mind. If there were something really to be gained...

I see what you mean about Rugby Union, but my league plays in the US (in a big NFL town, no less), where we tend to think in terms of the closest analogy to hand, which is also the one that the game's fluff is nominally based upon. If I told people that BB was like rugby, only with fantasy critters, I'd never get any coaches. We have zero rugby tradition out here. But I tell them that it's kind of like (American) football with fantasy critters and simplified rules, and they're frothing at the bit.

In fact, it's a lot like what American football would be if it didn't have down-and-distance; that is, if "all teams were special," if plays weren't defined by the status of the ball, but just went from kickoff with a live ball, if the only part of the game that confuses newbies were removed. Of course, that's what makes American football watchable by people who otherwise don't like spectator sports; six seconds of extreme, gut-wrenching violence followed by thirty seconds of drinking beer and talking about what just happened while the players line up for another six seconds of terror. Over the three hours of real time and sixty minutes of clock-time, there's about ten minutes of action, on average involving three serious injuries. But BB would be about five minutes of game time, and is turn-based, so it's kind of similar in that regard too.

[nick_nameless]

as far as a house rule, I think it has some merit. I would not want to see this as part of the LRB structure, but that's not what we are talking about here. It's a tie breaker, plain and simple.

Then again you could just make wins the tie breaker. In our league, IIRC TD's are the first tiebreaker, followed by casualties. I am taking over as commish of that league next year, and plan to change those tiebreakers to net TDs and net casualties, and possibly combined.

So standings would be determined by
1) Overall Record
2) Net TDs + Net Casualties (TDs/Cas for - TDs/Cas against)
3) Wins

[mattgslater]

You could make it a ratio if you want to give the edge to heavy teams.

I've been wondering whether TV+Treasury is a fair tiebreaker.

[nick_nameless]

You could make it a ratio if you want to give the edge to heavy teams.

I don't. I think that the sum of the net is fair because it takes the strength of both Bash and Dash teams into account.

I've been wondering whether TV+Treasury is a fair tiebreaker.

I don't think it is, especially considering some teams run better at lower TVs because they live and die by their inducements. TV + Treasury has a place in the game, and we have had some discussions about how to use TV + Treasury to calculate inducements. I read Galak's stuff on the banking system, and liked it.

By next season we will have several teams over 2,000,000 value, and quite possibly a few that are in the 1,000,000-1,250,000 range. The discrepancy is often just too much, and it is tough for those low TV teams to develop as they tend to lose players much more quickly and easily than high TV teams. Spiraling expenses does not account for this discrepancy. So this is being proposed the following to my league:

1) Teams will each be allowed a bank account for their teams. Transactions to their bank account can only be made during the post match sequence, and a maximum balance or (TBD, but 100,000 is suggested) may be kept in the bank account.
2) All gold left in the team's treasury counts towards TV, both for spiraling expenses and for inducements. Teams are of course encouraged to spend this gold on their own inducements in the pre-match sequence.
3) Spiraling expenses paid by league teams will be considered a luxury tax revenue share to be distributed amongst teams with low TV. Mechanism TBD.

So, rather than using it as a tie breaker, I would like to use it as a game mechanic to help balance out the gross disparity that can occur in continuing leagues.