Hello again. First, thank you all for taking the time to read my rather epic post and respond. Time to respond to a few points (oh god it’s gone epic again!):
1. “No system is perfect”. Indeed. But you don’t line up 10 systems and pick the worst one just because none of them are perfect. The problems of 2/1/0 plus SoS tiebreaker are the problems of fair tiebreakers – contentious across many sports and never entirely satisfactory – but much much better than arbitrary ranking and scoring systems which is a problem only UK Blood Bowl seems to have.
2. “Blood Bowl is just for fun”. Okay I respect the people who think that – but can’t you respect those for whom winning is part of the fun? I would suggest that people who don’t care about scoring systems would be equally happy to play under a fair scoring system as a terrible one. Yes we are mainly there to have fun and hang out with friends but every tournament crowns a winner wouldn’t we all rather it was the ‘right’ one?
3. Bunker Bowl was fantastic. Amazingly organised, great venue – I mean above a freaking Gaming shop giving us a 10% discount for crying out loud! – and I’ll attend next year regardless of the scoring system. But we should still be able to have a debate in the community about what are good and bad scoring systems without the threat of cancelling tournaments please! This thread was never intended to attack Bunker Bowl and I already pm’d Darren to apologise if it had come across that way. The thread was motivated by the number of tournaments using what I see as poor scoring systems – for the reasons I gave, attacking the SYSTEM – nothing else.
4. In terms of the actual issues at hand. Any bonus point system that rewards Draws or Losses is going to mess with the W>D>L hierarchy over a number of games. The very worst systems I contend are those that mess with it after one game like the system I was specifically attacking. However, any bonus point system rewarding draws or losses will mess with the hierarchy over time – 2/1/0 never will. So again I would ask any TO not using 2/1/0 – why did you deviate from that in the first place? Yes tiebreakers like SoS have issues but at least our start point is putting the players in the right order! Also note that tiebreakers at the end of tournaments don’t mess with the Swiss system. The Swiss system is a way of replicating knock out tournaments but with everyone getting 6 games rather than half the field going home after one game (also genuine knockouts require specific numbers of people: 4/8/16…) – the Swiss system does this pretty well when there are no bonus points. The worse the scoring system the more this aim gets watered down until ultimately you can be crowning the wrong winner (according to W/D/L).
5. When I wrote the original post I naively had no idea how much impact these terrible scoring systems were having. I must admit it has been a revelation to me that tournaments are regularly crowning winners with inferior records. Sorry but I think that is awful and if I ever get to the point of having the best record on a weekend and finish second or third then I will likely be looking for a new hobby. I think it’s mad that the NAF would have to impose something to stop this, I would hope TOs would listen to reason – I still hope they will but if not then maybe we should appeal to the NAF. I think at the very least Golden Gauntlet tournaments should be ranked in the same way – with my strong preference for 2/1/0 and no BP at all just a tiebreaker at the end.
6. We have spoken a fair amount about the W>D>L hierarchy but I want to bring back my other 2 points in the OP. Points for TDs is bad because it causes a ranking of wins that takes no account of winning margin (which surely goes against common sense) and it strictly ranks draws by their TDs. Coaches cannot control getting a 3-3 draw over a 1-1 draw and there is no rational reason to value a 3-3 draw over a 1-1 draw so why do it? There are better ways to rank wins and no real need to rank draws – no real need to rank either if you just have a tiebreaker at the end of a tournament. Points for casualties is bad because you are rewarding luck and luck is a reward in itself. By rewarding casualties you are making casualties an end in themselves which the game specifically avoids doing. Blood Bowl is a war game with a twist: there is a ball on the park and whatever race or tactics you employ you only get to win by scoring TDs. There are plenty of war games out there where casualties are the point – we shouldn’t be trying to turn BB into one of them. I still invite a Tournament Organiser using these systems to explain to me their logic. Why not use 2/1/0 with a tiebreaker?
7. To Besters point about “it would be a shame to lose variation in scoring” I would agree if we had 2 or 3 properly thought out, reasonable scoring systems and someone was trying to impose uniformity just for the sake of it. There is no rationale I can see to points for TDs and points for CAS and definitely no rationale for messing with W>D>L after one game. I would say uniformity and the consistent application of 2/1/0 plus tiebreaker would be much better than the current situation. I think there is plenty of flavour that TOs can add without messing with a standard ranking system. And once we have a good baseline and are regularly crowning the correct winners at tournaments then we could look at what properly thought out variations might be interesting. I guess we all have a different view on how much uniformity is needed – for example I don’t mind TOs setting their own tiebreaker (eg using Cas suffered or TDs scored rather than SoS) but others may feel differently. Again I think it would be crazy for the NAF to have to impose rules but there is a strong to case to outlaw points for TDs (cause it is dumb) and points for CAS (cause you are messing with the principles of BB). But I’d rather we just agree that 2/1/0 with a tiebreaker is the best of flawed options. The responses I am most interested in are those that make the case that 2/1/0 with tiebreaker is NOT the best of flawed options. I see one respondent talking about points for TD and points for Cas and that’s it – I dislike that because again you are making Cas an end in itself which is not what BB is. For me W>D>L has to be the basis – and more than that W>D>L has to be it except potentially a bonus point for a bigger winning margin or a smaller losing margin. Why do we need anything else?
Again I come back to my original question: what are you trying to achieve? Is there a play style or tactic or bias that you want to combat? I’m interested to know, honest
) not because I outperformed the opposition, at least with Td & Cas bonuses I'm winning on my own ability (or lack of it) 
