Game Speed..

[madaxeman]

The top 20 placed players in Britcon Early (out of a field of 43) only lost (as in an "army broken" result) 9 games out of the 120 games in total they played.

In the entire 43-player comp - so 258 games - there were 50 decisive army break results.

Only 3 players in the entire field managed to win more than 2 of their 6 games outright.

Discuss...

[philqw78]

One would hope that the top 20 players lost fewer games than the bottom 20 Tim. They scored 16+ points in 43 of the games

Its easier at the beginning. Without Swiss pairings there would have been less draws as people of varying ability would be matched up. But since the system matches people fo equal ability there will be more draws

[philqw78]

The bottom 20 scored less than 5 points in 78 of the 120 games. So this makes the lower finishing players better as they finish more games.

[madaxeman]

I know that the top half of the field will lose less games than those in the bottom half, and Swiss system does encourage that sort of trend.

But even so, is "1 game in 5" ending up as a decisive result a reasonable proportion? It feels a bit low to me.

You and me alone accounted for 14% of the decisive results in the whole field. If we - clearly the only ones with real cohones - hadn't een there it clearly would have been a real bloodless event more akin to a ballroom dancing contest than the recreation of WAR!

[lawrenceg]

I know that the top half of the field will lose less games than those in the bottom half, and Swiss system does encourage that sort of trend.

But even so, is "1 game in 5" ending up as a decisive result a reasonable proportion? It feels a bit low to me.

You and me alone accounted for 14% of the decisive results in the whole field. If we - clearly the only ones with real cohones - hadn't een there it clearly would have been a real bloodless event more akin to a ballroom dancing contest than the recreation of WAR!

I wouldn't be so certain. To quote my dancing teacher "I've had my nose broken before while dancing and I'm sure it will happen again."

Come over to DBMM, Tim. Over 60% of games result in a broken army and you get as much terrain as you want!

[philqw78]

Reduce the table depth. This would massively increase the viability of HF as well as speeding up contact.

[philqw78]

Come over to DBMM, Tim. Over 60% of games result in a broken army and you get as much terrain as you want!

BURN THE HERETIC

[grahambriggs]

To save time I looked at how many scores of 20 or more players had.

In the early period the top ten managed 14 scores of 20+ between them, numbers 11-20 had 13 scores of 20+ (so 27 in total). No player had more than 2 scores of 20.

In the late period the top ten managed 29 scores of 20+ between them, numbers 11-20 had 14 scores of 20+ (so 43 in total). Three players had 4 20+ scores and four players had 3 20+ scores.

I suspect the difference in 'big wins' between the two periods might be down to the later period having more hard hitting expensive BGs - knights, expensive shooters etc. So armies perhaps smaller but more decisive.

There's little difference between the top ten and next ten in the early period in terms of 20+ scores. So i guesss the skill difference is turning draws into winning draws and avoiding losing draws?

On the other hand there's a big difference in the later period. The top ten players getting more than twice the 20+ results than the dullards in the next ten. Speaking as one of the latter I found my army rather forgiving of my mistakes being 15 BGs of quite tough stuff in general the Merovingian Franks tended to survive the daft situations I put them in.

Surprisingly for a Frankish army we did best against the skirmishy armies - 20 bases of armoured light spear cavalry being generally sufficient to settle their hash.

[madaxeman]

To save time I looked at how many scores of 20 or more players had.
In the early period the top ten managed 14 scores of 20+ between them, numbers 11-20 had 13 scores of 20+ (so 27 in total). No player had more than 2 scores of 20. In the late period the top ten managed 29 scores of 20+ between them, numbers 11-20 had 14 scores of 20+ (so 43 in total). Three players had 4 20+ scores and four players had 3 20+ scores.I suspect the difference in 'big wins' between the two periods might be down to the later period having more hard hitting expensive BGs - knights, expensive shooters etc. So armies perhaps smaller but more decisive. There's little difference between the top ten and next ten in the early period in terms of 20+ scores. So i guesss the skill difference is turning draws into winning draws and avoiding losing draws?

On the other hand there's a big difference in the later period. The top ten players getting more than twice the 20+ results than the dullards in the next ten. Speaking as one of the latter I found my army rather forgiving of my mistakes being 15 BGs of quite tough stuff in general the Merovingian Franks tended to survive the daft situations I put them in. Surprisingly for a Frankish army we did best against the skirmishy armies - 20 bases of armoured light spear cavalry being generally sufficient to settle their hash.

I'm more sad than that and looked at actual games where the result added up to 25..

Top 10 in Early recorded 18 decisive results (7 of which were me and Phil). No's 11-20 recorded 13 decisives - kudos to Lance Flint and his 3 !

If there are more decisive results in Late, it may be as you say because the armies hit harder - but also because (as a result of costing more) they are smaller.

QED Armies with more BGs are harder to beat.

Rocket science !

[petedalby]

QED Armies with more BGs are harder to beat.

Always good to learn something new!

[hammy]

I will see if I can get the number of BG information as I am sure we could cook up some silly statistics if we wanted

One of the reasons that the games at Britcon get more indecisive results is that the playing time is a touch shorter than at other comps where there are only 2 games a day.

There are lots of ways to make games more decisive.
Reducing the depth of the table is an easy one.
Reducing points less so
More time
More practice.

Looking at the early period I make the number of decisive games per round (out of 21): 18,6,7,5,7,5 so the longer first game was a lot more decisive than the later ones. Overall 38% of games ended in a result.

In the later period out of 19 games there were decisive results in: 17,9,6,9,11,7 or just over 50% of the games.
These figures are calculated by summing the total scores each round subtracting 20 times the number of games and dividing the result by 5. Remember that it is possible to get a 16-9 'win'

I also know that in 25mm one of the 'drawn' games was actually a mutual destruction which is quite hard to manage in FoG.

[madaxeman]

Looking at the early period I make the number of decisive games per round (out of 21): 18,6,7,5,7,5 so the longer first game was a lot more decisive than the later ones. Overall 38% of games ended in a result.
In the later period out of 19 games there were decisive results in: 17,9,6,9,11,7 or just over 50% of the games.
These figures are calculated by summing the total scores each round subtracting 20 times the number of games and dividing the result by 5. Remember that it is possible to get a 16-9 'win'
I also know that in 25mm one of the 'drawn' games was actually a mutual destruction which is quite hard to manage in FoG.

aaah - I was doubling the number of games.... that's a lot better then.

[hammy]

Looking at the early period I make the number of decisive games per round (out of 21): 18,6,7,5,7,5 so the longer first game was a lot more decisive than the later ones. Overall 38% of games ended in a result.
In the later period out of 19 games there were decisive results in: 17,9,6,9,11,7 or just over 50% of the games.
These figures are calculated by summing the total scores each round subtracting 20 times the number of games and dividing the result by 5. Remember that it is possible to get a 16-9 'win'
I also know that in 25mm one of the 'drawn' games was actually a mutual destruction which is quite hard to manage in FoG.

aaah - I was doubling the number of games.... that's a lot better then.

Personally I would like to see say 60% of games complete in the slot but more than that and you end up with a lot of people standing around waiting for games to finish.

FWIW at the BHGS Challenge just over 50% of games were decisive.
At Roll Call 62% of the games in the Immortal Fire comp resulted in army break but only 39% of the Legions Triumphant games managed a 'result'

[jlopez]

Interesting stuff. My personal experience has been that balanced armies earned me a lot of more draws than extreme designs (all LH, all longbow...etc)which, win or lose, resulted in decisive games. Britcon is a perfect example with 4 victories, 2 defeats and no draws. Probably boils down to balanced armies not having enough of anything to deal with extreme armies while the latter only struggle against a handful of opponents.

Julian

[hazelbark]

I am less concerned with how many get 20+ points for a broken army although certainly that is gratifying. Games at 16+ points are certainly bloody affairs.

The real issues is how many games had less than 4 points lost on both sides? that sounds like a dull game. Another way is how many 11-9 or 10-10 with low losses were there?

A game with two 14 BG armies that each lose 10 AP is still likely a good game.

It could be worthwhile to have a short 3-4 y/n question tick off questionaire for unifinished games.
1) Did either army lose more than 1/3rd of its AP?
2) Did the game timeout and only fail to finish because one army could significantly disengage and prevent its last BGs from being caught?
3) Would the game outcome be more gratifying and/or decisive if you have an extra 25 minutes to play?
4) Regardless of the final score was this game enjoyable and rewarding to play?

Those or questions like those could be quite instructive.

[hazelbark]

Is the point we need more decisive results for the victors? That can be done by saying any timed out game each army loses 25% of its starting AP and if that breaks an army then the other side gets +5.

But I rather have a scoring system and game that ensures fun games first.

[madaxeman]

Having +8 for a win instead of +5 would be a lot better afaiac.

Tim
(beaten by 2 points but with one mor win than Phil)

[philqw78]

Having +8 for a win instead of +5 would be a lot better afaiac.

Tim
(beaten by 2 points but with one mor win than Phil)

But lost against phil

[hammy]

I am less concerned with how many get 20+ points for a broken army although certainly that is gratifying. Games at 16+ points are certainly bloody affairs.

The real issues is how many games had less than 4 points lost on both sides? that sounds like a dull game. Another way is how many 11-9 or 10-10 with low losses were there?

Unfortunately I don't have direct access to those figures but I could probably get them. I am sure that a lot of the 28-8 and 11-9 scores had plenty of attriton points lost.

I do have the full numbers for the Leeds doubles and in that comp out of 158 possible attrition points (the sum of the size of all the armies) the round by round AP losses were 84,120,85,101

Percentage of AP lost by army worked out at: <20>80% =15. There were no games where both sides lost less the 20% of their AP.

[madaxeman]

Having +8 for a win instead of +5 would be a lot better afaiac.

Tim
(beaten by 2 points but with one mor win than Phil)

But lost against phil

So +7 for an outright win and a countback based on results of games between the two players concerned would maybe be better from where you stand ?