Truncated Scoring in Tournaments

In just over a week I'm off to Orktoberfest in Brisbane. This has always been my favourite tournament of the year as not only has it attracted gamers from all around Australia but it is the last event of the tournament year. This means it is always hard-fought but immense fun.

In last year's event I won 5 out of my 6 games but only finished 20th. This shows how tough the competition is.

As an aside, the game I lost included one of the most freaky events I've seen happen on a Warhammer table. I was playing Nathan Goodchild's Chaos army and we had reached the last turn. I had the opportunity to fire my Warplightning Cannon but potential targets were limited, As I remember I shot it at a Chaos Knight to try and get the remaining points from the unit. Of course I misfired and rolled the old "Spin Wildly" result. My Skaven Warlord was by himself on my baseline 23" away from the Warmachine. With any of the other 359 degrees open, the scatter dice decided to roll exactly so it put the Str 10 shot through my lone Warlord. He promptly failed his Ward Save and took the necessary 3 wounds to kill him. Oh how we laughed!

Anyway enough digression back to the main topic.

This year at Orktoberfest the organisers have implemented truncated scoring for the first three rounds of the event. This means that for those rounds the most you can get is a 15-5 result (regardless of the VPs you earn). The rationale behind this is to try to ensure that the person who wins the event has to really perform on Day Two of the event. In the later stages of a tournament as the Swiss Chess system of player pairings has had a chance to match players, wins should theoretically get harder.

At the start of the tournament there is greater potential to get mismatches in player skill in the various pairings. There is the opportunity to have what the vets call a "Bunny Run" where you score high points against less skilled players and then have the opportunity to defend a lead against players not so "fortunate".

I am really keen to see how this pans out at Orktoberfest. The games Day One are worth a maximum 45 points while those on Day Two have the usual 60 point maximum. Looking at this prior to the event I can see how this should have the desired effect but the proof is in the dessert as they say.

It will be fascinating to see how it plays out.