I got Stoned - A Moonstone Tournament Report

Once I had decided to break my Tournament cherry the Tournament rules were set out well in advance to assist in what to expect and also how the format would be and what restrictions would be in place for Troupe choice.

The Tournament was going to be timed rounds, with each round being an hour and a half, with 3 rounds in total.

We would be using 5 moonstones in the game with a Troupe size of a fixed 5 models, so using the same 5 models for the entire tournament.

An efficient Swiss system

A swiss pairing system was going to be used. I did not know what this was, so had to read up on it. This method is a popular format for the big Fantasy Flight Games tournaments, basically it works to match people up based on the points scored.

Games would be scored as 2 Victory Points (VP) for a Victory, 1 VP for a draw, with any ties on points broken by the most moonstones claimed.

So round one, all players are randomly paired, then under normal Swiss system, the next round you would expect to play an opponent with a similar result to you in round one, with round 3 being the top two playing to claim overall victory.

This means that if you happen to get drawn against an experienced gamer in round one and lost, you would probably play someone who also lost in round one in round two. This means that you get a kind of balance after round two, and it meant it felt that even losing round one, you still had chance to win the tournament.

In larger tournaments (we had 6 players), they introduce a Cut and Strength of Schedule also can be used – but I’ve not read on how Strength works and seems very complex, but aims to balance out your losses are not quite as bad if you lost against someone who won all there games.

As an example:

6 players.

Round 1 – random pairings

Player A vs Player B

Player C vs Player D

Player E vs Player F

Round 1 results

Player A 3 – 2 Player B (Player A Victory, holding 3 moonstones  to player B’s 2)

Player C 4 – 1 Player D (Player C Victory, holding 4 moonstones to player D’s 1)

Player E 3 – 1 Player F (Player E Victory, holding 3 moonstones to player F’s 1)

Round 1 Table

So under the rules, the table is sorted by VP’s first and then moonstones held, where moonstones were tied, the number of moonstones the opponent held factors in, this would be different based on the game and tournament organiser (TO).

So Round two matches are then basically done top down from the table. So based on these round one results round two would be:

Player C vs Player E

Player A vs Player B

Player F vs Player D

Round two results in:

Player C 3 – 0 Player E (Player C victory)

Player A 3 – 2 Player B (Player A victory)

Player F 3—2 Player D (Player F victory)

Round two table would then be:

As this was a three round tournament, this meant the final round would decide the final standings for the entire tournament.

Again the pairings are juts taken top down, but using the swiss system, you can see that the strongest players end up at the top, with both C and A winning both their games, so then will play each other, with whoever winning having won all three games and claiming first place.

Hopefully this helps illustrate the Swiss system a bit more easily.