Playing It Out

The idea of prize splitting is that the players who get to the top eight or top four of an event take the prize pool and equally split it between them. This means there is basically a tie between those four or eight players. Ties are no fun. Who wins when it’s a tie? Where is the fun in that?

Prize splitting makes sense to those that are getting a portion of the prize pool. Going through seven rounds of Swiss pairings only to lose in the first round of a top eight cut and get potentially nothing to show for it certainly has a large amount of “feels bad” to it. Additionally, looking at the top cut field any player that views those matchups as less than ideal could be more in favor of splitting vs. taking their chances and ending up with nothing.

SCG Columbus is happening this weekend. Friday had a 1k, Saturday a 2k, and we are a few hours away from the start of the day three 1k event. These events mark the first large tournaments of the Twilight of the Republic meta and also the first since Boba Fett, Collecting the Bounty was suspended.

Friday’s event saw a top 8 prize split. The 2k event yesterday saw something commendable. Even though there was a top 4 prize split, the players played out the matches to determine an actual winner.

There are merits to actually determining a winner. For starters, you know which deck and player came out on top. There’s no ambiguity as to the best deck on that day at that event. Additionally, an eight way tie is really anticlimactic.

Congratulations to John Tatta who came out on top with a Jango Tarkintown deck. Props to the other top four players for playing out the matches, Ryan (also on Jango TT), Maclunky Gaming Numberguy/Filip (Han1 Yellow), and Alex Blandin (Jango TT). The other four players deserve credit as well for playing out the first round of the top eight as well, Ian Klein (Anakin Blue), Quinn (Sabine ECL), Sean (Rey TT), and Derrick (Qi’ra Green).

This SCG 2k event got played out. We had a winner. We now have an established early Twilight of the Republic meta. Jango seems like the current leader to beat given it was 3/4 of the top four.

With another event today, we’ll see if something topples Jango. Potentially we’ll see a prize split top cut that does not get played out. Ideally we’ll see the top cut played out regardless of the prizing.

** Edit: TowerNumberNine has a nice recap of the first two SCG Columbus events for which he seems to concur that playing things out is nice, plus a breakdown of the new meta on his YouTube channel.