Today’s article will explore the topic of tiebreakers in competitive play. My intent is to provide the pros and cons I see with various methods so that tournament organizers who run local events can best decide what they want to use for their formats. If any larger tournaments get some insight from the article, all the better, but I’m writing this as a tool for the little guy out in their smaller store tournaments. It has implications for players in these tournaments of course, and could sway you to take certain warbands, decks, or strategies to maximize your chances in tiebreakers, so it might be a useful read for many. I’ll also admit that the topic was inspired by a big tournament – the biggest in fact – the World Championships of Warhammer held last November. Worlds used “strength of schedule” as a tiebreaker to some controversy – first off, you as a player can’t control that, and second, it did lead to a player missing the top cut when tied with another player who he had beaten earlier in the qualifying rounds. Unfortunately, at large enough events, tiebreakers are going to matter, and it even could come into play at a smaller store event you run. So how do you design your tiebreaking format in a way that is both fair to all involved and results in the fewest ‘bad feelings’ while also being easy to execute from the TO’s perspective?

There are dozens of ways you could presumably break ties for placings in an event – I’ll focus on the ones I have seen most commonly and/or I think have the most merit. You could, of course, just have the tie break towards the shorter player or something else silly like that if you so choose, but I’ll ignore those things for this discussion. Categories of tiebreaker we will discuss today are Strength of Schedule, Total Glory, Glory Differential (with subcategories), Head-to-Head Record, Mutual Opponents’ Records, Overall Game Record, and the dreaded Roll-Off.

For more content in a similar vein, check out What to Expect at your First Grand Clash

Strength of Schedule
In a strength of schedule tiebreaker, the player whose opponents had the overall better record is the one who wins the tiebreaker, as they presumably had a harder path to get that final placing. The thought is that say you and I both went 3-2 across the event, but most of your opponents landed in the top 8, while most of mine lost most of their matches. We both have the same record, but my opponents were ‘lower quality’ and so by proxy you ‘did better than I did’ to have earned the same final record. You can calculate the SoS by, at the end of the event, checking the sum of all player’s opponents’ Tournament Points divided by the number of opponents the player played.

One of the benefits of this system is it can be used no matter how large the event is. Imagine an earthshattering Underworlds event with a thousand players. There’s probably no way you can play the ten matches needed to crown a true ‘winner’ in a traditional elimination bracket, and regardless, you’re going to probably have a dozen or more players who went 6-1 or what have you. Strength of schedule can be used even when the players in question never played each other and have no opponents in common either.

The major drawback is that the player has no control over their opponents’ performance in other matches. You can imagine a scenario in which a player competes their heart out, wins every match they can, and gets leapfrogged by other players because of random pairings. It’s not your fault that your opponent went on to lose three straight after your match. If this is the primary tiebreaker, you can even have a scenario (as we saw at worlds) where somebody who you beat in the event place higher than you, which could be disheartening and feels ‘wrong’ from an outside perspective. If player A beat player B head to head, shouldn’t they be ranked higher? Similarly, a player at Adepticon made the top cut despite having more game losses (going 2-1 when others went 2-0) due to the first tiebreaker being opponent win percentage. If you win the matches you can without giving up a game, it might feel bad to be outdone by somebody who lost more games. How else could you have done better?

Mutual Opponent Record
Similar in concept to Strength of Schedule – we look at ‘who else did you play’ – but in mutual opponent tiebreaker scenarios we only consider the players that both people faced. Say you and I are tied, and we both played a match against player 3 – if one of us lost while the other beat them, then the winner should probably win the tiebreaker. If we both won or both lost, (or we have multiple mutual opponents with a mixed record), you might need to use one of the other options like glory differential, but specifically for those mutual opponent matches rather than the tourney at large. It’s not an elegant tiebreaker, but it’s definitely more ‘fair’ than strength of schedule when and where your pairings allow for it.

Total Glory
The benefit of total glory as a tiebreaker is it’s very easy to calculate. Two players went 3-1? Well, who scored more? Isn’t that the point of the game? The player who scored more glory in a game wins, so the player who scored more glory across an event should win a tiebreaker, no sweat.

There are tons of drawbacks for total glory as a tiebreaker though, and I personally wouldn’t ever advocate for it. If your event is running best of three matches, the format rewards people who play three games. If you win your match 2-0, and I win mine 2-1, you had a ‘better showing’ than I did, but I had three games in which to score and so probably exceeded your glory total despite ‘doing worse’. Another major disadvantage is that it give a disincentive to conceding games when you’re losing, or allowing/being gracious about concessions when you’re winning. Say I’m losing this game and there’s no chance for me to come back in any meaningful way. If I can still squeeze out one or two more glory by dragging it out, I’m supposed to based on the format of the tiebreakers. Say I’m winning the game and there’s no doubt. With Total Glory as a tiebreaker, I’m encouraged to go hard into running up the score and giving my opponent a negative play experience. In either situation, both players may want to keep the game going, which could lead to delays in tournament matchups or the general event timetable, and/or preventing games or from completing in a timely manner to allow a full best of 3 to finish. And, how many glory points does the winner get when a game is conceded anyway? The number they had at the time the game was conceded? Do they score out the remaining cards in their deck? A TO needs an answer to this and often a player pack doesn’t consider it.

Glory Per Game
Glory per game is quite similar in benefits and drawbacks when compared to total glory, except that it averages out the glory across the number of games, so it doesn’t unfairly advantage players who went to a game three in more matches. It still encourages running up the score, discourages conceding, and can make for bad feelings and matches running long. When I was at LVO this year, a surprising part of the player’s packet was the fact that glory per game was not just a tiebreaker, but part of the main scoring for placement during the top cut. As a result, I went into the final day ranked third since I scored a lot of glory, and was even ranked above Derek who not only was undefeated, but also defeated me that same day. By most scoring systems, I should have been ranked lower than him, and seeing as I ended up tenth and he won the whole event, it’s more evidence that glory per game still isn’t the best option.

We also never touched on the ‘glory total’ issue in a different sense – it encourages certain deck builds and rewards ‘win big’ warbands. A total glory system, and even a glory differential system, rewards players who have high maximum score decks and perhaps get lucky. A smart, good player, using a denial or control strategy will be hindered by this setup. Imagine a player who will win most of their games, and has a reasonable chance to defeat anybody at the tournament itself, but they’re playing a deck that tends to win 10-6 or something similar. This player will have a low total glory and lower differential than my Yahtzee-dice Arenai that often wins 23-14 and the like – but was I really a ‘better player’, and would I deserve to win a tiebreaker here? I’d argue no. A community perception is already that aggro is king – total glory and glory per game as tiebreakers only encourage people to lean into that and reduce the frequency of other playstyles and forms of expression, which reduces variety in the game.

Glory Differential
Glory Differential as a tiebreaker is a system in which the difference in scores, or margin of victory, is what is counted rather than total glory. The pro of this type of tiebreaker is that it doesn’t necessarily punish lower scoring warbands as much so long as they still outscore their opponents handily. a 10-5 win is the same as a 20-15 win here. It still has some of the same issues total glory and glory per game have though, since you want to push your margin up by as much as possible, but there is a solution: enter the Italian 7’s.

Italian 7’s, as colloquially known, relates to the system used in the Italian Underworlds scene whereby the greatest glory differential you can record is a +7. If you win 15-8, your score is +7. If you win 25-0, your score is +7. This prevents a blowout score from over-affecting the standings, and gives the losing player more to fight for even when they get obliterated by double digits – on the score sheet they only lost by 7. It also gets rid of the issues with conceding games that are common in glory total formats – if I’m losing by more than 7 and can’t make it up, there’s no need to drag it out and we can get on with the next game. If I’m winning by more than 7, I don’t feel the need to keep running up the score and play out the whole foregone game to squeeze as many glory points out of my shattered opponent as possible.

The jury is still out on whether 7 is the ‘best’ glory differential cap, but anecdotally it has worked pretty well in the events that I have run and participated in, and the European scene has largely adopted it. you can definitely do worse than an Italian 7’s glory differential as a tiebreaker.

Head to Head Record
Of all possible tiebreakers, the head to head competition result is probably the cleanest tiebreaker if it exists. If two players are tied, and they played one another, the winner of that match is ranked higher. The challenge is that you will only be able to use this sparingly, since many times tied players will have never faced one another, so what do you do for second? You also have to have an answer to what to do if they did play one another, but that match went to a draw.

When you have access to this one, it’s a great option, but it doesn’t work as a sole tiebreaker. I once had this issue where a small round-robin event actually had three people tied for first, and all three of them had played each other, but player A beat Player B who beat player C who beat player A. Frazzled, we had a roll-off decide who took home glass that day. Be better prepared than me! Have a second tiebreaker already lined up!

Overall Record
A solid tiebreaker option when using a best-of-three format is ‘overall record’ or ‘total losses’. Say two players tied 3-1 in match record. You know they both lost 2 games in the match they lost, but what about their wins? If one player won every match 2-0 while the other had to squeak out 2-1 wins, giving up a game each time, the player with fewer losses probably deserves to win the tiebreak. If that’s the same, but one player lost their losing match 0 games to 2 and the other lost it 1-2, the one with more wins should theoretically win the tiebreaker. If your opponents couldn’t take a game off you as easily, or you were able to take a game off the people who bet you, that’s a sign that you deserve a higher placing.

The pros of this system are that it’s intuitive, feels ‘fair’, and gives everybody a reason to try and win all of their games and force a game three when behind, or grind out a 2-0 win when able. The downsides is that it might push people away from conceding a loss, and it doesn’t work if your event is a best-of-one format. Overall it’s a strong contender for ‘best tiebreaker’ when you’re able to use it, though.

Roll-off
When all else fails, you could have the tied players perform a roll-off, the winner of which gets the higher placing. Coin flips, rock paper scissors, or any other ‘randomizing’ method works the same way. The upside of this method is it is fast and doesn’t require you to do any math, and the TO can appear completely unbiased. There are major downsides though – it completely discounts any other metric previously discussed. The player who scored more glory, gave up fewer loses, won by larger margins, has stronger strength or schedule, etc might feel like they deserve it more and now they are out of the podium, top cut, or what-have-you because they lost a coin toss. It’s best, in my opinion, to only use this as a last resort tiebreaker when all other things are equal, and only after the other options are exhausted.

Verdict
Of the options I explored here, there are a couple of approaches. In my personal estimation, the best tiebreakers in order are as follows:

Head to Head record
Overall Record
Glory Differential (preferably with a cap like +7)
Mutual Opponent Record
Strength of Schedule
Glory per Game
Total Glory
Roll-off

It’s worth noting that the Battle Mallet TO packet (a great resource if you want to run an event yourself or need a template for your own comp pack) disagrees slightly. Their list is Overall Record, Glory Differential (with the +7 per game), Strength of Schedule, Head to Head, and lastly Total Glory in descending order of preference.

Wrap
Ultimately, how you choose to run tiebreakers in your event are up to you as a T.O. but you should know that what you choose can end up ruining somebody’s event and possibly depress future turnout if things feel too unfair. In many instances, you’ll never need to use tiebreakers, but it is best practice to have them in place anyway and have communicated them clearly and in advance to all players so nobody is taken by surprise when they pop up. If you’re a player, you may want to take the tiebreakers into consideration when preparing for an event – if total glory matters, bring a deck or warband with a high ceiling. If total record matters, bring a deck with a high floor that will win most games and has the lowest chance of crashing and burning based on luck so you don’t win a bunch of 2-1s when your dice go cold. The community at large can benefit from standardization, but if that’s not possible, do your best to make a fair competitive environment for your players. Whatever you choose, and whatever you find on your players’ pack, I hope you enjoy spending glory!