Level One - Lesson 16
Scorekeeping - Using Melee.gg
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Hello there and welcome back to the Judge Program for Star Wars™: Unlimited - Level One certification track lessons.
As always, I’m your host Jonah, and in this lesson, we’re going to take a closer look at a very powerful tool - this lesson will cover Melee.gg, the scorekeeping software for Star Wars: Unlimited.
We’re going to look at the software from three different perspectives - as an Event Organizer, as a Judge, and as a Player. While it’s not a primary part of judge training, being able to run a basic event in melee or other event software is an important skill for a judge to have. Generally, you shouldn’t need to set up the event, or handle registration - that should be a part of the store’s responsibilities, but they may ask you to directly manage the event by turning over rounds and using the software for a few key activities.
However, beyond that, as a judge, people will consider you an expert in all things, including a lot of scorekeeping and registration-focused tasks. While you often won’t be performing these roles, being able to answer common questions and understand the underlying event settings can help you provide a better service.
This also includes player-based questions. A lot of folks will ask you how to drop from an event or report their match result, and understanding how to do those things will make everything just that much smoother.
Before we dive into the technical details, I want to talk more generally about Melee’s history and background, so you can better understand where it’s coming from, and why some of the features that may seem strange exist.
Melee was developed initially to run online tournaments for Magic: Arena. This is why the “check-in” feature exists - with an online tournament, you’re not able to look out at the event and see if a player is present or not. Similarly, this means it was designed to be run by a tournament organizer at a dedicated workstation, and so the UI was developed for that.
The software has grown over time to have more features, support more games, and be more powerful. However, that comes at a cost.
Think of it this way - Melee is a Star Destroyer. It will do whatever job you assign it to, but for taking out an X-Wing, it’s a bit of overkill, and you probably don’t need all of its features. Melee, likewise, is more than you need to run weekly play or a prerelease. But if you’re running a multi-day tournament with thousands of players and dozens of side events, having all of these features at your fingertips quickly becomes an asset.
Another thing to note is that there are many ways to get to the same screen, and consequently a few different routes to get things done. I’m going to be outlining the ways I’m familiar with, but there may be more efficient options out there.
If you’re ever running an event, and Melee does something that you don’t think it should be doing, or you’re not sure what actions you need to take to make the software give you the results you expect, check in with their community discord: https://discord.melee.gg/. Not only is their support team extraordinarily responsive, but there are also many expert scorekeepers who understand the software deeply and can provide assistance.
If you want to follow along with this lesson, you can follow along by making your own organization on https://melee.gg/Organization/Create. You can also find supplementary resources that go into more detail than this lesson on the melee.gg help page.
Let’s dive in!
To create a tournament, you’ll head to either Your Current Organization or Your Tournaments in your profile and then click “Create New Tournament”. You can also just navigate directly to https://melee.gg/Tournament/Create.
Once you do that, you’ll want to make sure you’re creating one for the right organization, which may happen if several stores have you on their staff, and then select the proper game. In this example, we’re also hitting the checkbox to indicate that this is for testing and training purposes so that the event isn’t visible to players or other users.
Our first task is to set up some General Details for the event. Give the event a name, that’s useful for someone searching for it.
For Tournament Type, select either Tabletop or Registration Only. Tabletop is going to be your standard tournament structure with paired rounds for players. Registration Only allows you to collect a list of players but doesn’t do anything more with that information. This is a great option if you run open weekly play, where players find their own opponents, or if you’re running a league of some sort. You’ll also want to add tags so that it’s easier to find your event. These tags cover the event types that are sponsored by FFG at this time.
Under scheduling, set the start time for your event. Adding additional details is optional, and not necessary, but can allow more control over the event.
It’s also critical to include Player Registration information - whether it’s open to the public or requires an invite.
Branding and Player Communication are optional and can provide a more polished experience for players, but are not required and are generally self-explanatory.
Under Player Data Requirements, you’ll generally want to check off “Require Star Wars: Unlimited ID on Profile”. Having a UID is a requirement for entry into official FFG events, and is used to track players tournament points as well as invites and byes at subsequent events. For example, without a UID a player who wins a Planetary Qualifier may not accurately receive their byes at the Galactic Championship.
Finally, under Advanced Options, you’ll want to include a player cap. While you may not expect to run out of space for your event, there’s nothing worse than starting an event and then finding out you don’t have space for everyone to play.
For in-person events, you’ll also want to select “Ignore player check-in”. This is a feature designed primarily for digital events, and simply adds an unnecessary step for in-person events, where you can more easily confirm players are in attendance.
Then you can hit Create Tournament, and the event will be created. However, there’s still more work to be done before you can make the event public and players can register.
Once you hit create, you’ll be brought to your event’s phases page. If you want to return here, you’ll just be able to hit the phase button on the sidebar. There’s a helpful link for more information about phases. Phases allow you to have different structures for different parts of the event. This is most frequently used to delineate where progression cuts occur, either for the second day of competition or for top-8, but can also be used for multiple-format events, allowing one tournament to more broadly test player skills.
For now though, we’ll go to Phase Actions and select “Create a new phase”
This will bring up a new window, where there are a lot of choices to make. If you have progression cuts (such as on a multi-day event, or an event with a top-8) you’ll want to make sure to include that, but we don’t have to worry about that here.
For Play Format you’ll generally choose premier, but for draft and sealed events, you’ll choose those as appropriate. Similarly, you’ll choose Swiss as your Matching Method most of the time. Each matching method has a short description when you select it.
For Match Type you’ll select either Best-of-One or Best-of-Three. The other options are generally for other games.
Then, you’ll select a number of rounds. To play the appropriate full swiss rounds, consult the Tournament Regulations, which will provide a value based on the number of players you have.
Table Numbers and Pods include more features that are valuable for running draft events and for running multiple events at the same time with contiguous numbering.
Before moving forward, we’re going to want to jump up to Quick Settings, also on that side navigation bar. Here, you’ll want to verify that things are as how you expect them.
You’ll be able to confirm and edit details such as the Tournament Name, Tournament Type and Player Cap.
You’ll also want to verify a few settings have been checked off. Ignore Player Check-In is important, otherwise players who don’t check in will be dropped from the event. Again, this was a feature built for digital events, but you can check for no-shows more easily with an in-person event.
Enabling draws is also important. This allows players to enter a result as a draw. They will still receive zero match wins for a draw, and tiebreakers will be recorded accurately.
You can also enable the round timer, which you can run in Melee, so that players have access to a round clock on their phone. If you enable it, make sure to set it to the appropriate length - either 25 or 55 minutes, depending on your Match Type.
Next up, we’re going to publish our tournament, so that it’s available to players to register. It means that players will be able to find it in the tournament finder, or you can send them a direct link or even have a QR code for the event posted in your store.
Both the Event Status dropdown and Tournament Actions dropdown are available on all pages of the Tournament Controller and where you can complete this action.
To enroll players, we’re going to jump to the Players tab. We can hit the Enroll Players button to start adding players. If they’ve played in events with this organization before on Melee, it’s relatively easy to find them. If they don’t have a melee account, you can register them and create an account for them, that they’ll have to claim with the chosen email.
For this, we’re going to go to Player Actions dropdown and select “enroll test players”, which gives us a full event of players to run the event with.
With players enrolled, it’s time to get the event started!
We’ll navigate to the Matches Tab, and then under the Match Actions dropdown, select “Match players/teams”. At this point in time, pairings will be available to players in their player controller, and you can additionally use the Match Actions dropdown to print out paper pairings.
Results will come in as players report - which they can do from the same page as where they found their pairings. You can also enter match results, either by hitting the Results Entry button next to the Match Actions Dropdown, or by hitting the gear to the right of any given match.
Once all of the results have come in for a round, switch to the next round, and match players again. Rinse and repeat until the event comes to a conclusion.
At any point you can check the standings as well as see standings in previous rounds by clicking into the standings tab - this is very useful for distributing prizes, whether they’re based on standing or final record.
As a judge, there are a few extra tools you may want to engage with more actively. One of the first things I do is I adjust my column visibility - I usually just show Table, Players/Teams, Result, and Time Extension.
This shows me the vast majority of the information that I need to effectively manage end-of-round or help players.
The other big feature for judges is the ability to enter penalties. While you won’t need to use this frequently at casual tier events knowing how to can set you up for success in the future. You can do this either by clicking the gear and then “Enter Penalty” or tapping on the player’s name and then “Enter Penalty”. You’ll be able to select the infraction, the penalty and enter a short description.
This description is important for auditing later, in case the player makes other similar mistakes, or they later believe that they received an incorrect penalty. These penalties are not visible to anyone other than staff.
Notably, whenever you’re entering a penalty, melee will display all other penalties that player has accrued during this tournament. It also allows you to update the time extension a match has when issuing the penalty.
If players incorrectly input match results, you’re able to edit those. You can check a player’s seatings, matches, and tournament history just by clicking on their name. You can help players drop from the event or find their table. If a player needs a fixed table for a tournament due to mobility concerns or a parent wanting to stay near their child, you can enter those on the player profile as well.
As a scorekeeper, you’re able to export the match data every round, in case something occurs - you’ll be have that information at hand. You can create tournaments with progression cuts based on record or standing, and have multiple cuts. You can even have the format change over the course of the tournament, going from draft to premier and back again, should you so choose (and there are some tournaments that take advantage of these tools).
For most player interactions, they’ll want to go to their player controller. They can access this by going to their tournaments (from the upper right user menu), selecting the event, and then selecting player controller.
From there, they’ll be able to find their match, see what table they’re at, confirm their match wins, input their match results, and drop from the event. This is where the majority of players actions will take place, but they can find more information on the Player Controller, which includes decklists (when available) and information about matches still playing.
There’s a lot we haven’t covered, especially in rigorous detail. I encourage you to go ahead, create an account if you don’t already have one, create a test event to play around in, and begin to better understand the tools and features available to you. Our next lesson will be where things all start to really come together - how to run an event! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or insights, be sure to join the Judge Community Discord and make your voice heard. Until next time, good luck and have fun!