Level Two - Lesson 23
Running a Top Cut
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Hello there!
Welcome back to the level two lessons for the Star Wars™: Unlimited Judge Program!
As always, I’m your host Jonah, and this course is going to cover the best practices for running a smooth top-cut. The single elimination portion of any competitive event is a strange dichotomy - it’s one of the most visible and impactful parts of the tournament, but in other ways it’s also the easiest and most relaxed.
For many player,s their goal is simply to make the top cut - once they’ve reached that threshold, they’re just happy to be there - the stress of trying to make the cut goes can diminish, and it can lead to the top cut being a more casual feeling environment.
This lesson is going to focus on a cut to top eight, as that’s the most common cut to single elimination for Unlimited. Furthermore, there will be a few places in this lesson that diverge from official guidance - official championship series events (PQs, SQs, RQs, and Galactics) should adhere to official guidance, but other competitive tier events that aren’t official have a bit more flexibility. We include that guidance here as it can create a different play experience, which may be what you or the tournament organizer are looking for.
Presenting the Top Eight
Before the top eight can begin, we need to know who is participating in it.
For larger events, particularly ones with an audio system to make it easy to clearly be heard over the crowd, I encourage you to announce your top eight competitors before publicly posting standings. While most of the top eight know that they’ve made the cut, it often comes down to tiebreakers, and there is some uncertainty. Announcing which players made the cut can create a moment of hype and excitement for the player and their friends, celebrating the achievement.
When announcing players, start with first and work your way down to eighth - the players toward the top of the standings are locked, and so it’s less exciting. Going from first to eighth builds excitement.
At the end of the announcement, ensure that standings become publicly available, and have a short window (two to five minutes, roughly) before standings are finalized. Very infrequently there’s an error in someone’s record, which needs to be adjusted. However, you also need to move the tournament along, and so you can’t wait indefinitely. Having a defined period before standings are locked in allows players the opportunity to raise concern, but doesn’t meaningfully delay the event.
Pictures and Media
With your top eight announced, it’s time to prepare them for their matches. Part of that is accounting for what the tournament organizer needs for their media - this is particularly relevant for events with broadcasters.
In many situations, there are no additional steps, and you can move the players directly to play, but there can often be a few minor requests from the organizer or media team.
The most common of these is photos - usually at least one group photo of the competitors, and sometimes individual portraits. Beyond that, some organizers have players fill out a short biography or interview questionnaire to provide to the coverage team, to allow commentators to provide a bit more insight into the player profiles, but this is generally reserved for exceptional events.
Performing Courtesy Checks
Before top eight play begins, it can be useful, but is not required, to perform courtesy deck checks. Penalties for errors with the deck or with marked cards should not be issued during these courtesy checks, other than for cheating, as there is not an active match going on. The goal of these checks is to ensure that the top eight is as smooth and fair as possible. Catching an issue during a top eight match and issuing a game loss has a huge impact, due to the single elimination structure.
A player with a decklist error, however, is still issued a game loss for the same reasons that a decklist error is a game loss even between swiss rounds.
Once the checks have been performed, you can either retain the decks and only return them to the players for their match, and collect them between matches, or return them to the players. I encourage the latter, as it leans on trust and respect within the community. Furthermore, given that a deck check has just been performed and that judges will be watching every match, the risk for adding cards to the deck or marking cards is much higher than usual.
Preparing the Play Area
While that’s being taken care of, you want to ensure that the play area is set up to maximize player comfort. Allow players to spread out a little bit more than usual, but ensure that they’re not too spread out so that you and the judge team can observe them. If you have a feature match area, try to have all of your players in or near that area, so you aren’t traveling great distances between matches.
A good practice is to have a spare set of chairs in between each top eight match. This not only allows the players a bit more elbow room on each side, but gives a place for judges to sit, so that they can focus on the match, and not have to stand for the duration.
You also want to take into account spectators. Other players who were in the event, particularly the friends of the remaining competitors, want to watch the games as they play out. If you don’t enforce boundaries, spectators potentially will crowd around the players and passive distract them.
Creating a barrier with tables, chairs, or simply instructing spectators to not pass a certain point can relieve this stress. Furthermore, if you’re able to set up a rebroadcast of the stream (if you have one) far enough away that the player’s can’t hear it, that can pull spectators away, because the top down view is often more informative. Also keep an ear open for spectator conversations - sometimes idle conversation may drift toward discussing strategy or options, which can be detrimental to the event.
Playing the Rounds
With everything set up it’s time to play some Unlimited! While your scorekeeping software will appropriately pair players throughout the bracket if you enter results, I encourage you to print or write out a bracket - this allows you to better communicate to players what their next match-up will be.
In a constructed event, the winner of seed 1 and 8 will play against the winner of seeds 4 and 5, while the winner of 2 and 7 will play the winner of 3 and 6.
If you run a draft top eight, players should be seated randomly, and then paired as they would be for the draft - with seat 1 playing seat 5, and so on. If the pairings were based on seed, to maintain the expected draft structure, players would also know what seat they would be in, and who their neighbors would be, well before the draft starts, and consequently would have more opportunity to discuss specific strategies and signals. By randomizing the seats, the window of opportunity is reduced dramatically.
Throughout the single elimination rounds, the player with the higher seed gets the choice of who starts with the initiative for game one of each match - but for games two and three, the loser of the previous game chooses as they normally would.
Official top cuts also have a time limit of seventy-five minutes. After players finish the current round and their additional action phase, the game proceeds to sudden death. Because of the single elimination rules, a winner must be found. If players are still in a game, the player with the most remaining HP on their base wins. If the remaining HP is tied, the player with the initiative when the game ends is the winner. If the players are going to game three, the player who would start with the initiative wins.
For unofficial events, you can consider running your top cuts without a time limit. If you do so, ensure that you consult with the tournament organizer to see if there are any limitations on the time you can spend in the venue, as some venues may close and you may need some time limits.
When you have time limits, ensure that you’re appropriately issuing time extensions when you take calls and interact with matches. Because the outcome of the match can change based on the state of the game in a single round, a minute can be very impactful.
Throughout the top cut, it’s very likely you’ll have slightly more relaxed players - at the very least, you’re going to have a more intimate event. During the swiss rounds, whether you’re the only judge for a thirty player event or one of several judges for over a hundred, you’re not going to be able to dedicate your full attention to a single game or match, and neither will anyone else, other than the players in those matches.
However, during the top eight, it’s very likely that you can have a judge watching each match, and that each match will have it’s own set of spectators. Banter and cross-talk talk is more noticeable when you’re sitting there - but by being in the space, you’re also more able to effectively judge what is and isn’t appropriate, and what might be making players uncomfortable.
As players finish their matches, one side of the bracket may finish before the other. In that circumstance, you can choose to have a semi-final play while a quarter-final match on the other side of the bracket is ongoing. If you choose to do so, make sure that it doesn’t disrupt any plans for coverage or feature matches, and be aware that you may be creating a long stretch of time for one player to do nothing but wait.
Prizing the Players
As players are eliminated from the event, you can prize them out. When prizing is based on standing, they’re usually based on rank ranges, such as 5th to 8th. That means that as soon as a top eight player is eliminated, they know exactly what prizes they’ll receive.
You can even prepare each match by putting prizes down at the beginning of the match - letting players know which prizes go to the winner, and which to the loser. I prefer to get prizes to players as soon as possible - top eight promos distributed as soon as the quarter finals begin, top four as soon as a player begins their semi-final etc... This is to help minimize the overload that can occur if you try to do everything at once.
Giving a player four different promos, a playmat, an initiative token, and some booster boxes, and then the next player the same, except one fewer promo, can be a complicated process.
Giving everyone the same promo, and then, later, giving the remaining competitors another can be more individual steps, but it’s a little bit more composed.
When you get to your final competitor, be sure to congratulate them, make sure you have the information you need for any further communication (they likely have given an email as part of event registration), and consider announcing the winner to the entire venue. For local events, like Planetary Qualifiers, there’s a high probability that everyone interested in the outcome of the tournament is watching the match, so it’s less impactful there, but at larger events, it can be a nice way to celebrate your champion.
Speaking of larger events, that’s the subject for our next lesson! We’ll be talking about the structure of multi-hundred player events, what different teams and tasks you can expect and some guidance on how escalations should be handled. If you’re watching this on YouTube, and you want more level two lessons in your feed, go ahead and subscribe. Join us Tuesdays and Fridays on twitch.tv/swu_judges for live broadcasts covering the content of these lessons as they are released, and join the Star Wars: Unlimited Judge Program Discord to join the community in discussion of this and much, much more.
As always, good luck, and have fun.