So it’s Nationals/Euros/Gencon. You’ve battled your way through the swiss rounds, skilfully bringing down each opponent and staying ahead of the pack, your hours of list crafting and practice games have fine tuned your skills and tactics to get you right here – the top cut. Well done!

Now, repeat what you just did two more times and you win the ultimate prize right? Well…not so much.

You see, games in the top cut are very, very different to your standard swiss games, and that’s because the conditions you’re used to in swiss have dramatically changed.

Firstly, there is now no incentive to go all out, balls to the wall, to get that 300+ MoV because tournament points no longer matter. Win / loss is all that matters now, and all you need to win is 1 MoV if you’re first player or 0 MoV if you’re second.

Secondly, the stakes are higher now. Entry, flights & accommodation to Worlds, maybe even the World Championship title itself! Yes, you knew what the stakes were before entering the tournament. But right now, at this very moment, what was before a mere opportunity is now a real possibility! This can often encourage unconventional and sometimes unsavoury tactics to win.

Let’s see how these factors can possibly influence your game in the top cut.

The Initiative

Whoever wins the initiative bid has a lot of things to consider before making the choice of first or second player. This includes, but is not limited to:

Can your fleet & strategy win against a fleet that does not engage?

Will your opponent have objectives that will support not engaging?

Do you have objectives that will support not engaging?

Does your opponent have something that can be easily singled out for destruction and vice versa?

A lot of this will come down to how you analyse the capabilities of your opponents fleet and your own, its just that this time you’ll have to account for a game where your opponent may not necessarily want to engage you, or where you may not necessarily want to engage your opponent.

Objective selection

So you choose to go first. Your opponent has Ackbar double pickle MC80s, double GR75, Shara and Tyco. You’re running an Ozzel DeMSU paired with Maarek & Jendon’s Relay Flying Circus.

He/She reveals the following objectives.

Without even using the force I can tell what most of you reading would straight away discard. Advanced Gunnery.

And if this was a swiss round, you would probably end up picking Capture the VIP because that gives you a definite engagement zone and doesn’t squander your deployment advantage (unlike Solar Corona)

But this is not swiss, and this example actually happened in the finals of the 2017 Australian Armada National Championship (which you can see here).

In summary, Nick setup a pincer around the VIP token knowing the Scott had to deploy in such a way that he could pick it up. The expectation would be that Scott would continue to fly straight down the middle of the board to get that delicious Ackbar slash on both pincers, but with Nick’s activation advantage and speed he could wait until both MC80s have gone and send in the blocker last whilst having the MJ Flying Circus chip away at the lead MC80. A great battle plan…if this was swiss.

What actually happened was Scott skilfully manoeuvred his MC80s head on into the weakest pincer, destroyed it, and kept the rest of Nick’s fleet at arm’s length with the power of Ackbar. Another thing that Scott did was he kept a mental tally of the current score, this way he would at all times know what the victory conditions were for Nick and how to stop it. In this case the last opportunity for Nick to make a comeback in the last few turns was to take out the GR75s or both Tyco and Shara. So in response Scott kept his GR75s and Shara as far out of the fray as possible before sending in Tycho at the last minute to give Defiance some much needed relief from the MJ Flying Circus.

Scott won the day, the 2017 Australian national champion title, and the prize of paid flights and accommodation to Worlds 2018. If this was a swiss round, it would’ve been an unimpressive 6-5. But it wasn’t a swiss round and we can see when one player is thinking top cut strategy and one isn’t, the implications can be huge.

Now what can we learn from this with our 20/20 hindsight? The objective that would have actually given Nick the most advantage as first player would have been, believe it or not, Advanced Gunnery.

Remember this was set in the days before the Relay nerf, so the MJ Flying Circus could pretty much go anywhere and attack with impunity, whilst the ships fly off into the sunset. With deployment advantage, activation advantage, first player and squadron superiority, the best thing to do would be to ignore the Advanced Gunnery objective and simply target a single GR75 or one of the Awing Aces for destruction and bug out.

There would have been no way the pickles could catch any of the Ozzel ships to make up the points if they deployed facing away and whilst it would have been a boring match to watch, it’s still winning.

Deployment

I touched on this facet a little in the previous point, but I wanted to stress that a deployment strategy that worked well in swiss rounds, won’t necessarily translate well into the top cut. To demonstrate my point, I bring you another example from down under. This time it’s the 2016 Australian National Championships where I personally made the final top cut against this guy on the left, who should need no introduction!

So I was flying what I called Crack Team Six. It was essentially six ships (MC30, 3xTRC90, 2x GR75), six A-wings, and a 16 point bid, all commanded by Cracken. I relied heavily on first player so I could first/last with the MC30. At the time, I found a particular deployment that worked well for me when I was forced into a Superior Positions was this.

Basically this forced my opponent to counter deploy either in the middle and come straight down which allowed me to swing vertically with the TRC90s to stay at long range and get the MC30 in last. Or, they deploy head on in the opposing corner in which case I would do the same thing but horizontally. It made little sense to deploy behind the line and chase it because my ships are faster, attack at long range, and being first player I’d activate a ship that was in trouble first. Deploying this way would also mean a really low scoring game which did not help anyone in the swiss rounds.

Intel Officer Luke was running 2 Assault Frigates, 3 GR75s, 6 Awings, 6 Ywings. Without thinking about the top cut conditions I automatically chose first player, because that’s what I built my list to do. His objectives were Most Wanted, Contested Outpost, and Superior Positions. We talked about objective selection in the last point but at the time I chose Superior Positions over the others. I had my reasons for it, which I won’t bore you with here, and without thinking about how the top cut worked I deployed as per my usual plan for Superior Positions.

Luke counter deployed in the top left corner, not even facing towards my fleet.

He grinned. The penny dropped for me. We laughed. I shook his hand and said “well played good sir, GG!” and that was pretty much the 2016 Australian National Championship over for me right after deployment. It would have been the most boring game to watch, so much so they didn’t even bother uploading the recorded match! But like I said, it doesn’t matter because it’s still a win.

Again with 20/20 hindsight, there are countless things I could have done differently. One thing that stood out to me was the possibility of even going second and either forcing an engagement, or running away myself. But the main thing I did not consider was that the top cut is played very differently from the swiss rounds.

Time considerations

If both players are on the ball, what went wrong in the previous two examples should have been mitigated and we’re actually engaging now. Chances are the points difference between the two player is going to be close. Losing one squadron or gaining a single objective token may be the difference between winning and losing the finals. This means both players will be assessing and reassessing for the most optimal moves and counter moves, which can take up considerable amounts of time, as we saw in the finals of FFG Worlds 2017 and 2018.

The 2018 game ran out of time by turn 5. It ended in a draw, giving the win to second player Nathan Coda. The point I wish to demonstrate here is that playing in the top cut means you have to be on top of your situational awareness. You have to quickly calculate points you have accumulated, points your opponent has, the time left, and remember it without the aid of taking notes. On top of that, you have to work out if you can defend or gain the lead in the remaining time, because a winning activation on turn 6 may not actually happen.

Governor Pryce & Bail Organa

Timing is crucial on these two upgrades. In a regular swiss game, most people would choose turns 2 or 3 for these to go off, because that’s when the action usually happens. In a top cut game, this may not be the case.

At the same time if you choose to delay the timing of these cards to turns 3-4 to account for non engagement strategies, you take the risk that your opponent will play as if it were swiss and engage you early on turn 2.

Just something to consider if you have those upgrades on deck while playing in a top cut.

Conclusion

The main point I want to stress is that if you have fought hard enough, and have been lucky enough, to make it to the top cut, remember that it’s an entirely different beast to the swiss rounds and that the most prepared and well informed players will come out on top.

There are entirely different strategies that apply in the top cut that you normally wouldn’t use in the swiss rounds that you must be aware of. These include:

Second player not engaging

First player singling out and destroying 1 easy target then disengaging

Last killing before the end of the game

This is further compounded by considerations with selection of first or second player, choosing objectives, and how your deployment works when considering the top cut conditions.

If you’re reading this, I hope with all sincerity that you make the top cut in the future and that this article was somewhat helpful to you.

Tangent Discussion

Be warned, I’m going to go off on a tangent here with a bit of a rant.

One of the inspirations of writing this article is that this year, there is a noticeable behavioural shift on how the top cut is played. Before it was something us Australians worried about as demonstrated 2 years in a row. It is a big deal for us being able to get to Worlds financially. Nationals, Euros, Gencon, and the Worlds top cut games during the same period (2016-2017) were largely action packed and were great to watch.

This year, the top cut players globally have caught on and have changed their play style as necessary to win. Whilst I recognise the skill and marvelled at the decision making process of the finalists during the livestream of the 2018 Armada World Finals, many quite frankly did not. Most people just wanted to see dice rolled and ships leave the table. If you look at the Twitch live chat and even some threads on the FFG forums after the event, it’s just shameful.

At the same time, I don’t blame the people watching for saying those things, nor do I blame the players for playing that way. It’s the way the top cut system operates that encourages this. With both watchers dissing Armada and top cut placers playing in an unentertaining way, it serves as an indication that something is wrong.

Another point I’d like to raise, is about the top cut theory itself. I’ve covered the considerations to take when you get to the top cut but something that’s difficult to address is fleet building for a top cut game. Because you need to win your swiss matches first, you won’t have an optimal fleet or strategy if your plan is to win by as little as possible. Essentially it’s like you’ve been playing 40k and in the finals you have to play chess now, but using the same armies.

In the example where I demonstrated Advanced Gunnery was the best choice to take against Ackbar MC80s, how can such a fleet archetype not take Advanced Gunnery? What is clearly a massive advantage for you during swiss turns into a glaring weakness in the top cut. It’s insane.

By writing this article I hope to raise awareness of this situation, which hopefully results in games that are more fun to watch. Also, with the way FFG is going with Armada and OP Australia (restricted store champs, no nationals 2018 announced yet, heavy possibility of national winners no longer winning flights & accommodation to Worlds), I may never actually get the opportunity to even make the top cut in any Armada event from this point on! So here I am, sharing what i know so you may benefit.

In any case, good luck at your next big event!

– Veteran Captain Ken