Seating Order Not Completely Random?

[michaelHastriter]

Thanks everyone for getting back with me on this. Well. I guess we will always sit in that same seating order but I don't like that seating order because I don't like going after the player I go directly after because their strategy makes the player directly after them have to make tough decisions. If I subtract a player in 1 game then add them back in the next time will it still maintain the order last time it was us 4? Is my only hope to create a new BGA account?

[Mathew5000]

Thanks everyone for getting back with me on this. Well. I guess we will always sit in that same seating order but I don't like that seating order because I don't like going after the player I go directly after because their strategy makes the player directly after them have to make tough decisions. If I subtract a player in 1 game then add them back in the next time will it still maintain the order last time it was us 4? Is my only hope to create a new BGA account?

I assume the four of you are friends on BGA, and you are doing turn-based games?

Try setting up a Swiss System tournament. From https://boardgamearena.com/tournamentlist click on "Create a new tournament", then the game name (Wingspan, presumably), make up a "New championship name" and "This tournament name" (for the latter, I just use the current month and year), then under Who can register, select "Private tournament (by invitation or link)". For "Number of participants", set both the minimum and maximum to 4. Choose a start time that will allow your friends enough time to join the tournament. Set Tournament type to Swiss system. Set the game maximum duration to whatever you want (I usually say 30 days), and set "Number of players in a match" to 4. Under Players pairing policy, I always change it to "Don't try to prevent same players to be opponents twice" though it doesn't really matter. Choose the number of matches, and set the other options to whatever you want, then click Create this tournament. Then click "Open tournament" and use the interface to either invite your friends, or generate a private link to send to them.

In tournaments, it seems to me that the playing order does not rotate from the last time you all played, but it's generated randomly each time.

You may find other small differences, such as the way clocks run (in tournaments, you don't have extra time added each turn).

[Mathew5000]

There is a setting I can change in the implementation that disables rotating the first player on rematches:
https://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Game_ ... of_rematch

I might make this change in the next version (99% there, just finishing up Automa). I'll need to look into the impact it has on Arena mode, if any.

Paramesis, please also consider the related issue raised here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31374

My strong preference would be this: no aspect of playing order is determined until after all players have made their initial discards. After the initial discards, then both the playing order (i.e. seating position) and starting player are determined by random draws.

[michaelHastriter]

I guess I'll have to set up a Swiss tournament. Thanks for the workaround idea.

Also I just wat to say the Wingspan logic is very good! I love that I can undo almost everything that is legal to be undone. Very impressed with the implementation.

Does it say in the rules that start player is chosen after turn order is set?

[bananasplay]

Does it say in the rules that start player is chosen after turn order is set?

Right on page 2, under Player Setup: choice of bird cards and bonus cards is made in steps B and C, respectively, while starting player is randomly selected in step D. (I'd have cut and pasted the relevant quotation, but the rulebook PDF seems to be one big image and not actual embedded text.)

[Mathew5000]

It'll literally be the first thing in the log every rematch: "Rematch with the exact same players detected: player order has been swapped."

...which is totally inaccurate, because player order is never swapped but maintained—that's precisely why you consistently see the exact same player order every game.

Start player is not at all random, though, but rather rotated (which is probably the word that BGA should have chosen instead of "swapped"): the player who went last (in the first round) in your previous game will have gone first in your current game; this first player will then go second in your next rematch.

See https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=110152 (five upvotes at the moment) and the forum thread linked therein.