Yes, but what are the building rules? Same squad at each level, except that you can swap a unique for another version? And how many squads do we need to submit prior to the first round?

Got it

In round 4, can the epic be an upgraded character like the other rounds?

I was thinking about it and I think the fear would be that the factions with a semi-epic piece would get to play them. I know every faction has access to the 100pt Revan, but only a few have a in faction mini epic (Dooku, Luke, Vader, Sidious, Krayt, Obi Wan for example) that could be played when you factor in the cost difference between a non-epic and a Epic and also consider you have 175pts to work with. Case in point: There is a 58pt Mara Jade. If you upgraded her to 126pt Epic Mara Jade, you would only be having to use 68pts of the 175 given to you. That gives you over 100pts, and you could easily get 100pt NR Luke in addition to Epic Mara Jade. That seems a bit broken. I'm going to say that a regular mini can't upgrade to a Epic one simply because of the unfair situations that can occur with some factions.

I guess i just see it limiting squad building more than it opens it up, mostly because everyone then is going to want to include a character that can upgrade to an Epic version due to the fact that you get that many more points to add when you subtract the cost of the difference between the non-Epic version and the Epic one. It'd feel like everyone who doesn't build a squad with a character that can upgrade to a Epic gets the short end of the 175pt build total since they don't get as many points for the second character. The 175pts was suggested as a way for people to add any Epic they want and also have enough points to add a second character who could help your squad and balance out the amount of activations for everyone.

I realize that as it currently is, people can upgrade Luke for instance to the 100pt version in round 3 and still have the Epic Mara Jade in addition to the extra mini from the 175pts you get in round 4 to add. Someone could also have the 100pt Sidious for the Imperials by round 3 and then you would be able to pair him with the Epic Darth Vader (who could cost 10 less also with Sidious) which would be an extremely powerful combo. Would it be ok with everyone to limit the amount of points a character can be upgraded to? I think to avoid the situations where someone could have a 100pt character and a Epic character, we could just set a cap on the upgrading to be where you can upgrade to a higher cost version that is less than 100pts. I really want to avoid broken squads as best I can and I just forsee a few squads becoming real problems when you pair a 100pt character with a Epic one and becoming a NPE for those who don't have a combo like that. If everyone is ok with allowing a 100pt BHC piece to be played with an Epic, we can keep it as it is.

Current list of characters that could be upgraded to a 100pt or more version by round 3 are:

1. Palpatine - could go from Palpatine on Throne (33pts) to Emperor Palpatine, Sith Lord (62pts) or Emperor Palpatine, Reborn (83pts) to 100pt Darth Sidious, Sith Mastermind
2. Vader - could go from Vader of Lothal (45pts) to any other Vader (all others cost 50pts or more) to 100pt Vader.
3. Luke - could go from Luke Skywalker, Galactic Hero (48pts) to Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master (74pts) to 100pt Luke
4. Dooku - could go from Dooku, Separatist Hero (45ps) to any other Dooku (all others cost 50pts or more) to 100pt Dooku.
5. Revan - could go from Darth Revan, Sith Lord (62pts) to 100pt Revan, Returned
6. Yoda - could go from Master Yoda (44pts) to any other Yoda (all others cost 50pts or more) to 100pt Yoda.

The ones that stand out to me as being the biggest issue is Vader, Revan and possibly Yoda. They have solid versions through the upgrade chain and could contribute to you doing well in the round they are in at all point levels!

Luke, Jedi Master isn't all that great, so you'd be hurting your round 2 rankings most likely if you played him, but you could have him in round 3 as his 100pt version. Palpatine has an ok version (Emperor Palpatine, Reborn) who you could upgrade to in round 2 and then have him go to 100pt sidious for round 3.

I suppose that to make things less complicated than they are, we can just keep things as they are and if something needs to be changed next time we do a tournament like this, we can. My goal is to create a new format with this, so I'd like it to be fun for everyone!

If I'm reading right, this is something like 12 skirmishes per player. 4 rounds, and each round will be Swiss pairings of (most likely) 3 skirmishes. Is that right?

I still think it should be 2 skirmishes a round.

Richie from NZ made a few nice apps for Star Wars minis, including a tournament tracker. I can't find it in the Android PlayStore right now. Maybe it was only made for the iPhone.

I forgot his screenname... DarthRattlehead maybe?

I think we can make that work. TJ also mentioned that it might be a good idea to cut down the number of games to 2 per round. I know that time is important to people and also it might be hard to play most of the same peices 12 times in a row compared to 8. For Swiss, if we could somehow recruit 1 more player, that would make things much more representative of what is the best squad 2 people won't get a bye each round. I was thinking 3 rounds would give a decent shot at showing what squads are the best in each round. If we are at 7 players next week, maybe we could do round robin with the lesser amount of games if we do 2 games per round instead of swiss? That would ensure that everyone gets to play everyone at least once. What does everyone else think about switching it to round robin instead of Swiss? We currently have 7 players signed up. 2 rounds per tournament means 8 total games, so there would be just 1 rematch and we can do the swiss style pairings for that one game making it so that those who are overall doing the best in round 4 get matched against each other for the final game 8.