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Triangle Battle: Running a Four-Player Couch Tournament
· ArcadeDeck Team · #strategy #triangle-battle #multiplayer
Triangle Battle was built as a couch-multiplayer first experiment: four players, one keyboard, one screen, no logins. Since launch it has consistently been our highest replay-rate game on weekends, and the most common email we get is "how do you run a fair tournament?" Here's the format we use internally and have seen work cleanly at small parties.
Hardware
You need a USB or Bluetooth keyboard with full N-key rollover. Membrane keyboards typically support only 2-3 simultaneous key presses, which becomes a problem in a four-player game where everyone is mashing direction keys at once. If your keyboard ghosts, players will lose inputs and accuse each other of cheating. A cheap mechanical board solves this for under $40.
Bracket structure
For 4 players, run a round-robin: every player faces every other player once in 1v1 mode, then a final 4-player free-for-all. With six 1v1s plus one final, total runtime is ~25 minutes for typical match lengths. Award 3 points for a 1v1 win, 5 points for the FFA winner, 3/2/1 for second/third/fourth in the FFA. Highest total wins.
For 5-8 players, split into two pools of 3-4, run round-robin within each pool, then take the top two from each into a four-player FFA final. Keeps total runtime under 40 minutes.
Map and rule selection
Triangle Battle has three arena layouts and four hazard settings. For tournament play, we recommend:
- Arena: Symmetric Wedge. The other two layouts have spawn-point asymmetries that cumulate over a long set. Wedge is the only fully mirrored map.
- Hazards: Off for the round-robin, On for the FFA. Hazards spice up the final without polluting head-to-head results with random deaths.
- Best of one per matchup. Best-of-three drags total runtime past 45 minutes and tournament fatigue starts costing players inputs.
Common arguments and how to pre-empt them
"They got the better starting position." Coin-flip starting positions before each round. We use a physical coin because it ends arguments faster than a digital one.
"My key didn't register." The N-key rollover keyboard solves this almost entirely. If a key truly didn't register and you can demonstrate it by replaying the input, replay the round. Use this rule sparingly or it gets abused.
"Final FFA isn't fair to the leader." The 5/3/2/1 weighting means the round-robin leader is favoured but not guaranteed. We've kept the format because the tension is the point — close finishes happen most when the late game can still flip the standings.
Submit your tournament
If you run a Triangle Battle tournament with 6+ players, send results plus a short write-up to help@arcadedeck.net. We feature the most interesting brackets in the monthly Hall of Fame recap.
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