THE TABLE THREAD
Table layout is a captain-craft variable, and the matrix doesn’t price it
A four-round arc. Missed in Round 1 (the Custodes “Super L” layout flipped a predicted +1 into a 2–18). Taken in Round 2 (Jag handed the optimal board against Death Guard, a flat-0 cell finished 17–3). Fumbled by the opponent in Round 3 (BDE picked the wrong heavy table for the TSons mirror). Denied in Round 4 (BFT won the roll-off and pulled Table 7 from TH’s top scorer). The variable that costs the round in entry one becomes a captain’s lens by entry four.
THE SOFT-SPOT THREAD
A captain naming a roster weakness and resolving it across rounds
EC, Deathwatch, and GSC struggled in Rounds 1 and 2 — Riley closed the Round 2 intake saying he wanted “to get them something better next round.” Round 3 is that round: François 20–0 into CSM, Kas 13–7 into EC, Stu 20–0 into the Recon Guard the GSC list was built to pin. Multi-round team management as captain craft, not just single-round pairing.
Trail:
R1 →
R2 →
R3 (resolved)
THE COORDINATION THREAD
Pairings authority works as singular — with absence, it fails one way; with overcrowding, it fails the other
The Round 1 entry names “the value of a coach” — the missing role that would have coordinated three games losing on variance into the smaller-loss plays the team result wanted. The Round 5 entry names the inverse failure on the opposing team: “too many cooks in the kitchen,” a coach plus two co-captains producing a confused process. Same variable, two failure modes, two rounds. Round 4’s Captain’s Sacrifice sits in this thread as the positive demonstration — a single captain seeing the round-vs-game distinction and acting on it.
Trail:
R1 (absence) ↔
R5 (overcrowding) ·
R4 (the unit of victory)