The Modernist wrote:I think with the criticism that lists can look stale when the tie-break five are repeated in the next round, I can see nothing wrong with giving people the option of having an entirely new set of five songs or even just using some of them with new songs. However if we made this change it would have to wait until next year as I don't think it would be fair to alter things halfway through.
There's absolutely no question of changing the rules in the middle of a tournament - we've already had something like six or seven tied matches, so it would look ridiculous to treat the next tied match differently. Also, we're clearly going to struggle to get consensus on how to proceed at present.
Nevertheless, I think there is an argument for discussing how to improve the tournament before next year's BCB Cup arrives. There's also another question here. What happens when the tie-break match is also drawn? I don't think this has ever happened before, although one of this year's replays was settled by a single vote. Maybe, if this did happen, we could use five new songs that won't go forward to the next round?