Here are a couple of suggestions for January next year... In other words for season 17 ! Because I guess season 16's format has already been chosen. I picked most suggestion form other user's post here, so this is more a summary of great suggestions.
Remember that I am not a native speaker. Some formats or some rules might be explained in a weird way... Ask questions please ! I'm just trying to help here, so I'd be really glad if you were interested enough to ask questions.
Formats
Semi-fixed armies. I am semi-stealing this from
this post. So I was lurking in the Louisville monthly tournament thread for fun and I found this great idea that the guys there had : fixed matchup. Every map for the tourney would have a fixed, balanced, matchup and players didn't bring any army of their own. With a dice-off the plauers could chose which one of the fixed armies they wished to play.
I would definitely like any version of this... If it was fully fixed, I would like it, but I think semi-fixed is cool too ! Everyone brings one or two 200 points pods and they get to add that to fixed little armies every round.
So for example : I bring a pod with Krug and Arrow Gruts and another one with Braxas. I get to play Gorrilinators this round → I'll chose Braxas because it fits my strategy and the map for this game.
All kinds of different rules could apply, like "only heroes, no squad (mercenaries, and you need to pay them every round with a finite total of points)" or "you may pick either your fixed army first or the pod you will chose first between your's and your opponent's". Lots of oppurtunities here.
Using Custom Figures. That was suggested by flameslayer93 and I think it's a great idea. When the ScytaleVerse tournament happened, I signed in and liked it very much. Sadly the event didn't reach an ending but it was still a lot of fun.
Could it happen in an official Online HS season ? I am not sure, not because the customs wouldn't be balanced, but because the players wouldn't know the meta-game. In my opinion this is NOT a problem (proof is the Delta+ event that happened a while ago), but I can't speak for everyone.
At least organize something like that again !
Return of the Whip - Draft Edition. That's a format I used a couple of times when playing at home and it was a lot of fun. The rules are simple : taking turns, both players draft units for their opponent to play !
In a tournament setting, this could alternate with normal draft and would probably involve a draft pool. That's cool : do I bring a pool of really bad units that I can play okay, or good units that I can counter ? Or both ?
It's basically a nice twist to RtW.
Core + Something.
Another cool idea from flameslayer93. Every player brings a small army core (about 300 points ?) and, before every game, the opponent may chose something to complete his core depending of what he is facing. It's like a pod draft in many ways, but the "core" is different from the half-armies.
This is the format I am less sure about for the formulation of rules, bit I think it is promising.
Maps
A map contest. That's pretty self-explanatory : do an online map contest again ! Running Hot one the first one and, even though some seem to hate that particuliar map, I think it allowed some really cool gameplay when it was introduced (by the way Hell in a Handbasket wasn't so bad, you should take a look at it, dear TDs).
A couple of maps from the french forum.
Ok so this is clearly me preaching for my own community, but a little frenchy effort to produce one or two new maps for a future event would be great, I think. I didn't talk about it with the french forum but some members would like the idea I'm sure.
Other
Personally I like treasure glyphs because they encourage the use of heroes and discourage camping, but that's just personal taste.
Maybe a non-swiss-style tournament ? That's more of a randomly thrown idea, but I think we could try some other format for smaller tournaments. An event with pools, like in the world cup is okay for smaller events with a little less than 30 players, but I am not sure if it is too long.
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Alright ! That was long. And on my cellphone... I really just want to go to sleep now. :P
I hope those ideas will be useful and I am waiting for your returns.
Long live the Online HS League.
