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HeroScape General Discussion General discussions of packaging, terrain, components, etc. If it doesn't fit in any other official category, put it here. |
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An Alternative Tournament Structure: The Rolling Rumble
Two things that would make a tournament better:
a) More games, b) Playing more of the games to their conclusion. Here's a proposal for a tournament structure that would achieve this and, I think, be pretty fun. It's still rough around the edges and needs some work. I'd appreciate any feedback. The idea is based on the NESA Rumble used at TempleCon, but rather than having two teams it is everyone for themselves. Essentially as soon as you finish a game you (usually) start another. Here's how it works... EDIT. After a bunch of good discussion in the thread, here is a slightly more polished set of rules. Feel free to copy and paste them and use for an event! (You'll need to edit the stuff in angle brackets to customise for your prefered options.) Rolling Rumble <Insert army and game conditions here. For example: Everyone brings a 450pt army (Marvel allowed). The start zones are 24 hexes. No glyphs. We'll be using these maps...> The maps will be numbered (ideally, there will be more maps built than are required to have everyone playing). To start, make random pairings and fill up the first however-many maps. If there is an odd number of people, the nonplaying person puts their name and record (0-0 at this stage) on the prominently displayed whiteboard. There is no game time limit; play each game to completion. The pool of waiting players will be listed on a whiteboard. When you finish your game, check the board for opponents. The winner plays the person on the board with the best record that he has not previously played. If there is more than one such player with equal records, the winner plays the one who has been waiting longer. The loser plays the player who has been waiting longest that she has not already played. In each case, if there is no suitable opponent in the pool, then add your name and record to the bottom of the whiteboard. Now that the players are paired, remove the player's name and record from the whiteboard and play. Choose the lowest numbered free map that neither of you have played on before. If there are no such maps, play on the lowest numbered free map. Continue for <some length of time---four and a half hours, say>. Call a half-hour warning after which no more games are started; at the end of the half-hour any unfinished games finish their current round, play two more rounds and, if still not completed, decide the game on points, calculated <fractionally/wholecardicitly>. Rankings are determined according to the following criteria: A) Best win difference (number of wins minus number of losses), B) Win percentage, C) D20 roll. That is, the win difference is the primary method of ranking. Within equal differences, win percentage decides the placing. If the records are identical, roll the D20 (any splits made by the D20 are for prize table purposes only). Alternative and additional options The previous section describes the core rules to run a rolling rumble event. Here are some variations and possible additions. I don't think we'll know what works best and what is necessary until we start using the format. For now, I'll list the alternatives here; use them if you think they're better! (I'm currently inclined to add a maximum length to waiting list, have the extreme time limit, and use the frantic finish with a 40 minute warning.) Alternative ranking algorithms. Should win difference be higher priority than win percentage? (Is 5-1 better than 3-0?) When using win difference, is win percentage or number of wins the appropriate secondary criterion? (Is 6-2 better than 5-1?) Should points remaining be collated to add another criterion? (Is 5-1 with a points differential of 530 sufficiently different to 5-1 with a points differential of 450 to be worth everyone collecting that information?) Any and all of the criteria can be put into the order of your choosing to determine placings. If using win percentage, you will probably also want a minimum number of games, say three, to qualify. Anyone with fewer than this number of games adds losses to reach the total. Strength of Schedule. Calculate the average of your opponents' win percentages. This is your strength of schedule. This can be added into the list of criteria for determining placings. Extreme time limit. Any one game cannot go on longer than 100 minutes. If you reach this time limit then complete the current round and then count points to determine a winner. Repeat players allowed. To reduce the number of people waiting, drop the condition that players cannot play against those they've already played and replace it with the weaker condition that they cannot immediately replay the opponent against whom they just played. Alternatively, cap the size of the pool. That is, if there are more than X names on the board (X=5? 8?) then rather than adding your name when there are no new opponents, play someone you've already played once (selected according to the usual other criteria). Army options. Players may bring two (or more? non-overlapping?) armies that are compliant with the army building requirements and choose which army to use in each game (after seeing map and opposing army? according to some pre-determined schedule or coin toss?). Spreading map use. The above system means that lower numbered maps see more games. To spread it around more you can either have a pair of players roll a die to choose a random starting point from which they look for a map neither has played. Alternatively, have the players from the just-finished game write the map number they just used on the board (removing the existing map number). The next game is on the first open map after this that neither have played (or just the first one if they've played all of them). Wrap round back to 1 if you reach the limit of the number of maps. Frantic finish. When the half-hour time limit is called, all players in the waiting pool are paired Swiss-style (best record vs. second best; third vs fourth;...) regardless of whether they've played before and start a final game. If doing this, a forty-minute limit might be advisable. Swissish pairings. You can't be matched up with anyone who is more than two wins above or beneath you in win difference, unless nobody is within 2 wins of you by that measure.[/u] Deturtler. If no attacks are made for three consecutive rounds then the game is over and the winner is decided on points. Rolling Rumble Events Bay Area Brawl, October 2009, CA. Rocky Mountain Rumble, October 2009, CO. Scape-a-Palooza II, October 2009, CT. Green Mountain Montage, June 2010, VT. Rhode Island Rampage, August 2010, RI. Rocky Mountain Rumble, October 2010, CO. Eastern PA NHSD, October 2010, PA. Last edited by ollie; August 16th, 2010 at 04:05 PM. |
#2
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
Ya, I think that that could work entirely. I like you idea were the player with the best record wins. But my faveroite would be the win percentage the most.
Good job! |
#3
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
I think your title says it all.
Actually, I could see it working for a casual tournament. It would be quite easy to game the win percentages through delay tactics, but it should work for people looking to have fun. I'd have to run through some scenarios, but I think the wait times for starting games will get longer the farther into it you get. |
#4
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
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If there are more than X people waiting to play, all of which you have played before, do not sit at an empty map. Instead, repeat the opponent-choosing procedure among those players you have only played once. As a general procedure it might make sense to have X as a percentage of the attendees. Alternatively, it could kick in when there are no free maps to sit at (I was sort-of imagining as many maps as were ever needed which is a little unrealistic). |
#5
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
I think you play the next available player whether you played them before or not with the 1 exception that you do not play the guy you just played.
With the Rumble format their was an extra guy on 1 team which almost always assured you faced a different player each time. Perhaps using this format with only with an odd number of players would work best. |
#6
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
I was actually just having a PM discussion about a better strength-of-schedule metric. I am a big ranking algorithm nerd, and I went into a long description of how a good ranking algorithm could work and could be used for determining place.
It occurred to me that if the algorithm is good enough, you really don't need to match people up too carefully (e.g. in a Swiss format) in order to get good results. You just need a fairly well-connected set of games between all the players. But a random scramble of games will achieve that the majority of the time. So, I like the format, particularly for a more casual atmosphere, but if you care about determining a winner fairly, I would sharpen up those scoring metrics. |
#7
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
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Thinking more about it, I think I prefer the second option I gave in my answer to Kobu regarding repeat plays: only when there are no free maps do you consider playing someone you've played before. I have a 20 person tournament as my mental model. My guess is that fifteen maps (so ten active and five empty to begin) is about right. Quote:
Rather than win percentage, how about number of wins minus number of losses? (Win difference? Does this have a name?) This means that someone who goes 6-1 beats someone that goes 4-0, which I think is how it should be. Number of wins (or, equivalently, number of games) would still be the second splitter (So 7-2 beats 6-1). D20 to split equal records at the prize table. When thinking about this system, I think the trade-off between an obvious winner and more 'scape is the central point. The more I go to tournaments, the less I care about the actual standings and more I care about the games themselves. The extra 'scape and still getting a pretty good ranking out seems like an improvement to me over our regular structure, but I can see that others might not agree. |
#8
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
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#9
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
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It's going to be pretty unlikely that the queue will get very long I think. Once things get going (which I don't expect will take long) there'll be a game finishing every five or ten minutes and with a theoretical maximum queue length of about seven no-one is going to be waiting very long however the new match-ups are decided. My version means that there will almost certainly be no repeat match-ups and that winners get to play slightly more frequently. I like both of those characteristics. |
#10
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
If you are doing no repeats then everyone needs to be there for the entire day from start to finish right?
This format is alot like the Warmachine Championship set-up they had at TempleCon which was basically you just found someone to play and you played them...and the overall winner was the person with the best winning percentage based on a minimum number of games played for the weekend. So someone who only made it for 2 of the 3 days had a chance to win it as the guy who played all 3 days. |
#11
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
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#12
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Re: An Alternative Tournament Structure: A Recipe for Chaos?
I like the concept. I think scoring is the biggest problem. Why not combine number of games and winning percentage into 1 metric, counting it 40/60 or something? That way, a guy is not rewarded for playing slowly.
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