A New England HS League? Thoughts on a regional meta-tourny

[Pilgrim]

This last year has seen a remarkable level of informal, well-attended HS tourneys in New England. We had two tourneys on the south shore of Boston, and two in Rhode Island, with another Boston tourney coming this September, and a NH tourney this October. The second Boston tourney (Jan 07) may still be the largest ever tourney to date anywhere. That’s a lot of momentum in this area in a just a year’s time.

I’m wondering what it might look like to attempt organizing a New England HS “League” of sorts. The basic concept would be to hold several tourneys this year around New England, just like last year. The difference would be that the tourneys would be coordinated to have the same structure and be designated as League tourneys. Players who wanted to participate at the league level would attend those tourneys and their scores would be part of a cumulative score or ranking across several tourneys. At the end we could even hold a HS “superbowl” event in the spring for the top 4 or 8 or whatever players in the league to determine the year’s New England HS champ. Those players not in the league could still come to tourneys and play (and even win!) but their scores would not be part of a running ranking of some sort. So at any given tourney, there are two levels of play going on – regular tourney play for everyone wants to come, and league play for those in the league. Basically, I’m trying to think of a league structure that takes minimal work to create and uses our current tourney formats, which seem to be working very well.

Here are some random ideas on how it might look . . .

Obviously league tourneys would need to follow a consistent format and scoring system so you can compare apples to apples. In essence we’ve already hit upon a common tourney structure: the 500 pt, swiss style, four rounds, score-points-for-what-you-kill has been the format in all four New England tourneys last year. It’s not a perfect system, and no scoring system is. But it works well and people are familiar with it. Plus the points lend themselves one way or another to a league ranking system.

A group of maps would probably need to be determined for all the tourneys. If we found 6-10 maps that worked, players would know that they could potentially play on any one of those maps in official league play.

League scores could be done a couple ways. You could simply make your league score the cumulative total of your scores in all the tourneys. So a perfect tourney score would be 2000 pts (500 pts for 4 rounds). If the league season was, say, five tourneys, then there’s a possible 10,000 pts for the league rankings.

The problem with that is it’s VERY likely that a league member may miss a tourney. That’s how life is. So you could be a great player, miss a tourney, and be ranked poorly as a result. Here are two possible solutions:

Solution #1 - League members must throw out the scores for one tourney – So if you missed a tourney, that would be the one that you toss! That’s a consolation too – if you have a really bad tourney, you’re not necessarily sunk.

Solution #2 - Score is based on an average – you average your score between all the tourneys you attend. Even here it would be important to have a rule that you can only miss ONE league tourney and still be qualified for league ranking. Otherwise someone might win the first league tourney undefeated and not show up for the rest. Hey, perfect average of 2000!

It would probably also be nice to make some rule about army construction. One idea might be that you can only use any one character/squad in, say, two tourneys. The idea is to keep players from hitting upon a killer army and using it every time. So for instance, you could only use Mass Line in two of the five tourneys (or however many we have for the season). This forces players to show their prowess with a number of different army configurations.

Another idea would be to have, say, five tourneys in a season and then say that at each one you have to bring an army from just one general, a different one for each tourney. This is a little more narrow, and you’d have to make all the tourneys single-general army tourneys. That’s fun for the themed element but definitely limits creativity in army construction.

As noted earlier, at the end of the season, you could take the top four or whatever scorers and have them play a mini-tourney – kind of like in football. You play all season and the top players make the play offs for the HS Superbowl!

Taking a step further, if we test this out this year in New England, it could be a format for other leagues in regions around the country. Get enough regions following the same format, and then you have critical mass for the winners to go to, say, Gencon for the HS national championship!

But anyway, that’s probably getting a little ahead of myself. I’d be willing to be a part of a task force to help coordinate and spearhead this. It seems we have a developing HS community in New England, successful experiences with tourneys, and at least two venues to hold big gatherings (Disposable Heroes and the church). Could this work? Anyone interested?

Okay, talk amongst yourselves.

Here’s the topic: New England Heroscape League

Discuss.

[mrbistro]

Great idea Pilgrim! I think I prefer Solution Number 1. While I liked Solution 2 better at first, it occured to me that someone who shows up to all of the tourneys might be hurt by an average in the long run, and another player may boost their average by dropping out of one tourney to preserve their record. Sure you're only missing one tourney, but we would never want a lack of participation to be a viable strategy.

[Pilgrim]

That's a good point. With solution 1, both the player with perfect attendance and the player who misses a tourney are benefited by the drop-one-tourney rule, whereas solution 2 would tend to play in the favor of the guys who misses one tourney, all things being equal. In solution 2, the guy with perfect attendance has more at risk.

The first one awards better attendance, the second worse attendance.

[Slaader]

A very interesting idea...

I think the solution could be better decided if we knew the frequency of events. Are we talking 1 event a Quarter? Or 1 a month?

One way to do it could be to make each event a Bracketed Tournament. Each place is assigned points. This would be similar to the way Poker Tournaments and Leagues are set up.

1st - 500 pts
2nd - 475
3rd - 400

Or Keep them lower to make the math easier.

Good:
The good thing about this style, and what I find works in New England poker league I've played in is that you don't need to worry about making every event to be a contender. You just need to worry about dominating an event when you do arrive. Or atleast placing high enough to get some points.
Players will be able to learn strategies and develop new armies if we make the brackets random draw each event. Players may also feel they can mix up there strategy and try new armies because they've got plenty of time to get enough points to place.
A final tournament to determine champion can be for the leagues top 20 something. That tourney can be bracketed based on points, just like the NCAA brackets.

Concerns:
If each event draws 50 people where is the point cut off? Or do people get points just for attending (a good idea, but someone could find just attending bumps them up a place in the overall standings).
Initially I thought another flaw would be the the time such a large tournament would take. The rulebook provides us with a way around this though. Each game between two players would have to be limited to a certain number of rounds (5-8 seems to be something the rule book likes). At the end of the correct number of rounds, highest point total left standing advances.

OR
Some poker leagues allow anyone who has one a nightly event to attend the champions tournament. Something like a monthly HS tournament could allow all Quarter Final finisher from each month to attend. Dropping the points idea all together. Giving more people the chance to attend a champions tourney. Unless its the last 4 standing every time....

Other questions:
1) What clubs / stores could we get to sponsor? UConn, WPI, Worcester Tech all seem achievable. Rising Phoenix games in Worcester? Pandemonium in Boston?

2) Would Hasbro sponsor (advertise,figs,demo,maps)?

3) Can I use Marvel figs?

[Pilgrim]

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say we could realistically do about 5 solid tourneys inthe Sept - April-ish time frame (not counting a final superbowl single elim for top ranks). We might do more tourneys than that, but you don't want tourney hosting to become a chore, and I suspect you'd lose attendance by having too many tourneys. Just my hunch.

Also, whatever structure you do I think it has to be one where the casual tourney go-er can come to have fun and enjoy the tourney without having to be in the league to appreciate the event.

The single-elim bracketed tourney vs. swiss style is a debate we won't solve easily. The poll on the Beantown Beatdown III thread shows a fairly divided response to the two options.

My personal preference is for swiss style because I think it's always better to keep everyone involved throughout the event. I suspect that a single elim would deflate the desire to go to a tourney if you lost early. Imagine driving from NH to RI to do a tourney only to get knocked out in the first round! Yeah, you can play pick-up games for the next three hours, but my guess is for most people the day will have lost a lot of luster, and the person will be far less likely to come to the next tourney.

GREAT ideas about getting sponsors for this event! I bet we could totally work that somehow - local gamestores, Hasboro, Housemouse. It would add a little feel of "official-ness" to the league.

Other ideas people???

[loborocket]

I like the idea of a league. I would be interrested in joining.

Here is another idea to perhaps help with problems with attendance or missing a tournament. What if it was set up that league members had to complete a specified numbers of games (20) over the course of a cirtain time period. Against a cirtain number of different opponents. These games could be completed at any time during the "season" and the "official" scoring. (Armies used points etc....) reported to a secretary of the leage. Perhaps to be considered "official" at least 3 league members would have to be present at the game to keep everyone honest. These games could be completed any time and anywhere. There of corse could be 4 or 5 "official" events throughout the season to help people get together and get in the required games. But it might also be possible to get in your 20 games against 15 different opponents (or whatever) without ever going to one of the tournaments. This way it might be easier for someone to participate if they had a schedule that might prevent them from attending regularly.

I don't like the idea of having to use armies themed to a specific gereral. A guy like me who does not have a tremendous amount of figures would be severly handicapped with a limit like this. I already fell limited with the pieces I have and adding another restriction would make it that much harder.

[Slaader]

My only problem with that loborocket is that me, my roomate, my fiancee. We play everynight...now I have more points then you.

I think we could do swiss instead of brackets and rely on two different types of points. I do like the idea of keeping everyone involved.

Games being defined as you vs someone else...

Each official league tournament is made of of X number of games. X would have to be a standard # to make all tournaments equal in terms of scoring.
Each game you face a different opponent chosen at Random
At the X number of rounds the game ends, swiss style scoring is reported to the secretary and the next set of games are drawn.
At the end of the tournament points are awarded to player who place 1st - (determine number).

What about ties you ask? Well if 3 people tie for first you just add what 1st, 2nd and 3rd get and divide that in half. Which could mean at the end of the season you may have several people tied. In which case you do your final tournament allowing the top X number of people in.

If there are multiple players on the bottom of that list, then you can do like tie breaker sudden death matches day of the big tournament. I still think the final "super bowl" should be bracketed.

[sjscaper]

Long Island area has a league going for a couple of years now. You might gain some good insight on what works and what doesn't by talking to someone in that league:

http://www.liheroscapers.com

Was thinking of joining this league.

[Doustin]

Id love to see this really take off. New England was where our country got started, and now it could be where HS leagues get started . I like the idea of having league matches at times other than specific tourneys, I know Ill not likely be able to make them all otherwise.

I like Solution 1 in the first post. I had a teacher in high school that used that idea for tests and it was great. If this is used Ill be less worried about everything in my previous paragraph.

Also, I vote we call the final event Scaperbowl. And maybe each state can be given a mascot and cheerleaders

[mrbistro]

Originally Posted by Doustin

New England was where our country got started...

I'm from Virginia boy, and I'll be happy to buy you a history book.

Originally Posted by Doustin

Also, I vote we call the final event Scaperbowl. And maybe each state can be given a mascot and cheerleaders

Dig! I vote TehFattestNinja with his scrolling LED belt for RI.

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

My personal preference is for swiss style because I think it's always better to keep everyone involved throughout the event. I suspect that a single elim would deflate the desire to go to a tourney if you lost early. Imagine driving from NH to RI to do a tourney only to get knocked out in the first round! Yeah, you can play pick-up games for the next three hours, but my guess is for most people the day will have lost a lot of luster, and the person will be far less likely to come to the next tourney.

Agreed. No matter what the solution is, people have to be kept in a tournament or they won't come.

[loborocket]

Originally Posted by Slaader

My only problem with that loborocket is that me, my roomate, my fiancee. We play everynight...now I have more points then you.

Yeah I understand that. I imagined some kind of rule in place that makes you decalare if a game is "for league scoring" before it is played. So you basically pick wich games are going to be for "official" scoring (before they are played of course.) So you can only score 20 "official" games in a league season and those 20 games have to be completed against say, at least 15 different opponents. (I don't know if 15 is the right number or not I just picked it out of the sky.)

The "official" events could still be held. If someone made it to all of those then they would for sure make their 20 game requirement. But if they could not make some of the events they can try to arrange smaller events in their area or meet with a few league members on their own to get in the required games.

[Slaader]

I think the real question is still...can I use Captain America?