Whither the Tournament?

[kolakoski]

Well met!

At one time, the standard tournament format was that from which the Power Rankings were generated - one-on-one, ~500 point, kill-em-all on BoV maps. Now, there is a plethora of formats, with new ones being created faster than they can be implemented, and the number of "standard" formats increasing as certain TDs (Dad, for example) creating their own "tournament house rules," and what appears to be the beginning of a Legacy series in the S.F. Bay area.

Having recently attended Dad's My Time To Shine (and planning for, but unfortunately missing Clan's Multiplayer Madness), I was reminded, by the experience, of what is good about tournaments, and what they seem to miss. The rationale for tournaments in general, as I understand it, is for players to meet each other a bit outside their local gaming groups, broadening their perspective and the scope of their 'scape, in friendly competition (and perhaps gaining a little rep in the wider 'scape world). The level of competition varies widely between tournament "pros" and eight year old beginners. Given the number of kids at all the tournaments I've attended, they are as much family game days as anything else. As such, players rarely take them too seriously, in spite of all the thought and preparation that many of us put into preparing for them. In such an environment, what do we really want to happen?

My friend, chas, doesn't do well in tournaments. It is not that he generally loses. His armies are not built along purely competitive lines. He does not expect to win much. He has no problem with that (at least, not too much). What he has a problem with is playing four out of five games against kids, the result of his usually being in the "losers'" bracket after the first game, when, for example, he came to A Time To Shine to meet and play against Clan and Dad and others that he has heard of and communicated with in these forums. Although I did well (4-1), I, too, wished that I had gotten to spend more time with, and playing against, such luminaries. I imagine that, if we had gone to Clan's event (multiplayer), both of us would have been happier. However, I can see that our take on things may be anomalous.

The Gang of Four's typical gameday is very much scenario driven, team or FFA, with a bit of backstory, on fairly large maps. I generally add wrinkles to encourage/discourage certain kinds of units. We have become fairly sophisticated about it, for instance, in ensuring that no one can be eliminated too early, or that winning is too easy for certain kinds of units, or too dependent on luck. If we had our druthers, tournaments would be like our gamedays.

[Dad_Scaper]

Yup.

I always come away from events thinking "I wish I'd gotten to play with ..." or sometimes "I wish I got to play on map ..."

Not really anything to do about it, besides (a) go to more tournaments, because over time you *will* get to play with those other guys, and (b) have multiplayer FFA tournaments. The best thing about the FFA events is you get to play with many more people than you would have otherwise.

But you guys were sociable & even though we didn't get to play, we did get to talk for a bit, and maybe when the kids are bigger we'll get to hang out a bit afterward and hoist a few.

Sure, a game day is great. But if I were to have a game day with a few of my best gaming buddies, I wouldn't have gotten to meet you guys, right? The luckiest are the guys who get to have their gaming groups *and* their tournaments.

[lefton4ya]

I think the issue is more with swiss-style game matchups than any formatting of the tourney event rules. If you loose bad on game one, there is little chance you will see the best players that day, unless the best players fail that day as well and you can do well the next few games. Having multi-player team events might help if say you pitted the best and worst player against the second best and second worst, and so on. Again, the style of games (capture the flag or other scenario, HOB, General specific, etc.) does not matter so long as you can find a way to change the match-ups being played. However a lot experienced players will get mad if they only play newbies and newbies will get mad if they play (and are slaughtered by) very experienced and aggressive players (i.e. w/ top-notch armies). The trick is to have the mid-level players be able to play both newbies and pros. The team tourney like I suggested might be the best route.

[Dad_Scaper]

There's some truth to that, lefton4ya.

That said, I took my unimpressive 2-2 record into Round 5 at my last event and got to play AliasQTip, and I humbly suggest we both got to play pretty good opponents even with our mediocre records.

I've had guys come up to me before and ask me to tweak matchups for various reasons late in tournaments & I'm always happy to do it.

It's unfortunate Chas ended up playing against so many kids when he was here, but I've taken care of attendees before when they'd had a few matches in a row against the *ahem* shorter members of our crew and they wanted to play against an adult.

When you guys come back, I promise to tweak things for Chas, so he gets a chance to beat up on some grown ups, instead of beating up only kids.

edit: One thing I've been considering on and off is trying the Rolling Rumble format. I'm still not sure about it, but it would be another way to solve the issue.

[EternalThanos86]

At the Madison tournament scene, we have flirted with the idea of hosting a children's bracket separately, but it never came to fruition simply because there just weren't quite enough kids to make it worthwhile. We usually have a handful (less than 5) of participants under 10 and roughly 1/3 are under 18.

I know the frustration, but as long as the kid is following the rules and is open to suggestions, I help 'em out with basic strategy (take height, shoot with all possible units, etc) and end up with a fairly competitive match. Kids are so darn lucky!

[killercactus]

Originally Posted by EternalThanos86

Kids are so darn lucky!

QFT.

I saw a little girl melt my friend's entire Elf Wizard army with Braxas in under 10 minutes in the first round of a tournament (I don't know how she killed Ulginesh - either they goofed on the rules or Braxas bit him to death). Her D20 was insane.

I had to play her in the second round with both of us 1-0. I was playing something like Cyprien, Stingers x5, Rats x2, and she flew Braxas into my starting zone and rolled 18-18-17 to kill 3 rats. Then next turn she got Cyprien with a 20. Thankfully my juiced Stingers took Braxas down quickly and her Krav all whiffed from range, allowing me to steal a win. But, man! That D20 was literally on fire.

[kolakoski]

Well met!

A 4-player, FFA and/or Team format, where the matchups and maps for each player are pre-determined, might work. Suppose there were 16 players.

"/" means versus:

Round 1: a/b/c/d, e/f/g/h, j/k/l/m, n/o/p/q

Round 2: a/e/j/n, b/f/k/o, c/g/l/p, d/h/m/q

Round 3: a/f/l/q, b/g/m/n, c/h/j/o, d/e/k/p

Round 4: a/g/m/o, b/h/j/p, c/e/k/q, d/f/l/n

The four "best" players, determined by cumulative, partial scoring and/or "wins" (each map having a different scenario/winning condition, i.e., Capture the Flag, modified Heat of Battle, etc., with each player perhaps having a pool of units, whatever), would meet in a final game. You could get by with only four large maps, but you might want more.

This way, there are no problems like chas', and everyone gets to play against everyone else at least once. [I may have messed up the matchups, but you get the idea.] If the number of players is not evenly dividable by 4, you could have a three-player map in the mix, but the principle is sound.

[Dad_Scaper]

Yup. I've written elsewhere (and here) that multiplayer FFA solves that problem, to the extent that it's a bug and not a feature.

My good friend Bill, who you may have met at the tournament, had a similar experience once.

I wouldn't care to have FFA events too often, though, for the same reason I don't care to repeat too much *any* one format. It creates its own metagame, encouraging some units and discouraging others, and there is also at work a larger-than-usual amount of chance and diplomacy in FFA games.

Anyway. My friend Bill has been in Chas' shoes, like Chas he loves to play, and he has oftentimes not done particularly well in tournaments. He keeps coming, though, and has normally had the opportunity to play people of all shapes and sizes.

The one time he was having Chas' experience, he came up to me & asked if I could make sure to pair him against another adult, and I accommodated.

I've said 1,000 times my number one goal is for people coming to have fun. If they aren't - and I think/hope Chas *did* - I hope they'll tell me.

What happened to Chas will sometimes but not always happen to adults who do poorly at an event. Our last two Baltimore-area tournament winners were both under 18; our last two Savage last-place finishers were both adults.

The best suggestions I have are (a) go to FFA events and (b) go to more tournaments. It does happen sometimes but over a series of events it would balance out, I'm sure.

[quozl]

And I thought this was going to be some kind of tournament locater thread!

[dok]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

edit: One thing I've been considering on and off is trying the Rolling Rumble format. I'm still not sure about it, but it would be another way to solve the issue.

The RR format will tend to shuffle top players (on that day) against bottom players (on that day) a bit more, so an early win or loss won't drastically alter who you play next.

I have to admit, though, that the RR format has slightly frustrated me at times, of late. My issue has been that I have had some very long games that have prevented me from getting as many games as I would like in on the day. Playing games to completion can be a two-edged sword at times. I am toying with a 80 or 90 minute time limit for individual games.

[clancampbell]

I get that we adults don't always want to be matched up against the kids. However, at least in our area we have some very good players in the under 18 set. Kid Scaper and Robber have won the last 2 Maryland events, and there are some up and comers from that group.

I don't mind playing against the juniors, as long as it's a good game.

[arp12]

Being a younger player, I'll chime in and say that in general I prefer playing games against adults rather than younger kids. I think the important thing is not age directly; it's whether the person is experienced at the game and can carry on good conversation. Most adults seem to think I have those qualities so they don't mind playing me.

Helping kids who are beginners at the game benefits them though, and most people don't mind playing a few such games.