How we changed our tourney style!

[TheMainMan]

We love to play tournaments and we seem to have about 6ish a year.
A few problems we always ran into were:
1. Time it took to play a match. Some people have different play styles and would turtle and some matches could take an hour and a half easily.
2. Participation. People always seem interested but it was hard to get people to commit and even harder to attract new players.

Here was my solution.

1. Guarentee to play 6 games each.
2. 600 point armies, but to speed up the game we make two critical changes.
a. 5 round limit (after the 5th round points are totaled)
b. You are not scored by win loss but by how many points you destroyed of your enemy (you take what ever is left on the board of your enemy and subtract that from 600 for your score.).

I tried to make the tournament as plain as possible so new people could join. For example, no glyphs, and one universal map that we all used. To try to get people to sign up early, I made a promise that I would raffle off 1 wave 8 booster to the first 10 people to RSVP and show up.

To help keep track of rounds, at each table we had a small sheet of paper with the names of who was playing who, what game number it was and a spot to write down 5 initiative rolls. At the bottom it had a spot for your name and how many points you destroyed. They handed in these sheets after the game and we kept a running score on the main board.

In addition to all this, if we had an odd number of people, 1 person with the lowest score got a bye in each round. At the end we had a 7th round with everyone who had a bye play against the person with the most similar score to them who also has a bye.

By doing all this , we started playing at 12:20 and we were completely done by 6:20. That is 6 full hours and 7 games!

Feel free to check out page 21 of our tourney as it has a ton of stats. Way more than we needed, but fun none the less.
http://www.heroscapers.com/community...=17526&page=21

I hope this starts some new ideas on how to run tournaments. This by far one of the fastest tourneys I have ever been a part of, with by far the most games played. No one was able to turtle, because you would then be low in points, and with 600 points as an army, you had tons of options. Tons of fun. I hope I can run one this successful in the future.

-TMM

[Messenger]

I think this scoring system is brilliant. It appears to solve one of the major issues concerning Heroscape tournaments, namely, Stalling. The problem with stalling is not knowing if the player even is stalling or if they're just planning their move. When a win is based on points-killed within a limited number of Rounds, and a tournament is won based on overall-points-killed, intentional stalling is essentially eliminated. In a sweet twist of irony, only the staller would be negatively affected.

In this system, some army builds may be less attractive, especially Turtling-style armies. But would it be a bad thing to see less Q9+Raelin+Rats armies???

For beginners I see the benefit of using the same map over and over, but for the intermediate/advanced/everyone else, I don't see a problem incorporating different maps.

Why only five rounds? How long do five-round games take? What about six rounds? That gives each player 18 turns versus 15. With a high point total there should be enough figures for that much action, or does the extra Round take too long?

Overall I like the idea, and would like to see this incorporated into more tournaments. Although it may be difficult changing the Winn-Loss mindset of most tournament goers. Did you get much feedback? What did the players think?

[Onacara]

The 5 round thing makes no sense cause 5 rounds can be over in 15 minutes if people are not being "a slang term for cats" and hiding or stalling. You should make it 45 minute games. It gives you 15 minutes between games to shift people around.

[Darth Ryan 2.0]

Actually having participated in this tournament I found that it was very effective. 5 rounds was more than enough with some matches taking 30-45 minutes. Plus most of the time since it was based on points destroyed, players were forced to engage one another and by the end of the fifth round, most armys had been completly wiped out. All in all it was a great tournament. Things moved along quickly and the new style kept things interesting. Thanks again Main Man you did an excellent job with this tournament and I can't wait for the next one.

[TheMainMan]

Great questions.

5 rounds was an arbritrary number that worked perfect. We have played time limits in the past and there are two problems. The first is, if someoen is winning already, they tend to stall. The second is, now that we have so many bonding armies, there are points where you are moving 8 figures. If both teams are moving 8 figures each turn, 45 minutes is not very long.

Out of the 13 that played, no one ever turtled, and only one person even used the rats (deathreavers).

I have heard over and over again that it was the best tourney they have played in, and they hope we keep the format. It is 4 days later and I am still getting pm's about it.

I would encourage you to check out the link to our results page on my post above. It may answer some questions.


-TMM

[Velenne]

If the goal is to destroy as many points as you can, I can understand why 5 rounds would be enough. Players have the incentive to be aggressive and but plan carefully.

edit: n/m I read the tourney thread and saw that you used partial scoring. Three cheers! Looks good to me at first glance.

[waycoolsuperdude]

I am another who played in that tournament and enjoyed it very much. I believe that proper map choice was critical to this style game. The chosen map was perfect. It did get a bit repetitious as game strategies were almost always the same: move out fast, take one or both hills and rain <insert your choice of projectile here> on the other player. The map was short enough that action was pretty much guaranteed on the first turn. It was also wide enough to allow some tactical maneuvering to get in behind the enemy. This map certainly did not encourage turtling in any way.
I must admit that I was a bit leary of the five round limit. I did not think it was long enough to run complete games. Boy was I wrong! Almost half the games ended early with one player's figures completely eliminated. Aggressive play was really the only way to win. The map choice and round limit encouraged fast, furious games. Some games only lasted about 15-20 minutes, while others lasted nearly an hour. The length of the game really depended on a two factors. 1. How many figures moved in a turn and 2. Thinking/planning. With Blasts/Glads and Kato/Ashigaro armies, moving and rolling dice up to eight times is time consuming. Elf wizard armies are pure finesse. One order marker in the wrong place and they could be doomed. Five rounds was enough to fully utilize (and lose!)all 600 points.
This format really got players to think in a different way, which I believe is a good thing. This style may not be for everyone, but I would suggest that other TD's at least give it a try once. I think you'll be impressed.

[Tiberius]

I was also in the tournament and again, I enjoyed myself greatly. I thought the five round limit was fine, 4 or 6 or 5, it wouldnt have mattered much to me, though the only thing that I didnt care for was ignoring wins/losses and only counting points destroyed.

I guess my personal preference is counting the win/losses but for an occasional mix up it definately stresses different armies to be used and different styles of play.

It did stop the turtling as I didnt see any of that this tournament with so many big offensive starting zone bombers flying around. The map was quite short but for a tournament limited to 5 rounds and you are going for who kills the most, you want it that way.

And again, this led to certain army choices over others where I have would not have been viable in this format because it was too close to the other start zone to be a good choice.

Overall good tournament style, not something I will employ here as a standard, but a great mix it up style.

[damja]

This tournament was fast-paced (well except for me with the elves), fun, and bloody. It really was a good time.

However, I'm of the same mindset as Tiberius. I really enjoyed the change of pace that this tournament brought, but when the dust settles I have a hard time accepting that total points destroyed should outweigh win/loss record as I think it more accurately represents your overall performance in relation to the other participants of the tournament.

This would be analogous to the NFL deciding that they were going to have a 16 game season where the only statisitc that mattered for standings would be the number of points you scored. Consider the 2001 Baltimore Ravens who only scored 303 points. This would have made them 11th in the AFC thus they would have missed the playoffs (only 6 teams from each conference do for you non-football fans).

That year the Indianapolis Colts scored 413 points to lead the AFC, no surprize there, right? The 6th most points scored was by the Denver Broncos with 340 points. The problem? Neither the Colts or the Broncos actually made the playoffs. Indy had a record of 6-10 and Denver had a record of 8-8. The Ravens finished 10-6, and just happened to go on to win the Super Bowl that year.

This is the biggest reason most tournament players will not like this scoring system. Sometimes it is ok to outlast your opponent due to your inpenetrable defense.

I think the best idea that came out of this tournament was the use of a static number of rounds that didn't allow for stalling. Is five the magic number? I don't know. Should there be some sort of time limit imposed for those slow armies and players? Maybe.

Do I have all the answers? Yes, but you haven't asked the right questions yet.

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[TheMainMan]

Originally Posted by damja

I have a hard time accepting that total points destroyed should outweigh win/loss record as I think it more accurately represents your overall performance in relation to the other participants of the tournament.
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This tournament is no different than any one you have ran in the past or that is happening at Gen Con. If you make a rule that is different than the normal tourney rules, you have to plan ahead to make an army that works for that rule. If we are talking about a "Heat of Battle" or a "Big Ol' Monster Battle", it is a deviation from the normal game. You can say you have a hard time accepting the record because you didn't plan well enough. The bottom line is in any tournament or game you have a goal. The rules don't change as to how you complete that goal. Strategy, a sharp mind and your army is what you bring to the table. You either get it done and win or you don't. You may not like the theme of the tourney, which is fine, but you also know those rules 2 months in advance and don't have to play if you don't like those rules.

Having said that, out of 13 people who played, the scoring system only affected 1 person and would have changed their rank had we done win loss record instead of points killed. Besides that 1 person, the other 12 are in the same order as their win loss record. Had we done Win loss records, Tiberious would have been first becasue he won 5 out of his 6 battles. But, would people have played their same strategy if we were playing off win loss records? Probably not. I know I wouldn't have.

Just food for thougt.

[damja]

Originally Posted by TheMainMan

This tournament is no different than any one you have ran in the past or that is happening at Gen Con. If you make a rule that is different than the normal tourney rules, you have to plan ahead to make an army that works for that rule. If we are talking about a "Heat of Battle" or a "Big Ol' Monster Battle", it is a deviation from the normal game. You can say you have a hard time accepting the record because you didn't plan well enough. The bottom line is in any tournament or game you have a goal.

Sorry, bro but I'm calling BS on this one. I finished second and know that I didn't have the second best army there for Win/Loss record. In my planning I noticed that the elves weren't the best team for winning every game but consistently killed large numbers of points. That's about as far from saying I didn't plan well as you can get.

When you take win/loss record out of the equation some typical army builds are not as competitive. I contend that playing a strong defensive army should be just viable as any other army. Name one other competitive environment where the object isn't to defeat your opponents but rather to score more points in relation to everyone else. I cant think of one. Points scored is almost always used as a tie-breaker, and not usually the first one.

This was a fun, well run, and viable system. I had a good time. I had to think about my army in a different way. I planned as much for this as any other tournament I have been to. I will likely incorporate the round limit in conjunction with time limit for future tournaments. I would go so far as to recommend that this be considered as a possible GenCon event next year. I just don't see this as the gold standard for competitive play.

[TheMainMan]

Originally Posted by damja

Sorry, bro but I'm calling BS on this one. I finished second and know that I didn't have the second best army there for Win/Loss record.

Well I love that you think that little of your self, but take a look at the win loss records. You, Haleon and MI Tiger all had a 4 win 2 loss record. Tiberious had a 5 win 1 loss record. Draconious had a 3 win 3 loss record. I had a 2 win 4 loss record. The stats are all there on page 21 including who beat who in each round. So you can call BS, but you are wrong again.