Swiss-style *SPEED* Tournament Info / Sign-Up!

No, they are disqualified from getting any prizes.

 

I like 6 minutes a lot, but then I'm used to playing by impulse. I won two matches on time, I think, and another came close. I never lost on time.

The draw restriction was interesting, and did cause me to make different choices for a couple of slots. I also probably would have used a draw bot if that rule wasn't in place. It made wizards more interesting to build because I couldn't count on ignoring several slots by packing them with traits.

The rares-and-lower was nice. It gave enough flexibility that I didn't feel like my builds were completely subpar for normal MP play, but several common strategies were off-limits for both myself and the opponents.

On the whole, I had way more fun playing this tournament than I've had in a while. I like the quick play, the variety of builds and maps, and getting a bunch of familiar and new faces together. ^_^

 

I'm not sure about Draw Limits, most of the time it did nothing, but occasionally too much parry/inspiration/martyr's blessing/elven maneuvers would trigger the cut off.
I made my build with the draw limit in mind, and I am sure other people did too- I wonder if it stops certain builds from appearing?

The Rare or lower items was actually pretty nice. You couldn't rely on certain items (notably ones with 2+ SPR, NS, MF) but you could still bust out some good items like Trembling Staff/Staff of Winter, Rageblood Dagger, Shuddering Relic.

Of course, there is no questions about Whirls being banned. We like that rule XD

 

Time - OK
Rare- - OK
Draw limits - why? what? weird? no.

 

And this dind't remove the frost attachments?

Count me in next time then. I don't play that slowly but if I am not fan of RTS games. I take my fun in the thinking processes.

 

Why? Testing purposes to see how it works with many players.
What? In an attempt to see if Draw Limits are needed for balancing the game in the future.
Weird? Not really, it is just an attempt to balance trait cycling and draws. I don't find it is a necessary change though as it rarely comes into play.

Well, any tournament I run will probably have a 10 or 11 minute time limit just to keep the time manageable. Maybe divided into 2 events again like my first Swiss tournament. Although I doubt I'll be running any tournaments in the near to mid future as I *really* need to be spending my time cleaning up my house, getting ready to move, and trying to find a job. Setting up a tournament like this takes a lot of planning, advertising, coordinating, and so on.

 

Yy, was ok to try but I wouldn't use them again. And they caused a draw to miss in most of games today.

 

In the future there should be a way to drop players if they fail to show or want/need need to leave. I know Abraxus & Abbus had connection issues, however I lost a bunch of matches and wanted to drop but that would have thrown off the matches even more. Challonge doesn't seem to offer that but maybe there is another service that does? Manchu should really build tools to do this into the game itself.

It was overall a good experiment though, so thanks for running the tournament! I lost a number of close games but did manage to beat Neoncat at the top

I liked the draw limits and time limits for the most part. Speeding up animations, which I did at the end of the tournament, helped immensely with the time, so players should be advised to do that when time limits are short. The rare & lower restriction was good. (There are still a lot of items, even commons, I'm missing since I've only been playing since AoA. I actually need more stuff from the original set.)

Not sure if you've sent out prizes yet but I hope there's something for me all the way near the bottom of the ranks.

 

Like Leagues?

Entry fee, pod size and rewards are all changeables, so BM can basicly run tournaments if they want to.

 

Yes, that was my point. Though leagues haven't yet had rarity level restrictions which would be good. (I only play in fixed deck leagues because my item pool is currently too small for custom deck leagues.)

 

AFAIK leagues can't have deckbuilding restrictions yet (as the functionality hasn't been written). However, there's hope that it'll come in the future. I've seen some ideas passed around in lobby chat—elf only leagues, peasant leagues, etc.

 

There's no tournament system I know of that allows people to drop out mid way through without being imbalanced. If you were to leave midway through Swiss or Elimination it essentially means some people get free wins that they shouldn't deserve. The way tournaments like Swiss are calculated the player needs to continue to try to win or else it will skew the results (since your success is important for tiebreakers of people who beat you).

Also, if you left mid way through you'd not be eligible for prizes and would probably be banned from future tournaments. I thought Abraxus was there and Abbus had internet problems but came back so I doubt they were "faking it" or whatever.

I haven't given out prizes yet, I'll be assigning them tonight. Essentially the better you did in the tournament the higher the high the chance you have of winning a chest (except for the first 3 which are guaranteed chests).

 

I play in a lot of Magic the Gathering tournaments that allow just that. Once you loose a few times (the number depends on the size of the tournament) you're out of contention for prize and many people drop at that point. Alternatively you can structure the prizes to be more flat to encourage everyone to play. I think the league structure does a good job in demonstrating a flatter payout in that you can win some chests even if you place 5th.

Basically, forcing people to play game they don't want to is against the point of a game so one should structure your tournament to avoid that.

 

The thing is that I'm rewarding people for staying through the whole thing -- and people come to play. Even someone who is "out of the running for prizes" might be interested in sticking around to play. If someone dropped out then they'd might not have an opponent. That's no fun for them.

The League structure with pods is designed so that each pod is independent of others. It is an okay system for what it is, but it doesn't hold up and many times people are left without matches due to others dropping out.

Leagues allow chests even if you place 5th because there is an entry fee. I could do that with tournaments if there was an entry fee, but I think that would limit player enrollment heavily. Flat prize structure could work, but I'd like there to be some competition out there -- the way I do it there is half incentive to play well and half incentive to just play.

You should go into the tournament knowing you'll be playing for X amount of time (usually 3 hours). You agreed to that before hand so structuring it for people to drop out mid way at the expense of other people isn't really a good solution. For example, let's say there are only prizes for the top 3 and someone in 3rd place gets knocked out by someone in 4th place who got a free win due to someone leaving right before their match. That'd be pretty sucky.

 

Sure, I didn't me a completely flat payout. Obviously first should still get the most and prizes should decrease from there.

I guess I just fundamentally disagree with you here. I'm playing for fun and if I'm loosing too much or having connection issues then it's not as much fun. That said, people should be heavily encouraged to officially drop between rounds before the next pairings are finalized so that everyone left can get to play as much as possible and the scenario you described doesn't happen. This is how it works for nearly all Magic tournaments of all sizes and they've been doing this for years.

 

I don't see anything in the official rules from WotC about being able to drop out in Swiss tournament: http://wizards.com/DCI/downloads/Swiss_Pairings.pdf

What format structure do you use for MtG tournaments? Are they officially sanctioned by DCI?

 

Yes they're DCI sanctioned with Swiss pairings. I mostly play in FNM with occasionally Grand Prix and larger tournaments for new sets and the like. We always use the DCI Reporter program which you can read about here. (There is lots of discussion about dropping players on that page, do a search for 'drop' or, for example, here's the section about 'late drops'.)

 

It seems like a lot of work to do and I'm sure that it can skew results. It would work fine if both opponents are out of the running for prizes, but it could definitely lead to edge cases where one person gets a boost in standings when they wouldn't have otherwise.

 

The software actually makes it pretty easy to run, not too different than Challonge really, just with a drop option. Getting a similar service to that for Card Hunter would maybe be more difficult, but again, I'm talking about the ideal here.

I'm sure there are cases where it can matter if someone drops between rounds but if you play enough rounds it doesn't make a large difference in my experience. IMO, the edge cases are more than made up for by better attendance because people know they can drop if they want.

 

The problem with a system like that is it wouldn't allow for users to enter their own data. Since it was a speed tournament, I couldn't enter the data manually. I did it last time but it was a LOT more work and wasn't feasible this time when games went to the wire.

I'm not sure how many more people would sign up if they knew they could drop out. You're really one of the only people to ever complain about this (save for one person last tournament who was like 0-6). How many League games have you seen someone not play all their matches? It seems fairly rare to me and isn't a huge selling point from my experience.

Plus, Leagues have an entry fee cost -- if someone drops out they are sacrificing something. Without motivation to not stay around people would drop out instantly when they couldn't get a prize and leave those who wanted to play for fun hanging.