Card Hunter Elimination Tournament #1 - Sign Up and Win Pizza!

The tournament is over and we have the winners. You can see the final results in the first post of this topic . Pizza will be delivered during the next couple of days. Thanks everyone who participated! Please post feedback here. Thank you.

1st place: Qivril (400 pizza)
2nd place: neneboss (240 pizza)
3rd place: SgtSteve (160 pizza)

4th place: ArcadianRook (80 pizza)​

 

I gladly take the pizza but the amount is far too high for this kind of tournament.
People would also play just for fun and for some hall of famest on Farbs metapage.

Pizza should be awarded for tournaments with, for example: best of 3 rules, more players and a longer sign up time.

 

I like this guy, but I think you deserve the pizza. You played exceptionally well in the 2 matches I saw. Just rejoice and enjoy your month of club membership or a few purple chests or whatever! :-P

EDIT: Maybe I don't like him so much considering he throws matches to artificially lower his Elo to win easily.

 

That's very good of you, Qivril. Stexe, I agree with almost all your criticism. All things considered, however, SLG did work to make this happen, so thanks and well done SLG.

 

Pizza are always welcome

 

Yeah, I'm not saying anything against SLG. I think it is great that SLG spent the time to host it and should definitely get a pizza reward for the time spent. Thanks for hosting it again!

I'm going to be setting up a tournament soon as well. Something similar but definitely taking away things I've learned from the past 2 tournaments. Having people host the games themselves seemed to work well and 10 minute matches back to back really kept it moving and interesting.

 

I'll be getting in touch with the prize sponsor to make sure the sorcererers' prizes are distributed among all sorcererers who participated.

 

Lots of fun being in the tournament, with 2 especially great matches as the finals to watch!

1) I'd like to suggest 15 min timers for the next? Still quick, but takes away the pain of super-speedy play. I suspect many of the 6-0s in the first round were due to timeouts.

2) Nerfing WW & WWE was a good move for this map set, or they'd have dominated. I'd also suggest something that nerfs 3DC if you're doing that on an open map set like this. Overall, I played 6 games in tournament style, and faced 3DC four times. Mirror matches would have been problematic in a 10 minute slot, and also not a huge amount of fun for most people I imagine.

3) Maps: map 1 is too strongly pro 3DC to see much rotation - the victory point is hard to reach, will be lava-ed, and the sight lines are very open. I think map 5 also leans too heavily in that direction. The other 3 maps I enjoyed.

4) Single elimination is brutal, and that's the nature of this type of tournament. Swiss is definitely an option, or double-elimination. I think there's enjoyment in all of these, and we should rotate to a different one next time for variety.

Thanks to SLG for running! Well worth getting up early for

 

Like I've explained before, the reason I used single-elimination was that the tournament would run fast and smoothly. Also I don't think we should be trying to make the rules so that those who are "supposed to win", win. Sudden death matches can be fun too because they are so unpredictable. Swiss format works too, but this was something different.

Like I said in chat, you don't fully understand how it works. If we did it like you suggested, we would have 15 players for round 2 when we need exactly 16. With 32-player tournaments like this one, if we have less than 32, each missing player will mean one bye during round 1. It is mathematically impossible to do it in any other way. And I did not actually choose those 3 byes, the Challonge tournament system does that automatically. And it does it so because there is no other way to do it.

It being different was the whole point. I don't think all maps should have characters ball up on each side of the board. Having this kind of 1 vs. 1 matchup (original idea by Tuknir) is a good and interesting challenge imo. Now the execution could have been better, but in my defense I have to say that this was just a PvE map that was quickly converted to a PvP version because we didn't get as many maps submitted as I had hoped. The right way to do that map would have been to use 3 rooms and 1 center room. Doesn't matter any more though since the next tournament will use different maps. Still, it's good to identify problems.

I think it was very risky to use the same exact build, and I think there's only one person you can blame for that loss. I mean it's pretty obvious that he would adapt to it if he had a suspicion that you were going to use the same deck. Knowing your opponent and guessing their strategy is part of the fun imo.

Sure, but what you describe here is a totally different event. There's no reason why we could not have both quick single-elimination tournaments, and swiss tournaments that last multiple days.

This is against the basic philosophy I had with this event. I wanted to make it as simple as possible so that a person wondering in the chat room at the right time could jump in and have some tournament fun. Registering builds etc. is very time-consuming and leads to all kinds of problems like people not submitting their decks, people using different decks, etc.

About the accident. That was my fault because I originally uploaded a flawed version of the final map and Rook had downloaded it before I managed to fix it.

Your timer idea could work. Other option would be to make finals best-of-3.

Yes, both final matches were pretty epic.

1) 15 minutes would be nice but there's the problem of overall tournament time. I'm a bit worried that if we increase the time, the tournament will last 3+ hours, which I think is way too long. One option would be to try something like 12 minutes. I think there's a big difference between 10 and 12.

2) I kind of agree but it's a bit difficult to nerf 3DC because there is no single card that is the problem. I don't know.. maybe Trembling Staff? Also we have to take into consideration that while 3DC was pretty popular and worked nicely, it didn't win. And would it make more sense to nerf, if we have to do it, something that actually won the tournament?

3) I agree. Wizards had a big advantage there. Then again being able to realize that was part of the deckbuilding challenge

4) I'd like to do double-elimination myself but it would mean 2 extra rounds, which could be a problem if we want to keep the tournament short and sweet.

 

1.) I still think 10 minute timers are fine -- it makes you play fast, keeps the duration of the tournament low, and leads to interesting and nail biting games. I run 3DC (one of the longest time consuming builds due to requiring lots of LoS calculations) and can manage a 10 minute time limit. Having it be 15 minutes might work if everything was automated and there was no need for a "cool down period" in between matches. But as of right now I think 10 minutes works. Maybe 11 or something just so people can chat in the first minute and organize themselves (early trait cycling and loading screen times can be annoying for the clock).

2.) Removing WW/WWE was definitely a good move. 3DC is strong, but I'm not sure they need a lot of nerfs. Maybe limiting Epic items or something to reduce the amount of SPR? It would be interesting to see a tournament with "only 1 of each item in a team" thing. Then you won't have tons of Runestones and Staff of Winter.

3.) Agreed. Map 1 needs some more cover. Map 5 isn't too bad from my experience on it, but I know you'd argue against that from our last match. :-P

4.) Yeah, Swiss or Double-Elimination is a must going forward. I'd even suggest some type of point scoring so every VP matters. Single elimination is simply too brutal for a game that has as much luck in it as Card Hunter. Plus having byes in a single elimination tournament is a HUGE advantage (you'll notice how many of the bye players made it to the finals).

 

The method I suggested would work. It would reduce the byes to 2 from 3 by having 1 bye in the first round and 1 bye in the second round and still keep the matches work for a 32 person team. Challonge's system does it so all the byes are at the start, which I'd say is flawed as you should strive to reduce the number of byes as much as possible. Plus, having byes be something other than random would be nice -- something like base it on actual score and move it away from the first round.

Not all maps have to cater to having teams bundled up, but maps shouldn't be "stick 2 people in a room and have them fight it out with little chance of escape." That is just not fun, is highly random, and teams basically boil down to a few choices of highly self sufficient builds.

Registering a build takes few seconds... you simply copy the code and paste it into a message. It wouldn't slow down the game by any measurable amount.

Plus, I was under the impression that people designed character builds for the map -- not for the person they were playing. I wanted to see if a non-changing build would do well. The fact he spectated my game and designed a build to counter me as opposed to adapt to the map goes against the heart of the tournament purpose. But whatever. More things to fix in the future going forward. Having who you're going to fight be anonymous until the last second would remove a lot of that.

The way I described the tournament could still be done quickly and work well. It might be a bit longer, but I don't think it would be significantly long as each person would be playing for the full amount of time. That's how other tournament systems have worked in multiplayer games (see my post on WarCraft 3's automated tournament system).

 

Thanks for organizing a great event SLG. Specially the brackets showing almost real time stuff. unfortunately i missed to observe some gr8 few final games i seem. Was bit beat loosing on 1st round to paladinGP sooo close though mainly case some ****** play to keep it moving fast. Its really annoying playing wizards or ppl with armor in 10 mins time, So please who ever organize games in future make the time limit to 15.

 

Thanks SLG again for organizing the tournament!

It was worth staying up late, esp. for the great final!

I think for tournament, there should be an option that when you ran out of time, you still have a very short time (e.g. 5-10 seconds) for your next move, just like what we did for Chess/Go competition with the use of a game clock.

Perhaps, there should be a special prize for the most interesting deck in the tournament to encourage people to make a new deck.

 

Having extra time after the basic time runs out would be nice, but it would be nearly impossible to enforce without Blue Manchu making a system for it. Not sure there is enough need for them to devote dev time for it.

And "most interesting deck" is really subjective... would the tournament runner decide? Would it be a vote by other contestants? Vote by general public? Seems a bit iffy.

 

I've never heard anyone use a round 2 bye in a tournament like this. It would be a terrible idea because round 2 bye is much more valuable than round 1 bye. In a 32-player tournament you could be lucky and get seeded against an easy opponent during round 1, and you would win that match 6-0. You would then get a bye and go straight to top-8. But if all byes happen during round 1 like they are supposed to, during round 2 you are guaranteed to have to fight someone who has already won a match, and is therefore at least not a complete newbie.

This comes down to personal preference I think. What you see as "lame and boring", I see as new and interesting. If I want to have standard MP maps, I can do standard MP. Cool thing about community events like these is that we can be creative and have new challenges. I think your opinion of this map is affected by the fact that you lost there. It's not the greatest map of all time, but I don't think it's as bad as you make it sound.

Things that seem simple, rarely are, especially when you have 32 players, many of who are new to the forums or the game. For example in Peasant tournament we had very clear instructions on how to submit sideboards, yet my opponent hadn't done it. It's not a case of it being easy, it's a case of casual players just not caring that much. This is why I wanted to design the event so that it would require minimal effort from both the organizer and the player. The more different steps of communication you add (like submitting decks) the more problems and work you will have.

The way I see it, you design for the map and for the opponent. If you are fighting someone who plays nothing but Firestorm decks, and your planned deck performs badly against Firestorms, it would be crazy not to make any last minute changes. These kinds of last-minute executive decisions are part of the deckbuilding skill imo.

Your loss happened because you didn't change your deck even though it was obvious that your opponent was observing the match. You had also previously announced that you hadn't really prepared for this event and only had 1-2 decks available. Of course your opponent will use all this information against you, I know I would. It has nothing to do with honor and everything to do with knowing your enemy. Had you been clever, you could have simply switched to a completely different deck and enjoyed your win.

Yea, I felt bad for you because you were one of the few players who prepared beforehand. Challonge random seeder wasn't kind to you.

Problem with going from 10 to 15 minutes is that it could add almost an hour to total duration.

I think that the main issue with 10 minutes not being enough is that people are not used to making moves that fast because we usually have twice the time. I've observed many 10 minute matches and they often happen so that first players make moves like they usually do in a 20 min match, and then suddenly when they have less then 2 minutes on the clock, they go "oh crap!" and start to make quick moves (and mistakes). But if they made faster moves right from the start, 10 minutes would be enough. In other words, they need that sense of urgency right from the start. For me personally 10 minutes was not enough at first, but after I trained moving faster, it's not a problem any more.

Yes, this kind of timer would be really great. Hopefully BM implements something like that at some point.

Rewarding the most interesting deck is also a good idea. Anything that encourages creative deckbuilding is always a good idea. A bit subjective of course, but these things always are.

 

It wouldn't really be a terrible idea to have a bye in round 2. You give the bye to the player who "did the best" in the previous match to offset the problems. "Guaranteed to have to fight someone who has already won a match, and is therefore at least not a complete newbie" -- not really true considering the amount of luck in the game. If someone gets horrible draws and the other player gets amazing draws no level of skill is going to save them. If you watched the peasant tournament you'd see that even the best players would lose some matches. I just think single elimination doesn't work. It was an interesting experiment, but byes based on luck makes it overly problematic.

Yes, I may be biased against it because I lost, but I'd wager it isn't that biased. I had problems with it before my match -- it doesn't add much to the game since it boils down to multiple 1v1 fights while each person runs to the center. If there wasn't so much difficult terrain getting to the middle it might not be as problematic. That and random spawning spots leaves a lot of it up to chance. It might be fun, but from a competitive environment it isn't healthy.

Sideboarding in peasant was optional. I went almost the entire tournament without needing to sideboard. Having to simply submit a build I don't think would be that bad. But we'll see as we experiment more.

Designing for the map and opponent seems silly. Matches should be anonymous until seconds before the game, that way you have to prepare a build to work against many things and not be a super niche build.

My loss happened because he spectated my game, but when I asked him if he had he didn't respond. I didn't know he would do that or that it was "obvious" -- I thought having a bye would be enough of an advantage that he wouldn't have to rely to unfair tactics to gain an advantage. No one else really had time to change builds based on one player or another -- they were busy with their other matches. And I was experimenting to see how well a single build would do assuming that someone wouldn't spectate my game, then build something designed just to counter it. I didn't care if I won the tournament or not, I just didn't want someone to make something intentionally to throw it off. Or if he was going to do that at least let me know he watched the previous game and was spending time changing his deck. It is akin to stealing a team's play book and studying that book. Sure, a team could have another book or whatever, but that isn't something they practiced with and either way it would give the enemy an unfair advantage.

Anyway, I think these tournaments are learning experiences to better come to a consensus on what is best for tournaments so that Blue Manchu can implement something that works best.

 

Actually for me the problem was after trying some 10 min games and running off time i play way too fast end up having even time left but make too many mistakes. Anyway I did not mind the loss that much and was really wanted to say thanks for a great tournament. I had good fun b4 hand practice with tuknier and and with you SLG. I was quite impresed how smooth it ran specially as how you managed to get brackets up fast even with no shows and make quite a lot of work solo. AND I WAS most surprised today looking at MP rating of your winner that was like ...

 

First, thanks for hosting an event.

Second, thanks for hosting an event.

I hope you modify the rules/maps if you do host another. I did like the map changing every round, and knowing it's design did help me in my builds. Of course the obvious doesn't need to be said about the timer. Otherwise your rules were really good.

 

Can you do another tournament?