Several folks have asked for what is currently Vassal league. Mu0n whipped up a listing for us!

Link is broken for me.

And I've signed up!!

thanks! fixed link.

116 at the moment? Wow.

I hope that not many drop, though.

120 players already? Outstanding. Don't mind if I make 121.

116 at the moment? Wow.

I hope that not many drop, though.

I believe this is inevitable. I suspect around 10-20 players will be difficult to contact and/or didn't fully understand what they were signing up for, and thus will drop out. But hey, that happens with lots of things.

I am curious if Sozin and Earthworm have a planned way of contacting each person who signed up soon before the league begins to assure they are still planning on participating so they can weed these people out early on.

Hopefully by cross-checking the Reddit / Challonge and ELO sites, they can weed these out quickly. Surely people that went to the trouble to get setup on all three knew what they were doing... right?

Hopefully by cross-checking the Reddit / Challonge and ELO sites, they can weed these out quickly. Surely people that went to the trouble to get setup on all three knew what they were doing... right?

That would probably be a good starting point at the very least, if not the full solution.

I'm also curious how the original pods will be determined. I understand the difficulty of aligning this, but I think 2 or 3 randomly paired matches, or maybe even a short swiss round only tournament, be played before the pods are created. This would give us at least some idea of what tier a player should be placed in initially. If Paul Heaver were to enter he would almost certainly be in one of the top tiers. But, if the tiers were random, he could just as easily end up at the bottom. That would be like Manchester United playing in tier 6 of the English football pyramid, or the Yankees playing in Triple AAA baseball.

Obviously, this isn't even close to that magnitude, and good players will quickly shoot up to the next tier, but for the most competitive of players (that wouldn't be me), it could be frustrating having to start from the bottom.

I think the intention is to do location based at first, so that it is easier to get a game time among your group, and then see how that shakes out. There are going to be some areas that might have to be split or combined, but since we are playing round robin initially this would make the most sense. Which probably puts some of us in some very tough zones... but that's ok, the point is to learn here, at least for me and it helps Sozin gather enough data to provide feedback to other sites so that things run better in the future.

What Earthworm and Sozin have planned, from my understanding, is random pods of 5 people at first who will play each other on the first month. After that, new pods will be created based on the performance of players from this first phase. This sounds like an excellent plan - 5 games should be more than enough to get a rough idea of a good starting point for a player. The second and third months should settle the more competitive players at the top pods, and the less competitive players at the lower pods.

We are cross checking the ELO and reddit sites, though right now it's just to send gentle reminders.

The first round will be randomly seeded pods, and the results from that will create the next round of pods, which will put you against players of similar record from round 1. (After seeing the plan, MajorJuggler nicknamed them "swisspods" and we're running with that term).

We're deciding now whether geographic seeding (which is still essentially random) is worth doing in round 1.

I think geographic seeding is worthwhile. You don't want to be the one Australian in a pod with a bunch of eastern US guys (or vice versa). If you make it too hard to get games in, people will be more likely to drop.

It's probably worth grouping by geography anytime you have too many people for a single pod at month 2, as well. For example, there probably won't be many 6-0s, so they might get all stuck in one or two pods, but the 3-3s can probably still be split by region.

I'll probably join in - I like having a reason to log onto Vassal.

I like how Theorist did it for the last Galactic Cup (this way if you're in the US but prefer to play in the morning, it works out):

Times are listed by EST ( my time), and by UTC time for you to convert:

Block S — 1am-6am (UTC 6am-12noon)
Block T — 5am-10am (UTC 11am-3pm)
Block A — 9am-1pm (UTC 2pm-6pm)
Block R — 12am-5pm (UTC 5pm-10pm)
Block F — 4pm-9pm (UTC 9pm-2am)
Block O — 7pm-12pm (UTC 12pm-5am)
Block X — 10pm-3am (UTC 3am-8am)

You can find a UTC conversion map to help you HERE . https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Standard_World_Time_Zones.png

I think geographic seeding is worthwhile. You don't want to be the one Australian in a pod with a bunch of eastern US guys (or vice versa). If you make it too hard to get games in, people will be more likely to drop.

It's probably worth grouping by geography anytime you have too many people for a single pod at month 2, as well. For example, there probably won't be many 6-0s, so they might get all stuck in one or two pods, but the 3-3s can probably still be split by region.

I'll probably join in - I like having a reason to log onto Vassal.

The second month pods will be not all players of identical records, but rather the top 6 (by score and MOV), then the next six and so on. Pod A Might have some 5-0's and 4-1's, pod B might have more 4-1's, C might have 4-1's and 3-2's, etc.

Actually, with so many players signed up, we may have some room for flexibility within seeding to make geography a thing. Season Zero is all about trying new things, and keeping the momentum of this player enthusiasm going.

Up to 141!

We're still kicking around some ideas on how to make the pod promotion system work smoothly and as intended. The first month will look the same regardless though - pods assigned randomly but generally within time zones and used to seed future rounds.

I signed up as #147. I am looking forward to it.

So, where is the best place to keep updated on this now that we're signed up? Should we be looking for a new thread here, on reddit, etc.?

So, where is the best place to keep updated on this now that we're signed up? Should we be looking for a new thread here, on reddit, etc.?

Reddit is our home for now.

Can I put a vote in for naming the pods after Star Wars planets/moons/systems? I just think that would be fun and there's plenty to choose from.

Can I put a vote in for naming the pods after Star Wars planets/moons/systems? I just think that would be fun and there's plenty to choose from.

In the long run, yes, though they may just be lettered this time around for everyone's convenience.

Yeah, the more dripping it is with Star Wars theme, ty better!

We now have 150 Players!

So when the pods are done and we get paired up we message the player via reddit?

After Which we report through Elo.

How do we report winnings to whoever is organizing the league?

Seems like a lot of work

Yes, and more.

When pods are done, we'll create a stickied thread for your whole pod on reddit. You all can share your best times to play there, and then individually contact each other to get your games done. You'll have 5 games to play, and can play them at your leisure over the following 5 weeks. Everybody is required to be reachable over reddit, but you can just as easily switch to email or whatever once you've made contact.

So when the pods are done and we get paired up we message the player via reddit?

After Which we report through Elo.

How do we report winnings to whoever is organizing the league?

Seems like a lot of work

That's a good thought there, Krynn.

And I had a good suggestion, but it looks like on the Challenge Board ELO site, under "Match Activity" and "Recent Matches", it ONLY shows 50 recent matches. Per month we will WAY more matches than that. Other, I would have suggested that all match reporting be done on the X-Wing Vassal ELO ladder by requiring players to put a comment with something like "Reddit League Group X, score 100-20", then let the League Organizers just scroll through there. But alas, unless we have a way to view ALL the ELO matches, it seems to be a doomed idea.

@Sozin, @Earthworm, I assume you've already got a method, possibly on the Challonge League site? Email and/or reddit reporting seems harder for YOU guys to handle.

And just to clarify, we can only play each other player in our pod once during that month? For the bracket, I can see that, but if we like each other and we have an opportunity to play an extra game versus an ELO opponent, would that cause problems? Obviously we don't want to play the same person over and over, but perhaps a rematch for a close game would be in good fun!