Spawning a new thread from another discussion ... emphasis added

From Nate:

Discussing of games between rounds with friends and meta-mates is discouraged, although admittedly it is something where players are on an "honor system," as judges and TOs can't be everywhere. If it becomes too big an issue at your events, the most practical solution is to run events where players can play different decks from round to round, so that each game is a potentially fresh encounter for each player.

Aside from the "I don't want to play that format" responses, I would really like to hear one or both of two things:

1. What would you do as a player if this is the format at your local store / tournament?

2. What would you do as a tournament organizer to make this format work at your local store / tournament?

Discuss, and remember, let's be constructive and think of ways in which this format might work.

I'll attempt to make a suggestion:

IF I were to organize an event that made use of multiple decks, I would design it as such:

1. Each player must bring 2 decks each one representing a different house.

2. A player's tournament score for each match is equal to the amount of power he has at the end of the match. The score is tallied separately for each of the player's two decks for the duration of the match.

3. Two rounds of random groupings are played first, to determine a "seed" order for the players and houses.

4. Two rounds of seeded groupings are played next.

4a. For the 1st round, the players will play the deck that gave them the highest power from the random groupings.

4b. For the 2nd round, players will play their 2nd deck.

5. The final round will be composed of players with the highest score for each house (breaking up ties by total scores).

For example:

Andy's 2 decks: Stark, Lannister
Bob's 2 decks: Stark, Baratheon.
Charlie's 2 decks: Lannister, Targaryen.
David's 2 decks: Baratheon, Greyjoy.

1st Random Round:
Andy (Stark): 15. Bob (Bara): 13. Charlie (Lanni): 9. David (Grey): 12

2nd Random Round:
Andy (Lanni): 6. Bob (Stark): 10. Charlie (Targ): 15. David (Bara): 8

(As there's only one table for a tourny of 4, the scores just determine which deck is played first for each player. In a larger setting, the top total-scorers would be play against each other.)

1st Seeded Round:
Andy (Stark): 14. Bob (Bara): 15. Charlie (Targ): 10. David (Grey): 7

2nd Seeded Round:
Andy (Lanni): 4. Bob (Stark): 14. Charlie (Lanni): 12. David (Bara): 15

Totals

Andy: 18 (Stark 14, Lanni 4, Bara 0, Targ 0, Grey 0)
Bob: 29 (Stark 14, Lanni 0, Bara 15, Targ 0, Grey 0)
Charlie: 22 (Stark 0, Lanni 12, Bara 0, Targ 10, Grey 0)
David: 22 (Stark 0, Lanni 0, Bara 15, Targ 0, Grey 7)

Final Round:

There's a tie for Stark (Andy and Bob at 14) and a tie for Baratheon (Bob and David at 15). Bob wins both ties due to having 29 total, so he can choose which of the 2 decks he wants to play. Bob chooses Baratheon. That leaves Andy to play Stark, and David to play Greyjoy. Since Charlie is the top scorer for both the houses for his decks , Charlie is free to choose between Targaryen or Lannister, and he decides to play Targaryen.

Note: if Bob had chosen to play Stark, Andy would have been unable to play in the final, because his other deck is not the top Lannister deck.

So final table is:
Andy (Stark), Bob (Bara), Charlie (Targ), David (Grey)

My suggestion would be a simpler one. Each competitor brings the same amount of decks, say 3. All must be different houses. Then to even the playing field in the spirit of LCGs, limit 3 of any copy of a card for all three decks (that way you don't feel pressured into having 8 core sets). Each round it's a random draw of what deck you play. Proceed as normal.

-Or-

You have three decks and during early rounds, say for example there are three rounds, you could only use each deck once. Then as you progressed you couldn't reuse a deck until the other ones had been used.

Allowing multiple decks seems reasonable, assuming you require deck lists to be be turned in before the tourney starts. I don't know if REQUIRING multiple decks would be a good idea though. I guess it depends on how serious a tourney it is, and how hard core your player base is. For more casual players that requirement could be a real turn off, and since the multiple decks seems to be a suggestion to protect against scouting, and if a player isn't worried about that issue then they should be able to play what they want.

For those who did wish to play different decks, there shouldn't be a need to limit decks to 3 cards between all the decks, as cards could easily be swapped between decks as needed. Administratively though, this could cause more head aches with deck checks.

I do think forcing people to play 2 or more decks in general is a bad idea without unanimous support from your player base. I also think that if you have a multiple deck format, the player should be able to choose which deck he wants to use each round and tell the tourney director without the other players knowing. If you preset which deck is going to be used in each round, the risk of scouting still being an issue is greatly enhanced.

Karazax said:

Good points there. Those would be weaknesses to the suggestion I made.

Well it came about because of scouting, but this idea isn't that new. I remember talking with the players of the Threat from the East Bay about this format idea, and a few others on the boards back then doing the same... I don't remember who spawned the idea though.

What I think would be necessary is the idea that it is a fun tournament, more structured than casual play, less make or break than a regional. Everyone goes in knowing that they will have three decks of different houses.

Each round you switch decks, how this is down is up to the TO, but I would encourage the players to register the order they will play their decks when they turn in deck lists, no deck able to be repeated until all decks are chosen. The 4th round the opponent gets to at random from three face down house cards).

The semi-finals are played the same way with the opponent choosing the deck they will face at random and the final game is played with your remaining deck.

An alternate way to play would be three decks, you decide each round which deck you will play, but you must play every deck once in swiss.

Requiring 3 different decks could be fun IF all your player base is interested in such a format. However it could be real turn off to newer/casual players who barely have the collection to put together one competitive deck, much less three different ones. If the main concern is scouting I think just giving the player the option of switching decks at will between rounds would be sufficient to curb it a lot, and some people would rather play one deck they feel confident in regardless of the risk of scouting. So if you go with a required multi-deck format, I think it should be because all your players think it would be fun to play with different decks every round more so than because of scouting concerns.

I think the most important thing is to talk to your player base ahead of time and get their input, because regardless of what any of us who post here think, they are the ones who you need to buy in.

I really like the idea of this format as a two deck format. Everyone brings two decks from two houses. And it's double elimination. When you lose with a deck, it's out of the tournament. When you lose with two decks, you're out of the tournament. It makes for some interesting strategy and some fun matchups. I think it'll work especially well with 8 or less players. I wanna try and run it in our long island meta, if it works out, I'll some feedback!