Has anyone ever considered setting up a OCTGN tourney so that players from all over the world can easily compete against the best of the best?

I'm sure nothing beats playing face to face but some of us are stuck in regions where there is no live play per say. A draw could be created, then the two players have say a week or so to connect and then complete a game? It would take a while to actually complete a tourney but it isn't a problem if it's all online. Maybe have a North America and Europe side where the champs from each side of the ocean meet up?

Good idea? Thoughts?

in my opinion this game is too much for octgn. octgn is more suited to simpler games like mtg.

I think that this got done about a year or so ago.

Either way, it's a great idea and one I'd like to see given another run, especially now that Stahleck and Black Friday are over.

Some kind of Ryder Cup style US v EU tournament, with a brief "Here's how our game went down" post after each game would be really interesting to watch (and lets us start to answer those " Why is Stark only good in Europe? Where the hell was Martell at Stahleck? Is Greyjoy actually any good if people are expecting it? " questions that people have been ruminating over recently)

We do them semi-regularly in Poland but the 7-10 hours time difference beetween Europe and USA would be huge problem for people with work and families imho.

There was a want for another one going around before the previous GenCon, and I think it just fell off everyone's plate and rolled under the table and dirtied the rug and then The Hound ate it.

michaelius said:

If you have 1 week to complete a round, you can schedule the match during the weekend, when time difference doesn't matter so much (I've done it with small events for a completely different game that also takes about 1 hour to complete). I don't know if it could work out for a large tournament, but for a small one, I'll say it definitely can.

shiiiiiiiiiit. I'm down for a tourney. I can organize it too if no one else wants to. Pretty much we'd want to do something like an eu bracket and a us bracket. Then we could take the top four from each bracket and make the top 8. First seed of us plays last seed of eu, first seed of eu plays last seed of us, etc. Any other regions like australia and asia, can be put with whichever time zone group is closest. Places like Mexico, South America, etc can be grouped into us since they are in the same time zone. So start laying down email addresses if you want in I guess. We'll shoot for January or Feb for a start.

I know that I would be interested in doing something like this since there are only 3 of us that play regularly in our area, and the closest play group I think is 4.5 hours way. I assume my wife would also be interested in this as well.

Staton said:

Stahleck and Gencon top fours should get an automatic entry into the top-flight or something... just so vultures like myself can see which of the champion-card designers can beat which other champion-card designers.

Staton said:

Thanks for organizing. bjaurelio/gmail.

Eu Bracket for me, zuranjef(At)gmail(DOT)com

LoneWanderer said:

That would be a different event all together. Plus, I'm not even sure if we could get all eight of those guys in the tourney. I'm not inclined to have that in the tourney I'm organizing, especially since we'd then have to make a top 16 which isn't very feasible in a field of around 30 that we've had in the past.

May i suggest using skype instead of emails ? We will need to have voice communication for comfortable gameplay anyway

LoneWanderer said:

michaelius said:

I am going to stick to emails, because everyone has an email address. If you want to use skype that's fine. You can work that out with your opponent each round though. I don't want to force people to get skype.

Twn2dn said:

I think that's probably a good idea. I'll look into getting some recording software. I might see if someone else wants to announce the game with me. Maybe I'll get shives or one of the 2 champs and a chumps guys.

Count me in (EU bracket). khudzlin(at)hotmail(dot)fr

Did you know it's possible to spectate a game if you connect at the start?

Khudzlin said:

Yes I did. That is how we will be announcing during the final games. Please repost your sign up info in the Octgn Tourney Sign up thread.

It's done (I noticed the other post later).

Thought I should ask this in this thread instead of using the sign up one:

I was just trying out Octgn there and my internet connection broke. The other guy had to go anyway but if it happened in the Tourney can you just sign back in and continue when the connections back? Or does it stop the game entirely?

If argyles7 reads the boards thanks for showing me how to work OCTGN btw (~also for beating me so bad it broke my internet)

Yeah sadly there is no way to reconnect to a game once the connection has been lost. I'm not really sure why. I have a few guesses but haven't actually looked at the code. Anyway, if it happens during the tourney then we have decided to go with the following: If the connection is lost in the first two turns then restart the game. If the connection is lost on turn three or after then you can still restart the game if both players agree. If both players do not agree then one or both need to send me an email and we'll work out something.

The disconnect issue is obviously the greatest threat to being able to have a serious competition on OCTGN, because anybody who wished to 'game the system' would just see if they were losing after one or two rounds and then 'disconnect'. As long as no physical prizes were being offered (because greed always drives mankind to do their worst) I doubt these issues would present themselves.

Disconnections are rarely intentional (technical problems are much more likely in my experience -- whether internet, system or octgn -- followed by "oops, I've got to go"). As long as we're competing only for bragging rights, we shouldn't have any ragequit problems.

DieMyDarling said:

If you suspect any intentional disconnects then you don't have to agree to restart the game after turn two. So if its turn three or four and your opponent disconnects and you suspect that it was intentional then feel free to send me an email. I'll be sure to respond asap. It should be a few mins, but there might be a bit of a delay with EU emails. Actually I'm going to see if Gualdo can help me out with that.

Since host is never disconnected and guest doesn't lose his screen it's possible to make a screenshots of board and discard/dead piles and then rebuild board situation in new game.

Takes a few minutes but the only thing lost is reshuffled draw deck

michaelius said:

This is true, but the shuffled deck is kind of important. We'd prefer that a game is just restarted, but it is up to the players on how they want to handle the situation. If you would rather do this then feel free.