I saw that there are some posts about tournaments on the forum and was wondering what are the rules for pairing players and how to solve the tournament.

Do you make all players face the same adventure and then compare their scores? Are players facing each other?

Overall I would like to have an idea on how to run a tournament, thanks!

Javier

Hi Maggical,

I've been hosting (and have all plans to continue hosting) some tournaments here on the forums, and everyone is invited to play. To give you some ideas for how you might structure your tournament, you are welcome to read through the threads related to what I've hosted already. Probably the best place to start would be to check out my Hall of Fame thread. From there you can link to the 2 completed Solo Player Tournaments and the 1 active 2 Player Tournament. Also, in my signature you can link to my tournament Ideas Thread and read how this process has developed and notice where it's heading (new announcement made today for next week's new solo player tournament). That said, I hope you'll join in on some of these tournaments as a player, as it's been a lot of fun so far, and the more the merrier. Plus that will give you experience for designing your own. And speaking of that...

It sounds like you are considering hosting a live tournament (different from hosting one online over the course of a week or month). In that case, you could modify some of the ideas I have used and provide all participants with a list of parameters before the tournament (quest, deck building restrictions, number of players, etc...) and then give everyone the same window of time on a given day (say noon to 4pm, or whatever) to use their pre-built decks to try the tournament quest as many times as they can during the given window, attempting to post their best score.

Anyway, that's just an idea. If you do host your own tournament, I'd love to hear how it goes, what you learn from it, what went well, what didn't. I'd love to learn from your experience as I continue to host tournaments here. Also, did I mention you're invited to play in any of the tournaments I'm hosting here on the forums? Because you are. You can even invite your friends to join in too. Really, it's a good time.

juicebox.

Myself and Tragic are working on a tournament witch we plan to run though lackey at some point in the future.. but while thinking about it we came to these problems.

Like, I think that for a tournament to run properly there needs to be a judge watching every game at every table. As this is co-op vs the rules game, slight mistakes in rule management will greatly bend the outcome of the scores.

In duel games, it is an excepted practice that players try to "get in your head" and trip you up or sneak past rules with out their opponent noticing.. but this is different, as the encounter deck can never speak up and say.. hang on.. you can not sneak attack Gandalf to lower your threat so that just revealed encounter card that came out during the quest phase no longer auto engages and then also use him to attack or block an engaged creature. The Hunt for Gollum deck can not say.. "hang on.. only the 1st player is allowed to scry the encounter deck after questing in 1b, this is a independent decision and the 3 cards are hidden and not discussed between players.)

While Juices events are fun, as is the quest log. I honestly think that the vast majority of scores are invalid due to rule violations. If you wish to run a proper live event there needs to be a ref at each game. On top of honest misplays, if it is a tournament and there is cash on the line, it isn't like a duel game were you check each other.. cheating will happen.

Also there needs to be some kind of rule to handle missplays. Like for example, because of the table talk rule (Witch also needs to be better defined) if you make a missplay and show a card, you have also violated the table talk rule.. you just can not put that card back in your hand, as now your partner knows you have it.

So we are thinking that after a missplay that reveals a card or cards, or a table talk violation means that the misplayed cards needs to be discard. You can not shuffle it back into the deck, as shuffling your deck is a powerful effect one that people normal pay resources to do, so this would mean people would misplay on purpose to put dud cards back in and shuffle.. so discard is the only option.

Talking about "Table Talk" I think this is on of the best ideas in this game. I love the idea that your partner has to be competent and you need to play as a team but each player is a independent thinker rather than have 1 player basically control the other player. The Table Talk rules as they are are so vauge and loose that they are nearly useless and this needs to be addressed b4 torny play can really start.

IMO, it needs to be way way way way stricter, or completely removed. Though I would prefer for stricter.. Like with the rules as they stand now you can not say card names, but it is meaningless.. like if I say the white wizard you know it is Gandalf. As the rules stand now you can basically tell your partner exactly what is in your hand and what you plan to do.... so the question is.. what is the point of the rule?

IMO, all communication between players about cards that are not in play should be banned, so no alternative names, code names, nick names... etc etc. None of that... Like saying a convo like this should be legal..

P1 - "Hmm, if I block and it is a bad shadow card though, I might loose my hero.. maybe I should just block with my ally this time?"
P2 -"Narr, do not worry about that shadow card"

This is legal as it has no references to cards at all, you are just talking strategy and that is how I think it should be. That unless the card is on the table you can not talk about it in any direct way, including talking about its affect and its name or w/e...

Example of illegal

P1 - "Look the staging area is already to high threat, we need to quest with everyone and then I can not defend and everyone in staging area will attack me!"
P2 - "yea but I can lower your threat this turn so.. do not worry"

as you have just told him you have a greeting.. but just saying "Narr, quest.. lets quest with all" ... that would be legal.

You see.. I love the table talk rule.. it add so much .. you have to really trust your partner to know what they are doing and it brings into this game that thing you only get in duel games were awesome game changing events surprise you.. and your just like.. ******* awesome play dude!!

Anyway... imo, the no table talk is a good rule.. but only if it is greatly increased, and defined, as now it is completely pointless. Also if it IS defined, then it also needs to be policed... and again.. for that you need refs at the table.

Agree with booored.

Judges are good idea, but we are all in different part of the world so it's very complicated to judge us).

Table talks... When we started to play we didn't use this rule to understand the game. Then we just forgot about it. When we began to use this rule it became hard no to talk about our cards.

E.g. we have some tournament (international). We play and make a full log (every small step). Then we send result and log to some judgment committee, they'll check it for correctness. So it is possible to discover if the game was correct. But yes, we can't log our table talks. So maybe this rule should be clarified more accurate.

Thanks for the replies and invitations, I will consider them although I don't like playing online that much.

My idea for the tournament was to allow players with solo decks of 50 cards, and make them play X amount of adventures each. To avoid any rules mistakes my idea is to do this:

- Sit players in pairs
- Each player will play 1 full turn with the opponent being sure he plays correctly
- Once player 1 finishes his turn, it's time for player 2 to play his own, with player 1 checking his moves
- Once both players win or fail the quest they hand down the points they've scored

I will award 2 points per adventure win and 0 points for failed quest, and then will add their score in case of ties, what do you think about this?

Thanks!

Javier

Maggical said:

Just to clarify, my tournaments do not involve playing online. You can play wherever you want and then post your result(s) here to the forum.

For your ideas:

Having players watch each other could work. Sounds kind of tedious (imagining myself playing this way), but if your participants don't mind, it would help mitigate some of the issues boored brought up around ensuring players are being honest. You could have the watching occur every other turn, like you suggested, or have a player watch the entire game of another player and then switch places (maybe not as disruptive to a player's game flow). In general, it could also give an opportunity to bring in the "getting in another player's head" piece that boored brought up.

Why 2 points for a victory and 0 for a loss? Since there is no third option, why not just 1 and 0?

I'm intrigued by the idea of success being based primarily on win/loss, only using the official scoring in case of a tie. That dramatically reduces the value of the scoring and may free people up to use a wider variety of play styles (i.e. turtling). Another option, if you want to value the scoring system more (and maybe you don't - which is also a fine choice) is that you could give 1 point for a win and 2 points for the player who scored the best score overall on that particular adventure (or 2 points and 3 points, if you like the 2 for a victory). That would spice up your scoring (like having 2 and 3 pointers in basketball). Everyone who got a victory would get 2 points and only one player (per adventure) would get 3 points. Or it could score more like soccer/football/futbol - 3 points for a win with the best score, 1 point for a win that was not the best score (like a draw in soccer/football/futbol), and 0 points for a loss. Anyway, room to play here.

The points are just arbitrary, but I like the idea to award more points to the one with the best score. Also like the idea for one player to play the whole quest and then the other, seems it will flow better as you mention...

juicebox said:

Using sport analogy, then what you need is the way many rugby union tournaments are scored: 2 for victory, 1 for a tie and 0 for defeat. Then there are bonus points for the highest scores in victory, but also for the defeat by a lower margin.

Thus here we could have a similar system: fixed points for victories, plus/minus bonus depending on the adventure score.

Rugby idea seems good, but can you put that into numbers?

Maggical said:

I'll think about it, but this is close to what juicebox was describing.

One way is to make everybody play, giving 1 point per victory (or 2 points, depending on the weight of the victory over bonus points). Then we could look at individual game scores and give bonus points for the 10% best scores within the victorious games and within the defeats.

One difficulty is to smooth luck in the encounter draws. We know that some encounter deck sequences are deadly when others are easier. This could only be smoothed by playing several times the same scenario, or playing with random, but identical encounter decks for every player (but in that case players should not watch other games, because knowing the encounter deck sequence in advance gives a strong advantage; and this might be dull). Also, giving points for defeats also compensate "bad" encounter decks by rewarding players with the best result despite defeat.

Just my 2-pence thoughts. I do not know if such implementation is really fair though.

Luck is part of the game, so bad or good draws of the encounter deck are a must in my opinion. I play several card games and it's part of the soul of them, really don't think we should remove that...

Maggical said:

Yea, luck shouldn't be removed... but I agree that a mean / best score taken from three games might be worth looking into. Duel games do this, as a way to round out the luck vs skill. I mean having a single game and getting some super unlucky draw that blows you out is not fun for the players. This is compounded if they have to travel to get to the comp.

I really think the biggest problem for comps at the moment is the table talk rule and its lack of definition. HOw can you have a comp, when there is no consensus of what this rule even is?

Why not "simply" count the wins and use the scores as tie breakers?

For example: Out of many competitors player A, B, C and D have risen to the top. A and B have won 5 out of 5 games, while C and D have won 4. But player A and C finished each game with a score of 100, while players B and D finished each game with a score of 200. The final rankings should then look like this (in my opinion):

1st Player A 5/5 score 500

2nd Player B 5/5 score 1000

3rd Player C 4/5 score 400

4th Player D 4/5 score 800

Since winning is more important than the score you win with, you don't need to count any score on a lost game. Losing is penalty enough.

plueschi said:

That's what I have in mind since the beginning and probably the best option.

Having each player play 3 times against a quest and average the scores is a good idea, but for a tournament it will take a lot of time and I don't see it possible.

The whole idea of this tournament is to play solo, so no worries about the table talk rules for now.

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To sum up a little what we have so far:

• 50 card min decks (any amount of core sets, and up to expansion pack #3, just as an example), the decks will be used as they are for the whole tournament and can't change.
• Players sit in pairs (randomly selected), roll a dice on who starts and the winner plays against quest #1 while his opponent watches his play to make sure he doesn't commit any mistakes
• Once player one finishes the quest, either by winning or losing, he calculates his score and write it down
• Now it's time for player 2 to play the same quest and player 1 to watch him and control him
• Once finished player 2 calculates his score and writes it down
• Both players hand the tournament organizer his scores and if they won or lost the adventure
• Once all players give their scores against the SAME quest, this round is over and we move to the next round

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With this data we will award players with:

• 2 points if they won the quest
• 0 points if they lost the quest
• 2 extra points to the best score of the round
• 1 extra point to the second best score of the round

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With this we can run the tournament with as many rounds as quest we want to include, having a winner at the end of it. In my case I'm planning on 6 rounds, all solo playing against all 3 core set adventures and the first 3 adventure packs.

What do you think?

Another idea to give players some maneuver room will be to have them have their 50 card deck and 12 extra cards that they will be able to switch with ones from their deck to adjust it for different quests, this can be good since it's really difficult to have 1 deck against all adventures. This idea is similar to the idea of sideboard on Magic, although I don't know if it will be good or not...

Javier

Maggical said:

Personally I am not a big fan of those. In order to get the lowest score you not only have to play risky but reckless. I personally see the player that wins 2/2 as the stronger player than the player that wins 1/2 with the best score on his win (both would get 4 points under your system).

I think it comes down to this: Having low scores already is a deciding factor, but with the points above a low score would be "double" value.

Consistency ftw!

plueschi said:

Not sure I get this, how would you recommend putting it into numbers? Maybe giving 3 points for winning and 0 for loosing and keeping the 2 and 1 for best score and second best score...

Let me know,

Javier

I would simply remove the extra points for achieving the lowest score in any given round, since having a low score is already beneficial, no need to value it twice I think.

Just score 1 point for a win and add the "regular" scores as tie breakers.

But I am fully aware, that this is just one opinion of many. Some people might find extra points for certain feats exciting and you have of course more than one possibility of scoring a tournament.

All opinions are welcome, the idea is to build a good tournament floor rules set or similar. I agree with your opinion about not using the score twice (one for extra points and another time for tie-breakers), so I like what you say...

Any other opinions?

Javier

I do not understand why you just do not use the point system from the game that is already done?

booored said:

Somehow the above post got screwed.

I think the problem is that you have to find a way to score your losses.

booored said:

Because with the current system you can end up with a player loosing 3 out of 6 games but scoring good results in those 3 loses and ending up better and a player that won 4 out of 6 scenarios, wich I don't like at all...

Maggical said:

"If the players win the game, use this process to determine their group's score for the game."
- (p.22 from the Rulebook)

You only score games that result in a win.

A loss = no score.

juicebox said:

Yes, and that is also a problem when you want to calculate tiebreakers between players with equal losses. That's why on the tournament I'm planning on rating losses too using the system, even if the result is a negative number. That way I will be able to determine positions in the tournament more accurately...

Maggical said:

Why would scoring a loss make for a more accurate tournament table. I seem to not get it.