I was trying to think of a good way to run a NON-team based tournament format and this is what I came up with.

Assume you have 8 competing players..

Each player is allowed to build 2 decks to bring to the table to play in the tourney. Additionally, each player is allowed to bring 4 heroes for each deck he built. And is allowed to play any 3 out of his chosen 4 heroes for the deck he chooses to play with each round.

Each player will play 1 game with each of his opponents (Obviously this can be adapted based on how many players enter the tourney, and how much time you want to play). Thus essentially what we have is a co-operative, 7 round, round robin.

Each round, all 8 players (all 4 pairs) will face the SAME, randomly chosen scenario of moderate difficulty from a pool of scenarios of moderate difficulty. In this way, every player faces the same 7 scenarios, albeit with a different teammates. But remember, you have 2 decks to choose from. I think this will take a lot of the luck out of teammate pairing process, which is a good thing.

Before each round, each team gets 5 minutes to discuss Which 2 decks (and which 3 of 4 heroes) they should field against the revealed scenario. Play then begins for a set round time.

Wins and Loss tallies at the end of the 7 rounds are the primary way to determine a champion and runner-ups. However if a tie-breaker is necessary between players with the same W-L ratio then the player with the lowest pt tally from his wins is given the higher rank.

Ideally I think scenarios should be chosen based on an expected win percentage of 30-50% or so, so that the best players can most easily rise to the top. In other words we don't want the player who somehow managed to win 3 of his 8 matches against hard scenarios to be the winner in a tourney..

I realize the weakness of this type of tournament is that there's no vigilant opponent to enforce the rules. Practically though, I think this wouldn't be a huge problem. Players do tend to care about their reputations and generally don't want to have to cheat to win. Especially when a lot of their opponents are their friends!

Would love to hear what you guys think! I'm still relatively new to LOTR so I'd love to hear of any holes in this format that I may have overlooked.

Cheers

I think that you would need to restrict or outlaw certain card combo's (possibly some hero's)... and include hand size or card draw limits as has been suggested (http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/93154-over-powered-decks/ ) for tournaments (i'm against lots of card erratas outside of tournaments requirements).

If there was a way to weight/scale the various hero's that might help (might not too) ie including Spirit Glorfindel adds x points to your game score... using Brand subtracts x2 points (LOL)

I have also wondered how you (or anyone for that matter) would handle players that choose not be very co-operative? Could you include points for helping your team mate (that you are actually competing against)? Or maybe each player rates every team mate though out the day and add/subtract points at the end of the day scaled from most co-operative to least?

hmmmmm Actually i think Against a shadow FFG rules is very ok so for me i don't bother with other rules. Is only restricted list required for the tournaments. that all in my opinion

I like it, but I would allow 3 decks. I think, in the tournament setting, there will be a higher percentage of the best heroes being used, so it could be difficult to find enough variety with only bringing 8 heroes to be able to match up well with your partners, though as the card pool grows, this would definitely be less of a problem, at least I would hope so.

I would also allow for a set of alternate cards for swapping cards other than heroes for each deck. This is mostly due to unique cards. If you and your partner both decide to use decks with Arwen, Horn of Gondor, etc, then this way, one person can swap out their version of that card so you don't end up holding a card in your hand because your partner already has it in play.

I've never liked the idea of banning cards, but I like @chuckles' idea of adding/subtracting points based upon some of the cards being used. Spirit Glorfindel and Hirluin (or rather Hirluin plus Outlands allies) are good examples of cards that should be penalized because their power greatly outweighs their weaknesses/drawbacks. The only reason I believe this penalization is really even worth it is because it will provide encouragement for creative deck building rather than everyone trying to build the best deck so they can win.

Sounds like fun. But I wouldn't really call it a NON-team competition unless you are to play only solo.