UK WTC Team Selection Process

[GrengisKhan]

Hello

 

If you’re reading this then you’ve probably seen my post regarding the Malifaux WTC.

 

In the event this event goes ahead I intend to form a UK WTC committee to help with the organisation of the event and UK WTC team selection. Committee members will not be able to directly influence UK WTC team selection unless they also qualify as UK WTC Citizens (see below).

 

The aim of the team selection process is to select the best team/teams possible for the WTC as judged by the best players that the UK has to offer.

 

The selection process will attempt to fulfil these three goals:
 

1. The selection process should choose players that exhibit good sportsmanship and that will act as ambassadors for the UK Malifaux scene.
 

2. The selection process should be transparent.
 

3. The selection process should choose players that have a high skill level to enable Team GB to perform well at a WTC event.

 

 

What follows is the process I believe we should use to select our team(s).

 

Overview

 

Players that consistently do well at UK events will become UK WTC Citizens with two privileges: 

 

1. The right to apply for the UK WTC Team and

 

2. The right to vote on the composition of the UK WTC Team.

 

UK WTC Citizenship

 

Players earn UK WTC Citizenship by consistently doing well at UK events.

 

Players that place (finish 1^st, 2^nd or 3d) at least twice at UK Malifaux singles events with 20 or more players will gain UK WTC Citizenship. 

UK WTC Citizenship must be earned each year.  

 

The WTC year will run from 1^st September to 31^st August.

 

Players that have met the requirements of UK WTC Citizenship between 1^st September 2014 and 31^st August 2015 will be eligible to select the UKs 2016 WTC team.

The Winner of the UK Nationals and the UK Masters will also automatically meet the requirements of UK WTC Citizenship.

 

 

UK WTC TEAM APPLICATIONS

 

Before submitting an application, a potential UK Team Member should only submit an application if they feel that they can fulfil the obligations expected of a UK Team Member.

UK WTC Team Members must be able to travel to the WTC event and must have the financial capability to cover the entire cost of the event.

Team Members are expected to actively communicate with fellow their Team Members on a regular basis.  Team Members are expected to take the necessary steps to be well practiced and prepared to play at the WTC event.  Team Members are expected to exhibit high levels of sportsmanship.

A player must be an active UK WTC CItizen and a citizen of the UK in order to apply to be a member of the UK WTC Team. 

 

The UK WTC Committee will advertise the deadline for the submission of application resumes.  The application resumes may include tournament wins from the last two years. Tournament results from 1^st edition may not form part of your resume.

Resumes are limited to achievements from the previous two years to give a fair chance for newer players to earn a spot on the team and to incentivise veteran players to continue to improve their resumes.

 

VOTING ON UK WTC TEAM APPLICATIONS 

 

UK WTC Citizens that wish to exercise their voting privilege are expected to read through the pool of resumes and then rank their top fifteen resumes. 

 

When a UK WTC Citizen votes, he will give his player in first place fifteen points, his player in second place fourteen points, and so on until the player that he considers in fifteenth place would get one point.

The player should use two considerations when ranking players:

1. The quality of the player’s resume

2. How well you believe the player will represent Team USA and display sportsmanship
 

UK WTC Citizens must decide how heavily they will weigh each of these considerations when ranking a player.

As an example, if thirty UK WTC Citizens applied to be the UK WTC Team, a UK WTC Citizen should review each of the thirty resumes.  The UK WTC Citizen would then rank his top fifteen resumes.  Here is a sample ballot:

1st:  Jacob Lynch 15 points
2nd:  Sonnia Cridd 14 points
and so on
15th:  Mei Feng 1 point

In this example, fifteen players would receive points on a ballot and fifteen would not receive votes.

Once the deadline for submitting ballots has been reached, three of the UK WTC Committee members will total the points for each player.  The top ten players will be the players selected for the UK WTC Team.  The players with the next highest point totals will be alternates.  For the sake of transparency, the completed ballots will be published on line without the names of the UK WTC Citizens on the ballots.
 

UK WTC TEAMS & TEAM CAPTAINS

 

Each UK WTC Team must have a captain.  The captains will be in charge of leading the training and preparation for the team, directing communication among the team and with the UK WTC Committee, and at the WTC they will be in charge of selecting player pairings during the event.

The player with the highest vote total will be approached by the UK WTC Committee and will be asked if they are willing to be a WTC Team Captain and if he believes that they can be an effective WTC Team Captain.  If they answer yes, then they will become a Team Captain.  They will then select four other players to join their team from the remaining pool of nine UK WTC Players.  If a player is approached about being a WTC Team Captain and turns down the opportunity, the player with the next highest vote total will be approached and the same process will be followed.

Once a team has been formed, the player with the most votes that has not been selected for a team will be approached to become a WTC Team Captain.  The same process that is outlined above will be followed until a Team Captain is selected.

 

I hope all that made sense. 

 

Regards

 

Greg Piskosz
 

[Tapdancer]

Cracking stuff. Couple of typos making reference to US rather than UK. Other than that exciting stuff, adds a further dimension to the scene. Well done to those beavering away in the background.

[MariFaux]

Citizen or resident of the UK?

[Insidiously Mad]

I second Maria's question. Sad to be excluded based on nationality  

[MariFaux]

Most hobby non-professional international competitions base their team selection on residency (such as orienteering for example).

 

The Warhammer ETC require 50% citizens. But there mercenaries (players with no affiliation to the country they're playing for) seem to be a lot more common. And their selection process is not based on tournament successes based in the relevant country I believe.

 

The WM/H WTC requires all team players to be residents (with one mercenary allowed "under exceptional circumstances"). In the UK the selection process is linked to qualifying tournaments. They don't discriminate otherwise. (Unless the specific county chooses to like the US.)

 

 

Also, I know it's just an example, but based on the rules who qualifies as a "UK WTC citizen", I doubt the UK has 30, and I'm not sure 15 people would be able to hand in a résumé and commit to overseas travel.

[mythicFOX]

<MOD HAT>

 

I have removed a comment which was off topic. 

 

</MOD HAT>

 

 

I have very little time for people who tell other members of this community how they should enjoy their leisure time.  While I fully appreciate that the idea of 'competitive play' is anathema to some members of the community, there are others who love it.

 

I wouldn't want players posting in a thread about a story driven campaign weekend to tell everyone they thought such things were inherently bad and shouldn't happen. I don't want the reverse either.  If you don't like it you don't have to participate in it. 

 

How consenting adults choose to enjoy themselves is none of anyone else's business.

[madaxeman]

Given that there is a UK ranking already, why not just set a cut-off date a few months before the international team competition, and then offer people at the top of the rankings on that date the opportunity to be in the team for this event?  That's been the way that it's worked in historical rulesets that I've played in the past, and it seemed to work out fine. 

 

Not everyone at the top of the rankings on that date is going to be able to make the date / afford the trip / want to go anyway, so you basically just go down the rankings offering folks places until you have 5 "yes's" - that's the team.

 

This avoids needing to create and administer a brand new parallel duplicate system, it also adds some more weight and value to the existing rankings, there is hardly any extra admin for anyone, and there is no "subjective" element to who gets to go (which avoids any risk of accidentally creating bad feeling is anyone for any reason feel that the "system" is somehow unfair to them). 

 

If whichever country is hosting the the event also wants to offer a team place to a "barbarians" team (to take a rugby metaphor) - maybe to get some well known podcasters to take part who haven't qualified for their countries would be an obvious idea that I'm sure everyone else would be happy with - that's then down to the host country to decide. 

[Grez90]

In my opinion this is where we should differ from alternate rulesets. Piling more weight on to the rankings is not the way to go for malifaux, as that would promote a WAAC mentality for the rankings. Also the way Greg had set the rulespack up allows for the communities decision to matter. Yes it is more time and effort but if he has the help needed to make it successful then I definately. think it is the better option. Im quite high up on the rankings but most would be within thier rights to say I have achieved this through good attendance. This system gets round that and matters more on peoples opinion of the players, playstyles & overall gaming ettiquete. Making the team selection on gaming ability alone would (in my opinion) be the downfall of the social aspect of the malifaux gaming scene and cause the cliques etc mentioned by previous posters.

[OldManMyke]

I will add an icon to rankings that shows if you have got 1-3 in a 20 person event

[PanzerHarris]

I prefer the idea of a more subjective approach. The Malifaux community is already renowned for being extremely welcoming, inclusive and friendly, so to take the approach of 'rankings points over all else' feels wrong and goes against what we stand for. 

 

The 'voters' come from a disparate enough background and across enough clubs that I don't foresee there being any block voting or transparency issues. How things run is being set out very clearly for all to see. Not only do prospective players have to satisfy the 'are you any good' requirement, but their peers are asked if they satisfy the 'you're not going to be a dick, are you' requirement.

 

Happy to back Greg's proposals, but I would be against imposing limits based on players' passports and base it on residency instead. Maria and Connor aren't from the UK, but they both live here, play in UK tournaments and would be fine representatives of our scene, and I'm sure there are others in similar positions.

[madaxeman]

 Piling more weight on to the rankings is not the way to go for malifaux, as that would promote a WAAC mentality for the rankings. Also the way Greg had set the rulespack up allows for the communities decision to matter. 

 

Whether "WAAC" develops in any community comes down to the way the game is designed, and the way the community sets its own norms and culture IMHO - and Malifaux is very, very robustly against WAAC in both categories (hoorah!).   Adding in a little extra "reward" for high ranking players (who want to pay for it and who can also take the time off to take advantage of it) would, I suspect, be highly unlikely to change this in itself.  And as long as all the stories that come back from the "world championship" are about late nights, crazy card flips, excessive drinking and debauchery and late night kebab shop visits (rather than playing and winning games or toy soldiers) then the sense of balance is maintained :-)   (and I'm speak from experience as having been part of exactly such a world team toy soldiers event on a couple of occasions in the, erm, late 90's ) 

 

Aside from this, it's maybe also worth considering the possible unintended consequences of a team selection system based on peer voting.

 

What happens if/when a highly-ranked player is passed-over for one with lesser ranking. Imagine how you might feel if that's you, and a jury of your peers have decided that someone else, who wasn't as highly ranked as you, was - on a purely subjective basis - a "better person" who they would prefer to go on a gaming weekend abroad with? How do you look the other "citizens" (who voted you out) in the eye at the next event after that?  

 

I'd actually fear that this would do far more to mess around with community cohesion than leaving things it just to the (impersonal) rankings alone. 

[OldManMyke]

Icon added

[jondoe297]

There is a danger in some regards that this good be more of a popularity vote than anything else. Which like menioned could cause in advertent bad feeling and alieniate a player that was passed over?

But on the flipside, it's good that a system has been put together that tries to encompass the fair play and etiquette sides of the game and puts an almost equal weighting to the ability at the game

I think either way will have its supporters and naysayers.

But big thumbs up Greg for stepping up and putting something together

(What a long and wishy washy post ha ha)

[Tapdancer]

Rankings position, is a poor indicator of the true top quality player. There are a number of tournament whores (myself included) whose progress is more to do with luck, 3 round events and sheer relentless attendance.

What Greg proposes is as good a way forward, with the info and time available.

Regards Maria's point can a residence qualification be included. Seems daft to exclude established, active members of the UK scene, besides we need a descent Outcast player, current No1 is clearly over the hill.

[mythicFOX]

Finally had time to read through this.  Like the system and agree it should be based on residency as Maria suggests.

 

I should say I'm not completely clear on what the committee does and how that's formed. Can you clarify?

[PanzerHarris]

I'll be blunt (as if I'm ever anything else). If someone gets in a strop because they weren't voted onto the team, that's almost certainly why they weren't voted in. I wouldn't want anyone who behaved like that on the team anyway.

Major downside of the rankings approach is it breeds that sense of entitlement. Someone sufficiently high thinks they're a nailed on certainty because they've blagged a couple of events. I use myself as an example - rankings say I'm no 8 but there are many better players below me (Doxey, Cocksedge, Ledgerwood, Hoult etc) who can't get to the events I can. They have at least equal claim to me.

As long as we're clear from the outset that this is a subjective system, you have no entitlement due to rankings, then we should be OK.

[ProximoCoal]

'They have at least equal claim to me'

This is not the topic I thought it was, but when in Rome...

[PanzerHarris]

I'm tired, grumpy and in pain. Pardon the occasional clumsy expression. :-P

[madaxeman]

I've no idea how the UK ranking system works, but at the risk of wandering a little off topic here, if the ranking system is overly rewarding "attendance" over "winning stuff", isn't the best bet to change the ranking system to give more weighting to winning the bigger events and reduce the emphasis on just turning up a lot, instead of adding a whole new system on top?

Having more ranking points for the bigger events, and also only counting a players best 6 (or whatever the number is in Malifaux to allow a good number of players to count a "full" score) results in a year is the norm for rankings in other rule sets i play, and where there was a WTC it served as a great incentive for people to enter more events in the year as well.

Going back on-topic again, the threshold put forwards by the OP for peer consideration to join the team would be to have placed in at least 2 events with 20 or more players in the prior year. Anyone got an idea how many/which players that would be if it was rolled out effective now, as that might be useful as a sanity check as well.

[mythicFOX]

The rankings system is very similar to the WFB system. Best four results in a rolling 12months, smaller events carry lower points.

A rankings system is there to drive participation. So it's important that a rankings system reward participation AND success.

[madaxeman]

The rankings system is very similar to the WFB system. Best four results in a rolling 12months, smaller events carry lower points.

A rankings system is there to drive participation. So it's important that a rankings system reward participation AND success.

 

OK, thanks - makes sense on both counts. There's a lot of events now though, so maybe 4 events is now too few in a 12-month cycle?  

[MariFaux]

Can we keep this on topic please? I'm sure possible changes to the rankings will be discussed in due time same as every year sometime around November.

Mike did answer your question by adding another icon to the rankings site. Right now about 18 people would qualify to be WTC citizens.

[GrengisKhan]

I'm at a tournament today so I swill reply to questions tomorrow.

However I'm more than happy to have eligibility based on residency instead of British citizenship

Greg

[shakes1066]

Will I have to fight bugs to gain Citizenship ?

luke