Feedback requested on my first tournament!

[Maniacal_cackle]

Draft 1.1 Conquest 2020 Player Pack.pdf

I'm organising my first tournament, and thought I'd ask for some feedback (player pack attached). Some explanations on the reasoning:

Four 3-hour rounds (instead of five 2.5-hour rounds): We have several new players, and while some of the more experienced players can complete games in 2.5, 3 feels like it'll be a more manageable target for everyone. I'd rather have 4 completed rounds than 5 partially completed rounds. Also leaves room for something a bit more light-hearted Saturday night like Enforcer Brawl. If we get more than 16 players I might up it to 5 rounds to have a clear cut winner.

Multiple masters allowed: I don't like double masters, but absent them just steamrolling tournaments in our local meta, I'm hesitant to ban them.

No DMH: Basically some DMH core boxes are no longer available for sale. Since not all players have access to these crews, they're not allowed. Although I considered allowing proxies of them instead, but that doesn't seem like a great long-term solution.

The Pools: Rather than going for mechanical balance, I was shooting for interesting themes. Although I still made sure to have variety of schemes/strats/deployment. Hopefully it'll be balanced!

All thoughts are welcome! I'm of course also getting feedback from my local community, and will compile a final draft once people have had their say.

[Rufess]

There is no such a prefect way to run a tournament, and I believe that the format which fits the local meta most is the best format to run. So I am writing here not to deny any of your decision, but just want to bring some alternate idea for your references.

 

1. Multiple Master

The complaints about multiple master are mostly about handful combinations (like the infamous Dreamer/Zoraida) rather than some standalone master hired as a super solo model. The simplest way is the Ban format that allows opponent to ban the unwelcome master along with the keyword.

Considering new player may not have enough understanding and knowledge to ban the most proper keyword, another way to do is have all players vote for the combination they dislike most. And the top X combinations are forbidden in the tournament.

If you are, however, worrying the power level of all multiple master, an interesting method is to limit the number of master a player can take during the tournament. Let's say a player can take only 6 masters in the tournament. Which means they can have 1 game of 3 masters and 3 games of single master, or 2 rounds of double. Note that in this case double Viks should be count as 1 master if they are the leader.

 

2. DMH

The intent of DMH is allowing players who already own the crews can keep playing the game, while stopping new players buying these crew. So I think it is okay for that kind of "unfair". It is issue though for players who cannot practice against DMH master.

The only concern to me is the unbalance of master number of every Faction. My solution is that if a player decided he want to play DMH in the tournament, then he had to pick 8 masters from all available choice from his Faction. During the tournament the player can choose from the picked masters.

 

3. Pools

All pools look fine to me. I just want to share my special rule regard of the final round of top table. We want both top players playing in a pool they feel comfortable and can unleash all their potential. So we decided both players can each kick out one strategy they dislike, while choosing one scheme they want to see in the pool. Then the TO randomly pick from 2~3 strategy and 3~4 schemes combine with the chosen scheme(s) to generate the final pool.

[Maniacal_cackle]

7 minutes ago, Rufess said:

There is no such a prefect way to run a tournament, and I believe that the format which fits the local meta most is the best format to run. So I am writing here not to deny any of your decision, but just want to bring some alternate idea for your references.

 

1. Multiple Master

The complaints about multiple master are mostly about handful combinations (like the infamous Dreamer/Zoraida) rather than some standalone master hired as a super solo model. The simplest way is the Ban format that allows opponent to ban the unwelcome master along with the keyword.

Considering new player may not have enough understanding and knowledge to ban the most proper keyword, another way to do is have all players vote for the combination they dislike most. And the top X combinations are forbidden in the tournament.

If you are, however, worrying the power level of all multiple master, an interesting method is to limit the number of master a player can take during the tournament. Let's say a player can take only 6 masters in the tournament. Which means they can have 1 game of 3 masters and 3 games of single master, or 2 rounds of double. Note that in this case double Viks should be count as 1 master if they are the leader.

 

2. DMH

The intent of DMH is allowing players who already own the crews can keep playing the game, while stopping new players buying these crew. So I think it is okay for that kind of "unfair". It is issue though for players who cannot practice against DMH master.

The only concern to me is the unbalance of master number of every Faction. My solution is that if a player decided he want to play DMH in the tournament, then he had to pick 8 masters from all available choice from his Faction. During the tournament the player can choose from the picked masters.

 

3. Pools

All pools look fine to me. I just want to share my special rule regard of the final round of top table. We want both top players playing in a pool they feel comfortable and can unleash all their potential. So we decided both players can each kick out one strategy they dislike, while choosing one scheme they want to see in the pool. Then the TO randomly pick from 2~3 strategy and 3~4 schemes combine with the chosen scheme(s) to generate the final pool.

All great ideas!  I especially like the 6 master limit!  Will see what my locals think. Thanks for the suggestions!

[Adran]

5 hours ago, Rufess said:

3. Pools

All pools look fine to me. I just want to share my special rule regard of the final round of top table. We want both top players playing in a pool they feel comfortable and can unleash all their potential. So we decided both players can each kick out one strategy they dislike, while choosing one scheme they want to see in the pool. Then the TO randomly pick from 2~3 strategy and 3~4 schemes combine with the chosen scheme(s) to generate the final pool.

This is an interesting suggestion. It sort of relies on that final game being the final between 2 players to decide on a winner, which isn't always the case at events I've been too. (Even if you have the right number of rounds, Draws happen.) It also means you can't have produced the round already printed out, which is a popular set up. 

A lot of this may well be due to the fact that I generally attend events that are over 20 people large, so this sort of thing can get complicated to handle in larger numbers. If you're playing  8 people its not so bad. It makes for that final round to feel "important" but there are a lot of the times that the top 2 players actually meet in earlier rounds so you still have the issue of the critical game may have one of the top players feeling handicapped. (This sort of depends how closely matched the players are. If you have a small percentage that are significantly better, then they are more likely to meet in earlier rounds if you are doing a pure swiss selection). 

 

On the rest of the topic - 

Dead mans hands and multiple masters are things that I would say are very much local meta issues. If you have several "old hands" that own DMH crews, and only those, then I would think carefully about banning them. If you are almost exclusively players that started in M3, then banning DMH makes very little difference, as most won't have them anyway. If a few people do have them, and you aren't expecting people from that many places to travel to your event, then there is a reasonable chance that your players will have seen them before. 

Multiple masters - Really I would go down the side of what you normally play locally. If you play with them in friendly formats, you are probably best to play with them in tournaments. Its if you actively don't use them in friendly games, that suddenly encountering them in tournaments might be an issue. 

I don't have the figures on their usage, but I don't think that there is anywhere that has really shown a multiple master combination is that much better than a single master crew. 

 

 

Times - I would certainly rather play fewer games and get them to time than play more half games.  Only 2 games in a day seems very few, but it sort of depends on travel, and venue and what you are expecting to do Saturday evening. 

 

Good luck with the event

[Maniacal_cackle]

Yeah, for time on Saturday it is a bit awkward. 9 hours on games is definitely not viable, which then leads to 2.5 hour rounds to get it down to 7.5. But trying to avoid 2.5 hour rounds. The special event in the evening is a bit of a compromise, but I'm hoping will give it a nice twist of fun. Last time we wanted to play some silly things like enforcer brawl at the end, and could be nice to have a bit more time for that (and a longer lunch break, a better display setup for painting, etc).

It'll be a 'nationwide' event (but NZ is the size of a small State in the US), so will have people travelling from all over. So since there'll be people I'm not familiar with, it is good to get this wider persective!

So thanks for all the thoughts, definitely giving me a lot to think about.

[Math Mathonwy]

On 9/14/2020 at 5:39 AM, Rufess said:

2. DMH

The intent of DMH is allowing players who already own the crews can keep playing the game, while stopping new players buying these crew. So I think it is okay for that kind of "unfair". It is issue though for players who cannot practice against DMH master.

The only concern to me is the unbalance of master number of every Faction. My solution is that if a player decided he want to play DMH in the tournament, then he had to pick 8 masters from all available choice from his Faction. During the tournament the player can choose from the picked masters.

I'm not sure the uneven number of Masters per Faction is a big deal. It's very unlikely that someone will master seven or eight Masters to a comfortable tournament level and usually people do better with a slightly unoptimal Master that they are comfortable with than an "optimal to the situation" Master that they haven't played as much.

As for the balance of DMH - I'm not convinced that they are any less balanced than many other Masters in the game. All in all, the balance of Malifaux is kinda all over the place but since player skill levels are even more all over the place, it tends to sorta even out.

[Paddywhack]

On 9/11/2020 at 6:27 PM, Maniacal_cackle said:

Multiple masters allowed: I don't like double masters, but absent them just steamrolling tournaments in our local meta, I'm hesitant to ban them.

I don't like them either and if your local meta tends not to use them, I don't see why you can't say no to them. Makes things easier for players that have never faced multiple masters before and can avoid some of those OP combinations that people tend to have trouble with.

I don't care much about DMH and haven't seen many, if any, people playing them anymore. I doubt you'd have much negative feedback banning them. It can be difficult for players who maybe never even looked at them before. From Beta, they sounded like they were pretty balanced except maybe for Collodi, so if you allow them it should be fine. 

Strats and schemes seem fine. A good mix is always what's important so crews that beat face and crews that scheme both have opportunities to shine. 

Good luck! I've always wanted to run a tourney, but haven't had time or a big enough player base. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

14 hours ago, Math Mathonwy said:

As for the balance of DMH - I'm not convinced that they are any less balanced than many other Masters in the game. All in all, the balance of Malifaux is kinda all over the place but since player skill levels are even more all over the place, it tends to sorta even out.

It's more the issue that it is a bit unfair if Collodi is allowed, but then we also have a rule that you can only use Collodi if you have the actual model. Veteran players will get to play Collodi, and new players don't get to even if they wan to. Whether or not he is powerful enough to make a difference isn't my issue. It's that I want all players to have access to the same models. Of course, I could also solve this with proxy DMH allowed, but I want to minimise proxies as much as is reasonable.

10 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

I don't like them either and if your local meta tends not to use them, I don't see why you can't say no to them. Makes things easier for players that have never faced multiple masters before and can avoid some of those OP combinations that people tend to have trouble with.

We've had one player specifically requesting it, and kind of feel like we should at least give it a fair go. But yeah, will keep this in mind, especially if others request we ditch them!

[Math Mathonwy]

4 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

It's more the issue that it is a bit unfair if Collodi is allowed, but then we also have a rule that you can only use Collodi if you have the actual model. Veteran players will get to play Collodi, and new players don't get to even if they wan to. Whether or not he is powerful enough to make a difference isn't my issue. It's that I want all players to have access to the same models. Of course, I could also solve this with proxy DMH allowed, but I want to minimise proxies as much as is reasonable.

I'm not convinced that Collodi is worse than Dreamer, for example. Not to mention powerhouse masters from other Factions.

One of my biggest losses in M3e was with Collodi against Titania so at the very least there is still some skill involved