Puppet Wars Tournament???

[sssk]

Woo yeah! Puppet Wars Unstitched has landed in a store near me... unfortunately it's out of stock now... because I bought it.... twice (one for a friend).

I put some Puppet Wars vs Unstitched pictures on twitter (@iamsssk), really can't wait to get playing this after such a long wait.

Next question (and the topic of the thread... which perhaps I should have opened with), has anyone tried running a Puppet Wars tournament? I know adepti/gen-con has had a tournament in the past.

I can't help thinking it seems like an ideal game for having some fun and quick tournaments.

My thoughts on implementation:

You get 3 masters per set, and easily enough puppets to build a shoebox for each. So with 2-4 sets, you can have a 6-12 person tournament. As it stands, I have Unstitched, as do 2 friends, I also have 2 sets of original puppet wars (which I would very very very much like some unstitched cards for... pretty please with a cherry on top Wyrd?). So that's plenty of boards, and plenty of masters.

For building toyboxes, there a few ways to do it:

A) people build their own toyboxes using their own puppets/a selection of my puppets. This of course favours people who have played before, as they might build mega-death toyboxes.

We do a drafting type thing. Split the puppets into subsets, and everyone gets to pick a puppet from a subset, then pass that subset on, and pick a puppet from the next subset etc. (in my case this would favour Vik players, as I have an abundance of seamus/lady j from original puppet wars).

C) I just build a bunch of fairly evenly balanced toyboxes beforehand, and everyone is allocated one. This would help new players, as each toybox would be pretty straight forward to use. However, it could irritate experienced players, as they don't get to pick the cool combos they've figured out.

As for games, we could have a random selection of 2/3/4 player games (the ability to have 3 player games ensures you never have anyone sitting out for a round) to fit the number of players present, ensuring that each game gave a novel experience. I hasten to point out that this is strictly for a "fun" tournament. If people wanted to play competitive puppet wars, this wouldn't work.

The fantastic thing about this, is that a round could be played fairly quickly, and so a tournament could just be a little afternoon/evening affair, and the rules are simple enough that complete novices seem to be absolutely flying by the end of the first turn of their first game (5 activations).

Of course from Wyrd's point of view, this would have people playing Puppet Wars with no investment (as they'd mostly be using my models). I'm not saying that the Wyrd folks would find this despicable at all (or anything to that effect). As a board game, it's clearly intended that at most, half of the players buy a set, and minis etc are shared. However, using a quote from BaconMcSandwich on twitter "played a mate on Thursday, Took him 3 animations to decide he wanted a copy"... the game sells itself.

So what are people's thoughts on Puppet Wars tournaments? Possible? Fun? User friendly?

At the moment the only problem I have is a lack of models (which could be remedied with some card decks... not trying to flog the dead horse, but it's true), however I can assure folks that I will be setting up some form of tournaments as soon as I can reliably access a few extra masters.

On a side note, wyrd have the henchman program for showing/teaching/demoing wyrd products. I could be tempted to join if there was a "sidekick" program (sorry, still giddy with excitement).

[Clousseau]

This looks like a great idea, which I'll support where I can. I have the equivalent of 2 current sets (one in metal) and can make up a spare set of cards with a photocopied set.

Format proposed would work.

Maybe we could try it at the GT in parallel to Hardcore?

[sssk]

Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to make it to the GT.

Might see if anyone fancies some puppet wars at 4M