Conquer Club

brian fletcher wrote:Lindax. Excellently run tournament. You've now set such a high benchmark for multi-team tournaments, that there are going to be many more who want to be in the next one. I predict 25 teams minimum which could well mean 2 divisions. I know we in FOED are hoping to enter 3 teams next time.

Dako wrote:A or C.

CoF option is also good.

Chariot of Fire wrote:I've had a rethink about my earlier suggestion. One thing's for sure, this is a very popular tourney and will attract quite a few teams. Operating a 'one league' system from the start would necessitate an incredible number of games (say for instance there are 30 teams. That would require 870 team vs team encounters - more than double the 342 that were played in TLO II - which surely isn't feasible). The one thing I'd change about my earlier suggestion is that the results do carry forward, excluding the results against those teams that have been eliminated. This way we wouldn't have to repeat the same fixture.

So, for example, 30 teams join. They are put into 5 pools of 6 teams and each pool play amongst themselves. After those games have completed we'll have a clear picture, e.g.

Pool A
1. Team A 5-0 105-0
2. Team B 4-1 84-21
3. Team C 3-2 63-42
4. Team D 2-3 42-63
5. Team E 1-4 21-84
6. Team F 0-5 0-105

In this case Teams E & F would be eliminated from the competition (this would help greatly, as a total of 10 teams would go out this way leaving a league comprising 20 teams). The Top four teams in each pool go into a single league, along with the results of their games against the other three teams who were promoted with them. This saves that fixture having to be replayed. The results against the two teams that were eliminated are not carried forward into the league (this makes it fairer in case one pool had a particularly weak team who everyone thrashed).

Anyway...this is my tuppence worth. It seems the best way to accommodate a large number of entrants, but it also allows the tourney to discard the weak teams who were never really going to stand much chance. The other advantage of this system is its flexibility (e.g. if we have 28 teams we could do four pools of seven teams and discard eight after the preliminaries, etc etc).

I also suggest that a team could comprise seven players (this might help reduce the number of teams that wish to participate so would benefit the tourney in that respect) and that each team vs team fixture (worth 21 pts) must feature those seven players who each contest 3pts, i.e. it's perfectly balanced and is ultimately a 'team' game rather than the same four players taking-up all the spots. Just a thought

Thank you for your input CoF & Brian.

A few quick remarks:

1.- The formats preferred by the majority of respondents were options A & C. As the organizer I would have preferred one of the B options, but alas! Whether we use option A or C will depend on the final amount of teams signing up, I would think anything over 24 teams would definitely mean option C. The suggestions of CoF on that option are pretty much how I have in mind executing that option.

One observation: To be perfectly honest, as the organizer I have no wish to manage a yearlong tournament without my team and I participating for the whole tournament. Would it be acceptable to grant the winners of the previous two tournaments, as well as my team, a place in the final group, independent of the possible results of the first elimination round?

2.- The original idea was to have teams of 4 players competing. I decided to accept up to 6 players per team because of 2 reasons: players losing their officer's rank and the flexibility to use specific players for specific maps. I don't like the idea of changing that for the following reasons:

a.- There are several teams that manage perfectly fine with 4 players, I do not want to oblige them to expand their team.

b.- Over the course of TLO 2009 II I have had to make many player changes to teams, half of them at the last moment, which obviously is a bit of a nightmare for me as the TO. I'm afraid that if we require and/or allow teams to have more players, the effect will be opposite of what we try to achieve: teams will still sign up and scrape players together who may not really be in there for the long run. This will provoke teams losing players and maybe even having to pull out altogether.

c.- Obliging teams to have 6 or more active players will also provoke the need to change players more often if more than a couple lose their officer's rank. Another thing that will make it more complicated for the team captains and the TO.

d.- Having teams with more than 6 players means a problem with medals for the winning team. The normal standard is maximum 4 winner's medals per tournament, with exceptions for "large" tournaments. As a Tournament Director I certainly don't want to be the one to "stretch" the amount of medals we grant exceptions for.

So, although I agree with a more balanced team set up, in reality I think it will make things more difficult, not in the least for myself.

Lx

Pedronicus wrote:Lindax, if I were in your shoes, I'd be looking for what ever helped spread the load.

Best way I can see is that you need an assistant. I'd be happy to help you out next time. I could make all the games, you could do the rest. I know it's not much of a help, but I'd be willing to help spread the workload a bit.

would that help? or would too many cooks spoil the broth?