Hi, guys! I'm fresh back from the US Dominion Finals (don't ask how I did, though...), and the basic agreement is that, sorry Jay, but your format needs work.
This topic is meant to gather ideas for improving the kind of tournament that Jay wants for the Dominion Regionals/Nationals/Worlds/Universals? (any aliens playing this game?). Don't just say "Make it a 2-player tournament" because, as much as I know how most players prefer 2-player games, Jay has made it clear that he wants 3-player as much as possible.
Here's a reminder of how Nationals worked: For preliminaries, each player played three games, once in each seating position. You get 5 points for a 1st place, 3 for a 2nd, and 1 for a 3rd. Ties get a split between positions (e.g. a tie for 1st gets 4 points each). Once everyone plays their three games, the top nine (yes, we played three games each just to eliminate two players) start the process again with a clean slate.
Ideally, the player with the most points would win. That did not happen. There was a tie for first place, and Jay did not want a 2-player tiebreak. He wanted to put the third-placer in the tiebreak game, but there were two of them, too! After a heated discussion, we just did a 4-player final game that was overly Witch-centric. Not the best way to end a tournament, for sure.
After that final game, we talked about how tournaments should progress in the future. Jay firmly established that the format should stay 3-player, and I agree. ednever talked quite a bit about implementing a veto mode of sorts, from the standard veto format to one that favors the third player a bit more. I brought up a few ideas for a seeded elimination format, at least for the post-prelims, that uses the same point system to determine a single player to advance out of a group of three. I don't really remember the rest of the discussion, so if anyone who was there can help me out, I'd appreciate it.
Now's your chance to say whatever you want. Here are a few points of discussion that I want to focus on the most:
- For the point games, should there be more games? Obviously, the more games you get to play, the less likely a tie at the top will occur. To me, this seems like a no-brainer, but if people with brains have an objection, make it known.
- If there is ever a tie for qualification or the title, how should it be resolved? Three-way ties are optimal for the format, but how often would that happen? Larger ties could use the point system again, even though it'll take a long time, perhaps. Two-person ties are the big issue, due to the lack of desire to host 2-player games here.
- If we do use a seeded elimination system, how do we group up the seeds? I mentioned in a topic in the IsoDom board that I've been working on two such formats: double underdog (1-8-9, 2-6-7, 3-4-5), and what I now call "Magic Square" (1-5-9, 2-6-7, 3-4-8). One person at the tournament (I can't quite remember his name, so I'll just call him "Mr. Vegan") suggested sort of a split difference between the two that would look like this: 1-6-9, 2-5-8, 3-4-7.
I would like to host some test 3-player tournaments on Iso to help determine what would work best. This will be after I get more input, of course. So please, start discussing! And thank you in advance!