Finals time limits (again)

Howdy, Without going into much detail well let's just say that after each EC usually comes a time of contemplation for me on the time limits and the implications they have on the game, especially the finals. It helps to start this contemplation that out of the 3 "main events" at Göteborg all 3 timed out. I couldn't help but wonder in at least one case how the game would've turned out if not for the time limit. The obvious solution seems to be longer time limits for the finals. 2.5, 3, 4, 5 hour finals time limits are technically possible (though are probably prone to having logistics difficulties of their own both for the venue and the players who travel). I was considering, though, whether it would make sense to introduce a relative time limit for the finals - e.g. keep the 2 hours but also count the number of turns, and if the 2-hour time limit is reached, the game only ends when (say) 15 turns have been completed. Now this doesn't make it impossible for players to play in a way that maximizes their strategic advantages with respect to the time limit as well. There are decks that are getting stronger as turns pass. Probably some recursion techs might also be more common with this hybrid system. It gives advantage to decks that take long with their turns. Still, I expect this would speed up the game in the sense that even though some finals might last longer than 2 hours, the amount of "action" happening per final might be more, and more finals would be decided by decisive play and less by time-outs. I don't know if the tournament rules allow the organiser to set such a relative time limit, but if yes I might consider experimenting with it to see whether it really has the desired effect. Even before that I'd like to hear whether anyone has some constructive comments to this (I'm still scared from implementing 5-hour time limits for the finals just to speed up things simply because if a game does reach time, I'm gonna face some interesting situations with the venue, the players and last but not least the wife...). So I'm kind of open to comments... :) -- Regards, Daneel

Daneel skrev: > Howdy, > > 2.5, 3, 4, 5 hour finals time limits are technically possible My personal experience from judging a fair amount of tournament finals (yes that means I'm not that strong a player as I usually end up judging the final table instead of being part of it) is that a 2.5 hour time limit usually breaks the deadlock still in place after a 2 hour game. If it doesn't -- so be it. Even though I prefer the no time limit final game I have to admit that they sometimes can get VERY long. I have won one tournament in turn 53 or 55, something that took us five hours or so. I don't recommend a repetition of that. Sten -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Daneel schrieb: > It helps to start this contemplation that out of the 3 "main events" > at Göteborg all 3 timed out. I couldn't help but wonder in at least > one case how the game would've turned out if not for the time limit. > > The obvious solution seems to be longer time limits for the finals. > 2.5, 3, 4, 5 hour finals time limits are technically possible > (though are probably prone to having logistics difficulties of > their own both for the venue and the players who travel). Doesn´t help. Players (for some stupid reason) always start to get into gears 30min before the time-outs. If you have a final thats 30min longer they will just waste 30 more minutes on discussions. > I was considering, though, whether it would make sense to introduce a > relative time limit for the finals - e.g. keep the 2 hours but also > count the number of turns, and if the 2-hour time limit is reached, > the game only ends when (say) 15 turns have been completed. Interesting idea. Would need statistical data to find out the number of turns which seem to be a good solution. > Now this doesn't make it impossible for players to play in a way that > maximizes their strategic advantages with respect to the time limit > as well. There are decks that are getting stronger as turns pass. > Probably some recursion techs might also be more common with this > hybrid system. It gives advantage to decks that take long with their > turns. Such as Imbued. Perhaps we should have a per player/turn time limit? > Still, I expect this would speed up the game in the sense that even > though some finals might last longer than 2 hours, the amount of > "action" happening per final might be more, and more finals would > be decided by decisive play and less by time-outs. Sometimes decisive play can happen, even if there is a time-out. When Erol made the move to try to oust Olivier in the EC final, that was a moment of great suspense for me (and everbody else), even if he failed and got ousted and the game timed afterwards. Johannes Walch

The problem I see with 2 hour time limits is that some players start to stall when they notice that they won't be able to win the game and that there actually might be some chance that THEY'd be ousted. After that moment everything is done at a leisure pace and whenever possible they'll start "dealing" -not necessarily to make actual deals but just to make more time go by so that their prey will have less time to oust them. SOmetime they actually manage to make a deal which further helkps them to stay in the game, no probs there. Some will even go so far that they'll blabber about during their turn and when someone tries to speak some sense in theirs, these stinky cheesemasters will accuse the OTHER players of stalling -causing even more delay. I think that if your predator's deck works better than yours and the rest of the table isn't trying to save your sorry ass then it is not very good form to try rob our predator from his hard earned victory point by stalling. Actually if there was no time limit for the finals then stalling wouldn't help and most of the finals wouldn't take even 2 hours to play. But Sven is probably right that 2,5 hours would also help in most cases. I certainly don't have anything against freindly banter which just brings relaxed atmosphere to the game and enhances the whole experience, but you can do that while you play so it dosn't slow game up any. We Finns have a saying: "Jos sinulla on paska puntissa niin on turha enää rypistää." Which roughly translated means that if you've shat in your pants then there is no more any need try to cramp your cornhole. PLAY the game, Janne / Lonkka www.ahmametal.com www.myspace.com/iwearnohelmet

> It gives advantage to decks that take long with their turns. Such as the imbued yes. Timing tables was a problem before them, so we they were designed with those time-consuming mechanics is very weird.

I don´t know if I got the tournament rules 100 % correct, but the way I get it, if the final times with no ousts then the player that was no 1 into the finals will win the tournament. Is that correct? This means that player can play slow and go into absurd lenghts to save people from being ousted right? (This might not be a problem if there are good judges around to caution from stalling, but that is not the case in all tournaments) So no limit in the finals would be great, but again, a final without time limit could take 4-5 hours and that is not good for organizers or players. The solution to the problem should be a something that makes players wanna oust (faster) and also play more active instead of reactive decks. Also, no more designing mechanics like the imbued ones, but that goes without saying :)

[ quoted text not captured ] Well what about extending the time limit by 30 minutes, and then adding a sudden death effect after that 30 minutes? Someone somewhere made the suggestion of an automatic Blood Bank fed Smiling jack

[ quoted text not captured ] I don't know. It's again the "players tend to play somehow, so we have to adjust the rules". That's not the right way I'd say. I'd prefer not yelling for a change of rules, rather change the way you play. If you play a waiting game in the finals the first seed wins. Period. If you don't want that to happen speed up (and also make the others to). The game is alright. Change your way of playing it WITHIN the given rules.

With "you" I mean people, not you, Daneel. I don't know if you play waiting decks or not.

[ quoted text not captured ] Setting a final at three hours would suffice, in my experience. Would-be stalling (for excessive table talks) are checked by judges, as usual. Above all (as discussed previously), players IMHO should play per ptw (eg, at least 2vps without none else scorgin that much) as in the previous rounds, not minding their standings or being allow to take into account prizes offers or whatever external to the actual round.. That would ensuring the best sportmanship play in the final. best EMiliano

On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 01:58:53 -0700, Joscha <joscha...@gmx.de> wrote: > I don't know. It's again the "players tend to play somehow, so we have > to adjust the rules". That's not the right way I'd say. I'd prefer not > yelling for a change of rules, rather change the way you play. If you > play a waiting game in the finals the first seed wins. Period. If you > don't want that to happen speed up (and also make the others to). > The game is alright. Change your way of playing it WITHIN the given > rules. I can change my way of playing V:tES but that will have no real impact on a game played with 4 other players. The only thing I can reasonably expect other players to abide by are the rules of the game and the tournament. So if the rules allow players to win by benefiting from a time-out in many high-level games, I cannot reasonably expect every player to do everything in their power to prevent the time-out that will cement their position. Thought experiment: (assuming 5 players, turn lengths average, 2-hour time limit assumed) Each player takes 2-minute turns: 12 turns Each player takes 3-minute turns: 8 turns One player takes 1-minute turns, four players take 3-minute turns: 8.5 turns -- Regards, Daneel

On Aug 11, 4:06 pm, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > Howdy, > > > The obvious solution seems to be longer time limits for the finals. > 2.5, 3, 4, 5 hour finals time limits are technically possible > (though are probably prone to having logistics difficulties of > their own both for the venue and the players who travel). > > I was considering, though, whether it would make sense to introduce a > relative time limit for the finals - e.g. keep the 2 hours but also > count the number of turns, and if the 2-hour time limit is reached, > the game only ends when (say) 15 turns have been completed. > > Now this doesn't make it impossible for players to play in a way that > maximizes their strategic advantages with respect to the time limit > as well. There are decks that are getting stronger as turns pass. > Probably some recursion techs might also be more common with this > hybrid system. It gives advantage to decks that take long with their > turns. > > > So I'm kind of open to comments... :) > My newsserver seems to be eating my posts. Apologies for what may turn into multiple posts. At one of the tournaments during the Southern California qualifier weekend, Mike Courtois (JediMike) the judge decided that the official time was to be hidden. As a player, this led to more play focused on the table, and less worrying about the time. I can't remember if there were still time- outs, but it seemed to work. So one option is to ban any time-keeping devices from the tables (I know, tough since cel-phones are watches too), and only the judge knows how much time is left in the round. The judge then gives the 5 minute warning, and then ends the rounds. best - chris -- Super Fun Cards http://stores.ebay.com/superfuncards/ auct...@superfuncards.com

On Aug 12, 9:33 am, librarian <chrissh...@gmail.com> wrote: > At one of the tournaments during the Southern California qualifier > weekend, Mike Courtois (JediMike) the judge decided that the official > time was to be hidden. > > As a player, this led to more play focused on the table, and less > worrying about the time. I can't remember if there were still time- > outs, but it seemed to work. Actually, I remember that almost all (or possibly all) of the rounds ended within the allotted time. -Robert

librarian skrev: > knows how much time is left in the round. The judge then gives the 5 > minute warning, and then ends the rounds. > If I recall correctly the tournament rules have been changed to no longer include a mandatory five minutes warning. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 12, 10:02 am, lon...@dlc.fi wrote: > The problem I see with 2 hour time limits is that some players start > to stall when they notice that they won't be able to win the game and > that there actually might be some chance that THEY'd be ousted. Have to agree here. Especially in the finals, some specific players were (in my opinion) clearly just stalling for time, trying to make the game time out. Succeeded, too, more often than not. Of course, this is just how it looked to me and a personal opinion. I think having a longer time limit for finals makes a lot of sense. Would force people to actually, you know, *play*, even if they are in a sub-optimal situation. I personally run tournament finals over here with no time limit (unless there's an external force majeure need for one). Works great.

On Aug 12, 8:58 pm, Joscha <joscha.du...@gmx.de> wrote: > I don't know. It's again the "players tend to play somehow, so we have > to adjust the rules". That's not the right way I'd say. I'd prefer not > yelling for a change of rules, rather change the way you play. If you > play a waiting game in the finals the first seed wins. Period. If you > don't want that to happen speed up (and also make the others to). I totally agree - if you weren't first going into the final you will not win unless you oust someone. That doesn't seem too tricky to me.

Robert Goudie schrieb: [ quoted text not captured ] Interesting. But the time limit was still 2h, right? So why didn´t the players track it with their own watch (as I always do). Johannes Walch

On Aug 12, 1:06 am, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > Howdy, > > Without going into much detail well let's just say that after each > EC usually comes a time of contemplation for me on the time limits > and the implications they have on the game, especially the finals. > > It helps to start this contemplation that out of the 3 "main events" > at Göteborg all 3 timed out. I couldn't help but wonder in at least > one case how the game would've turned out if not for the time limit. Time is a strategic factor in VTES. Not taking it into account, as it happened during many VTES games during the EC weekend, is just BAD PLAY. Most players do not realize that they have to let other players be ousted during the first hour of play, or else the their game will probably time out. Trying to keep other players in play for no other reason than fear to let another player get his first VP is bad play. Thus, finals should always have a time limit (2 or 2:30 hours). -- Damnans http://www.almadrava.net/damnans http://www.vtes.net http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/vteshispania/ http://iuturna.sorcery.net (IRC channel: #vtes)

On 13 Aug, 12:13, Damnans <damnansv...@ono.com> wrote: > On Aug 12, 1:06 am, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > > > Howdy, > > > Without going into much detail well let's just say that after each > > EC usually comes a time of contemplation for me on the time limits > > and the implications they have on the game, especially the finals. > > > It helps to start this contemplation that out of the 3 "main events" > > at Göteborg all 3 timed out. I couldn't help but wonder in at least > > one case how the game would've turned out if not for the time limit. > > Time is a strategic factor in VTES. Not taking it into account, as it > happened during many VTES games during the EC weekend, is just BAD > PLAY. > > Most players do not realize that they have to let other players be > ousted during the first hour of play, or else the their game will > probably time out. Trying to keep other players in play for no other > reason than fear to let another player get his first VP is bad play. > > Thus, finals should always have a time limit (2 or 2:30 hours). I very much agree with this post. Many times I have seen players, x table from 'the action', spend resources on keeping people in the game for no better reason than they just dont want VP's falling at all, unless its to them. Bad play IMO. In many and even most cases (though granted not for all decks) what is more important is your relative strength compared to the surviving Methuselahs, spending resource, reducing your your srength and showing your hand in this manner is a bad idea imo. You can let 2 VP's slide in most games.... 1 in all games. Ant

On Aug 13, 2:13 pm, Damnans <damnansv...@ono.com> wrote: > Time is a strategic factor in VTES. Not taking it into account, as it > happened during many VTES games during the EC weekend, is just BAD > PLAY. > > Most players do not realize that they have to let other players be > ousted during the first hour of play, or else the their game will > probably time out. Trying to keep other players in play for no other > reason than fear to let another player get his first VP is bad play. > > Thus, finals should always have a time limit (2 or 2:30 hours). I'll just have to disagree on this one, partly. Yes, ignoring the time and trying to stop all ousts that aren't by you very often is bad play. No disagreement on that. However, it being bad play doesn't stop people from doing it, and what we saw (again) at the EC finals were people trying actively to stall the game, because they were in a position where they couldn't get a VP, but didn't want to give VPs to anyone else either (because of general standings issues, or whatever). Some people are so obsessed with winning and ranking score issues that they'll do pretty much anything for those goals. Including "bad play" that leads games to timeouts. With no time limits (on finals), those people would be forced to either self-oust or do a desperate lunge/deal for that VP; that choice of "just stall until timeout" doesn't exists anymore and stalling becomes simply stupid and annoying, instead of just annoying. For practical reasons, the preliminary rounds need time limits, or course. But in my opinion the final round would get *much* better (and probably faster) play if there was no time limit at all, or if it was so long that judges could easily catch and give warnings for stalling, because so huge amounts of it would be required. Face it, people. All 3 final rounds at the EC stalled out. There's a problem here. Maybe this was just because of some specific players involved in those rounds, but maybe it's a more general problem where stalling the game to timeout can seem like a valid choice for some mindsets.

On Aug 13, 1:31 am, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote: > Robert Goudie schrieb: > > > On Aug 12, 9:33 am, librarian <chrissh...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> At one of the tournaments during the Southern California qualifier > >> weekend, Mike Courtois (JediMike) the judge decided that the official > >> time was to be hidden. > > >> As a player, this led to more play focused on the table, and less > >> worrying about the time. I can't remember if there were still time- > >> outs, but it seemed to work. > > > Actually, I remember that almost all (or possibly all) of the rounds > > ended within the allotted time. > > Interesting. > > But the time limit was still 2h, right? Yes. > So why didn´t the players track > it with their own watch (as I always do). Some may have. -Robert

> > At one of the tournaments during the Southern California qualifier > weekend, Mike Courtois (JediMike) the judge decided that the official > time was to be hidden. > > As a player, this led to more play focused on the table, and less > worrying about the time. I can't remember if there were still time- > outs, but it seemed to work. IIRC 3 of the 4 tournaments that weekend did "NOT" go to time but finished early. One was under an hour. I may just make it a standard. I looked at the tournament rules before and found nothing preventing it. I think it will take several more tournaments to get a better idea. I can't help but to think that if you can't see the time, that sence of urgency will creep up alot sooner in the game. We'll have to see. ***JediMike***

On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:13:33 -0700, Damnans <damna...@ono.com> wrote: > On Aug 12, 1:06 am, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: >> Howdy, >> >> Without going into much detail well let's just say that after each >> EC usually comes a time of contemplation for me on the time limits >> and the implications they have on the game, especially the finals. >> >> It helps to start this contemplation that out of the 3 "main events" >> at Göteborg all 3 timed out. I couldn't help but wonder in at least >> one case how the game would've turned out if not for the time limit. > > Time is a strategic factor in VTES. Not taking it into account, as it > happened during many VTES games during the EC weekend, is just BAD > PLAY. In the finals at least one, but usually two people are pretty much content with the results assured by a time-out. For them making sure they spend as much time as legally possible, and keeping others in the game, is the BEST PLAY EVER. > Most players do not realize that they have to let other players be > ousted during the first hour of play, or else the their game will > probably time out. Trying to keep other players in play for no other > reason than fear to let another player get his first VP is bad play. Yes, some players are like that. There may also be other factors - if someone else scores a VP, you just fell behind the ranking unless the one making the oust is higher seed than you are. Meaning that on the average players will feel half as likely to let someone be ousted. > Thus, finals should always have a time limit (2 or 2:30 hours). I feel that this ties back to the other discussion of whether time limits are inherent to V:tES. I disagree - for many years we were running events without finals time limits, and it worked fine. For me having a time limit for the finals is more a matter of execution - as the venue closes, the players must travel home, etc. You could say that I consider the finals time limit as a necessary evil, which is far too often having a (for me too) significant effect on the game. Mitigating that effect, without significantly compromising the logistics of the event, is something I consider to be very worthy of exploration. -- Regards, Daneel

In message <1187025061.1...@x35g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, ***JediMike*** <jedis...@earthlink.net> writes: <snip - hiding the clock> >IIRC 3 of the 4 tournaments that weekend did "NOT" go to time but >finished early. One was under an hour. I may just make it a standard. >I looked at the tournament rules before and found nothing preventing >it. Anyone that cares about the time just needs to wear a watch. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

On Aug 13, 12:21 pm, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > In message <1187025061.158130.111...@x35g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,***JediMike*** <jedispa...@earthlink.net> writes: > > <snip - hiding the clock> > > >IIRC 3 of the 4 tournaments that weekend did "NOT" go to time but > >finished early. One was under an hour. I may just make it a standard. > >I looked at the tournament rules before and found nothing preventing > >it. > > Anyone that cares about the time just needs to wear a watch. True. Still, hiding the clock may provide some small benefit. There may be the occasional crime of opportunity that won't take place simply because someone won't see the time counting down and won't realize that if they were to drag out their turn a little longer they'd be able to finish with a half VP. Generally, though, I think the result was just an oddity. He also sprung that hidden clock decision on everybody. If it was to become the standard then yes, most everybody would probably just start wearing a watch. -Robert

In article <optw0cv0...@news.chello.hu>, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > In the finals at least one, but usually two people are pretty much > content with the results assured by a time-out. For them making sure > they spend as much time as legally possible, and keeping others in the > game, is the BEST PLAY EVER. Which is the result of the "in case of a tie, previous standings determine the winner", i.e. if you are first seed in the finals of the tournament, you have all the incentive in the world to make the game time out with no one ousted, as you win in that case. I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? I mean, yeah, a longer final certainly might help in some instances, but in other instances, it'll just make the time out take longer to reach. The problem isn't really the time limit--it is the concrete incentive for some players to have the game time out. Peter D Bakija pd...@lightlink.com http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html

Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > Howdy, > > Without going into much detail well let's just say that after each > EC usually comes a time of contemplation for me on the time limits > and the implications they have on the game, especially the finals. > > It helps to start this contemplation that out of the 3 "main events" > at Göteborg all 3 timed out. I couldn't help but wonder in at least > one case how the game would've turned out if not for the time limit. > > The obvious solution seems to be longer time limits for the finals. [rest snipped] The *easy* solution, you mean, and not even guaranteed to do anything. Why the players in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th are just sitting around scratching their asses for two hours not ousting their prey is just stupid and beyond my understanding, I guess. Play the game, oust your prey! >:( Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier

librarian <chris...@gmail.com> wrote: > At one of the tournaments during the Southern California > qualifier weekend, Mike Courtois (JediMike) the judge > decided that the official time was to be hidden. > > As a player, this led to more play focused on the table, and > less worrying about the time. I can't remember if there were > still time-outs, but it seemed to work. There wasn't a single table that went to time, all twelve ended before the 2-hr limit. > So one option is to ban any time-keeping devices from the > tables (I know, tough since cel-phones are watches too), and > only the judge knows how much time is left in the round. I don't know that you could do this with any kind of validity based on the rules, although you *can* have cell phones turned off. > The judge then gives the 5 > minute warning, and then ends the rounds. FYI: The 5-minute warning isn't part of the rules, as many people think it is. [ quoted text not captured ]

Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > I can change my way of playing V:tES but that will > have no real impact on a game played with 4 other players. Sure it will! If you are in 5th place going into the finals, and you are down to, say, 20 minutes left, and everyone is sitting around just picking their noses, then you should be slamming into your prey trying to oust him, since you have more to gain than anyone else. Once one player, any player, does this, then the whole table will start moving again, like one big machine that had ground to a halt due to stupidity on the part of its gears. [ quoted text not captured ]

Daneel wrote: > Howdy, > > > The obvious solution seems to be longer time limits for the finals. > 2.5, 3, 4, 5 hour finals time limits are technically possible > (though are probably prone to having logistics difficulties of > their own both for the venue and the players who travel). > > I was considering, though, whether it would make sense to introduce a > relative time limit for the finals - e.g. keep the 2 hours but also > count the number of turns, and if the 2-hour time limit is reached, > the game only ends when (say) 15 turns have been completed. > > Now this doesn't make it impossible for players to play in a way that > maximizes their strategic advantages with respect to the time limit > as well. There are decks that are getting stronger as turns pass. > Probably some recursion techs might also be more common with this > hybrid system. It gives advantage to decks that take long with their > turns. > At one of the tournaments during the Southern California qualifier weekend, Mike Courtois (JediMike) the judge decided that the official time was to be hidden. As a player, this led to more play focused on the table, and less worrying about the time. I can't remember if there were still time-outs, but it seemed to work. So one option is to ban any time-keeping devices from the tables (I know, tough since cel-phones are watches too), and only the judge knows how much time is left in the round. The judge then gives the 5 minute warning, and then ends the rounds. best - [ quoted text not captured ]

Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > I can change my way of playing V:tES but that will > have no real impact on a game played with 4 other players. Sure it will! If you are in 5th place going into the finals, and you are [ quoted text not captured ]

Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > Howdy, > > Without going into much detail well let's just say that after each > EC usually comes a time of contemplation for me on the time limits > and the implications they have on the game, especially the finals. > > It helps to start this contemplation that out of the 3 "main events" > at Göteborg all 3 timed out. I couldn't help but wonder in at least > one case how the game would've turned out if not for the time limit. > > The obvious solution seems to be longer time limits for the finals. [rest snipped] The *easy* solution, you mean, and not even guaranteed to do anything. Why the players in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th are just sitting around scratching their asses for two hours not ousting their prey is just stupid and beyond my understanding, I guess. Play the game, oust your prey! >:( [ quoted text not captured ]

librarian <chris...@gmail.com> wrote: > At one of the tournaments during the Southern California > qualifier weekend, Mike Courtois (JediMike) the judge > decided that the official time was to be hidden. > > As a player, this led to more play focused on the table, and > less worrying about the time. I can't remember if there were > still time-outs, but it seemed to work. There wasn't a single table that went to time, all twelve ended before the 2-hr limit. > So one option is to ban any time-keeping devices from the > tables (I know, tough since cel-phones are watches too), and > only the judge knows how much time is left in the round. I don't know that you could do this with any kind of validity based on the rules, although you *can* have cell phones turned off. > The judge then gives the 5 > minute warning, and then ends the rounds. FYI: The 5-minute warning isn't part of the rules, as many people think it is. [ quoted text not captured ]

Peter D Bakija schrieb: > I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, > rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" > from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th > place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you > actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? I suggested it a few weeks ago. Most people were laughing. I still think it is a good idea. Johannes Walch

On Aug 13, 11:13 pm, Damnans <damnansv...@ono.com> wrote: > Time is a strategic factor in VTES. Not taking it into account, as it > happened during many VTES games during the EC weekend, is just BAD > PLAY. > > Most players do not realize that they have to let other players be > ousted during the first hour of play, or else the their game will > probably time out. Trying to keep other players in play for no other > reason than fear to let another player get his first VP is bad play. > > Thus, finals should always have a time limit (2 or 2:30 hours). Totally agree with this - well put mate.

In article <f9qj8c$4hc$3...@news01.versatel.de>, Johannes Walch <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote: > I suggested it a few weeks ago. > Most people were laughing. > I still think it is a good idea. Yeah, I remember that. And it has come up before as well. And I can't really see why anyone objects to it. It strikes me as incredibly obvious as a way to make the finals move forward more--if a 5 way time out tie means everyone loses (or, well, everyone is a winner, but as a 5 way tie for winner, that isn't much winning. Especially if you have to split the prize. I'm sure no one wants to end up with 1/5th of an original piece of art...), you end up with much more incentive to try and do something like, say, oust your prey and try to get VPs. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 13, 8:13 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <f9qj8c$4h...@news01.versatel.de>, > Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote: > > > I suggested it a few weeks ago. > > Most people were laughing. > > I still think it is a good idea. > > Yeah, I remember that. And it has come up before as well. And I can't > really see why anyone objects to it. It strikes me as incredibly obvious > as a way to make the finals move forward more--if a 5 way time out tie > means everyone loses (or, well, everyone is a winner, but as a 5 way tie > for winner, that isn't much winning. Especially if you have to split the > prize. I'm sure no one wants to end up with 1/5th of an original piece > of art...), you end up with much more incentive to try and do something > like, say, oust your prey and try to get VPs. > > Peter D Bakija > p...@lightlink.comhttp://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html Erasing previous standings for the final is a great idea. In the case of ties, shuffle and draw 1 vampire* from your crypt. Highest capacity takes the better finish. Suck it, weenies!!! *ahem - Minion. My bad.

In article <1187053245....@l22g2000prc.googlegroups.com>, Wookie813 <veknp...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Erasing previous standings for the final is a great idea. I think so as well. The only negative I can see is that you could end up with a tie. Which strikes me as a reasonable result when everyone sucks so much that the game ends in a 5 way time out. I mean, yeah, currently, everyone who *isn't* top seed should be killing themselves to oust someone currently, but when there is someone at the table who has all the incentive in the world to have the game time out and make sure no one ever gets ousted, the dynamic is kind of twisted. > In the case > of ties, shuffle and draw 1 vampire* from your crypt. Highest capacity > takes the better finish. Suck it, weenies!!! Oh, great. Make Arika even better... :-) [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] Perhaps because some of us are for positive reinforcement (e.g. methods which would "sudden-death" the game and result in a winner) rather than negative reinforcement ("you all suck, no one gets to win")? [ quoted text not captured ]

Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: > Wookie813 <veknp...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Erasing previous standings for the final is a great idea. > > I think so as well. The only negative I can see is that you could end > up with a tie. Which strikes me as a reasonable result when everyone > sucks so much that the game ends in a 5 way time out. You want to create a system within a game which would directly cause no one to be able to win? Sounds like a version of hell to me. >:P [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 13, 9:38 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > > > Wookie813 <veknpont...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > >> Erasing previous standings for the final is a great idea. > > > I think so as well. The only negative I can see is that you could end > > up with a tie. Which strikes me as a reasonable result when everyone > > sucks so much that the game ends in a 5 way time out. > > You want to create a system within a game which would directly cause no > one to be able to win? Sounds like a version of hell to me. >:P > > Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas No. I'm suggesting that the finals should be like the playoffs in professional sports. It doesn't matter what your record was getting there. Once you get there, it's winner take all. This way, the ONLY way to win the tournament is to get the most VPs at the Final Table. Oust your Prey. Twice. If you don't, you can't win. In the event of a tie, randomly choose who finishes "officially" higher than whom. I would think this would make the idea of a tie much less desirable, and give players impetus to actually score VPs, rather than leaving their final standing to a coin toss.

On Aug 14, 2:05 pm, Wookie813 <veknpont...@yahoo.com> wrote: > No. I'm suggesting that the finals should be like the playoffs in > professional sports. It doesn't matter what your record was getting > there. Once you get there, it's winner take all. This way, the ONLY > way to win the tournament is to get the most VPs at the Final Table. I think that's a bad analogy; someone eventually wins by whatever method is appropriate for the sport in question whether it's extra time, a shoot out of some kind, or whatever. There is no concept of tie in the World Cup final for example. The only way currently to win a final now is to get more VPs than everyone else. Failing that there is a tie breaker system based on the seedings going into the final. At the start of the game four people must get a VP to be able to win so the majority of the table have a reason to go forward, how much incentive do people really need? Simon

Kevin M. schrieb: > Johannes Walch <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote: >> Peter D Bakija schrieb: >>> I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, >>> rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous >>> standings" from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, >>> everyone is a 5th place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, >>> the tournament, you actually have to win the final game, not just >>> not lose the final game)? >> I suggested it a few weeks ago. >> Most people were laughing. >> I still think it is a good idea. > > Perhaps because some of us are for positive reinforcement (e.g. methods > which would "sudden-death" the game and result in a winner) rather than > negative reinforcement ("you all suck, no one gets to win")? That would introduce in-game mechanics from outside of the game, which is a bad idea I think. And still if the first-seed is a bloat deck (e.g Embrace-Boon, happens often enough) he can still sit it out. Johannes Walch

[ quoted text not captured ] Still not a good idea. 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In your system there is none. 2. The one that came in first should IMO have an advantage in the finals. The best thing, obviously, would be a much needed change in metagame away from defensive play. But ATM the cards favour defensive play, imo.

On Aug 13, 7:15 pm, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:13:33 -0700, Damnans <damnansv...@ono.com> wrote: > > On Aug 12, 1:06 am, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > >> Howdy, > > >> Without going into much detail well let's just say that after each > >> EC usually comes a time of contemplation for me on the time limits > >> and the implications they have on the game, especially the finals. > > >> It helps to start this contemplation that out of the 3 "main events" > >> at Göteborg all 3 timed out. I couldn't help but wonder in at least > >> one case how the game would've turned out if not for the time limit. > > > Time is a strategic factor in VTES. Not taking it into account, as it > > happened during many VTES games during the EC weekend, is just BAD > > PLAY. > > In the finals at least one, but usually two people are pretty much > content with the results assured by a time-out. For them making sure > they spend as much time as legally possible, and keeping others in the > game, is the BEST PLAY EVER. The second seed being content with the results is BAD PLAY, or even illegal play, since he is not playing to win the tournament. > > Most players do not realize that they have to let other players be > > ousted during the first hour of play, or else the their game will > > probably time out. Trying to keep other players in play for no other > > reason than fear to let another player get his first VP is bad play. > > Yes, some players are like that. There may also be other factors - if > someone else scores a VP, you just fell behind the ranking unless the > one making the oust is higher seed than you are. Meaning that on the > average players will feel half as likely to let someone be ousted. That's bad play, since they are only focusing on the short-term results. I mean, the trees do not let them see the forest. In a final round, you may let someone get a VP (no matter his ranking), as long as you make sure the game does not time out and you have the opportunity to get the game win (as in any other game of the preliminary rounds). [...] -- Damnans http://www.almadrava.net/damnans http://www.vtes.net http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/vteshispania/ http://iuturna.sorcery.net (IRC channel: #vtes)

In message <pdb6-FA0A25.2...@news-server.stny.rr.com>, Peter D [ quoted text not captured ] Aces count as 1, not 11. *nods vigorously* [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <pdb6-89FC59.2...@news-server.stny.rr.com>, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> writes: >In article <f9qj8c$4hc$3...@news01.versatel.de>, > Johannes Walch <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote: > >> I suggested it a few weeks ago. >> Most people were laughing. >> I still think it is a good idea. > >Yeah, I remember that. And it has come up before as well. And I can't >really see why anyone objects to it. It strikes me as incredibly obvious >as a way to make the finals move forward more--if a 5 way time out tie >means everyone loses (or, well, everyone is a winner, but as a 5 way tie >for winner, that isn't much winning. I don't particularly object to it, except when it is strongly desirable[0] to have a winner. For example, a 5-way tie in a mini-qualifier would suck. Alternatively, if White Wolf have thrown a big party for the NAC (or something) and are planning to put publicity shots in the next White Wolf quarterly and have an artist all prepped to do a portrait of the winner and everything, it would suck a bit for them to have to say "P.S. Five way tie" in the results. Not the greatest publicity for a game that takes 6-8 hours. In your common or garden "We have 20 boosters to give away in prizes" tournament, it seems reasonable. But then you'd have different tournaments working on different rules, which would be a bit awkward too. [0] I would say "need", but you don't actually *need* it. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <1187081234.5...@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>, Damnans <damna...@ono.com> writes: >The second seed being content with the results is BAD PLAY, or even >illegal play, since he is not playing to win the tournament. Players in the final are assumed to be playing to win. It is also entirely possible that at a late position in the game, that person is happy with that outcome based on the table at hand. e.g. he can hang on by walling up against his predator, but reaching for his prey's pool would likely get him ousted by putting a chink in his armour. So second might well be a good position for him, rather than lower down. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] Actually, big disincentive comes by the prize offering - with a top seed being able to stonewall against predator and to make table control (such as anneke wall/politics,maris strectk/votes, weenie auspex and so on), after a while it will come clear that some non-top seed players will be not any longer in a position for "playing to win" (the tournament) - At the same time, trough prizes offer top seed player *can* actually give disincentives to those players, in the respect of playing "to win" - maximizing prizes (as lsj stated) is enough for several poeple to give up soon that "playing to win". best Emiliano

On Aug 14, 10:56 am, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > In message <1187081234.599455.128...@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>, > > Damnans <damnansv...@ono.com> writes: > >The second seed being content with the results is BAD PLAY, or even > >illegal play, since he is not playing to win the tournament. > > Players in the final are assumed to be playing to win. > > It is also entirely possible that at a late position in the game, that > person is happy with that outcome based on the table at hand. Correct. But what that person shouldn't do is letting the game get to a point where he is happy with his current ranking (and where he is not winning the tournament). [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > In message <1187081234.5...@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>, > Damnans <damna...@ono.com> writes: >> The second seed being content with the results is BAD PLAY, or even >> illegal play, since he is not playing to win the tournament. > > Players in the final are assumed to be playing to win. > They're not assumed to win the "round" (in the standard way the previous rounds are "won"), however - just to "win the tournament". As long as judges would be in the position of enforcing the "play to score the game win" (that is, at least 2 vps without no-else scoring that much, as previous rounds) in the final round, i think it would be easier to see the final round played "to win" it, and not played just to "maximize prizes". my two cents Emiliano

Jeroen schrieb: > On 13 aug, 23:42, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote: >> Peter D Bakija schrieb: >> >>> I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, >>> rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" >>> from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th >>> place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you >>> actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? >> I suggested it a few weeks ago. >> Most people were laughing. >> I still think it is a good idea. >> > Still not a good idea. > > 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In > your system there is none. The first seed can still be the "winner", but prizes and ratings points will be split accordingly. > 2. The one that came in first should IMO have an advantage in the > finals. He allready has the advantage to choose his seat freely. A big one that is, IMHO. Johannes Walch

On 14 Aug., 09:29, Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > On 13 aug, 23:42, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote:> Peter D Bakija schrieb: > > > > I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, > > > rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" > > > from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th > > > place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you > > > actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? > > > I suggested it a few weeks ago. > > Most people were laughing. > > I still think it is a good idea. > > Still not a good idea. > > 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In > your system there is none. A poster already responded to the tie with a crypt-draw. If there is a tie, decide it randomly. The crypt-draw seems as good as a die-roll. Arika or not. > 2. The one that came in first should IMO have an advantage in the > finals. First Seed already has a big advantage. He can choose his prey and predator. This is a bit advantage, cause at the time of the final round, most finalists already know what decks the other finalists play (direct experience, scouting, whatever). Start fresh into the final, there is no need to give the top seed player a *very strong* bonus. Offense wins games, defense wins champiionships, or so the saying goes. That's especially true for VTES finals, where you often see decks that can control the table and be very defensive survive to the time limit. Do we really want those waiting games? And, btw (I wanted to mention this since the threads about prize- splitting, final rounds, et al. started), if I understood LSJ right, in that every finalist is a priori considered to play to win, regardless what he is doing in the final, would it be legal for a player to do nothing at all in the final round, or even roll over from the get go? Clearly, in a prelim round, that would violate PTW, but in the final? And to have some incentive to do that, the top seed player could offer him a prize split if he rolled over for him right away. That IMO is against the spirit of the game. Disallow prize-splits at least. Please... ;)

On 14 aug, 11:33, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote: > Jeroen schrieb: > > > > > > > On 13 aug, 23:42, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote: > >> Peter D Bakija schrieb: > > >>> I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, > >>> rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" > >>> from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th > >>> place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you > >>> actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? > >> I suggested it a few weeks ago. > >> Most people were laughing. > >> I still think it is a good idea. > > > Still not a good idea. > > > 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In > > your system there is none. > > The first seed can still be the "winner", but prizes and ratings points > will be split accordingly. But that wouldn't really make much difference then. He still wins with a time out or a draw. > > > 2. The one that came in first should IMO have an advantage in the > > finals. > > He allready has the advantage to choose his seat freely. > A big one that is, IMHO. Only if full scouting is possible. So in big tournements it might not be so good.

On 14 aug, 11:50, preache...@gmx.at wrote: > On 14 Aug., 09:29, Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > On 13 aug, 23:42, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote:> Peter D Bakija schrieb: > > > > > I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, > > > > rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" > > > > from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th > > > > place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you > > > > actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? > > > > I suggested it a few weeks ago. > > > Most people were laughing. > > > I still think it is a good idea. > > > Still not a good idea. > > > 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In > > your system there is none. > > A poster already responded to the tie with a crypt-draw. If there is a > tie, decide it randomly. The crypt-draw seems as good as a die-roll. > Arika or not. that sucks. > > > 2. The one that came in first should IMO have an advantage in the > > finals. > > First Seed already has a big advantage. He can choose his prey and > predator. This is a bit advantage, cause at the time of the final > round, most finalists already know what decks the other finalists play > (direct experience, scouting, whatever). not in big tournements. > > Start fresh into the final, there is no need to give the top seed > player a *very strong* bonus. Doesn't matter. The 4 others are there who have to play. How much power do you all reckon the first seed has to prevent all VPs? > Offense wins games, defense wins champiionships, or so the saying > goes. That's especially true for VTES finals, where you often see > decks that can control the table and be very defensive survive to the > time limit. Do we really want those waiting games? No. But IMO the fault lies with the way the game atm rewards defensive play over offensive play. > > And, btw (I wanted to mention this since the threads about prize- > splitting, final rounds, et al. started), if I understood LSJ right, > in that every finalist is a priori considered to play to win, > regardless what he is doing in the final, would it be legal for a > player to do nothing at all in the final round, or even roll over from > the get go? Clearly, in a prelim round, that would violate PTW, but in > the final? And to have some incentive to do that, the top seed player > could offer him a prize split if he rolled over for him right away. > That IMO is against the spirit of the game. Disallow prize-splits at > least. Please... ;)- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht niet weergeven - > wrong thread.

Jeroen schrieb: >> Offense wins games, defense wins champiionships, or so the saying >> goes. That's especially true for VTES finals, where you often see >> decks that can control the table and be very defensive survive to the >> time limit. Do we really want those waiting games? > > No. But IMO the fault lies with the way the game atm rewards defensive > play over offensive play. Unfortunately, yes. In a certain way that is natural, because not dying is allready halfway to winning :) One of the problems is, that there are cards that can turn the forward momentum of another player (e.g your predator) in your own forward momentum (e.g Deflection) and protect you at the same time. So actually the best strategy to win a game is deflecting your pred until the right moment comes and then make a move on your prey. This is actually even worse because there are certain strategies (read clans) that dont have access to those cards so they are most likely the dead end of the bleed. It´s pretty interesting that out of the 15 finalists decks at the EC at least 13 had bounce capabilites (I am not sure about Brian Moritz´s biggies and Matt´s Imbued). Of course this is based on the assumption that most decks use bleeds (preferrably at stealth) as their primary ousting mechanism, which seems to be (at least for my limited domain of experience) the case. Also the "waiting game" players often wait for not-so-good players on the table to make a bad move. E.g it fascinates me how the Edward Vignes deck works all the time, just by preys who spend ~20 pool on transfers w/o having a Blood Doll/Minion Tap and on top of that almost tap themselves out when an Anarch Troublemaker is in play. The "waiting" decks just have the better possibilities to make use of those players, also because those players tend to propose team-ups on the aggressive decks, because they just don´t see that they probably *will* stop the aggressive deck, but make the waiting deck win in the processs. >> And, btw (I wanted to mention this since the threads about prize- >> splitting, final rounds, et al. started), if I understood LSJ right, >> in that every finalist is a priori considered to play to win, >> regardless what he is doing in the final, would it be legal for a >> player to do nothing at all in the final round, or even roll over from >> the get go? Clearly, in a prelim round, that would violate PTW, but in >> the final? And to have some incentive to do that, the top seed player >> could offer him a prize split if he rolled over for him right away. >> That IMO is against the spirit of the game. Disallow prize-splits at >> least. Please... ;)- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht niet weergeven - >> > wrong thread. > I don´t get why people whine so much about prize splitting. I have *never* seen it happen (and I play a fair number of tournaments), so don´t make it a problem unless it is one. And: wrong thread :) Johannes Walch

Ok, how about his? 1. Preliminary rounds only affects seating and ranking. 2. As players chooses seats in the finals, the higher ranked players from the preliminary rounds can get information about the decks who have already chosen seats.* 3. No time limit in the finals. 4. after say turn 10 everyone burns 1 pool during thier untap. Turn 13 everybodys burns 2. Turn 16 everybody burns 3 and so on. GW is awarded the usual way. (slow deck built for bloating will have a hard time reaching the finals) 5. In case of a tie for first place, the last man standing gets the GW (or some other method) 6. Ban/remake DI/Anthelios to avoid 75% of the tabletalk that makes for slow play. (I know there is another thread about this, but this affects final table time limit in a big way.) * This is the tricky part. For smaller tournaments, the amount of information is very small. For larger tournaments, there are a number of options. For example: A. Monocle of Clarity questions about the deck B. Examining parts of the decklist C. Revealing random cards of the deck. Of course, there will be players that already know everything about an opponents deck from previous rounds or other scources. This is a problem. Example (A): 5th placed players sits. 4th placed can ask "Does your deck include more than 15 bleed actions and bleedmodifiers combined?" In a larger tornament, the player could add another question: "Does your deck include more than 10 non-dodge, non-combat ends cards?" After he sits, the 3rd ranked gets a number of questions and so on. You could have a list of questions to chose from. Comments?

> > Example (A): 5th placed players sits. 4th placed can ask "Does your > deck include more than 15 bleed actions and bleedmodifiers combined?" > In a larger tornament, the player could add another question: "Does > your deck include more than 10 non-dodge, non-combat ends cards?" > After he sits, the 3rd ranked gets a number of questions and so on. > You could have a list of questions to chose from. > Should be: "Does your deck include more than 10 non-dodge, non s:ce COMBAT cards?"

On Aug 13, 5:15 am, Shade <shad...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Aug 12, 8:58 pm, Joscha <joscha.du...@gmx.de> wrote: > > > I don't know. It's again the "players tend to play somehow, so we have > > to adjust the rules". That's not the right way I'd say. I'd prefer not > > yelling for a change of rules, rather change the way you play. If you > > play a waiting game in the finals the first seed wins. Period. If you > > don't want that to happen speed up (and also make the others to). > > I totally agree - if you weren't first going into the final you will > not win unless you oust someone. That doesn't seem too tricky to me. Correct, but in some cases you *will* advance a couple of places in the end result.Which for some players depending on decks+seating is the best they can hope for at that point. I'd advise to change the choice of seating. Make it random, in stead of making it depend on who is first or lowest seed in finals. That is royally enough to avoid the situation where first seed installs him/herself in the ideal position to time it out. Just my 0.5 eurocents, which have been hardened in the fire of many an everlasting final, as well as many a timed-out final due to "luxury- seating" BTW: 1 question for Joscha: how do you define a "waiting deck"? My answer would be "One that plays Blood Dolls", but then I've suffered from Luk de Ron's "Turn 2 speedbump" tech years ago..

On Aug 14, 6:48 am, Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > On 14 aug, 11:33, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote: > > > > > > > Jeroen schrieb: > > > > On 13 aug, 23:42, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote: > > >> Peter D Bakija schrieb: > > > >>> I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, > > >>> rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" > > >>> from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th > > >>> place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you > > >>> actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? > > >> I suggested it a few weeks ago. > > >> Most people were laughing. > > >> I still think it is a good idea. > > > > Still not a good idea. > > > > 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In > > > your system there is none. > > > The first seed can still be the "winner", but prizes and ratings points > > will be split accordingly. > > But that wouldn't really make much difference then. He still wins with > a time out or a draw. If you want to stop games from going to time, wait until 5 minutes are left on the clock. Then offer to oust yourself in exchange for a prize split. I guarantee that final tables will start speeding up if this happens even a few times. witness1

[ quoted text not captured ] Yes, I think best way to solve it is th eother way around. Make the tableseating random, that will change a hell of a lot already. To have a good basis for discussion, you would need to check with the finalists of the timed-out finals at the EC whether or not they had any idea what they were doing while choosing seating.ANd why they chose those seats. In my experience it's ver very often the road to vistory, just to make sure you're in the golden seat, from where you can ride out the finals. So if you remove that factor and make it random, I believe youwill cut the time-outs by a large percentage. /jo

In article <R4t70Ti$lWwG...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk>, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > I don't particularly object to it, except when it is strongly > desirable[0] to have a winner. Agreed. But really, the "we all suck, so we get a 5 way tie" seems like a reasonable punishment for, well, everyone sucking. If you need a winner, and no one wins, that means no one deserves to be the winner--if no one wins the mini-qualifier, then no one gets to mini-qualify. That would give an awful lot of incentive to actually try and win the game, rather than table manage, try and not lose, and hope time runs out when you have the advantage in the tie break situation. > For example, a 5-way tie in a mini-qualifier would suck. It would. So everyone would really want to win. Which would help. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 14 aug, 15:39, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <R4t70Ti$lWwGF...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk>, > James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > > > I don't particularly object to it, except when it is strongly > > desirable[0] to have a winner. > > Agreed. But really, the "we all suck, so we get a 5 way tie" seems like > a reasonable punishment for, well, everyone sucking. Punishment for having 5 difficult to oust decks in the final? >If you need a > winner, and no one wins, that means no one deserves to be the winner--if > no one wins the mini-qualifier, then no one gets to mini-qualify. That > would give an awful lot of incentive to actually try and win the game, > rather than table manage, try and not lose, and hope time runs out when > you have the advantage in the tie break situation. Again, only 1 person has that advantage. The others have the incentive you speak of. So why isn't it happening already? > > > For example, a 5-way tie in a mini-qualifier would suck. > > It would. So everyone would really want to win. Which would help. > two way ties would suck too. Especially since that would be 2-2-1.

On Aug 14, 9:39 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <R4t70Ti$lWwGF...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk>, > James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > > > I don't particularly object to it, except when it is strongly > > desirable[0] to have a winner. > > Agreed. But really, the "we all suck, so we get a 5 way tie" seems like > a reasonable punishment for, well, everyone sucking. If you need a > winner, and no one wins, that means no one deserves to be the winner--if > no one wins the mini-qualifier, then no one gets to mini-qualify. That > would give an awful lot of incentive to actually try and win the game, > rather than table manage, try and not lose, and hope time runs out when > you have the advantage in the tie break situation. Better to just get rid of the final altogether and just give the tournament win to the player with the most GWs/VPs after X rounds of play. Seriously. You don't get to the finals by sucking. There's no good reason to "punish" the players who, over the course of the tournament, were the best at ousting their prey in succession, just because they have trouble ousting when they're seated together. The final table is the chance for 2nd-5th seed players to wrest the tournament win away from someone who has, on the whole, played better so far that day. If none of them can do it (or none of them are willing to do it), just let him walk away with the victory. > > For example, a 5-way tie in a mini-qualifier would suck. > > It would. So everyone would really want to win. Which would help. Wanting isn't always relevant. witness1

In article <1187076598.5...@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>, Jeroen <joen...@hotmail.com> wrote: > 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In > your system there is none. So make someone win. Currently, the person sitting in first place at the start of the final round doesn't need to win. They just need to make the table time out with a 5 way tie. If someone actually needed to *win* the final game by virtue of the most VPs to win the tournament, this weird dynamic would vanish and everyone would have incentive to try and oust their prey. If everyone is so lame such that no one actually wins the final game, then screw them--no one wins. You don't need to actually declare a "winner" if no one actually wins. > 2. The one that came in first should IMO have an advantage in the > finals. They do have an advantage--they get best seat choice, which, more often than not, means that they should win anyway through game play and ousting, rather than stasis. [ quoted text not captured ]

Peter D Bakija wrote: > In article <1187076598.5...@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>, > Jeroen <joen...@hotmail.com> wrote: > >> 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In >> your system there is none. > > So make someone win. Currently, the person sitting in first place at the > start of the final round doesn't need to win. They just need to make the > table time out with a 5 way tie. If someone actually needed to *win* the > final game by virtue of the most VPs to win the tournament, this weird > dynamic would vanish and everyone would have incentive to try and oust > their prey. > > If everyone is so lame such that no one actually wins the final game, > then screw them--no one wins. You don't need to actually declare a > "winner" if no one actually wins. Yes, you do. That's the point of "A tournament needs a winner".

In article <1187085021.5...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, preac...@gmx.at wrote: > A poster already responded to the tie with a crypt-draw. If there is a > tie, decide it randomly. The crypt-draw seems as good as a die-roll. > Arika or not. Why do ties need to be broken? If two people each get 2VPs in the final, then yaa! They are both winners. If the table times out with all 5 players still at the table, then boo! They are all losers. I'm unconvinced that it is so important that someone be declared *the* winner that there needs to be tie breaking. I'd much rather see a system that encourages *everyone* at the table to do their best to actually and legitimately win the table by ousting folks, even if that means sometimes you get a 5 way tie for loser. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <zI7wi.60476$vS1....@newsfe16.phx>, "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > You want to create a system within a game which would directly cause no > one to be able to win? Sounds like a version of hell to me. >:P Then pretend all 5 of them are winners instead of all 5 of them are losers. I think the incentive to actually try and win being handed to everyone at the table rather than hand 4 people incentive to try and win and 1 person incentive to try and time the table out with everyone still in play is much more condusive to folks trying to win the game. Most games of VTES I play end in under 2 hours and end with a clear winner (or a clear tie for winner in 4 player games where the table splits 2/2). The large number of time outs in the finals of competetive games comes from somewhere, and it is likely that a big contributor is that someone at the table has the incentive to make the game time out. If you remove that, I suspect a lot of the game speeds up and starts moving. If everyone is too lame to oust their prey and win, and the game times out with a 5 way tie? I'm *totally* ok wih everyone being declared the [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 13, 9:00 pm, Wookie813 <veknpont...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Erasing previous standings for the final is a great idea. Agreed. >In the case > of ties, shuffle and draw 1 vampire* from your crypt. Highest capacity > takes the better finish. Suck it, weenies!!! Riigghht. Just another opportunity for our favorite 11 cap to continue being the best minion printed. -dc

On Aug 14, 11:07 am, LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > Peter D Bakija wrote: > > In article <1187076598.569187.268...@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>, > > Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > >> 1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In > >> your system there is none. > > > So make someone win. Currently, the person sitting in first place at the > > start of the final round doesn't need to win. They just need to make the > > table time out with a 5 way tie. If someone actually needed to *win* the > > final game by virtue of the most VPs to win the tournament, this weird > > dynamic would vanish and everyone would have incentive to try and oust > > their prey. > > > If everyone is so lame such that no one actually wins the final game, > > then screw them--no one wins. You don't need to actually declare a > > "winner" if no one actually wins. > > Yes, you do. That's the point of "A tournament needs a winner". My understanding is that Peter disputes this assertion (i.e. - A tournament does not need a winner). It is not clear to me why a tournament *needs* a winner, although it is quite clear why a winner is desireable. It is also seems quite clear to me that it would benefit the game to have all five players in the final motivated to collect VPs in the final, and that all five are not currently so motivated. -Dave Clooney

On Aug 14, 11:08 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <1187085021.506509.245...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, > > preache...@gmx.at wrote: > > A poster already responded to the tie with a crypt-draw. If there is a > > tie, decide it randomly. The crypt-draw seems as good as a die-roll. > > Arika or not. > > Why do ties need to be broken? If two people each get 2VPs in the final, > then yaa! They are both winners. If the table times out with all 5 > players still at the table, then boo! They are all losers. > > I'm unconvinced that it is so important that someone be declared *the* > winner that there needs to be tie breaking. > > I'd much rather see a system that encourages *everyone* at the table to > do their best to actually and legitimately win the table by ousting > folks, even if that means sometimes you get a 5 way tie for loser. > > Peter D Bakija > p...@lightlink.comhttp://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html One thing that might contribute to tables timing out is that the primary goal of the player in Fifth is to not get ousted. Even though he has the most to gain by ousting, he also has the most to gain from not being ousted. If any other player gets a VP, that increases (or cements) their position, but nobody has as big a swing as the player in Fifth. If he gets a VP, he immediately jumps to First and is virtually guaranteed a top 3 finish. But this only happens if he 1) avoids getting ousted and (realistically) 2) prevents his grandprey from being ousted. That, combined with player 1's reward for a timeout, can lead to 3 players pushing for table balance, resulting in a timeout. Is anyone bored enough to look and see how table position affects game timeouts? I bet if player 1 and player 5 are cross-table, we see a lot more timeouts. -- - Gregory Stuart Pettigrew

> I think having a longer time limit for finals makes a lot of sense. > Would force people to actually, you know, *play*, even if they are in > a sub-optimal situation. Once upon a time, the final had no time limit. When was that instituted? Is there any reason why it can't go back to the way it was? Sorrow --- "Just once I'd like a childhood memory I don't have to repress." - Malcolm

Sorrow wrote: >> I think having a longer time limit for finals makes a lot of sense. >> Would force people to actually, you know, *play*, even if they are in >> a sub-optimal situation. > > Once upon a time, the final had no time limit. When was that instituted? > Is there any reason why it can't go back to the way it was? The finals have always had time limits in official VEKN tournaments.

Howdy, On Aug 14, 5:20 am, agzocgud <per_math...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Ok, how about his? > 2. As players chooses seats in the finals, the higher ranked players > from the preliminary rounds can get information about the decks who > have already chosen seats.* > * This is the tricky part. For smaller tournaments, the amount of > information is very small. For larger tournaments, there are a number > of options. For example: > A. Monocle of Clarity questions about the deck > B. Examining parts of the decklist > C. Revealing random cards of the deck. This seems like a nifty idea by itself. The only real seeding benefits are choosing your seat and tiebreaking. At a large tournament, or if you happen to be at slow-ish tables, you totally lose out on the former benefit if you don't know much/anything about the other finalists' decks. I'd go with option A above, and work it thusly: Fifth seed seats herself. Fourth seed may ask fifth a single Monocle (Yes/No) question - with all finalists listening to both question and answer - then seats herself. Third seed gets to ask fifth a question, then fourth, then seats herself. Second seed gets to ask fifth, fourth, third questions, then seats herself. First seed gets to ask each lower seed a question (in order, and, as always, with everyone listening), and then seats herself. Fifth seed has the no benefit, as always. First seed, OTOH, has up to four facts about fifth seed's deck, three about fourth, two about third, and one about second before making her choice, while her deck remains unknown. Plus everyone has heard what questions are important to the askers; if someone is asking about bounce, it's a good bet they have significant bleed. > Of course, there will be players that already know everything about an > opponents deck from previous rounds or other scources. This is a > problem. Not a big one, IMO. It is unavoidable that some finalists will have been at the same table with other finalists, or otherwise have a good sense of what they are playing. More power to them. It's the players who have done really well but know nothing about the other finalists' decks who are really losing out. Rather than encourage them to scout (lame), why not just build in a failsafe? Alex

Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: > I'd much rather see a system that encourages *everyone* at the table > to do their best to actually and legitimately win the table by ousting > folks, even if that means sometimes you get a 5 way tie for loser. The current system DOES encourage *everyone* at the table to do their best to actually and legitimately win the table by ousting folks. The second seed has the primary incentive to oust more preys than anyone else, with a secondary priority of making sure no one else does the same. The third seed has the primary incentive to oust more preys than anyone else, with a secondary priority of making sure no one else does the same. The fourth seed has the primary incentive to oust more preys than anyone else, with a secondary priority of making sure no one else does the same. The fifth seed has the primary incentive to oust more preys than anyone else, with a secondary priority of making sure no one else does the same. The highest seed has the primary incentive to oust more preys than anyone else, with a secondary priority of making sure no one else does the same, with a tertiary priority, given only to the first place seed, that if no one's primary and secondary priorities are fulfilled that he wins all ties. How is this a problem? Answer: Since block-everything-so-when-I-get-to-the-finals-I-can-be-a-dweeb-and-win-with out-ousting-my-prey decks aren't overly dominant, it isn't. Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier

agzocgud wrote: > Ok, how about his? > > 1. Preliminary rounds only affects seating and ranking. > 2. As players chooses seats in the finals, the higher ranked players > from the preliminary rounds can get information about the decks who > have already chosen seats.* > 3. No time limit in the finals. > 4. after say turn 10 everyone burns 1 pool during thier untap. Turn 13 > everybodys burns 2. Turn 16 everybody burns 3 and so on. GW is awarded > the usual way. (slow deck built for bloating will have a hard time > reaching the finals) > 5. In case of a tie for first place, the last man standing gets the GW > (or some other method) > 6. Ban/remake DI/Anthelios to avoid 75% of the tabletalk that makes > for slow play. (I know there is another thread about this, but this > affects final table time limit in a big way.) > Other than adding a set of complicated rules, i'd say that's better to give an incentive in *winning* the final round by: 1 - having players to play, by default the final round per normal play to GW as in the preliminary rounds (at least 2 Vps without no-else scoring that much) 2 - Granting an additional prize to tournament winner *only* if he "wins" the final round (as said above) - other tournament prizes to the five finalist would be given anyway. ----> EG: For "tournament winner": 8 booster, IF he "wins" the final round too (at least 2 vps without no-else scoring that mych), 16 boosters instead. That would represent a nice incentive in playing forward and not trying to stale the round, waiting for time limit (that needs, apart from anything else, to be set at least to 3 hours). 3 - Banning prize offers as part of deals in the final rounds (a real necessity given point 2 above) my 2 cents Emiliano

Peter D Bakija wrote: > In article <1187085021.5...@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, > preac...@gmx.at wrote: > >> A poster already responded to the tie with a crypt-draw. If there is >> a tie, decide it randomly. The crypt-draw seems as good as a >> die-roll. Arika or not. > > Why do ties need to be broken? If two people each get 2VPs in the > final, then yaa! They are both winners. If the table times out with > all 5 players still at the table, then boo! They are all losers. > I think that keeping the consistency with previous (preliminary) rounds would be the best option here. IMHO, best way to get a final played forward (and not to stale it by the current top seed playing at the table) by every one would be putting a prize incentive for the winner of the final round, per normal ptw (preliminary) rule. The rest would remains unchanged (top seed would still "win" the tournament in case of tie, and so on). best Emiliano

Kevin M. wrote: > Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: >> I'd much rather see a system that encourages *everyone* at the table >> to do their best to actually and legitimately win the table by >> ousting folks, even if that means sometimes you get a 5 way tie for >> loser. > > The current system DOES encourage *everyone* at the table to do their > best to actually and legitimately win the table by ousting folks. > Not really - it encourages more a prize-splitting/kingmaking approach, in the very moment that at the final sit two players confident enough with each other. As long as prize maximization it's in the object of the final, and it's allowed as part of the dealing process. > The second seed has the primary incentive to oust more preys than > anyone else, with a secondary priority of making sure no one else > does the same. No, usually the second has just the incentive to try to gang up heavily against first seed , while first do the same with him, but with a more stalling approach, usually - and so on. Lots of table talk and players trying to stall the game to their own advantage, as soon as a prize deal can be set. Emiliano

[ quoted text not captured ] Would be a special prize for the winner (per PTW ruled in the preliminary rounds) of the final round be doable under the current tournament vekn rules ? I mean: tournament winner (as it's declared right now) would get X boosters, but if he manages to "win" the final round too (per GW, as said above) it would get that X plus Y additional boosters. Emiliano

In article <%Xnwi.60628$vS1....@newsfe16.phx>, "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > How is this a problem? The problem is that the highest seed has all the incentive in the world to make sure the game ends with no one getting ousted, as they win if the game does not change from how it started. Which means that if they can finagle it, they can make deals and convince folks to do stuff in the interest of stasis rather than forward momentum. If this particular wackiness of the final round was removed, then all 5 players would have the same incentive to oust folks as efficiently as possible. As it stands, 4 players have incentive to oust, and 1 player, who already probably has the best seat and likely the best deck at the table, has the incentive to keep the game state from progressing. Which is a weird dynamic to introduce into the finals, as it isn't the dynamic in the preliminary rounds. And likely leads to a lot of weirdness. The only flaw that I can see with removing the preliminary standings from the final outcome (i.e. no tiebreakers) is that once and a while, when everyone is super lame, no one actually wins. Which works for soccer :-) [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <izjwi.664$Oo...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net>, LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > Yes, you do. That's the point of "A tournament needs a winner". You can quibble over semantics if you like, but in the end, really, why does a tournament *need* to have an absolute winner? Why can't it end in a tie? Split up the prizes and split up the rating points if two players tie for 1st (say a 2/2/1 VP distribution). If the game times out with zero VPs and everyone gets .5 VP? Split up the prizes and rating points 5 ways. Yeah, sometimes splitting prizes is difficult, but if a 5 way tie is a potential, then structure the prizes so that they can be split up in the case of a 5 way tie. I'm unconvinced that there *needs* to be a declared winner such that the rules need to work to introduce a strange dynamic into the final that is absent from all the preliminary rounds, when removing that strange dynamic only has the disadvantage of that once and a while, there will be a tie, but will also likely go a long way towards encouraging forward momentum. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <1187100222.1...@l70g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, witness1 <jwnew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > Better to just get rid of the final altogether and just give the > tournament win to the player with the most GWs/VPs after X rounds of > play. This is, if IIRC, a viable option for (small?) tournaments. > Seriously. You don't get to the finals by sucking. There's no good > reason to "punish" the players who, over the course of the tournament, > were the best at ousting their prey in succession, just because they > have trouble ousting when they're seated together. How is giving them all the same motivation "punishing" them? Sit them down, say "no one wins unless they get the most VPs", which is how all the other rounds of the tournament work. Watch as folks try to oust folks in the time allotted in the name of actually winning the game. Makes sense to me. > The final table is the chance for 2nd-5th seed players to wrest the > tournament win away from someone who has, on the whole, played better > so far that day. If none of them can do it (or none of them are > willing to do it), just let him walk away with the victory. Which is a weird dynamic, compared to the rest of the games in the tournament--why introduce the strange dynamic of "one player gets to win if nothing changes" that is missing from the rest of the tournament? If you are doing well, you get into the finals, with gives you the opportunity to A) Win and B) get prizes. Why is it *also* necessary to give first seed the strange motivation that no one else has, and no one else deals with at any other point of the tournament? [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <1187099169.3...@b79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, Jeroen <joen...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Punishment for having 5 difficult to oust decks in the final? They aren't all difficult to oust, likely. There just needs to be people who are willing to try and oust or lose, rather than have a lot of people who are willing to sit on their hands to try and survive. If you end up in no worse situation ousted than you would in a 5 way tie, there is a lot more incentive to go for the lunge. > Again, only 1 person has that advantage. The others have the incentive > you speak of. So why isn't it happening already? 'Cause 5th seed has incentive to simply not get ousted and 1st seed has incentive to see the table time out with zero ousts. Which creates a weird game dynamic. If everyone was at base zero at the start of the final, everyone would have maximum incentive to try and oust their prey. > two way ties would suck too. Especially since that would be 2-2-1. I'm totally ok with a 2 way tie for victory. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 14, 4:53 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <izjwi.664$Oo...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net>, > > LSJ <vtes...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > > Yes, you do. That's the point of "A tournament needs a winner". > > You can quibble over semantics if you like, but in the end, really, why > does a tournament *need* to have an absolute winner? Why can't it end in > a tie? Split up the prizes and split up the rating points if two players > tie for 1st (say a 2/2/1 VP distribution). If the game times out with > zero VPs and everyone gets .5 VP? Split up the prizes and rating points > 5 ways. Then everyone still has the same "better not let myself get ousted" incentive - they get a better share of the prizes/ratings points on timeout than by being ousted. Better not to expose yourself to that risk. Except that I don't know of anyone who actually thinks that way. > Yeah, sometimes splitting prizes is difficult, but if a 5 way tie is a > potential, then structure the prizes so that they can be split up in the > case of a 5 way tie. Great. > I'm unconvinced that there *needs* to be a declared winner such that the > rules need to work to introduce a strange dynamic into the final that is > absent from all the preliminary rounds, when removing that strange > dynamic only has the disadvantage of that once and a while, there will > be a tie, but will also likely go a long way towards encouraging forward > momentum. It's not a necessity, any more than holding a tournament is a necessity. But I'm wondering what the point of calling it a tournament is if you're not going to have a winner. witness1.

On Aug 14, 4:58 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <1187100222.185814.289...@l70g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, > > witness1 <jwnewqu...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > > Better to just get rid of the final altogether and just give the > > tournament win to the player with the most GWs/VPs after X rounds of > > play. > > This is, if IIRC, a viable option for (small?) tournaments. > > > Seriously. You don't get to the finals by sucking. There's no good > > reason to "punish" the players who, over the course of the tournament, > > were the best at ousting their prey in succession, just because they > > have trouble ousting when they're seated together. > > How is giving them all the same motivation "punishing" them? Punishment was your choice of words. You tell me. > Sit them > down, say "no one wins unless they get the most VPs", which is how all > the other rounds of the tournament work. Watch as folks try to oust > folks in the time allotted in the name of actually winning the game. > Makes sense to me. People already do try to oust folks in the time allotted in the name of actually winning the game. Seriously. It happens all the time. So leaving things the way they are makes sense to me. > > The final table is the chance for 2nd-5th seed players to wrest the > > tournament win away from someone who has, on the whole, played better > > so far that day. If none of them can do it (or none of them are > > willing to do it), just let him walk away with the victory. > > Which is a weird dynamic, compared to the rest of the games in the > tournament--why introduce the strange dynamic of "one player gets to win > if nothing changes" that is missing from the rest of the tournament? You can't escape that the finals table will have a different dynamic from every other table. It's the only one where the entire tournament is on the line. This particular dynamic is the one that every finals table has ever had. And it exists because we a) want to have a final table of VtES where the best of the best play against each other for the tournament win and we also b) strongly desire there to be a single winner => ties must be broken, and we prefer that ties be broken in a manner that rewards prior performance, as opposed to just rolling some dice. > If you are doing well, you get into the finals, with gives you the > opportunity to A) Win and B) get prizes. Why is it *also* necessary to > give first seed the strange motivation that no one else has, and no one > else deals with at any other point of the tournament? Because of a) and b). If you're willing to give up on either one, you can alter the dynamic. I'm not. witness1

On Aug 14, 5:03 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <1187099169.306866.262...@b79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, > > Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > Punishment for having 5 difficult to oust decks in the final? > > They aren't all difficult to oust, likely. They have been at final tables I've seen time out. The norm, IME, is that at least one aggressive deck makes the final and, well, aggresses all over their prey. Either they oust their prey or get ousted because they overextended. In either event, the whole table has to react, trying to get a VP of their own to win. But sometimes abnormal things happen. > There just needs to be people > who are willing to try and oust or lose, rather than have a lot of > people who are willing to sit on their hands to try and survive. This is most people I know. Regardless of the odd incentives. > If you > end up in no worse situation ousted than you would in a 5 way tie, there > is a lot more incentive to go for the lunge. > > Again, only 1 person has that advantage. The others have the incentive > > you speak of. So why isn't it happening already? > > 'Cause 5th seed has incentive to simply not get ousted and 1st seed has > incentive to see the table time out with zero ousts. Which creates a > weird game dynamic. If everyone was at base zero at the start of the > final, everyone would have maximum incentive to try and oust their prey. No. 5th seed has an incentive to wait until there's 5 minutes left on the clock and self-oust in exchange for half the prizes. > > two way ties would suck too. Especially since that would be 2-2-1. > > I'm totally ok with a 2 way tie for victory. I'm not. witness1

Peter D Bakija wrote: > The only flaw that I can see with removing the preliminary standings > from the final outcome (i.e. no tiebreakers) is that once and a while, > when everyone is super lame, no one actually wins. Which works for > soccer :-) 2-2-1 means everyone is super lame?

On Aug 15, 8:46 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > The problem is that the highest seed has all the incentive in the world > to make sure the game ends with no one getting ousted, as they win if > the game does not change from how it started. Which means that if they > can finagle it, they can make deals and convince folks to do stuff in > the interest of stasis rather than forward momentum. Well none of the other folks can win without a VP so if they work with the top seed to avoid anyone else getting ousted then that's just bad play. However I think the point that the players in the final are (presumably) all good players is well made by Johannes. I'm sure part of the problem is that they don't make a lot of mistakes that get made in previous rounds with people leaving themselves vunerable to an oust or missing an oppurtunity to lunge etc... That is surely going to contribute to the number of timeouts. Perhaps adding an extra 30 minutes to the final to allow for this might be a less drastic change and result in less time outs. Simon

In article <Tgpwi.710$Oo....@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net>, LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote: > 2-2-1 means everyone is super lame? No--it means 2 people are super awsome. See, they *both* get to win! :-) Still, I'm totally ok with ties. If it means removing the weird dynamic provided by the current rules for the final. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <1187126772....@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>, witness1 <jwnew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > Punishment was your choice of words. You tell me. My use of the word "punishment" was in reference to a game where everyone sucks to the point that there is a 5 way tie at a time out. If they are "punished" by having a 5 way tie for sucking like that, well, so be it. > People already do try to oust folks in the time allotted in the name > of actually winning the game. Seriously. It happens all the time. So > leaving things the way they are makes sense to me. Then in the instances that you see most often, changing the rules makes no difference at all. But in instances where folks bog down and time out by virtual design, changing this likely fixes that. > This particular dynamic is the one that every finals table has ever > had. And it exists because we a) want to have a final table of VtES > where the best of the best play against each other for the tournament > win and we also b) strongly desire there to be a single winner => ties > must be broken, and we prefer that ties be broken in a manner that > rewards prior performance, as opposed to just rolling some dice. Why is it necessary to break ties? Why isn't "tie for first" sufficient? Split the prize, split the rating points. I'm unconvinced that "tie for first" isn't good enough when there is a tie for first. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <1187126525.8...@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>, witness1 <jwnew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > It's not a necessity, any more than holding a tournament is a > necessity. But I'm wondering what the point of calling it a tournament > is if you're not going to have a winner. Most of the time, you will have a winner. Sometimes, you get a tie. It works for soccer, the most popular game in the world... [ quoted text not captured ]

Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: > "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > >> How is this a problem? > > The problem is that the highest seed has all the incentive in the > world to make sure the game ends with no one getting ousted, as they > win if the game does not change from how it started. Which means that > if they can finagle it, they can make deals and convince folks to do > stuff in the interest of stasis rather than forward momentum. You have got to be kidding me. You are basing your entire argument on saying that a deck which can stop cross-table ousts going into the finals as first seed is the problem? Oh, wait. That is what I already said. And since it hasn't been, and isn't likely to be, then it is moot. [ quoted text not captured ]

Johannes Walch schrieb: > One of the problems is, that there are cards that can turn the forward > momentum of another player (e.g your predator) in your own forward > momentum (e.g Deflection) and protect you at the same time. So actually > the best strategy to win a game is deflecting your pred until the right > moment comes and then make a move on your prey. This is actually even > worse because there are certain strategies (read clans) that dont have > access to those cards so they are most likely the dead end of the bleed. > It´s pretty interesting that out of the 15 finalists decks at the EC at > least 13 had bounce capabilites (I am not sure about Brian Moritz´s > biggies and Matt´s Imbued). I stand corrected: In fact Brian and Matt had them too, so that makes it 15/15 decks with bounce capabilities. Wow. Johannes Walch

In message <pdb6-6E4BBD.1...@news-server.stny.rr.com>, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> writes: >If this particular wackiness of the final round was removed, then all 5 >players would have the same incentive to oust folks as efficiently as >possible. Not exactly. In the prelims, you have this sort of incentive based on the fact that you really want a game win and more VPs so that you can get into the final, and choose where to sit etc. In the final, if I have 1 VP and everyone else has none, I win. So I don't have that much of an incentive to oust folks as efficiently as possible. I have an incentive to oust one person and then sit on my hands and help the table time out. I'm sure everyone's seen something like that happen, where one of 2-5 gets a VP, and then has no real incentive to do much else. So they can wheel and deal around the table, help out other people, vote down votes, or whatever. It's not slow play or stalling because the play is perfectly timely, but it's play designed to stop anyone else being ousted (unless it's the new prey). Game ends, 1.5, and 0.5 for the three left in. All done. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

In message <pdb6-8EA938.1...@news-server.stny.rr.com>, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> writes: >In article <1187126525.8...@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>, > witness1 <jwnew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: >> It's not a necessity, any more than holding a tournament is a >> necessity. But I'm wondering what the point of calling it a tournament >> is if you're not going to have a winner. > >Most of the time, you will have a winner. Sometimes, you get a tie. It >works for soccer, the most popular game in the world... Not, however, in tournaments, where winners are required. - Individual games in the English divisions (where there are around 40 games per team per year, one home and one away for each of the 20-ish clubs in the same division) can end in a win for either side, or a tie. (3 points for a win, 1 for a tie, 0 for lose. Ties on number of points are settled on goal difference.) - Some tournaments (particularly at the level of clubs, rather than countries) can have a home leg and an away leg, even at the level of quarter-finals and such. (These are the sort of tournaments that take place over the space of a year, with a couple of months between each round.) Other tournaments can also have replays because you have time to schedule them. - Many major international tournaments have a "group" stage, where the clubs/countries that qualified are put into a group of 4 or so clubs, who play against each other as above. The top two go through, or something similar. - Then you get into things like semi-finals of the World Cup, which have to be decided in order to get someone in the finals. Basically, any round in a knockout stage of a tournament that takes place over a short period of time doesn't have time to schedule new games for ties, you MUST have an outright winner. - The first way of resolving ties involves 30 minutes of extra time after the normal 90 minutes. Canonically, after the full 30 minutes, if one side is the winner, they win. However, there are also variations such as the golden goal (whichever side scores first in extra time wins, so the other team doesn't have chance to equalize) or the silver goal (if there's a winner after the first 15 minutes, they win, otherwise you change ends and play the second 15 minutes). - After that, you go to a penalty shoot-out. Five players on each side take penalties (put ball on ground in front of goal, must score goal from that kick). Whoever scores most wins. If that's tied, then you get to do things like sudden death penalties - if my team scores and yours doesn't on any given pair of penalties after the initial 5, my team wins. The point being, soccer is only happy with ties when a winner isn't "needed". [ quoted text not captured ]

> - The first way of resolving ties involves 30 minutes of extra time > after the normal 90 minutes. Canonically, after the full 30 > minutes, if one side is the winner, they win. However, there > are also variations such as the golden goal (whichever side > scores first in extra time wins, so the other team doesn't have > chance to equalize) or the silver goal (if there's a winner > after the first 15 minutes, they win, otherwise you change ends > and play the second 15 minutes). I like this. "Sudden Death"- when a finals goes to time with a tie for the GW, do not end the game. All non-tied methuselah's are eliminated with no pool or VPs awarded for them. Next player to score any VP's (including withdrawing) is declared the winner. What do you think? Comments Welcome, Norman S. Brown, Jr XZealot Archon of the Swamp

On Aug 14, 5:58 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <1187126772.949405.31...@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>, > > witness1 <jwnewqu...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > > Punishment was your choice of words. You tell me. > > My use of the word "punishment" was in reference to a game where > everyone sucks to the point that there is a 5 way tie at a time out. If > they are "punished" by having a 5 way tie for sucking like that, well, > so be it. You don't get to the finals by sucking. > > People already do try to oust folks in the time allotted in the name > > of actually winning the game. Seriously. It happens all the time. So > > leaving things the way they are makes sense to me. > > Then in the instances that you see most often, changing the rules makes > no difference at all. But in instances where folks bog down and time out > by virtual design, changing this likely fixes that. Except when, regardless of trying as hard as they can to oust their prey, no one can get an oust on their own. This is what I've actually seen. > > This particular dynamic is the one that every finals table has ever > > had. And it exists because we a) want to have a final table of VtES > > where the best of the best play against each other for the tournament > > win and we also b) strongly desire there to be a single winner => ties > > must be broken, and we prefer that ties be broken in a manner that > > rewards prior performance, as opposed to just rolling some dice. > > Why is it necessary to break ties? Why isn't "tie for first" sufficient? > Split the prize, split the rating points. Because a) If you don't break ties, you don't have a tournament winner. Which, IMO, defeats the point of bothering to have a tournament. The point of a tournament is to declare a winner. b) If you're splitting the ratings points and prizes in the event of a tie, several someones at the table still have incentive to timeout rather than push forward and risk being ousted. You're just changing who. > I'm unconvinced that "tie for first" isn't good enough when there is a > tie for first. Ties eliminate the point of bothering with tournaments at all. witness1

On 14 aug, 23:03, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <1187099169.306866.262...@b79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, > > Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > Punishment for having 5 difficult to oust decks in the final? > > They aren't all difficult to oust, likely. There just needs to be people > who are willing to try and oust or lose, rather than have a lot of > people who are willing to sit on their hands to try and survive. If you > end up in no worse situation ousted than you would in a 5 way tie, there > is a lot more incentive to go for the lunge. If a first seeder has the power to keep the whole table from ousting anybody: that's good play for him. And very difficult to do too. In my eyes: he has won. Either by skill or by the stupidity of the other finalists. He won. > > > Again, only 1 person has that advantage. The others have the incentive > > you speak of. So why isn't it happening already? > > 'Cause 5th seed has incentive to simply not get ousted and 1st seed has > incentive to see the table time out with zero ousts. Which creates a > weird game dynamic. If everyone was at base zero at the start of the > final, everyone would have maximum incentive to try and oust their prey. > > > two way ties would suck too. Especially since that would be 2-2-1. > > I'm totally ok with a 2 way tie for victory. I'm not. 1 tournament = 1 winner. And the parallel you draw with soccer might be an apt one, but not in the way you think it is. A soccer game can end in a draw. A soccer tournament final can never end in a draw. Again: 1 tournament = 1 winner. Show me a game that doesn't use this rule....

On 14 aug, 22:34, "Tetragrammaton" <nos...@none.com> wrote: > Kevin M. wrote: > > Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > >> I'd much rather see a system that encourages *everyone* at the table > >> to do their best to actually and legitimately win the table by > >> ousting folks, even if that means sometimes you get a 5 way tie for > >> loser. > > > The current system DOES encourage *everyone* at the table to do their > > best to actually and legitimately win the table by ousting folks. > > Not really - it encourages more a prize-splitting/kingmaking approach, > in the very moment that at the final sit two players confident enough with > each other. As long as prize maximization it's in the object of the final, > and it's > allowed as part of the dealing process. will you shut up about the prize splitting for a second. That's not what this thread is not about. I never saw it and never saw it reported. What influence does it really have do you think? > > > The second seed has the primary incentive to oust more preys than > > anyone else, with a secondary priority of making sure no one else > > does the same. > > No, usually the second has just the incentive to try to gang up heavily > against first seed , > while first do the same with him, but with a more stalling approach, > usually - > and so on. > Lots of table talk and players trying to stall the game to their own > advantage, as > soon as a prize deal can be set. Stalling is illegal. First seed can only talk if one of the other players listen. 'nuff said.

On 14 aug, 22:46, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <%Xnwi.60628$vS1.23...@newsfe16.phx>, > "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > > > How is this a problem? > > The problem is that the highest seed has all the incentive in the world > to make sure the game ends with no one getting ousted, as they win if > the game does not change from how it started. Which means that if they > can finagle it, they can make deals and convince folks to do stuff in > the interest of stasis rather than forward momentum. > > If this particular wackiness of the final round was removed, then all 5 > players would have the same incentive to oust folks as efficiently as > possible. As it stands, 4 players have incentive to oust, and 1 player, > who already probably has the best seat and likely the best deck at the > table, has the incentive to keep the game state from progressing. Which > is a weird dynamic to introduce into the finals, as it isn't the dynamc > in the preliminary rounds. And likely leads to a lot of weirdness. yes? A final is slighty different then the rest of the games. So? Once someone gets a VP the dynamic shifts. The one with the VP is now the temporary winner. > > The only flaw that I can see with removing the preliminary standings > from the final outcome (i.e. no tiebreakers) is that once and a while, > when everyone is super lame, no one actually wins. Which works for > soccer :-) Nope. Soccer games can be tied. Soccer tournaments are never tied.

> A soccer game can end in a draw. A soccer tournament final can never > end in a draw. Again: 1 tournament = 1 winner. Show me a game that > doesn't use this rule.... > > Apart from my agreeing with you on the real topic of this thread -- athletic games. Basically this would translate into having the eventual coin toss only determine seating-picking-order but not otherwise impacting the actual outcome of the tournament. Two players tied all through the tournament and tied in the finals would then share the same place. It's worth noting that tiebreakers are NOT used for places six and worse. I believe that this would theoretically have affected a NAC a couple of years ago with two players tied for first. As it was a coin toss prior to the finals decided the winner. Correct me if I am wrong. Sten -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

In article <1187180507.4...@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>, witness1 <jwnew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > You don't get to the finals by sucking. And yet a final that ends with a 5 way time out? That indicates that, in fact, you suck. > Except when, regardless of trying as hard as they can to oust their > prey, no one can get an oust on their own. This is what I've actually > seen. This happens incredibly rarely. Yes. I have seen it as well. But in, like, 1 game in 100. 5 way time outs in finals do not come from, in the vast majority of the time, everyone being at a systematic deadlock. It comes from people not wanting to get ousted, and so they take no calculated risks. David Tatu suggested in an e-mail (sorry if I'm outing you Dave, I just didn't want to take the credit for the idea :-) a reasonable idea, which is change the final game to have 1 winner (determined however you currently determine a winner) and then 4 finalists, regardless of the actual scores. So winning gives you an advantage (prizes, fame, glory, chicks, whatever) but moving from 5th place to 4th place has no impact at all. Rating points and prizes are exactly the same for places 5-2 in the tournament final. So the ratings score would look like: -Player A: First place, a lot of points. -Players B-E: Finalist, less points, but all the same points. -Players F+: Places 6+. This would not result in ties (saving us from my Marxist "It's ok if the tournament ends with a 5 way tie..." worldview), but would remove the incentive of players 2-5 to try and stay alive and increase their position in the final ("Well, I can't win, but I can move up to 3rd..."). Without that incentive, players 2-5 lose nothing at all by getting killed trying for the oust--coming in 5th is exactly the same as coming in 2nd. If 5th place and second place get you the exact same thing (same prizes, same rating points, same notation in the player registry), it ceases to be a good idea to try and just stay alive for the .5 time out VP instead of taking the less likely chance to oust someone. Strikes me as a far more brilliant idea than mine. > Because > a) If you don't break ties, you don't have a tournament winner. Which, > IMO, defeats the point of bothering to have a tournament. The point of > a tournament is to declare a winner. See, I think the point of a tournament is to play some good games. I'm not really concerned with declaring a winner, really. But that is me. And mostly irrelevant at this point. > Ties eliminate the point of bothering with tournaments at all. I don't think that is remotely true. But again, irrelevant now. Peter D Bakija pd...@lightlink.com http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html

In article <iyYXmy9o...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk>, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: > Not, however, in tournaments, where winners are required. Noted. This is what I get for being a sports ignorant geek who tries to use sports to prop up an argument... :-) [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <_xwwi.86826$dI1....@newsfe08.phx>, "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > You have got to be kidding me. You are basing your entire argument on > saying that a deck which can stop cross-table ousts going into the finals > as first seed is the problem? No. That is not what I am basing any of my argument on. I am not saying that this is a problem 'cause someone might be playing Aneke (who, btw, I am growing to hate more and more as time goes on...). That someone in the finals has a different, concrete incentive than everyone else, by design, is bad. That someone at the table has "if I can make the table time out with a 5 way tie, I win" as an incentive, is wonky. But that being said, irrelevant, as I like my new Tatu inspired plan better. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> schreef in bericht news:pdb6-C9C292.1...@news-server.stny.rr.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Indeed. No problem with that. > >> Because >> a) If you don't break ties, you don't have a tournament winner. Which, >> IMO, defeats the point of bothering to have a tournament. The point of >> a tournament is to declare a winner. > > See, I think the point of a tournament is to play some good games. I'm > not really concerned with declaring a winner, really. But that is me. > And mostly irrelevant at this point. > >> Ties eliminate the point of bothering with tournaments at all. > > I don't think that is remotely true. But again, irrelevant now. Of course it's true. If you don't need a winner, just come together and play sets of seperate games, without tallying the total results. Don't call it a tournement, though.

On 15 Aug, 16:56, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <1187180507.469873.155...@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>, > > witness1 <jwnewqu...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > > You don't get to the finals by sucking. > > And yet a final that ends with a 5 way time out? That indicates that, in > fact, you suck. Gah - I really disagree with this comment :o) seems very harsh to me. > > Except when, regardless of trying as hard as they can to oust their > > prey, no one can get an oust on their own. This is what I've actually > > seen. > > This happens incredibly rarely. Yes. I have seen it as well. But in, > like, 1 game in 100. 5 way time outs in finals do not come from, in the > vast majority of the time, everyone being at a systematic deadlock. It > comes from people not wanting to get ousted, and so they take no > calculated risks. More than that, I've seen it a fair few times. I do conceed that players are more cautious in finals, and probably need more sureties in a final than in a round or a casual game when going foreward.. thats not 'sucking' imo - just a symptom of the different lansdscape of a final. > David Tatu suggested in an e-mail (sorry if I'm outing you Dave, I just > didn't want to take the credit for the idea :-) a reasonable idea, which > is change the final game to have 1 winner (determined however you > currently determine a winner) and then 4 finalists, regardless of the > actual scores. So winning gives you an advantage (prizes, fame, glory, > chicks, whatever) but moving from 5th place to 4th place has no impact > at all. Rating points and prizes are exactly the same for places 5-2 in > the tournament final. So the ratings score would look like: > > -Player A: First place, a lot of points. > -Players B-E: Finalist, less points, but all the same points. > -Players F+: Places 6+. That is a farking grweat idea, nice and simple. > This would not result in ties (saving us from my Marxist "It's ok if the > tournament ends with a 5 way tie..." worldview), but would remove the > incentive of players 2-5 to try and stay alive and increase their > position in the final ("Well, I can't win, but I can move up to > 3rd..."). Without that incentive, players 2-5 lose nothing at all by > getting killed trying for the oust--coming in 5th is exactly the same as > coming in 2nd. > > If 5th place and second place get you the exact same thing (same prizes, > same rating points, same notation in the player registry), it ceases to > be a good idea to try and just stay alive for the .5 time out VP instead > of taking the less likely chance to oust someone. > > Strikes me as a far more brilliant idea than mine. Yup, agreed, your idea sucked :p > > Because > > a) If you don't break ties, you don't have a tournament winner. Which, > > IMO, defeats the point of bothering to have a tournament. The point of > > a tournament is to declare a winner. > > See, I think the point of a tournament is to play some good games. I'm > not really concerned with declaring a winner, really. But that is me. > And mostly irrelevant at this point. > > > Ties eliminate the point of bothering with tournaments at all. > > I don't think that is remotely true. But again, irrelevant now. I think he was exagerating, but IMO you do need a winner ina tourny :O) > Peter D Bakija Anthony

On Aug 15, 11:56 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <1187180507.469873.155...@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>, > > witness1 <jwnewqu...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > > You don't get to the finals by sucking. > > And yet a final that ends with a 5 way time out? That indicates that, in > fact, you suck. Surely, your steely tenacity is great. But I still endeavor to maintain that I do not, in fact, suck. Much. > > Except when, regardless of trying as hard as they can to oust their > > prey, no one can get an oust on their own. This is what I've actually > > seen. > > This happens incredibly rarely. Yes. I have seen it as well. But in, > like, 1 game in 100. 5 way time outs in finals do not come from, in the > vast majority of the time, everyone being at a systematic deadlock. It > comes from people not wanting to get ousted, and so they take no > calculated risks. It is somewhat rare. It is exacerbated when many defensive decks reach the finals, and when (due to the fact that you are now playing against the best of the best, and the entire tournament is on the line rather than just one preliminary GW), players play more cautiously and/or take a slightly longer amount of time considering their options. This adds up. It's also exacerbated when the top-seeded player, regardless of bleeding with every imbued he controls every turn, even in the face of constantly dropping in and out of incapacitated, can't seem to get through his prey's mild intercept/prevent/maneuver setup to even take the edge away from his prey. But he can recycle that damnable DI every turn to make sure nobody else gets a VP. > David Tatu suggested in an e-mail (sorry if I'm outing you Dave, I just > didn't want to take the credit for the idea :-) a reasonable idea, which > is change the final game to have 1 winner (determined however you > currently determine a winner) and then 4 finalists, regardless of the > actual scores. So winning gives you an advantage (prizes, fame, glory, > chicks, whatever) but moving from 5th place to 4th place has no impact > at all. Rating points and prizes are exactly the same for places 5-2 in > the tournament final. So the ratings score would look like: > > -Player A: First place, a lot of points. > -Players B-E: Finalist, less points, but all the same points. > -Players F+: Places 6+. > > This would not result in ties (saving us from my Marxist "It's ok if the > tournament ends with a 5 way tie..." worldview), but would remove the > incentive of players 2-5 to try and stay alive and increase their > position in the final ("Well, I can't win, but I can move up to > 3rd..."). Without that incentive, players 2-5 lose nothing at all by > getting killed trying for the oust--coming in 5th is exactly the same as > coming in 2nd. Sounds quite reasonable to me. I had been thinking along similar lines myself. I suspect that it won't actually have much impact on the number of games that timeout. But certainly reasonable. > If 5th place and second place get you the exact same thing (same prizes, > same rating points, same notation in the player registry), it ceases to > be a good idea to try and just stay alive for the .5 time out VP instead > of taking the less likely chance to oust someone. > > Strikes me as a far more brilliant idea than mine. Agreed. > > Because > > a) If you don't break ties, you don't have a tournament winner. Which, > > IMO, defeats the point of bothering to have a tournament. The point of > > a tournament is to declare a winner. > > See, I think the point of a tournament is to play some good games. I'm > not really concerned with declaring a winner, really. But that is me. > And mostly irrelevant at this point. I call that "weekly VTES". And I love it a lot. But I don't call it a tournament. witness1

Jeroen wrote: > On 14 aug, 22:34, "Tetragrammaton" <nos...@none.com> wrote: >> Kevin M. wrote: >>> Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: >>>> I'd much rather see a system that encourages *everyone* at the >>>> table to do their best to actually and legitimately win the table >>>> by ousting folks, even if that means sometimes you get a 5 way tie >>>> for loser. >> >>> The current system DOES encourage *everyone* at the table to do >>> their best to actually and legitimately win the table by ousting >>> folks. >> >> Not really - it encourages more a prize-splitting/kingmaking >> approach, >> in the very moment that at the final sit two players confident >> enough with each other. As long as prize maximization it's in the >> object of the final, and it's >> allowed as part of the dealing process. > > will you shut up about the prize splitting for a second. That's not > what this thread is not about. I never saw it and never saw it > reported. What influence does it really have do you think? >> I witnessed prize splitting in finals more than once, actually it's what players are eager to maximize once they know there's no too much chanches for them for "winning" the tournament. So i think it's just tournament experience, no need for you to shut up me on this. Prize splitting (in final), as lsj stated, it's in the best interest of players, even more in the very moment they think reasonably they can't "win" any longer. So, it becomes a part of the game - instead of trying to score "X" vps into they final, they're encouraged to get "X" prizes from a prize split - that can affect the final round, granted. >>> The second seed has the primary incentive to oust more preys than >>> anyone else, with a secondary priority of making sure no one else >>> does the same. >> >> No, usually the second has just the incentive to try to gang up >> heavily against first seed , >> while first do the same with him, but with a more stalling approach, >> usually - >> and so on. >> Lots of table talk and players trying to stall the game to their own >> advantage, as >> soon as a prize deal can be set. > > Stalling is illegal. First seed can only talk if one of the other > players listen. 'nuff said. Stalling is illegal ,trying to deal earnestly is not - in the very moment first (or anyone) has real prizes (and is willing) to offer, the table will likely spend some time trying the best set up for a prize split, a thing that i witnessed more than once in final. Emiliano

James Coupe wrote: > In message <pdb6-6E4BBD.1...@news-server.stny.rr.com>, > Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> writes: >> If this particular wackiness of the final round was removed, then >> all 5 players would have the same incentive to oust folks as >> efficiently as possible. > > Not exactly. > > In the prelims, you have this sort of incentive based on the fact that > you really want a game win and more VPs so that you can get into the > final, and choose where to sit etc. However, there are several cases in which players know they will get anyway into the final (for vps/gw already scored) when actually they have still to play the last preliminary round before the final one. So, in the last preliminary round there are several cases where it's mostly the PTW rule to make players go forward, and not the incentive the player could have (apart from choosing where to sit at the final table) for "getting into the final round", because they know they will be in the final anyway. > > In the final, if I have 1 VP and everyone else has none, I win. So I > don't have that much of an incentive to oust folks as efficiently as > possible. I have an incentive to oust one person and then sit on my > hands and help the table time out. > > I'm sure everyone's seen something like that happen, where one of 2-5 > gets a VP, and then has no real incentive to do much else. So they > can wheel and deal around the table, help out other people, vote down > votes, or whatever. It's not slow play or stalling because the play > is perfectly timely, but it's play designed to stop anyone else being > ousted (unless it's the new prey). Game ends, 1.5, and 0.5 for the > three left in. All done. Setting up an incentive in the form of an additional prize for the finalist that, actually, "wins" the final round (per PTW, intended as it is in the preliminary rounds) seems to me the best option here to avoid such cases "stopping other from being ousted". I'm waiting for LSJ opinion about this. Emiliano

On 14 Aug., 14:42, Wolflord <jo.herroe...@sca.com> wrote: > BTW: 1 question for Joscha: how do you define a "waiting deck"? > My answer would be "One that plays Blood Dolls", but then I've > suffered from Luk de Ron's "Turn 2 speedbump" tech years ago.. For me a waiting deck is played best defensively, waiting for the right moment to attack with a decent amount of power. For that a waiting deck has to have a good defense against the most played offense of a given metagame. Look at Ruben's Edward Vignes Deck for such a deck. But what I wanted to say is if you play a waiting game in the final and you are not first seed you don't win (often). As many finals time out recently it seems to me that many players are satisfied with the status quo being second or third instead of going forward no matter the cost just to try to be the winner. Erol did in the EC final and lost. But at least he tried and didn't sit around doing nothing else than throwing Deflections and DIs.

In article <1187197653....@b79g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, witness1 <jwnew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > Surely, your steely tenacity is great. But I still endeavor to > maintain that I do not, in fact, suck. Much. I'm not saying *you* suck. I don't even know where that came from. I was simply pointing out that the vast majority of the time that a final game times out as a 5 way tie, it is the result of general suckage, and not a perfect storm of gridlock. > Sounds quite reasonable to me. I had been thinking along similar lines > myself. I suspect that it won't actually have much impact on the > number of games that timeout. But certainly reasonable. It might--as noted by Matt recently, a great deal of timeouts would be avoided if folks in the bottom rung in the finals just sucked it up and tried to go forward and risk getting ousted in exchange for the chance of ousting their prey rather than playing safe and trying to move from 5th place to 3rd place. > I call that "weekly VTES". And I love it a lot. But I don't call it a > tournament. You don't give out prizes and rating points at "weekly VTES". I'm not saying you shouldn't have a winner. I'm just ok with sometimes there being 2 winners. Or in the case of a lot of suckage, 5 winners. [ quoted text not captured ]

Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: > "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote: >> You have got to be kidding me. You are basing your entire argument >> on saying that a deck which can stop cross-table ousts going into >> the finals as first seed is the problem? > > No. That is not what I am basing any of my argument on. I am not > saying that this is a problem 'cause someone might be playing Aneke > (who, btw, I am growing to hate more and more as time goes on...). > > That someone in the finals has a different, concrete incentive than > everyone else, by design, is bad. That someone at the table has "if I > can make the table time out with a 5 way tie, I win" as an incentive, > is wonky. And what *I* am saying is that that wonkiness is *irrelevant*, since <insert what I have said twice already>. Yes, it is wonkiness. I agree. But irrelevant wonkiness. > But that being said, irrelevant, as I like my new Tatu inspired plan > better. Good to hear. :) Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier

Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] This is SUCH a good idea that I would suggest to LSJ that we SERIOUSLY consider implementing it asap, as a tournament rules change that should have happened with PTW and/or all-deals-are-off-when-only-two-players-remain, but was just missed. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 11, 7:06 pm, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > Howdy, > > Without going into much detail well let's just say that after each > EC usually comes a time of contemplation for me on the time limits > and the implications they have on the game, especially the finals. > Yeah. Continental Championships that don't go to time seem to be exception rather than the rule. I too think this is unfortunate and have long been an advocate of 2.5 time limit for finals - I advocate it for all finals games, but I think it would be especially beneficial for "big" events and Championships. To get into the finals at a big tournaments the players (and their decks) have already demonstrated their ability to get game wins within 2 hours. Yet, we put these top players together at the finals table and it times out. Why? In the preliminary rounds you're all implicitly competing with all the other tables. You either get a GW or you don't. If the table times out without a GW you all lose. In the finals, there is always 1 player who is winning, and so has an incentive to maintain the status quo, and is happy to see slow play, extended negotiations, and a time-out. Also, in a high-stakes finals, nobody really wants to stick their neck out. There's more incentive for canny players to keep their heads down and see how the table develops. So, experience tells us that these factors have a tendency to extend the finals game length beyond the 2 hour mark. I would like to see the finals have a 2.5 hour length and see if it didn't lead to more finals ending in a GW. This doesn't require any kind of rules change. I'm not really sure why event organizers seem so reluctant to do it. I expect it's mostly habit. People, have argued that with a longer finals time limit, we can just expect players to talk more and that game will still time out - it'll just take longer. Sometimes we'll still get the stalemate, but I would guess most of the time the extra time will be enough to finish the game. My own theory (based on not much evidence) is that a longer time limit will actually lead to faster play. When there's 10 minutes left players can start to think about how to hang in there, and slow things down. If there's still 40 minutes left, at the 100 minute mark, hanging in there is, often, not a option. You have to figure out how to win. -Ben Swainbank

Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in news:pdb6-C9C292.1...@news-server.stny.rr.com: > David Tatu suggested in an e-mail (sorry if I'm outing you Dave, I > just didn't want to take the credit for the idea :-) a reasonable > idea, which is change the final game to have 1 winner (determined > however you currently determine a winner) and then 4 finalists, > regardless of the actual scores. So winning gives you an advantage > (prizes, fame, glory, chicks, whatever) but moving from 5th place to > 4th place has no impact at all. Rating points and prizes are exactly > the same for places 5-2 in the tournament final. So the ratings score > would look like: > > -Player A: First place, a lot of points. > -Players B-E: Finalist, less points, but all the same points. > -Players F+: Places 6+. > > This would not result in ties (saving us from my Marxist "It's ok if > the tournament ends with a 5 way tie..." worldview), but would remove > the incentive of players 2-5 to try and stay alive and increase their > position in the final ("Well, I can't win, but I can move up to > 3rd..."). Without that incentive, players 2-5 lose nothing at all by > getting killed trying for the oust--coming in 5th is exactly the same > as coming in 2nd. > > If 5th place and second place get you the exact same thing (same > prizes, same rating points, same notation in the player registry), it > ceases to be a good idea to try and just stay alive for the .5 time > out VP instead of taking the less likely chance to oust someone. > > Strikes me as a far more brilliant idea than mine. > I'll second ...err, fifth? this idea. A very nice solution. One thing I do see as a possibility, is that since a player cannot offer an improved standing in the finals as a negotiative element (being the recipient of a minority VP deal become meaningless in terms of standing), only prizes would remain as a negotiative tool. I think that would lower negotiations overall and speed up the resolution of tables, but negotiating with the prize pool might see an increase (if that happens to bother you, I'm undecided on that topic, myself)... DZ

On Aug 15, 4:59 pm, atomweaver <atomwea...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote innews:pdb6-C9C292.1...@news-server.stny.rr.com: [ quoted text not captured ] A similar (possibly better) idea would be to keep some staggered ratings points for 2nd-5th, but tie some portion of "bonus" ratings points to (full) VPs earned in the finals (and possibly the GW as defined for preliminary rounds). That way there's still always a single winner to declare the Ultimate Champion and give indivisible prizes (like artwork) to, but he gets more ratings points by ousting those below him. This also rewards those who manage to place 2nd (or 3rd even) by dint of earning their own VPs, even if they fail to ultimately win. Seems like that should alleviate some of the "wonkiness". First seed still has some incentive to deny VPs crosstable if he can't oust his prey, but has some counterincentive to go forward as well. witness1

In article <G%Iwi.87576$dI1....@newsfe08.phx>, "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > This is SUCH a good idea that I would suggest to LSJ that we SERIOUSLY > consider implementing it asap, as a tournament rules change that should > have happened with PTW and/or > all-deals-are-off-when-only-two-players-remain, but was just missed. Now that we have met again, only this time as *allies*!, I'm very pro this idea as a good, solid, not vastly damaging, non Marxist tweak to the tournament rules that would likely help games move to completion quicker and have very little negative impact on, well, anything. To be clear, again, the idea is to set up the tournament rules such that in the final game, you get a winner by virtue of VPs in the final and then preliminary seeding to break ties as always, but places 2-5 are all tied, i.e. you get the same prizes and tournament points for 5th place as you do 3rd place. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <1187178629.7...@x35g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, XZealot <xze...@cox.net> writes: >"Sudden Death"- when a finals goes to time with a tie for the GW, do >not end the game. All non-tied methuselah's are eliminated with no >pool or VPs awarded for them. Next player to score any VP's >(including withdrawing) is declared the winner. > >What do you think? It has a certain appeal. However, I'd probably also want to add (or, at least, playtest) something like: The "less than a full hand" requirements for withdrawal are dropped. Any Methuselah can declare a withdrawal attempt during her untap phase. If the game has ground to a halt because both Methuselahs are having trouble doing anything to each other (or aren't inclined to try for fear of screwing up), this should help them jog the game along a little. And the 0.5 VP will secure a win. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR. EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

> If the game has ground to a halt because both Methuselahs are having > trouble doing anything to each other (or aren't inclined to try for fear > of screwing up), this should help them jog the game along a little. And > the 0.5 VP will secure a win. Can you please explain how getting 0.5 VP for successfully withdrawing secures a win at a table where all the 4 remaining players will also get 0.5 VP when the table times out? I am probably missing something here. -- -bur

[ quoted text not captured ] In the final round top seed player wins anyway in case of a table tie.

[ quoted text not captured ] Why would the top seed player leave the table via a withdrawal? This way he will lose control on who gets how many points. For him it's clearly better to stay at the table and continue to do nothing. For the other players - withdrawing does not give them anything they don't already have by staying on the table until the end. Or do you assume someone might be able to withdraw successfully (not loosing pool), but not be able to survive until time-out with at least part of his library still available? -- -bur

On Aug 16, 12:00 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > In article <G%Iwi.87576$dI1.14...@newsfe08.phx>, > "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > > > This is SUCH a good idea that I would suggest to LSJ that we SERIOUSLY > > consider implementing it asap, as a tournament rules change that should > > have happened with PTW and/or > > all-deals-are-off-when-only-two-players-remain, but was just missed. > > Now that we have met again, only this time as *allies*!, I'm very pro > this idea as a good, solid, not vastly damaging, non Marxist tweak to > the tournament rules that would likely help games move to completion > quicker and have very little negative impact on, well, anything. > > To be clear, again, the idea is to set up the tournament rules such that > in the final game, you get a winner by virtue of VPs in the final and > then preliminary seeding to break ties as always, but places 2-5 are all > tied, i.e. you get the same prizes and tournament points for 5th place > as you do 3rd place. > > Peter D Bakija > p...@lightlink.comhttp://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html This makes great sense. Would ad an addendum of not allowing Prize splitting, as pointed out above, it may lead to interminable negotiations, which is kind of what we are trying to avoid here

[ quoted text not captured ] This is a RULES VARIANT. It is sudden death, a player withdraws AFTER TIME HAS EXPIRED which earns him .5 victory points. This immediately ends the game with the player who withdrew being declared the winner. Comments Welcome, Norman S. Brown, Jr XZealot Archon of the Swamp

[ quoted text not captured ] This is a variant for tournament play where a tied finals goes to "Sudden Death" rather than checking earlier standings to determine tie- breaking. No other tournaments, that I can think of, in the world use previous games performances against other players to determine the winner of a tie in the finals. This is a good way to resolve a "tie" at the finals table whether it be 1-1-.5. or 2-2-1. The main problem is what if one of the players who has tied is already ousted. Think of a solution for that problem.... [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 16, 4:04 am, "I. M. Bur" <bural...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> If the game has ground to a halt because both Methuselahs are having > > >> trouble doing anything to each other (or aren't inclined to try for > > >> fear of screwing up), this should help them jog the game along a > > >> little. And the 0.5 VP will secure a win. > > > > Can you please explain how getting 0.5 VP for successfully withdrawing > > > secures a win at a table where all the 4 remaining players will also > > > get 0.5 VP when the table times out? I am probably missing something > > > here. > > > In the final round top seed player wins anyway in case of a table tie. > > Why would the top seed player leave the table via a withdrawal? This > way he will lose control on who gets how many points. For him it's > clearly better to stay at the table and continue to do nothing. Apparently, reading is a vastly overrated skill. > For the other players - withdrawing does not give them anything they > don't already have by staying on the table until the end. It gives them the GW under Sudden Death rules. > Or do you assume someone might be able to withdraw successfully (not > loosing pool), but not be able to survive until time-out with at least > part of his library still available? Thanks for derailing the thread, but my comment was about implementing a Sudden Death rules set for the Finals of all tournaments.

On Aug 15, 11:56 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > > David Tatu suggested in an e-mail (sorry if I'm outing you Dave, I just > didn't want to take the credit for the idea :-) a reasonable idea, which > is change the final game to have 1 winner (determined however you > currently determine a winner) and then 4 finalists, regardless of the > actual scores. So winning gives you an advantage (prizes, fame, glory, > chicks, whatever) but moving from 5th place to 4th place has no impact > at all. Rating points and prizes are exactly the same for places 5-2 in > the tournament final. So the ratings score would look like: > > -Player A: First place, a lot of points. > -Players B-E: Finalist, less points, but all the same points. > -Players F+: Places 6+. > > This would not result in ties (saving us from my Marxist "It's ok if the > tournament ends with a 5 way tie..." worldview), but would remove the > incentive of players 2-5 to try and stay alive and increase their > position in the final ("Well, I can't win, but I can move up to > 3rd..."). Without that incentive, players 2-5 lose nothing at all by > getting killed trying for the oust--coming in 5th is exactly the same as > coming in 2nd. > The problem with this solution is that it assumes championship tables are timing out because (somehow) the players lack the incentives to win. You assumption seems to be that if you make winning better (or not winning worse) players will try harder to win the championship finals. I don't think that's the problem. The NAC ended in a timeout in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. The EC shows similar results. I see two possible conclusions: 1) The top players at the NAC, year after year, don't know how to, or don't want to, finish the game in under 2 hours. or 2) The predictable dynamics of a continental championship means the game (which can usually be finished in less the 2 hours) will take a little longer to finish. -Ben Swainbank

[ quoted text not captured ] Ironically, the 2002 finals ended with a concession once down to 2 players because of Jarred's need to catch his plan. Time still influenced the finals...though in a slightly different way that year. > I see two possible conclusions: > > 1) The top players at the NAC, year after year, don't know how to, or > don't want to, finish the game in under 2 hours. > > or > > 2) The predictable dynamics of a continental championship means the > game (which can usually be finished in less the 2 hours) will take a > little longer to finish. Probably this one. Though, it seems to me that a lot of players reach the finals by letting everybody else at the table play very defensively and cautiously while opponents weaken themselves--then they go in for the kill. If enough players reach the finals with that play style there might be a tendency for all of them to slowly build- up while they wait for everybody else to do something stupid. -Robert

Peter D Bakija a écrit : > In article <1187053245....@l22g2000prc.googlegroups.com>, > Wookie813 <veknp...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > >>Erasing previous standings for the final is a great idea. > > > I think so as well. The only negative I can see is that you could end up > with a tie. Which strikes me as a reasonable result when everyone sucks > so much that the game ends in a 5 way time out. Why imply that, if the game times out, then everyone must suck ? Can't it be good strategy to help and rescue another player to stop his pred from a sure sweep ? :)

Peter D Bakija a écrit : > > If everyone is too lame to oust their prey and win, and the game times > out with a 5 way tie? I'm *totally* ok wih everyone being declared the > loser. again, why use the word lame ? don't you think that the decks that make it to the final have some ways of surviving longer than expected, making them hard to crush so easily ? Don't you think that players will prevent you to oust your prey since it's the final and every VP counts ? Even strong cross table alliance can still fail due to a single failed move or a well timed D.I. ... I think, if there's a 5P tie, it's ok to give the game to the one who had the greatest standing before entering the finals since his deck performed better than the others in the other rounds -which means on the overall tournament.

In message <1187263634....@i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, [ quoted text not captured ] I wholeheartedly endorse this event/product/post. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <46c48705$0$3342$79c1...@nan-newsreader-07.noos.net>, reyda <true_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Why imply that, if the game times out, then everyone must suck ? Can't > it be good strategy to help and rescue another player to stop his pred > from a sure sweep ? :) 'Cause if a game times out in 2 hours with 5 players still in the game? It is most likely due to general suckage. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] Yes. I think we've seen some of that and probably will continue to see it. And given the caliber of players that tend to make the NAC finals, the wait for something stupid can turn into a much longer wait. I also think it's smart play. The "first mover" does tend to get stomped on. I would say we can file that behavior under "the predictable dynamics of a continental championship means the game will take a little longer to finish." - Ben Swainbank

Ben Swainbank <bswai...@hotmail.com> wrote in news:1187278863....@r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com: > The NAC ended in a timeout in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. The EC > shows similar results. > > I see two possible conclusions: > > 1) The top players at the NAC, year after year, don't know how to, or > don't want to, finish the game in under 2 hours. > > or > > 2) The predictable dynamics of a continental championship means the > game (which can usually be finished in less the 2 hours) will take a > little longer to finish. > There's some truth to this. Much of this game is about recognizing and capitalizing upon other people's game play mistakes. In a finals (any finals, but especially CCs), you've basically gone through two or three rounds of finding the players who habitually make the fewest mistakes, and so there are fewer opportunities on a finals table upon which to capitalize. Again, this must be _especially_ true for the high caliber play in CCs. It stands to reason that some more time will be needed to resolve that kind of table... DZ AW

Peter D Bakija a écrit : > In article <46c48705$0$3342$79c1...@nan-newsreader-07.noos.net>, > reyda <true_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > >>Why imply that, if the game times out, then everyone must suck ? Can't >>it be good strategy to help and rescue another player to stop his pred >>from a sure sweep ? :) > > > 'Cause if a game times out in 2 hours with 5 players still in the game? > It is most likely due to general suckage. so you mean those 5 players who proved to be better than the, say, 30 others this day in this particular tournament are dummies ? I doubt the answer is that easy ! :)

On Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:23:01 -0700, wumpus <wum...@comcast.net> wrote: >> 2. As players chooses seats in the finals, the higher ranked players >> from the preliminary rounds can get information about the decks who >> have already chosen seats.* > >> * This is the tricky part. For smaller tournaments, the amount of >> information is very small. For larger tournaments, there are a number >> of options. For example: >> A. Monocle of Clarity questions about the deck >> B. Examining parts of the decklist >> C. Revealing random cards of the deck. > > This seems like a nifty idea by itself. The only real seeding > benefits are choosing your seat and tiebreaking. At a large > tournament, or if you happen to be at slow-ish tables, you totally > lose out on the former benefit if you don't know much/anything about > the other finalists' decks. The idea is rather cool. A possible issue I see is that it would influence deck construction in a quirky way. Like, splashing in an Immortal Grapple when you don't play combat at all or something to be able to respond with yes to some questions. Interesting point, though, 4th seed has all the incentive to ask 5th seed a misleading question (has no choice upon the information). Though most players have good info on their adversaries' decks anyway, either due to scouting, information networking, or other means. While it is not desirable from a sportsmanship point of view to allow players to gather information about other players decks, it is probably inevitable regardless of event size*, so it can be assumed that all players have a fairly good idea of the other players' decks. * It would be interesting to hypothesize the size of event it would take to prevent / significantly reduce information gathering. I think above 40 or so tables players will not have access to good information in the finals table, except by accident. We'll need to experiment with that... :) -- Regards, Daneel

Kevin M. a écrit : [ quoted text not captured ] Is it such a good idea ? with this system, next time i get enough VP for the final, i would just drop the tournament to have a beer and a girl, and let someone else play the last game since, no matter the efforts i would do in the final, i certainly cannot finish first ! you are complaining that players are not combative enough, and then you deprive them of the last and better fight of the tourney ! don't tell me there is no contradiction here !! :)

witness1 a écrit : > On Aug 14, 6:48 am, Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > If you want to stop games from going to time, wait until 5 minutes are > left on the clock. Then offer to oust yourself in exchange for a prize > split. I guarantee that final tables will start speeding up if this > happens even a few times. > > witness1 do you realize that some people will break this deal just for the sake of it ? :p

preac...@gmx.at a écrit : > On 14 Aug., 09:29, Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > >>On 13 aug, 23:42, Johannes Walch <johannes.wa...@vekn.de> wrote:> Peter D Bakija schrieb: >> >> >>>>I know this has been brought up before, but isn't the simple answer, >>>>rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" >>>>from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th >>>>place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you >>>>actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? >> >>>I suggested it a few weeks ago. >>>Most people were laughing. >>>I still think it is a good idea. >> >>Still not a good idea. >> >>1. a tournement needs a winner. So there is a need for tiebreakers. In >>your system there is none. > > > A poster already responded to the tie with a crypt-draw. If there is a > tie, decide it randomly. The crypt-draw seems as good as a die-roll. > Arika or not. Why would you want to introduce more frickin' random stuff in this game ? Losing because you play midcap versus a bunch of princes and justicars would certainly be ultra unfair :/

[ quoted text not captured ] So? If I'm 5th seed, I'm still 5th place when I self-oust. No loss, possibility of gain. Definitely kicks people in their complacency. witness1.

reyda <true_...@hotmail.com> wrote in news:46c4a8fd$0$3598$79c14f64@nan- newsreader-07.noos.net: > Is it such a good idea ? > with this system, next time i get enough VP for the final, i would just > drop the tournament to have a beer and a girl, and let someone else > play the last game since, no matter the efforts i would do in the final, > i certainly cannot finish first ! > If you've qualified as a finalist, why is it that you "certainly cannot finish first"..? DaveZ

atomweaver a écrit : [ quoted text not captured ] ok, my mistake : i realize i misread the thing and thought that the 'top' player was determined at the end of the preliminary round. the system where one ends 'winner' and all the others end 'finalists' seems cool but it opens a door to abusive prize splitting... And it does not prevent ties from happening :/ beside this, being second in a tournament is way cooler than being just "finalist" ;)

In article <46c4a8fd$0$3598$79c1...@nan-newsreader-07.noos.net>, reyda <true_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Is it such a good idea ? > with this system, next time i get enough VP for the final, i would just > drop the tournament to have a beer and a girl, and let someone else > play the last game since, no matter the efforts i would do in the final, > i certainly cannot finish first ! A) Why can you certainly not finish first? B) Being a finalist in the final round (which is how the proposed idea works) gets you more of whatever than being a non finalist. You get more rating points and possibly prizes. If you drop out of the finals, you get fewer rating points and no prizes. And still, no potential to win. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <46c4a651$0$3601$79c1...@nan-newsreader-07.noos.net>, reyda <true_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > so you mean those 5 players who proved to be better than the, say, 30 > others this day in this particular tournament are dummies ? I doubt the > answer is that easy ! :) Not, it is not that they are dummies. It is that in 2 hours, every single one of them is incapable of ousting anyone. Once and a while, it will be because of a perfect lockdown, where everyone is sitting in the exact wrong seat, and everyone is incapable of any forward momentum at all. A small once and a while. The rest of the time, it will be because everyone is being too conservative and people are unwilling to take a risky lunge where you might oust your prey but you might fail and get ousted. As with the current system, the .5VP you get by not being ousted is better than the 0VP you get for trying something risky and dying. This is general suckage. If you remove the negative incentive to try something risky, more people try things that are risky. [ quoted text not captured ]

I have some experienced in finals and my point of view is this. The time limite probleme in final is not a probleme. The probleme are in the players. In Switzerland to train to final we do frendly game in final situation. Each player have a place (1st / 2gd etc) and we use all the same rule. Every time we do this with player how never attendet to final the game will time out. But after the segond game it's differrent. player understand the way to play in a "final" situation and games become really interesting. And just to correct somthing I was in the 3 finas. 1/ 3 dead befor time out 2/ Time out 3/ one dead...

reyda <true_...@hotmail.com> wrote in news:46c4b64b$0$12209$79c1...@nan-newsreader-05.noos.net: > ok, my mistake : i realize i misread the thing and thought that the > 'top' player was determined at the end of the preliminary round. > NP > the system where one ends 'winner' and all the others end 'finalists' > seems cool but it opens a door to abusive prize splitting... And it > does not prevent ties from happening :/ > > beside this, being second in a tournament is way cooler than being > just "finalist" ;) Meh. Almost still only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades ;-) DZ

On Aug 16, 11:45 pm, Olivier_PEREZ <olivier.eni...@gmail.com> wrote: > I have some experienced in finals and my point of view is this. > > 1/ 3 dead befor time out > 2/ Time out > 3/ one dead... Look, I realise this is an "English is a foreign language" problem, and I have no issue making allowances for that, but man, I gotta ask what this means. I really am stumped...

[ quoted text not captured ] one finals game he played in, 3 people were ousted, and then the game went to time. in another finals game, it timed out with no ousts, for 0.5vps for everyone. in yet another finals game, one person was ousted, and the the game went to time. that's how I read it. -- salem (replace 'hotmail' with 'yahoo' to email)

On Aug 16, 8:31 am, XZealot wrote: > This is a variant for tournament play where a tied finals goes to > "Sudden Death" rather than checking earlier standings to determine tie- > breaking. No other tournaments, that I can think of, in the world use > previous games performances against other players to determine the > winner of a tie in the finals. This is a good way to resolve a "tie" > at the finals table whether it be 1-1-.5. or 2-2-1. I like your idea very much. I had another one that might solve the problem below: > The main problem is what if one of the players who has tied is already > ousted. Think of a solution for that problem.... What if, instead of dropping all the non-tied players after two hours, we eliminated only the current last-seeded player? For example, if no VPs have been won after 2h, the fifth seeded player goes. If two people are tied with 1 VP, the third one remaining goes. (Those are the two ways to have a tie after 2h, unless I'm missing something). The VP from the eliminated player could be lost, or awarded to the player who scores next. I like this idea for two reasons. First, if the 5th seeded didn't do anything for two hours (either beause he couldn't or didn't want to), I'm fine with them going out at this point. Second, with a player less, there's a good chance that the table might collapse and get played out to the end - especially if there's an extra VP in the air for grabbing. I didn't think of it as a sudden death format before, but that's what it is on practice. Abraço, Luiz Mello Brazil VTES NC

On Aug 14, 12:29 am, Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > rather than making the finals longer, to remove all "previous standings" > > > from the finals, so that in the case of a 5 way tie, everyone is a 5th > > > place loser? (i.e. to win the final, and as such, the tournament, you > > > actually have to win the final game, not just not lose the final game)? > > > Still not a good idea. > > 1. a tournement needs a winner. Sure. Preferably one that plays to win though, not to tie. > So there is a need for tiebreakers. In > your system there is none. Its up to the players to provide those. > 2. The one that came in first should IMO have an advantage in the > finals. > They do. Advantageous seating. If we truly want to measure performance over an entire tournament and use that as a determining stick, then elimiante the final and have another open round with all players involved instead. > The best thing, obviously, would be a much needed change in metagame > away from defensive play. But ATM the cards favour defensive play, imo. Or simply enforce the play to win rule, by not rewarding timouts. IE: no .5 vp and no 'resting on your laurels' reward in the final game. G

Here's a crazy thought: Why not just make the next series of important euro/US tourneys a 2.5 hr time limit and see how it works? Instead of endlessly debating back and forth about what factors are to blame, introducing new [and flawed imo] victory conditions for finals, etc, why not just try the simplest solution first? We use 2.5 hrs for finals tables in the Aus Nats. In all the time we've been running the Nationals, none of our finals games have timed out as far as I recall. I don't understand how this is a 150+ post debate. Will the world as we know it end if you make your finals 2.5 hours?

[ quoted text not captured ] When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... Time limit is an intersting part of the game. The 5th player got nothing to loose, the 4th not much... it's there responsability to make thing's move.

nood...@iprimus.com.au wrote: > Here's a crazy thought: > > Why not just make the next series of important euro/US tourneys a 2.5 > hr time limit and see how it works? Instead of endlessly debating back > and forth about what factors are to blame, introducing new [and flawed > imo] victory conditions for finals, etc, why not just try the simplest > solution first? That was the recommendation that came out of the EC conversation, yes. (Well, actually, 3h, but the gist is the same).

> When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... > Time limit is an intersting part of the game. > The 5th player got nothing to loose, the 4th not much... it's there > responsability to make thing's move. STOP THE PRESS You build a deck to take advantage of the TIME LIMIT? How? Why? Surely, you can't be serious. Comments Welcome, Norman S. Brown, Jr XZealot Archon of the Swamp

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Olivier_PEREZ wrote: >> I don't understand how this is a 150+ post debate. Will the world as >> we know it end if you make your finals 2.5 hours? Of course not, but... > When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... > Time limit is an intersting part of the game. > The 5th player got nothing to loose, the 4th not much... it's there > responsability to make thing's move. Yeah. When 5 finalists sit and stare at each other stupidly for 2 hours, it's because somebody dropped the ball. Somebody didn't try to win. Has anyone ever heard of a finalist bleeding hard for 2 hours straight and being unable to oust a single prey? Can that happen? To put it another way, can anyone demonstrate the existence of an actual problem? I'm not seeing one. Oh yeah, and 8 hours of nonstop competative vtes is quite enough, thanks. Matt Morgan

On Aug 28, 8:48 am, "Matthew T. Morgan" <farq...@io.com> wrote: > On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Olivier_PEREZ wrote: > >> I don't understand how this is a 150+ post debate. Will the world as > >> we know it end if you make your finals 2.5 hours? > > Of course not, but... > > > When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... > > Time limit is an intersting part of the game. > > The 5th player got nothing to loose, the 4th not much... it's there > > responsability to make thing's move. > > Yeah. When 5 finalists sit and stare at each other stupidly for 2 hours, > it's because somebody dropped the ball. Somebody didn't try to win. Has > anyone ever heard of a finalist bleeding hard for 2 hours straight and > being unable to oust a single prey? Can that happen? Yes, it can happen. See also Taylor, Henry. witness1

On 28 aug, 14:13, XZealot <xzea...@cox.net> wrote: > > When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... > > Time limit is an intersting part of the game. > > STOP THE PRESS > > You build a deck to take advantage of the TIME LIMIT? > > How? Why? > > Surely, you can't be serious. As much as I know about Swiss Academy tactics: 1. Decksize should be as small as possible. Longer time limits may need larger decks. 2. Someone told me that they aim for a GW with 2.5 VP and a time-out, because that's easier to achieve. I'm not sure about the how or why.

[ quoted text not captured ] Well the why isn't that hard to figure out - you only have to make two ousts instead of three. Once this happens, if you can survive to time you have guaranteed a win. witness1

On Aug 28, 9:48 am, "Matthew T. Morgan" wrote: > On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Olivier_PEREZ wrote: > > When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... > > Time limit is an intersting part of the game. > > The 5th player got nothing to loose, the 4th not much... it's there > > responsability to make thing's move. > > Yeah. When 5 finalists sit and stare at each other stupidly for 2 hours, > it's because somebody dropped the ball. Somebody didn't try to win. While I fully agree with this, I still don't understand the concept of building a deck to take advantage of a 2h time limit, especially when we know that tournament organizers are entitled to hold tables with larger time limits, and final tables with no time limit at all. The only time limit consideration I make when building a tournament deck is to try and make sure that my deck is able to earn a GW in *less* than 2 hours, if things go my way. > Has > anyone ever heard of a finalist bleeding hard for 2 hours straight and > being unable to oust a single prey? Can that happen? I don't think so, and I rank among those who believe that the only problem with tournament finals as they stand is the lack of initiative from the players other than the 1st seeded one. > To put it another way, can anyone demonstrate the existence of an actual > problem? I'm not seeing one. Oh yeah, and 8 hours of nonstop competative > vtes is quite enough, thanks. Also agreed. Our local tournaments (except Qualifiers and State Championships) are all 2R+F, because we feel that 3r+F is kind of exhausting. I don't mind larger time limits for finals at all, but making VTES events even longer is a drawback, IMHO. Abraço, Luiz Mello

Matthew T. Morgan skrev: > > Yeah. When 5 finalists sit and stare at each other stupidly for 2 > hours, it's because somebody dropped the ball. Somebody didn't try to > win. Has anyone ever heard of a finalist bleeding hard for 2 hours > straight and being unable to oust a single prey? Can that happen? > Eh, yep. Happened to me once. NEC/DOM powerbleed. Hunting Arika and company M-Tap/vote/refill+Deflection. I DID oust players though :( I have also convinced my last remaining prey to concede a game once. Last meaning my beginning predator playing NEC/DOM powerbleed. When he gave up he'd successfully bled me for over 50 pool at which time I was down to a measly 110 pool. Sten -- More ramblings at http://yapvamp.blogspot.com -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Olivier_PEREZ wrote: > On 28 aoűt, 08:55, noodle...@iprimus.com.au wrote: >> Here's a crazy thought: >> >> Why not just make the next series of important euro/US tourneys a 2.5 >> hr time limit and see how it works? Instead of endlessly debating back >> and forth about what factors are to blame, introducing new [and flawed >> imo] victory conditions for finals, etc, why not just try the simplest >> solution first? >> >> We use 2.5 hrs for finals tables in the Aus Nats. In all the time >> we've been running the Nationals, none of our finals games have timed >> out as far as I recall. >> >> I don't understand how this is a 150+ post debate. Will the world as >> we know it end if you make your finals 2.5 hours? > > When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... > Time limit is an intersting part of the game. Last I checked, tournament games can legally be any length from 2hr or more. It's just that I don't know anywhere that runs the prelims for longer. Surely though, if you know ahead of time that the final will be 30 mins longer, then whatever it is you'd feel you'd need to do to your deck, you can do? and if you can't, neither can the other finalists, so it all evens out. (what the heck _would_ you do to a typical deck to make it work in a 2 1/2 hr environment instead of just a 2 hr, anyway? And would whatever that thing is you do, make it not so good in the merely 2 hr prelim rounds?) [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] Strategically that is sound, but is that fun? Isn't this a game where we are supposed to be having fun? And since fun isn't measurable, isn't that kind of behavior the antithesis of designer intent? If it does go against designer intent, then shouldn't we "correct" for that behavior by adjusting the rules? Would a good adjustment be that all finals are untimed? [ quoted text not captured ]

XZealot wrote: > Would a good adjustment be that all finals are untimed? Only if all venues are available forever for no additional charge. I know of none that are.

[ quoted text not captured ] The NAC Last Chance Qualifier and Day 1 and Day 2 events will each have extended time limit final rounds (probably in the 4-5 hour range). Not "untimed" but basically the same thing. -Robert

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, witness1 wrote: >> Yeah. When 5 finalists sit and stare at each other stupidly for 2 hours, >> it's because somebody dropped the ball. Somebody didn't try to win. Has >> anyone ever heard of a finalist bleeding hard for 2 hours straight and >> being unable to oust a single prey? Can that happen? > > Yes, it can happen. See also Taylor, Henry. It's a rhetorical question. If your deck is stopped by 1 intercept and untapping, how the heck did you get to the final? * Matt Morgan * This question is also rhetorical.

On Aug 28, 3:14 pm, Sten Düring <ya...@netg.se> wrote: > Matthew T. Morgan skrev: > > > > > Yeah. When 5 finalists sit and stare at each other stupidly for 2 > > hours, it's because somebody dropped the ball. Somebody didn't try to > > win. Has anyone ever heard of a finalist bleeding hard for 2 hours > > straight and being unable to oust a single prey? Can that happen? > > Eh, yep. Happened to me once. NEC/DOM powerbleed. Hunting Arika and > company M-Tap/vote/refill+Deflection. I DID oust players though :( > > I have also convinced my last remaining prey to concede a game once. > Last meaning my beginning predator playing NEC/DOM powerbleed. When > he gave up he'd successfully bled me for over 50 pool at which time > I was down to a measly 110 pool. > > Sten > > -- > More ramblings athttp://yapvamp.blogspot.com > > -- > Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PLAYING THAT GAVE YOU THAT MUCH POOL???????? Short of 1 cap caitiff vote with a metric assload of Autarkis persecutions, what is gonna gain you in excess of 160- pool? Please tell me. Please?

[ quoted text not captured ] Well thats easily solved. Include a "No leaving the table rule at the final". That means you gotta play faster or piss in your pants.... :)

On Aug 28, 10:35 am, Blooded Sand wrote: > On Aug 28, 3:14 pm, Sten Düring wrote: > > > I have also convinced my last remaining prey to concede a game once. > > Last meaning my beginning predator playing NEC/DOM powerbleed. When > > he gave up he'd successfully bled me for over 50 pool at which time > > I was down to a measly 110 pool. (...) > WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PLAYING THAT GAVE YOU THAT MUCH POOL???????? > Short of 1 cap caitiff vote with a metric assload of Autarkis > persecutions, what is gonna gain you in excess of 160- pool? Please > tell me. Please? I judged a final swept by a !Toreador Breed & Boon that ended with 147 pool and 22 minions: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/msg/f40e3dc010370d4f Abraço, Luiz Mello Brazil VTES NC -- IV Brazilian National Championship Vitória, October 12th to 14th, 2007 http://cbr2007.vtesbrasil.com

Olivier_PEREZ <olivier...@gmail.com> wrote in news:1188286605.3...@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com: > On 28 août, 08:55, noodle...@iprimus.com.au wrote: >> Here's a crazy thought: >> >> Why not just make the next series of important euro/US tourneys a 2.5 >> hr time limit and see how it works? Instead of endlessly debating back >> and forth about what factors are to blame, introducing new [and flawed >> imo] victory conditions for finals, etc, why not just try the simplest >> solution first? >> >> We use 2.5 hrs for finals tables in the Aus Nats. In all the time >> we've been running the Nationals, none of our finals games have timed >> out as far as I recall. >> >> I don't understand how this is a 150+ post debate. Will the world as >> we know it end if you make your finals 2.5 hours? > > When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... Then you might have to *gasp* adjust your deckbuilding strategy to compensate... DaveZ

On Aug 28, 10:14 am, Sten Düring wrote: > Matthew T. Morgan skrev: > > > Yeah. When 5 finalists sit and stare at each other stupidly for 2 > > hours, it's because somebody dropped the ball. Somebody didn't try to > > win. Has anyone ever heard of a finalist bleeding hard for 2 hours > > straight and being unable to oust a single prey? Can that happen? > > Eh, yep. Happened to me once. NEC/DOM powerbleed. Hunting Arika and > company M-Tap/vote/refill+Deflection. I DID oust players though :( Well, you did oust "preys", just not yours. =) [ quoted text not captured ]

"Matthew T. Morgan" <far...@io.com> wrote in news:2007082807...@eris.io.com: > Oh yeah, and 8 hours of nonstop > competative vtes is quite enough, thanks. > > Matt Morgan > Bah, you just need to quit making the finals so much ;-). 6 hours plus 2 at the bar suits the rest of us just fine... DZ AW

Robert Goudie <RobertT...@gmail.com> writes: > The NAC Last Chance Qualifier and Day 1 and Day 2 events will each > have extended time limit final rounds (probably in the 4-5 hour > range). Not "untimed" but basically the same thing. I sure hope none of those 5 people expected a normal-length final and scheduled an earlier flight home on Sunday... -- Bob Joseph jos...@cse.ohio-state.edu http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~joseph

Blooded Sand skrev: > > WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PLAYING THAT GAVE YOU THAT MUCH POOL???????? > Short of 1 cap caitiff vote with a metric assload of Autarkis > persecutions, what is gonna gain you in excess of 160- pool? Please > tell me. Please? > !Tor breeder with votes. Yes, you have to wash your hands after playing it. Almost no damaging votes, only a huge number of Embrace and ConBoon. (Bleed for 1 is a viable ousting method when you bleed with all 22 vampires...) Sten -- More ramblings at http://yapvamp.blogspot.com [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 28, 8:10 am, robert joseph <jos...@cse.ohio-state.edu> wrote: > Robert Goudie <RobertT.Gou...@gmail.com> writes: > > The NAC Last Chance Qualifier and Day 1 and Day 2 events will each > > have extended time limit final rounds (probably in the 4-5 hour > > range). Not "untimed" but basically the same thing. > > I sure hope none of those 5 people expected a normal-length > final and scheduled an earlier flight home on Sunday... That's generally a bad idea anyway since events rarely take exactly 8 hours. The larger the event the more likely you'll run into late starts, players arriving late for their rounds, rounds extended by judge for long rulings, unexpected adds or drops that aren't discovered until seating is completed, and so on... Also, I think with the way the hotel pricing worked, most people are probably staying Sunday evening anyway. WW asked us to extend the finals. I know that this wasn't announced before we started taking registrations and booking rooms so I imagine there will have to be some flexibility with regard to the finals time limit. -Robert

On Aug 28, 5:29 pm, Sten Düring <ya...@netg.se> wrote: > Blooded Sand skrev: > > > > > WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PLAYING THAT GAVE YOU THAT MUCH POOL???????? > > Short of 1 cap caitiff vote with a metric assload of Autarkis > > persecutions, what is gonna gain you in excess of 160- pool? Please > > tell me. Please? > > !Tor breeder with votes. Yes, you have to wash your hands after > playing it. Almost no damaging votes, only a huge number of > Embrace and ConBoon. (Bleed for 1 is a viable ousting method > when you bleed with all 22 vampires...) > > Sten > > -- > More ramblings athttp://yapvamp.blogspot.com > > -- > Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com How many embrace and con boon? And did you have any way of stealthing actions, or did you just rely on mass action + majesty?

Blooded Sand wrote: > On Aug 28, 5:29 pm, Sten Düring <ya...@netg.se> wrote: >> Blooded Sand skrev: >> >> >> >>> WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PLAYING THAT GAVE YOU THAT MUCH POOL???????? >>> Short of 1 cap caitiff vote with a metric assload of Autarkis >>> persecutions, what is gonna gain you in excess of 160- pool? Please >>> tell me. Please? >> !Tor breeder with votes. Yes, you have to wash your hands after >> playing it. Almost no damaging votes, only a huge number of >> Embrace and ConBoon. (Bleed for 1 is a viable ousting method >> when you bleed with all 22 vampires...) >> Does Palla Grande help at all? > > How many embrace and con boon? And did you have any way of stealthing > actions, or did you just rely on mass action + majesty? > !Tor, I have to imagine that it starts with Jost Werner, and flows from there... best - chris -- Super Fun Cards http://stores.ebay.com/superfuncards/ auct...@superfuncards.com

Blooded Sand skrev: > > How many embrace and con boon? And did you have any way of stealthing > actions, or did you just rely on mass action + majesty? > I believe 15 or so each. Was lucky during the "shutdown phase" when you only breed and hunt. Zero copies of Majesty, but 10 Change of Target helped. Three copies of Palla Grande made prey refuse to block any non bleeding actions when I hit 10+ vampires. Sten -- More ramblings at http://yapvamp.blogspot.com [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] That's really awesome. I think its great that the 2007 NAC Champ is going to get to/have to really win that finals table. -Ben Swainbank

LSJ wrote: > nood...@iprimus.com.au wrote: >> Here's a crazy thought: >> >> Why not just make the next series of important euro/US tourneys a 2.5 >> hr time limit and see how it works? Instead of endlessly debating >> back and forth about what factors are to blame, introducing new [and >> flawed imo] victory conditions for finals, etc, why not just try the >> simplest solution first? > > That was the recommendation that came out of the EC conversation, yes. > (Well, actually, 3h, but the gist is the same). Asking again since i didn't got answer here - time limit apart (that has been implemented since long time here in Italy, regarding final with at least 3 hours of time limit), would be fine to give incentives to the finalists in the form of additional prizes for a would be tournament winner that managed to *win* the final round per "play-to-win-rule" (so, at least 2 vps with no else scoring that much), even though that rule isn't actual in the final round? So, basically, tournament winner get X prizes, but if manages to win (in the PTW sense given in the previous rounds) the final round, he will get those X plus Y (additional) prizes. Or that would be somewhat in contrast of the basic winning conditions given for the "final" round ? thanks Emiliano

[ quoted text not captured ] ? You're asking if there can be an additional prize awarded conditionally? Yes.

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Ben Swainbank wrote: > That's really awesome. I think its great that the 2007 NAC Champ is > going to get to/have to really win that finals table. Just like all the past NAC champions, who won the NAC final table. Matt Morgan

[ quoted text not captured ] Thank you Emiliano

Robert Goudie <RobertT...@gmail.com> wrote: > The NAC Last Chance Qualifier and Day 1 and Day 2 events > will each have extended time limit final rounds (probably in > the 4-5 hour range). Not "untimed" but basically the same thing. You have got to be kidding me. Why??!! And I thought I was playing in L.A.! ;) Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier

Robert Goudie <RobertT...@gmail.com> wrote: > WW asked us to extend the finals. Why??!! [ quoted text not captured ]

On Aug 28, 9:31 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > Robert Goudie <RobertT.Gou...@gmail.com> wrote: > > WW asked us to extend the finals. > > Why??!! Because they want to encourage bad play >:-) And because they want to witness bad play for much longer >:-) -- Damnans http://www.almadrava.net/damnans http://www.vtes.net http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/vteshispania/ http://iuturna.sorcery.net (IRC channel: #vtes)

> When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... Absolutely irrelevant. > Time limit is an intersting part of the game. Agreed. A 2.5 hr time limit is still a time limit. The only difference is that 2.5 hours actually allows people who want to, you know, oust more than one person to have a better chance of actually doing it. > The 5th player got nothing to loose, the 4th not much... it's there > responsability to make thing's move. So you're saying that it's the top seeded player's responsibility to slow everything down and try to ensure no player gets a vp, so he wins by default?

> That was the recommendation that came out of the EC conversation, yes. > (Well, actually, 3h, but the gist is the same). Righto, case closed. I'll leave the podium to the whiners.

LSJ wrote: > Tetragrammaton wrote: >> >> Asking again since i didn't got answer here - time limit apart (that >> has been >> implemented since long time here in Italy, regarding final with at >> least 3 hours >> of time limit), >> would be fine to give incentives to the finalists in the form of >> additional prizes >> for a would be tournament winner that managed to *win* the final round >> per "play-to-win-rule" (so, at least 2 vps with no else scoring that >> much), >> even though that rule isn't actual in the final round? >> So, basically, tournament winner get X prizes, but if manages to win >> (in the >> PTW sense given in the previous rounds) the final round, he will get >> those X plus >> Y (additional) prizes. >> Or that would be somewhat in contrast of the basic winning conditions >> given for >> the "final" round ? > > ? > You're asking if there can be an additional prize awarded conditionally? > Yes. but players would not be able to play towards that conditional prize if, say, the conditions conflicted with ptw, right? (eg: if the prize was for 'most vampires torpored in the final round', you would not be able to pick on the 'soft' vampires around the table, causing random mayhem, unless it was also somehow contributing towards you playing to win? obviously, the prize emiliano was suggesting would not contradict regular ptw, so that is fine....) -- salem (replace 'hotmail' with 'yahoo' to email)

> > The 5th player got nothing to loose, the 4th not much... it's there > > responsability to make thing's move. > > So you're saying that it's the top seeded player's responsibility to > slow everything down and try to ensure no player gets a vp, so he wins > by default? Are you actually reading what he says or just reading what you would like him to say?

> > When I build a deck it is for a 2h00 game, not 2h30... > > Absolutely irrelevant. > Yes, irrelevant. Olivier, if time limit of the finals change, you just will have to build new decks. It is one environmental factor, such as new expansions, metagame, qualifying conditions of the tournament...

[ quoted text not captured ] No, he is just affirming that the logical extension of the statement regarding 4th and 5th leads to the conclusion that it is the to the 1st's advantage if nothing happens....

[ quoted text not captured ] There's a difference between 'having the advantage if nothing happens' and 'top seeded players's responsability to slow everying down and ensure no player gets a vp' and not a small one, IMO

[ quoted text not captured ] Where is the difference? There is not so much an advantage to be had from nothing happens as much as "He wins" if nothing happens. So in that case it is completely and utterly the most sensible move to make sure nothing happens. This can be done by arguing endlessly over every deal, counter offering on deals which you are not in, playing "methodically" and "carefully", 2 acronyms for "I'm gonna play like a tortoise jogging through hot tar"

On 29 aug, 13:05, Blooded Sand <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Aug 29, 12:23 pm, Jeroen <joen_...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > > > > > On 29 aug, 12:04, Blooded Sand <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Aug 29, 11:38 am, coincoinmas...@hotmail.com wrote: > > > > > > > The 5th player got nothing to loose, the 4th not much... it's there > > > > > > responsability to make thing's move. > > > > > > So you're saying that it's the top seeded player's responsibility to > > > > > slow everything down and try to ensure no player gets a vp, so he wins > > > > > by default? > > > > > Are you actually reading what he says or just reading what you would > > > > like him to say? > > > > No, he is just affirming that the logical extension of the statement > > > regarding 4th and 5th leads to the conclusion that it is the to the > > > 1st's advantage if nothing happens.... > > > There's a difference between > > 'having the advantage if nothing happens' > > and > > 'top seeded players's responsability to slow everying down and ensure > > no player gets a vp' > > and not a small one, IMO > > Where is the difference? Intend. The first is a passive state, the second is an assumed (even forced, he uses 'responsability') way of playing. >There is not so much an advantage to be had > from nothing happens as much as "He wins" if nothing happens. So in > that case it is completely and utterly the most sensible move to make > sure nothing happens. Why and, more importantly, how? Getting at least 1 VP yourself doesn't seem less of a gambit than what you suggest above. >This can be done by arguing endlessly over every > deal, counter offering on deals which you are not in, playing > "methodically" and "carefully", 2 acronyms for "I'm gonna play like a > tortoise jogging through hot tar"- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht niet weergeven - You can only talk if someone else listens. If everyone says: 'no deal, play on', the dealing is over. How can a deck completely stop xtable vps from happening? And if it is that easy, why can't the second or third seeded player just gain 1 VP and shut the game down?

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:00:17 -0400, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: >In article <G%Iwi.87576$dI1....@newsfe08.phx>, > "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > >> This is SUCH a good idea that I would suggest to LSJ that we SERIOUSLY >> consider implementing it asap, as a tournament rules change that should >> have happened with PTW and/or >> all-deals-are-off-when-only-two-players-remain, but was just missed. > >Now that we have met again, only this time as *allies*!, I'm very pro >this idea as a good, solid, not vastly damaging, non Marxist tweak to >the tournament rules that would likely help games move to completion >quicker and have very little negative impact on, well, anything. > >To be clear, again, the idea is to set up the tournament rules such that >in the final game, you get a winner by virtue of VPs in the final and >then preliminary seeding to break ties as always, but places 2-5 are all >tied, i.e. you get the same prizes and tournament points for 5th place >as you do 3rd place. I recommend two slight changes to this. It may seem a little complicated, but covers the single issue I have with the system. * Surviving to time is worth 0VP * When calculating position, all players in the same position use the worst shared position. In a 5 player game, this means if all 5 players tie, all players get 5th. If only 1 players scores a VP, they get 1st, and all other players get 5th. This is how your suggestion currently works. However, if 2 players gain a VP, according to your system, noone has won via VP, so all get 0. Or if a player gets 2VP, and another gets 3, that first player gets no reward for his efforts. Sure, this brings in the more than real concept of table splitting in the finals, but at least that'd force the table to move, which is still the point, no? Better to have a player make a deal and have a completed table, than try to get it on his own. The addition I suggest isn't really complicated if you've seen the current concept used in rankings for ties. Players C and D tie, and the ranking list is as follows. 1st Player A 2nd Player B 3rd Player C 3rd Player D 5th Player E My suggestion would make it 1st Player A 2nd Player B 4th Player C 4th Player D 5th Player E While it looks the same, within the concept of what a finals table would look like, the limiting factors would mean after the first VP is taken, anyone who gets a VP is rewarded, even if they can't beat the eventual winner. Morgan Vening

[ quoted text not captured ] Past NAC Champions have absolutely won the tournament and the title. I don't believe that any NAC finals table (starting with 2001) had ended in an actual Game Win (2+ VPs and more than anyone else). - Ben Swainbank

On Thu, 30 Aug 2007, Ben Swainbank wrote: >> Just like all the past NAC champions, who won the NAC final table. >> > > Past NAC Champions have absolutely won the tournament and the title. > > I don't believe that any NAC finals table (starting with 2001) had > ended in an actual Game Win (2+ VPs and more than anyone else). I think you're right. I also think that without the time limit we would've seen some different NAC champs. I'm not sure that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do know a that any player who can make it to the final with a wall deck will have a pretty good shot at the title. Expect these finals to be long, slow and dull. Matt Morgan

[ quoted text not captured ] "Smudge hunts. Any blockers?" "Smudge shall not be ignored, bwahahahahahaha!!!" Yup, thats going to be a ripping affair with highjinks, athleticism, and stupendous bladder control all around!!!

> > witness1 <jwnewqu...@bellsouth.net> wrote: > > > Better to just get rid of the final altogether and just give the > > > tournament win to the player with the most GWs/VPs after X rounds of > > > play. If large tournament finals games time out most of the time, then yes, I'd rather get rid of the finals and simply give the victory to the biggest winner after 3 rounds. It's better than spending two hours watching that happen anyway. Part of the problem is that many finals games are just a formality in which nothing happens, and most large ones the players can expect the table to time out. I personally always go to a finals thinking, "I probably only need 1 VP to win this before it times out." And I would like for this not to be true. > > Sit them > > down, say "no one wins unless they get the most VPs", which is how all > > the other rounds of the tournament work. Watch as folks try to oust > > folks in the time allotted in the name of actually winning the game. > > Makes sense to me. I happen to support removing the time limits on finals games. But, for the sake of exploration, we could probably remove the stalemate with, "Time limit won't stop the finals game until somebody is ousted." This way, the game couldn't finish with 1/2 for everybody, and if the game kinda sucked and nobody did anything for 2 hours, then the game would end as soon as somebody got his ass in gear and ousted his prey. And hey, players who regularly maintain that no-limit finals will result in 5-hour games will probably concede that ONE oust won't take that long. > People already do try to oust folks in the time allotted in the name > of actually winning the game. Seriously. It happens all the time. So > leaving things the way they are makes sense to me. Yes, players try to oust. But actual tournament results seem to show they are much less successful in that than in previous rounds, for whatever reason. So, if too many finals games are going to time, the only possible solutions are to change the way the players play, or to give them more time to play (which I argue will in itself change the way they play by removing stalling as an option.) Examine the finals game itself. When someone is ousted: 1 player isn't automatically winning anymore 3 players may lose a place in the final standings 1 player is unaffected Compare to previous rounds, where there are: 5 players who will lose unless someone is ousted These two games are clearly constructed differently from the beginning. If we want to change the first game to be more like the second, it means making the stalemate undesirable for all of the players. This requires ignoring the previous results, or increasing the time limits to go until someone is ousted. A new arbitrarily long limit, like 2:30, would probably be long enough for someone to be ousted, but something more direct, like, "Don't stop playing at two hours unless someone has been ousted" or "There are no time limits in the final" are both ways that guarantee the stalemate is impossible to achieve for the player going into the finals in 1st place. > > > The final table is the chance for 2nd-5th seed players to wrest the > > > tournament win away from someone who has, on the whole, played better > > > so far that day. If none of them can do it (or none of them are > > > willing to do it), just let him walk away with the victory. > > > Which is a weird dynamic, compared to the rest of the games in the > > tournament--why introduce the strange dynamic of "one player gets to win > > if nothing changes" that is missing from the rest of the tournament? > > You can't escape that the finals table will have a different dynamic > from every other table. It's the only one where the entire tournament > is on the line. > > This particular dynamic is the one that every finals table has ever > had. And it exists because we a) want to have a final table of VtES > where the best of the best play against each other for the tournament > win and we also b) strongly desire there to be a single winner => ties > must be broken, and we prefer that ties be broken in a manner that > rewards prior performance, as opposed to just rolling some dice. I would strongly prefer that ties be broken in a way that rewards CURRENT performance, than PRIOR performance. But if you're in 1st place, you may not feel that way. This may be part of why we have been seeing a hell of a lot of ties in finals games. If you think prior performance should be more important than current performance, then please, tell me what that reason is--but I doubt this is the case. If you'd rather players had a chance in the final to do well and oust someone, tell me what time limits you think would be appropriate and why. And if you think 2 hours is enough time, I'd like to remind you that more finals are timing out every year. I think, if we're to have an arbitrary time limit, we should keep track of how long finals games are lasting, and then set the arbitrary limit to be equal to the time at which 80% of finals games statistically complete. This way, we should see roughly 80% of finals games continue to reach completion. > > If you are doing well, you get into the finals, with gives you the > > opportunity to A) Win and B) get prizes. Why is it *also* necessary to > > give first seed the strange motivation that no one else has, and no one > > else deals with at any other point of the tournament? > > Because of a) and b). If you're willing to give up on either one, you > can alter the dynamic. I'm not. So, if finals had a two hour time limit, and play only stopped after the time limit was reached AND someone has been ousted, there would still be the same tiebreakers as there are now, so players would still see a definite winner and a definite prize structure. It would guarantee that just waiting and talking when you're in first place would not ever win you a tournament, and it would likely not take much more time to complete than the games we currently have do. I'd like to hear what you think of that. -- Brian