With 50 tournaments under my belt, ranging from 16 beefy Blood Bowlers crammed into my house, to being Head Ref at the 912-player World Cup III, I am going to have a go at summarising the different approaches to team and skill building at different tournaments, for those interested and those new to the scene. It will inevitably be Euro/UK-centric, but I will adjust it following feedback from North America and the Antipodes! I will be generalising, while acknowledging variances. This is designed to be descriptive, not prescriptive – individual Tournament Organisers (TOs) can do what they like!
Length of Tournament
Most tournaments are weekend tournaments, usually of 6 games but sometimes 5 (very occasionally 7!). One-day tournaments are becoming more common, either of 3 or 4 games. There are some 24-hour tournaments, where people play 10-11 games through the night. Madness!
Team Value
The treasury available normally varies between 1,050,000 and 1,300,000 with the higher end usually being used when you have to buy your skills as well. These values are often expressed as “1050” and “1300”, or “105” and “130”. It is usual that you have to have 11 players before buying star players. Star players are usually allowed to be on the roster. If both players choose the same star they are sometimes allowed to play and sometimes not (again, up to the TO).
Inducements vary, but can often be included in the team roster. Babes, bribes and the chef are standard. Cards and the wizard vary between tournaments.
Standard NAF tournaments use the 21 CRP teams plus Slann, Pact and Underworld.
Team Development
The vast majority of tournaments are “resurrection”, which means you get players back for the next game if they are killed or seriously injured. There are occasional league style tournaments, but these are less common because the administration is more onerous and if you get destroyed in the first game it can ruin the weekend. In most tournaments you choose your skills through various “skill packages”, there is normally no rolling involved.
Tiers
It is becoming more common for different teams to be treated differently. This is an example, and it depends on the Team Value and the Tournament Organiser’s opinion, as well as other people’s (i.e. it’s not a strict interpretation, and there are sometimes 4 tiers, or tier 1.5 etc, but you get the idea).
- Tier 1: Teams that are seen as “the best” for a particular skill set
- Tier 2: Those not in the other tiers
- Tier 3: Stunty teams, sometimes others as well
The lower tier teams are often given more skills, to encourage people to take a variety of teams.
Skill Packages
This is a small selection of the different skill packages that have been used:
- one skill per game, given to a player of choice, usually normals with occasional doubles
- all skills allocated at the beginning, with combinations of normals, doubles and stat boosts
- a given number of SPPs allocated to the team, then cashed in for skills
- skills bought at 20k/30k, with the cost included in the Team Value
- skills given a value of a number of points, then races get a number of points to spend on skills
Scoring
There are a wide variety of ways to decide who wins the tournament, and these include:
- 3 for a win, 1 for a draw, with TDs and Casualties used for Tie-breakers, or 2 for win, 1 for a draw etc. Pure scoring based on the match result, in other words.
- 30 for a win, 10 for a draw, with bonus points for TDs and Cas. Same effect as above, but with the possibility of a “good” draw being better than a narrow win.
- Bonus points for sendings off, crowd pushes or other events based on the TO’s opinion.
- “Strength of Schedule” calculates total opponent score, and is often used as a tiebreaker.
Score is the standard way of recording tournament results. A snapshot of various tournaments is here.
To be covered in other articles:
- the social side of organising tournaments
- other prizes that can be awarded