Rerolls in LRB onto Tourney formats

[Zombie]

The game is nothing without the rules in Death Zone for playing in a league. If those rules had never been written, i probably would have never found Blood Bowl interesting and never got into the game.

[wesleytj]

The game was meant to be played in one off games. All the league and player prgression rules were added afterwards. (Well in third edition)

<soapbox>
I got to tell you, if BB had never advanced any beyond one-off games, I wouldn't be here. I would have played 2 or 3 games, gotten bored with it, and moved on.

The thing that makes bb so great is that you can see your team grow, as you build it up. You take a bunch of plain joe guys and make them your team, with your skills, to play your way. You get to come up with fun skill combinations and try them out. And so on.

It's almost like a good RPG character. You start with "Bob the Lvl1 Fighter" that's just like every other fighter in the game (more or less) and end up with a guy you created, with a unique story, a unique history, a unique experience. That's what makes both games infinitely replayable.

So I agree with the original poster. The game was MEANT to be played in a league setting, with SPPs and skills and money and fans and the whole bit.
</soapbox>

Now, in tourneys, I see both sides of it. I don't think it's fair that 1 player gets a first round draw against the worst bb player ever, wins 6-0, casuses 8 cas, and suddenly has an unbeatable team compared to all the rest of the guys who won 2-1 or 3-2 or whatever. You want to try to maintain comparable teams to test coaches' abilities.

But, at the same time, part of "coaching ability" is knowing what skills to take, knowing how to distribute spp, etc. A tourney system with flat, or nearly flat, team structure ignores all of that.

To be honest, I'll play in any tourney I can make it to, any time, anywhere, regardless of format. I just want to meet new bb players and have a good time.

[Deathwing]

It's closer to how the game is normally played (and is meant to be played), that's why it's better.

But Tournament play is very different from League play. The trouble with running a tourney as a 'mini' league is that there simply isn't enough games for it to work effectively.
Hypothetical situation: What happens if we both win 1-0 and both get a skill increase on a Blitzer, I roll a ST increase whereas you get a normal skill. Is that fair if we meet round 2? Am I being rewarded for good play? The playing field is slanted. It'll rarely be level in League play, but I believe it should be in tourney play.

And what happens if you carry injuries over? Again hypothetically, imagine we both take 3 cas. in Round 1. I recieve 3 BH and you take 2 dead and a MNG or stat decrease. That's your competitive weekend over there and then, nice if you paid $40-$50 tourney fee and flown a few hundred miles, not to mention accomodation costs. And why? Because you've been unlucky on Sigards compared to me. That's not very clever IMO. (And somebody is going to get a significantly easier game in Round 2, which cannot help but have a bearing on final results).

Tournaments are as much about enjoyment and fun as anything else, running a system in which one unlucky game can screw a players whole weekend is not the way to go.
5 or 6 games with a large field over a weekend is a whole different kettle of fish from 1 or 2 games a week in your local league environment. There is no good argument that I've heard so far why the former should be 'better' for replicating the latter. I think (without intending to be patronising) that the orc/4 gobbo thread proved that you (and your league) is(are) a little well, insular. Try and think a little more outside the box.

The game is nothing without the rules in Death Zone for playing in a league.

If you really believe that then I feel quite sorry for you. I've had some highly entertaining and very challenging one-off games. On field tactics are more of what it's about to me than off-field strategy, although I do enjoy the latter aspect. To state that the game is 'nothing' without League rules is so far wide of the mark to be almost laughable.

If those rules had never been written, i probably would have never found Blood Bowl interesting and never got into the game.

I'm beginning to wish they hadn't!!

[Darkson]

To be honest, I'll play in any tourney I can make it to, any time, anywhere, regardless of format. I just want to meet new bb players and have a good time.

Amen!

Tjat's why I going to the BB (I know I won't win it) and that's why I joined the various PBeM leagues I'm in.

[Zombie]

Deathwing, of course i agree that luck needs to be less of a factor in tournaments, for everyone's sake. But you can take out the aftergame dice and still keep it fun.

For example, you could give an amount of money every game that is the same for everyone. 50k per game would be a decent number.

You could make the CAS work the same way every game:
1st CAS = badly hurt
2nd CAS = miss next game
3rd CAS = badly hurt
4th CAS = dead
5th CAS = badly hurt
6th CAS = miss next game
and work back from 1st CAS for 7th and more.

You could give every game 5 normal skills and 1 double, to be assigned to different players. That's a lot more than you get in a league, but it would allow you to play the whole range of team ratings during the course of the tournament. Another option would be giving 3 normal skills or one normal and one double, coach's option.

With such a system, rerolls would cost double after the first game just like they do in a league, and star players would have to be freebooted.

I believe that such a tournament would be just as fair as what's mostly played these days in Europe, and even fairer maybe since agility teams would have to work hard to keep their players playing, like they should be. It would also be a lot more fun.

Of course, the rules could be worked out in more detail; this is just a first sketch.

Anyone else feel that such a tournament would be a lot more fun?

[Munkey]

I would say that there should be a level playing field for tournaments.

That being said there is no way i'll believe the 3ed of Blood Bowl, without Death Zone was ever meant to be a complete game. The rules were written in such a way that Death Zone could just be tacked on the end, this was simply GW sales strategy at the time.

2ed was a much more complete game ou of the box and the league rules contained in the compendium had to explain and add a lot more to the game to make sense.

Thats not to say that most of the fun in 3ed isn't to be had on the pitch (or that vanilla games aren't interesting). Personally team management takes very little time for me but without league play there would be little scope to try new skills or play with more complete teams.

i.e. league play opens up more tactical options on the pitch.

[Deathwing]

Zombie, it's certainly interesting, but ideas along those lines are probably only workable in smaller tournaments. Even a simple system like the one employed at the Dutch Open and the BB is quite an undertaking as I'm sure Lucy or others will testify. Can you imagine the book-keeping involved with that kind of tracking of cas and skills when there's 60 games going on in a day? There's also the time factor to consider, if you're playing teams with the amount of skills you're proposing then games will naturally take longer. Quite apart from working out and remembering which players have Guard etc, you're also going to avoid a lot of turnovers by the use of skill rerolls. Rookies will have more rules queries etc. It's preferable to sit down across the table from an opponent and remember (example) that both Mummies have Block and a Zombie has Kick than go through a roster (that you've never seen before, another key difference from regular league play) with 15 skills on it and try and ascertain who's got what.
All tournies have to keep to schedules, and basic BB just plays faster by nature, and there's no getting around that.
Put yourself in the position of organising a tourney, ensuring all games run to schedule, all rosters are legal between rounds, all players are crystal clear about the rule system and not making mistakes ('Wait, that player has no access to Jump Up'..this guys got 3 'double' skill written in when he should have 2 at this stage)etc.
Maybe 10-14 experienced players could cope with something along those lines, but when you start getting 40+ players then I believe it'll become unworkable in practice. The KISS principle is very important in tournies, and it's relative to numbers involved. The greater the players involved, the simpler the system has to be. Likewise, the more complicated the system the greater becomes the ratio of non-playing officials/organisers to players required.
It really comes down to making sure it runs smoothly and that the players enjoy it (and while the players enjoyment is not necessarily dependent on a well organised and smoothly run event, the two are not unlinked).
As I said though, you could maybe work something that bears more semblence to League play in a relatively small tournament. Why not work through some ideas and submit it to the NAF?

[Zombie]

If everybody uses a clock, time should not be a problem. If they don't, time will be a problem no matter what rules you use.

So that leaves only one problem, and that's checking the rosters between games. You could do something like the following: after each game, and after the post-game sequence is done, both players go to the photocopy machine and make a copy of each coach's roster. They apply both their signatures on each photocopy, and hand them in. This would leave ample time for the organizers to check them out, i.e. until the next game is over. If the organizers find something abnormal, they could then go to the table where the team is now playing and correct the problem, and even add a penalty (set in advance, up to the organizers to decide) for the remaining of the game to compensate.

The moral is that something can always be worked out if people really put their minds to it.

[Anthony_TBBF]

You could do something like the following: after each game, and after the post-game sequence is done, both players go to the photocopy machine and make a copy of each coach's roster.

Great idea, I'll have to remember to bring a phoptocopier with me to our next tournament.

[Deathwing]

...and 20 chess clocks.

[Bevan]

It doesn't have to be quite as complex as Zombie suggested to simulate normal progression.

It would be easy to have a set amount of cash after each game as suggested. Then all purchases apply as usual.

You could disallow stat upgrades. That would prevent the +St and +Ag players dominating play. Doubles should still be permitted.

Handling deaths and injuries is more complex but you could just have an upper limit on the amount of carnage that can be inflicted (e.g. max 1 death and 1 SI). All others count as badly hurt.

The recent Australian championships used 7 games with normal progression. This worked well except for 1 or 2 teams that decided to restart after severe losses.

Game times work OK with 3 games per day. Playing 4 games is too rushed. You need time for a break between games and that time can be spent working out income, new skills etc.

[Deathwing]

Well, there's no hard and fast 'best' way to run a tourney (and I'm sure Babs did a great job with CanCon (I hear your son did pretty well, congrats to him)). But the fact that a couple of people found it necessary to restart is worrying. Limiting the amount of deaths doesn't help if it happens to be (one of) your key player(s). If people are happy to play in events that are in effect mini-two day leagues then all well and good. I just don't see it as preferable to what I see as 'pure' tournament play.
Personally, I don't want an easy game because my opponent has been mauled in his previous game, I want it on level terms. I don't want to be coming across Nerves of steel catchers either, because somebody's happens to have rolled a double. Not that I'm saying allowing doubles are that unbalancing, but stuff like that has to tilt the field. It's simple enough to run effective tournaments that ensure every game starts level, which is pretty important (to me anyway) when you may only play your opponent 2-3 times a year and major bragging rights and NAF rankings are at stake.
As I said, there's no hard and fast way, and I'm all for different flavour, but I'd rather be telling (and listening to) tall tales of the previous game over a beer between games than queuing up at a photocopier or getting bogged down filling in mountains of paperwork.
Write down Block next to your Ogre on your results sheet, hit the bar and wait and see who you get next, yeah, that'll do me.

[Zombie]

You could do something like the following: after each game, and after the post-game sequence is done, both players go to the photocopy machine and make a copy of each coach's roster.

Great idea, I'll have to remember to bring a phoptocopier with me to our next tournament. :roll:

Has there ever been a big tournament that wasn't held in a place where there's a photocopy machine nearby? If there wasn't one, it wouldn't be hard for the organizers to find one for the weekend and bring it.

[Zombie]

...and 20 chess clocks. :D

Like i said, if clocks are not mandatory, you're gonna have time problems, no matter what rules you use. Some people take up to 6 hours to complete a game without a clock. I should know because we have a couple of those in my league.

[Skummy]

Regular old digital timers work perfectly well. You're not timing the turns, and not the game, after all.