Event: USA vs. The World (Rules and Signups)

[Scaredgirl]

If the thing I talked about is a joke, you might want to actually remove it from the rules before people start posting decks based on that.

Also I think the biggest problem here is that people can see what decks others are going to use. If a person is smart, he will wait right until the signing up is over, look at what decks others have, and build a counter if possible. Of course he cannot counter everyone, but he could build a deck that is a counter to the majority of opponents decks, giving him a huge advantage.

[icybraker]

If a person is smart, he will wait right until the signing up is over, look at what decks others have, and build a counter if possible. Of course he cannot counter everyone, but he could build a deck that is a counter to the majority of opponents decks, giving him a huge advantage.

Thanks for ruining my big plan!

Of course, there may be lots and lots of decks of all different kinds, so one that can defeat even half of them may be difficult to find. My plan was to simply find the general trend and build a deck against that.

Decks may be altered between rounds only by substituting cards and mark from the sideboard

Can you simply add or remove cards instead of substituting? I realize this can be abused by having a 60-card starting deck that can even carry two decks within its massive frame, but if you make the starter deck a deck that you HAVE to play...

[Terroking]

Yes, I was curious about that too. Is the deck size mandatory to keep the same?

Also, while it may have options, most of them aren't (Or shouldn't) Be fueled by the mark, being better with stone towers. No matter how you place it, Mizzle will have the advantage among the masters with a speed rainbow that he can alter to his liking. No one should have an advantage. If the masters are limited, so should the rest of the players (To one mark).

[acelink]

Showing decks should be a problem.  It prevents people from changing their decks mid-event and shows deck building skills...  The original deck has to be more 'adaptive'.  But there needs to be some clarification on the sideboard and additional rules.

Match One.  You MUST use your original deck.  No using sideboard.
-It prevents automatically countering decks via sideboard... The original deck is forced to be more "balanced".

Decks must stay above or at original size. 
-You can't cut decks down to half size.  If your original deck is 40, you must end at 40 or 40+ cards.  This forces the original deck to be more "balanced".

[Essence]

Yes, substitution does mean 1-for-1.  I'll clarify that in the rules as well. 

SG, I added a clear 'just kidding' that should prevent anyone from trying to use the joke rule.

Also, while it may have options, most of them aren't (Or shouldn't) Be fueled by the mark, being better with stone towers. No matter how you place it, Mizzle will have the advantage among the masters with a speed rainbow that he can alter to his liking. No one should have an advantage. If the masters are limited, so should the rest of the players (To one mark).

Keep two things in mind:

1) This is not a competition.  There is no individual winner, so one individual having an apparent advantage over his 'peers' is irrelevant.  It would be far more important that, for example, there are more fully-upgraded decks on the World team than on the USA team than that one person has a "good" strategy at his disposal.

2) Masters are Masters, not 'the rest of the players'.  If you can't show everyone a damn good reason to pick an Earth mark, you're not really saying much about your element, are you? 

Match One.  You MUST use your original deck.  No using sideboard.
-It prevents automatically countering decks via sideboard... The original deck is forced to be more "balanced".

Good call, I'll add that in above.

If a person is smart, he will wait right until the signing up is over, look at what decks others have, and build a counter if possible.

That's true.  And I'm not terribly worried about it.  Each contestant only ever faces 3 opponents, so there's absolutely no guarantee that the decks these theoretical geniuses build to counter will actually be their opponents.  Combine that with the fact that counter-decks generally epically fail against anything other than the opponent they're built to counter, and you've got a pretty good chance of going 1 for 3 even if your deck can theoretically beat 51% of the posted competition.


Also, I just noticed that my reference to the rounds being best-of-five got removed in my various edits.  I put it back in.

[Delreich]

The way sideboards usually work (well, in MtG at least) is they stay the same size, in this case 10 cards. The rules probably should say "exactly 10 cards and a mark" rather than "no more than".
Going into nit-pick mode, round-robin implies everyone fights everyone else. The rules here are more towards those of a Swiss tourney, unless I've misunderstood something.

(Ninja'd by ace and essence... =/ )

[Terroking]

What I'm saying is that one player should not have an advantage over another by specific rule. It's simply something that shouldn't be done. Restricting to your mark would be fine if everyone else could take one mark, but here they have an advantage that has nothing to do with the element at all.

For example, say it's you vs. someone else with Water/Time marks available to him. He has an advantage simply because he gets a second mark, not because he had to choose a certain one. Even if for some reason he did have to take Water/Time as a restriction, he'd still have the advantage even though you both have Water marks. I mean, there's a reason challengers for the Masters Trials have to use at least 50% earth.

Restricting the Masters' marks is ok, but you stacked a huge advantage on top of the other people.

The point of the sideboard is to have a more adaptable deck. If a person can make 2 different decks using his cards, he has a much better chance than someone who has to take 1.

[acelink]

Acelink signing up fer the USA

Deck=31 cards.  Fire Mark.

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4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 6u1 71a 74a 74a 77e 7ae 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dp 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7dq 7ds 809 809 809 809 809 809 80a 80a 80a
Sideboard

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6rn 6rn 77e 7dm 7dm 7do 7dp 7k0 7n1 7n1
Edit: Posts = 149

[PuppyChow]

Signing up for team USA  8).

Code: [Select]

778 778 778 778 778 778 778 778 778 778 778 778 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 77g 77j 77j 77j 77j 77j 77j 7q4 7q4 7q4 7q4 7q4 7q4
Sideboard:

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778 778 77c 77c 77h 77h 77h 77i 77i 77s

763 posts at the moment.

[Terroking]

Right... Puppy gets to use graboids, I don't....

Anyways, just said that since it had to be done. The real reason for this post was:

Shouldn't it be score instead of posts? I realize that score changes, but so do posts. ANd posts only represents how long you've een on the forum, which frankly has almost nothing to do with this event.

[PuppyChow]

Right... Puppy gets to use graboids, I don't....

Anyways, just said that since it had to be done. The real reason for this post was:

Shouldn't it be score instead of posts? I realize that score changes, but so do posts. ANd posts only represents how long you've een on the forum, which frankly has almost nothing to do with this event.

. And Terro, think Aether/Earth. >_>...

As to it being score, does it really matter? Most vets have a high post count too; and some good players without that high of a score (like you) have high post counts.

I don't care what seed I am as long as it's high.

[Essence]

Shouldn't it be score instead of posts? I realize that score changes, but so do posts. ANd posts only represents how long you've een on the forum, which frankly has almost nothing to do with this event.

On the contrary, this whole event was driven by SG's observation that the number of people on the boards from USA is more or less equal to the number of people on the boards from the rest of the world.  Since the very foundation of the event is the boards' population statistics, I figured seeding based on the duration of one's participation in the community was the way to go.