Phat Deck PVP Event

[Essence]

Hi, y'all!

I've been asked to host the next PVP Event after the War ends, and I've got a few ideas.  Here's what I know: it's going to be a Phat Deck competition, meaning everyone has to play 60 cards, and everyone uses an 18-card sideboard.  (If you don't know what a sideboard is, read this. (http://www.essentialmagic.com/Miscellaneous/Sideboard.asp))  It's also going to be a Swiss tournament (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_tournament).

The question is, how do you balance such a competition so that (preferably) the newer players aren't at too great a disadvantage and the veterans are able to use their resources?

Option 1 is simply to put the new players at a disadvantage.

Option 2 is simply to prevent the veterans from using their resources.


I don't like either of those two options, so I came up with these proposed solutions:

Option 3 is what I did in the USA vs. the World tournament: I seeded all of the matches so that everyone played against an opponent that had a similar-ish number of upgraded cards in his deck.  It wasn't perfect, because I also had to seed according to who had won and lost in previous rounds, so sometimes players with no upgraded cards who did really well ended up facing players with all-upgraded cards who did very poorly.

Option 4 is brand new, and it goes like this: When you win a match, you gain points equal to 60+(the number of upgraded cards in your opponent's deck)-(the number of upgraded cards in your deck.)   The person with the most score (not the most victories) at the end of the tournament wins.  Yes, that means that an unupgraded deck that beats a completely-upgraded deck scores 120 points -- and a completely upgraded deck that beats a completely unupgraded deck scores 0. 

That should give veteran players a good deckbuilding challenge -- balancing out the score loss from using upgraded cards with the increased chance of victory they provide -- as well as giving skilled newbies a powerful advantage by making each of their victories over the veterans worth more.


Of course, if you have another idea, feel free to share as well!


Thanks!

[Scaredgirl]

Well, if we look at that previous USA vs. World sideboard event, here's what I think went wrong with it:

1. Weird seeding. I think you made the initial seeding based on forum post count? That's not good because high post count doesn't necessarily mean high amount of upped cards, and vice versa.

2. Players who posted decks first were at a disadvantage. Latecomers could see what they are playing and tweak their decks accordingly.

I think that fixing those two problems would help a lot.



Option 4 sounds good but I think it has some potential problems. For example if I play a fully upped deck and fight unupped decks, I get nothing if I win? There's no point in playing fully upped decks with rules like that. Unless that's the whole point, I recommend you change it so that winner gets points always, no matter what the card situation is.

As for the seeding, instead of using forum post count, I suggest this:

Round 1: Players are seeded based on how many upped cards they have (deck + sideboard combined), so that two players with most upped cards fight each other, two players with least upped cards fight each other, etc.

All other rounds: Players are seeded according to their score. The two players who have to most score after round 1 fight each other, etc. with the exception that you cannot fight the same player twice during the event.


EDIT: those of you who haven't seen it, here is the sign-up topic for the first sideboard event: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,5161.msg57385#msg57385

[finkel]

I vote unupped cards only or at least special scoring. I can't foresee how big a difference upgraded cards will make in a 60-card deck, but I think it will be less than with 30 cards, except with cards that become much better upgraded (elite charger, for example).

[Anothebrother]

i like option 4...

[Nume]

Option 4 does sound interesting. People would have to choose what upgrades are worth the point loss, which could provide an interesting dynamic to the deck building. A fully upgraded deck could never win any points, so people would have to use a lot of nonupgraded cards, yet they could still use a few really useful uprades to help win

[Anothebrother]

A fully upgraded deck could never win any points

Not exactly...Fully Upped vs. Fully Upped nets the winner 60 points..

[Nume]

Err nvm I missed the 60+ part . But still would provide an interesting dynamic.

[Essence]

Anyone else?

[Scaredgirl]

I have a suggestion. But first let me explain the current PvP plan.

PvP plan:

1. WoE <- always active
2. War and Trials <- one of these always active
3. About 4 smaller, 14-21 day PvP events <- one of these always active
4. Weekly PvP tournaments


This sideboard event would naturally go to that category #3. It would be bigger than a tournament, but much simpler than War.

The way I see it, this PvP event has actually two different kinds of events rolled into one. It has the sideboard thing, and then it has to phat deck thing. Maybe we could slit this into two different events? This way it would be simpler and more accessible to new players.

Sideboard itself brings a new element (no pun intended) to Elements, so I don't see the need to complicate things more.

[Essence]

I can see that.  OK, then, I'll shelve the Phat Deck event as a good idea for later, and run a 'sideboard' event this time around.

[Scaredgirl]

I can see that.  OK, then, I'll shelve the Phat Deck event as a good idea for later, and run a 'sideboard' event this time around.

Why not run both, back-to-back?

[pervepic]

I like the seeding based on an amount of  upgraded cards and the score system as the second criteria (which comes to play after first match).