Elements PvP Tournament - Rules

[The Oracle]

Elements PvP Tournament - Rules

1. Joining

1.1 - What Is a Tournament?
A tournament is a PvP competition. The type we use here is the single-elimination tournament (for 8 players or more), swiss-system tournament (6-7 players) or a round-robin tournament (in case of only 4-5 players).
The following image shows an example bracket of the single elimination tournament:

Spoiler for Example of tournament brackets:

1.2 - Who Can Join a Tournament?
Anyone from a beginner to a seasoned veteran is welcome to join a tournament. All you need is a valid game and forum account with at least 1 forum post where you introduce yourself.

1.3 - Minimum One Introduction Post
If you are a new member who wants to join a tournament, just make an introduction post here. This way, other players will know who you are.

1.4 - Signing Up
No signing up is required. Simply enter the Elements Tournament Room on our Blab chat at least 15 minutes before the tournament starts. If you arrive later than that, you can not participate. To find the Tournament Room, click the Rooms button in the upper left corner of the main chatroom.

Knowledge Check (For players who play for the first time)
We suggest new players to enter the chat room at least 30 minutes before the tournament starts so that the Tournament Organizers (TOs) can check whether you know the rules. The check includes sending the TOs a legal deck of the tournament and answering 3 questions. Please message a TO in the tournament room to ensure we can finish the check before the tournament starts.

1.5 - How Long Does It Take?
Expect to spend at least two to four hours playing in the tournament. The amount of time required varies depending on the speed of the used decks and the amount of players. Note that there is no penalty for leaving after you are eliminated, though.

1.6 - Four Player Minimum
Each single elimination tournament has to have at least 8 participants. If a tournament has less than 8 participants, it is changed into a double elimination tournament. If less than 4 people show up, the tournament is cancelled.

1.7 - 64 Player Limit
Each tournament can have a maximum of 64 players. If we have more than 32 players, we will have a fast "best-of-one" preliminary round to determine which 32 players go to round 2.

1.8 - Tournament Special Rules
All tournaments have special rules. If these special rules are in conflict with any of the rules on this page, special rules will apply. Special rules are announced in the current tournament's respective thread.
If a card is banned by the special rules, but another legal card can generate this banned card during the gameplay, you can freely use the generated card.
2. Getting Ready

2.1 - Making Sure the Rules Haven't Been Updated
Sometimes players find loopholes in the rules that the organizers didn't take into consideration. In this situation, organizers might change the rules to avoid people exploiting the rules and ruining the event. This is why before you start preparing for a tournament, it's always a good idea to make sure that the tournament rules haven't been updated.

2.2 - Building Decks
To avoid downtime during duels, please build and test your decks in advance. All tournaments have deckbuilding rules, so make sure all your decks are legal. An automatic loss is given to anyone who uses an illegal deck regardless of the outcome of the game. This only applies to the game where the illegal deck was used.

2.3 - 15 Minutes Before the Tournament Starts
Please enter the Elements Tournament Room in Blab chat to participate. To find the Tournament Room, click the Rooms button in the upper left corner of the main chatroom.

While you wait for the tournament to start, it's a good idea to read tournament rules once more and make sure you have all the deck codes available for easy access. Here is a tool that helps you store your decks easily: http://elementscommunity.org/tools/mydecks/

2.4 - Five Minutes Before the Tournament Starts
The TOs will now take all the names currently in chat room and build tournament brackets. Once the brackets are ready, the organizer will announce it in chat.

NOTE: If you don't plan to join a tournament, stay out the tournament room until the tournament has started. Brackets are made according to people in the tournament room and the presence of people who do not participate can lead to incorrect brackets. Violating this rule can lead to a chat ban.

3. Tournament Starts

Note: All time limits mentioned below are approximations. They are treated only as a guideline.

3.1 - Finding an Opponent
See from the Tournament Brackets who you are fighting. You have 5 minutes to start a duel with that opponent. If your opponent does not respond, contact a TO who will also try to contact the other player. If unsuccessful, it is considered a forfeit and you will move on to the next round. If your opponent shows up before you start your next duel, he is given one last chance if he instantly starts the match with you.

3.2 - Best-of-Three
A match consists of 2 or 3 individual duels. The player who first wins 2 duels is the winner. The winner goes on to the next round and the loser is eliminated from the tournament (unless he was in the Top 4 or Top 6 in case of more than 32 players).

3.3 - Deck Legality Check
Before you start your match with your opponent, you can ask him to save all his used decks during the duels. If your opponent asks you to save your decks, you must accept it. After the match has ended, you can ask him to show either you or the Tournament Organizer his decks for a legality check. If you miss doing so and later it turns out that you lost against an illegal deck, there are two possibilities. If it is a single elimination tournament you won't have the chance to claim the win any more. If it is a round-robin or swiss type tournament, then the user of the illegal deck lost the said game. These can cause a replay or a simple change of the result.

3.4 - Changing Your Deck
You are allowed to change your deck and mark between your duels, but you only have 5 minutes to do so which is why it's important to build your decks in advance. If it takes you more than 5 minutes, the TO will ask you to start your duel. If you still can't start your duel, it is considered a forfeit and the other player goes to next round.

3.5 - Desync and Disconnect
If you and your opponent get disconnected in the middle of a game, you both have the opportunity to finish the game against your opponent's AI. If you are winning, create a print screen of the final turn and send it to the TO. If both players claim to have won, but only one of them has a picture of it, the one with the picture wins.
Print screens different from the final turn (for example, images from the victory screen) may not be accepted, and they will be evaluated case by case by the TOs.
NOTE: If you don't know how to take a screenshot, click HERE.

When a desync error happens, the match gets restarted, unless it was very clear who was going to win. We are hoping that players are honest about this, but if there is a dispute, the TO will decide the outcome. Players are not allowed to change their decks or marks when a match gets restarted.

If there are 3 desyncs in a single game, contact a TO. You will be asked to provide a screenshot from the Connections page. Both players may need to play a dummy game with the TO to test the connectivity. If one player is obviously having connectivity issues, an automatic loss will be given.

3.6 - Never Ending Games
If it is obvious that a game will never end (i.e. both players have zero net damage output - where they can both heal the damage done each turn - and will never deck out, and the players have no means of breaking the stalemate), the result of that game is voided. There is no winner and no loser for that game. Both players have the option of switching decks for the next game in the match.

3.7 - 40 Minute Time Limit
Rounds last a maximum of 40 minutes. TOs can give 20 extra minutes time depending on the situation if, for example, players are just about to finish the last duel. If players are unable to finish all duels before this time limit and the score is tied, the TOs announce the winner according to who seems to be winning (for example: health remaining, cards in the deck, etc.) when there is overwhelming evidence pointing towards one side winning. Otherwise, it's a coin toss.

3.8 - Tiebreakers
In case of a round-robin or swiss type of tournament ties (2 or more players having the same amount of won/lost matches) can happen. In that case the following rules apply.

Priority order to resolve a 3-way tie.

In a 3-way tie only those matches count which are played against other tied opponents.

• Match wins against tied opponents.
  
  
• The WIN/LOSS ratio of the played games vs tied opponents. (For example Player 1 having 3 wins and 2 losses is better than Player 2 having 3 wins and 3 losses.)
  
  
• If - after using the previous rule - there are 2 players left with the exact same statistics (won/lost games) then we look at their match against each other.
  The winner gets the better placement.
  
  
• If there are 3 players with the exact same won/lost games statistics then 2 things happen in succession. First, we check the results of the matches vs
  the non-tied opponent left. If that still cannot decide between the remaining contestants, then the TO assigns numbers to each tied contestants and rolls and 1d3 (or 1d2) publicly.
  The roll will show the number of the player who is out of the competition. The remaining 2 players then may play a tiebreaker game OR ask the TO to roll an 1d2
  and determine the winner the same way explained above.
  

Priority order to resolve a 2-way tie.

It is a simple case, hence the tied players had a match against each other. Whoever won that match also won the better placement.

Priority order to resolve a 4-way tie.

• It follows the logic of 3-way ties, all the rules written there applies here as well.
  
  
• Only exception is the rare case of 4 players with the exact same statistics. First we check the results of the matches vs the non-tied opponent left. Then the TO must
  eliminate remaining players by 1d4 (or 1d3) rolls. The TO first assigns numbers to players then does 1d4 (or 1d3) rolls until 2 players are left (the rolled numbers shows
  who are the eliminated players). The player eliminated first gets the 4th place, the player eliminated second gets the 3rd place. The 2 players left in the tie may play
  a tiebreaker game against each other. The winner gets the 1st place. In case of these 2 players are really hardcore and don't have time to play another game they
  may ask the TO to make an 1d2 roll to determine the winner of the tournament (but we hope such things won't ever happen).

Spoiler for Example:

Last tourney of 2020 brought also a 3-way tiebreaker between these players. They all had 1 win against tied opponents.

Naii: 1 Win 1 Loss; 3-2 (1-2, 2-0)
worldwideweb3 1 Win 1 Loss; 3-3 (1-2, 2-1)
Wyand: 1 Win 1 Loss; 2-3 (2-1, 0-2)

Spoiler for Just for historical reasons: this earlier method was used between 2019.10.20. and 2020.09.20.:

In the 2020.05.17. tourney we had a 3-way tie between Klatu, serprex and Wyand. All of them had 1 win against tied opponents.
The end results were (the results vs tied opponents are in the parentheses):

1. Klatu 5-3 (1-2, 2-0, 2-1)
2. Wyand 5-4 (2-1, 2-1, 1-2)
3. serprex 4-3 (2-1, 0-2, 2-1)

Another example was the 2019.11.24. tourney, where there was a 3-way tie for the 2nd-4h places.  TheonlyrealBeef, mathman101
and Wyand all had 1 win against tied opponents. The end results were:

2. TheonlyrealBeef 4-4 (1-2, 1-2, 2-0)
3. mathman101 3-5 (1-2, 2-1, 0-2)
4. Wyand 3-5 (2-1, 1-2, 0-2).

As you can see, mathman101 and Wyand had the same statistics, but if we look at their match it ended with mathman's win,
so the 3rd place goes to him.

3.9 - Posting Match Results
Match results are to be posted in the respective tournament thread by the winner. Please use a simple format like one of the following:

Billy: 2 Johnny: 1

or

Billy 2 - 1 Johnny

4. Other Rules

4.1 - Pillars, Pendulums and Standalone Mark Cards
Pillars and pendulums of all elements are always allowed in tournaments unless stated otherwise.
Standalone mark cards belong to their element and is treated as a pillar unless stated otherwise.

4.2 - Pay Attention to Chat
You are expected to answer the TO's questions and pay attention to announcements in chat. Failure to do so may disrupt the tournament and result in a ban. Protip: have the game in its own window in your browser. This is better than a tab because it won't slow down Flash and cause desyncs.

4.3 - Cheating
We take all kind of cheating very seriously. If you get caught cheating, you automatically lose and will be banned indefinitely from all Elements community PvP and PvE events. So please play fair. Entering a tournament under two separate accounts (Person A joining as Person A and Person B) is considered cheating and may result in a permanent ban from all tournaments. The following actions are also considered as cheating: changing deck/card/mark in a retry, willingly including more copies of a card than it's allowed, photoshopping false evidence and playing cards that are considered unobtainable (Malignant Cell, Ash and Holy Cow).

4.4 - Posting About Tournaments
Please don't post discussions on the forum regarding the metagame or decks for the upcoming tournament. Also please do not post or give away tournament decks while tournament is still in progress. If you think that there is an overpowered card or strategy that should be banned, send them to the organizers who will privately discuss whether the card is really overpowered or not. Feel free to discuss these topics after the tournament is over.

4.5 - Chatting During Tournaments
Please don't spam the chat 5-10 minutes before the tournament starts. We don't need 20 people shouting "Where are the brackets?!". Just wait until the TO makes the brackets public. If you keep spamming, you will be removed from the tournament.

Try to use chat Personal Messages as much as possible, for example, when arranging a duel with your opponent.

After a tournament has started, please refrain from talking about any non-tournament related topics. This way it will be easier for the tournament organizer to communicate with all the players.

Thanks.

Tournament Prizes The top 4 players will receive prizes. Tournament Organizers will give reward codes to winners who can then redeem the codes in-game. 1st place 5,000 electrum + Nymph/Mark Code+ Trophy 2nd place 1/3 Nymph/Mark Code 3rd place 1/6 Nymph/Mark Code 4th place 1/9 Nymph/Mark Code

The normal rewards are increased if 8 or more players participate.

Spoiler for increased rewards:

1st place	5,000 electrum + Nymph/Mark + Trophy
2nd place	1/2 Nymph/Mark Code
3rd place	1/3 Nymph/Mark Code
4th place	1/4 Nymph/Mark Code

If you have any questions about the rules, please post them here. Thank you.

[Rastafla]

Signing up
Tournaments can be divided into two different groups based on the time they are held: Westerns tournaments and Eastern tournaments. You can join either one of them depending on which time suits you best, but you can only join one tournament per week.

Signing up thread will appear on the main tournament section roughly one week before a tournament starts. To sign up, simply reply to the thread with the following information:

• Forum username
• Chat username
• Elements account name (aka IGN)

If something unexpected comes up and you cannot participate, please write a 2nd post saying you are canceling your sign-up.

Here is a lengthy post about the new protocol.

The underlining (by me) in your post and quoted below.
"You can join either one of them depending on which time suits you best, but you can only join one tournament per week."

This is kinda bad. It will remove about to 50%-75% of the tournament players. Most players migrate between them. And as long as we use single elimination (instead of double elimination) its common for someone to lose in the first round due to bad draws but having a second chance by signing up for the next one fixes that.

Secondly, Participants must join the tournament chat with a Registered chatname. Multiple guest nicks is a horror and all of them chatting and talking about irrelevant stuff asking questions getting annoyed by all the talking by regular users etc etc. We have seen this before. Its hard just paying attention to 15-20 users who are all excited and are joking and having a good time.
Even explaining in detail how to make a registered nick wont shut them up or make they listen.
Last week I gave them 10 minutes to change and gave them detailed instructions on how to do it, one answered "who cares you ****" and left before i could do anything, the rest I had no choice but to kick out.
On a personal note i would like to add; make it clear that once the tournament starts all NON entrants besides mods and organizers should stay quiet or leave.

Thirdly, everyone can edit their post and change it to signing up as "reserve" or "I have withdrawn" instead of making a second post. Or resigning up for that matter. If people makes multiple posts it will make it harder for the single organizer to keep track of entrants.

Fourthly, when desync happens a 30 min round will be too little. Give it and extra 10 min  like the old protocol.

Fifthly, If a player drops out mid-tournament, they should be replaced by the player they most recently beat and then by others down that chain of beaten players in that line in the bracket. If its the first round one randomly reserve player takes the place. If no reserve is there (ie signed up as reserve) is found the spot becomes a bye.

Sixthly No byes outside the first round. Challonge ignores this sometimes but then an organizer can use copy and paste in any image software mspaint, gimp or photoshop and fix it.

Lastly  Too bad the old protocol is gone. There are good points in it. The first two posts had very good points on how to deal with stuff that happens.

On a another note about the so called "Signing up is now closed! If you come even one minute late, you won't be able to join the tournament - no exceptions!" That also existed in the old protocol.

Over the past weeks/months I have observed several things, people have been given permissions to enter even after such things as:
Being over 5min late. Veteran players included even though they were late, and picked over others equally late. Player being late and added anyway just to even the numbers and making a perfect numbered bracket. The first first bracket fails because of a player that the organizer missed and when the remade bracket comes it included all players even those who were late and weren't supposed to be in.

Last week I was 20 sec late (first time ever, always been there at least 15 min early)  into the channel 18:00:20 gmt (yes i checked the world clock via Greenwich) and when i looked in the history later, a few more players that were not in the channel before the required 5 min pre-tournamnet start were in the bracket.
This made me very pist and to ensure this wont happen again to ANY other player I want the rules to be perfectly followed the next time.

After one and a half hour I calmed down and thought "Well I've already won several tournaments, being kicked out from one even though others wouldn't is no biggie, i'll compete the next week."

But as everything with rules and protocols are being changed I want rules to be followed by the letter, if not, new players might get just as disgruntled as I was at first especially now when Zanzarino is considering making ingame links to the tournaments. Having new players face the things I've described will not be good as they will feel mistreated and see favoritism.

Thats all, for now.

1st edit - Spellings there are probably more.

[Scaredgirl]

The underlining (by me) in your post and quoted below.
"You can join either one of them depending on which time suits you best, but you can only join one tournament per week."

This is kinda bad. It will remove about to 50%-75% of the tournament players. Most players migrate between them. And as long as we use single elimination (instead of double elimination) its common for someone to lose in the first round due to bad draws but having a second chance by signing up for the next one fixes that.

The idea here is that when Zanz puts that in-game link, we will most likely have 10 times more players wanting o join tournaments, and because there are only 64 spots available weekly, most of them won't have a chance to join.

Are you saying we should let some players join two tournaments while others are completely left out? Not going to happen.

I could add a rule that if there are not 32 players participating, then anyone can join.

Secondly, Participants must join the tournament chat with a Registered chatname. Multiple guest nicks is a horror and all of them chatting and talking about irrelevant stuff asking questions getting annoyed by all the talking by regular users etc etc. We have seen this before. Its hard just paying attention to 15-20 users who are all excited and are joking and having a good time.

I'll add this.

Thirdly, everyone can edit their post and change it to signing up as "reserve" or "I have withdrawn" instead of making a second post. Or resigning up for that matter. If people makes multiple posts it will make it harder for the single organizer to keep track of entrants.

I'll add this one too.

Fourthly, when desync happens a 30 min round will be too little. Give it and extra 10 min  like the old protocol.

We have to try with 30 (+5) minute rounds first. Main goal is to make tournaments faster.

Fifthly, If a player drops out mid-tournament, they should be replaced by the player they most recently beat and then by others down that chain of beaten players in that line in the bracket. If its the first round one randomly reserve player takes the place. If no reserve is there (ie signed up as reserve) is found the spot becomes a bye.

Yes, this is something I need to add as well.

Related to this, I'd also like to see a system where a player who frequently quits mid-tournament gets "banned" from the next tournament. Because I've seen on multiple occasions, when a player knows that he most likely doesn't have time to play the tournament but joins anyway. This is unfair to other players who have time to join.

Sixthly No byes outside the first round. Challonge ignores this sometimes but then an organizer can use copy and paste in any image software mspaint, gimp or photoshop and fix it.

I'm pretty sure that we get that 32 players almost every time so this shouldn't be a problem.

Lastly  Too bad the old protocol is gone. There are good points in it. The first two posts had very good points on how to deal with stuff that happens.

It's not gone. It's just not visible to mortals.

On a another note about the so called "Signing up is now closed! If you come even one minute late, you won't be able to join the tournament - no exceptions!" That also existed in the old protocol.

Over the past weeks/months I have observed several things, people have been given permissions to enter even after such things as:
Being over 5min late. Veteran players included even though they were late, and picked over others equally late. Player being late and added anyway just to even the numbers and making a perfect numbered bracket. The first first bracket fails because of a player that the organizer missed and when the remade bracket comes it included all players even those who were late and weren't supposed to be in.

Yes, I've also seen this veteran favoritism, and it's going to change. Forum post count will have no affect. Only way to be in the tournament is to be on time.

[plastiqe]

We're actually gonna have 32 player tournaments?  I'll believe it when I see it.  : )

Having a username for tournaments is a no brainer, but even outside of tournaments I see a lot of people in chat asking how they sign up.  Is it possible to put a link or tutorial somewhere in the chat to address this?

I think 30 min is too short, raise to up to 45 min for standard games, up to 1 hour for the finals .  Also this was suggested for the old rules but have mods post time left in chat at 15 min, 30 mins, 40 mins and call time at 45 mins. 

Have a note somewhere in there about stalling.

[Rastafla]

The underlining (by me) in your post and quoted below.
"You can join either one of them depending on which time suits you best, but you can only join one tournament per week."

This is kinda bad. It will remove about to 50%-75% of the tournament players. Most players migrate between them. And as long as we use single elimination (instead of double elimination) its common for someone to lose in the first round due to bad draws but having a second chance by signing up for the next one fixes that.

The idea here is that when Zanz puts that in-game link, we will most likely have 10 times more players wanting o join tournaments, and because there are only 64 spots available weekly, most of them won't have a chance to join.

Are you saying we should let some players join two tournaments while others are completely left out? Not going to happen.

I could add a rule that if there are not 32 players participating, then anyone can join.

Thanks for the answers Scaredgirl. That had occured to me but I assumed its just as with everything else. First to sign up gets the place. Theres no way to check if someone is serious about this game or not so by making it so that the first people to sign up gets the a spot makes sure we get people who really wants to compete and are playing. And if theres a penalty for taking a spot and not showing up its gets even better. This makes sure there is one more level of professionalism. Especially if we seed top players (all time score/last weeks top 4/monthly rating) in to make sure the tournaments requires a bare minimum of skills to win and not slipping bye on a banana skin.

If there will be so many more players as you think it will be, we might have to make more than just one tournament of western and eastern to accommodate all players.

Single elimination is still very unfair since the randomness of draws and optimal decks and the short (30ish card) decks makes single elimination not about skill, rather draws and a cookie cutter deck who works against many other cookie cutter builds.

Signing up for several tournaments or double elimination lessens this factor.

We're actually gonna have 32 player tournaments?  I'll believe it when I see it.  : )

Having a username for tournaments is a no brainer, but even outside of tournaments I see a lot of people in chat asking how they sign up.  Is it possible to put a link or tutorial somewhere in the chat to address this?

I think 30 min is too short, raise to up to 45 min for standard games, up to 1 hour for the finals .  Also this was suggested for the old rules but have mods post time left in chat at 15 min, 30 mins, 40 mins and call time at 45 mins. 

Have a note somewhere in there about stalling.

I do agree with you, a msg asking a guest to register every time they log in could possibly help with the nice people we want and they are the majority of the ones asking.

Signing up for the chat is so easy, users are simply too impatient to even look for themselves.
Theres a register button but they ignore it, and if they still do in many cases even after people (such as veterans and staff or users with nicks) tell them how to go back and change.

They are, in harsh terms, not worth helping as they clearly don't care and have no interest to be a part of the game. Nevertheless one tries.

Yes, stalling have to be addressed, one guy i beat in a previous tournament basically threatened to let CPU take over if i not spoke to him at great lengths about why my deck so utterly crushed him. He let it go to cpu warning almost every turn when it was apparent I had a big advntage. I took screen shots of me being able to win in 1 turn just to be safe if he actually did leave.

[PuppyChow]

Related to this, I'd also like to see a system where a player who frequently quits mid-tournament gets "banned" from the next tournament. Because I've seen on multiple occasions, when a player knows that he most likely doesn't have time to play the tournament but joins anyway. This is unfair to other players who have time to join.

For this, we would need to define "frequently". Things do come up that are unforseen, like computer crashes and internet problems among other things. And since frequently is subjective, it may not be applied equally.

Hence, here's my idea of frequently:

You are allowed to quit mid-tournament once every four tournaments you compete in. If you quit mid-tournament more than once per four tournaments, you will be banned from a single tournament.

Following your first tournament protocol breach in this way, you will be banned for one more tournament for each subsequent breach which will cap out at a three tournament (week) ban.

This would be easily kept track of with a single list of people that HAVE quit mid tournament and the games passed since their last mid-tournament quit.

I could add a rule that if there are not 32 players participating, then anyone can join.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. To make it easier, we should just have three different sign ups (in one topic though).

1) Participants (32 slots)
2) Reserves (infinite slots)
3) Reserves Slot 2 (for those participating in another tournament this week)

So Participants would have first priority, then any reserves present, and then those already participating in another tournament. So if only 25 signed up but there were 5 reserves, then two of those participating in theother tournament would be allowed.

On a personal note i would like to add; make it clear that once the tournament starts all NON entrants besides mods and organizers should stay quiet or leave.

I disagree with this. Spectators should be allowed to comment on what's going on in the tourny.

However, subject matter of the chat should be kept on the topic of the tournament; don't ask which card you should upgrade next.

[Rastafla]

Related to this, I'd also like to see a system where a player who frequently quits mid-tournament gets "banned" from the next tournament. Because I've seen on multiple occasions, when a player knows that he most likely doesn't have time to play the tournament but joins anyway. This is unfair to other players who have time to join.

For this, we would need to define "frequently". Things do come up that are unforseen, like computer crashes and internet problems among other things. And since frequently is subjective, it may not be applied equally.

Hence, here's my idea of frequently:

You are allowed to quit mid-tournament once every four tournaments you compete in. If you quit mid-tournament more than once per four tournaments, you will be banned from a single tournament.

Following your first tournament protocol breach in this way, you will be banned for one more tournament for each subsequent breach which will cap out at a three tournament (week) ban.

This would be easily kept track of with a single list of people that HAVE quit mid tournament and the games passed since their last mid-tournament quit.

I could add a rule that if there are not 32 players participating, then anyone can join.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. To make it easier, we should just have three different sign ups (in one topic though).

1) Participants (32 slots)
2) Reserves (infinite slots)
3) Reserves Slot 2 (for those participating in another tournament this week)

So Participants would have first priority, then any reserves present, and then those already participating in another tournament. So if only 25 signed up but there were 5 reserves, then two of those participating in theother tournament would be allowed.

On a personal note i would like to add; make it clear that once the tournament starts all NON entrants besides mods and organizers should stay quiet or leave.

I disagree with this. Spectators should be allowed to comment on what's going on in the tourny.

However, subject matter of the chat should be kept on the topic of the tournament; don't ask which card you should upgrade next.

I agree with everything here, i should have said "stay mostly quiet or leave". Talk about the current matches is good but guests don't even know about spectate and speak about other non tournament stuff, its that non tournament stuff i want to get rid of.

To Scaredgirl

One can only compete in the nick one signed up for. Swapping to a friends or family members account midway because of other cards and stuff should not be allowed.
That prevents people from getting someone else to play for them or signing up with several accounts and hogging several tournament spots and do battle to just benefit one account. The nick in the bracket should also be the ign so there is no misunderstanding.

[melzardust]

One question: can you submit redeem code on another account than the one you won with?

[Scaredgirl]

One question: can you submit redeem code on another account than the one you won with?

Yes.

[GG]

Is is absolutely necessary to stay in the chatroom for the entire duration of the tournament?

I know that, including myself, some people have troubles with elements chat and regularly dc. And by saying regularly, I mean like every 2 minutes.

It would SUCK to be disqualified just because I got randomly dced from the chat like a second before the tournament.

[Scaredgirl]

Is is absolutely necessary to stay in the chatroom for the entire duration of the tournament?

Well, if you know your opponent and there are no issues, there's really no need to stay in chat 24/7. You only need to come there to talk to your next opponent or to settle a dispute.

These chat room bugs will hopefully be fixed in the updated version of the software I'm installing soon.

[Scaredgirl]

Rules updated.