Tournament Rules?

[XCoconutMonkey06x]

Originally Posted by Onacara

Or perhaps assign points for units to be used to decide winner...Say Commons destroyed count as 1 point..Champions count as 2

Going further on that point there should be scoring similar to the NHL involved...

W=2 Points
L=0 Points
T=1 Point...1 point would be given to the person who ended a game with both Summoners still alive but lost the game due to the "Overtime/Shootout" scoring above. The winner would be awarded 2 points.

Only possible issue I see here is if your playing with (or against) cards that sit on top of a "stack". If you control the monster but your opponent captures the card, do you not count those cards at the end? If that card is still in play at the end, would you count those cards?

I think finding an adequate time for a game would be a good start first. As for the "tie" bit, I was just basing that off my experience with MTG tournaments. Seemed to work ok for that format but their games tend to go a tad faster so I can see that being an issue here.

I am starting to kidn of like Bistro's idea with "captured" cards, persay. That should show who was controlling the card advantage during the game.

I'm not a fan with the life total on the board. Someone could cast like reinforcements or something and toss out some high life commons to swing the results.

[Creationist]

Maybe there could be a sudden death-ish thingy. Maybe have a set number of turns after and then its decided by something. And I think maybe that decider could be total life of the summoner. The summoner makes the player able to play.

[mrkurtb]

A couple things to consider:

1) Have a 5 minute (10 minute?) warning.
2) To reward aggressiveness and to punish cheesy tournament play, consider rewarding each surviving unit. Weight the points received by the number of rows away from ones own starting row (1-8). For example, all units in the row closest to that player receives 1 point per surviving unit. This progresses all the way up to rewarding all units in the opponent's back row, 8 points per unit.

Ties would be very infrequent and I have a feeling this would finish games quickly/make for some crazy finishes.

[SupaGerm]

What about number of wounds inflicted on the opposing summoner? I figure this would work because:

1. It's already the main goal of the game
2. It would inspire an aggressive rush/desperate defense as time is running out
3. Burn/greater burn only hits commons or champions (no advantage for the elves)
4. No complex math or counting of cards

Note that I'm not talking about wounds remaining, as that would make for an uneven situation between factions.

[Truth]

Originally Posted by SupaGerm

What about number of wounds inflicted on the opposing summoner? I figure this would work because:

1. It's already the main goal of the game
2. It would inspire an aggressive rush/desperate defense as time is running out
3. Burn/greater burn only hits commons or champions (no advantage for the elves)
4. No complex math or counting of cards

Note that I'm not talking about wounds remaining, as that would make for an uneven situation between factions.

I think it would still be rather easy to have a tie with this.

[SupaGerm]

I dunno. I find it hard to believe that each summoner would have taken the exact same number of hits during a game. Unless the players were passive and the summoners weren't wounded at all, I don't think there'd be a real issue. Anyone feel like counting wounds during their next game or two? Maybe at 30 mins and every 15 after that? I'd be curious to see the results.

The main thing is that a tie breaker should reward the player who is closest to achieving the main goal of the game. Some of the other suggestions were number of units in play, number of cards in magic pile, etc. And these all lend themselves to the sort of "cheeseball" strategies that mrbistro mentioned. I'd hate to play my way through a tourney, almost kill the other guy's summoner, but lose because he dumped five zero-point goblins on the table at the end of the game, or hid his summoner in the corner and ditched his entire hand into the magic pile each of the last few turns.

[Hogg]

The game is so swingy it’s hard to determine who is winning at any given time. The "For the Puppies" write-up is a great example of this. One summoner killed the other one personally, even when things looked bad for him.

I think the life counting method is bad for high life summoners. Who cares if someone lands a hit on Grognak? But on Elian one hit is significant.

[SupaGerm]

Well, the only other thing I can think of at the moment that is even between factions is event cards. Based on the deck construction rules, each faction will always have the same number of events available.

A potential tie-breaker could be the number of unplayed event cards. I'm not crazy about this idea, but you could argue that both players fought to a tie, but one of them got there by using less of their special strategies.

On the downside, events are meant to be played, not sat on. I'm also not sure if you would count events burned for magic as unplayed or not. I would guess they count as played.

[XCoconutMonkey06x]

I believe Mr Bistro suggested counting "enemy" cards in your magic/discard pile. This would show who attacked and was more aggresive since that player would have more of his enemies cards in his piles. Can't get those by cheeseballing on the last few turns. You have to earn those cards

[SupaGerm]

Originally Posted by XCoconutMonkey06x

I believe Mr Bistro suggested counting "enemy" cards in your magic/discard pile. This would show who attacked and was more aggresive since that player would have more of his enemies cards in his piles. Can't get those by cheeseballing on the last few turns. You have to earn those cards

Definitely not cheeseballing, no. But horde armies would be at a disadvantage in a straight kill count. It's *typically* easier to bump off a goblin than an orc, isn't it? And you yourself pointed out what happens if the goblin is Blarf and he comes stacked with 4 other cards. Tiebreaking pinata, anyone?

I think if you wanted to do it by captured cards and keep it as fair as possible for all factions, you'd have to count costs on the defeated enemies, and figure out what to do with those pesky 0 point ones. Of course... that sounds like a royal pain.

I think I'm leaning towards Onacara's idea, but where commons = 1 point, champions = 3 (better reward for taking out the more important characters, helps leverage easy-to-kill commons). Thing is, under that plan Krung (cost 8) is equally as valuable as Baldar (cost 4). Maybe that's good though, as you should be protecting your better champions anyway, and it should take them more effort to defeat the tougher ones. It definitely keeps things quick and simple, since you're already going to be sifting through your piles to return your opponent's cards, and can count then.

As far as non-unit cards you may get... Count them as commons?

Could have a fun scenario with Magic Drain in play, if someone kills their own champion, and you steal it from the pile.