The Team Tournament was never meant to be anything more than
a fun exercise in trash talking between local game groups. Those
who take it too seriously want it to morph into something else.
| What You’d Like to See… |
What You Want Not to Change |
How I See It… |
| Better Test of
Skill 5: It seems to me that the method
of picking one event makes things awfully anti-climactic, with
most teams being out of the race well before Sunday, rather than
being able to hope for a miracle win in a game they don’t play
much on Sunday morning. I understand that that advantages eurogamers
over wargamers, since
eurogamers play more events and therefore have a greater chance
of winning one. So I suggest that team tournament scoring be
changed from based on attendance only, like it is now, to attendance
multiplied by event length, like it is for laurels. In fact,
you could
simply use the laurel system directly—add up the highest number
of laurels each player on the team earned in a single event. |
|
Many people over the years have critiqued
the Team Tournament—uually with the goal of making it more
inclusive of multiple events—and thus more complicated. These
schemes tend towards rewarding skill and giving players more
control over their scoring chances rather than making them predict
how they will do in one event. I too have suggested improvements
to the Team Tournament and have introduced numerous changes that
have not gained the Board’s approval. However, my changes would
take it in the opposite direction and make the possibility of
upsets even greater.
Originally, the Team Tournament was conceived
as an esprit de corps building attempt to bond members of local
gaming groups in a fun, trash ’talkin’ kind of way. Over the
years, it has become more and more of an exercise in Ringer recruitment.
Consequently, I favor maintaining the chaos of the luck element
as opposed to making it easier for the sharks to dominate. And
simpler is always better. |
| More Timely Results
4: It would also be significantly
more awesome if team tournament standings could be posted in
near-real time. |
|
Yep, and I’d like
to get GM reports that fast too, but we’ve had years to prove
that isn’t going to happen. Aside from my need to have something
to headline those monthly email newsletters to make them relevant
year ’round, there is a practical reason why realtime Team Tournament
scoring isn’t going to happen—even in the information technology
age. I have yet to have a year when all GMs actually submitted
a correct Winner’s List—not an event report, but a Winner’s
List—by the end of the convention. Usually, I’m chasing down
missing results for weeks after the con. Or accepting corrected
results. Imagine, the anguish if we announced another title for
the Nest of Spies at the con only to issue a “sorry—upon
further review, we’ve decided you didn’t win after all."
Instant replay has not yet made it to boardgaming officialdom. |
| 2-Man Teams 1 |
|
Wow; that would more
than double the number of teams. While I sympathize with those
who lack enough pals at the con to form a team, that would destroy
the tradition of the 4-man teams, defeat the purpose, relevance
and current scoring of the event. More importantly, it would
increase my work load so you can figure he odds of that happening
are slim and none. |
|
|
