Always a Titanic Struggle ...
The big story this year is that the number of preliminary
games was way down this year. Typically we have had in the 40s,
but this year we had only 23. This affected what was needed to
qualify this year and will change how the tournament is run next
year.
This
year only 13 different people won preliminary games. This was
in part due to some players winning multiple preliminary games.
(Kyle Moore won three plus another as an eliminator, Kevin Hillock
and Ed Rothenheber three, Rich Atwater, Brian Sutton and David
desJardins two each) One player with a win was unable to play
in the semi-finals and so four players without
a preliminary win made the semi-finals. Three of these four (Aaron
Fuegi, David Finberg and Russ Cleaveland) won their semi-final
game and Aaron went on to win the final. Steve Koleszar is the
only other person to win the event after not winning any preliminary
games.
I am not sure what the reason for the big drop this year was,
but it was probably some combination of the following:
* Competition from other events, particularly from "German"
games.
* Titan has been out of print for several years now and
sets are selling for around $100.
* Several fairly dedicated players had conflicts this year and
were unable to attend.
* Feedback from the lower number of games going on at once making
it harder to get new games started. This cost us some potential
players who did not want to wait a long time for a game to start.
* Only having our initial start time in the program making us
less noticeable to people looking for events starting at any
particular time.
For next year I twant to make a change to reverse this trend.
I don't think the current format works well when new games aren't
being formed every half hour or so during the afternoon and early
evening. Initially I wanted to hold on to the current system
for another year to see if things went back to normal, but I
have come to the conclusion that a change really needs to occur
next year. I am very interested in feedback about my proposal
below and would like to hear back from people whether they favor,
are opposed or are neutral to the proposed changes. You can reach
me at the address below.
I still want dedicated players to be able to play lots of
games while accommodating a drop in players as well. I don't
want to have to cut games off before they are finished. However
there isn't enough time to both have rounds completely separate
and get a reasonable number of games in. I think what we can
do is start games about every four hours or so. Some games will
still be going on, but normally one or two players will have
been eliminated after four hours. Most of the games should be
finished in eight hours. There isn't much point in starting at
the same time as the two-player event. So the times I was thinking
of starting rounds were Wednesday 14, 18 and 22, Thursday 10,
14, 18 and 22 and Friday 10, 14 and 18. The semis and finals
would still be on Saturday.
If we change to this system we will not be able to just have
four-player games for the preliminary matches. I will use three,
four or five player games and will slightly prefer three-player
games to five-player games determining the matches in a particular
round. I think five-player games are too crowded and take longer
to play. Three-player games shouldn't play that much different
than four-player games.
I also want to adjust the scoring a bit. Getting third place
in a three-player game will not count as a third. And getting
fourth in a five-player game with be worth between a third and
a titan kill.
We really didn't have anything else come up that suggests
making any other significant changes.
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