Irl Codex Tournament Format

After playing in the FSX Codex tournament I’ve thought about what format I’d like to play Codex in. The format run there was bo1 with 25 minutes per player to complete their match. If you run out of time you lose.

This format doesn’t really highlight the cool aspect of being able to do many different stuff with the same deck and being able to change up your gameplan between games and being able to learn what kind of stuff the opponent’s deck can do and try and formulate a counter to it.

What I’d like to see is 100 minute rounds with 45 minutes per player to do a bo3 (the extra 10 minutes is a pause between games to clean up and reset your Codex). This would allow for more counter play between decks and a more enjoyable experience for players (imo) because they get to play more games. If there was lots of tournaments to go to in the course of a year I could get on board with 50 minute bo1 rounds because if this was the case it would be possible to follow the meta and learn what decks generally like to do and come up with plans before the tournament. However, currently there is one tournament a year, just let us play a bunch of games.

45 minutes per player should be plenty of time for a player to complete a bo3. Once you know all your cards games can move really quick. I’m so proficient at my deck that I’m able to lose games in 7 minutes.

Any thoughts?

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I’ve got very little experience of playing f2f (although not none) - but 15 minutes per player per game sounds insane. The typical game seems to be about 7-8 turns, assuming no concession* - can you even phsyically play out all your cards and resolve their effects in just 2 minutes for one turn?

I understand the desire to get through lots of games, but I personally wouldn’t enjoy any tournament where I felt so rushed I was unable to enjoy the game. And I would love to play in f2f tournaments were they ever to become a thing, even though I’d likely lose every game. (I’d just like to lose based on my bad in-game decisions, as opposed to losing on the clock).

*Actually I suspect concessions would be non-existent in this format. No matter how much I’m getting killed on the board, I can hope that my opponent can’t manage to physically carry out all his attacks in the time available. Makes even more sense if the time limit is for 3 games combined, rather than per game.

3 Likes

I totally understand the desire to do Bo3, but I agree with Robinz that you’ll need at least 60 minutes per player to do that, and the other issue with Bo3 is that some of the players are going to be sitting idle after a 2-0 where others will be resolving a rubber match.

I think a best of 2 where you play each side of a matchup, with 45 minutes for each player’s side, in 120 minute slots, would be doable, but that is cutting in half the number of opponents you can play each day, and doesn’t have a clear winner necessarily.

While I wasn’t at FSX and can understand the frustration not being able to adapt to odd matchups, I think it still probably is the best format for a RL competitive tourney.

The time limit is combined for the whole set. You have 45 minutes to play out the bo3. It might seem insanely short if you’re used to pbf but it should be definitely doable once you get used to playing irl. Your first two turns shouldn’t take more then 30 seconds each. Turns only get complex later in the game so if you managed your time well early on you’ll have extra time for the complex turns.

If it was too difficult to do my original idea of 100 minute bo3 I could see just making each round 2 hours long which would be 50 minutes per player up to 10 minutes between games to reset Codices and a 10 minute break between sets.

Not when you’re paying a lot of money to participate in the one Codex tournament in the year and want to get in a lot of tournament games, I got to play 4 games of tournament Codex and then the rest of the day was dead time. I’d like it to be a most of the day thing or even two day thing.

That sounds really bad and unworkable. How does a bo2 even work?

By play each side of the mu do you mean one game you’re player 1 and the next you’re player 2? Or do you mean swapping decks? Because if it’s the latter I’m sure most players would strongly dislike/hate swapping decks.

Definitely meant swapping P1/P2, not swapping decks :wink:

4 games definitely wouldn’t feel satisfying for flying out to a place, I’m sorry it worked out that way. I agree that running it over multiple days would definitely be easier to justify flying for, but I can also understand why they’re running each game’s tourney on a different day: people want to compete in multiple games, if the tourneys run at the same time they can’t do that!

Perhaps what would have worked best would have been keeping the 60 minute best of 1 format, but don’t cut anyone after swiss for seeding? If you started at 8:30am and run until ~8:30pm, you should be able to get 3 rounds of Swiss before lunch, and 4 rounds after lunch, you can start a 8-person single elim before dinner, eat after quarters, and then everyone can either watch semis / finals or play games for fun in the evening?

If I could get clearance from my wife I’d look into traveling for that (I had to promise no big trips this year since we moved into this big new house, I’m even skipping my Ultimate Dodgeball Championships where there’s $50k of total prize money up for grabs, and it’s in Chicago, not that far away!)

2 Likes

25 minutes per player is a very comfortable amount but gets kinda tight on very long games. A best of three could last anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours which is an absolute nightmare to organise for.

Which is why I assume clan went for an overall timer that is shorter. However, I feel shortening the timer wouldn’t be good.

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I should add that clans timeframe wasn’t completely bonkers since many people finished with 5 to 12 minutes left on their clocks, indicating about 15-20 minutes per person. However some people nearly did run out of time and a shorter timer fails to take into account how variable game length can be.

3 Likes

[quote=“ClanNatioy, post:1, topic:2664, full:true”]This format doesn’t really highlight the cool aspect of being able to do many different stuff with the same deck and being able to change up your gameplan between games
[/quote]

Good point.

Yeah, the Codex day did seem to have “extra time” that maybe could have been used for more matches