[Tournament] Experimental Codex Asynchronous Fall Swiss (XCAFS22)

Welcome to our Fall tournament! As before, this is an experimental format. This time around, we’ll be using out Midori’s Balanced Bouts. Each match will have randomly chosen multicolour decks, such that the statistical model I’ve be working on here thinks the matchup should be roughly fair.

In addition, we’ll be using the forum’s current rules changes, as used for CAMS22.

This is a Swiss tournament, with one match per week, plus a grace period if your match overruns.

I’m planning to post the first round on Friday, 30th September.


General rules

  • Late signups will be accepted without penalty until the second set of pairings are made. Signups after that may occur, but will be given one loss for each full round / “tournament week” that has elapsed. Please submit your entry to the tourney, via PM to me or reply in this thread, in order to sign up!
  • I am accepting volunteers to help judge the event. You could be an authorised judge!
  • New pairings will be posted roughly every Monday. Matches that are not progressing may be given an adjudicated result. The “tournament week” is considered to be from one round of pairings posted to the next (so possibly more or less than an actual calendar week, depending on how prompt I am with the Monday postings / others are at finishing games).
  • Matches are 1 game.
  • The first player is responsible for creating the match thread.
  • Tag @charnel_mouse when a winner has been determined.
  • CAS tournaments use a “three strikes” rule - any player who has three losses will be automatically dropped from the tournament. Players may also drop out at any time.
  • There is no “top cut”: the last player standing wins the event. Thanks to the “three strikes” rule, the field should narrow towards the end, and culminate in some exciting final few matches.
  • The default is to play all matches as play-by-post within the forum. A match may be played in an alternate format – in person, on an alternate platform, via snail-mail, whatever – by mutual agreement, until the field is reduced to four or fewer players.
  • If any rulings are necessary, any single judge who is not participating in that match may make a ruling.
  • Rulings are subject to appeal only if the judge making the ruling is wrong about the facts of the game (e.g., forgetting that a Building Inspector is in play, or that the Shrine of Forbidden Knowledge only makes Demons unstoppable by units), or the rules/FAQ as noted in the rulebook and/or the Rulings thread.
  • Please note the forum-suggested post generation spreadsheet, or one of the other format suggestions (like this or this) such that it includes hand, tech and worker decisions, either in a details + spoiler combo,
like this,

Here’s my hidden stuff!

  • or in a linked source that I can get to. This helps with judgements, adjudication, as well as spectators. For games involving me, you can send a private link to a different judge if you so choose.
  • As with all PbF games, the honour system is in place: don’t peek at your opponent’s spoilers, just as you wouldn’t grab cards out of your opponent’s hand / deck / discard / worker pile and look at them in a real-life tournament!

Other details

Details for Swiss pairings

Each round, pairings will be assigned using zango’s pairing algorithm, as described here.

I reserve the option to hand-craft pairings and/or the bye if necessary, to minimize the number of re-matches. This manual manipulation will not result in someone getting a second bye, unless all players have had a bye.

Players that have not completed their previous matches will be handled as follows:

  1. If a match between two players who each have two losses is not completed when the next round is paired, a proxy of “the winner of x vs y” will be paired for the next round in lieu of either participant.
  2. When the delayed match completes, the proxy will be replaced by the actual winner. This proxy is considered to have the combined opponent and bye history of both players, for purposes of making pairings.
  3. Deliberately delaying a match, in an attempt to affect your pairing for the next round, is considered cheating, and is punishable by being disqualified from the tournament. Yes, this is technically “not enforceable” but it’s still illegal. Don’t do it.
Details for unfinished match adjudication
  1. Matches where Player 1 has posted their 5th turn within a week will not be adjudicated until 3 days after (10 days after pairings, Thursday by default).
  2. Matches where Player 1 has posted their 10th turn 11 days after pairings (Friday by default) will not be adjudicated until two weeks after pairings (Monday by default).
  3. Matches subject to adjudication may have a win declared, by opinion of the judges, for
    a) the player that is “going to win” (having clear hand / tech spoilers is helpful for determining this);
    b) the player that is less responsible for delaying the game;
    c) for no one, if prior arrangements were made, or the match result isn’t critical for making the next round of pairings, or if a “catch up” week is coming up.
  4. Generally, I will be pretty generous about allowing for extra time, provided I’m given notice of absence. If you ‘re ghosting the tourney with no notice, however, don’t be surprised if you’re given forfeit losses!
Details for correcting game errors

In the event of a game error, one of three fixes will be implemented:

  1. If a unit, hero, or building took the wrong amount of damage, and changing it to the correct amount does not cause anything to leave play or not leave play, then the damage will be corrected.
  2. If not enough gold was spent, and the excess was floated, the gold total will be corrected. If too much gold was spent, the excess will be refunded. The possibility of theft (red starter, Anarchy, or Law) does not impact this, as both players are responsible for maintaining the game state. An actually executed theft (or failure to steal after taking the appropriate action) forecloses this remedy.
  3. The game will be backed up to the turn of the error. In this case, having the decisions / game state noted is important for re-constructing things. Any random events that are undone (e.g. drawing cards) must be re-randomized, regardless of the size or type of error. Normally the entire turn containing the error will be backed up and re-done, but if knowledge has been gained, or cards drawn, and the error occurred after the new information was gained, the judge must only back up to the point where new information was revealed.
  4. If neither of the above apply, or if I think a backup cannot be performed, the game will be left as-is. (For example, an error occurs on Turn 2, and it is now Turn 4, both players have made decisions, reshuffled, etc. based on the incorrect game state).

Regardless of remedy, players should feel free to use any information disclosed by their opponent’s error in making gameplay choices: for example, an opponent’s tech choice revealed via a card illegally played and then returned to hand.

In the case of repeated errors, or errors where the game state cannot be recovered, a game loss may be given if the error was substantial.

List of players participating:

  1. charnel_mouse
  2. zango
  3. FrozenStorm
  4. Bryce_The_Rice
  5. Penatronic
  6. Dreamfire
  7. Whitspurr

Authorised judges

  1. charnel_mouse

You can find the tracker spreadsheet here.

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I’m in! Thanks a lot for hosting!

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And because I forgot to add notes on the model-driven deck pairings again:

In short, caveat lusor.

While the model thinks the matches should be fair (not accounting for players), it’s basing this on historical tournament results, in a game with several thousand possible decks. As such, it’s bound to be a little off, but should be close enough to give matchups that are fun/interesting to play.

The above goes doubly for this iteration, since the model has rather limited experience with the balance changes. I’ll rewrite it to partially use the information from the original versions, if I have time, but expect to see the changed starters/specs more often. Unless I just have it do pairings as if we’re using the standard versions, if people would be happy with that.

If there’s agreement that a given matchup is hopelessly lopsided, I’m happy to provide a replacement.

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I am in, look forward to some mix ups!

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Yeah get me in there, need to post some better results after last tournament

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I’m in ten characters

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I’m in as well.

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Given how little information we have on the current forum version of the cards, I’m leaning towards using the model’s predictions for the original game instead, unless anyone feels strongly otherwise. I’m not sure I’ll have time for the rewrite I mentioned.

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that seems reasonable, the results of the tournament showed that some of the strongest specs historically are still strong. Plus no data to really do anything otherwise.

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Hi, I recently registered on the site and would like to participate in the upcoming tourney if there’s time/room available. Otherwise keep me in mind if you need a +1 to reach an even number of players.

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Always room for more, Whitspurr! Welcome to the forum.

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Thank you. I’ve PbForum in the past, 3 or 4 years ago. I recognize more than one of this tourney’s participants from way back when. I also recall a forum thread of edge cases and outlier verdicts that was a mile long :wink:

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Oh, were you witspur?

I’ll join this! Might be a little rusty but should be fun

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Yep, that’s me. I can’t remember if you were playing back then Mouse. I want to say that you were, but my memory fails.

Yeah, I remember you, I just don’t think we ever played against each other. I’ll link your names together in the match records :slight_smile:

OK, I’m just setting up the deck pairings. I’m taking 30 pairings to allow for late-comers / replacement requests. The only deck with repeat showings is [Bashing]/Necromancy/Past. As before, I’ve made sure to not include any mirror matches, but there weren’t any included this time anyway.

Starter appearances:

starter count
Black 4
Blue 10
Green 9
Neutral 7
Purple 7
Red 13
White 10

Spec appearances:

spec count
Anarchy 11
Balance 5
Bashing 14
Blood 14
Demonology 6
Discipline 5
Disease 7
Feral 5
Finesse 6
Fire 13
Future 16
Growth 10
Law 6
Necromancy 9
Ninjitsu 4
Past 7
Peace 18
Present 7
Strength 9
Truth 8

Posting the first round now: I’ll be away for the most of the evening and tomorrow, and I want to give people some time for questions, replacement requests, etc. The tracker sheet is now live. Late arrivals are welcome.

As usual, P1 should begin the thread, using the exact title/link provided above. If you can, please also give the relevant rules/card changes at the start of the thread, it makes things easier.

Good luck, everyone!

Round 1

  1. [XCAFS22] Round1: P1 FrozenStorm [Peace]/Anarchy/Future vs P2 charnel_mouse [Peace]/Blood/Growth
  2. [XCAFS22] Round1: P1 zango [Truth]/Blood/Discipline vs P2 Bryce_The_Rice [Blood]/Future/Peace
  3. [XCAFS22] Round1: P1 Dreamfire [Law]/Finesse/Future vs P2 Penatronic [Anarchy/Fire]/Peace

Whitspurr has the bye.

Rules changes recreated below:

Forum Standard Rules Addenda v 2.1 (CAMS22 edition)

Nerfs
Vandy Remove resist 1 at midband
Garth Reduce midband stats to 2/3
MoLaC If you have no units in play, remove all runes from this
Lich’s Bargain Base damage increased from 4 to 6
Pirate Gunship Remove obliterate 2
Deteriorate Increase cost to 1
Dark Pact Increase cost to 1
Bird’s Nest Change Upkeep to “Resummon one lost bird (max: 2)”
Battle Suits Change to apply to "Purple Soldiers and Mystics
Buffs
Troq Swap midband and maxband
Mid at 4 and max at 7
Let maxband target any building
The Boot Modify text to “Destroy a tech 0 unit, a tech 1 unit, or an upgrade”, change card type from “Spell - Debuff” to “Spell”
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The algorithm straight up gave me my deck, nice

Indeed, no excuses this time :wink: