[Tournament] Experimental Codex Asynchronous Spring Swiss 2022 (XCAPS22)

Now taking signups!

Welcome to our [XCAPS22] tournament! As before, this is an experimental format. This time around, we’ll be trying out @Bryce_The_Rice 's suggestions to find a minimum set of balance tweaks as they are currently discussed in this thread
It looks like this will be the set of changes:

Pirate Gunship:
Loses Obliterate 2.

Vandy Anadrose:
Loses Resist 1 at midband.

Garth Torken:
Midband 2/4 → 2/3.

Lich’s Bargain:
Base damage 4 → 6.

Might of Leaf and Claw:
If you have no units in play, remove all runes from this.

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 20th of March somewhen around 19:00 UTC.


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 in desperate need for at least one judge! @FrozenStorm ? @zhavier ? @charnel_mouse ? Could you be so kind?
  • 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 @zango 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

The idea behind swiss pairing is that each round players should play against each other that have a similar number of losses. The actual paring will be done within the tracker spreadsheet linked below that will include the algorithm for an automatic pairing creation as described here
The basic idea behind the algorithm is: compute for all possible pairings the so called penalty score and choose one of the pairings that has a minimal penalty score. For computing the penalty all unfavorable events within a pairing are identified and taken into account (for example a player with 0 losses plays against a player with 2 losses, or the pairings include a direct rematch). The more unfavorable events are within the respective pairings, the higher the penalty score will be. See the link above for a description of all unfavorable events.

I reserve the option to hand-craft pairings and/or the bye if necessary, in case the algorithm does not provide favorable pairing. 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. <- this is planned but not implemented yet
  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. @zango [Finesse]/Ninjutsu/Feral
  2. @FrozenStorm [Demonology/Necromancy]/Finesse
  3. @Bryce_The_Rice [Future]/Peace/Blood
  4. @Moby_Dick [Finesse]/Ninjutsu/Discipline
  5. @zhavier [Anarchy]/Strength/Growth
  6. @Dreamfire [Demonology]/Anarchy/Balance
  7. @dwarddd MonoPurple
  8. @charnel_mouse [Necromancy]/Anarchy/Blood
  9. @OffKilter [Future]/Ninjutsu/Blood
  10. @flagrantangles MonoBlue

Authorised judges

  1. @FrozenStorm
  2. @zhavier

Read only link to the tracker spreadsheet:
Link

Link that generates a copy of the current state where you can actually use the macros:
Link

4 Likes

I’ll judge, that’s usually barely a need anyway :slight_smile:

Entering tourney for sure, tentatively with [Demon/Necro]/Finesse, pending final list of balance changes

1 Like

Well obviously I’m playing.

2 Likes

I’m in, and happy to judge.

Just know I need someone to tag me to look at something.

2 Likes

I’m in, probably with [Demon]/Anarchy/Balance.

2 Likes

I’ll join, mono Purple :+1:

4 Likes

I’m in, not sure which deck yet.

1 Like

Welcome back @dwarddd !

1 Like

Dear all,
the tool for automatic pairing creations via the suggested penalty algorithm is completed, we can make use of it in this tournament. A big thank you goes out to @Moby_Dick and an even greater one to @charnel_mouse for helping me out - THANK YOU!
The testing I did so far makes me believe that the penalty factors I chose seem reasonable, but there might be some corner cases where the suggestions of the algorithm will feel not in line with what a human would prefer for a “fair” pairing. In such a corner case I might be forced to change the parameters during the tournament.
In case anyone is interested in having a look at the tool, just let me know and I will share with you the current state. Otherwise I will share my work with the community once I know that I will not put more work into trying to get it’s user friendlyness increased and once the penalty parameters are checked a bit more thoroughly.

5 Likes

I’m in, Gonna try out [Future]/Ninjutsu/Blood :slight_smile:

1 Like

@Bryce_The_Rice @zhavier @charnel_mouse : friendly reminder that there are just a few more days left to commit to a deck :wink:

@Nekoatl @CarpeGuitarrem @flagrantangles : is one of you recently active players willing to take up the slot for the 10th participant so that we do not have to go the bye route with an odd number of players in this tournament? Rules modification probably will be (MoLaC is still in discussion):
Pirate Gunship:
Loses Obliterate 2.

Vandy Anadrose:
Loses Resist 1 at midband.

Garth Torken:
Midband 2/4 → 2/3.

Lich’s Bargain:
Base damage 4 → 6.

Might of Leaf and Claw:
If you have no units in play, destroy this.

Don’t know whether to take [Balance]/Blood/Strength back out for a spin, or go [Necromancy]/Anarchy/Blood and try to win. Does anyone have a preference?

2 Likes

The more players go for something that is actually affected by the changes the better, I think…
(I’m just too curious to try to get something working with Sets to do so myself)

2 Likes

I’ll stick with Miracle Grow and see how it goes.

2 Likes

I’ll go with [Necromancy]/Anarchy/Blood, then.

1 Like

Then again, we could also use a “control group” of strong codices without any changes.

3 Likes

good point!
@Bryce_The_Rice : care for a tournament with PPA? :wink:

@Dreamfire: Do you have anything else in mind that should be played in the control group?

1 Like

No, it’s time for the tournament classic.
[Future]/Peace/Blood

1 Like

I think this one fits well into the category that Dreamfire suggested :+1:

Oh yeah, I was definitely hoping for a [Purple]/Peace/X. dwarddd’s mono-purple is also good to have. I’d say we’re only missing a mono-white or white/Finesse variant.