The following are all words I have to say about Overly Complicated Rules, a tournament that had overly complicated rules. You know I'm crazy about analyzing these events.
- This was the first tournament I'd ever run outdoors. It's not really my preference to do outdoor tournaments, but indoor tournaments aren't especially viable right now, or what I would consider safe. Thanks again to Beymaster Yami and Ardmore for judging! Thanks to all our backup judges! LJ-Blader, sorry I didn't let you judge, but I didn't know you from Maryland tournaments. Next time you can. Gratz on 3rd place!
- We had a 24 person 5 round swiss. It started going a little faster as people started leaving and we got into the proper rhythym.
- I didn't have as many judges on hand as I'm usually comfortable with, so we ran 3 beystadiums. Next time we'll run more.
- This tournament operated on the 3v3 modified format I based off of WBBA. Meaning that ties mean you just switch to the next bey, which is different than the WBBA 3v3 test they did up in Toronto. That solved a LOT of problems that normally bog down first stage.
- Because this was a 3v3 format, I knew deck boxes were going to be essential. I actually did some research on box sizes that fit modern bey combinations (some of the older TT deck boxes are Too Small) and came up with 9x3x2. Weird dimensions, for sure. I went to a couple stores to try and find boxes those size, no good. Eventually I found a place online I could order those boxes that had lids perfect for deck boxes. I went ahead and bought 50 and gave them to everyone who wanted one. I had 6 of them numbered and had separators put in (with help from my wife) and left those at the stadiums if anyone didn't want to use the free boxes I was giving them and needed to use them. It seems like people liked the boxes. They'll come in very handy for WBO deck format even if we don't do 3v3 again, and they're plain white, you can style them up however you wish.
- We had a healthy mix of newer bladers, experienced bladers, and unstoppable juggernaut bladers make it to the finals because of the variations in the format. But the finals were done in standard WBO deck format... and the ties that more or less were absent or non-blocking in the first stage made a fearful return in the finals!
- I was glad to see shota finally win a tournament, even if it was unranked. Great job! Beating Ardmore Bladers is an accomplishment, I've only done it twice. LJ-Blader did well in earning 3rd place, very solid deck build there. Congrats to everyone else who made it to the finals.
- I went 5-0 in the first round. What?!?!? I'm as surprised as you are. Most of those matches were very close. I ran the same 3 beys the entire first stage, changing the order more or less randomly with no rhyme or reason to it at all. Those beys were Dynamite Belial+F Over Drift-10, Vanish Fafnir Tapered Bearing-2, Astral Spriggan (Right) Nexus+S Quattro-0. Wait, why the heck did I have 2 on Vanish? What's wrong with me. I shoulda put 6 on there! Anyway, those beys were all reasonably good all the time. I left Quattro on the Survive tip (made of Metal, not Metal Surive) and I didn't change it once. It just worked? It just worked. It didn't burst once. For deck format, at one point I switched Bearing/Tapered onto my Dynamite, and I replaced the Astral Spriggan with my Rage Longinus 3A X'.
- I need to stop using attack types in deck format. I just need to stop. I can't attack launch worth a dang, and although I've managed to win some stellar victories back in the days of Judgement and Zwei, I clearly don't still have that skill. I either need to practice or switch to other types. I honestly could've left Astral Spriggan in my deck and made it to either 1st-3rd place. I made it to 4th. You know what? Fair. I'm happy enough with that.
- I should stop using attack types, but I'm going to buy the new Longinus anyway and continue to make this mistake.
- I'm sorry I didn't put more intentional thought into my bey order. I know, I should be the one trying to come up with a strategy behind the order decision. But I am just not a strategic person. Chaos is my strategy. Sometimes it pays off, and sometimes I eat dirt. Today it paid off reasonably well. If anyone else had strategies for bey order that led to success, I'd be interested in hearing them.
- Some bladers traveled very long distances to be there! Hey folks, I don't know about you but 2-2.5 hours in one direction is the most I'm willing to travel for tournaments. It's easy enough for me to say that because I live in a region that has a lot of tournaments, and much harder for other people to find events close by. I guess... thank you parents for being willing to travel all this distance for your bladers' hobby. That's actually kind of heartwarming. Sorry about the nightmare traffic today. But I mean, I-95 on a Saturday, you know that's gonna be a nightmare.
- I had an interesting situation where one of the parents of a participant wanted to provide a financial prize to the top 3 winners. It was... substantial. And honestly I was uncomfortable with the amount of money involved. I'm not fundamentally opposed to cash-as-prizes, but I have a preference for beys-as-prizes, and would want to discuss it with Staff before accepting. I thanked the parent for the offer but I declined. I think their blader would be very appreciative if their dad spent that money on some better beys for them.
- We had 5 out of 24 people leave the tournament prematurely! One left after round one, which makes me regret that I wasn't more clear in explaining Swiss format at the start. I was so caught up in talking about the 3v3 aspect and walking everyone through it that I forgot to talk about "Don't leave if you lose once, and don't leave without telling us!" That's on me. The other four never really gave me a reason, but they said they had to go. Two left during round 3, two left during round 4. Honestly? That's fine. I'm just glad they told me. It was HOT out there and it was very draining and I'm sorry it was so hot and draining. I do not blame parents at all for making bladers leave because it was too hot. It was really difficult conditions. I was so focused on the rain worries that I never considered that the entire tournament would be a soupy hot mess. Anyway, by WBO rules, Swiss departures are ruled as losses. In a ranked tournament, those absences would still be processed as losses. Thankfully this was unranked. It got real weird when bladers who were gone were matched up against bladers who were gone. I had to award the win to whoever left last. Really weird situation there! Anyway, you live you learn: Don't run tournaments in August Heat and Rain.
- We had a lot of people run late. I ended up stretching the end of registration all the way to 1:15, then explained the rules and started at 1:40 once I had the final bracket. Two of the three people who messaged me to say they were running late made it to the tournament. We had a much lower turnout than anticipated, so there was some extra waiting. And I think that may have come back to haunt us with some bladers having to leave early. We really need to start by noon, or sooner, during summer.
- The weather. Oh cripes, the weather. This wasn't the worst possible scenario for weather, but it was bad in its own ways. We had worries about the weather all week. The morning of, we were looking at 58% chance of scattered thunderstorms at certain points during the tournament. I rolled the dice on weather, and I got something weird. No rain, just extreme humidity and heat. It was almost worse, at least rain would've cooled things down. I, personally, am never hosting during summer heat and storm season again. I can judge, I can help, but I can't organize. It takes too much out of me.
- I did not clearly identify "This is the judge table. Please keep off the seats and keep your stuff away from it" at the start. I should have. Sorry.
- Please stay out of the coned-off tournament stadium areas if you are not actively participating in a match. That's a little hard to enforce when Mike's son is... Very Young and Mike needs to keep an eye on him, so I did not press the issue. Not ideal, but I know when to leave well enough alone. Sorry about the double standard. I used to tape off areas with caution tape, but this was still better than that one Pennsylvania tournament that one time, so, eh, not necessary.
- We discovered a blader had been using a fake Zeta'. Apparently for the first two rounds before discovery! Doh! Well, it's unranked, he stopped using it, didn't realize it was fake before, and... eh. Gotta be more careful of this stuff, but I wasn't judging many matches myself, so it's hard to know if anything slipped by.
- I'm so tired. I'm not going to run another tournament for a while, definitely not during summer, and maybe not outdoors. So tired. And I feel like there's so much I should've done differently. Well, I would say it went okay anyhow. I had fun. I hope y'all did too.
I think we should use this format again. It has some real possibilities at fixing the endless ties the burst standard meta has right now. My hypothesis was correct! That's how you science! Also I believe people liked the format? I did, but I'd like to hear what other attendees thought about it.
- This was the first tournament I'd ever run outdoors. It's not really my preference to do outdoor tournaments, but indoor tournaments aren't especially viable right now, or what I would consider safe. Thanks again to Beymaster Yami and Ardmore for judging! Thanks to all our backup judges! LJ-Blader, sorry I didn't let you judge, but I didn't know you from Maryland tournaments. Next time you can. Gratz on 3rd place!
- We had a 24 person 5 round swiss. It started going a little faster as people started leaving and we got into the proper rhythym.
- I didn't have as many judges on hand as I'm usually comfortable with, so we ran 3 beystadiums. Next time we'll run more.
- This tournament operated on the 3v3 modified format I based off of WBBA. Meaning that ties mean you just switch to the next bey, which is different than the WBBA 3v3 test they did up in Toronto. That solved a LOT of problems that normally bog down first stage.
- Because this was a 3v3 format, I knew deck boxes were going to be essential. I actually did some research on box sizes that fit modern bey combinations (some of the older TT deck boxes are Too Small) and came up with 9x3x2. Weird dimensions, for sure. I went to a couple stores to try and find boxes those size, no good. Eventually I found a place online I could order those boxes that had lids perfect for deck boxes. I went ahead and bought 50 and gave them to everyone who wanted one. I had 6 of them numbered and had separators put in (with help from my wife) and left those at the stadiums if anyone didn't want to use the free boxes I was giving them and needed to use them. It seems like people liked the boxes. They'll come in very handy for WBO deck format even if we don't do 3v3 again, and they're plain white, you can style them up however you wish.
- We had a healthy mix of newer bladers, experienced bladers, and unstoppable juggernaut bladers make it to the finals because of the variations in the format. But the finals were done in standard WBO deck format... and the ties that more or less were absent or non-blocking in the first stage made a fearful return in the finals!
- I was glad to see shota finally win a tournament, even if it was unranked. Great job! Beating Ardmore Bladers is an accomplishment, I've only done it twice. LJ-Blader did well in earning 3rd place, very solid deck build there. Congrats to everyone else who made it to the finals.
- I went 5-0 in the first round. What?!?!? I'm as surprised as you are. Most of those matches were very close. I ran the same 3 beys the entire first stage, changing the order more or less randomly with no rhyme or reason to it at all. Those beys were Dynamite Belial+F Over Drift-10, Vanish Fafnir Tapered Bearing-2, Astral Spriggan (Right) Nexus+S Quattro-0. Wait, why the heck did I have 2 on Vanish? What's wrong with me. I shoulda put 6 on there! Anyway, those beys were all reasonably good all the time. I left Quattro on the Survive tip (made of Metal, not Metal Surive) and I didn't change it once. It just worked? It just worked. It didn't burst once. For deck format, at one point I switched Bearing/Tapered onto my Dynamite, and I replaced the Astral Spriggan with my Rage Longinus 3A X'.
- I need to stop using attack types in deck format. I just need to stop. I can't attack launch worth a dang, and although I've managed to win some stellar victories back in the days of Judgement and Zwei, I clearly don't still have that skill. I either need to practice or switch to other types. I honestly could've left Astral Spriggan in my deck and made it to either 1st-3rd place. I made it to 4th. You know what? Fair. I'm happy enough with that.
- I should stop using attack types, but I'm going to buy the new Longinus anyway and continue to make this mistake.
- I'm sorry I didn't put more intentional thought into my bey order. I know, I should be the one trying to come up with a strategy behind the order decision. But I am just not a strategic person. Chaos is my strategy. Sometimes it pays off, and sometimes I eat dirt. Today it paid off reasonably well. If anyone else had strategies for bey order that led to success, I'd be interested in hearing them.
- Some bladers traveled very long distances to be there! Hey folks, I don't know about you but 2-2.5 hours in one direction is the most I'm willing to travel for tournaments. It's easy enough for me to say that because I live in a region that has a lot of tournaments, and much harder for other people to find events close by. I guess... thank you parents for being willing to travel all this distance for your bladers' hobby. That's actually kind of heartwarming. Sorry about the nightmare traffic today. But I mean, I-95 on a Saturday, you know that's gonna be a nightmare.
- I had an interesting situation where one of the parents of a participant wanted to provide a financial prize to the top 3 winners. It was... substantial. And honestly I was uncomfortable with the amount of money involved. I'm not fundamentally opposed to cash-as-prizes, but I have a preference for beys-as-prizes, and would want to discuss it with Staff before accepting. I thanked the parent for the offer but I declined. I think their blader would be very appreciative if their dad spent that money on some better beys for them.
- We had 5 out of 24 people leave the tournament prematurely! One left after round one, which makes me regret that I wasn't more clear in explaining Swiss format at the start. I was so caught up in talking about the 3v3 aspect and walking everyone through it that I forgot to talk about "Don't leave if you lose once, and don't leave without telling us!" That's on me. The other four never really gave me a reason, but they said they had to go. Two left during round 3, two left during round 4. Honestly? That's fine. I'm just glad they told me. It was HOT out there and it was very draining and I'm sorry it was so hot and draining. I do not blame parents at all for making bladers leave because it was too hot. It was really difficult conditions. I was so focused on the rain worries that I never considered that the entire tournament would be a soupy hot mess. Anyway, by WBO rules, Swiss departures are ruled as losses. In a ranked tournament, those absences would still be processed as losses. Thankfully this was unranked. It got real weird when bladers who were gone were matched up against bladers who were gone. I had to award the win to whoever left last. Really weird situation there! Anyway, you live you learn: Don't run tournaments in August Heat and Rain.
- We had a lot of people run late. I ended up stretching the end of registration all the way to 1:15, then explained the rules and started at 1:40 once I had the final bracket. Two of the three people who messaged me to say they were running late made it to the tournament. We had a much lower turnout than anticipated, so there was some extra waiting. And I think that may have come back to haunt us with some bladers having to leave early. We really need to start by noon, or sooner, during summer.
- The weather. Oh cripes, the weather. This wasn't the worst possible scenario for weather, but it was bad in its own ways. We had worries about the weather all week. The morning of, we were looking at 58% chance of scattered thunderstorms at certain points during the tournament. I rolled the dice on weather, and I got something weird. No rain, just extreme humidity and heat. It was almost worse, at least rain would've cooled things down. I, personally, am never hosting during summer heat and storm season again. I can judge, I can help, but I can't organize. It takes too much out of me.
- I did not clearly identify "This is the judge table. Please keep off the seats and keep your stuff away from it" at the start. I should have. Sorry.
- Please stay out of the coned-off tournament stadium areas if you are not actively participating in a match. That's a little hard to enforce when Mike's son is... Very Young and Mike needs to keep an eye on him, so I did not press the issue. Not ideal, but I know when to leave well enough alone. Sorry about the double standard. I used to tape off areas with caution tape, but this was still better than that one Pennsylvania tournament that one time, so, eh, not necessary.
- We discovered a blader had been using a fake Zeta'. Apparently for the first two rounds before discovery! Doh! Well, it's unranked, he stopped using it, didn't realize it was fake before, and... eh. Gotta be more careful of this stuff, but I wasn't judging many matches myself, so it's hard to know if anything slipped by.
- I'm so tired. I'm not going to run another tournament for a while, definitely not during summer, and maybe not outdoors. So tired. And I feel like there's so much I should've done differently. Well, I would say it went okay anyhow. I had fun. I hope y'all did too.
I think we should use this format again. It has some real possibilities at fixing the endless ties the burst standard meta has right now. My hypothesis was correct! That's how you science! Also I believe people liked the format? I did, but I'd like to hear what other attendees thought about it.
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