Preparation:
Me and Neo started planning this out shortly after I had settled into the Tennessee area. I had low hopes of an actual event happening due to the low amount of history in the area, but as I looked through older threads I was surprised at the attempts at a tourney before me. I was determined and we gathered 7 confirmed in about 2 weeks. The thread was published far beforehand so we could gather more participants, but we didn't get many more besides the surprise return of Ingulit.
The Event:
Neo and Coopatruth were the first there at 12:00 sharp and I came there shortly after. People started showing up and we had 7 by 1:00. However, Amidamaru was confirmed, but not there so we waited, but when he wasn't there by 1:15 we began the tourney. We got through 2 or 3 rounds and than he showed up. There was know way to add a player in Challonge so I just took screenshots of the previous rounds on my phone and reset the event. Luckily there were no errors and we continued on with the event after a short break. There were many great and not so great surprises at the end of the preliminaries. Neo ended with the best record after he supposedly "sucked" and Amidamaru came out on fire in his first tournament. Ingulit failed to make the finals after ending on a losing streak, but it was all fun for him in the end.
The Finals:
I tried a "new" event style in Challonge which is the same as Block Round Robin and just created 1 group of 8 people and took the 3 people to the finals (4 in this case, because me and Amidamaru had the same record in a tie for 3rd). It worked great and is much easier than creating a separate tournament for the finals. The finals went by quickly with Neo getting the win and me pulling 2nd followed by ZachBob at the 3 and Amidamaru with 4th.
Overall:
I feel this was a very successful event with little to no mistakes. This was the first event in TN and I hope to make it a very active region. We were planning on hosting in January, but due to the lack of cheap indoor event locations we probably won't be able to make it go ahead. However, TN is an upcoming active region that I hope becomes a big community as the new series creates more interest in our area.
***Please comment any suggestions, questions, or comments below or PM me if you can't post here.*** The tournament thread can be visited by clicking here.