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TOURNAMENT STYLES |
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TOURNAMENT STYLES |
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"On the battlefield! Clubs at dawn!" - Hugh Fitzcairn
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You're at a convention and you take a look at the list of
Highlander events: Alternate Ironman, Master's Tournament, Sealed Deck, Lean & Mean.
What the heck does all this mean? Here I've compiled a list of rules used for
the most common styles of tournaments. Please note that the tournament coordinator
has the final say in how the tournament is run, and it may vary from the formats listed
here. However, this list will hopefully give you an idea of what to expect, and a
general guideline for running your own tournament format. Adapted to HTML by Stealth Dave Master's Tournament
Also known as Standard Constructed, this is the most common tournament style found for Highlander. It is a Double-Elimination format which allows the use of all cards from all sets (including promotional cards) using normal deck building rules. The most recent Rules and Handbook are used, and loss by a Head Shot removes you from the tournament. Each round lasts 30 minutes. Double Elimination Brackets and Tournament Sign-Up Sheets are available in Acrobat PDF format. If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, click on the icon below: it's free. This style is the same as the Master's Tournament, with the exceptions that all decks must be 44 cards and include 6 Lean & Mean cards. There are no TCG cards allowed. Each round lasts 30 minutes. These games tend to be quick and bloody! The complete opposite of Lean & Mean, in Big & Bad your deck must include 6 Big & Bad cards, making your deck size a minimum of 130 cards. Normal Master's Tournament rules apply. *Note - Some Big & Bad tournaments do not allow Methos or the Methos Master's Strategem Quickening because of the distinct advantage that power has in a Big & Bad format. This is a Standard Constructed, or Master's, format where everyone must play as a Generic Immortal. With the advent of new Generic Immortal Personas in Arms & Tactics, this format is bound to get more popular. This is a common tournament style to get new players into the game, because all players start on relatively the same ground. It is a double-elimination format. Players start with a set number of cards from sealed Starters and Boosters (usually 1 Starter deck and 2-3 Boosters), and players build their decks from these cards. There is time set aside for deck building, often 30-45 minutes, and each round lasts 30 minutes. Currently, there are three different variations of sealed deck rules Normal Deckbuilding Rules - The original Sealed Deck rules. You must abide by all deck building restrictions as stated in the rules. The major disadvantage to this was that most of the really cool cards were reserved, and the rare card slot was often wasted. All Cards Allowed, Card Restrictions Apply - Call it Sealed Deck: The Next Generation ;). You may use all cards from your sealed packs. Card restriction numbers still apply. This meant that you could use that Shooting Blade or Amanda: Seduce even if you didn't get the Persona. If you choose to use a Persona, you must abide by normal deck building rules. Under these rules,. you could use a Xaver: Stalk, a Xavier: Forethought, and a Xavier: Dodge as a Generic Immortal. All Cards Allowed, No Restrictions - This version of Sealed Deck was introduced (to the best of my knowledge) at Origins '97, and is now the standard Sealed Deck format being used by Thunder Castle Games. Under these rules, you may use every card from your sealed deck, regardless of restriction number. If you use a Persona, you are restriced to using only that Persona's cards and generic cards, and you may only use a Gold Foil Persona with the correct Persona. You are still restricted to six of any one card. Starting ability for this format is 10 ability (11 if using a Gold Foil). Check with your tournament coordinator if you are unsure of which rules are being used.
Fledgeling Format Created by Jeff Barnes, this format is basically a "Type II" (for those of you familiar with Magic) for Highlander in which highly abusive cards and strategies are weeded out until such a time as cards exist to deal with said strategies. Attention is also paid to keeping new players competitive without having to hunt down impossible-to-find promos or expensive collections. In their purest form, Fledgling tournaments are meant to be played in Swiss or Round Robin format. Post-Arms and Tactics, the following cards are banned in Fledgling format:
The following cards comprise the "watch list" of cards feared to be abusive and currently under observation for being placed on the banned list:
- Renee is moved to the watch list based upon certain cards in A&T, the changing of
the Nakano ability, etc. *Note: Renaissance Format is currently not supported by Thunder Castle Games for Sanctioned tournaments in any variant. Renaissance Style is a new format created by Buddy Dowdy and Ben Durbin. It is a Double Elimination format with 30 minute rounds and the following deckbuilding restrictions:
The idea behind this format is to get back to swordfighting (as opposed to the "cheese-fests" that usually occur in Master's Format), and to make every Immortal able to create a viable deck. Obviously, any deck created must rely on the strengths of its Persona. As an added bonus: NO SEDARIUS! NO REAL CHEESE OF ANY KIND (okay, maybe a little). Try this format out with your friends and see how it works. MODIFIED RENAISSANCE With more powerful objects coming into play, many Renaissance tournaments are being run in a slightly modified format. This format is the same as Renaissance Style with the following changes:
Misfortune allows people to deal with such ugly combos as C&R Wings / C&R Grapple as well as problem objects such as Hogg and 9mm. Extra Weapon has two purposes. One is to deal with the prevalence of Disarm / Master's Disarm strategies, many of which use Master's Head Shot. The other is for Yung Dol Kim, whose persona ability relies heavily on having an Extra Weapon in play.
This is a single-elimination format where you start each game with the Ability that you ended with in the previous round. There is no time limit on matches. For example, if the final score of your first game was 8-0, you would start the next game 8 ability. If your final score was 9-0 but you had a Master's Advice in play, your starting ability would be 7. You may, however, heal back up to your max ability of 15 (16 with a Gold Foil). *Historical Note: The original Ironman format was similar to a single elimination Standard Constructed format. The difference was that the winner ripped the head off of the loser's Persona, literally "taking his head".
This is a standard double elimination tournament where only "dead" Personas are allowed. Specifically, Personas who have died on-screen. This means that Annie Devlin is not allowed, because even though she died in the novel Scottland the Brave, she did not die in the series. Also, since Yung Dol Kim was never seen in the movie (not even the Director's Cut), he is normally not allowed. The decision is, of course, ultimately up to the party running the tournament. Team events are part of the new Team League started by Bill Chien. A Team consists of four players and four alternates, all of which must be Nexus Members. You may have a Team Event any time you have two or more teams present. For every two teams present (eight players minimum), Thunder Castle Games will supply one Quickening for a prize. This means that if you have four teams present, TCG will award TWO QUICKENINGS! The winning team is determined by a point system:
The top ranked player of each team will play each other, as will the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ranked players. When only two teams are present, a double-elimination format will be used. When three or more teams are present, each player will play every other player in their rank once. The team that accumulates the most points wins. Team rules also include:
This format was created by Sam Orlando for some fun at Halloween! Deck Construction Each player must choose two Personas to play. You may not choose to play a Generic Immortal. You may build a deck using cards from both Immortals. When determining Master card restrictions, count Generic Master cards as a Master card for both Personas. So using a Connor/Kastagir Masquerade deck you can include up to 7 Master cards for Connor and 5 for Kastagir, however a Generic Master card (such as Master Stance) will count as a Master card for both personas as it is not specific to either. Game Play At the beginning of each turn you must declare which Persona you are playing for that entire turn. An easy way to keep track of this is to stack your two Persona cards with the Persona you currently are playing being on top. You will remain this persona until you change it at the beginning of one of your turns. So if at the beginning of your turn your choose to be Kastagir, you will be Kastagir for that entire turn and during your opponent's next turn. Then at the beginning of your next turn you may remain as Kastagir or change to your other Persona. Alternate Masquerade Formats: Manic Masquerade: Players must change Personas each turn. Generally used for smaller tournaments, instead of Double Elimination, each player plays every other player once. Games have a 30 minute time limit. At the end of 30 minutes, time is called and players compare Abilities. The player with the most Ability is considered the winner. Each player is awarded points for his performance as follows:
After each player has played every other player, points are tallied and the winner is the player with the most points. Tie breaking rounds are played as necessary. Power Matched Swiss As submitted by Bruce Loebrich. There are several variations on Swiss format, but at its core, it is an abbreviated variation of round robin in which power matching is used so that all players to not have to play each other to determine a winner. I will outline the components of the variation that we have used with Highlander to some success. 1. Each player fills in the player info on their own sheet of paper and turns it in to the tournament director. We have a premade form just for this purpose. 2. The tournament director matches up players using some predetermined method. Random draw or NEXUS ratings both work fairly well. If there are an odd number of players, you can fill out a sheet for 'bye'* if you like. If not already set, the number of rounds to be played is usually set now**. 3. At the conclusion of each round, each player fills out the section for the game just played on their opponent's sheet and turns it in to the tournament director. Points are awarded based on the result: 0 pts for a loss, 1 pt for a tie, 2 pts for a win, 3 pts if the win is by Head Shot***. The margin of victory is recorded as a + or - and a running total is maintained for all of this. You can obviously use a different structure for awarding points, this one was taken directly from Team League play to provide consistency 4. The tournament director matches up players with similar records to play each other. Care must be taken to ensure that current pairings will allow pairings in future rounds that do not involve any single player receiving more than one Bye* or playing another player twice. 5. After a predetermined number of rounds** is played, rank the players based on their scores and hand out prizes accordingly. We have always been able to determine an exact order of finish for all participants by using margin of victory as a tie break, but head-to-head competition, number of Head Shots, or number of victories could all be used as primary or secondary tie breaks as well. * Byes can be handled in a variety of ways. They can be awarded randomly, by NEXUS ratings, or by current tournament performance. Most tournament directors will assign byes a predetermined number of points (i.e. - a 2 pt victory with a 0 pt margin of victory), but using an average taken from all the other games a player has played more accurately represents their actual play and requires only a little more work. ** Generally the minimum number of rounds played will be the same as that required for a single elimination tournament. We always play several more rounds than this with the number and length of rounds determined by the available time. The more rounds you play, the more care that must be taken with pairings to avoid complications in later rounds but it ensures that all the top players will have played each other. If you have a small number of players, this can just turn into a round robin tournament. *** Head Shots create the greatest genre objections to Swiss because you continue to play after taking one. They also create a wrinkle in the margin of victory method of tie break. Head Shots officially do no damage providing the opportunity to have a 3 pt victory with a negative margin of victory. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it has led us to experiment with having a Head Shot do Power Blow damage or having someone that loses by Head Shot drop to 0 pts when computing margins of victory. Dropping to 0 pts has the added bonus of creating an incentive to avoid a head shot. To assist with your Swiss Style tournament, you may use these Swiss Style Tournament Brackets and Swiss Style Tournament Scoring tables. These brackets will not define bracket seeding as TCG's Double Elimination Brackets do (the nature of Swiss tournaments prevents this), but they can help you keep track of wins, losses, and who has played who at any given tournament. Swiss Tournaments Made Easy (or Bracketed Swiss)! So you've heard all the great things about Swiss Style Tournaments, but you're still not sure how to run them? Well fear not! Stealth Dave has the solution with his Swiss Tournament Bracketing Tables! Please note that while this is a variation of the Swiss Format, it does not necessarily follow the above guidelines to the letter. I designed these guidelines to make Swiss Tournaments easy to run while trying to distribute matches between good / bad / moderate players equally through Nexus ratings. Before your tournament, print up a copy of the Swiss Style Tournament Brackets and the Swiss Style Tournament Scoring sheets, 1 of each for each tournament that you plan to run, as well as an appropriate number of sign-up sheets from the TCG web site. If you're expecting a REALLY BIG tournament (more than 18 players), you may want to print two (the bracketing has room for 18 players per sheet). You will use these to keep track of matches and score. This is also what you will be sending to Thunder Castle Games if your tournament is Sanctioned. Now print up one copy of each of these pages (four in total):
Seed the players from highest Nexus ranking to lowest Nexus ranking (don't worry, everyone will play all skill levels), with the top ranking Nexus member starting at 1. Determine the number of players you have. Now follow the Seeding Table for your size tournament, substituting the players' names for the numbers on your Tournament Brackets. Now you're ready to PLAY BALL!!! Matches are separated on the Tournament Brackets by color (or shading if printed in Black and White). When time is called, the player whose turn it currently is finishes their turn. Then remove all Specials from play and adjust all players' Ability accordingly. Each player gets awarded points on the Tournament Scoring Sheet using the following scoring method:
When the tournament is over, add up each person's total score. The person with the highest score is the winner! If you need to hold any tiebreakers, do so at this time. Tiebreakers should not affect scores any further than deciding who the winner is. For example, a second place tie (for prize reasons) would not be allowed to boost one of the players into first place. What do I do if I have more than 18 players for a tournament? Simple. Just run more than one bracket. For larger tournaments you'll want the full six rounds so that you can get larger point spreads. (Of course, you can always add your own brackets! Just don't repeat players playing one another.) What do I do if I have less than 8 players for a tournament? Just use the Round Robin format. With 7 players, a 6 round Swiss tournament is really a Round Robin tournament. ALTERNATE SWISS So you like Swiss Style, but you miss the old "There Can Be Only One" matches? No problem! After your normal rounds of Swiss (4-5 rounds), take the top four players and do a Single Elimination mini-tournament for The Prize! A new format brought forth from the Four Horsemen expansion. It is similar to the standard Double Elimination or Swiss tournament, however each deck must include at least 2 Monkey: Situation cards. At the beginning of any player's turn, if they do not have a Monkey in play then they must place the top card of their Endurance into their Discard pile. The concept with this format is not just to win, but to win with style! This is done by playing Monkey-Puns; essentially anything you can do to your Monkey in Highlander the card game. You can shoot the Monkey (Back Away / Pistol with In Cold Blood in play), you can Kick the Monkey (Dirty Trick: Kick with ICB in play), you can have Monkeys in a Barrell (Both Cover and Higher Ground in play along with several Monkeys), you can Choke... well, just be creative. =^) Typically prizes are given out for best Monkey-Pun actually played during the tournament in addition to normal tournament prizes. |
