Off topic but the discussion is going… I really enjoyed having it in the pacific northwest this year. We had a great time despite the turnout. Having all the important events on the other side of the country kind of sucks. Toronto is within driving distance of Gencon, just saying… We had quite a few competitive players travel to it across the continent even if the con scared other people away. Not saying it stands up to gencon or even some of the regionals as far as competition but had there been more information earlier on and a different venue I really feel like the west coast could have put up a better turnout. We did randomly have 1st seed drop going into the cut which was unsuual. I don’t think it should be here every year, but I’d like to see something happen pacific side once in awhile.
As for information here is what I got. Final standings
Jason 1st(NEH, Kate), Lawson 2nd(Argus, Kate), Robert Brown @Ossa 3rd(RP, Kate), @d1en 4th(NEH, Val), I got 5th (RP, Kate), Matt Clark 6th(Noise?, ???), Craig 7th(Leela, Biotech), Justin @Nobody 8th(Biotech, Noise). The drop player was Trung Tran who played Noise + NEH I believe.
Jason won some epic games to get through the losers bracket. I will let him share his game stories if he wants but there was some pretty epic stuff. Especially against Robert and Lawson. Very close games overall.
Jason, Craig, Ciara, Justin, me and Robert all went out for food and drink after, was a blast. One of the better gaming trips I’ve been on.
This was the big issue. Keep in mind that Vancouver Regional alone was larger, with at least 8 or so from Washington/Oregon coming up. For the Nationals a lot were excited to go (myself included) but the lack of info, high cost for the convention, and what seemed like very poor organization were turn-offs.
The fact of the matter is that it’s nice to diversify every other year. It just needs better organization for next time in 2017.
All of those negative, PLUS the subpar-FFG prizes for Nationals, IMHO. Honestly, just handing a NATIONAL tourney to a distributor who gives fuck-all seems like a bad idea.
I’d also like to take a moment to share a couple of my experiences with the TO for the event. During round one, I was playing runner and it was the corp’s turn when time was called. The TO ruled that the corp would be able to finish his turn, I would take my turn, and then the corp would get an ADDITIONAL full turn. I contested until he actually took the time to look it up. In another round I was playing RP against a Val player with Film Critic installed. The runner tried to tell me that he could play the psi game first and then host TFP on Film Critic. The TO initially sided with the runner but once again I contested and got the right ruling eventually. There were two other instances on the day in which I wanted to call a judge but didn’t because I felt like it would consume too much time and even if I did I may not end up with the right ruling. This is extremely trying when you’re in double elims and playing for a national championship. I feel like these experiences at a “premier” organized play event are absurd and FFG should really take their organized play more seriously because, honestly, it often feels like a joke,
EDIT: Also, FFG’s tournament software crashed after round one and we lost an hour of time while they tried to fix it.
I like the idea for either 2 more turns each, or at least for the Runner to get some ‘last at-bat’, for equal turns. I believe the ANRPC is looking to adopt at least 2 turns, if the floor rules don’t push it.
@ossa After your description of how the tournament was TOed, I am a proud that my dirt poor, scrub player status spared me from such an experience. Congrats the the entire PDX crew making the Top 8. See you guys at one of the local tourneys.
How is this even possible? FFG’s software is browser based and automatically backs up all the data before and after each round. If something crashes, you can restart Chrome (or whatever browser) and pick up exactly where you left off. A trained monkey could “fix” this in five minutes. I can only assume the TO/store owner had technical issues with his personal computer/laptop and was not recording results on match slips for back-up. I mean, this is stuff we do at a Store Championship and Regional level regularly, how does a National TO jack this up so bad that you have an hour delay? Regional/National-level TOs have had access to FFG’s program for four months now, how are they still having issues? -_- Rabble rabble rabble, forgive me.
We had two TO’s in total. One is probably a Lion Rampant rep, and the other a player recruited two or three weeks prior to the event. The player TO actually dropped out due to “emergency shifts” of his work a day or so prior to the tournament. Luckily another guy stepped up to fill his place last minute.
Nels, of Terminal 7 podcast, had his iPad as backup plan with him when the system went haywire. He stepped up to manually enter all the info/ID so that round 2 could go on whilst the TO’s were troubleshooting.
I suppose it’s great that we had the Nationals on the west coast this time around, though information was very scarce. I even wonder how some of the out of province/country players got to know about the tournament… If only FFG/Lion Rampant had co-operated with a store locally. I’m sure they would have been alright with it.
I don’t think the TO set the tournament format to swiss or something. When they tried to pair round 2 nothing came up at all so they had to recreate the tournament and re enter matchups and results etc. I don’t think it was TOME. To be fair TOME has messed up previously at regionals so i wouldn’t have been shocked if it was. They might have been able to fix it in another way idk.