Stimhack Online Cache Refresh 9: Information Thread

Tournaments and Events
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Welcome to the information and hype thread for the Stimhack Online Cache Refresh 9 tournament. The tournament will begin Sunday, April 7th.

Who is running this tournament?
Me, Sanjay! And also for this tournament, lostgeek has also agreed to act as co-marshall, so feel free to reach out to either of us with any problems, concerns, or questions (the slack channel is also a good place to go with those, or this thread).

How will the tournament work?
This will be an online version of a regular FFG tournament with 4-6 weeks of Swiss pairings followed by a single elimination top cut. The number of Swiss rounds and the size of the top cut will be decided by regular NISEI tournament guidelines for casual events. The top cut will be played in a best 2-of-3 games format.

Each Sunday night starting Sunday, April 7th, the tournament organizer will post pairings. Players will need to arrange games during the week and report results by the following Sunday. In other words, you will play one game per week.

Scoring will be standard with 3 points for a win. Players may not ID or two-for-one.

Policy Regarding Scheduling Conflicts
Pairings will be posted before midnight Eastern Time each week. Players should contact each other on Sunday or Monday to arrange a time to play before the reporting deadline. (Remember, you will both Corp and Run.) If a player does not respond to initial attempts to contact within 24 hours, please contact me. If they fail to respond to further attempts to reach them, they will forfeit the round.

If players cannot reach a mutually agreeable time to play despite sincere attempts on both ends, then I will enter the results as a 3-3 tie unless one player agrees to concede the match to the other.

If problems with Jinteki or other connection issues disrupt a game. Start over.

If problems with Jinteki or other connection issues prevent the conclusion of a match before the deadline, it will be entered as a 3-3 split unless one player concedes the match to the other.

Will we be using the Cache Refresh bidding system?
Absolutely not. I’m very happy for that system to fade into oblivion.

Each week you will play both Corp and Runner.

How do I join?
Sign up here before April 7th.

To sign up, you will need a Slack account. That is the best way to arrange games. If you do not provide a Slack username, your entry will be invalid. If you do not have a Slack account, you can use this link .

The Slack channel for this tournament is #cache_refresh_tourney .

This tournament will also be listed on Always Be Running (link pending)

What are the deck building rules?
Your deck must be constructed from the following set of cards:

  • 3x System Core 2019
  • 1 Big Box (Creation and Control/Honor and Profit/Order and Chaos/Data and Destiny)_ (this may be different for Runner and Corp)
  • 1 Copy of Reign & Reverie
  • Magnum Opus Champion Cards (Labor Rights, Crowdfunding, Slot Machine, Border Control, Timely Public Release, Embolus)
  • All 6 Packs of the Kitara Cycle
  • Downfall, the first half of the Ashes Cycle.

Further, your deck must comply with the standard MWL here: http://nisei.net/files/NISEI_Formats.pdf

(Each of your decks can have 1 restricted cards, and 0 removed cards).

You may change the cards in your deck between weeks, but you cannot change your card pool. You must use the same big box for the whole tournament, and you must use the same ID.

Where can I post my match results?
Use this Google Form to report the results of your games . Only one player needs to submit match results each week.

Are there any prizes???

You bet!

The winner gets a custom alt art made by two-time tournament winner Kevin Tame. You can see his previous work here.

Top 8 will get 4 Nestrunner alts from DanB! They are adorable and are the runners as chickens.

Bottom 3, of people who finish the tournament, will get a custom bongo cat emoji from 0thmxma.

How can I follow the tournament?
The pairings and standings can be found on a cobr.ai page to be posted soon.

If you have any further questions, please post here or over in the Slack channel. You can also reach out to me, Sanjay, or lostgeek.

Good luck and have fun.

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Logistical thing:

I sat out SOCR8 because I wanted to make sure I could run the tournament fairly and well, but I’m planning on playing in SOCR9. Me participating in the tournament leads to three potential problems that I see, and I want to talk about how I’m addressing them:

  1. I have advanced knowledge of what IDs people are picking, and that can allow me to make my own sophisticated ID picks. To deal with this, I’m going to just declare what my IDs are now, while only two people have actually picked their IDs: I’m going to be on Asa Group and Adam.
  2. I will be able to see what ID my opponent is on during round 1, and therefore could make specific deck edits to combat their ID. To deal with this, before pairings, I am going to send my lists to co-marshall lostgeek, and not change them for round 1, so I am unable to make counter-ID specific edits.
  3. If any rulings come up, it would be good if I wasn’t the ultimate arbiter of my own games. For this, we have lostgeek, plus the internet gives us very quick access to people who know the rules of this game very well, so I don’t see this being that big of a logistical problem.

If anyone can think of any other issues with me participating in the tournament, do let me know!

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Going to get started soon!

Three things:

  1. The comprehensive rules update introduced two unintended consequences which are going to be fixed soon. We are going to be using the fixed version for this tournament. What this means for the purpose of the tournament:
  • If the corp uses a Nisei Mk II token or a Border Control to end the run, Stimhack credits immediately leave the runner’s credit pool. The paid ability window is over. Thankfully, this shouldn’t be too complicated since this is how things work on Jnet anyway.
  • You cannot take an action after a terminal operation, even if Mirrormorph would allow you to. You can, however, take a credit.

  1. You have until the tournament starts (I’ll likely get it going in the late afternoon tomorrow, EDT) to register and register your IDs. But please, for my sake, register as soon as possible. If you’ve registered but haven’t registered your ids, I’m going to be trying to track you down and ask you what IDs you are on, which sounds pretty tedious to me! Help me out here.

  2. You ALSO have until the tournament begins to make any last minute changes to your IDs or Big Boxes. If you want to change, just reach out to me via Slack (ideally) or the forum.

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Get this party started! Was thinking of sitting out, but now I am super excited. Thanks for running it again Sanjay.

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Some updates:

  1. There is a legality checker for SOCR9 on jnet. It says “SOCR8” but just trust me it is SOCR9.
  2. The tournament is started! If you haven’t gotten in touch with your opponent, do that pronto.
  3. Report results here: Stimhack Online Cache Refresh 9: Match Reporting
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Two updates:

  1. Given how late the MWL is going to be relative to the tournament start, I think it is going to make sense for us NOT to keep with the updated MWL that will come out on April 29th. So for the purpose of the tournament, that MWL update won’t happen.
  2. Strength of Schedule calculations: one of the quirks of strength of schedule calculations means that if you happen to have an opponent drop early, it just tanks your strength of schedule. I am going to be entering match data separately such that we can quickly calculate a strength of schedule that doesn’t have this problem. Specifically, where your SoS = Opponent’s Prestige / Matches played by your opponent (as opposed to SoS = opponent’s prestige / rounds). I think this is particularly important for a tournament like ours where a few drops are more likely to happen.

That said: the SoS on Cobr.ai will not reflect your strength of schedule. I hope the cut doesn’t come down to SoS, but it very well might, and if it does, I will have a corrected SoS available when round 6 concludes.

This is a tedious thing to do! You’re welcome!

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Another update on the strength of schedule calculation.

We will be using Cobr.ai’s calculated strength of schedule

I had a misapprehension about how Cobr.ai calculates strength of schedule.

I was under the impression that the strength of schedule calculation was:

Total opponent prestige/total rounds

The issue with this formula is it heavily tanks your SoS if you have an opponent drop, because that opponent can no longer contribute to your numerator, but the denominator just keeps increasing.

What Cobr.ai actually does:

The sum of each average prestige per round for all your opponents / total rounds.

While this can be a bit fiddly with a drop (if your opponent drops round 1 after losing both their matches, their average prestige per round is going to stay 0, whereas if they kept playing for 6 rounds chances are they would win a game. However, it is generally less punishing, since if an opponent drops, their average prestige per round stays the same no matter how many rounds there are, so you aren’t penalized that your opponent is no longer racking up the prestige.

I personally like the SoS I was proposing slightly more than the one Cobr.ai is using, but I want to go with the Cobr.ai calculation for several reasons:

  1. Unlike what I thought, the Cobr.ai calculation does not significantly punish having dropped opponents.
  2. Cobr.ai does the official SoS calculation per NISEI Organized Play, and I’d rather not muddy the waters with a different SoS calculation without good reason.
  3. Not insignificantly, calculating everyone’s SoS would have involved a lot of data entry on my part and I am quite relieved not to do it.
  4. Having a custom SoS would be confusing because the standings on Cobr.ai would not reflect the actual standings.

All this said, we are likely going to have a very competitive cut to top 8, and I would not be surprised if the exact standings end up differently if we use Cobr.ai’s calculation compared to us using hand calculated SoSs. If you happen to be on the short end of this decision, I sincerely apologize.

Thanks very much for your understanding.

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Swiss rounds are finished!

Here are the final standings.

The cut is, starting with seed 1:

  1. Janktivist
  2. webster
  3. M73K
  4. analyzechris
  5. maelig
  6. kevintame
  7. lazychef13
  8. internet

Details on the cut:

We will be using a single elimination bracket. Paired players will play a best of three match. Sides for the first game will be decided by the player with the higher seed from swiss. Sides for the second game will be decided by the loser of game 1. Sides for the third game, if necessary, will be decided by the loser of game 2.

The pairings are:

  1. janktivist vs. 8. internet

the winner of this match will face the winner of

  1. analyzechris vs. 5. maelig

Meanwhile, we will see:

  1. webster vs. 7. lazychef13

the winner of that match will face

  1. M73k vs. 6. kevintame

Please let me know if there are any questions.

There are no specific deadlines for matches for the cut, but I request that you try and get your cut matches in promptly, and I would suggest you aim to complete your matches at least within the week.