Also, @bblum, I was disappointed you didn’t make it to double elims either.
Said it before, but the match streamed where you came back from 6-4 to beat that NEH was some of the most impressive netrunner I’ve seen. It was the match where you Same Olded into a Quality Time to find Legwork and steal the fatal Beale out of HQ.
Amazing decision making all match, despite what the commentators said. That game should be mandatory training video for how to play PPVP Kate. Cool to see someone push that sensible sedan of a build to its race-car limits when it was necessary.
Yeah, it was perhaps the best runner game I’ve played of all time, honestly. Great that it was caught on cam. I went back and watched the disappointing commentary, and just wish I could have seen what all was said in the chat in response
In retrospect, I messed up with how I played the indexing. (Of course since I had stimhack, any 4 points in the top 5 would win on the spot, even if two NAPDs.) The cards were eli, enigma, sansan, beale, jackson, listed in the order I indexed. He had just dug for fresh cards with jackson the turn before, so I felt I needed to go for a last-ditch single-access on HQ with my spare clicks instead of taking the beale right then.
But since I already had one breaking news in my score area it’s probably better to risk it and just take the beale. At the very least, I should have put the beale in the 3rd spot instead of 4th, since there’s a chance he’ll play draw-cred-cred or draw-ice-cred, leaving the beale on top, but as soon as he draws the sansan in spot 3 he’ll also draw the beale from the NEH ability.
I’ve seen some people here and there saying they’d like to see some in-depth commentated games like they do with chess, so I’m thinking about doing that for this game.
I think this I a great idea. In poker it is common practice to share hand reviews whereby people discuss the optimum line in a given situation. I think this would translate well to netrunner.
I’m glad this all managed to happen especially since OCTGN limitations are so many! Honestly the things the community has managed to do and this kind of thing even rivals huge tournaments like Worlds. I wonder if FFG was watching and what they think about this level of online play.
The whole thing was one of the weirdest, yet most fun experiences of my life. I was playing Netrunner from 3pm to 5.30am to the point where I could barely think straight by the end. The UK community had a great time with the tournament, hanging out all day via Google and chatting and cheering each other on. Cheers to everyone for running this and bringing the community together. It went very smoothly considering that this was the first time something like this has been done for Netrunner.
Cheers guys!
@Orange_Devil analysis on the 2013 Nordic Championships finals are still some of the best articles out there and prove that if you are at a high enough level it can be done very well.
I spoke to Ian birdsall (organized play associate for FFG) shortly before the tournament to give him my appreciation for the job he does. I trash talked FFG organized play for a while without really considering how understaffed they are and how difficult it is to run a major tournament. He told me that he thought it was an amazing idea even if he couldn’t support it in any official capacity.
I don’t know about Lukas and Damon, but I would think at least one of them HEARD it was happening, even if it was unlikely either of them watched the tournament.
I would love nothing more than to get some kind of official recognition for this.
I really want to make some videos where I go over people’s games with them. @bblum has expressed the same desire. While OD’s article was amazing, I thought the text format was somewhat limiting, as you couldn’t see the game being played as he talked about it. I want to watch a game on video and be able to pause it to talk about what’s going on while everyone can watch it. @AceJack, @bblum let me know; I’ll do that shit right now.
Huge thanks for setting that up, it was a great idea! I’m not sure I’d have been able to stick out all 7 rounds if I’d been sat on my own in between, having people to hang out and chat with between games made it a much more enjoyable experience, and it was a lot of fun sticking around to watch your progress in the top 16.
Very nicely done all around. In describing this tournament to someone else, his first reply was “Wow, that’s impossible, OCTGN is already spotty, how the hell do you organize people for a tournament with it? This is going to be a total shitshow.” I was very impressed at how well the tournament as run, and how elegantly everything recovered from the hiccups that did appear. It’s amazing that the community was able to put on a tournament so huge. Respect to the Euros, I can’t imagine staying up until 7-8 AM watching/playing Netrunner.
As an aside, I’d be curious to see OCTGN’s shuffling algorithm. I’m not a conspiracy theorist and it’s entirely likely that OCTGN’s shuffling is sufficiently random, but there were quite a few high-profile instances of agendas coming in clusters that seemed very unlikely. The Blue Sun game where 9 points were on the top of R&D on the first turn comes to mind, and the RP game before that where the runner ripped 2 agendas off the top of R&D. I know that @hhooo certainly suffered under getting all of his agendas in bunches.
I’d recommend a centralized webpage designed specifically for participants. It would contain at minimum the following:
A link to the result submission, link to relevant tournament rules, a Mod only chatbox/post board where FAQs can be answered and updated during tournament play (Example: Who picks what to play first?)
And most important 2: Round status showing when the next round begins or when pairings have been created
A large countdown timer with round time remaining, associated alerts such as 'if opponent hasnt shown yet, contact for DQ procedings, and most importantly an audible alert of round ending.
Basically make a centralized page for all the needed player information and most important updates with audible alerts designed for the participants to keep open at all times during gameplay. An example of usage might have been for the emergency repairs. Sly issues an emergency alert on the page which sounds an audible alert which continues until acknowledged giving the player notice that critical information has been relayed.
Alternatively, could require mandatory attendance in a participants only mumble server where all are muted but organizers. Could also be done in any form of streaming service. The goal being of course, separate out official participant announcements from the game commentary in twitch. I think the delay worked well but the important bit is that participants shouldnt be relying on twitch stream for official notices and instead should be using a separate official channel for that info.
Mandatory attendance on such a site / service could be used also as a checkin procedure to try and iron out Rd1 matchmaking issues.
That’s entirely likely, OCTGN might actually be MORE random than real-life shuffling, where people take care to weave their agendas and pile-shuffle to preserve the distribution.
Just for information, for a standard RP deck with 9 agendas, you should expect there to be a 3 agenda clump somewhere in your deck about 18% of the time, assuming your not doing anything to make it more likely, like using jackson to put agendas back in R&D.
