Team Tournament Format

Tournaments and Events
1

Hey everyone! I was recently involved in a Warhammer 40k team tournament and it made me think of the possible applications for Netrunner.

Over the past year “teams” have started to form in different areas around the US. A lot of talk is coming from these teams about who’s who in the ANR world. This should be a great (fun) way to decide who’s team is bringing the heat and who’s team is just spewing bologna.

Below I’ll place the rules for a tournament of this nature and how I would see it work. Please respond by saying:

  1. What do you like or not like about this tournament structure?
  2. Would you be willing to participate as a team member or captain?
  3. Where would a good venue be to pull in as many teams as possible?
  4. What kind of prize support would make this worth while?

ANR Team Tournament
Before the tournament, a team of 4 people will need to be formed. This consists of 1 team captain and 3 team members. Each person must bring a Runner and a Corp deck that they will play throughout the tournament. Each team can consist of no more than 1 of a single ID on runner or corp side. For example, each team may have 1 Kate and 1 RP… I think you guys get this.

Teams are paired together randomly in the first round. One team will begin as corp. That team captain will nominate one of the players to be in the first game. The opposing team captain will choose a runner on their team to face the corp player that was nominated. Then, the opposing team will select a runner to nominate and the corp captain will chose a player to play against that runner. This will shift back and forth until all players have matches.

Example: The corp captain has 4 corporations to choose: RP, ETF, PE, NEH. The corp captain nominates RP as the first deck. The captain of the opposing team has 4 choices: Kate, MaXx, Noise, Andy. The opposing captain chooses Noise to play against RP. Then, the opposing captain nominates Kate for the second game. The captain of the corp team chooses NEH to pair against the Kate deck. The corp captain would nominate again as above.

Before the game starts, each team has 5 minutes to gather and discuss their matches and give each other advice. After the 5 minutes is up, the normal rules of tournament play are in place. You may not assist other team members while they are playing a game.

Once all corp games have been completed, the opposing team would switch sides to corp and begin the pairings again as mentioned above.

After all games have been completed each team scores prestige equal to the sum of all team members earned prestige during the round. All pairings after the first round would be based on prestige.

CONSIDERING: All teams must bring deck lists to provide to the opponents before pairings are decided. I think this will add more strategy to the selection process and it makes the captains role a lot more important.

The reason I like this format is because it adds more strategy to the game by assessing match-ups and making good decisions are rewarded with game wins. Also, it allows for the game to ascend the 1v1 nature and avoids creating all new rules for the game (I like the idea of big sell out but it’s far from perfect).

Let me know what you think! If there is any interest in this I may try and find a venue. @spags ANRPC maybe? I think this could be a cool side event or something for the main event weekend since all the teams will already be gathered.

14 Likes
2

This would be so much fun.

I saw another tournament like this that was teams of three and restricted it to one of each faction. It would definitely be interesting either way but the one ID per team is a little easier to work around.

3

I’d have to be a player. I don’t know the matchups well enough to know which goes better against what possible decklists. The venue would depend on the number of players, but if you had a normal store tournament, then divide them up into teams (so the tournament is effectively smaller but hosts the same number of people), we can use the same venues we’re using now.

As a note, it seems that ties are possible. Do you factor in and compare the point spread of the teams after a prestige tie?

4

Nice. We are seriously considering a team tourney when we do Vegas.

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5

seems fun :grin:

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6

Wait, so I’d be playing less Netrunner AND have to share any potential glory?

The Collective lost. Let it go already!

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7

I’m captain of Team Philly! Hmm, first pick…

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8

I’d love to do this, though I’d be a player, as there’s another local player better suited to captaincy (especially with decklist evaluation being a thing). That said, getting enough teams together to make it worthwhile seems… tricky. May see about doing one this fall/winter in Olympia, Washington, though, so people from Seattle and Portland and Tacoma and maybe even Vancouver could theoretically make it.

Prize support seems tricky. You might have to crack two GNKs open just to have enough stuff for the first place team (mats and all that). But that then means that second place won’t have much stuff… so some non-standard prizes might be necessary/the best thing to do.

There’s also the thing where people wouldn’t be really able to just show up without a team, meaning groups of 7 might only get to send 4, or weird stuff like that. So either a side event or some kind of alternate teambuilding thing might be necessary, too.

EDIT: Other idea that may not be great for this but seems like a flavorful variant if’n this becomes a common enough thing: each player must share at least one faction with the Team Captain. So if they’re RP/Kate, you need to run Jinteki or Shaper. Adds another interesting restriction/consideration when planning what to do and what to bring. Maybe count the minifaction runners as both a “minifaction” faction and the faction they’re most similar to, to make things easier once they come?

1 Like
9

Oh yeah that would be perfect. This would be a great event for “rep” when all the teams would be together anyways.

You’d be playing the same amount of netrunner, but the sharing thing is spot on. Working as a team can be just as glory-filled as going solo-man-5000.

The point of the tournament would be to prepare ahead of time. You’d want the 4 decks on either side to be prepared with a “meta” of some sort in mind. For example, you’d want someone to run Stealth Andy in case any sentry heavy lists come up. And since you have 50/50 control on your matchups you can bring “silver bullet” builds and hope to apply them against decks you’re worried about. For example, you have a list with 2x cerebral static for Noise, or anti-tag tech for Making News (or whatever new yellow madness is around)

As far as prizes I was asking more along the lines of unique prizes or prizes I can get without the help of FFG. It’s always an uphill battle when working with FFG.

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10

That, or we were going to steal Quinn’s team tourney, where the teammates each play in their own mini tourney, and the two teams with the best overall prestige would battle it out like you note in the finale. That would be recorded.

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11

Really like this idea from all angles.

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12

We have something a bit similar to this called Baltic Meta Showdown.

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13

We did a team tournament in Toronto a few months ago - our team format was more like magic’s team unified constructed, with the team sharing a card pool and being able to discuss strategy during the match. Here are the rules: Netrunner Unified Team Constructed Rules - Google Docs

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14

saw the detroit folks considering putting together this exact deal a day or two ago (but with each team restricted to a single faction instead of an ID) – volunteered SWORN to go, but whittling a team down to three (for that format) would be difficult…

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15

I’ve always wanted to do a team format. Would be a great way to see metas match up against each other. I also like the idea of “winner stays” so that the losing team could pick a deck that maybe they consider a counter.

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16

There are four games going on at once. If my team is Corp and yours is Runner:

I pick Corp A, and you choose Runner B to match.
You pick Runner C, and I choose Corp C to match.
I pick Corp D, you pick Runner A.
You choose Runner D, and I wish I didn’t have to pick Corp B because it’s a bad match-up for them.

Then we all play. When we’re all done, we swap sides and do it again.

17

Quinns tournament was good fun, but this (as proposed) is much more of a team event. I would however change it to “all factions have to be represented” from “No more than 1 of each ID”.

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18

I’d hate to punish a team that wanted to play a PE by locking them out of RP.

On the topic of PE, it seems like the tournament encourages silver-bullet-ing, and I don’t know if I love that. But I guess I’d have to see it in action.

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19

Unified Constructed seems sweet and I would love to play in a tournament with that rule set although not sure it would work as well as MTG because of the neutral economy cards.

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20

The neutral economy cards are a premium since they have to be shared. Makes for more interesting Econ choices.