Discerning aficionados of my tournaments will remember last year's "Gratuitous Transfer of Wealth". Well, here we go again. Thanks to CC's generous premium prize matching policy, the prize that BigBallinStalin provided for us in that tournament is matched by an equal prize from the Tournament Department's vault. And now, my friends, the time has come to dispense it!
As before, freemiums are welcome in this tournament. Also as before, there will be a lockout period of one week -- during the first week that this tournament is posted, only freemiums may join. Premium members posting during the first week will be ignored. After that, anyone can sign up. And yet further as before, BigBallinStalin constitutes an exception and may join during the blackout week.
In this tournament we will be celebrating the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, who gained fame for the extraordinary achievement of being the only person in history more arrogant than BigBallinStalin. Conquer Club has four great maps from the Napoleonic Wars, and we will of course use all of them. (We will repeat maps as necessary, because the Foundry has not yet had the foresight to give me some nice maps of Borodino, Marengo, Jena, or Leipzig. Get the lead out, ya lazy bastards!)
It will again be a 32-player 1v1, but this time it will be a double-elimination tournament, which means you can survive one loss and still have hope. Bracket will be hosted on Challonge.com. Both the winners bracket and the losers bracket will follow the progression of maps and settings shown in the spoilers below. They will repeat as necessary (round 5 in both the winners' and losers' brackets will have the same map and settings as bracket 1, losers bracket 6 will have the same map and settings as bracket 2, etc.) The final showdown between the winners of the two brackets will be best-of-three on maps 2, 3, and 4.
All games will be Automatic deployment, Sequential play, 24-hour rounds, with a 30-round limit. Other settings will vary, as described in the phase spoilers below:
Napoleon's spectacular victory at Austerlitz cemented his reputation as possibly the most brilliant general of all time. The famous maneouver of appearing to abandon Pratzen in order to lure the Allies to their doom suggests Zombie spoils, while the amazing speed with which the French were able to refocus and redeploy to finish the Allies suggests Parachute reinforcements. Definitely, there was no time for Trench warfare; forming Square was about the most static maneouvre imaginable. Unquestionably, the role of the mist in concealing French movements makes Fog mandatory for this map!
While a master of battle on land, Napoleon had no comprehension of naval warfare, and so it is no surprise that his fleet was soon in shambles. The last great effort to muster some kind of naval power against the British ended with the defeat at Trafalgar. The French and Spanish fleets were hampered by lack of supply and reinforcement, suggesting No Spoils, and could only pass messages from one ship to the next, suggesting Chained Forts. On the other hand, visibility was excellent, so we have No Fog. One cannot dig Trenches in the water, so we will not see any of that. (Well, one can, but it's a frustrating enterprise.)
1812 is often considered the apex of the Napoleonic Empire. (Personally, I would consider 1805 to be the high point. After that the beginning of the end was already evident in many ways. But we don't have an 1805 map, so we'll have to deal with this, lol.) The size of armies was growing rapidly during the Napoleonic Wars, suggesting Escalating spoils, but transportation infrastructure was poor in most places, making Adjacent Forts the logical option. Much diplomatic skullduggery and an era of misinformation suggests Fog of War. The rapidly shifting borders and loyalties suggests No Trench.
Already beaten in the campaigns of 1812-14, coming out to be humiliated in 1815 was a fool's gesture. Still, Napoleon put a brave face on and actually came close to winning during his swan song at Waterloo. Besides being Napoleon's last and worst battle (and ironically one of his most famous) Waterloo was also one of the most static. Thus, Nuclear Spoils, Adjacent Forts, and Trench (yeah, you knew there had to be a Trench phase somewhere, didn't you?) will define this fight. And Fog, indubitably!
merch313 wrote:GA approved for player who scores fastest in rounds called "The Wellington Award"
Thank you!
The full wording of the qualification for the GA medal is:
The name of the medal will be "The Wellington Award" and it will be for "The player who scores the fastest (in rounds) victory during their first opportunity on the Waterloo map. (IOW, if we have already looped around to the next four phases and it's Waterloo again, you cannot have a second crack at winning this) (Tiebreaker: if multiple players win a Waterloo game in the same number of rounds, the medal will go to the one who finished with the greatest number of surviving troops.)"
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 7:41 pm
