Well, the vowel shortage is not imaginary.
Prevalence of vowels in English language: approximately 40% (different sources give different numbers, and the whole concept is somewhat debatable, but 40% is a reasonable approximation from what I can see.)
Prevalence of vowels on CC "browse maps" page: 52/175 = 29.7 or about 30% (not counting Beta maps which don't come up in Random.) I should have thought more about this problem when I started this tourney, but it's a learning process. This is only the first tourney in a series I intend to do based on this concept, so to some degree you are all my test patients. I apologise for the inconvenience.
Prevalence of vowels on games that actually came up in this tournament: 30/120 or exactly 25% . As I mentioned before, the luck of the draw has taken the shortage of vowels on CC maps and exacerbated it for us.
Okay, so a while back I suggested
some possible solutions to the problem and asked for commentary. So far there have been 2 votes for Option 1, 3-and-a-half votes for Option 5, and half a vote for Option 4. This really isn't enough for me to feel confident about what the majority want, so I'm going to PM this out and (I hope) get a majority decision.
Options 2 and 3 never had any support, and Option 4 got very little, so I'll take them off the table entirely, and simplify this to a basic YES/NO question on Option 5. Please respond, preferably in the thread but I will accept PMs as valid also.
Just to make it clear what you're voting on:
If you vote YES, that means we change the rule according to Option 5. You will be allowed to add any two vowels to your tray, free of charge. You will not have to win them or defend them, but they will not score any points when you use them. Vowels that were won in the normal fashion still score points.
If you vote NO, that means we do not change the rules. The letters you won are the letters you won, and if you have no vowels tough luck. After all, we all know CC is largely a game of random chance.
Sorry to close the door on other possible solutions, but that door has been open for a long time, and if we are to come to a decision I need to simplify the question. So please, at this point, just an unequivocal YES or NO.