1st Place and Tournament Winners! itake dshedd elddir
2nd Place groovysmurf Caymanmew JPlo64
3rd place Lancelot du Lac Unai Donelladan
4th place 4 U 2 NV cheffed The_Samurai
Links to the bracket:
Dukasaur wrote:Tournament bracket is on Challonge.com. Challonge seems to have changed a lot since the last time I used it. The bracket image no longer seems to be post-able. Hope you can all see it if I post a link.
This tournament is part of the TPA 7 tournament series. The original version of this tournament was run during the TPA 4 tournament series back in 2013.
This is my 150th tournament. For a complete list of my tournaments, click here.
Struggles in the Snow II ----- A TPA 7 Premier tournament for 20 teams of 3
Battles in the snow are legendary as some of the most brutal struggles in the snow that men have ever lived through. The names alone evoke a shiver: La Rothiere, Battle of the Ancre, Borodino, Bogesund, Raate Road, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Weihaiwei, Chosin Reservoir, Bentonville, Barents Sea, Valley Forge, Mount Marmolada, Kutna Hora. All of them were horrible in their own way. Often the death toll from hypothermia and starvation was higher than the death toll from the enemy. At Borodino, the cavalry had to eat their own horses. At Chosin Reservoir, it was said that you do not stop marching, ever, because if you stop your boots will freeze to the ice and you will be trapped, a statue until the spring. At Leningrad, there were a million military casualties but also nearly a million civilians killed or wounded. In terms of sheer numbers, Stalingrad is the big one: more than a million soldiers died, another half a million went into captivity, another million were wounded or sick, the city was reduced to rubble and all its pre-war citizens left homeless. This, the greatest of all the struggles in the snow, is the centrepiece of this tournament.
Tonight in my real life job, I begin winter patrol for the 2020-21 snow season. This naturally makes me think of snow and the many battles it has influenced, and made it an easy decision to run the second edition of this tournament. This is also my 150th tournament overall; I will be marking the occasion with special prizes. Not quite ready to announce all the goodies, but I think you can take it as a given that there will be major prizes to the winners and surprise spot prizes along the way. Stay tuned!
Basic structure: 20 premium-only teams will participate in a full round-robin. Each set in the round robin will consist of 3 games: one of each team's home map from the list of Optional maps, and a third on the mandatory map, featuring the most terrible struggle in the snow that ever happened: the Battle of Stalingrad. After the round robin, four or more teams will advance to a final round.
How to sign up: (please pay close attention!)
Sign up with a complete team of 3 premium members. I will not play matchmaker or accept singles.
Choose one map from the list of Optional maps. In order to produce reasonable variety, each of the Optional maps may be chosen only three times. Please look over what Optional maps teams before you have signed up for to avoid the hassle of being asked to change your home map.
All games will be Sequential, Automatic deployment, 24-hour turns, and a 50-round limit. When you choose your optional map, you may choose Fog or No Fog, Trench or No Trench, and any Spoils and Reinforcement options. The default if you don't choose will be No Spoils, Chained, Foggy, non-Trench.
The Stalingrad map will be played on the default settings unless both teams in a match agree to different settings, in which case I will grant their choice. One match will start at a time, a few days apart and the list of who you are playing will always be posted in advance, so there will be time to engage in these kinds of discussions if you wish.
Game frequency: I will not wait for all games in a round to be finished before starting the next round. I'm trying for a frequency of approximately one round every 15 days, depending on my work schedule. The hard limits will be 10 to 30 -- definitely not starting a new round less than 10 days or more than 30 days after the previous one.
These maps represent places where men struggled in the snow. Some, like WWII Ardennes, represent military battles fought in the snow. Others, like Antarctica, represent places where the land itself is the enemy. Still others, like Canada, represent no specific struggle but the accumulation of many lesser struggles over a long period.
Maps chosen thus far: Antarctica T2, T5, T9 no more Antarctica teams, all three spots taken Arctic T12, T18, Canada T10 Das Schloss T1, T4, T6 no more Das teams, all three spots taken Greenland poor Greenland, got no love at all Nordic Nations T11, T20 Northwest Passage T3, T17, Soviet Union T14, Transsib 1914 T7, T15, T21 all 3 spots taken WWII Ardennes T13, T16, T19 all 3 spots taken WWII Eastern Front T8,
Scoring: you will score three points for winning on your home map, four points for winning the mandatory game, and five points for winning on your opponents' home map. This point system will apply both in the initial round robin and in the Finals, but in the Finals you will have two home maps and two away maps, so the point totals per round will be higher. All scores will reset between the initial round and the Finals.
In the original version of Struggles in the Snow, I had a team resign relatively late in the tournament. I hadn't foreseen that, and it created a problem. I'm hoping this will never happen again, but here's some special rules to cover resignations and disappearances.
I reserve the right to remove anyone who misses two consecutive invitations. That being said, however, I think most of you know that I'm not a prick. I will make reasonable accommodations for anyone who has some kind of emergency, provided that there is some communication going on. Please post in the thread, or send me a PM, or at the very least let your team-mates know so that they can post in the thread or send me a PM. As long as I have some information as to how soon you will be back, I'm normally lenient, and only remove people if they miss two invitations without providing any information.
If a team resigns or is removed relatively early in the tournament (first four or five rounds) they will be replaced with a team of reservists. The reserve team will inherit the score earned by the team that is gone.
If a team resigns or is removed after the fifth round, any round for which games have begun will be scored as normal. Any team scheduled to play them thereafter will score the average of what teams playing against them scored in the rounds before they resigned. Example: A team has scored 12, 4, 3, and 9 in the first four rounds. In round 5 it resigns after games have begun. The scores for the first five rounds will stand. Teams scheduled to play them starting with round 6 will be credited 6 points each. The round 5 score will stand, but will not be included in the average, because it is possible that by now they are falling apart, missing turns, etc., and to include that in the average would artificially inflate it.
If a team needs to replace a player, it is charged a 5-point penalty. This comes off its total rather than off any particular round. (Does not impact the scores of the teams playing against them.)
A team may replace a player more than once, being charged a 5-point penalty each time. However, if it ever gets to the point that NONE of the original members remain, then that team is disqualified entirely.
The top four teams after the round robin will advance to the final. If any other team has the same number of points as the 4th-place team, then that team will also advance. Thus, the finals may consist of more than four teams.
Points will reset to zero before the round robin. Scoring will follow the same pattern as in the main round.
In the finals, each set will be five games instead of three. You will have two home maps instead of one. Yes, you may choose different home maps in the final than you did in the round robin. There will be no restriction on how many times a map can be chosen in the final, but you must choose two different ones for your two home maps. And yes, of course they still have to be from the list of Optional maps above.
Maps chosen thus far: Antarctica T2, T5, T9 no more Antarctica teams, all three spots taken Arctic T12, T18, Canada T10 Das Schloss T1, T4, T6 no more Das teams, all three spots taken Greenland poor Greenland, got no love at all Nordic Nations T11, T20 Northwest Passage T3, T17, Soviet Union T14, Transsib 1914 T7, T15, T21 all 3 spots taken WWII Ardennes T13, T16, T19 all 3 spots taken WWII Eastern Front T8
Note: When this tournament was first run in 2013, it specified No Trench. When I posted this year's version, I was copy-and-pasting and the No Trench snuck in. However, I have now edited it to allow Trench. The reason for the change is that in 2013, Trench was still a fairly new and highly controversial setting. However, seven years has gone by and there's no controversy any more; Trench is generally accepted in Clan play and other Team settings. Since nobody has signed up yet, I think I'm fairly safe making the change, but I just wanted to be explicit in case some people have already read the rules and made plans.
2nd Edit: Just in case it isn't clear, non-Trench remains the default setting if you don't specify.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” ― Voltaire
Maps chosen thus far: Antarctica T2, T5, T9 no more Antarctica teams, all three spots taken Arctic T12 Canada T10 Das Schloss T1, T4, T6 no more Das teams, all three spots taken Greenland Nordic Nations T11 Northwest Passage T3, Soviet Union Transsib 1914 T7, WWII Ardennes T13 WWII Eastern Front T8,
JesseColinScott wrote:In w/
Hansei + TheFanny
Home Map - Nordic Nations (do you mean Nordic Countries actually?)
Standard Spoils, Trench, Fog
PM sent to clarify what are "Standard Spoils".
DoomYoshi wrote:What about Hannibal crossing the Alps? Did he ever end up fighting up there?
No, I don't believe so. The fighting started after he came down from the Alps and entered the Po Valley.
celliottii wrote:In Please
celliottii, Lord Arioch, and DP757
Supermax, Fog, Flat, Parachute
I've tentatively marked you in, but you will need to choose a map from the list to make your registration valid.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” ― Voltaire
