Organizing Community-Run TournamentsContents: Tournament Design and Set-Up/Tournament Thread/Running Your Tournament/Abandoned and Rescued Tournaments Policy/NoteFollowing are the rules and guidelines for organizing a community-run tournament.A.-
Tournament Design and Set-Up1.-
Name: You will need a name for your tournament. It’s also a good idea to have a theme for your tournament, although it’s not a necessity.
2.-
Format: Next you need to decide the format of your tournament. Is it going to be a team tournament, 1 vs 1, multi-player, polymorphic, terminator, assassin, etc.?
3.-
Bracket: And you need a bracket type. Standard ones are like single-elimination, league style, round-robin, for example. There are also options like double-elimination, double round-robin, or incorporating a group phase and a knock-out phase.
4.-
Seeding: You then need to decide how to fill the bracket, randomly or using seeding. Once you have a bracket style you can determine the number of rounds.
5.-
Settings: Now you are ready to decide the game settings, such as:
- Number of players
- Troop Deployment
- Map(s)
- Play Order
- Spoils
- Reinforcements
- Special Gameplay
- Round Limits
6.-
Requirements: You will need to keep in mind several minimum requirements that must be observed in order for your tournament to be considered a public tournament:
- Minimum number of participants: 1vs1 and singles tournaments: 16 players, team tournaments: 8 teams (no more than 12 players per team.
- The maximum point restriction allowed on a tournament is 2000+ points per player or team average.
- The tournament format must cause the eventual winner to play at least 3 games.
- The tournament must list all settings.
- All players must be given at least 24 hours to join their games (preferably 48hrs), unless the tournament uses speed games.
- At least 50% of the spots must be for open/public sign-ups and not filled with special invitations. Every player or one person from every team must post in the thread to enroll.
- All players must be listed in the tournament thread in order to receive tournament privileges.
- Each tournament should be designed to end within 1 year.
- As a standard each organizer can have only 4 tournaments recruiting players at once. More requires approval by the Tournament Department.
B.-
Tournament Thread (or Topic)Once you have established all the details, you need to create a thread in the Create/Join a Tournament section of the tournament forums. Your tournament thread serves various purposes:
1.- It gives the TDs a chance to verify that your tournament fulfills the requirements and follows the rules. Once they have done that, it will be marked as “NEW”. From then you have 30 days to get your tournament filled. When your tournament is filled you write “FULL” behind the title and the thread will be moved to “Ongoing Tournaments” and privileges will be issued.
2.- It gives players a chance to see that you have set up a new tournament and a place to sign up for it. Once a player signs up, you add them to your player list. Many TOs also announce in the title how many players have signed up out of the number of players they are looking for, for example: (3/16). If you end up with more players than you need you can sign them up as reserves.
3.- It serves as a public means of communication. For TOs to answer questions and give status updates, such as: announcing new rounds starting, which players are through to the next round, update the bracket, announce the winner(s), etc. For players to ask questions, let the TO know when games are finished, report games not being filled, etc. For TDs also to ask questions, ask for status updates, help solve issues, etc.
C.-
Running Your Tournament1.-
Start: Now that your tournament has been moved to “Ongoing Tournaments”, it is ready to start. You should have the “privileges” needed to create the games for your tournament. When you go to “Start Games” you should see the name of your tournament in the “Tournament” section. If it is not there you do not have the privileges yet. In that case, please contact a TD.
2.-
Create Bracket: When everything is ready to go, you’ll need to create and post your bracket, determining who plays who, depending on how you designed your tournament. You can do this yourself, or you can use online providers such as “Challonge”. They have made everything easy for you and you can simply post a link to your online tournament bracket, results and standings in your tournament thread.
3.-
Create Games: Time to create the games: Go to “Start a Game,” scroll to the tournament section and select the appropriate tournament name. Select the map and settings and other details that you choose for your tournament and create a password. You can also add a descriptive “Game Label” that will go after your tournament title, for example” “Round 1”. At this stage you can invite players, if applicable (see below). You will have to go through this process for each game you need, depending on your tournament format. Once you have done it a few times, you’ll find that it’s quick and easy. Make sure you register the game numbers and passwords you use, one easy way to do that is using an Excel-type spreadsheet.
4.-
Invite Players: To get the players to join their games, you can use the “invite” feature. In many cases you can do that when you are actually creating the games. Depending your game format, you may have to do it afterwards with your created and “waiting” games. Invites last 24 hours, so you’ll need to check if the players joined their games. If not, you’ll have to resend the invite and maybe remind the player(s) by PM that they need to join. How often you do that depends on your own tournament rules. The same applies if a player simply never joins the game(s). If you need reserve players, you can post here:
Requests for Immediate Players for Ongoing Tournaments.
5.-
Keeping Track: You will need to go through this process (creating games and inviting players) for every round your tournament has. This means you will have to keep track of the games, results, who goes on to the next round, etc. You also want to post all that info in your tournament thread, so that the players can keep track as well. You can ask the players to post as well, when they won a game or a round, for example. Whether you post these updates in a specific post in your thread or in the website of an online provider, always post in your tournament thread that you have updated the bracket, results, etc. Many TOs also like to edit the title of their thread to reflect which round the tournament is in, for example. We recommend you do that.
6.-
Finally: When your tournament is finished and you have a winner, you need to do the final updates in your tournament thread, bracket, etc. You then announce that your tournament is finished and, of course, who the winner is. Once you have done all that, edit the title and after the tournament name you write “COMPLETED”. If you have enough space, you can also add the name of the winner and/or the end date. The TDs can then award the medals and possible other prizes, remove your privileges and move the tournament thread to the “Completed Tournaments” section.
D.-
Abandoned and Rescued Tournament Policies1.- When a TO can no longer run a tournament, the tournament will be considered abandoned.
Tournament Department can also cancel a tournament or relief a TO of their duties, if deemed necessary.
2.- Nobody likes to see a tournament being discontinued; hence we have a policy that makes it possible to rescue abandoned tournaments. The TO that can no longer run a tournament can try to find someone to take over. A person interested to rescue a tournament can also volunteer to take over. In both cases the person needs to be approved as the new TO by the Tournament Department.
3.- In the Tournament Organizers Forum, we have a topic “Tournaments Needing Rescue”, in which we post tournaments that are up for rescue.
4.- In the past we had an extensive policy with punishment for abandoning tournaments and rewards for rescuing tournaments. Nowadays the Tournament Department deals with those tournaments and TOs on a case-by-case basis.
E.-
Note1.- Most tournaments run pretty smoothly, however, there can be occasions where a problem arises. Players leaving, players not joining a game, players not following the rules, etc. For most of those things you should already have a plan in place or, if not, you’ll need to make a decision on how to handle it. Don’t hesitate to ask the TDs, if you need advice. It can also happen that players do not agree with one of your decisions, in that case the TDs can help mediate or even intervene.
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