Tiller Operational Campaigns Tournament No 2: Attacking and Defending

[Iceman]

I agree with the above. While I love the format and don't particularly like mirrored play, the scenario will determine the winner more than skill. Also, in my opinion, a 20-turn limit eliminates a lot of mechanics that allow one's "skill" to shine. Fatigue, morale, deployment, HQ distance, etc. These all play less of a role (in the case of the latter, less of a chance of affecting play) in smaller scenarios. When you are only playing 15 turns, what's stopping me from (as offense) pushing full steam ahead regardless of the status of my troops to take VP, or get lucky with some assault results and snag a victory due to it? It becomes more of a puzzle and less a battle of minds.

I see three ways to address this. 

1. After obtaining all entrants, poll for the most common titles held, once you do,  you can choose the most common three. Then, you can choose x amount of scenarios of 40-60 turn length based on Blitz's reported balance. While there might be slim pickings for balanced scenarios of that length, I am sure there is enough for a 3 maybe 4-round tournament not including a head-to-head final. This works because as you have it set up, there are 6 rounds of 20 estimated turns, that is 120 turns for the tournament for those who make it that far. If you do an average of 50 turns per round for 4 scenarios, that's 200. 80 more turns yes, but you let the game shine and the skill reveal itself. 

This predicates itself on the fact that I do not believe we are in any rush to complete a tournament. Perhaps make a rule that only those who can return a turn every other day at max can enroll to keep the pace going, but you are already running two tournaments at once, what's the difference if one takes a little longer? 

2. Run the tournament as you have it but instead of choosing teams, you choose a stance—defense, or Offense. The best defender or best attacker wins the tournament, and the organizer chooses the scenarios based on commonalities along with balance. 

3. Keep the tournament as you have it, but restrict scenarios to meeting engagements. I am unsure how many of those there are, but this SHOULD add some balance into play. 



Overall, I commend you for taking the time and doing the heavy lifting to get a tournament going. The competitive potential of these titles is immense, and often neglected (AI players    ). I am excited to partake, no matter the format!