WDS Tiller Operational Campaigns Tournament News

[HMCS Rosthern]

Mersh, through no fault of his own, has to withdraw from both the K43 and the FWWC tournament. Mersh has completed round 4 of the K43, and Round 1 of the FWWC tournaments.

We are left with an odd number of entrants in both tournaments. I'll give it until Friday, Feb 7, 2359PST, 2025, for in order of preference:
Someone new to join either one or both tournaments, taking on Mersh's score, for the remainder of the tournament(s).
Someone to volunteer to drop out from one or both tournaments, after completion of the current round. 

If neither happen, the following will take on Mersh's portion in the tournament:
K43: HMCS Rosthern
FWWC: Mr. Grumpy

Contact me via Private Messages.

Thanks. And Good Gaming.

[zaxi_stones]

I can drop from the FWWC tourney if you don't get a new body before the deadline.

[HMCS Rosthern]

I am happy to announce that SvenDuuva has agreed to take Mersh's position in the K43 tournament for Rounds 5 and 6. Thanks SvenDuuva!

[Mr Grumpy]

I am happy to announce that SvenDuuva has agreed to take Mersh's position in the K43 tournament for Rounds 5 and 6. Thanks SvenDuuva!

Thank you for stepping up 

[HMCS Rosthern]

I am looking for some feedback.

Scenario Selection: There are a number of criteria I use to select the scenarios. For the FWWC tournament I had guidance from the WDS design team which helped, but I still had to consider the following. The scenarios are first selected based on the tournament requirements, e.g., small and 20 turns long. Second, I rely on the theblitz.club scenario database, which is a  statistical sample of the results giving an idea of a scenario balance. Some scenarios have been played a lot while some have not been played much. Third, I want to give entrants equal opportunity to attacked and defend, i.e., it would not be fun/fair if one side had to defend in every scenario in the tournament. Therefore, it is possible that the selected scenarios give one team an advantage.

Round Pairings: I have been relying on ELO ratings. ELO rating sort of gives an idea of the strength of each entrant but not necessarily so. For 6 rounds, 12 entrants is the best situation, because every entrant plays all entrants on the other team. However I want to have as many entrants as possible and to date all entrants will not play all the entrants on the other team. What I have been doing is pairing the highest ELO on one team with the entrants with the highest ELO, and working down the ELO rankings as the rounds progress. The advantage of this is that minimizes a high ELO-rated entrant from feasting on weaker entrants. The disadvantage is that high ELO rated entrants bang heads and get minor or draw results, while the lower rated ELO entrants have potential to get Major victories. Also, since ELO ratings do not necessarily indicate the strength of an entrant, it's possible for a strong entrant with a moderate ELO to play nothing but weaker entrants, thereby giving the entrant an advantage.

Summary: The upshot of what I am trying to get at is that the tournament format to date introduces luck compared to a mirrored tournament. It is possible that some entrants will get lucky with the scenarios they play and the entrants they complete against. The luck allows all entrants to have a chance to win the tournament, and I think this is good.

Conclusion: My goals with these tournaments are to:

1. Give entrants opportunities to meet new players
   
2. Promote theblitz.club and PBEM
   
3. Provide a venue for competition.
   

If you have any comments I'd be happy to hear them.

[Ricky B]

I don't have a lot to say. I like how you have organized things, the mix of players I have the opportunity to play and overall the scenarios involved, knowing that the scenarios can be a tough part to handle.

Thanks for doing it all, and I just say keep on with what you are doing sir.

Regards
Rick

[LordDeadwood]

I second Ricky's opinion. I have enjoyed the tournament so far, and I am fine with the scenarios you have selected and with the mix of opponents. I personally think the mirrored tournaments are overrated and I really don't care to play the same scenario back-to-back or simultaneously. And indeed, luck has always been an element of warfare/combat and excessive attempts to eliminate it are misguided in my opinion. Keep on keeping on!

[HMCS Rosthern]

As you can see the "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" tournament has started. Between the 3 active tournaments, there is a lot of PBEM tournament gaming scheduled that will stretch until 2026/2027. 

• Winter Operations 2024
  
• 1914 Valour 2025
  
• It's a Long Way to Tipperary 2026
  

Tournament 5 will commence approximately 2026, and I'm thinking it might be a Modern Campaigns tournament. 
But who knows, maybe in 2026 I'll launch 2 new tournaments, MC and another PzC!

I also like the idea of having a tournament span 2 years so that longer scenarios can be utilized. 

Your feedback is appreciated. 

Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him - Sun Tzu

[Almskaar]

I am looking for some feedback.

Scenario Selection: There are a number of criteria I use to select the scenarios. For the FWWC tournament I had guidance from the WDS design team which helped, but I still had to consider the following. The scenarios are first selected based on the tournament requirements, e.g., small and 20 turns long. Second, I rely on the theblitz.club scenario database, which is a  statistical sample of the results giving an idea of a scenario balance. Some scenarios have been played a lot while some have not been played much. Third, I want to give entrants equal opportunity to attacked and defend, i.e., it would not be fun/fair if one side had to defend in every scenario in the tournament. Therefore, it is possible that the selected scenarios give one team an advantage.

Round Pairings: I have been relying on ELO ratings. ELO rating sort of gives an idea of the strength of each entrant but not necessarily so. For 6 rounds, 12 entrants is the best situation, because every entrant plays all entrants on the other team. However I want to have as many entrants as possible and to date all entrants will not play all the entrants on the other team. What I have been doing is pairing the highest ELO on one team with the entrants with the highest ELO, and working down the ELO rankings as the rounds progress. The advantage of this is that minimizes a high ELO-rated entrant from feasting on weaker entrants. The disadvantage is that high ELO rated entrants bang heads and get minor or draw results, while the lower rated ELO entrants have potential to get Major victories. Also, since ELO ratings do not necessarily indicate the strength of an entrant, it's possible for a strong entrant with a moderate ELO to play nothing but weaker entrants, thereby giving the entrant an advantage.

Summary: The upshot of what I am trying to get at is that the tournament format to date introduces luck compared to a mirrored tournament. It is possible that some entrants will get lucky with the scenarios they play and the entrants they complete against. The luck allows all entrants to have a chance to win the tournament, and I think this is good.

Conclusion: My goals with these tournaments are to:

1. Give entrants opportunities to meet new players
   
2. Promote theblitz.club and PBEM
   
3. Provide a venue for competition.
   

If you have any comments I'd be happy to hear them.

Just want to say thanks again for putting this together, I'm having a blast.

About the pairings... A thought I had was that the initial round pairings could be done using ELO, but after that pairings could be done based on the highest (or lowest) scores of the previous round (not total tourney points), pairing from previous round would yield diverse enough results I think. Highest scoring player from side A pairs with highest scoring player from side B, if it's a repeat pairing side A pairs with 2nd highest score from side B and so on. This is probably the sort of thing that you won't know if it'll work until you actually try it though.

As for scenario selection... So far the games you have selected for the FWWC tourney are ones I have never played before and, since I don't look at the scenario before starting it, I'm going in blind. This may not be true for other players. A solution to this, and this maybe down the road or never partly because to some it would be blasphemy, would be to have a scenario generator (seems like with AI stuff these days it would be plausible enough). I'm not aware if this currently exists for WDS games and maybe it never will but it would insure everyone is going in blind, especially if as coordinator you email the 1st turn to the 1st players.

Another idea I had recently, which I also then discovered in the game notes, is to have a multi-player game. I'm still new to this pbem stuff so maybe this has been done before and I'm not sure how this could be made competitive other than simply one team vs. another, or maybe each side could vote for an MVP. Anyway, Use similar sized scenarios as you are currently using then assign or let teams chose overall army commander and corps or division commanders depending on number of players and forces available. The army commander emails the game and orders to whomever he wants to move 1st, they send their turn back to HQ, HQ sends it and orders to the next player, and so on. Division or corps commanders could communicate with each other, if they're within command range. It's a lot of back and forth but if someone is only commanding a division or a corps their turn should be fast. I think this could be a hoot because it would add a layer of semi-realistic simulation to the game and, as long as people aren't too up tight, entertaining - orders could be poorly given, misinterpreted, or even disobeyed. Next year once the tourney is over I plan to try this, I don't have the authority to offer any prizes though.

[Steel God]

First and foremost, you're doing great Patric and you should continue doing what you're doing and don't worry too much.  In my days of running forums and Tournaments here I can tell you with complete confidence that silence is approval at The Blitz.  If your players don't like what you're doing chances are there will be some grousing about it.  Lack of it speaks volumes.

While I personally think the ELO rankings are a better indicator of a players skill level than is their winning percentage on the Ladder, it is far from perfect too.  We developed the ELO rankings to mimic a chess players rankings, however Panzer Campaigns has infinitely more variables than a game of chess and therefore even the ELO rankings aren't perfect by any means.  All of which is to say that I think anything you choose to do will be fine, but if you always rely on ELO you will find Tournaments featuring many rematches.  You can have just as much success with a completely random draw system, or a random seeding followed by bracketed play, or a seeding based on ELO followed by bracketed play.  As others have pointed out, there's always a bit of that in warfare anyway.  I'm sure Lee would have preferred to keep fighting Hooker and Burnside and not Grant, but sometimes you just draw a bad hand.  For me personally I like the tournaments because they force me out of bad habits I develop when I play my "regular opponents" whose tendencies I've learned.

You're doing a bang up job, and the number of sign up for the latest Tourney is a testament to it.