Sired's Bloodbath - Sept. 22-24 2018 - Orange County CA.

This is a premiere event!  Wish I could attend.

Hey Sired,

Corpo24 and I printed out your notecards and tested out your tournament rules yesterday for a full game. It was a lot of fun! We may wind up playing some games in the tournament format even when we’re just doing casual pickup games. I especially like the way the railroad movement makes it possible to launch and complete multiple invasions within the 8-round turn limit. The railroads are limited enough that you can’t just pick up a massive stack of infantry and teleport it to the center of the board, but they’re useful enough that you can actually get significant forces across Poland, Siberia, China, etc. in just a few turns, leading to a more dynamic, complex, and interesting set of front lines. Less mindless marching, more tactics, and an overall faster pace to the game. Thank you very much for developing and sharing all of this!

I wanted to make sure we got one detail right about the technology rules. It sounds like the major powers start at Phase I for one technology, and can pay 4 IPCs to raise that to Phase II on turn 1. Then, on turn 2, they can pay another 4 IPCs to raise that to Phase III. Then, on turn 3, they roll a die. Assuming the die isn’t a 6, they can pay the value shown on the die (call it 3 IPCs for the sake of argument) to advance to Phase H. Finally, at the start of turn 4, they can pay 1 IPC per die to roll some dice to try to achieve the technology, which would then kick in immediately. If a major power wanted to develop a second tech, they could not start development until turn 5, at which point they would pay another 4 IPCs to get the new technology to Phase I. The technology would hit Phase II on turn 6, Phase III on turn 7, and then you would need to roll a 6 to develop the second tech on turn 8…otherwise turn 8 just lets you move the second technology to Phase H, and then the game ends before you can advance the tech off of Phase H and have it actually take effect.

So, unless you roll a 6 on at least one of your two advance-from-Phase III die rolls, it’s not possible to discover two technologies within the standard 8-round turn limit. Is that correct?

And, to discover even one technology, even as a major power, you will typically need to pay about 14 IPCs: 4 to move to Phase II, 4 to move to Phase III, 3 (or whatever is shown on the die) to move to Phase H, and about 3 more (depending on how lucky you feel) to get some dice to roll to try to move from Phase H to achieving the technology. A minor power would need to pay about 18 IPCs, because in addition to all the above costs, they would also have to pay 4 IPCs to get to Phase I in the first place. Is that correct?

If Italy wants a tech, they will be one turn behind since they do not start with a free round?  So they will to see if they get a 6 on the 4th round and if not buy dice on the 5th?

Hi everyone,

I’m sharing some thoughts about tournament / bracket design, mostly because I can’t help myself. I think about this stuff in the shower. Obviously this is SiredBlood’s tournament and he can and should run it the way he sees fit, but I’m offering these suggestions in case he finds them useful.

It looks like we’re going to have 10 teams competing in the tournament, meaning 5 tables. Call the teams A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J, and assume for the sake of argument that A is the best team, B is the second-best team, and J is the worst team. Assume everyone gets average luck.

After the first game, there will be 5 teams that have won their game: A, B, C, D, and E. So, in the second game, if you pair those winners against each other, you can expect at least two teams to have a perfect record, maybe three teams. In the A-B match, A will win and then be 2-0. In the C-D match, C will win and then be 2-0. E doesn’t have another winning team to play against, so they have to play against one of the losing teams, like F. In the E-F match, if E wins again, then E is also 2-0. So now you have three teams that all have perfect records, but only two teams can advance to the championship round, which means you need a way to break the tie.

My suggestion is to use the VP scoring as the tiebreaker, and only as the tiebreaker. If the Axis come up with 12 VP, they win, and get paired with another winner on day 2. Otherwise, they lose, and get paired with another loser on day 2. It doesn’t matter how many points the Allies have; it’s just do-or-die, come up with the 12 VP, or stop your opponent from getting to 12 VP. There’s no “bonus points” awarded for getting to 12 VP…it’s just that if you make it to 12 VP, you win, and if you don’t, you don’t.

Then, later, when there are three teams with perfect records and we need to see which ones should advance to the metal round, we check everybody’s point totals. That’s when it matters whether the Allies took Italian Somaliland or whether the Axis held onto the Caroline Islands.

The alternative leads to a bit of chaos – even if you award 5 bonus points for “winning” with 12 VP, it still might be easier for the Axis to fight for 5 little territories like Caroline Islands and Somaliland. If the Axis know that they can’t get to 12 VP no matter what they do, then all of a sudden Somaliland is worth the same number of VP as Moscow, and that feels weird. There’s also an issue where you could get people who “lost” a game promoted to the metal round ahead of the same team that supposedly beat them! To make sure that didn’t happen, you’d have to set the number of bonus points for winning so high that you’re essentially saying that whoever wins will automatically advance – so you may as well just say so openly, and let the points stay in their role as tiebreakers.

Finally, I know SiredBlood thinks the game is evenly balanced for Axis vs. Allies given optimal play, and he may be right, but given how new the format is and how short the tournament is (only 3 games!), it might make sense to allow players to select their sides using a competitive bidding auction. If the Allies have a serious advantage based on the strategies us newbies will actually know how to deploy, then being randomly assigned to the Axis by a coin flip could basically knock a good team out of the championship round. It’s worth considering how you will pair teams up against each other – lets say of the five teams that win on day 1, four of them played Allies: A, B, C, and D. E was the only team that won with the Axis on day 1. So, you can pair A and E against each other, and that works out fine – A can play Axis, and E can play Allies. But then what to do about B, C, and D? You want B and C to play against each other so that you can narrow the number of teams with perfect records, but they’ve both already played Allies. One of them will have to play Allies again, meaning that if they win, they’re making it to the championship round without ever having to play the Axis.

Man this sounds fun–looks like hambone will be representing KC.  All the best for a successful tourney.

Good Luck to everyone attending this weekend, play well and have fun.

Go Hambone !  In metal Round today.

Give us some photos and details!

Thanks to SiredBlood and to everyone who played for a wonderful tournament! This was a really cool event and I’m glad we could make it happen.

From my Patron Stephen…

From my Patron Hambone…

From my Patron Stephen…

From my Patron Hambone…

From my Patron Hambone…

From My Patron Hambone…