All-Expansion Sealed Collection Tournament on Cardnum, Summer 2022

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Theo
Posts: 1393
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 5:49 pm
Location: Denver, CO

I'd like to open registration for the first all-expansion, all-alignment sealed format tournament event. Registration deadline is May 31 EST, with sealed collections being released June 1 EST and round pairings commencing in roughly 10-day intervals thereafter. Games will be played on cardnum.net according to the rules below. The event is expected to run until the end of July.


Overarching Rules:
  1. Communication – communication with the event coordinator (me) must be via the councilofelrond.org/forums or MECCG Discord (join at https://discord.gg/EFqBJmT) event announcements, or via private messaging on those platforms if on game info or other private matters. Registration should include a cardnum account name along with a Discord username, as players must at a minimum be able to communicate on Discord for coordinating their games with one another. (Discord has no registration or download requirements.) For example: "I'd like to register. Cardnum: Theo2. Discord: Theo#4594. Thanks."
  2. Rules - The rulesbooks, Collected Rulings File (CRF), ICE rulings, and CoE rulings, and Council of Lorien Tournament Policy are available in the Rules section of Card Nûm. Deck Construction, Game Setup, and Game Play must adhere to these rules except as modified below.
  3. Additional Card Errata: Chance of Being Lost and Winds of Wrath may be used against any opponent. If the opponent could not have moved the effected company to the chosen version of the site, the site is set aside and the opponent uses his or her own version of the chosen site. If taken from the discard it enters play tapped and is not usable by that player for any purpose besides that movement. If the used site becomes tapped otherwise, the original site set aside is discarded when the opponent discards the used site. Otherwise, the original site is returned to the location deck when the used site leaves play.

Format Rules:
  1. Game Format - Games must be in accordance with the 2-deck game format.
  2. Cards - Each participant will receive a different sealed collection from which to build decks created by MECCG-Collection-Generator (details given in follow-up post).
  3. Alignment - Participants have up to ten days after receiving their collection to inform the coordinator whether they wish to play as Hero, Minion, or Both for the entire tournament. Players can also make Fallen Wizard decks, but these need to meet additional requirements to slot them into one of the Hero or Minion designations (see Deck Construction). Participants choosing Both play two games per round, where pairings and tournament points are tracked independently for each alignment. Players failing to inform may be assigned one of those choices or None (dropped from the tournament) at random.
  4. Deck Construction - For the games played as a given alignment, a player builds and uses a 2-deck game deck from his or her collection (along with up to one additional avatar character not from his or her collection) following the standard tournament rules for decks of that alignment. Alternatively, hero-aligned players may use Fallen-wizard decks with no overt companies (as a company composition rule), and minion-aligned players may use Fallen-wizard decks by starting with Bad Company and at least as much total mind of Orcs and Trolls as other character races. Players may alter their decks from their collections for each game.
  5. Deck Integrity - The cards used in deck building are limited to the sealed collection given that player, along with up to one additional avatar character not from his or her collection per deck. Players may make a different deck for each game. Players do not submit deck lists; instead, the server logs may be used to ensure legality.
  6. Pairings - The first two rounds players are paired within the same alignment. For the third round, top ranked hero players are paired with the top ranked minion players (but a participant playing Both alignments never has his or her alignments paired), and extra players from the dominant alignment are paired against each other. There will be one or two more rounds with pairings unrestricted by alignment, depending on participation.
  7. Overall Tournament Ranking - Players will be ranked by a measure based on their alignment rankings. First, for each alignment, player achievement is measured as the fraction of players in that alignment that ranked at or lower (self included). The overall achievement of players that choose Both alignments will then be measured as the hypotenuse ("as the crow flies") of the two alignment achievements, shrunk by 0.9. The shrinking factor is to discourage players from registering for both alignments but only caring about one. (If the fraction of players ranked at or lower in the worse alignment is more than half of the fraction in the better alignment, the player achievement will measure higher than it would if the player had correctly anticipated and only played the better alignment.)

    For example:
    Alex ranked 4th of 15 hero players, and 5th of 8 minion players. Alex's hero achievement is 12/15 = 0.8, and minion achievement is 4/8 = 0.5. Alex's overall achievement is 0.9*(0.8^2+0.5^2)^(0.5) = 0.849.
    Jessie only played minion and ranked 3rd of the 8 minion players. Jessie's achievement is 6/8 = 0.75. For the overall tournament, Alex ranks higher than Jessie.

Logistic Rules:
  1. No Scouting - Players are not allowed to share any player's card collection nor deck information, specific or general, other than their own info in their own games until the final results have been announced. Violators will be handled on an individual basis, with ejection from this and future events possible. Keep reflections in a personal journal until the tournament ends.
  2. Scheduling of Games - Players have 10 days to complete each game and should typically attempt to begin communicating availability with their opponent within the first 24 hours after pairings are announced. If the game is not completed in time and it is your fault, you will receive no points for the game and may be dropped out of the tournament. If it is no one's fault (e.g., scheduling not possible), both players may either receive three tournament points or points for partial games as if they had reached the time limit. Determination of fault and outcome is at the discretion of the tournament coordinator, although failure to submit a report as to why a game was not completed automatically puts you at fault. This is an international game, and players are discouraged from entering the tournament without anticipation of at least a few different possibilities (including weekday and weekend) within a week (more for players choosing Both alignments) for sychronizing with players in other time zones or with other work and family schedules.
  3. Requesting a Bye - If a player knows that they will not be able to play one of the rounds in advance, they may request a three point bye for that round before pairings are assigned. One per player per tournament.
  4. Time Limit - All games have an optional time limit of 200 minutes (3:20). If either player requests the time limit before the game, or during the first 80 minutes of the game, it is in effect. After that, either player may set a limit of as short as two additional hours of play from when notice is given to the other player, or both players can agree for the 200 minute maximum to be in effect.
  5. Reporting Results – Both players should agree and submit the game's CoL tournament points of both players to the coordinator. Players should capture a screenshot of the End-of-Game state for their own records in case of dispute, including the Marshalling Point tracker and all cards in play. On Windows, the “Snipping Tool” or the PrtScr button (and paste into Discord or a document) may be used to capture screenshots.

Cardnum Rules:
  1. See "Card Num Guidelines" at viewtopic.php?p=36989 (items 13-20).
  2. Cardnum Malfunctions: any player may submit a report of a malfunction in cardnum for possible at-discretion adjustment of the game point outcome, explaining what happened and why the impact is perceived to be significant. Submissions received after the announcement for the next round of pairings will be received with more skepticism.

Current registrants (as of 22/5/31):

Code: Select all

1)	Bergil
2)	Nimrandir
3)	Trotter
4)	sarma72
5)	langloude
6)	Adamj
7)	Celith
8)	Moriquendi
9)	DamienX207
10)	Sulimo
11)	GaerethBarethson
12)	maxocub
13)	Bilbo
14)	Shapeshifter
15*)	Theo (as needed per alignment for even numbers)
16)	Saurn
17)	baretico123
Last edited by Theo on Mon May 15, 2023 6:23 am, edited 27 times in total.
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Theo
Posts: 1393
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 5:49 pm
Location: Denver, CO

For this event, Sealed Collections will be comprised of:
  • 1 METW starter
  • 1 METW starter, fixed pack only (guaranteed to differ from the first)
  • 2 METW booster
  • 2 METD booster
  • 2 MEDM booster
  • 1 MELE starter
  • 1 MELE starter, fixed pack only (guaranteed to differ from the first)
  • 2 MELE booster
  • 3 MEAS booster
  • 4 MEWH booster
  • 2 MEBA "packs" of 8 cards each, using a print sheet equivalent to the combined deck boxes' Balrog cards
(valuation of $74.14; 52(63),52(61))

MECCG-Collection-Generator will be used for generating the collections distributed at the event, and can be used now by those interested to practice making decks.

Per pack, cards are sampled uniformly from their print sheets without replacement. It is still possible to have repeats of a card if that card appears multiple times on a print sheet or on multiple print sheets.

To reduce extremes of pointless cards (since all sites and regions are available to players), all sites and region cards are removed from print sheets. The number of cards of each rarity in a pack is reduced to be the smallest that still gives at least as many non-site, non-region cards as the original packs had on expectation. In particular:
  • METW starter: reduced from 40 to 39 commons
  • METW booster: reduced from 6 to 2 booster-only commons
  • MELE starter: reduced from 12 to 9 uncommons
  • MELE booster: reduced from 4 to 3 uncommons
  • MEAS booster: reduced from 4 to 3 uncommons
Last edited by Theo on Sun Mar 24, 2024 6:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Theo
Posts: 1393
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 5:49 pm
Location: Denver, CO

Expansion of a card doesn't matter for construction legality (when name and type match; e.g., Wargs or Giant Spiders). Cardnum doesn't actually allow copies of the same card from different expansions in the same portion of a deck, and it will automatically convert them (I think to the first expansion alphabetically), even those of different types. I'll remind people of this when I send the collections and give a list of cards for which to be on the lookout for lossy autoconversions.

Code: Select all

wizards
The Balrog (usually character and ally are in separate copy-paste sections)
dwarven rings
Necklace of Girion
palantiri
Red Book of Westmarch
Scroll of Isildur
The Arkenstone
The Mithril Coat
The One Ring
Thrór's Map
Angmarim
Beornings
Dunlendings
Haradrim
Hillmen
Men of Dorwinion
Nûrniags
Petty Dwarves
Southrons
Variags of Khand
Wain-easterlings
Woodmen
Woses of the Eryn Vorn 
Last edited by Theo on Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:14 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Moriquendi
Posts: 94
Joined: Mon May 02, 2016 4:46 pm
Location: Denver

I've thought about a sealed mixed tournament such as this with real packs for quite some time. Very interested in participating, sign me up!
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CDavis7M
Posts: 2816
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 3:10 am
Location: California

Looks like a fun idea. Would be fun to open real packs :shock:
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DamienX207
Council Member
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:53 pm

I'd like to register!
Cardnum: DamienX207
Discord: DamienX207
And thanks for organizing this!
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Theo
Posts: 1393
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 5:49 pm
Location: Denver, CO

Got you Damien.

In general I do need the #s following Discord accounts to disambiguate possible duplicates (and it saves me the step).

Moriquendi, let me know your cardnum and discord accounts per the communication rules.

I've added a current registrant list in the original post.
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Sulimo
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Aug 05, 2013 1:00 am

I'd like to join.

Cardnum: Sulimo
Discord: Sulimo#9458
"omnes qui errant non pereunt"
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Moriquendi
Posts: 94
Joined: Mon May 02, 2016 4:46 pm
Location: Denver

Cardnum: Moriquendi
Discord: Moriquendi #8992
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Theo
Posts: 1393
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2018 5:49 pm
Location: Denver, CO

I've posted an exhibition game (https://youtu.be/Nts3letVFJE) where Beezertheturnip and I sat for a few turns to showcase some of the diversity of decks in the format of the upcoming All-Expansion Sealed event (info here: https://discord.com/channels/6880583535 ... 5351039046). I strongly recommend the HD resolution.

Also, for the first time I've tried to add some informative commentary. I won't say it's very good, but hopefully heading in the direction that would be useful for the community. At least when I watch at a faster pace it seems somewhat tolerable.
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Theo
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Location: Denver, CO

Registration is officially closed. I will except some late entrants for the next week if I can be assured that they can have their deck(s) sufficiently ready when first pairings are announced in 10 days.
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Moriquendi
Posts: 94
Joined: Mon May 02, 2016 4:46 pm
Location: Denver

Couple quick questions before the tournament begins -

- Do you have a link to the COL tournament points explanation for scoring? (EDIT: disregard, found it on Cardnum)
- How is achievement calculated?

Also, small bit of curiosity/feedback - playing around with the MECCG Collection Generator, I notice ME:WH boosters are increased to 4. I assume this is done to increase to viability of assembling a FW deck. However, on the draft simulations I've run, the Balrog ends up completely handicapped in almost every draft. Either no avatar at all is drafted or a lack of Balrog-specific character/resource cards that enable the Balrog to do something/anything are drafted (or both). I'm curious how rarity in the MEBA set is calculated and why the ME:BA "booster packs" are limited to 8 cards instead of 12. Is the Balrog particularly overpowered compared to other minion avatars?

Lastly, with regards to Deck Integrity -
The cards used in deck building are limited to the sealed collection given that player, along with up to one additional avatar character not from his or her collection per deck.
If a player drafts Sauron or The Lidless Eye, is he/she allowed to add one additional copy to their deck as their minion avatar?
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Theo
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Location: Denver, CO

Short answers first:
Moriquendi wrote: Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:10 pm - How is achievement calculated?
See Format Rules part 7 in original post. Did you have specific questions?
Moriquendi wrote: Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:10 pm If a player drafts Sauron or The Lidless Eye, is he/she allowed to add one additional copy to their deck as their minion avatar?
No. This was also mentioned with collection distributions. Sauron manifestations are not characters. The player can still use whatever was in their collection.
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Theo
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Moriquendi wrote: Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:10 pm Also, small bit of curiosity/feedback - playing around with the MECCG Collection Generator, I notice ME:WH boosters are increased to 4. I assume this is done to increase to viability of assembling a FW deck. However, on the draft simulations I've run, the Balrog ends up completely handicapped in almost every draft. Either no avatar at all is drafted or a lack of Balrog-specific character/resource cards that enable the Balrog to do something/anything are drafted (or both). I'm curious how rarity in the MEBA set is calculated and why the ME:BA "booster packs" are limited to 8 cards instead of 12. Is the Balrog particularly overpowered compared to other minion avatars?
First I want to say that this is all a big experiment, so we may find that all my plans are ruinous! The next iteration might see a different distribution of packs.

The short answer to your overpowered question is---I think---yes. I’ll try to scratch the surface.

One of my biggest goals for this event was for it to be interesting to both new and veteran players. Being mindful of new players, my goals for both FW and Balrog decks was to give them a chance of being viable but not have them dominate; I didn't want a new player to feel like they HAD to learn to play what might have been an annoying number of new rules and new strategies to have any chance of competing. In my exploring, around 7-8 packs of WH is around what it would take to expect (>50% chance) a very competitive FW resource portion with the other packs being distributed. So I wanted fewer than that. But furthermore, and perhaps most significantly, both FW and Balrog resource strategies can be highly resilient to typical hazard distributions from the packs I had chosen. That is, e.g., The Balrog doesn’t need to do anything interesting to be able to do most everything better than a RW.

Anyway, for FW, it seemed like something closer to 4 packs of WH makes, say, the top 15%-30% band of available FW resource decks viable (reasonable expectation of getting to 25 points to call before double-decking), but when only considering the resource side it will not seem competitive with the median Wizard or RW. However, the additional resiliency to hazards could make it competitive. I also expect that the FW flexibility in using both resource alignments and potential to be played under both player alignments could see play from anyone wanting to play Both alignments who got a collection with much stronger resources under one alignment than the other.

For Balrog I considered similar resiliency aspects. But the Balrog is a different beast. Anecdotally, The Balrog special character rules are already good, and can approach nuttiness in a sealed format. As an active character, he is much stronger than any other avatar (only 1.35 expected basic mode cards for RWs). Having 40% chance of getting Orcs of Moria in your collection is unrivaled by other deck types. Etc, etc.

Regarding the precise selection of 8 cards per Balrog pack, I was first motivated to have only two packs because BA is such a small set without rarity I wanted to make it impossible to have 3x repeats of a unique. This can happen with the other expansions, but is quite rare. It may also be worth remembering here that WH and TB cards still contribute to what is usable by Wizards and RWs. Another of my design goals was to foster 2-deck games with the grittiness of traditional (1-deck) sealed. I felt that 16 cards achieved this well. I looked at several other solutions but thought this was the most elegant at the time. This does result in lower viable resource expectations for Balrog decks than RW, but I would still not be very surprised if someone got a lucky collection to make a dominant Balrog deck.

However, I'm also very interested to see what emerges with this event, and will likely do some adjustments in any future sealed collection events.
Last edited by Theo on Sat Jun 11, 2022 3:02 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Theo
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Moriquendi wrote: Wed Jun 01, 2022 7:10 pm I'm curious how rarity in the MEBA set is calculated and why the ME:BA "booster packs" are limited to 8 cards instead of 12.
The generator used a single print sheet for MEBA of the combined deck box list Balrog cards. There is no rarity in the sense of different print sheets, just different numbers of repeats. It is meant to emulate picking up the remains of a collection at a yard sale, where maybe someone spilled their boxes over a sidewalk grating and salvaged what they could.

Anyway, this means that the chance of zero Balrog avatars with two 8-card packs is roughly 0.4, one avatar is 0.4, and two or more is 0.21. Compare this to the RWs from two unique fixed packs: all but the Witch King would be 0.6 chance of not seeing at all, and 0 chance of seeing multiples.
Last edited by Theo on Fri Jun 10, 2022 10:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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