Running a tournament, advice wanted

[Polkovnik]

I'd be interested in playing and I expect that at least two others from my gaming group would be also. I could provide terrain for a table if needed.
I think most of the things you need to consider have been mentioned already. I recommend you have a turn limit rather than a set game time. You could ask players to provide some wandering monsters. You need to think about how experience and progression, rolling for treasure, out of game spells, will all work, and how it will be checked and tracked. You should consider some of the rules changes that have been suggested on here relating to campaign balance. 

[Awesome Adam]

How are you going to determine score and are you going to use rankings to determine who the next opponent is ?

Since Gold is randomly rolled, it's a terrible way to keep score. I suggest wins/loss and XP earned plus x amount of points per treasures obtained.

Also, I would run them all as stand alone games. No progression. Nothing carrying over between games.

Time Limit: I think yours is too long. An Hour per game, with 15 minutes in between for setup and bathroom breaks, will allow you 3 rounds of swiss, a semi final round, and finals round.

Round 1: Everyone plays, random pairings
Round 2: Pairing by record, top players verses each other all the way down
Round 3: Pairing by record, top players verses each other all the way down
Round 4: Semifinals Top 4 Players Pairing by record, top players verses each other all the way down
Round 5: Finals: Winners of Round 4 compete for 1st and 2nd, while losers of Round 4 compete for 3rd and 4th

This way everyone gets in 3 games, but the people who no longer stand a chance of winning can leave, if they want to, before the semifinals.   

[Buff Orpington]

Hi, thanks for all the advice so far.
I had pretty much decided to cut game length to 60 minutes. I'll have to put a timetable together to see what will fit.
The idea of using a starter warband for each round hadn't occurred to me but I can see some advantages. It will speed up the after game phase and prevent anyone finding themselves in the situation I'll be in for my next game where both my archers and my Man at Arms will miss the game. How do other players feel about the idea? It isn't as if this band has to be used again after the event.

I'll work out the programme tonight and pass it to the show co-ordinator. He will then put it on the website.

I'm hoping that we can source all the terrain within the club. That way I can set it all up on Friday and players can get stuck in straight away on the Saturday. Right now it looks like there will be four rounds but the option is there to squeeze in a fifth round if play rattles along quickly.

Thanks

[Daniel36]

Using starter warbands all the time means you never get to use any of the cooler, more difficult spells though. Fortunately, Frostgrave hasn't been around long enough for the ever-so-fun "net-list" spam, but you are going to be playing a very different game to Frostgrave proper if you are going to do it that way, if you ask me.

Embrace the randomness, embrace the fact that some wizards grow powerful very quickly. It is part of the game, and it is part of the narrative. Part of life too. You don't see Barcelona hiring really bad players just to make sure that the game stays balanced when they have to play against a poor football team.

[Polkovnik]

How about doing something like everyone's wizard goes up a level between rounds,  and you get 50 more gold to spend on your warband each round. This would allow progression, so you get to use the more powerful spells and better soldiers, but would also mean you could plan your warband in advance for each round.

[Awesome Adam]

It doesn't have to be a starter list. It could be something like a level 10 wizard, with a 1000GC spend limit, but it should be the same list for each game. A tournament isn't a league.

[Buff Orpington]

Thanks All, Sorry I haven't been around for a day or two but real like intervenes now and then, decorating and puppy sitting, one's a pleasure and one isn't. Plenty to think on here, much appreciated.

[Buff Orpington]

Just done some number crunching to see what a typical Level 10 warband might look like, how much it might have earned, lost, spent and what it could have. It is actually quite a lot. A level 10 band will earn something like 18 treasure rolls, that comes out to an average value of about 8700 GC when treasure values are totalled in. Of course there will have been losses to replace, scrolls & potions used and things bought along with grimoires that sit in the vault because you have no intention of wasting an upgrade to learn something with a casting number of 22.

I threw in a few usage factors and I think that 2,500 GC will give each player enough to build his party, buy items, potions, grimoires & scrolls of his choice without giving him enough to build a totally Uber band. I'm assuming that players will only purchase grimoires that they intend to use their upgrades to learn, maybe about three? Of course, they may choose to buy none and power up the original eight but that's a matter of choice.

Any thoughts?

[Awesome Adam]

I'm just curious how you are figuring that average.

This weekend I had a Wizard make it to level 5, with 130 GC, a 200GC Magic Item, and 3 Grimoires.

If I had to guess at an average Frostgrave game:
2-3 Treasures @50XP
5-10 Spells @10XP
50Xp of Scenario Specific XP ?

So average of 2.5 levels of advancement and 2.5 treasure rolls per game, about 4 games and 10 treasures.

Remembering that some of the treasure rolls will be lame, like 20GC, or High casting number opposing schools.

Also, should implement a limit on how many times something could be improved, I suggest 4.

Otherwise, you'll end up with level 10 wizards casting Elemental Bolts on 5+ 

[Buff Orpington]

I was looking at a slower advance rate with more games to get to level 10, about 6, but that's probably based on a very limited sample size.
An average treasure roll should earn you 83 GC, 0.25 potion, 0.1 Armour or weapons, 0.15 magic items, 0.25 scrolls and 0.4 grimoires.
I averaged out costs for the various treasures from the values in the lists and an average treasure roll totals out at a fraction over 485 GC in value.

I tweaked it down to 2,500 as an allowance to build a decent band and add something like three spells at 500 points a time. I can see that cutting it to 2,000 would lessen the chance of someone cherry picking one additional spell and really loading up a high impact band with 1500 points worth of extra equipment.

Thanks for the suggestion about the limit on spell improvement, I can see that having one banker spell could unbalance things over a short series of games.

[Awesome Adam]

You could also set a GC limit and have them pick N# additional spells.
Make a standard 500GC warband.
Choose 2 additional spells.
Choose a base.
Add 10 levels of advancement , with nothing upgraded more than 4 times
Have 1000GC to spend as they wish.

Adjust the numbers as you see fit, but this method would prevent them from loading up on all Magic Gear, and simulate that they would have gotten grimoires  by 10th level