Dreadball League: The Trilogy Cup

[obsidian3d]

Reposted from my blog at http://obsidian3d.blogspot.ca/2013/02/dreadball-league-thoughts-two-full.html.
(side note, is there a way to simply 'quote' my blog using forum tags so that the text will show up without me copying and pasting it?

Dreadball League Thoughts: Two Full Rounds In The Books

Starting in mid-January I organized a small Dreadball league to try out the rules. I decided to try the rules exactly as they're written, since making changes to them didn't seem to make sense without having  at least tried them first.

Initially I had six players signed up including myself. We lost one player early on because she decided the game just wasn't for her. Due to that, I decided to play an additional team so that the Corporation humans wouldn't go unrepresented and we would have an even number, so as not to leave one team with a bye each round.

One of our players still needs to pay his league fees, and another isn't available every Sunday but otherwise things seem to be proceeding fairly well. If there's enough interest in running another league I will likely have to stipulate that players should be willing and able to play on league days. Of course life will get in the way occasionally, but that should be the exception rather than the norm.

A few of the teams have played additional exhibition games as per the rules and those have been helpful in acquiring additional cash and experience, especially if the team is coming off of a particularly nasty defeat in a league match. Now that the second round of play has closed our standings are as follows:

Team Name   Value   League Points   Games Played   Wins   Losses
Brett's Bruisers   157   4   2   2   0
Avion Yellowhawks   116   4   2   2   0
Funky Fathers   111   2   2   1   1
Royal Eternian Rams   111   5   3   2   1
Snake Mountain Smashers   106   3   4   0   4
Seb's Veer-myn   83   4   3   1   2

With the challenge system in place I do see the possibility that teams won't be required to play each other team, which isn't exactly ideal. It works out nicely in that players can modify their challenges to suit so that they can play their league match right away, but can lead to some repeat match ups and less variety. With a small league like this it might have simply made more sense to create pre-set pairings instead so that everyone played against each other team once.

However, the benefits to the challenge system does become apparent when you're dealing with large gaps in the team values. For example having the Veer-myn play against the Bruisers using the above examples could be disastrous, unless the Underdog bonus were spent acquiring both MVPs and free agents, and plenty of them. In fact, with the pairings set for Round 3, a few of the match-ups will indeed provide large amounts of underdog cash. That's going to provide some interesting drama.

Round 3 Pairings

- Veer-myn vs. Yellowhawks: 33mc underdog bonus to Veer-myn
- Smashers vs. Funky Fathers: 5mc underdog bonus to Smashers
- Rams vs. Bruisers: 46mc underdog bonus ro Rams

With the high amounts of underdog cash going out to the Veer-myn and Rams it's likely that they'll each end up with one of the available MVPs as well as having monies to spend on free agents. Additionally, it is possible that the prices for the MVPs will be driven up high enough that teams won't be able to afford them at the start of round 4. At this point of course, it's entirely speculation.

The final thought I have at this point is how to handle the championship match. I don't know that it makes sense to just pair off the two teams with the highest values. The options I am considering are:

- highest value vs. second highest value
- highest value vs. most wins
- highest value vs. best win percentage
- highest value vs. most league points
- best win percentage vs. second best win percentage
- most league points vs. second most league points
- most wins vs. second most wins

In retrospect I should have chosen this prior to starting the league, but I didn't realize that I would have so many different possibilities. I'd like to choose something before round 3 begins, so that players have three more league matches (plus any exhibition ones they wish to play) before the championship match.

What do you feel would be the most fair way of choosing the two finalists for the first Trilogy Cup?

[obsidian3d]

Our league is still rolling along. We've got two more rounds of regular play before we vie for the crown of "Champ-peen". I asked each of the players what they thought would be good for choosing the top two teams to play for the top-place and we decided to go with the top two winning percentages. Any ties that arise will be decided by league points, and then, if necessary, team value.

This feels good to me for a few reasons, first it doesn't punish anyone who may have won a lot of games, but not had the in-game luck to acquire experience, or have rolled low in the income part of the post-game sequence. Secondly, it gives players a chance to increase their odds of getting a championship berth by playing extra games, without requiring them to simply try to up their value. Wins matter here.

The number of wins isn't the only thing however, as a coach who plays some additional games can improve their win percentage, increase the number of league points that they have, and increase their chances of getting a spot on the playoffs. Finally, using the Team Value as a last tie-breaker gives some meaning to it and allows that higher skilled team the opportunity to show off their stuff.

Of course this logic might not be the same for every group playing out there, but it feels logical and solid to me. As the league sponsor, that means I get to choose. So, choose I have.

Here are the league standings after three rounds.

Team Name   Value   League Points   Wins   Losses   Games Played   Win Pct
Da Bombers   145   5   2   1   3   67%
Royal Eternian Rams   135   7   3   1   4   75%
Avion Yellowhawks   117   5   2   1   3   67%
Funky Fathers   111   4   2   1   3   67%
Snake Mountain Smashers   106   4   0   5   5   0%
Seb's Veer-myn   101   4   2   2   4   50%

I'll leave you with the pairings for Round 4.

- Veer-Myn (44mc bonus) vs. Da Bombers
- Smashers (29mc bonus) vs. Rams
- Fathers (6mc bonus) vs. Yellowhawks

[obsidian3d]

Here's the link to the full article (http://obsidian3d.blogspot.ca/2013/03/dreadball-league-finals-are-set.html)

Just in case you don't want to click through, here are the final pairings:

Bronze game: Veer-Myn (24mc) vs. Rams
Gold game: Fathers (5mc) vs. Yellowhawks
Smashfest: Smashers (3mc) vs. Bombers

We'll be playing straight team vs. team with no MVPs allowed in these games, although free agents may be purchased. The finals will be played next Sunday, 1pm at Trilogy. All in all it's been quite a lot of fun, and I'm really looking forward to the final games. In the interest of trying to entice more players we will make some changes to the league structure / match-up structure. I haven't figured out some of the details yet.

[obsidian3d]

Reposted in its entirety from my blog at (http://obsidian3d.blogspot.ca/2013/04/first-league-complete-my-thoughts.html)

League Play

I wasn't planning on using the Avion Yellowhawks (Corporation humans) in the first DreadBall league I ran from January thru March. When assessing interest in the league it sounded as though we were going to have two Corporation teams and two Orx teams from our four coaches. Not having a single Veer-myn or Forge Fathers teams didn't sit well with me, so Sebastien volunteered to play the Veer-myn and I opted for Forge Fathers. In the end we ended up with six teams registered: 2 Orx, 2 Forge Fathers, 1 Veer-Myn and 1 Corporation.

After two rounds of play, our lone human player opted not to continue so we were human-less and sitting at an odd-number of players. I was already coaching The Royal Eternian Rams but also added my Yellowhawks in to round out the teams and provide a full representation of the core four teams.

League Finals

The top four teams were a good mix, with only the Orx going unrepresented for a prize. The third place game was between Seb's Veer-myn and my Forge Father team, the Royal Eternian Rams. This was a great game with a lot of scoring, swinging the lead back and forth several times through the course of the game.

Near the end it looked like the Rams had it all buttoned up with but a great rush by the Veer-myn strikers gambled for a bonus strike of two points. With the score at one point in the Veer-myn favour, and only one rush remaining to each team it was going to be close. I gambled away my first two action tokens in hopes of getting a card that would allow me to score, and did get one that I could use. I also needed to double my attempt to pick up the ball. Everything worked out except for the strike throw...

A well fought game that went down to the wire, Seb's Veer-myn take 3rd place in the Trilogy Cup!

The game for top place was played between Orrin's Funky Fathers and my Avion Yellowhawks. This was a very tight, low scoring game through the early stages. When we got closer to the end I was able to pull ahead by 5 points at the end of the 13th rush.

So after being a surprise entry into the league and an impressive run, the Avion Yellowhawks turned out to be the winners of the 1st Trilogy Cup!

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who played in our first league. It was a lot of fun, and I hope to do another one over the summer.

Closing Thoughts

I quite liked the provided league rules in the core rulebook, but they do feel specifically aimed at club play. By that, I mean a regularly scheduled repeating event where everyone shows up every time. The reality of things with gamers locally seems to be far less organized, and that simply doesn't seem to be possible for most players. Or perhaps it's simply a matter of desire, I don't know.

Regardless, I think a second round of league play would need some modifications in order to work. I'd likely try to do a round-robin schedule where all of the games for each team are set ahead of time, for each round. The games could be played at any time during each week (1 week per round?), and the results reported back.

I would still like to keep the MVP auctioning at the beginning of the rounds because I think that adds a really fun group dynamic to the game, as well as some extra drama to games that might otherwise turn out to be tough slogs for the underdog.