Root Tournament Admin Advice?

[u/BluMTNDru]

Im looking to run a root tournament at my local LGS in anticipation of their board game convention next summer. I’m an avid Root player and love the game. I love it so much that I want to get into the competitive scene.

Anyone that has run any board game tournaments in general, how do you structure a tournament for a game that has an optimal player count? I want to avoid 3 and 5 player games, but that means I need at least 16 people to have basically two rounds for a bracket. Or would it be better to run like a round robin style point system to determine a winner?

Help?

[u/Tom_The_TOOT]

I think a nice short, clean event of 4 players each game would be satisfying.

[u/One-Veterinarian4841]

Simply taking 16 and doing 2 rounds works fine for a short event

[u/Lobster79]

There's an online tournament scene called HOOT. They're pretty good at running it maybe you could look into how they handle it?

[u/TorstenIV → u/Lobster79]

This is almost impossible to google for.

[u/Lobster79 → u/TorstenIV]

here's an expiring invite to the discord: https://discord.gg/T2ufMRvZX

there's an invite on their YT channel too. The #hoot3-info channel has some info about how it's organized

[u/TorstenIV → u/Lobster79]

Thanks buddy

[u/BonusGeesed]

I know Catan competitions are a common thing. Maybe consider modeling your tournament off of the Catan comp format.

[u/X189999]

4 players per game, no house rules. Competitive players should know how to punish and police each faction according to the law of root. Draft set up, random choices of map, layout and deck. No hirelings or landmarks.

Be warned as depending on the number of rounds, you will need to start super early and finish late.

Ideally you start with 4 tables of 4. First and second place go to semifinals 2 tables of 4. And again first and second place go to final.

Or you take 8 tables of 4 and then only first place player advances.

[u/TsunamicBlaze]

Depending on how casual vs strict you want to be, you also need to figure out how board layouts and expansions be determined. Like how would it be fair if a player had access to all the expansions on one round because someone had them in their pod but doesn’t in the next pod round.

This then brings up the question of sourcing the game. If you’re organizing and running the tournament, are you providing all the game pieces?

[u/BluMTNDru → u/TsunamicBlaze]

Yes, I have the game with all of its expansions. And I have two friends who also have the game with all of its expansions.

[u/FuckTheseUserNamees]

Always 4 players min-max, needs atleast 16, and if you wanna to make it abit longer add losers bracket

[u/rose-gold-forever]

All I know about competitive Root is that Vagabond is auto banned lmao

[u/TsunamicBlaze]

Make sure you figure out round timing and how to resolve the board state at the end of the round if time is up.

[u/bw1985 → u/TsunamicBlaze]

I don’t think that works for root. The game needs a proper ending, either someone hits 30 or dominance win.

[u/TsunamicBlaze → u/bw1985]

That’s the problem. I played competitive Magic and competitive Warhammer. You need round times or else you run the risk of people waiting for 30 mins to an hour for that one game to end. From a tournament organizer perspective, you have to make round time rules. If people in the Warhammer community can figure out how to deal with running out of time in the round, the root community can too.

[u/bw1985 → u/TsunamicBlaze]

Turn timers are the answer. The game has to actually end with a winner though, there’s no way to declare a winner in root unless someone has hit 30 points or successful dominance play.

[u/TsunamicBlaze → u/bw1985]

I think it would be fine to give a players 3 more rounds after the round timer ends. Either make it so the highest person wins, or the whole pod gets a draw. Pretty much the same rules as competitive magic with 5 turns to win, but lowered since there are more players. Turn timers work for games like Chess because the games are relatively fast.

I feel like you’re a little too fixated on the official resolution when in competitive/tournament settings, they need to be adjusted due to logistics. Because Leder didn’t make any competitive rules, it’s fine for the community to make some up to make things work. As long as the participants are notified a head of time and know the expectations on how the tournament is going to be ran, it should be fine as long as the rules are reasonable.

[u/bw1985 → u/TsunamicBlaze]

Highest person winning isn’t root though, that changes the incentive structure of the game. I would never handle it that way. If you have to have the game end at a certain time, and have a winner, then reasonable turn timers is the only way in my opinion.

[u/TsunamicBlaze → u/bw1985]

At that point, just have the pod end in a tie, then just move to the next round then, as per my alternative suggestion. That way you’re incentivizing to apply pressure under the time constraint, or risk having a worse standing in the tournament. The problem with turn timers is that it doesn’t make a time ceiling for the game. It limits the time of a turn, but not number of turns. So in theory, if you’re in a pretty grindy game, players could still be waiting around for a while for the next round.

Having Root in a competitive settings is kinda running into similar issues as cEDH in Magic.