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Knoxville, TN--August 1-3, 2019

Host: Chris Fachman
Venue:
Meridian Baptist Church
6513 Chapman Highway, Knoxville, TN 37920

Official Schedule:

Thursday:  T2 - 2 Player (Free!) / Booster Draft 2 Player ($20.00)
Friday:  T1 - 2 Player (Top Cut X players) (Free!) / T2 - Multi (Free!)
Saturday:  Teams (Free!) / T1 - Multi (Free!) / Sealed ($15.00)

This year's National Tournament participant promos!

Spoiler (hover to show)

Alright guys, while I'm still working on the official schedule I wanted to post here what was mentioned a while ago.  I want to try to raise some money to see if we can't make this a completely free tournament if not discounted to try to make this as affordable as possible so we can try to get as many people there as possible!

So here are my goals with the value beside them.

1) Free entry for open categories for everyone 17 years and younger or has never been to a National Tournament before.  $100

2) Free entry for open categories (for everyone).  $100

3) Free meal plan (This will include Breakfast and Lunch)  $3,000

I figure about $5 a meal x 6 for 100 people.

4) Free entry fee for closed categories for everyone 17 years and younger or has never been to a National Tournament before. $1,400

Sealed Deck:  $15 x 40 = $600
Booster Draft:  $20 x 40 = $800

5) Free entry fee for closed categories (for everyone).  $1,400

Sealed Deck:  $15 x 40 = $600
Booster Draft:  $20 x 40 = $800

Goal 1:  $100
Goals 1-2: $200
Goals 1-3: $3,200
Goals 1-4: $4,600
Goals 1-5: $6,000

How are we going to do this?  I have talked to Rob and I can do it a few ways:

I can sell cards from my collection, I will only be selling cards I have an excess of.
I can sell complete sets (including Phase 2 of Prophecies of Christ)
You can simply donate through Pay-Pal.

Money Raised so far: $339.61

The selling thread is HERE

Lord willing I will make either date with a van full of players. Thanks for hosting and making this so affordable!

If we can figure out what we are going to do with the kids, (Simon is 4 weeks old already, and Evan is 3!) then we will try and come. It would be great to see everyone!

Looks like he is excited about it, so you should bring him with you!

Bumping again because we need to go ahead and try to figure this out.  If it ends super close to a tie, I’ll be having a discussion with a few people and we will decide on which date to go forward with.


Huge announcement coming tomorrow!  Stay tuned!

Alright everyone, please vote if you haven't already.  Upon conversations with people, unless the poll moves very heavily towards the July date we will probably keep the date the same as it has always been which is the first weekend in August.

Mega Bus, Mega Bus, Mega Bus!

As if I have not bothered you enough this week  is there an update to the schedule or a general consensus leaning towards one way or the other?  7 categories is tough, I personally wouldn't be opposed to testing a new schedule out that didn't include one of or both of the multiplayers, (T1/T2 MP only). Maximizing the amount of contestants in the most popular categories seems to make for the most competition, different decks, and everyone always gets excited when the field is large. The new cards/format for booster seem to be a very popular category, T1 2p is always the most category, so these two should really be the main focus. I wouldn't mind type 1 2p running only alongside type A. I don't think there's such a thing as the perfect schedule, so appeasing the majority should be the main concern and type 1 2p is just that, and this is coming from an almost secluded type 2'er.

Thursday- Booster/T2 2P: This allows for your hardcore t2 players and more experienced t1 players who want to cross over into the real gameplay and also opens up the playing field for booster for newer players to have a better shot at higher tables, or even competitive players to win if you take away 12-20 top players in type 2. This also gives newer players a day for deck building, construction, chance for new cards, and allows for the masses to travel if need be and be there for the main event for the next day...

Friday- Type 1 2 player/Type A: Let us all try to friendly kill each other. I can't think of anyone who hates type 1 so much they would be mad that something else isn't offered. Technically type 2 mp can be during this day too, but the thought of the main event gaining all the attention is pretty cool. Imagine 100 people at this nats and 75 playing in type 1. 

Saturday- This is a low attendance day where people are leaving and your main 3 events are already done anyway. You can really throw in a lot of categories here all in one day. Sealed/MP's/Teams can all run jointly. Like I said, I think type 2MP, even with additional time, is almost to the point of impossible to finish games, and type 1 MP is just a draw fest anyway, sorry if you don't like that, but you still know it's true. I would run Sealed and Teams this day and eliminate T1/2 MP's for this year and see how it goes. And once again, this is coming from a guy who has a couple T2 MP titles under his belt and the only open category left that I haven't ranked in is T1 MP so I wanted to play that this year, so I'm just saying.

This schedule allows for both 2 player formats, maximizes booster, gives a day for travel, a day for deck building with new cards from booster, and creates a huge amount of excitement for the first ever main event being the only event pretty much. Maybe extend top cut to 12, extend prizes to top 8, live feed multiple games at a time, and get to see a massive amount of unique deckstyles in type1 which I personally think will be the most open and explosive meta in Redemption history. Last year had a few good decks in type 1 that had a realistic shot at winning, sorry but it's true. The year before was CoL (shudders) and the year before that was BoM/Throne decks. This year we could (should) see a resurgence of BoM, various prophet offenses, more Throne, a very fast red bander, teal (that feels weird to say), Genesis/Flood, white/clay, clay variants, musicians, Ruth (maybe), Daniel decks, cloud based decks, star based decks and maybe even a random angel party. I seriously think if there are 75 type 1 players you will see the most amount of decks that are actually competitive and the meta hasn't even been set yet!

I love you, Tyler.* 

*In a manly, platonic kind of way.

Great feedback so far! 
Love you guys too, in a similar manly, platonic kind of way too of course.

You absolutely can, but now you are potentially diluting all of fields on that day on the least attended day. I would probably play T2 MP that day, but why T2MP over T1MP on that day? If you are eliminating 1 category, that helps, but 2 might need to go for an ideal schedule. I will agree with you about sealed not being fun because those decks have been out for so many years, so I would not mind that category gone, but that is a decent money maker for the host. If you do all 3 you take away around 12 players from the field of teams/sealed, but this also offers an opportunity for people to leave early if they are hitting the road. I am not against 3 categories on Saturday, but that is tough to balance all 3 categories in a timely fashion on the day that tends to end slightly earlier.

You absolutely can, but now you are potentially diluting all of fields on that day on the least attended day. I would probably play T2 MP that day, but why T2MP over T1MP on that day? If you are eliminating 1 category, that helps, but 2 might need to go for an ideal schedule. I will agree with you about sealed not being fun because those decks have been out for so many years, so I would not mind that category gone, but that is a decent money maker for the host. If you do all 3 you take away around 12 players from the field of teams/sealed, but this also offers an opportunity for people to leave early if they are hitting the road. I am not against 3 categories on Saturday, but that is tough to balance all 3 categories in a timely fashion on the day that tends to end slightly earlier.

Historically, when type 2 multi player has been with type one the field is diluted too. Not sure pairing it with a less popular category, TEAMS, would dilute T2 multi more.  As for type 1 multi you could throw that in on the day type 2 when t1 2 player is played. Then it can also serve as a type- A and a half for those not young enough to play type A but not experienced enough to have fun competing in T1. I agree overall though and would take that schedule over any of the "old" ones.

If you are not going to have them played at Nationals, you may as well just remove the multiplayer as official categories and make it clear that Redemption is strictly a two player game.

And since last year there were as many T1-MP players as there were people playing T2-2P, and only two more people played TEAMS, maybe we should just stick with the most popular events and do...

Thursday:  Booster
Friday:      T1-2P/Type A
Saturday:  Sealed

Popular vote would be a more accurate way of deciding this, but I understand your sentiment. Having all categories played at Nationals is important, however diluted.

Maybe we should just change the deck building rules for T2-MP to having a good to evil ratio of 2:1.

I would be fine with cutting one category so there are only two categories each day. Although T1 2P is the most popular category, there are people who really prefer not to play that category and for them to spend the money to come to Nationals, I think it's reasonable to offer two categories each day even if they end up with smaller fields. (As a note, I'm not counting Type A as that should always be paired with T1 2P).

If that category has to be T2 MP, I would understand though I would hope we could cut one of the Type 1 categories since there are 5 of those and only 2 Type 2 categories. I have no problem with games timing out in T2 MP as long as we're actually getting to fight battles and not spending 20 minutes for one person to get through their prep phase...the timing system we tested at the T2 Only seemed work really well -- we got 3 quality rounds done in about 5 1/2 hours so 4 rounds would have been just over 7, which is perfect for a Nationals.