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First let me say that I really enjoyed Nationals this year as I do every year.  Congrats to Steve and his team on pulling together a great tournament.

Every year I look forward to seeing everyone that I only get to see at Nats.  Other than the years that I've hosted, I have always been able to make time to just hang out with the friends I have made over the years.  However, just "hangin out" has been getting more difficult the last few Nationals.  It's amazing to me to see how all the extra events have sprung up over the last few years.  Now don't get me wrong, I think the extra events are great and everyone seems to really enjoy them, but especially this year, it seemed that a lot of players were getting to the breaking point from trying to be in every event, both official and unofficial.

So, with that preface in mind, I am wondering if it might be worth considering making Wednesday the unofficial event day.  If the tournament host booked the event site for Tuesday night through Saturday night, then Teams, Fantasy Draft, and Canaan could all be run on Wednesday.  Ironman would still have to be over the course of the whole week due to the nature of the event.  This way there would be more time for players to hang out each night without having to "be somewhere" for this event and that event.

The biggest downside would be an additional night of hotel and/or day off from work, but I think Nationals has become such a big event that most would be willing to come for an extra day.

Let me know what you think.

in Him
Chris

Love the idea. However, since I'm not hosting nationals this year I can only show my support.

The only one I would strongly support being shunted off is Teams, because it has grown to the point where it literally eats up an entire evening of gaming for what this year amounted to over a third of the total participants.  Including (on a selfish note) most of my gaming partners.

If Teams evolved to the point where Cactus began to sanction it as a formal gameplay category, I think we would have a difficult time justifying a three-day tournament.  The other viable option is to run it at the same time as Sealed and (insert T2 event here), which would either siphon players off those two categories or possibly kill Teams.  I don't know if there's an elegant solution there.

I do think Prof's objections to a fourth day are valid, though.  I will say that playing a shorter Sealed event this year seemed to pay off fairly well, at least inasmuch as extra rounds really were not necessary.  So maybe if we ran the other event either fewer rounds or began it earlier, we could wrap up early Thursday and open up that evening to accommodate Teams and Settlers better.

I think if we consider adding an extra day, we make it a Wednesday evening-only time frame, because both events can be wrapped up inside of 5 hours, imo.  5pm Wednesday might be more feasible than all-day Wednesday.

The other issue we run into is that Roy and I were kind of outliers with our venues; most nationals (I would probably include any future Columbus events) will be held in churches, and Wednesday night runs up against mid-week services for many denominations.

Raven, please read my post again, with a bit more care.  I said that one possible thing that would happen is that putting Teams up against other regular events would kill it off.  I never claimed it would be a "good thing".  I fully supported and encouraged Mark's efforts to hash out a good set of team rules this year, which I wanted to see become either the standard for teamplay or the template to build on for next year (possibly under his direction again).  I would even like to see it considered as an official category eventually, but I don't know how far that will go.

I would not let him take Teams to the level that he did and then try to kill it.  I am just thinking out loud about the good and bad points of trying different ideas to find a solution.  If anybody wants to see people with lots of free time, it's me; I was promoting the evening free time almost as much as the regular events, that's how excited I get about Bang and Robo Rally.

I think the concerns that people have are very valid in this situation. However, I think that if nationals is 4 days we should make the 4th day the unofficial day.

...Teams, because it has grown to the point where it literally eats up an entire evening of gaming for what this year amounted to over a third of the total participants...The other viable option is to run it at the same time as Sealed and (insert T2 event here), which would either siphon players off those two categories or possibly kill Teams...

I was glad to observe that we had about the same number of people playing all three of the events on Thursday at Nats.  There were about 50 in T2-2p and TEAMS, as well as about 40 in Sealed Deck.  I would imagine that it would be possible to put 3 events on Thursday and still have a decent turnout for each.  I would imagine that if Thursday had TEAMS, Sealed, and T2-2p, then they would each get at least 30 players in them.  People who wanted to play a multi-player game would play TEAMS, people who were beginners or who like the balance and randomness of Sealed would go that route, and the experienced players who like to go it alone would play T2-2p.

I will say that playing a shorter Sealed event this year seemed to pay off fairly well, at least inasmuch as extra rounds really were not necessary.  So maybe if we ran the other event either fewer rounds or began it earlier, we could wrap up early Thursday and open up that evening to accommodate Teams and Settlers better.

I think this may be the best option.  Since multi-player tournaments finish faster it could work to put Sealed Deck on Thur with either T1-mp or T2-mp.  Either of these would get done with plenty of time for a full TEAMS competition following.  It would also hopefully cut down on the only complaint that I have heard about this years Nats (Sealed people being bored waiting for T2-2p to finish).

...most nationals...will be held in churches, and Wednesday night runs up against mid-week services for many denominations.

That is a great point that I hadn't even thought of yet.

im all for a 4 day event. more days of gaming = more days of fun. gencon is the biggest gaming convention in the united states, and its a 4 day long event. if they can do it, we can too!

Even though Redemption is a bit smaller demographic...

What if it was Sunday instead of Wednesday?   Just my two cents.  I.E., run the extra stuff in the afternoon, after church.

I second that notion.

The Sunday idea is the best I've seen so far. The worship at the church was the best part of my Nats expirience.

That was pretty funny I must say.

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Since most Nats will probably be held in churches, it might also be nice for those churches to have an extra 50-100 people attending their service in return for giving all of us a place to play.

I'm not too sure about that...haha, maybe if the church has showers

Don't let them see the post on tithing or they won't let us come!

Finding a sub for a Sunday School class for 1 week is not very difficult.  The same would be true for most other commitments that Redemption players have at their home church.  The only exceptions would probably be Pastors (which I don't think there are more than a handful who would come to Nats anyway) and Youth Pastors (which there are a few more of, but still probably not enough to rule it out).

Don't most churches have a backup pastor in case the pastor is sick?