Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Or maybe you print your own winner sheet and sign-in sheet from the Cactus page, and mail that at your own expense, and he mails you the exact number of promos and prize packs.  This option seems best to me.

Thank you!

We eagerly await Rob's post and how he might initiate an experiment out of all our ideas as soon as possible.  I'm confident it's win-win for the bottom line for Cactus and it's win-win for existing playgroups who wish to expand quicker.

I encourage all other hosts to share their inputs if you haven't done so yet.

Godbless all!

I think there should also be a deadline so that players don't try and do a bunch of "short notice" tournaments during the major tournament (States/Regionals) season so they can rack up RNRS points before Nationals.

My 2 cents on this is to apply the rule that the proposed system be effective initially only for Local tourney level, and case-to-case basis on District level.  Since the main purpose anyway is to gain more tournaments and improve player base, I'd be more than happy to host a Local tourney involving between 10-15 players, and deem it as a District if all of a sudden around 20 players attend.  I guess Cactus can make a final judgment whether or not to validate a District depending majorly on attendance.  I suggest that if tourney attendance (assuming honest count) is less than 10 (?), that it should be declared a Local.  Just my thoughts.

More thinktank?

Godbless!

My thought is also how do you prevent fraud?  Could not someone with money to waste and obsession for winning not just send in several apps at the end of the year all at once with the dough just to climb the stats?

Another way to fix that is to only allow them to be locals. And remember, you can only have points from 5 locals and 2 districts (I think?)

~Marti

The promo would be easier for me because I would give out the promos when they arrived from cactus.  I see my players every week and sometimes twice a week so getting them there promos would be easy.  I think this may be a bit easier on cactus from time to time because I wouldn't need to have the items sent to me right away.  The tourney was already done so when Rob got around to it would be fine with me.

On the surface, I like the idea, however, I have one concern

These would, in effect, be "closed" tournaments open only to those in the know.  Because of this, only local tournaments would be eligible.  My concern is that you could potentially get a small group (even 2 or 3 people) have a bunch of small tournaments and spam the RNRS.  So my thoughts would be:

1) Only Local tournaments would be eligible
2) These would be limited to 1 per month per group
3) all paperwork/payment for previous tourneys must be resolved before the next one is allowed
4) set a maximun number of these tournaments per season/per group (like 6)
5) None of these tournaments between May 1st and Nationals
6) all paperwork must be turned in by May 15th or they are not eligible

or course it is ultimately all up to Rob

in Him
Chris

On the surface, I like the idea, however, I have one concern

These would, in effect, be "closed" tournaments open only to those in the know.  Because of this, only local tournaments would be eligible.  My concern is that you could potentially get a small group (even 2 or 3 people) have a bunch of small tournaments and spam the RNRS.  So my thoughts would be:

1) Only Local tournaments would be eligible
2) These would be limited to 1 per month per group
3) all paperwork/payment for previous tourneys must be resolved before the next one is allowed
4) set a maximun number of these tournaments per season/per group (like 6)
5) None of these tournaments between May 1st and Nationals
6) all paperwork must be turned in by May 15th or they are not eligible

or course it is ultimately all up to Rob

in Him
Chris

I completely agree with these and as Scott stated sometimes its impossible to plan tourneys in advance all the time.  This last winter was a perfect example as the NW got hit with a long stretch of ice and snow and we were unable to do alot of traveling even with in the same city.

Putting limitations and guildlines for this idea is necesarry, but I still like the idea alot.

I would have been able to host tournaments last year if this suggestion had been an option.  My sister-in-law passed away 2 months ago after battling breast cancer for 3 years.  This past year and a half has been rough on my wife and me.  We made at least a dozen flights to New york to visit with her.  Frequently, my wife and I did not know 6 weeks ahead when we would be called to her bedside. This prevented me from knowing with any certainty when I would be available to host a tournament.  The result was that, with exception of a local or two, no tournaments were held in the South Central Region last year, and a player base  was not added to, either.

I am pleased to report that we still have a number of Texas players ready and able to resume playing tournaments.  Having this as an option can only help us out here in Texas.

This idea would be a great help for us Fresnians.  It is very difficult to know when the playgroup will be away with some school/family activity (especially since two of them are PK and their family is always busy).  It's also difficult to know when I'll be busy (since stuff just seems to keep popping up).  I'm with ya all who don't have a lot of extra promos (though I have some left over from my past two tournaments (since I'm also my playgroup's storehouse/deck creator)) however I also see most of my playgroup quite frequently so I too can just pass them out when I get them (or, like most time, keep them if it doesn't fit into their decks ).  I think it would also help Cactus in the fact that they know exactly how many promos to send out (since last time I estimated over ten and only three showed up ).

One thing I would change with Marti's suggestion is the limit of people. For all of us with smaller playgroups, just missing three people would disqualify us from an official tournament.  I was thinking that, since the top RNRS people seem to be able to get the points nicely already, maybe we can have it where you must have a certain number of players to earn the RNRS (that way, if we only have three people show up (excluding the judge since they can’t play anyways), we can still have an official tournament with promos and prizes but they won’t receive any RNRS points for winning (considering that the top people are already in good size playgroups).  This would still encourage playgroups that have small numbers that are somewhat inconsistent in attendance to still host official tournaments and reward the people who actually showed up (I’m not bitter about my last tournament (all but one had good reasons why they couldn’t make it at the last minute), I just want to make sure the people who do show up are rewarded).

Also with Marti’s summer suggestion, maybe if there is a regulation that states that if the impromptu tournament falls on the same calendar week as another higher tournament, then it will be automatically rejected as an official tournament (for State tournaments, we can include the state it’s in plus the surrounding states tournaments).

Other than that, I completely agree with the other regulations to these types of tournament (once a month, black out dates between May-Nationals, etc).  If this was implemented right now, I would have a local going in two weeks (since we were planning on meeting anyways).

God Bless

4) set a maximun number of these tournaments per season/per group (like 6)

I don't really like this limitation because of the headaches it would cause Rob.  It would be very complicated to decide what constitutes a "group".  If there are 15 people in a playgroup and 5 of them show up per tournament, and they kept rotating, it could mean it would take 18 tournaments for each player to participate in 6.  But if there was more overlap, then their quota might be reached faster leaving some people out.  Keeping track of that would be a nightmare.

I think it's better to let people have as many as they want.  No one can get more than 10 RNRS points for the year out of them anyway, so I don't see any harm.

For all of us with smaller playgroups, just missing three people would disqualify us from an official tournament.

My 2 cents:
1.  limit impromptu to a local tourney (open, not closed -- to abide by Cactus' ultimate aim of opening the doors to all)
2.  set minimum to 3 players per category (maybe 2 per 2-player event, obviously)
3.  do not limit number of tournaments since RNRS is maxed out anyway
4.  allow impromptu beyond April but credit points to the next tourney season
5.  add $5 to existing local tourney application fee to cover any inconvenience on Cactus
6.  host may award more than one type of promo but must request Cactus for only one type to cover number of promos given away
7.  urge Cactus to begin the 'experiment' as soon as Cactus concurs and rules are finalized -- "WE are itching to make this 'win-win' happen, Mr. Anderson!"

Thanks so much to all the minds that have contributed to this thinktank so far.  Kudos to one and all!

Godbless!!!

Something we have to consider.  What is the reason behind the 6 week deadline and how would this affect it (even a closed local has to be applied six weeks in advance)?

  --- the thinktank is actually in order to eventually reach a conclusion that, at least, a local tourney could be allowed as an 'impromptu' event.  I am sure that most hosts understand the valid reason for the 5 or more weeks allowance for a tourney to be approved.  If approved by Cactus, impromptu Local tourneys would be exempt from the 5-6 weeks before tourney submission minimum.

So far, consensus disapproves the idea of impromptu for tourneys beyond Local level.

Godbless.