Blood Bowl League

[Sideshow]

I think it'd be a good idea to run a more structured league alongside our current ladder. Basic outline of the format:

Each competitor makes up a new team, and that team may only play other competitors in the league.
Every week each team has one game to play. During the course of the league you will play each opponent twice, so the league would run for (#COMPETITORS-1) X 2 weeks. Pairings are randomly drawn at the start of the week.

This would depend on people being able to reliably play their one game, so: there will be a scheduled BB game time (for now let's say Sunday 2pm-7pm). If you have not played your opponent before that time has elapsed then you forfeit, so long as the opponent was available to play during that time. If both players are unavailable then the result is a draw. Of course you can arrange to play your opponent earlier in the week, if you can both agree on a time.

After the season is over, we could have a cup - a simple knockout tournament that everyone in the league can enter. After that we start another league season, and just keep going back and forth between league and cup 'til everyone is bored of being smashed up by Orks. If we drum up some new players (or a current player wants to retire their team and switch to a new one) then they can join at the beginning of a league season with a team who have played a number of games not more than the number of league weeks played to date.

Optional stuff:

Prizes. Make up a dummy team with 9FF. League/Tourney winners get to play a game against them, in which the dummy team always receives first and instantly concedes. This awards one game's total earnings, a chance at +1FF, and two 5spp MVP awards to random players.

Highlander teams. Only one of each race appearing? If two players wanted the same race then some fair way to determine who gets them would have to be decided (coin toss as the most arbitrary).

Thoughts? Suggestions? Post if you think you could reliably play 1 game a week and are interested.

[TK-Maximus]

Sounds good to me! I'd be up for it, and might try something new.

[--Mogwai--]

i'd say one game a week will take too long if we get more than a handful of people playing - people will lose interest of 'forget' to play if the Dawn of War ladder is anything to go by.

highlander races (or random races?) sounds like an EXCELLENT idea however!!! maybe get people to apply with 1st/2nd/3rd choice races and then if there's still a tie flip a coin..

although given that people might like the teams they already have.. a season like this could run alongside the ladder suing the ladder teams everyone already has, or our ladder could be converted entirely to a season from a certain point. just some options.

[GingerPrinz]

Man this feels like it might suit me better than the ladder, I crave structure :P

Only problem I can see is "Prizes. Make up a dummy team with 9FF. Winners get to play a game against them, in which the dummy team always receives first and instantly concedes. This awards one game's total earnings, a chance at +1FF, and two 5spp MVP awards to random players."

Isn't that in direct conflict with FUMBBLs rules?

EDIT: Oh yeah I forgot to say yes I am interested. Goddam this illness plays tricks with the brain

[Sideshow]

I think when you're in League division you can more or less do whatever you want to.

[Baron_Greenback]

OK -- I'm in for a more structured league but..

I don't like the prize team idea. it means that if you win and some of your players are "miss the next game" then that free prize game will heal them whereas the poor lossing team still has to play the next game without any players that he lost. Not really how a league works. you get your reward by winning the game anyway -- more points, a win already = better chance of fan factor.

I'd want to play a necromantic team.

[Sideshow]

You can set the knockout tournament up so the game knows when the semi-final and final is, and the winner gets better reward due to it, but league play has no equivalent. You're right that the winning team gets a game to heal up that the losers don't... imagine this is first class medicare awarded as part of the prize.
This idea basically came from the rulebook - in the tabletop rules there are leagues and tourneys you can enter (e.g. The Chaos Cup, etc), which have substantial cash rewards for winning. On FUMBBL though there is no way to award a team anything manually, so this would be the only way to facsimilate it. You could argue that money+spp+healing is too much of a prize for winning the league... possibly. Assuming we get 6 players it would only happen once every 2.5 months.
I think there should be some kind of prize for winning the league, and I don't see any other way to do it. We could set the game as a tie instead of a conceded win, with both players just clicking end turn til it was over, which would effectively half the prze money and spp.

[Baron_Greenback]

I have no problem with getting a free match for winning the *league*

I thought you meant that you got a free match after every game that you won.

Which did you mean?

[Sideshow]

Well, the former, obviously. Though I guess not, in retrospect. Editting OP...

[Baron_Greenback]

Speaking as a fully employed person with not much time on my hands. I think 1 game a week (league game) is the maximum I can commit to.

if you have a blood bowl fix then you can still play the ladder matches. I think the league should be something totally separate.

[Captain_Caveman]

I'd be up for a more structured league.

[twonky]

I would be up for that

[brialzebub]

in a league I think imposing a 1 match per week rule would be perfectly fair - the nutters that want to play every night can simply register multiple teams (but cant play them against each other obviously :))

Im just speaking as another employed person with not that much time on my hands, consoles to play, girlfriends to entertain, computers to play, and various weeknight commitments all vying for my attention.

It seems that under the current system, if you play 3 games a week you will simply have three times more points in the league table than the person that plays 1 game a week. Just seems ... unbalanced... or favouring fanatics :D

just my 2p

[GingerPrinz]

Now just so you know the league and the ladder are different things. League rules are 1 team per player, 1 player per race. Ladder you can register 2 teams at a time, and play a total of 4 games per week using one team for no more than 3 of those games. I think this has been gone over more than enough times in terms of argument so I doubt very much it will be changed now. Atm it massively favours the casual so rest assured :)

Additionaly in the league I don't even think it's been a bone of contention. Pretty sure everyone's just gone with what Iain said, makes sense.

But yeah the ladder should deffo keep its 4 games per week. I wish it was more (and funnily enough I have the same commitments as yourself Brialzebub) but the issue's been done to death and I'm not gonna get into it.

[GingerPrinz]

I was just wondering now we're at the half way point what exactly is the policy on the winner? Is there a prize? The prize you outlined in the original subject seems a bit OP to me, although might be a bit better balanced if the dummy team had FF0 (getting a reroll, 2 mvps and maybe some extra money on the side seems a bit much)? Either that or FF9 and the Tie option, but even then it would give the team that won the league a chance at -FF

EDIT: Other wonderings. At the half way point/end of season will coaches get to retire teams under 100TR? I only ask because I'm sure it's a misery to be forced to play a game you will likely lose and a fresh team might seem a better option to some folk

[Sideshow]

I've been leaning toward no prizes. As you say, it seems a bit overpowered, and unnecessary. I still want to do a knockout tourney after season 1, so what we could do is award bye's to the top teams of the league (probably just the winner). In fumbbl we can set up a tourney so that the semis and final award extra cash.
I don't think we'll end up with sub-100 tr teams (I hope), but any coach who has a team in division 2 will be able to swap them around.

[--Mogwai--]

there should be a prize for something, either the league or the KO tourney surely? a bit of cash isn't really that much

[GingerPrinz]

Well if you can bump the cash for semi + final then the tourney seems to be the best option for rewards. Maybe you could use the league as a seeding tool for the tournament? Like top 4 play bottom 4 in first round. It'd be kinda like a playoffs system tbh, which is pretty cool. It's also good to expand into to include D2 in future runs.

EDIT: Just had a thought - wouldn't a KO tourney benefit better teams? Since BB is a skilling-through-play game, that means that two teams in the league will have played 1 or 2 more games than their opps, giving them 1 or 2 more MVPs plus more bankroll. Maybe to offset this we could either go Swiss or an unusual format called Double Elimination Bracket, which you can read more about on Wikipedia, but it's pretty self explanatory - you need to lose twice to be eliminated, losers drop to a second bracket below to play their last chance games. Prolly needs more ppl than we have tho, so I reckon Swiss is best - at least we're all very familiar with it!!!

[--Mogwai--]

well in tabletop BB you get hundreds of thousands of gold + extras for winning these sorts of things - it takes a lot to win them, generally winning comes at the cost of your players as you cant play to win and to keep your team alive at the same time.

compared to those (standard) rewards, the 100k or so for a conceded game isn't very much

[TK-Maximus]

Double Elim is a massive hassle. I'd say no.

Playoffs should really be a semi for the top 4, then a final. Yes, these teams will get more advantage in some ways, but by pitting strong against strong, you will probably find that the volume of DPs and MBs results in as much pain as gain.

Also, We'll see how my final rounds against King and Charles go, but me ending up under 100 at the half is easily possible, as I'm not that far above that ATM.

[GingerPrinz]

Hassle? Wouldn't have thought so, seems simple enough. Have u used it for something before yeah? Just trying to keep it fair in terms of games played for everyone, it's a tricky one to balance because you can never be too sure how exploitative people will use the system to pro-out their teams at minimal risk, even if it doesn't follow spirit of competition.

EDIT: Larry, in tabletop BB isnt it illegal to play a 40TR difference matchup tho? And the cups it outlays in there are like big deals, not just 8 player cups. Pretty sure that 24-32 is more appropriate for those levels of winnings

EDIT2: It'd be real nice if it was possible for entrants to "pony up" an entry fee, which gets added to prize fund. Is this in any way possible Iain?

[Sideshow]

I don't see any simple way to let players transfer funds between each other. Only way I can think of would be to have playes hire and fire coaches until they'd wasted enough cash, and then give the recipient free games against a dummy opponent til they'd got roughly the right amount of money.

[--Mogwai--]

... Just trying to keep it fair in terms of games played for everyone, it's a tricky one to balance because you can never be too sure how exploitative people will use the system to pro-out their teams at minimal risk, even if it doesn't follow spirit of competition.

well its an incentive to win... rewarding losing is always a bad plan, and is way more exploitable.

EDIT: Larry, in tabletop BB isnt it illegal to play a 40TR difference matchup tho? And the cups it outlays in there are like big deals, not just 8 player cups. Pretty sure that 24-32 is more appropriate for those levels of winnings

and nope, the 40TR is only on fumbbl ranked games. the cups in the book are there are for any league run with any number of players, i think 8 players playing each other twice followed by a KO tourney is more than enough games to warrant a decent prize.

[GingerPrinz]

I totally agree about losin being more exploitable, and I guess in the most exciting sports leagues resources arent evenly divided amongst the teams, so yeah I'm all turned around. Gogo shiny prizes!!

[Sideshow]

Just so you know this thread isn't dead; I'm weighing up whether or not to have prizes. I think you've summed up the for and against in this thread, but there's always room for more info so if anyone has anything further to add to this discussion (even if it's just opinion) please post it. I'll make a decision at the mid-season point.

[Baron_Greenback]

you could give the winner a game against a ff 9 team that immediately conceeds -- extra sp and some cash.

And give all the other teams a game against a 1 FF team (0 possible?) in which the league team must conceed -- no sp but heal miss game in same was as the winner. Chance of loosing FF

that way the winner would still get something (10SP + a load of cash + a chance at FF + healed guys) and the other teams would get (healed gus + chance loose FF)

Simulate a holiday after the league so that when the cup starts everyone does start with full rosters but the winner still gets a good advantage.

[Baron_Greenback]

you could also give 2nd place a free game against 5FF team, declare the result a draw. then 2nd gets something also.

[Sideshow]

Half way through Division 1's season, and at the start of Division 2, I'm gonna clear up some rules issues that have been floating around unresolved.

Disconnections
Fumbbl rules dictate that if you get disconnected during a game and upon reloading the save you are a turn or so behind, then you must exactly duplicate the play that occurred before disconnecting, including redoing it over and over until the dice provide the same results. I think this is a horrific cluge which they have had to create in order to compensate for the client being a little... shit. Regardless, we are NOT following this rule in the league. It's a pain in the arse, it just leads to ill feeling, and it can be almost impossible in some circumstances to do it. So: if your game disconnects you must reload the most recent viable save, but from there you can do what you want. I don't see this being a problem since we are all know each other, and I don't think anyone involved is going to abuse this system.
Important: The game begins as soon as the client connects to the server. As soon as you connect you must play the game out from there. If you realise just after connecting that you forgot to spend your cash then you may NOT disconnect, spend it and rejoin.
Note that I strongly recommend setting up games with direct connections and forego using the proxy servers if at all possible. I always set up directly, and I don't think I've had one disconnect in the league so far.


Prizes
There will be no additional prizes for the team which wins the league. I know it would be nice to get something for your efforts, and if we could award cool things like you can in the board game (or as Fumbbl does in it's official leagues and tourneys); magic items, a free resurrection for a past player, etc, then I would definitely include them. However, as it is, the only prizes we can give are cash, fanfactor and spp, which we can only award those by violating fumbbl rules. I understand that after winning you would like to be rewarded for it, but I feel that all such a prize would do would be to directly increase the power of the winning team. The winning team has already (by definition) won more games than the other teams, and so is already, roughly speaking, going to have gained more cash and spp than everyone else. We want the division to remain competetive for all teams involved, and giving the most powerful team a reward which makes it more powerful will only serve to unbalance the division. Therefor: no prizes for teams.
However, I think there should be a prize for the winning coach, so IRL the winner will get something. What? Shhhh, secret prize is secret.

[GingerPrinz]

Iain, just a few questions about the KO tourney you mentioned a couple of times before. Will it take place after D1S1 finishes and only include those teams? Or will it wait til the end of D2S1 and include all coaches (maybe coaches with 2 teams could pick the one they want to enter?)

Also will it be seed-based, drawn out of a hat, straight up league-position for league-position pairings, or something else entirely?

Finally just wanted to say that these tourneys are going really well, I'm thoroughly enjoying them and on the strength of my constantly talking about them to anyone who will listen I have a few new guys interested, *EDIT - so thanks Iain :D*. One or two have used/use fumbbl and others are new. Would they be able to enter into any division at the end of it's season or is it just D2 that takes new blood?

[Baron_Greenback]

Indeed -- Hail to the tournament Organiser!

I am enjoying the leagues too.

[Sideshow]

The likely format for the post-season tournament will be the top 8 teams in div 1 in a simple knock-out structure. It's optional though, so if you don't want to enter you don't have to (and your slot would go to the next highest team - obviously we currently only have 8 teams in D1, but that would be how it worked if/when there are more)

[GingerPrinz]

Supplementary - we can switch teams out at the end of a season right? How does that work while seasons are staggered over each other?

[Sideshow]

season 2 for div1 and div2 will both start at the same time

[GingerPrinz]

Woah, so we're gonna be waiting, what, 4-10 weeks for D1S2 to start?

EDI: Wait, just remembered that D2 plays everyone once... My bad