Magic league

[Alex_Steinkohl]

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen.

Beginning with January 1st 2011, I am going to kick off a Magic league for Lackey CCG.
To get it started the format will be standard and the league will be played in single evening tournaments similar to FNM.
I will use the standard ELO rating system, K-value for each tournament will be 16, starting rating for each player will be 1500.

Now to get this to work I need a sufficient number of players obviously and it would be nice to have 1 or 2 additional judges on board, myself being head judge (which means I will NOT participate myself, for obvious reasons!)


My ingame name for Lackey is Judge Alex and I have been a licensed DCI judge for almost 3 years now. I've been head judge in a local store for FNM, as well as floor judge in several bigger tournaments so I know the game rules as well as tournament regulations and I am able to calculate rating changes in the ELO system.

I'd like for anyone who is interested in participating as well as for those willing to fulfill judge duties to send me a pm, with ingame name, and if interested in judging, age.
Please reply to this post for any questions you would like to ask, I'll reply as soon as possible.

[ParadoX Haze]

How will ratings be recorded & displayed for players? (where/how will players be able to view the rating ladders)
Do you have any qualms with a K-value of 32 instead of 16?
How will decks be checked for legality?
What's the plan for dealing with differences in Time Zones?
Who will be able to host official tournaments? And how often?
FNM - Best two of three games? Four rounds total?
How will disciplinary issues be handled when dealing with stubborn players who are a bit 'misguided' about the rules of Magic?
What incentive is provided for participating in tournaments? (how do you intend to make rating important to the players/what other prizes do you intend to give)
What are your main goals/visions that you hope to achieve with this Magic league?

And on a personal note - I'd like a Limited format and rating for draft/sealed competition.

[Remag]

Seasons Greetings

Not attempting to be a representative for this idea I would still like to share the thought that I think this could be a huge step up and might obviously yield substantial gain (in different ways) for Lackey, it's makers, players and others who have fringe interests. Of course that depends on the answers to certain questions such as above and, also, it's maintainer.

For a while now, I have hoped that Lackey would be sufficient and able to host for those interested in a Magic League (of sorts or equivalent at least). I am sure that there is shared opinion in that a commendable amount of work and creative innovation has gone into Lackey that, should it continue especially (and hopefully ), will provide it the opportunity to become a leader in the alternative online Ccg community.

Cool of you to offer up the time for such an endeavour Alex and if you have not already done so, I kindly recommend that you contact the administrator Trevor, who would be central and pivotal in organizing such an undertaking. It would be cool if you could install an ELO system or rating for Lackey and etc Trevor

Good questions ParadoX. Covers almost all of it. I would like limited or at least sealed myself too as well as the occasional extended tourney. 

Alex, would these tournaments be associated with and mirror Magic League itself much like it already functions, using their site for compiling ratings, prizes, rules etc?

[Alex_Steinkohl]

@Paradox

1. I have 2 possibilities in mind, first being me creating a forum specifically designed for the league, the second being opening a section in this forum, which is read-only except for the judges which of course would require Trevor's consent.
2. K-Value is just a variable. I can pretty much insert any K-Value in the standard ELO calculation for each tournament. Note however that an increased K-Value will result in higher fluctuation of the rating for each participant.
3. The judges will check the decks of each player just before the tournament starts in a seperate game room, where the participants will make the decks visible to others (in this case one of the judges). Also every player will be required to send in their decklists to one of the judges via E-Mail at least 48 hours before the tournament starts. That way the judges will be able to inform the players if their deck does not meet the requirement, giving them enough time to adjust their deck list.
4. That will be determined once I know, how many time zones are present and how far they are apart. If the difference between the time zones are not significant, this should not be a problem.
5. Anyone that is approved as judge will be able to host one tournament per week.
6. Best of three with a maximum of four rounds, depending on how many players have signed up.
7. Similar to real life tournaments, the judges are the final instance when dealing with rules. A player who does not accept a judges ruling will be asked to check the exact rules text of the comprehensive rulebook (downloadable for free from wizards.com) after the tournament but still has to comply with the judges ruling. A judge whose ruling is wrong will be suspended for one week and can only be reinstated after passing a test by the head judge (me). Disciplinary measures against players will follow the guidelines presented in the official tournament rulebook (also downloadable for anyone to check).
8. The rating itself will have to suffice because Lackey Magic League will never be sanctioned by DCI due to Wizards of the Coast's policy regarding tournaments. Still the rating provides a means to build up a ladder for those who like to play magic competitive without having to pay for it.
9. By starting a league such as this I hope to get the Lackey Magic community closer together and to provide a ladder for competitive players. As for myself starting off a league on my own gives me plenty of opportunity to train as a judge in order to further advance through the Judge levels. (I wanna be invited to the really big tournaments one day )

As I stated in the initial post I'm just gonna start the League with standard. Other formats will be added but in order to run those at the same time I would definitely need a few additional judges. I simply cannot handle all formats at once all by myself. After all, even a head judge is merely human! xD

@Remag

As of now I have not made contact with Magic League so the answer is no. However if this project should succeed that may change. Time will tell!


P.S.

In order to start anything at all I desperately need more participants. As of now there is only a single player listed as participant. Please give it a shot and sign up! At least give me an opportunity to prove that this can work! That's all for now.

[ParadoX Haze]

2.) Yeah, that's exactly what I was after. The thing is, the Lackey CCG community is much smaller than the 'irl' MTG community where tournaments are pretty frequent and players attend regularly. I once participated in a community center chess group (approx. 20 people) that used the ELO rating system with a K-value of 16. The ratings really didn't go anywhere because the community was so small and it seemed like calculating it was moot point. Of course you could probably change K-value at any time, so if a number doesn't work out I'm sure we can easily revise it (=

Other than that it looks like you've got this baby figured out well, congrats!

With regards to players and participants, I'm not sure if you've done this already, but advertising on the network would probably be way more effective than the forums. I didn't even know this forum existed until the day before my reply to your post.

I'd be down to participate. In-game name is just ParadoX Haze. With the avatar Paradox Haze. And two upkeeps.

[teapower]

I'm up for joining. I sent u a message.

[Alex_Steinkohl]

Thanks to Paradox and teapower there are now 3 participants. We would need at least 8 to at least think about starting off.

[teapower]

Have you guys gone onto Lackey and advertised the league?

[Remag]

You can include me as a participant as well Alex. Message sent. That is probably the best idea right now Teapower, as it will spread the word quicker. I do not mind doing so but I will wait to see if and how Alex wants to do that, being the organizer. What I have done one my own recognizance is add a little blurb about supporting MTG Standard League play in the "Info" section of my player profile. 

[Ayotte]

This has been tried before on multiple occasions and the number of players in the league is always the reason it fails.

I tried it when Lackey was at a popularity of ~70 people online at a given time in the evening, but now we're at ~40, so I wouldn't be too optimistic.

That said, if it were other formats than standard, I would join.  I did mine in a matter where the 2 players agreed on the format and agreed to a ranked match before playing, so there were no format restrictions.

[Alex_Steinkohl]

Ayotte, there is one big problem with your way: It is impossible to run a tournament based league without format restrictions. As I stated before other formats may become available but for now, it's just standard.

[Remag]

With respect to your post and past efforts Ayotte, those numbers reflect how many people are on Lackey during the average evening and not reflective of total number of players. Also more players will likely come to Lackey if there is a tourney of any kind with a rating system that provides a bracketed time they can expect some competitive gaming. Optimism, amongst and together with other things, will help this become a reality. 

Maybe the reason why pick your format did not work out was because Classic and Legacy (even Extended to an extent) have been ever more losing popularity while the player base for more recent formats has been blossoming. Even when it comes to CCG apps like Lackey, a lot of peeps want to play / practice (mostly) with the card pool they have Irl and or on Mtgo. Besides I think it would be easier for the coordinators as well if there was only one or two formats from the three most popular which are Block, Standard and Extended.

[Ayotte]

Having two players able to choose a format before their match makes it inherently easier to play a game.  Standard is always an option, but for players that don't want to play standard, they then have an option other than not being in the league at all.

With two players able to agree on the format, there's no issue about format restrictions because the games are going to be played with both players using the same format anyway.

Also, the only indicator we have of how many active lackey players there are is the number of players on a night.  If that is lower, it's likely that there are less active players holding all other variables constant.  Granted, other variables may not be constant, but it's the best estimate we have.

[Alex_Steinkohl]

Knock it off you 2, that's not the purpose of this thread!

Anyways there's 4 listed players now and I'm currently trying to get some of my friends to join. None of them is present in Lackey atm, but I think they will come to like it.
Once they're in we can start our first tournament and I do think that once other players see us actually pulling it off, they might join as well!

[Cyrus]

I'd be down to play in a Lackey tourney, especially Standard. I should brush up my skills in Lackey, been playing Magic a lot irl, but fumbling around with the controls would make me look like a n00b