Having judged all three Jedi Challenge Events this year, plus several others as well as squeezing a few games in, I found the Jedi Challenge to be exhausting, and I'm wondering how many other players feel so?

With that in mind, I'd like to present several possible revisions to the Jedi Challenge to alleviate some of this. For those of you who don't know, the Jedi Challenge is ran at Gencon over the course of 3 events 100,150, and 200 constructed. A Grand prize goes to the player with the best record over all 3.

Option #1: This one is the least changing. Continue to run the JC as is, but change the time limits to 30 and 45 minutes for the 100 and 150 respectively.

Option #2: As Option #1, but alter the Contructed Rules to be Faction Only. I mean how many of us are sick of the JC 200 (previously 150) event being nothing but Championship Practice?

Option #3: Drop the constructed events altogether from the Jedi Challenge, and incorporate the Jedi Challenge aspect into three outlying, less demanding events, that present three distinct playing types. My suggestions would be Tile Wars, Dynamic, Duo and the Mystery Map event.

Option #4: As Option #4, and adding two event from Option #2, likely 100 and 150. This is my personal favorite option as it allows players to be more selective. Previously to have a chance for overall winner, you had to play in all 3 events. This option allows players to play in some and not in others, given that most other players will do the same. It gives a nice balance in play styles, and removes some of the mentally exhausting competitiveness that can leave a player wron out over 4 days.

Thoughts and opinions, plus a rebuttal here and there

I do like the idea of dropping the 200 point format (champs preview). What about making it an Iron man like M dog?

250 point - 1 hour - 4/5 rounds
150 point - 45 minute - 4 rounds
100 point - 30 minute - 4/5 rounds

All on Friday.

Well, Marmalade Dog was hardly Iron man by my definition as I thought ti originally had to include similar pieces within a faction across all 3 point totals.

What about, to be considered for the Jedi Challenge, you have to have one specific 100 point squad, which you add 50 points for each of the next two levels. Sort of like the Iron Man I have played before. Not many factions are dominant in all point levels, and this would show who has the skills to play the same faction in all point levels.

+1

Its not even just about best with the one faction at all levels. You also have to consider that adding 50 points to an existing squad is likely not going to get you the best thing it could be, if you could build the 150 from scratch.

The only problem I see with replacing a 3 tourney event with another 3 tourney event is that it pretty much takes a committment to all 3 tourneys plus whatever else they want to do...it leads to "Gencon burnout" which I'd kind of like to prevent...

The exception being 3 "lighter" more fun tournaments as outlined n the option about DD, Tile Wars, and Mystery Map

I like the idea of altering the Jedi Challenge a little bit. It would even be interesting to have something like 5 events, and you had to participate in at least 3 out of the 5, and you would take your 3 best finishes. That way, if you played all three of the 100, 150, and 200 point events, and did really bad in one of them, you could then play Tile Wars, and hope to do well. Might be an interesting way to show people's versatility in different formats.

With Tile Wars being an official format now, I would definitely like to see it included into the Jedi Challenge somehow. I would certainly like to see the Challenge become more than a Championship warm-up. On the other hand, I think it IS good to keep a standard 200 point tournament on the calendar for the weekend. Most everyone wants to have at least one tourney to practice before Saturday if possible, and the Mystery Map tourney isn't necessarily a good one for that.

Could be as simple as still offering the individual 100, 150, and 200 point tournies, and then also do Tile Wars and Dynamic Duo, with people being allow to submit their top 3 finishes for consideration in the Jedi Challenge. Could potentially do it via a separate sign-up, just so you could keep track of those people's scores a bit easier.

If we decided to go that route, it would be a piece of cake for me to build a small Excel file that would automatically determine who had the best record, even taking SOS into account.

I personally think using a 200 point event AT Gencon for Championship practice is weak. I'd like to avoid that if we can. Regionals are good enough. I know quite a few people wanted to try something fun for Mystery Map but too many others used it as yet another practice for their Championship squad. C'mon guys if you don't have it by then, you're not going to get it anyway.

Well, there's something to be said for practicing against the guys at GenCon, vs. practicing against the guys at the LGS. For instance, at my LGS, there's only 1 other person who has made the Top 8 at GenCon at any point in time, and that's Lackey. Now, James Naegele has come close several times, but that still only gives me 2 top level players locally. And I play those guys SO much, that we read each others moves like books half the time. So it's no where near the same as playing high-level games against people you only see once a year.

So I for one have liked having the 'practice' tournament. It's no different than what most other major competitive games do throughout the weekend. Many of them have 'qualifier' rounds on Thursday/Friday before their Championship events on Saturday.

FWIW though, I did play fun squads in BOTH the Mystery Map and the 200 point Jedi Challenge this past year, haha.

Regionals then? Most of those, except in the West, had at least 2 top 8 finishers at them.

Which are 3 months prior, and again, tend to be largely local players who you always face. For instance, I didn't play at my own Regional here in Cincy, but we ended up having no top-level competitors from out of town come to our event. I only got a chance to practice against other top-level people at Regionals because I was able to travel to several others. Not everyone can do that.

I'm mostly being devil's advocate here. In the end, it doesn't matter much to me one way or the other. In the past, it used to be nice to have the 200 point tourney on Thursday or Friday in case a new set had released in between Regionals and GenCon, like Jedi Academy did in 2009. But for this year, it really probably won't matter, because the meta will have been set for nearly 8 months, twice as long as last year post-MOTF.

But I know that some people like those competitive events. So, that's why I was suggesting that the offer be made to allow people to do 3 out of the 5 events (or 6 or 7 events if you want) and submit those. The downside to that, is that it might encourage people to play really cut-throat stuff in otherwise 'fun' tournaments, because they think if they play a high-level squad, and all the other people are playing 'fun' squads, that they'll be able to get an easy 4-0. So in the end, it ends up turning ALL of the events into high competitive events.

Honestly, I'm not sure that the Jedi Challenge needs to necessarily even happen this year. The past couple years it's been cool to do because we could award full sets to the top finisher. Does Dean/Jim even have any complete sets left to give as prizes? Could we somehow offer a prize worthy enough to attract players to compete?

Lol, you had yours on Mother's Day and was already accounted for in my initial statement. Your statement about "cut-throat stuff" is actually going to be the topic of Interesting Topic #4

As far as prizes, what ever happend to good old fashioned pride? I'll make a trophy or since it's the Jedi Challenge what about a MR (now HAsbro) lightsaber?

Eh...OK, whatever. Just have to agree to disagree on this one. I think the normal 200 point event at GenCon is worthwhile enough that it shouldn't be tossed out altogether.

As for good ole fashioned pride....I dunno. If the Jedi Challenge is based on a bunch of 'fun' events, then the people who win the Jedi Challenge will be the ones that ignore the 'fun' aspect of it and play cut-throat stuff anyways. How much pride is there in beating up on people, when they weren't planning to play tough to beat squads anyways?

The Challenge was always supposed to be that. An alternate form of the Championship, to see who was not only a good player in the Championship format, but in all formats.

So, IMO, whatever tournaments you assign as part of the 'Jedi Challenge' will end up being highly competitive events, and not 'fun' events anymore.

Yeah, a lot of this is getting into Interesting Topic #4. Maybe I should crank out #3 and get to it.

No changes to the JC. I don't want fun formats added to it, and I don't want the ability of people to try to cherrypick the easier events, even if its for nothing significant. Keep it as is, or drop the event entirely and run other things.

Isn't this a contradiction?? You want the Jedi challenge to keep the Championship Format of a 200 point game but it's not suppossed to be that?

I believe the phrase I used was "more fun" and "lighter", which are not necessarily mutually exclusive of competitive.

Really Tile Wars has certain key squads that function fairly well in that format, is it cut-throat to play them if it were now part of the Jedi Challenge?? I don't think so, but the Tempo of Tile Wars makes the overall Jedi Challenge less taxing on the players and judges alike. Same thing with adding Dynamic Duo.

Will there be key squads if it were faction pure. Sure, but the use of them doesn't make it any less fun. It's the fact that it's something different and not just another Championshop practice...

Maybe the use of "fun" is the wrong word. Still, "cherry picking" events...seriously?? How is one event any easier than the nxt beyond anything on the individual level?

I'm not really sure what contradiction you're pointing at. The Championship is designed to be a format around 1 point level, to test how good a player is at playing MANY opponents in that one point level, and sticking it out through a long event with 1 single squad. The Jedi Challenge is for multiple point levels, and shorter duration tournaments, still competitive though. It just happens that the Jedi Challenge has historically also included the same format as the Championship. So the Challenge was just simply meant to be another method to measure a player's overall skill.

And yes, people will cherry pick events if you do the best 3 out of 5 type thing like I wrote above. For instance, if I wanted a shot at the Jedi Challenge, and the 5 events were 100, 150, 200, Dynamic Duo and Tile Wars, then you can bet that I would be skipping the crap shoot events of 100 and DD and just doing the other three, as I can have a higher degree of control over my own fate by not competing in the 100 point events.

So, if we keep the Jedi Challenge as a 3-tourney event, then what would be the best way to do it and give it a little twist to make things interesting?

I do like the idea of making someone declare a single faction and stick to that for all 3 events. Or just simply doing faction pure tournaments isn't bad either, especially now that almost every faction has some form of door control. So those are some interesting ideas to start with there.

Certainly, changing the time limits to 30 minutes for 100 point tournies and 45 minutes for 150 tournies is 100% cool with me.

I never said it would be a 3 out of 5 event. I think my example was misinterpreted. You can still play all 5, if you want, but I doubt many will do that. All 5 would then count. So it gives you some leeway in that, unlike the current which pretty much forces you to play all 3.



Yeah, I do like the idea of Faction Pure probably the best of those two. It just gives you something different to play each tourney. However, the single faction, add 50, then add 50 more idea is probably more in tune with the concept. The balancing act though is making sure it's interesting enough for people to play, which I see that being a problem in the second one.

I think the differences between the Jedi Challenge tournaments vs the Championship is pretty significant. A 3 or 4 round tournament (I don't remember) vs the day long grind of the championship? Yeah, they're different enough, even if one is considered "practice".