Beyond the Wall, Season 3 Episode 8

Where did you guys hear the speculation about ESPN and cash prizes? Do you have a link to the source?

Where did you guys hear the speculation about ESPN and cash prizes? Do you have a link to the source?

We do indeed! Sorry, we'd posted that information on our facebook group, but I should have included a link above. The quote is from Patrick, our guest for S3E0, and is as follows

"Announced at GAMA Trade Show, a new tabletop circuit starting sponsored by Oomba and ESPN with a $50,000 cash purse for the winner and another 50k for their local game store. Top players are flown to Vegas to play on live ESPN TV with commentators including Penn from Penn & Teller. Multiple events for different board, card and minis games. Thrones not confirmed but the spokesperson said "think of any of the most popular organized play games in your store and they will be present.""

Here's a promotional poster with more information: https://www.facebook...?type=3

The event is called "Unrivaled"

Money and ID's are not a bad thing, however they will change the way people view the game. It will entice some new players but will shy others away. I don't think we can fully know the impact and ramifications of what would happen until we are actually in the situation and have first hand case studies.

great cast

Love Dennis' vids

Love Viking beards

If you're interested in the awesome NYC tournament Dennis mentioned at the end of his segment you can find all of the information here. 

If you can make it, you should come!! 

Those that win chess tournaments, don't get to make a new chess piece. 

We may need to get official word from the "powers that be" in regards to 2.0 draft. When I brought up the future of draft as an organized format going forward in Thrones during the draft cut at worlds last year, Nate's response was something along the lines (can't quote him) of "Don't count too much on it."

If you want draft back (who doesn't?) email FFG's organized play department. I did, and also suggested that they include alternate arts in the packs

Like Dennis said on Facebook, once money is introduced into the environment, the scum of the earth comes crawling out.  It happened with the boom of poker, it happened back in 2003 - 05 when VS System had their $1,000,000 Pro Circuit and $10k events, and it still happens to this day in Magic Grand Prixs and the like.  Anytime there is a monetary incentive to perform well, less scrupulous players will do everything they can to make sure they get a piece of the action.  Also like Dennis said if the way to the money is for lack of a better word, a filtration process where only the top performing players from Regionals, National tournaments, and Worlds, get the invite, you're preventing undesirable players with toxic attitudes playing just for the money.  If the toxic players have to play for no money to qualify, it severely limits their desire to play in the first place.

I love draft, but I never want to draft for a current LCG. I don't need to expand my cardpool. I'm not getting anything worth trading. Why not just extend Kingslayer to include chapter packs?

My only regret was not wearing mirror shades, so we could share the look on your face when I crushed your chances at Gencon.

My only regret was not wearing mirror shades, so we could share the look on your face when I crushed your chances at Gencon.

Hah. It was a good match, given I never drew more than one card a turn! My chances were actually crushed two matches later, when I wound up with 14 power having forgotten to use Caron Bryce's ability. Definitely a flub.

I actually meant the time I crushed your chances in the melee, not the joust. Thanks for the reminder though, made me smile.

Its great that you still listen to the show peter or at least care enough to have your little birds mention it to you from time to time. It makes me think we may one day have a way of pulling out from magic and back into AGoT. As a highly competitive player what do you think of the possibility of a big cash prize for AGoT. Would that be something that would bring you back to the game? I know magic uses IDs a lot, how have you found them to effect tournament play? Would be cool to hear your thoughts since you have played or play both games competitively.

I don't really have little birds, but I still have lots of friends "in the community." I don't think me playing Thrones again is something anyone should be excited about. In case anyone is excited I might, please don't be. I currently have no desire to play 2.0 even casually.

I don't really think my opinions are anything special and there are many players that play both games, but you asked so here you go:

• I think a big cash prize for Thrones would obviously be a positive thing. It provides motivation for competitive play in ways that the current prize support simply can't. I would not expect it though. I sincerely doubt FFG would be willing to put up the money and I don't see what a third party organization would have to gain by doing something like this.
• Would it bring me back? I'm not going to lie, I would give it some thought. I think ultimately if it was one tournament that seemed like it would be easy money, I would. Anything more than that seems unlikely. Thrones is missing more than cash prizes at tournaments to compete with other games. Magic is the obvious example so let's look at that. They have things like the Pro Players Club to really help reward consistent players beyond ones that spike one tournament. Speaking of which, Magic also has many more large tournaments, that all get varying degrees (and quality) of coverage. These tournaments cause the metagame to evolve a lot more quickly, and things do not seem to remain stagnant as often as they do in Thrones. Consistent card releases and yearly rotation also help with this. None of this is to really mention the game itself which I feel is better designed and developed. Now is it reasonable to expect Thrones to have all this? No, of course not. FFG just doesn't have the resources or the player base for this. In fact, I highly suspect many players in the community would be against a lot of this. For example, I think that's why no tournaments with any real stakes happen. There's really nothing to stop small stores from doing tournaments for store credit or whatnot, but at least while I was playing I never heard about it because I don't think there is much player interest. Now this may have changed since I have left, but I sincerely doubt it.
• At high level play I don't see any practical alternative to using IDs. If you are taking the game seriously and it is mutually beneficial to cut out the risk and just ID, then that is what the players should do. As far as affecting tournament play, I think it does, but it mostly reduces the number of feel bad "I was undefeated, lost twice and am out of the cut" type situations that could theoretically arise.

Did not really fit into any of the questions, but if you are interested in comparing Thrones and Magic in competitive play I think there are three major elements in Thrones that put it at a significant disadvantage especially when combined:

1) Setup

Setups are incredibly iconic in Thrones and I can see they wanted to include them in 2.0. That being said, it was probably a mistake. Opening hands in any game are important and are obviously random, but setup puts an insane amount of pressure on your opening hand to deliver the goods. One could easily be at +2 or 3 cards from the setup due to basically variance. On the other hand one could have a completely non-functional hand with the same deck. One player having such a massive advantage at the start of the game due to basically chance isn't very interesting. You really only need to look at the success of KotHH in the original Thrones to see that removing this variance can be a tremendous upside.

2) Mulligans

Mulligans are incredibly common in Thrones but can also be severely punishing. This really puts extra emphasis on the setup problem as having to keep a mulligan with a bad setup is devastating. Nothing the player really could have done about drawing all their non-setup cards in their mulligan, but unfortunately that is likely straight up game over. Fortunately the mulligan rule can be changed without major damage to the game. I don't pretend to know what the right answer is, but I'm pretty sure the one they currently have is wrong.

3) One Game Rounds

Due to the length of each game this seems like really the only realistic option. This really just compounds all the problems I mentioned above, though. I have completely lost count of the number of times I have seen a great player in an elimination match mulligan into garbage and get completely rolled. Had nothing to do with that player's skill, that's just how it happened. Now, this is a card game and randomness is expected, but in many other games a best of three format greatly reduces the chance for these kinds of scenarios to be the major decider of the outcome of a match. This is to say nothing of what sideboarding provides other games.

Now in competitive play you want to remove as much variance as possible in order to try to decide who the most skilled player is. I personally find these three factors to be major stumbling blocks for the game when judging it for competitive play. These are the kinds of issues that cash prizes won't solve and part of the reason I wouldn't want to return even if that was instated.

Interesting, Peter. 

I'd actually argue that by removing (most) 0 costers, increasing the gold amount and increasing the setup-upable cardtypes to include duplicates and attachments, variance in setup has decreased. My setups group more consistently around the mean value than they ever did in first edition. It's also worth noting that being behind by a card because of setup typically means 13 cards to 14 (T1 marshaling), not 6 to 8 (a first player mulligan in Magic); add in the 'draw 2' and plots (especially the addition of one-sided draw and search plots), and I believe variance is lesser here.

There's a thread discussing the mulligan rules on the main boards here, and it's proven interesting. I actually think that given your magic background, you'd consider this mulligan more forgiving than even the vancouver mulligan. In Magic, I believe the rules are still roughly '24 lands' and 'mulligan 0,1,6 or 7 lands' (e.g. Mulligan 15% of the time). Mulliganing, without factoring in the scry (because honestly, drawing 2 compensates) gives you another 22% chance of a 0,1,6 'fail'. In Thrones, my last SC deck resulted in 2 card (or fewer) setups 2.88% of the time without mulligan, and 0.1% with mulliganing those, 0.68% if I mulligan away 3 card setups (my chosen strategy).

That said, I'm wholeheartedly in agreement with you about the "one game rounds" - they do magnify variance tremendously, and, given the time involved in a game, I'm pretty sure this one is insurmountable. I've always been curious if we could drive tournament play faster (play in Thrones is very slow relative to other games, for some good reasons and other not-so-good ones) to squeeze in a second game, but I doubt it.

I think it is safe to say that Oomba is only going to go after games with a massive player base and games that can really police themselves. That is what makes video games their bread and butter. You don't need a judge, and complex rules, and claims of x or y or z. Anything beyond Catan would really surprise me. I see they had a Risk qualifier that had 1 person respond in facebook that they were attending.

TLDR - I don't see AGOT as something that would appeal to any part of this setup. Too small. Too complex. Terrible for TV.

Also - there is one big reason why there aren't big tournaments with prizes - even store level with credit.

No one can make money running those tournaments.

The choice is either that the store makes money having the event or the players put up the prizes to basically gamble against each other.

There just isn't enough in it for the stores in the first scenario. They aren't selling more cards so at best they would be working under the 'people in the door equals sales'...which is extremely hard to monetize and likely will not be any better than just having league and/or supported casual play.

Scenario 2 is just something that rips a small community apart. Occasionally you can get away with it...but for the most part the same people tend to win and those paying resent it and stop.

If FFG wants to increase OP - they should bribe organizers with swag based on number of events and number of players. The judge program shouldn't be based on competence nearly as much as willingness to put in the work to get players to show up. The easiest thing they could do for the players is to create a online ELO system.

Interesting comments from Peter. I never thought about setups in this way, and I think there might be some room to tweak mulligans, not sure how. But I whole-heartedly agree with the single game issue. I think that if there's a way to make the cut smaller but make games in the cut best of 3 - at least the finals, and perhaps the semi-finals in some big tournament - that would be great. I personally prefer best of X and think it would really make a head-to-head duel more interesting. What do you reveal in your first game? what information do you have about the opponent's deck and playstyle by the third game? It's one of the main reasons I enjoy watching, for example, Starcraft matches. Can't imagine they would be any fun if you had no rematches at any of the stages.