Hey community,

As always, CL takes forever and includes politics that limit the fun a lot. I don't claim to suggest something clearly better, but I'd like to know your opinion on an alternative format that could make it a bit more exciting, libertarian and "fresh". I will sum up for you what I thought of; if you think it has potential, give me some constructive criticism, but writing "That's shit, alex" is encouraged aswell if you just want to tell me you don't like it.

How it is supposed to look like: We have four rounds which I will explain hereafter. Every clan fields a team of 8 players. Every player has a "board" (the chess players will know what I mean), 1st board is the best player and 8th board is the weakest player of the team. I will explain the details in [my suggestion for] the rules. Let's take a look at the four rounds/stages.

Qualifiers
Four groups (A, B, C, D) with four teams each. They play the template 1. Every clan in a group plays every other clan. So if we have the clans Jo, Jack, John and Joker in group A, the board 5 player of Jo will play three games, one against the board 5 player of Jack, one against John and one against Joker. In total, a team that wins every game can receive 24 points in this round. A "team" is first of all a clan, but I will tell you about quite some exceptions in the rules. This round is created on the 1st Saturday. The next round will be created the next Saturday etc., so the Cup will take only one month without pressuring anybody with long MD games or RT time frames (see in the rules why exactly).

The table looks the following:

Group A Group B Group C Group D
Clan A1 Clan B1 Clan C1 Clan D1
Clan A2 Clan B2 Clan C2 Clan D2
-------------------------------------------------
Clan A3 Clan B3 Clan C3 Clan D3
Clan A4 Clan B4 Clan C4 Clan D4

The two clans with the most points in the group reach the Quarterfinals (the details are in the rules). Let us now see how these are supposed to look:

Quarterfinals
In the quarterfinals, the winner of a group always faces the 2nd place of another group. They play the templates 2 and 3, so there are two games between both players on e. g. board 5. Such as a clan only faces one other clan, the achievable point number therefore is 16. This round is created on the 2nd Saturday and looks the following way:

Quarterfinals 1: A1 vs. B2
Quarterfinals 2: B1 vs. A2
Quarterfinals 3: C1 vs. D2
Quarterfinals 4: D1 vs. C2

Semifinals
In the semifinals, the winners of the quarterfinals play each other. They play the templates 4, 5 and 6, so there are three games between both players on e. g. board 5. Such as a clan only faces one other clan, the achievable point number therefore is 24. This round is created on the 3rd Saturday and looks the following way:

Semifinals 1: Winner Q1 vs. Winner Q2
Semifinals 2: Winner Q3 vs. Winner Q4

Final
In the final, the winners of the semifinals play each other. They play the templates 7, 8, 9 and 10, so there are four games between both players on e. g. board 5. Such as a clan only faces one other clan, the achievable point number therefore is 32. This round is created on the 4th Saturday and looks the following way:

Final: Winner S1 vs. Winner S2

Rules draft

a) Guests are allowed. Every clan may field up to 4 guests from other clans or clanless guests. The captain cannot be a guest.
a.1) If Fizzer decides to participate, he can field a team that is not bound to a clan with teammates of his choice. So technically, the clan "WZ Staff" is privileged over rule a), it can field up to 7 guests and the captain is allowed to be a guest.

b) Vacations are honoured. Participants on vacation are allowed to switch from main to alt and back as often as they wish. This does not affect rule c).

c) All games are played in pseudo RT. They are created in MD and can be played at any time in the next two days. Games that are not over 48 hours after creation count as a loss for the competitor who played slower in total (and therefore did not play in RT). If you cannot make it in time for some reason, consider rule e).

d) Substitutions are allowed. Every clan can substitute up to 4 players a round. This does not affect rule a). It is allowed to sub a player out and later in again.

e) Draws are allowed. A vote to end counts as half a point for both competitors.

f) Tie breakers are captains' games. They take place on a random template out of the pool of 10. In the qualifiers, they take place between the 1st and 2nd or 2nd and 3rd place. Rule e) is out of power in captains' games.
f.1) If the 1st, 2nd and 3rd clan have the same amount of points in the qualifiers, their captains play a single elimination tournament on a random template out of the pool (one faces a bye first round). If all four clans have the same amount of points, the same happens without the bye.

g) Every clan is allowed to field up to two teams. In the event that there are more sign ups than slots, the 2nd team will be excluded. Every team can field up to 8 players and up to 8 substitutes. If there are more 1st teams than slots, the teams that can participate will be chosen randomly.
g.1) The team name will show whether this clan fielded several teams to compensate this advantage. E. g. if the clan "Chickens" fielded one team, it will be called Chickens, if it is two teams, they will be called Chickens I and II. Brother clans count as seperate clans. Possible games between I and II take place, you are encouraged to be fair in this regard and in general. A clan playing against itself can be so exciting if it doesn't try to agree on a strategic result in advance!

h) All games take place on one level: Board 5 against 5, 8 against 8 etc. The higher the board, the stronger is the competitor supposed to be. The captain is always board 1. Attention: A win on board 8 has the same worth as a win on board 1!
h.1) The sequence of boards can be modified between the rounds, but not in an ongoing round, just like substitutions. E. g. the player Young Goose can be board 2 in the qualifiers and board 5 in the quarterfinals, but not 3 on MME and 4 on FB if both templates are played in the same round (e. g. semifinals).

i) The winner clan receives a star next to its name for all future RT Clan Cups. E. g. if the clan "Chickens" wins, it will participate as Chickens ☆ from now on.
i.1) The player with the most wins receives a star next to his name for the best individual result for all future seasons (e.g. Young Goose ☆). Captains' games don't count in this regard. This is intentionally only realistic for competitors of the two teams that reach the final (because with a winrate, it would be too easy to get for a clan with one good player that drops out in the qualifiers).

j) Templates can be suggested in advance and will be chosen in a poll. The most popular suggestion becomes template 1, the 2nd template 2 etc.



Thanks for your attention, I can't wait to read your opinions!

Cheers,
alexclusive

Here you can see an example result/game sheet:

Quarterfinals match Retro Lovers (B1) versus Futurists (A2)

Boards and players
1. Sherlock (C) vs James (C): 1-0, 0-1
2. Holmes (G) vs Tiberius: 1-0, 1-0
3. Dr. Watson vs. Kirk (G): 0,5-0,5, 0-1
4. Otto vs. Nicola: 0,5-0,5, 0-1
5. Bismarck vs. Tesla: 1-0, 1-0
6. Elizabeth II. (G) vs Albert: 0-1, 0-1
7. Boris vs. Einstein: 1-0, 1-0
8. Johnson (G) vs. Juri Gagarin (G): 1-0, 1-0

Result: Retro Lovers win with 10-6 points and reach the Semifinals 1.

(C) = Captain
(G) = Guest
First result = Template 2
Second result = Template 3

How do you enforce the loss provision in c) in a timely manner? I don't think you can see who's delaying the game (except for the most recent turn) if the game is ongoing.

That's a legit complainment. I think the easiest way would be to ask the player who claims to deserve the win to send us a screenshot from the turn speed, what would you say?

That's shit, alex

If I had the possibility, I would've bet my head that you would be the first one to write that, Cowboy. I individually thought about you when I wrote it^^

Joi would've done it too

Nice.
Maybe stream it like WGL.

From what I've understood, it's not really an RT Cup but a Semi-RT Cup as players have 48h to complete their games. But new rounds start every week. So why not give 6 days to complete games instead? If unfinished games are going to be decided by playing speed, everyone will try to be quick anyway.

a) too bad its not RT, I was excited for a moment

b) it sounds already more complicated than CL

c) how often do you want to run it a year?

What if someone gets matched with someone else who plays from the other side of the world? One player would be given an unfair advantage of choosing when to take their turn. Going by fastest move speed would be an insufficient measure in this case as you can’t expect players from UK and US (for example) to be online at the same time. Yet the “clocked MD game solution” is meant to break down time differences.

Imo the best way to deal with time conflicts would be to manually check which times don’t cause conflicts for all players competing. For each time clash, create a new tournament with players that are able to play at the same time. You could have this as RT then with 30-120 mins bank over 200 turns with 0% more bank time per turn and auto boot after all time gone. In the event of boot, if the player genuinely ran out of time (and not stalling), the seasonal force-finish formula could be used. Doesn’t really work with divisions but then you will at least have players who can take their turns and not abuse when their opponent can’t take their turn.

If Lynx fields two teams, will they be called Lynx I and Lynx II or Lynx and 101st?

Thanks for taking the time to make this.

However, you'll need to test your idea as a seperate event, prove that it works and then pitch it to the community to "replace" the current Clan League format. otherwise you're jumping at the gun a bit suggesting it to replace the current format.

@Rento That is a good question. I thought of 48 hours to keep the feeling of RT (people see fast results etc.) and make sure that people don't forget when a game has to end. But it's true that we could take the whole week, I will consider whether your suggestion makes it better, I tend to think so.

@linberson 1) I'd prefer RT myself, but I have no hope that we could motivate enough good players to be online at the same time. 2) What part do you mean exactly? 3) That depends on the interest and if it's an additional event or a replacement of CL. I can't guess that before having tested the format. Either way, it can take place more often than CL.

@Bonsai g.1) "Brother clans count as seperate clans." This evidently also counts for Apps and Masters: Such as there are no divisions, both can easily participate.

@Platinum I agree with you completely, I never thought of replacing the CL without even having tried this out. Right now, I am only finding out how big the support is to make clear whether a test is worth the effort.

@DanWL We will find this out if we test it, as I told Plat. I am sure that won't be the only problem we will face. If it happens, we will look for alternatives, but right now, I am uncertain if that is a problem. Like half of my RT QM opponents are from the US. As for the game speed thing, if both players try to be fast, it will become RT at some point anyways (the test could still prove me wrong though). Same argument, I play so many players from New Zealand etc. in RT.

Wonderful idea alex.

I would suggest you try creating a small scale version as soon as possible, that way most problems can be found outnearly. Maybe have two (or four) clans join, where you try out the various suggestions by DanWL?

I tried creating a game with some boot settings that would make sense for this, but unfortunately DanWL's ideas are not possible. For RT games the maximum allowed bank is 20 minutes, and for MD games the shortest turn length is 4 hours.

I know the intent is to have an actual RT. Would it work to have multiday with a forced finish? It won't be literally RT, but you should still be able to play games on a fairly fast pace. I know I've sometimes had ladder 1v1s where my opponent and I made 5+ moves within 15 min or so of eachother while doing other things.

I like that you plan to have pairings based on strength. That should make things more competitive for teams and more interesting to watch. I'd assume people won't cheat on ordering, since most strong players are known already.

I feel like in principle, clans should have a majority of the players on their team (so 3 guests instead of 4). This won't make or break anything though.

I am glad to see that the interest seems to be big enough! Therefore, I will organize a try out round. We will only have one group and all teams make it to the semifinals, 1st vs 4th and 2nd vs 3rd place. Every team will consist out of 4 players instead of 8. I sign up Lynx, but if four or more other teams want to participate, Lynx will drop out.

It is not necessary to be a clan to participate in the try out, any team is welcome. You can sign up subs, but you don't need to.

I will ask all teams when we can start once we have enough participants. It's best to register a team the following way (just post it in the thread):

Team Pink Dolphins on LSD

Board 1: Dolphin Arthur (C)
Board 2: Dolphin Bernhard
Board 3: Dolphin Carl
Board 4: Dolphin Dan

Sub 1/2/3/4: (...)

To make it easier, I will just decide on the templates in the try out. So the beginning board sequence you sign up is for template 1. We will play the following:

Qualifiers
Template 1: Strategic Greece

Semifinals
Template 2: French Brawl
Template 3: Elitist Africa

Final
Template 4: Guiroma
Template 5: Biomes of Americas
Template 6: Strat ME

Potential captains' games will be played on Phobia SR.

After the try out, all participating teams are encouraged to leave a short statement on what went good and what should be improved. Thank you!