Dear community,

my continuous dissatisfaction with how Nations Cup is working at the moment has motivated me to propose an alternative concept for this competition. Naturally, everything about it is up for discussion. I believe that something like the below would make it more fun to everyone and eliminate the well-known problems, to name a few: Matchup uncertainty due to unfinished games, the absence of any elimination round that makes it possible to become the winning team without having played against the runner-up team, matchup randomness within teammates (the best player can be wasted against the weakest players of the opponent team and lead to a different result), uncertainty and ambiguity regarding rules. This is not against Marcus Aurelius or any of the previous organizers; I believe that the whole concept can be greatly improved. I have discussed a rough draft of this concept many years ago with Rento, so it’s not something that has come to my mind recently.

All major sports events in the world that I am familiar with consist of two phases, a group phase and an elimination phase. I believe that this is not by chance and a feature that adds to the tournament being exciting. Hence, my proposition includes these two phases. That being said, the number of games and duration of Nations Cup would remain roughly the same. I will proceed with details about the two phases and a few fundamental rules.


Group Phase
There are four groups (let’s name them A, B, C and D) with 6 teams in each (can be extended to 8 if many teams sign up, although that would make the event last longer). Teams are assigned to the groups at random and only play against other teams in their group during this phase. The matchups are pre-determined, because every team plays against every other team in their group exactly once; they don’t depend on performance.

Every team has 6 players that each play two games per round, which is already the case in the current version of Nations Cup. Hence, during the group phase, every player will play 10 matches. A winning team scores 2 team points, a drawing team 1 team point and a losing team 0 team points. When the group phase ends, a perfect team would have 10 team points and 60 wins.

In the current version of Nations Cup, individual players are assigned to each other as opponents at random. I don’t believe this is fair, so I suggest that every team ranks its players by skill and assigns them board 1 to 6. Board 1 (the strongest player) will always play two matches against the board 1 player of the other team, board 2 will play against board 2 and so on. This is how chess team tournaments usually work. For example, the lineup of Germany A could look like this:

Board 1: Beep
Board 2: Timinator
Board 3: alexclusive
Board 4: Guest
Board 5: Suschel
Board 6: Let’s Fight

In chess, usually there is some form of limitation to avoid abuse (for example, a team with one very weak player that won’t win anyways fielding that player as board 1 to give everybody else weaker opponents). I suggest that this limitation could be 100 MTL rating points (record ratings are considered, not up-to-date ratings). This means that a player whose MTL record is more than 100 points lower than another player’s is not allowed to obtain a higher board than that player.

Example: Beep’s MTL record is 2252, alexclusive’s is 2137. The difference is more than 100 points, so alexclusive cannot play on a higher board than Beep. Timinator’s record is 2127, the difference to alexclusive is 10 (less than 100), so he is allowed to play a higher board than alexclusive if the team prefers that. This also gives the teams enough flexibility to account for form differences, like certain players being rusty. Players that have never played MTL must play on lower boards than all their teammates that have an MTL record rating. Among players that don’t have an MTL record rating, the board position can be determined without limitation. This should not lead to substantial abuse, because close to all strong players have an MTL record rating.

I don’t believe that there is any suitable alternative to MTL record ratings, because from a certain skill level onwards, 1 v 1 Ladder record ratings (even in the old ladder) are to a high degree arbitrary and depended more on the question at which concrete point of time the first game was lost than on skill.

Every round, the template changes. For example, the group phase templates could be ME, FB, Biomes, Discovery and World of Warhammer. The organizer(s) will decide on the approach to template selection later, this aspect is not important for the concept discussion.


Elimination phase

At the end of the group phase, the two highest ranked teams by team points from each group qualify for the quarterfinals. If team points are tied, the first tie breaker is number of wins, the second is head to head result, the third is number of wins of the board 1 player, the fourth is head to head result of the respective board 1 players and the fifth (if the head to head is 1-1) is a tie breaker game between the board 1 players on the same template on which the respective teams were matched before. Other than for the tie breaker, points on each board have equal weight.

The successful teams are matched for the quarterfinals as follows: Winner A vs runner-up B, winner B vs runner-up A, winner C vs runner-up D, winner D vs runner-up C. This 1st vs 2nd system is very common in sports competitions to reward the winning team with a likely weaker opponent team.

The quarterfinals are played like another group round (each player plays two matches against the opponent holding the same board) on a new template. The tie breaker from here onwards is different: If the result is 6:6 (draw), a third match between the board 1 players will be created. Behind this kind of tie breaker lies the idea that when two teams are highly equal by average skill, the team that has the highest peak skill should have a small advantage.

The winners of quarterfinals 1 and 2 will compete in semifinals 1, the winners of 3 and 4 in semifinals 2. The rules for semifinals, final and (if introduced) game for 3rd place are identical to the rules for quarterfinals.

This is of course only a very rough draft. However, if implemented, I’m confident that the winning team of Nations Cup would not feel random to anyone. Also, if we wanted to accelerate the whole thing, we could decrease the number of games per round per player from two to one.

I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts. If most people believe that this generally sounds good, we can start talking about the details; at this stage, I would also appreciate a short general judgement, such as „hot dog shit“ or „best discovery since the theory of relativity“. I have not talked this through with anyone, so I don’t know how popular this is going to be.

Thanks for your consideration!
CONSEQUENCER

Looks good to me.What about the players that haven't a MTL ranking?How will you rank them?

Sounds like you are organising the next nations cup Alex? :)

If Marcus organises again I'd still play though as he did an awesome job! It worked well as is but could definitely improve in format. However the MTL ranking stuff sounds a bit too intense for people to manage if not signing up as a top team. It might discourage some people from signing up a team as it would be potentially time consuming to organise a team and then some players may not play MTL.

@Samwise

Players without an MTL record can play on any board, but below the players that do have an MTL record. An alternative would be to remove the restriction completely and leave it to the discretion of the organizer to spot potential abuse.

@dco

See above :)

Interesting approach, but how do you avoid teams from the same country matching each other? or do you not?

@stefano

I don't think that needs to be avoided. If it needs to, it can be done like this: Before filling the groups, run the random number generator over all teams from the same country. The first one drawn goes to group A, the second to group B etc.

If two teams from the same country make it to the play-offs and match one another, that's different (I agree with you that we'd need a solution for this at least for the scenario that it happens in the final. Obviously that's very unlikely, but rules should be clear before a competition starts.)

Approach it how they do it in European Champions League (football)...clubs from the same league can't be matched in the groupstage or the first elimination round, but after that all can happen and teams from the same league can be matched to each other...from there it is the best team wins

Good idea! We could make it impossible on the group stage (as described above), but allowable or even desirable in the elimination phase.

I think that's a pretty effective setup. However, one thing I really like about the current NC setup, over something like the World Cup for instance, is that everyone gets to play the whole tournament.
Would there be a way for your tournament to do this, or have some kind of compromise?
I'm thinking potentially a loser's bracket, so you essentially have two finals series - one for those who finish top of the group phase (the 'A' finals, if you will) and one for those who finish bottom (the 'B' finals).
Open to any other suggestions for how that could work, but I think it would be great if the tournament didn't necessarily end immediately for those finishing bottom of the groups.

Edited 10/26/2023 11:13:27

I wouldn't say it ends "immediately" to those who don't qualify. 16 teams play five rounds, 4 play six, 2 play 7 and another 2 eight. So it's not like in the football world championship where you miss the biggest part of the tournament if you are out in the group phase; conversely, you are guaranteed to play the biggest part.

Suggestion could be that all teams go to a separate elimination bracket:
Top 2 teams to Eliminiation Bracket A: aka the Finals
Middle 2 teams to Elimination Bracket B: playing for places 9-16
Bottom 2 teams to Elimination Bracket C: playing for places 17-24
etc...if more teams per group

And even within the elimination brackets:
4 winners from first elimination round are going to fight for places 1-4, but the 4 losing teams can continue for determining places 5-8..

(Edit: If there happens to be a game for third place, all four best teams play eight)

Oh yeah, what koning just wrote would work as well!

I don't quite understand the purpose of the thread. If Marcus is organising next season this will be useful I'm sure.

Without Marcus, this event wouldn't have happened.

Organisers who come and make these events for us are rare to come by. Assuming they intend well, they should always be respected and thanked for their work.

In a small community like ours this is especially the issue.

Therefore it brings the question who will spend their time bringing this event from the ground? I'm certainly sure it won't be any of the snowflakes crying about it.

There is room for genuine critism always however I think there's a way of going about it in a respectful manner.

Edited 10/26/2023 12:17:08

This is completely unrelated to critisizm to Marcus, so I don't really understand the remark. It's about the format, regardless of the organizer. It has pretty much remained the same over different organizers so far.

lol what koning wrote was exactly what I suggested, except he proposed three brackets instead of two hahaha

Yup, was just clarifying :)

Good thread.

Let me share my own thoughts on the current format.

The number 1 problem is lack of stability.

Clan League turned into a scheduled yearly event and it works out great. NC should follow the example and be held in the window between CLs, something like from July/August to November/early December.
Problem is, you need to find someone to organise it. And that's the same problem like, for example, finding community moderators. People who really want to do it are usually the least competent, while the unbiased and pragmatic people usually have better things to spend their life on.
We will see around May 2024 if someone capable comes up, or maybe I will consider organising it again.

And honestly this number 1 problem is the only real problem in my eyes.

Your format suggestion is good.
But like you noticed, it takes 8 rounds to find the winner, and that's with only 24 teams participating. But we always have 30-40 teams playing.
If we could have 8 or 9 rounds, it'd be easy to come up with a better format than what we have now. I myself have a bunch of ideas in my head. The challenge is to find a format within our time constraints. Or maybe people wouldnt have a problem playing 8 rounds? I don't know, it's up for discussion. But from my experience, people start getting bored around turn 3 already, unless they are the very top team that believes they can win it.

You wrote:

the absence of any elimination round that makes it possible to become the winning team without having played against the runner-up team

Is this true? Well it was true in 2021, but if set up correctly, there's only 1 team with perfect score in the end. If the final round is ClearFavourite vs Underdog, it's because the Underdog team must have beaten some very strong teams early on.

matchup randomness within teammates (the best player can be wasted against the weakest players of the opponent team and lead to a different result)

I think that this pinch of randomness adds some fun, or at least it's not objectively a flaw.
Your solution with player hierarchy adds a bit of additional work both to the event organiser and to individual team organisers as well. And I don't think people want this.
We both like MDL elo ratings so let me show you something.
Every team has an option to drop the 6th player and have their best duo play an extra game, at a small cost of -1 game point.
Is this a good idea?
Mathematically, if you estimate your worst player to win 25% of his games, and your best duo to win at least 50% against same opponents, it pays to drop the weak link.
In elo world, that's the difference of 200 elo. If your worst player lags more than 200 elo behind your best duo, you should consider dropping him.
There are a lot of teams in this situation and exactly noone ever does it.
To me it's strong evidence that people aren't that much interested in team management. They just want to find 6 guys and play.

ty alex for stepping up to organise the next nc!

my policy is to 100% support the organiser, so holy shit snacks! this is the best theory since relativity 👏