Can Managers Have Multiple Entries to 2020 Barnstormers Tour

I am new to online strat-o-matic but have been an avid board game player for 25 years. I am planning to join the 2021 Barnstormers Tour. I have been studying some teams from the first event and have a question: Can one user have multiple entries to Barnstormers?

For example, it seems like the users “Riggodrill” and “rangrfan” are the same person. I say this because “rangrfan” event two team is an exact match for “Riggodrill” event one team. Here are the two website links:

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1572171
https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1574092

My questions are, it doesn’t really seem fair to allow some users to enter multiple teams if others are only playing one team. For me specifically, I can’t afford buying more than 7 teams each year, so if I join next year’s tour, won’t I be at a huge disadvantage to Riggodrill? Also, is this something that the commissioner polices? Or are multiple teams allowed so long as both Riggodrill and rangrfan make sure they don’t join the exact same league as to ensure there is no collaboration between teams in the same league.

Thanks to anyone who can help clarify, and hope to see everyone in the 2021 tour next year!

First of all RiggoDrill is one of the best most experienced managers in the game. Second of all there is nothing to stop and nothing wrong with someone esp a rookie like rangrfan from copying a 44-13 team. Not a foolproof method however a lot of this game is based on matchups. Having said that if someone showed me this roster without the record I would never think it could be 44-13 but then again what do I know

Thank you for replying. I am still confused. Are Riggo and Ranger the same guy (forgive me if this is already common knowledge but I have not been in the online arena much at all).

Wiley: People cannot have multiple entries to the BS tournament. I think that this is specified in the rules and illegal. To the best of my knowledge, Riggio and Ranger are two different people. From my point of view, there are two main problems with the BS tournament (you've noticed one of them):

1) There is outright, shameless copying of teams. Unfortunately, there is no way to stop this from happening. As awful as what Ranger did, it honestly happens all the time.

2) Managers can cherry pick leagues. Riggio is famous for this. Cherry picking means that someone either joins a league and pulls out if "excellent" managers join the league, or only join a league as the 11th or 12th team when they are assured no "excellent" managers are in the league. Riggio is actually notorious for this, you'll see the manager composition in his event 1 team.

To Hittman's point, Riggio's team isn't that good and is vastly over performing. Part of this is masked because he cherry picked his event 1 league, and is playing against a bunch of rookie managers, making his team look way better than it actually is.

The mind blowing part of all this is, "Why would Ranger even play this game if all he is doing is parroting other peoples' teams." How is this fun at all?

Caveat: I mostly quit Barnstormers because of these issues, but in Moose's defense (he's the commish), there isn't much he can do to keep this from happening.

Looking at Riggo's first team, Rangr is in the same division and doing terrible. It might have more to do with copying success than them being the same person.

If we ever really need to - SOM will and has looked up players addresses and give their opinion on whether we have a player entering twice. In this case, I agree with the opinions already expressed here. It's just a frustrated copycat and we cant do anything about that. Of course its a lot more than just the players, it's the settings and the ongoing daily tweaks that SKILLED PLAYERS do to fine tune a team.

We allow "fillers" in the Barnstormers to answer a different question, but a filler only plays when we need to fill up a league at the end of the tournament entry period and their scores do not count for points. Only a players first team entered gets points.

And cristano1, we do have a rule in place for pulling your team out of the league once it is entered. I monitor the leagues continually and when I see this happening, the player is swiftly notified of his rule violation. If it happens too often, penalties will be considered.

BTW wileymays, you can still enter the 2020 tour. We allow signups until the end of this Event 2. You just wont have the ability to drop your lowest event and you need to play in all 5 of the remaining events to be eligible for any prizes. You need to PM me with your email address which is how we get the passwords to you.

And hey, your teams better be original !!!

"Looking at Riggo's first team, Rangr is in the same division and doing terrible. It might have more to do with copying success than them being the same person"

Doing Terrible lol the understatement of the year

About "cherry picking" leagues, there was a brief hint of something new coming from SOM and I plan to get more involved into how I think this should work. They want to make a tool that will allow you to "INVITE" players into a specific league. So if I create leagues and find some randomizing way to decide who goes in them, I can send out - an email ? a PM ? to tell a player(s) that he is INVITED into a particular league.

Gone are the passwords, gone are having problems with the wrong "player set" which was the problem with Event #1 and the ALL ERAS not being the default. We know "league numbers" so once I create a league I have those.

SOM sees this as a great tool for theme leagues, Barnstormers, The Players Championships, etc. I plan on working with SOM on this and it will solve both cherry picking AND players jumping in and out of leagues. I won't CARE if they jump out of a league as they are only INVITED to THAT league.

I can see problems with invitations if they are non-random. If they are done by specific criteria established prior to the start of the tour each Spring, such as, for example, a stratified seeding based on current standings in the tour that is one thing, but if they are done by arbitrary fiat of the Barnstormers Board, all of whom except for Moose are playing in the current 2020 tour, that would not be something I could live with. I have sat out several tours in the past decade because I did not agree with some of the tour rules and only returned when said rules were modified to my liking. I would prefer not to do this again as the board has been much more responsive to input the past few years, but as Moose himself did last year with SOM, some things are just non-negotiable.

I would much rather see stratified seeding in the playoffs so that what happened with the last two finals where one division was vastly stronger than the other two, does not happen again.

I don't really know what a "stratified seeding" is and I wasn't even thinking that far ahead. Just get this "invite" thing, define how it should work and get started testing on it. I see the great potential in it.

As far as where you were going, just off the top of my head I am still a big fan of randomization. Automated randomizing of teams in leagues AND if we are talking randomization of an entire Barnstormers membership for an event that's completely possible. Alphabetize all of the players som names who are eligible for an event and request a random run for example from 1 to 2XX. Assign that random run to the alphabetized players and you have a fair jumble of players and a tool to assign them all to specific leagues. Gone are cherry picking, gone are passwords. If a player is a NO SHOW for a league then a filler is recruited and INVITED to finish off the league.

In thinking about some of the "options" for the tool, check boxes for "Randomize players into Divisions" and check another box which opens up a dropdown to PLACE players into specific divisions.

This is probably a long way out but I think it's a nice "next thing"