Sat Jan 09, 2021 12:23 pm
Hi all, I hope that despite stratorat's take on the changes that I've made to this year's tournament that you are all going to stick around and honour your word when you signed up. I'm doing my best to build this tournament up. We've gone from 96 players in 2019 to 143 players in 2020 and now this year we are already up to over 150 players signed up. In order to grow we need to adapt and evolve, and part of that was listening to a good number of the regular participants when they express that we should increase the playoff teams. It made sense. With about 150 participants we need to have more than 12 make the playoffs. So I have expanded the playoffs, but in a very conservative way - going to 24 teams, and rather than ignoring the first 4 rounds at that point we're going to add to the cumulative standings so that the expanded playoffs doesn't derail too many of the teams that did so well through 4 rounds. So when I say you are making a committment of 4 credits to participate - that's still true, but with the caveat that if you are lucky enough to make a the top 24 you will need another one, just like has always been required for the top 12 when just 12 made the playoffs. Having said that, if you are in the top 24 you almost certianly have earned credits throughout the tournament by making it to the finals in your leagues in the first 4 rounds, so using 1-2 more credits on the playoff rounds shouldn't be a show stopper for most. Now, as for adopting the new 2000s Mystery Set in this tournament. I thought this was a no-brianer. The timing was perfect that this set comes out just as we are about to start. We've been waiting so long for it that to me it made no sense not to use it right away and wait a full calendar year to incorporate it in the tournament. I get that we are not "familiar" with the set yet, but eveyone is in the same situation. It seems like a natural too that we now have a 5th set at a time that we are adding a 5th round - so we'll "ease in" to using the new set on the 5th round for the top 24. I realize now that it's released that it seems we could easily have used the new set in one 24 team league becasue it has so many cards, but for this year I'm going to keep the 5th round as two seprate 12 team leagues as was previosuly decided.
So I apologize that these changes are not making everyone happy. If you change your mind about participating please just let me know without trying to influence others decision to participate and attempt to sabotage the tournament. I am vounteering my time and effort to make the this as good a tournament as possible, so let the rest of us continue in a fun and positive way even if you have a negative take on it all.
I am confident that we are going to have the best and biggest tournament ever! Stay tuned for - we're about to get the dice rolling!
Juiced JC
