After reflecting a fair bit on this year’s (and last year’s) Warmahordes League, I started thinking about what things I might try for my next league. This is going to read a little bit like a list of recommendations, and, in some way it is, but it’s also meant as a reminder for me for some things to try, so, at present, they are untested recommendations.
Allow more open match structure
The last two years, I have had strict week-by-week pairings to keep people showing up. While this generally works, make-up games and the like make this really complicated. Instead, I’m going to try something a little less structured and provide one block’s worth of paired matches all at once, and allow people to play anyone on their list for a point anytime during that first block. This provides a bit more open structure, “I need to play these people” without the rush or “I need to play this person this week and maybe catch up with them if one of us is out-of-town”.
Shake up the point system
For the last… …four years, I have been using the Journeyman league point structure – for each week, a participant can score one point for winning their paired match, one point for painting a model/unit, and one point for winning the most matches. This works out quite well, but I’d like to try some adjustments to this (especially if I shake up the paired matches). Instead of having a week-by-week point system, I’m going to try to do it block-by-block, but have similar capacity, so, in a given (say) four week block, you could score up to four points for winning your paired matches, four points for painting four models/units, and points for winning the most matches that block (maybe a 2-1-1 for first-second-third). Additionally, I plan on making the points for later tournaments worth a bit more (maybe double) to avoid a runaway victor; I don’t want someone to come in to the final tournament knowing they are already going to win the league, regardless of the outcome.
Refine the size of the design space
In the future, when I do a design-a-* league, I’m going to keep the design space more open, rather than artificially restricting it with something like the cards I did this time. The extremely limited choice ended up missing the point of what I was going for, and I think it was too narrow in scope. On the other hand, I may do something more like selecting abilities/bonuses from a menu, as that may bridge the gap better than the having a completely open structure.
Find some way to fairly reward participation
One of the things that I really liked about the cards was that it gave me a way to reward both participation and winning – for each match, there were two equal but different cards, and the winner got to choose one while the loser got the other. This encouraged participants to show up for games (and get new cards that may inspire them or help them build the warjack/warbeast they wanted), while not unduly benefitting consistent winners (such that they would steam-roll later in the league). If I’m making the design space larger, then this “different but equal” becomes more difficult, though maybe having different colors of XP with different menus of abilities or at different costs would achieve a similar effect.