This article will tell you the rules and information you need to know about the unofficial Warsaken Blitz Tabletopia tournament. It's mostly meant for participants and as a public record for rules.
Referees and Contact personnel for this tournament
(All names mentioned are Warsaken Discord user names.)
Please first contact warneverchanges on all tournament matters.
Referees : Warneverchanges, Riku Ito, Ace, Agent Zarah Zivai.
Reserve referee: Ivan | Warsaken
Warsaken team observer: Coleman | Warsaken
Everything else: warneverchanges
Dates and times
Based on signups and feedback from players, tournament will be locked to 16 players and the game's will be split between the 12-20th February 2022, with final qualifiers on Saturday 19th ( last 8), and finals and semi finals on Sunday 20th ( last 4). Times for semi finals and finals will be listed in Warsaken Discord in advance.
This change was made so that people who can't play on weekdays can participate on the qualifying rounds as well as based on signup rate. Reducing sign up time back to the original week instead of two made this possible.
Exact times of each match will be posted at Warsaken Discord: https://discord.com/invite/warsaken at the Tournaments Channel, times will be discussed with players directly first.
Match format and hosting
All matches use Tabletopia ( https://tabletopia.com/games/warsaken)
and are played using the two Warsaken Blitz deck pairs there:
Lathabo vs Ace and Will vs Emperor
All qualifiers including semi finals, will be best out of 3 format, finals will be best out of 5. Aimed match duration is 60 minutes in case of three or more games.
Referees participating in the tournament can't judge their own matches. There will be another referee present for these games.
As spectator can't be the host of a match, one of the players will host the match and invite the other player and referee to spectate the match.
Referee will stream the match in Warsaken Discord warzone, both players also need to be there so they can hear Referee audio and discuss during the game, but they do not have to stream the game.
Spectators watching the game in the warzone are asked to mute their microphones.
Finals and possibly semi finals will be recorded and may be posted in the internet ( twitch, youtube), or even streamed outside Discord.
Game progress
Referee assigned for a match will roll the leader pair used at start.
At start of the match both players roll a die, highest roll gets to pick a leader for the first match of the set.
After first match is done, host resets the room and both players swap leaders then play the next match. This is so neither player gets unfair advantage with familiar leader.
If there is a tie after this ( 1-1 or in finals 2-2), players roll again to see who gets to pick a leader for the final match.
End result will be recorded and send to warneverchanges to be archived and listed at tournament section of Warsaken Discord.
Game play related instructions
Win condition being leader getting destroyed by matching 3 of copies of a force card, after it's compromised by : Losing all territories, losing all cards on arsenal, losing all morale.
Let's go through three of the most confusing card rulings below, the rules written here will be used for the tournament, but will be changed for future tournaments to reflect correct rules if there are errors.
Building cards
Building cards will let you pick what you want from the discard pile ( 3 to hand or 6 to return from discard your deck/arsenal), meaning you can pick any card combination from your discard, it does not have to be the top most cards or copies of same card. They can be one of each unique type as well.
Weather cards
Weather cards let you pick an extra turn or three actions.
This plays instantly, so if for example, you have actions left when you play weather and pick another turn, the cards played to field get send to discard IMMEDIATELY, freeing a play slot. You can also still use your remaining actions before you take your extra turn.
WMD cards
You can only use their effect to destroy 2 territories once, it does not matter if you get more matches of WMDs later during the match, you can't use the effect. It's a single use effect even for different wmd type, so keep it in mind when you think about returning them to hand from discard with buildings.
If a player still wants to match WMDs after using one earlier, they get discarded from field without destrying territories. ( this is relevant on *extremely specific *situation, where player gambles on multiple wmd matches on the field and it's cheaper to match third wmd than to return one's on the field to hand after they manage to match the first one and activate their effect)
There are some specific playing methods used in this tournament to make things easier for all parties. First is placing cards on the field in a way described bellow.
While Tabletopia does keep a track of cards placed top of each other by showing a number top of the pile when you mouse over it, it's easier for both players to place the cards either top of each other using the above method.
Second ruling is for the discard pile. Building cards in Blitz let you choose cards from your discard and as knowing opponents discards is a vital part of creating a strategy in Blitz, this tournament uses following method of placing cards on discard :
This makes it easier for both players to see what cards are on discard pile. Simply place the three pairs or single cards to the side of your discard pile ( In the image single card is placed at the discard spot).
Third rule is pretty much common sense ( as well as official), but as it does not apply to all pairs in the premade decks, some people skip morale part of it in custom games. In this tournament however it will be followed:
Morale is reduced when it takes a hit from territory or morale cards.
Also territories are flipped over when they are destroyed.
As seen in image bellow:
Rulings for mistakes and misplays
In general players and Referees are expected to be civil, polite smack talk and frustration is allowed, example : " Rolling 1 again? on brand I see" or " damn it I hate my dice"
Going personal or offensive will face severe penalties from referees.
As it's extremely easy to make some mistakes with Tabletopia ( I am notoriously guilty of this myself), there are no penalties for things such as:
Miss counting actions ( as long as it's corrected), not playing cards top of each as described earlier, forgetting to remove cards when matched (when corrected later), accidentally picking "deal" instead "draw" ( as long as it does not happen often) and so on.
In case of repeated mistakes each referee will make their own judgement on if the actions are intentional or not and can order restart of the match, turn skip or even disqualification.
Here are my recommendations for Referees:
In case of taking too many actions :
If spotted on the turn, just mention it and fix the situation.
If noticed later or repeated often during same match up:
On next turn the extra actions get deducted from their next roll(s)
In case of accidental " Deal" is picked instead of draw :
Each player should pay attention to their rightmost card during start of opponents turn, if you suddenly get cards to your hand, opponent accidentally picked deal option, simply mention it and return the cards to the right of your last known card to the field. They then get added to opponents deck and shuffled.
If this happens again on the same match by same player, the cards send to get opponents hand get discarded instead.
In case player uses Flip value or set when rolling a die
( this flips roll to next number, so from 4 to 5, 5 to 6 so on).
This can be detected with really low height roll animation, on real roll the die "jumps" high, it does not do that on flip or set value.
First time: Warning and re-roll.
Second time : Turn skip.
*Third time *: disqualified. Disqualified player can't participate in after tournament raffles or get special condition rewards.
Punishment for this is heavy as it's the only real way to cheat in this tournament.
If players get over emotional or angry :
Game is called off for few minutes. If players calm down and settle the dispute, game goes on, if one player keeps agitating other one ( or both), Referee present makes the call on penalty, then reports reason for other referees.
In case of players needing breaks (toilet so on), they are allowed as long as they do not happen constantly or take excessive amount of time. In case of genuine emergency ( Baby, disaster, burglary [I saw that once in other game, someone's car was stolen mid match]), match gets re-scheduled later. In this case if I am not present, immediately contact Warneverchanges so I can arrange re-match. The match then continues from same score.
Special rule In case you meet a developer as opponent, no interviews please 😅 they are pretty talkative so 60 minutes might run out too fast =)
In any other confusion Referees will be fairly lenient depending on match ups.
Extra :
If you need help with hosting a game or general interface related things, check my other guide at : @warneverchanges/hosting-a-warsaken-game-in
