Disclaimer : This article is not always directly related to the current on going tournament, but it's principles apply to most of them, so you can use it as a good baseline to run tournament or how to behave in one.
This article covers details about the structure of Warsaken Standard Tabletopia tournaments, as well as what is expected of players and how they should play the game so everyone can keep a track on what is happening.
First we will cover the structure of the tournament, then we'll go trough some basic etiquette and game play and lastly some penalties should rule violations occur.
Besides everything mentioned in this article, game follows the official Warsaken rules : https://www.warsaken.com/rules/standard/
For card rulings related to the tournament please read my other article at : @warneverchanges/warsaken-standard-rule-clarifications-for
Let's go trough the structure of the tournament. ( Outdated )
The tournament will last entire March and if problems occur, first week of April as well, though this is just a precaution.
Brackets are a combination of single elimination and double elimination.
How this works is as follows : First round is an elimination round, all players who lose this round will be eliminated from the tournament.
Those that win, will move to second round, from that point players who lose will fall in to the loser's bracket. This means, people who get to second round have to lose twice to be eliminated from the tournament, with the exception of the Finalist from the winner's bracket.
Players who lose in Loser's bracket will be eliminated, and loser's bracket will be adding new players as winners bracket progresses. The Winner of Loser's bracket will face the loser of Winner brackets semifinals for the right to play in the finals against the winner's bracket winner.
Of course should something sudden happen, this is liable for change.
Flow of the game and Basic etiquette - For matches with Referees
For everyone
Due community having streamers who can't allow profanity during their streams covering some of the games, players should avoid cussing during the tournament. Normal smack talk is allowed, just don't go personal or pull out the good old swear o saurus on your opponent.
As this is standard played entirely manually, all players and referees are required to prepare at least 2 hours for a match.
For referees :
Referee will act as spectator to a match and stream it in Warsaken discord. Some special matches will be Uploaded to Youtube. Referee also decides which of the two players will host the match.
Referee will decide the leader pair used for the match using wheel of names or other public method, drawing from the pool of four available leader pairs. I personally prefer wheel of names.
Referee's job is to make sure timer's and resources are correct and mention if they aren't. However, if player keeps making mistakes over and over referees are allowed to mention they will stop correcting them and that they will lose those timers/resourses/intel gains, should they keep forgetting them. This is due referee acting as the "AI" for one player gives them advantage.
As always, referee can't judge their own games, unless there's a special occasion, in which case match will always be recorded.
If game is played without a referee, recording a match would be beneficial to prevent any problems in future. If it's not possible, the defeated player telling who won is acceptable replacement.
For players and referees
Referee observed games with random leaders
Once Referee decides a leader pair, they will ask players if they are fine with the pair. Every player can once and only once during the entire tournament, deny a selected player pair. If this occurs, referee removes this pair ( As example : Emperor vs Key), from the raffle and decide pair again. The player who called for re-draw can't do so again for the duration of the tournament. Once you use this option it's gone. This question is asked again once one of the players picks a leader after match roll. In this case, should this card be used ( and available), match returns to lobby and new leader pair is picked ( excluding current one).
Once the match begins, players roll and Highest roll get's to pick a Leader advantage OR Turn advantage. If they pick a leader advantage, they get to choose which player they use and their opponent picks who goes first or second. If they pick a turn advantage, they get to choose who goes first or second, but their opponent gets to pick a leader first. As mentioned above, this is the last chance to use the card to not play a leader pair.
Tournament uses official Warsaken Mulligan ( re-draw) rules :
First re-draw of starting hand is free for both players. Should they not like their hand after this, they can draw again, but their opponent gets a + 1 card to their starting hand. Both players have to decide if they re-draw their first hand before this, so no re-draw happens with more than 8 cards. There is no third re-draw.
Quote Brandon ( Main Developer, bit summed up) : "If a player just wants to keep drawing till they win with a perfect hand they never wanted to play the game anyway, so if they want to do third re-draw it's considered forfeiting the game"
For games that were pre-allocated with leaders pair decided in advance
- Same as above, except the players will find their opponent and leader pair they will be using from provided charts. Once you find your opponent and arrange match date, you can either decide among yourself who picks what leader or roll for it, using above rules along with the person who does not get a leader gaining the right to choose if they go first or second, to balance the advantage of choosing a leader.
For players - ways to keep game clear and easy to follow.
Use the Warsaken symbol to define your legion area, play cards on your side of the warzone. This avoids confusion as forces swap from ready ( facing enemy) to return mode ( facing player who used the forces)
Always call what resources you use to swap and to what resource, for extra clarity put the resources you swap next to resource bank before you do when possible ( this is recommended but not required, if match gets confusing Referee can choose to mandate this instead).
In bellow example, player is swapping 2 generic resources to a food resource.
Players can choose to use either dice or token as their timer tracker. Also, in case of large influx of resources on resource cards, they can use tokens instead of resource cards to mark the resource amount ( This is specially useful in case of Colossal warehouse card).
Bellow is an example of both ways to mark timers, pick one that suits you.
Weather cards are played sideways top of the Warsaken symbol and removed immediately at the next turn of player who used them.
Additionally all resource cards MUST be attached to the card producing them ( unit, territory, leader).
When a player uses deck search mechanics ( Deploy, Vow, intel cards).
They place their hand face down behind their territory cards so opponent and referee can see they got no cards in their hands, then they draw cards to their hand ( player chooses how many, even picking entire deck is allowed), then pick the card they are searching for. If the rules demand it's shown they place it above their arsenal or center next to the symbol. Example bellow is for above their arsenal.
They then place the drawn cards back to the deck and shuffle, or if they do draws by increments, they flip them face down in their hand and put them to the right of their arsenal.
It's not recommended that people do open searches or one by one searches as it takes lot of time.
In case of the Opponent searching their enemy's deck, the player being targeted puts their hand on the field face down, draws the entire deck to their hand, then places on the filed to the right of their arsenal ( in this case to the side of resource bank) face up. Once opponent picks cards their used effect targets, reform the arsenal, place cards back to it and suffle.
Penalties for miss plays
Basic penalties from Blitz tournament apply so I will partially copy that segment here:
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.
In case of accidentally picking deal 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.
Penalties specific to this tournament
Official Warsaken miss play rule :
"RULE VALIDATION
To validate a player is to confirm that they did not make a mistake during their turn.If a player is caught playing the wrong card, placing the wrong timer, or using the wrong amount or type of resources, they must discard that card and any attached resources. You must validate another player before they attack or pass their turn."
As this rule is pretty harsh we mended it a bit : " If a mistake is spotted on same turn it's made ( timer fixed on the same turn, forgotten resource is added bit later that turn, wrong amount of resource paid is corrected and so on), corrections are allowed."
IF however, mistake is not noticed on this turn, and opponent notices it later or it's noticed during the next turn of the player who made the mistake, the official Warsaken validation rule Applies.
Example : Player A plays apex, they place wrong resources, just before they end a turn they ask to double check the card, they see they miss calculated, they ask Referee if they can add a missing resource ( they can afford) to the card before they end the turn, they are allowed to do that. If they can't, they must pick the card back and re-allocate resources they used to their sources and they continue from that stage of the game ( if they noticed this mistake on battle phase, they can no longer play cards).
Example 2 : As above but when the Apex is flipped ready referee and opponent notices it misses resources . ALL RESOURCES and apex card is discarded.
Edit : Special rule - If a player deliberately miss plays a card to get it eliminated, just to get it to field with cheaper cost ( such as with Restored vehicle card), this is not allowed. In case of such play on match it's eligle ( Like Tapletopia pair Volkov vs Lione), they will be unable to target that card in discard with Restored vehicle.
example -extra Miss play Roman's prototype with 1 resource, try to get it back with Restored Vehicle, referee judges this as deliberate miss play to gain advantage and does not allow them to play it to legion.
Reminder about referee and timers / resources
As mentioned earlier, Referee's job is to make sure timer's and resources are correct and mention if they aren't. However, if a player keeps making mistakes over and over, referees are allowed to mention that they will stop correcting that player and let them suffer the penalties of losing those advantages, should they forget them, as they are giving that player advantage by being their AI.
This means if a player constantly keeps forgetting their intel gains / timers and resources, referee can say they stop reminding them and they will lose those benefits !
Special rule In case you meet a developer/general as opponent, no interviews please 😅 they are pretty talkative so time might run out too fast =)
In any other confusion Referees will be fairly lenient depending on match ups.
Besides all this, common sense presides. Good luck in the tournament!
Edited : 12.8.2023