Origins `90 Tournament Report
Part 2

Introduction

by J.D. Webster

FRIDAY: The Main Event, Round Three

The intended final round of the tourney was a four-on-four team game with a Vietnam-era, low technology scenario featuring gunless Phantoms against gun- and missile-armed MiGs. It would prove to be interesting once play started but, it did take a while to settle things down and get going. As before, players were allowed to form their own four-man teams.

I was hoping that this round would break-out some clear leaders so that I could wrap up the tourney and declare some winners. Unfortunately, what actually happened was that some of the earlier round losers made up lost ground and as a result I had a lot of ties for each of the various places. Last year I tried an overly complex scoring system that unfairly rewarded a player who won quickly against an unskilled opponent and penalized skilled players who fought each other to the last game turn trying to win.

This year my basic scoring system was too simple! I allowed a point for being on the winning side of each scenario, a point for surviving, and a point for each kill scored. It didn't work out as the competitors were too skilled and ended up too close together in score to establish any clear winners.

Play during this round was still a little heated although by now it was tempered somewhat as I kept a close tab on the rules questions and pushed people to keep the games moving. One thing though, I now believe eight-player games are just too tough to control in a tournament environment. No matter how interesting a four-on-four scenario might be, there are just too many interruptions occurring and even with the sand timers running, play would bog down as numerous questions concerning who was where and who moved before who had to be answered.

Also, the seven guys at the table not moving at any given time tended to engage in various distracting side conversations not related to the play at hand. Nevertheless, we plodded through round three and completed it within the two- and-a-half hours allotted.

Origins `90 Tournament Report Part 2

Origins `90 Tournament Report Part 1

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