Admission Limits Only Convention members can enter the Tournament. No one will be allowed to enter the Tournament after 3 PM Saturday. A player cannot enter the Tournament more than once. The Tournament The tournament will be conducted in multiple rounds with four players per table per round. Rounds will start on the half-hour between 6:00 PM and 9:30 PM on Friday and between 10:00 AM and 7:00 PM on Saturday. Each round will have a signup sheet. If the number of players on a signup sheet is not divisible by four then some players may have to wait a half an hour for the next round. Such players will have priority in the next round. We will attempt to minimize this problem. Players will be assigned to tables at random when more than one table starts in a round. The order of seating at a table must be determined randomly if one of the players at that table so requests. Each player can play in from four to six rounds. But only the top four scores for each player will be used. If a player has played in less than four rounds at the end of the tournament then (s)he will be eliminated from the tournament. Results and Prizes Results will be announced and prizes awarded at 9:00 PM on Saturday. The player with the top score will win a plaque, a hand painted robber figure and $10 in prize certificates [dealer dollars]. The second place player will win a hand painted robber figure and $5 in prize certificates [dealer dollars]. The third place player will win a hand painted robber figure. Time Limit Games still in progress at the end of 1 hour and 30 minutes will be stopped. Victory Points will be awarded based on your current position. How to Win During the Tournament your goal is to win as many of your games as possible and earn as many Victory Points as you can in games that you do not win. In general a first place player scores better if he crushes the other players. The other players score better if they have a high score. Remember only your top three games count. No extra credit will be awarded for winning a game and finishing with more than 10 Points. Scoring Victory Points will awarded for each game as follows: 3 points for 1st place, 2 points for 2nd, 1 points for 3rd, and 0 points for last. In addition, players will receive bonus points based on how close they finished. 2nd-4th place bonuses (a) are calculated using this formula: a = your score/winner's score x 0.5 1st place bonus (b) is calculated using this formula: b = (1 - (sum of opponent's scores) / (3 x winner's score) ) x .05 [In both of the above formulas "winner's score" cannot be higher than 10!] Your overall tournament score is based on the sum of your scores from three games. The first tiebreaker is who scored more VPs in games between the tying players. The second tiebreaker would be a coin flip or die roll. It is unlikely that these tiebreakers will come into use. Game Decorum and Disputes All players should write their names and final game scores on the results sheet for each game, sign it and return it to a Tournament Director [Gaming Staff Person]. The Tournament Directors will happily provide rulings on any queries that occur; their decision is final and not subject to appeal. All players are expected to show good sportsmanship and to try to complete each game in the time allowed. The Tournament Directors reserve the right to enact, introduce, delete or alter any of these rules at any time with no prior notice, and the decision of the Tournament Directors is binding, even if incorrect. The Tournament Directors reserve the right, as a last resort, to exclude or dismiss players from the tournament. Players are reminded that they are responsible for policing one another once play begins. This means that they should be paying attention to what is happening at the gaming table with respect to the play of the game that they are in and attempt to catch errors in play at the moment they occur. If, for some reason, a mistake is discovered once play has passed to another player, the mistake will stand as fair with the understanding that the mistake is NOT a precedent for future play either in the game or in the tournament. Any future mistakes of a similar nature are still in violation of the rules and should be corrected the moment they are made. Alternate Rules & Conventions Following is a list of alternative rules and conventions that will be in effect for those individuals participating in the Settlers of Catan Tournament. Their purpose is to inform players ahead of time about how particular situations will be ruled upon before play begins with the hope that any and all arguments will be quickly and fairly laid to rest. 1. All games will be between four players and may use either German or English language sets. However, all sets must have the same number of each type of card and piece as a standard Kosmos German language set. (The first and second edition American sets have too many development cards for four player games. The correct composition is as follows: 5 victory point cards, 2 of each of the three progress cards [road building, monopoly, and discovery], and 14 knights, for a total of 25 cards). 2. The desert is not placed in the middle of the board but drawn randomly as with any other land tile. The Robber begins on the desert tile and must be moved to another tile on the roll of the first seven. 3. Rolls of seven within the first two rounds (eight rolls) do not count and should be re-rolled. 4. A win cannot be claimed on another player's turn. 5. You can play a Knight card before or after rolling the dice. 6. Only one development card can be played in a player's turn, and it may not be one bought that turn. Note that 1 VP cards do not have to be explicitly played, merely disclosed and counted towards the total VP score at the end of the game. 7. If you build to a port, you can use it in the same turn. 8. The building of a settlement at the end of a road segment will cut an opposing player's road in two if that opposing player had two road segments which also joined at the building player's hex intersection. The opposing player, however, may still build roads and settlements from the open end(s) of either of his roads. 9. A player may build a road segment INTO an opposing player's settlement/city. However, the building player may NOT build a road segment OUT of the opposing player's settlement/city regardless of whether or not an open hexside exists beyond the intersection. 10. Players are asked to please use only those dice that came with their game sets. These dice must be shared by all players. Copyright 2004 Richard E. Price Licensed under the Open Software License version 2.1 and reproduced by permission of the Copyright Owner. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 8 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com