UPDATE (October 17, 2005): All first round games are now underway – I’ve included a link to the Current Overall Standings (which at the moment is just a lineup of who is playing against who) at the top of the page as well. Also, there has been one clarification to the tournament rules regarding when you’re allowed to take back a move or card play – follow this link.

UPDATE (October 13, 2005): The first round pairings have now been set – they can be viewed at:

Preliminary Phase – Round 1 – Draw

Games 1.9 and 1.10 should wait for the BPA membership of Messrs. Lew and Spray (respectively) to be sorted out before starting – everyone else should be ready to go!

UPDATE (October 1, 2005): After much thought about the scoring rules, I’ve decided to change them before the tournament begins so that in the Preliminary Phase, the Player who finishes in first place will receive 60 points instead of 50 (or 55 instead of 45 in a three-player game). My goal is to ensure that there’s a suitable balance between rewarding Players who win the game and encouraging everyone to do their best to the very end of the game; I think the boost in points for finishing first will help with the former (and discourage especially Austrian and Russian Players from playing for second place from the outset – a win and a last-place finish is now more valuable than two seconds) without hurting the latter, so that’s how we’re going to go.

UPDATE (September 24, 2005): As of today, we have 57 confirmed participants in the tournament. As a result, the Knockout Phase tournament format has been streamlined to eliminate the format which would have ensued in the event that we had fewer than 30 Players.

A few additional clarifications about the tournament:

Peace Roll procedure: One of the confirmed participants pointed this out: “I actually saw a pick up game at WBC in 2004 have the peace die thrown, game ends, and another player says, ‘Hey, wait. You miscounted my VP total – look I win!’” To ensure that this doesn’t happen, prior to the Peace Die Roll procedure (rule 5.8) at the end of each turn, the Players must clearly calculate how many VPs each player has and how many cards each player would be drawing in the following turn. Only then do the players decide whether or not to burn a card to modify the Peace Roll. (I will be keeping track of the VP levels at the end of each turn in each game anyway for analysis purposes, so this will be very helpful to me as well.)

Substitute procedure: I have a list of willing Substitutes to call upon if a player should drop out of the tournament for whatever reason. If you are willing to be a Substitute, or would like to be removed from consideration as a Substitute, please contact me at any time (prior to selection as a Substitute) and I will change your status. When a player drops out, I will choose a name at random from the current Substitute list – that player will be obliged to assume the abandoned position and play it to completion. In the event that a Substitute should drop out of his game, he will incur a penalty of 10 points in the tournament standings (Preliminary Phase only). During the Preliminary Phase, no player will be asked to serve as a Substitute twice until every other volunteers has served as a Substitute once. More information about the Substitute rules can be found below.

How the Preliminary Phase pairings are assigned: A Generic Game Module in ACTS has been created called “BPA TNW PBEM Pairings”, with the two “players” being the GM and one of the Assistant GMs. Details of the draw procedure will be posted there – the exact procedure will change from round to round (to ensure that no Player plays multiple games against the same opponent or as the same side), but the general idea is that each Player will be assigned a number, and that a series of random die rolls will be used to determine the pairings.

Note that in Round 4 of the Preliminary Phase, should it for any reason become impossible to ensure that no Player plays multiple games against the same opponent or as the same side, Players who are mathematically unable to qualify for the Knockout Phase may be asked to play a second game against the same opponent or as the same side. If problems still persist, others Players may be asked to play a second game against one another.