We’re going to be taking a jump from the original “Catalogue” of gimmicks idea and pivot to something a bit more digestible for me to write, and hopefully you to read! Today’s topics are the kinds of formats you’ll be finding within the local and national scene!
We’re going to start today with the tournaments typically held every week that you can join in from the comfort of your own home! Supershow’s website hosts weekly sign ups to the tournaments “Monday Night Fights” which is often hosted by Brian Wait_4_It Schmidt, and then “Thursday Night Fights” which is hosted by Chibi. You also can look forward to the occasional “Pop-up” tournament on Friday and Saturday nights, these could be hosted by anyone!
Monday Night Fights carries a usual lighter tone, and has overall less competitive picks. It is done most often in the “World Cup in a Day” format which is Pod (You are grouped with an amount of players and play everyone in your pod once) style fights, where the top 2 advance into a Single Elimination Bracket (Lose once and your gone!). You can often expect 3-6 matches in the night with these. Most tournaments these days are also run with the World Cup in a Day manner. During the top cut of Monday Night Fights there is a rotating wheel of stipulations that gets utilized. Diversity (Using the same competitor as someone else) is usually handled in the top cut for Schmidt style events.
Thursday Night Fights is where people often try a little harder, as the winners are put into a bracket for the “Seat of Power” tournament which does have a higher competitive connotation. This tourney is also World Cup in a Day styled, and while commonly standard matches in the Pod format, you could end up running into a pre-planned stipulation throughout to emphasize deck building. Top cut does tend to have stipulations.
Some fun Pop-ups to look out for are “Boss-Rate Beatdowns” usually hosted by Matty BarOne, and endorsed by SRG Boss himself. These often times have some fancy prizing as a tag a long. You can also look out for are tournaments hosted by the L.F.F. Ring General, these are typically tournaments that utilize the “Special Guest” rules, where both players get an additional gimmick at the start of the match based on a randomized list. Of course we also couldn’t end this Online Event list without the old “Monday Night Fights” host, Dread Pirate Tech Support! If you ever see a tournament hosted by the Dreaded Captain, you’re in for some nonsense; his tournaments typically have some special rules aligned with it that cannot even begin to be catalogued by us.
There exists other formats outside of World Cup in a Day of course. Swiss (Everyone gets paired randomly in round 1, plays there match and waits for round 2; where pairing is then based on Win Loss for a Skill-based matchup) was popular back in the day, although is far less common nowadays. When you do see a Swiss tournament it is often accompanied by a Round Timer, due to the nature of notoriously long matches when finishes botch back to back. Double Elimination (Lose once, drop to a new bracket, lose again and you’re out) is also used in more long-form tournaments such as Cheetah Cup or a 2v2 Tag tournament. (Due to the length of 2v2 matches not making realistic sense for World Cup or Swiss). The last one which is done in a spotty manner is Bullet Rounds, which is the spastic process of having the player hunt down active opponents they have not played yet and get in a match. There is often a time cutoff, and anyone under a match threshold is eliminated immediately, and the most wins from this set move onto a single elimination finals.
Online events are big and all… But what about in person? Well we have Con-play and Local-play. At the convention level the biggest SRG event is and will always be The Grand Gathering. This is yearly (usually) gathering at a hotel block where there is 3 uninterrupted days of Supershow. There is typically a match card made for stream matches, big 100 person tournaments every day, and exclusives galore! Outside of that SRG’s con presence is growing, and you can look forward to seeing us at Origins, or Gen-con as the bigger conventions that SRG frequents. If you’re in the South keep an eye out for Southern Fried Gaming and Dragon Con, if you’re further up North, Armor Con and Captain Con are also in our neck of the woods! Tournaments in these convention styles vary depending on the General Manager on duty; typically that states General Manager will take hold of planning matches; or tournaments. You can reach out on the Facebook Discussion Group to get further details on these conventions.
Last but certainly not least. The very lifeblood of SRG is its Local scenes. Most states have a designated General Manager that can get you situated in the states local scene or even keep your name for regional belts! The differences between play groups is vast, and as soon as we have an updated QR list we will toss a link to reference here for the notable groups already in rotation…
The most I can give you is the Florida 6-Match format in this regards, everyone at the start of the meeting agrees if they will draft prize support out of Mr Rey or Pay Off packs, and then they proceed to give me 3 different singles competitors. Each player will play these decks twice against a randomize opponent; highest win total at the end of the night gets first pick out of the collective pool. All wins and losses are then recorded for local belts.
If you’re the General Manager of your own division please don’t be shy! Send me information regarding your locals and I’ll gladly edit in a paragraph here!
With that it’s a nice and easy topic cleaned up while I work further on the Catalogue of Gimmicks… That will likely be a project for the future, so our next meeting for “Let’s Talk Shop!” will be on whatever the masses suggests! (This was edited from Accessories… Because well. There are only so many things out there!)