Kings of the Pandemic 1 - Tournament Report

Hi all, Tas here with a tournament report.

We hosted our first one-day Kings tournament in Australia this weekend, played on the UB2 platform, with all players on the same Discord Server for voice chatting. We had a general channel for people to hang out in, and then separate voice and text channels for each table. It worked well for approximating the tournament experience.

The format was 3 rounds with 2 hours for each round. Results are up on Tabletop TO. The event was run in the Australian timezone with 13 players total on the day. We were joined by 1 player from Singapore and 3 from the US (Nebraska to be exact!). The event ran from 9:30am Australian time to about 4pm. That translated to a 6:30pm start for our Nebraskan friends, and a finish of 1am.

And what a day it was for the cornhuskers! Not only did Travis win the event with his Ratkin Slaves list, Shannon was voted best sports! Well done lads!

The lists used at the events are here. What's really interesting about this event is how a list of Ratkin Slaves which is usually thought of as a weaker list, performed quite strongly. The lower points format perhaps suited it a lot more than standard 2k or 2300 games do.

I also trialled the 'Luck Scroll' rule. Once per game, a player may reroll a single die of a double ones nerve roll. Funnily enough, the two times it was used on the day the players both rolled a one again anyway so I guess some things are just not meant to be.

The next one of these that I run will be marketed at Australians, Kiwis, and those in the Americas who don't mind a late night. It will be on the first weekend in June. We will trial lower points (around 1750 I haven't decided yet) and we will see how we go for 4 rounds. Most people were pretty quick, and we had no trouble sticking to the 2 hour time allocation, with a bit of effort we could squeeze that down to maybe 100 minutes.

So, if you have any questions about running a one-day tournament online let me know, happy to get you set up. The online one-dayer won't be for everyone, but it's fun to be able to chat with people about their games, and to watch what is going on with people still finishing up. Plus it's great practice for events when they start back up again!