[MidnightLich]

Hello,

This thread will be for all the official posts, updates, and previews about First Edition March Madness 2023. I'll try and keep this top post updated with links to important other posts, in the hopes I can make it easier for people to track things down.

Feel free to ask any questions you might have here, or start other threads to discuss the issues of the week. But if you just want to see the official updates and analysis posts, this is where they will be.

Schedule
Here is the planned schedule for the tournament itself. Polls will go up every Wednesday and run through Sunday.

February 16th - Prelude
March 1st - Seeding Begins
March 6th - Brackets are Finalized
March 8th - The Bracket Begins (Round of 64)
March 15th - Round of 32
March 22nd - Sweet 16
March 29th - Elite 8
April 5th - Final 4
April 12th - Championship
April 19th - Announcement of the Winner

Links to Posts
The List of 64 Card Concepts

[MidnightLich]

If you volunteered to help seed the brackets this year, you should have received an email yesterday from myself (cplaine AT gmail DOT com). Everyone who volunteered was recruited to seed at least 1 of the brackets; some of you will have gotten 2 different emails.

If you volunteered but do not have an email (and have checked your spam folder), please reach out to me ASAP.

Seeding submissions are due by NOON on Sunday.

-crp

[MidnightLich]

While seeding is taking place, I thought it would be fun to give you some information about the cards that will appear in this year's bracket. We ended up not quite getting enough submissions that we could do justice to, so we included 40 cards from user submissions. In addition to those, we picked 12 returning favorites and 12 broken links, all based on your votes.

Out of the 64 cards participating this year:

16 are from DS9,
5 are from Enterprise,
1 is from the movies,
21 are from TNG,
9 are from TOS,
and 12 are from Voyager.

A total of 58 unique episodes and movies are represented in the bracket. The most number of cards from a single episode is 3.

If seeding ended right now (it is open until Monday), TNG would have 3 of the #1 seeds; the 4th would be Voyager. 1 of those is a broken link, 1 is a rerun, and 2 are from user submissions. Remember: this is going to change between now and Sunday.

Some other facts about the card pool this year:
- A (potential) dual personnel shows up for the 1st time.
- A (potential) double sided mission shows up for the 1st time.
- One entry is a pair of cards that are tightly linked; so much so that splitting them up felt wrong.
- 2 different series finales are represented.
- Only 1 series premiere is represented.

I'll start sharing more details about the cards soon, ahead of the big reveal next week.

-crp

[MidnightLich]

Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary friends, I present to you the 64 card concepts that will do battle starting this Wednesday. These are presented by series, and not yet by bracket or seeding. I'll share that with you all tomorrow.

Deep Space Nine
"A Time to Stand"
Starbase 375
Destroy Production Facility

"Armageddon Game"
Bashir and O'Brien

"Emissary Part I"
U.S.S. Saratoga

"Far Beyond the Stars"
The Dreamer and the Dream

"Homefront"
Joseph Sisko

"Image in the Sand"
Kanar

"In the Pale Moonlight"
Treacherous Sisko

"Inquisition"
Holoprogram: Loyalty Test

"Meridian"
Planet Meridian

"Soldiers of the Empire"
The Warrior's Anthem

"Take Me Out to the Holosuite"
Holoprogram: Niners vs. Logicians

DS9 "The Visitor"
Elder Jadzia

"Through the Looking Glass"
Infiltrator Sisko

"Trials and Tribble-ations"
Trident Scanner

"What You Leave Behind Part II"
Kosst Amojan

Enterprise
"Carbon Creek"
T'Mir

"Divergence"
Admiral Krell

"First Flight"
A.G. Robinson

"Future Tense"
Temporal Causality Loop: Future Tense

"United"
Ambassador Gral

Insurrection
Protect Innocent Culture

The Next Generation
"All Good Things Part II"
Senior Staff Poker Game

"Best of Both Worlds Part II"
Recover Assimilated Crew

"Casino Royale"
Fermat's Last Theorem

"Deja Q"
The Infamous Facepalm

"Descent Part II"
Group of Individuals
Acting Captain Beverly

"Final Mission"
The Water Guardian

"Genesis"
Primitive Worf

"Journey's End"
Wesley Crusher

"Justice"
Violate Prime Directive

"Redemption"
Lower Decks: Fleet Operations
Support Coup

"Second Chances"
Lt. J.G. Palmer
Transporter Duplication

"Starship Mine"
Calvin Hutchinson

"Symbiosis"
Ornara & Brekka

"The Big Goodbye"
Doc Crusher

"The Chase"
Decode Genetic Message

"The Child"
Ten Forward

"Thine Own Self"
Bridge Officer's Test

"Tin Man"
Race to The Gomtuu

The Original Series
"Amok Time"
T'Pau
Lirpa
Ancestral Arena

"Balance of Terror"
One Happy Privlige

"Court Martial"
Legal Proceedings

"The Conscience of the King"
Kodos

"The Corbomite Maneuver"
Corbomite Device

"The Paradise Syndrome"
I Love You

"The Tholian Web"
Loskene

Voyager
"Barge of the Dead"
✶ The Barge of the Dead

"Basics Part II"
Suder's Sacrifice

"Distant Origin"
Voth City Ship

"Equinox"
U.S.S. Nova

"False Profits"
Grand Proxy Neelix

"In the Flesh"
Holoprogram: Starfleet Command

"Lifesigns"
Holoprogram: Make-Out Point

"Once Upon a Time"
Flotter

"Relativity"
Utopia Planetia Fleet Yard

"Renaissance Man"
The Doctor as B'Elanna

"Scorption Part I"
Repel Invasion

"Year of Hell"
Annorax

That's the list. What are your early favorites?

-crp

[edgeofhearing]

Destroy Production Facility
Holoprogram: Loyalty Test
Holoprogram: Niners vs. Logicians
Kosst Amojan
Protect Innocent Culture
Senior Staff Poker Game
Recover Assimilated Crew
Violate Prime Directive
Support Coup
Transporter Duplication
Decode Genetic Message
Race to The Gomtuu
✶ The Barge of the Dead
Holoprogram: Starfleet Command

I'm very interested in all of these potential storytelling objectives and incidents (and whatever Barge of the Dead turns out to be).

[Takket]

Facepalm lol

Contest over, that's the winner

[Hoss-Drone]

I feel like ds9 is stacked and has the best chance to put out a winner. I say that knowing full well that my opinions in MM in the past have proven to be a minority.

[MidnightLich]

I feel like ds9 is stacked and has the best chance to put out a winner. I say that knowing full well that my opinions in MM in the past have proven to be a minority.

History would seem to agree with you. Last year's winner was a DS9 card (Section 31 Recruitment) and the previous year had a DS9 card as runner up (Holoprogram: Loyalty Test). There are a lot of choice options for DS9 this year too, but the bracket is a brutal gauntlet.

-crp

[Hoss-Drone]

I feel like ds9 is stacked and has the best chance to put out a winner. I say that knowing full well that my opinions in MM in the past have proven to be a minority.

History would seem to agree with you. Last year's winner was a DS9 card (Section 31 Recruitment) and the previous year had a DS9 card as runner up (Holoprogram: Loyalty Test). There are a lot of choice options for DS9 this year too, but the bracket is a brutal gauntlet.

-crp

I will be rooting for Starbase 375 and the baseball holoprogram.

Go Niners!

[MidnightLich]

Here is the official voter's guide for 2023 March Madness:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G98 ... share_link

This includes all of the cards, seeded and in their proper brackets.

You can also see the official bracket here, so you know which matchups are in the first round:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... share_link

The article is queued up and ready to go: polls open at the tick tonight, and will be open through Monday at NOON Pacific.

-crp

[Yalenus]

Damn, seeing Loskene seeded against the Bashir and O'brien pains me. Because the Tholians are my jam (Play them in Starfleet Battles, and my first ever trek episode was The Tholian Web, way back in the days of Trek on PBS....)

[MidnightLich]

Damn, seeing Loskene seeded against the Bashir and O'brien pains me. Because the Tholians are my jam (Play them in Starfleet Battles, and my first ever trek episode was The Tholian Web, way back in the days of Trek on PBS....)

There are some quite nasty matchups. One of the brackets came out really brutal IMO.

-crp

[Yalenus]

There are some quite nasty matchups. One of the brackets came out really brutal IMO.

-crp

Yeah, there were quite a few places where voting? I was going "Well crap, can't they BOTH advance?!?". Which if anything? Is a testament to the ideas and possibilities provided by the cards suggested.

[MidnightLich]

24 hour update:

A total of 40 votes have been cast so far. Across all 32 contests, there are 7 upsets at this point, and 4 matches that are tied. My personal favorite is currently losing and I am inconsolable. At least one of the returning favorites and at least one of the broken links are losing significantly in their contests.

Plenty more time to vote. Remember, if we get 100 or more participants this week, the prize pool will double. That number has only happened once, in 2021 - can we meet or exceed it now?

-crp

[Takket]

Damn, seeing Loskene seeded against the Bashir and O'brien pains me. Because the Tholians are my jam (Play them in Starfleet Battles, and my first ever trek episode was The Tholian Web, way back in the days of Trek on PBS....)

I love the bashir/O'Brien friendship but I have to admit I got to this one and thought "Do I really want the 94th persona of these guys, or the first Tholian?" Tholian it is!