[nobthehobbit]

Why dont we put together a list of like 12 cities (inc GenCon/Indy) in the US that would be great places to hold Trek Masters. Then we hold four of those 12 cities each year hitting a "region" of the U.S. and they go on a three year cycle. Based on multiple factors like attendance/side events/feedback from the community (we are still all a community here), the next time that area runs a Trek Master, we turn it in Nationals/Continentals/Worlds there that year. Here are my thoughts, subject for vote/opinion but based on playgroups:

Northwest:
Seattle
Portland
Sacramento (not sure on playgroup but aiming for Northern California)
Minneapolis

Southwest:
San Diego
Las Vegas (not sure on playgroup but great place)
Phoenix (not sure on playgroup but great place)
Texas (was it Austin play group?)

Northeast:
Indianapolis/GenCon
Chicago
Maryland
Ohio/Kentucky

Southeast:
Orlando
Charlotte
Atlanta
Tennessee

Thats four major events each year and you know each quarter we are going to have a big event. Its an easy layout. We dont have to make things complicated to make this work...

~D

From an outside POV, that seems like a fantastic idea

Honest

I concur.

[Iron Mike]

If there's a spot for crazy proposals, why not here?

What if we did away with National/Regional, and replaced them with a system of Masters tournaments?

By divorcing a lot of title play from arbitrary governmental borders, a more organic system should emerge. Major cons which see attendance from Trek people could have their own title event which could count towards Worlds* if one went. So Gencon and such could still have a title, but just not the title. Bosskamiura's online play series could see one or two a year turned into a Masters event too. It would also save some of the weird scheduling problems, like that which precipitated the Brisvegas disaster a few years ago. Anything after the start of Worlds 2015 counts towards Worlds 2016, and so on. This theoretically allows more control of title events because the only deadline that matters is Worlds.

*Maybe each Masters event sees SoS points handed out instead of superbyes. Gods I hate those.

[edgeofhearing]

What if we did away with National/Regional, and replaced them with a system of Masters tournaments?

I'm not emotionally invested in Nationals, but I would be strongly opposed to the disappearance of Regionals. I think it is really important for the health of local playgroups to have a guaranteed high-importance event every year.

[Fritzinger]

I've been representing the "every player at worlds counts" lobby, but I want to pick at a few things I don't agree with that some others on the "same side" have been saying.

1. 1-size-fits-all OP hasn't worked in the past, nationals wasn't working for the US and that's why we got masters. They've worked well there, but let's not make the same 1-size mistake and think that masters are better than nationals everywhere. Nationals work well for Europeans (and my lonely african group - in the future). The one European masters tournament didn't fair so well. Please, we don't need to be doing the same thing everywhere. Let's use masters where they work and nationals where they work.

2. At least in Europe the additional day of competition for 2e continentals should be revisited. Only two guys posted against 1 day but I know there were more who didn't post because (a) it was clear that the decision had already been made and (b) for some posting in English is difficult. They guys whom I met and asked about this said explicitly that they thought more people would have attended euros if it had been 2 days. There's a lot to be discussed: 2 day continentals vs. single day continentals plus level 2+ event the next day; under attendance of 1e players vs. 2e players mostly disappearing on the Sunday but the conversation must be had. And it has to be Europe specific, the last time the issue was clouded with North Americans talking about playing both games but Europe is different. Again, 1-size-fits-all is BAD.

3. I'm against moving to a single day worlds. I'm hoping that the 3 day London Worlds schedule is not an indication that this is already the plan without this having been discussed publicly. I like more swiss over backet play (although brackets build more tension with the global audience and look cooler) but I'm dead set against 5 round qualifiers - that's a local tournament. Even 6 rounds now feels cheap after experiencing the migraine-inducing 8 rounds (call me a masochist, whatever ).

If necessary, make more than one 2e qualifier and spread them over more than one day so the people who play both can have a chance of qualifying on the day they're not playing 1e. The only person playing both 1e and 2e at Euros would have had no problem qualifying with just one shot.

[nobthehobbit]

1. 1-size-fits-all OP hasn't worked in the past, nationals wasn't working for the US and that's why we got masters. They've worked well there, but let's not make the same 1-size mistake and think that masters are better than nationals everywhere. Nationals work well for Europeans (and my lonely african group - in the future). The one European masters tournament didn't fair so well. Please, we don't need to be doing the same thing everywhere. Let's use masters where they work and nationals where they work.

The only 40K events are Masters and Nationals. Why not call them all Masters and give some the additional Nationals appellation? So we can have things like Trek Masters - Orlando, but we can also have Trek Masters - German National Championship.

[pschrader]

If I had my druthers, I'd say eliminate Worlds all together. Elevate Continentals to the ratings level Worlds is at and keep the rest the same and perhaps push Masters/Nationals up to somewhere between where it is now and where Continentals currently is. In my world, the structure looks like this:

• Local - Level 1 Event
• Regional - Level 2 Event
• Master/National - Level 3 Event (worth current Level 4 ratings points or close to it)
• Continental - Level 4 Event (worth current Level 5 ratings points)

[Worf Son of Mogh]

1. 1-size-fits-all OP hasn't worked in the past, nationals wasn't working for the US and that's why we got masters. They've worked well there, but let's not make the same 1-size mistake and think that masters are better than nationals everywhere. Nationals work well for Europeans (and my lonely african group - in the future). The one European masters tournament didn't fair so well. Please, we don't need to be doing the same thing everywhere. Let's use masters where they work and nationals where they work.

The only 40K events are Masters and Nationals. Why not call them all Masters and give some the additional Nationals appellation? So we can have things like Trek Masters - Orlando, but we can also have Trek Masters - German National Championship.

This has some merit and is worth investigating...

[Iron Mike]

What if we did away with National/Regional, and replaced them with a system of Masters tournaments?

I'm not emotionally invested in Nationals, but I would be strongly opposed to the disappearance of Regionals. I think it is really important for the health of local playgroups to have a guaranteed high-importance event every year.

My idea would be to turn existing regionals into Masters tournaments for the region. A regional would effectively undergo a small title change, but little else. The key aspect is that the escalating regionals/continentals/worlds scale is eliminated.

[AllenGould]

The only 40K events are Masters and Nationals. Why not call them all Masters and give some the additional Nationals appellation? So we can have things like Trek Masters - Orlando, but we can also have Trek Masters - German National Championship.

This has some merit and is worth investigating...

I would be totally fine with Canadian Nationals turning into a Masters event - geography means we're unlikely to get all the various outposts of CanuckTrek in one place (and we'd certainly never manage it reliably year-over-year). That's an event slot that's much better used for things like the Vancouver-Seattle Party By The Pacific (or War on the Waterfront? Whatever y'all call those cross-over events of yours).

[flrazor]

The only 40K events are Masters and Nationals. Why not call them all Masters and give some the additional Nationals appellation? So we can have things like Trek Masters - Orlando, but we can also have Trek Masters - German National Championship.

That was actually the original idea. There are many player groups that are very passionate about keeping Nationals for their countries the way they are currently set/labelled and there's nothing wrong with that. Consensus was that they would hold the same value but could be kept separate so that Nationals were not eliminated or lumped under the Masters with regards to titles/badges/rewards. Nationals currently award byes to the next Continentals, Masters accumulates points that currently award byes to the next year's Continentals & Worlds but the reward could change.

[Fritzinger]

The only 40K events are Masters and Nationals. Why not call them all Masters and give some the additional Nationals appellation? So we can have things like Trek Masters - Orlando, but we can also have Trek Masters - German National Championship.

That was actually the original idea. There are many player groups that are very passionate about keeping Nationals for their countries the way they are currently set/labelled and there's nothing wrong with that. Consensus was that they would hold the same value but could be kept separate so that Nationals were not eliminated or lumped under the Masters with regards to titles/badges/rewards. Nationals currently award byes to the next Continentals, Masters accumulates points that currently award byes to the next year's Continentals & Worlds but the reward could change.

Personally I think masters points should accumulate from all events, perhaps on the same sliding scale of attendance.

But I would be one of the passionate nationals as-is people, and here's why: if you make them all the same, then you open them up to more comparison. Believe it or not there's a South African Open in tennis. It's crap, nobody here watches it, we watch the Australian/French/US Open, or (especially) Wimbledon. It's a tennis open, but there's no Nadal, Federer, Murray etc.

OTOH a South African Nationals is a different thing. It decides the best player in South Africa. If nobody international flies in, who cares, it's there to decide who the best in SA is. If someone from elsewhere does show up, that's a bonus.

Slight semantics but X nationals is not just a tournament that happens in X, it's THE tournament where people from X duke it out. I suppose it's also a bit like a derby match, there's a bit of extra edge.

[nobthehobbit]

The only 40K events are Masters and Nationals. Why not call them all Masters and give some the additional Nationals appellation? So we can have things like Trek Masters - Orlando, but we can also have Trek Masters - German National Championship.

That was actually the original idea. There are many player groups that are very passionate about keeping Nationals for their countries the way they are currently set/labelled and there's nothing wrong with that. Consensus was that they would hold the same value but could be kept separate so that Nationals were not eliminated or lumped under the Masters with regards to titles/badges/rewards. Nationals currently award byes to the next Continentals, Masters accumulates points that currently award byes to the next year's Continentals & Worlds but the reward could change.

From what I can see, Nationals both award byes directly to Continentals as well as awarding Masters Points. (This, for instance, states that Andrey Gusev earned 20 MPs for his first-place finish at Russian Nationals.)

Fritz:

Yes, but Nationals are still open tournaments. For instance, Tobias Rausmann has been Danish champion on multiple occasions, Michael Van Breemen won 2E Canadian Nationals last year, and Chris Clarke won a US National in "2009". They are effectively part of the same series as Masters tournaments, with the same K-value, and I don't see any particular reason to maintain any illusion that they're not.

I'm not saying that Nationals should be stripped of their Continentals byes (though I do think they should award byes slightly differently than they currently do), just that they should be acknowledged as Masters events.

[nickyank]

Yes, but Nationals are still open tournaments. For instance, Tobias Rausmann has been Danish champion on multiple occasions, Michael Van Breemen won 2E Canadian Nationals last year, and Chris Clarke won a US National in "2009". They are effectively part of the same series as Masters tournaments, with the same K-value, and I don't see any particular reason to maintain any illusion that they're not.

I'm not saying that Nationals should be stripped of their Continentals byes (though I do think they should award byes slightly differently than they currently do), just that they should be acknowledged as Masters events.

All tournaments are open tournaments; hence why I can walk off with the US Continentals title.

This has been discussed very passionately within OP, and the feeling is that Europe wants to keep Nationals, and it wants it to be separate yet equal to Masters. In a Continent of many countries, Nationals makes a great deal of sense.

We all know that Nationals and Masters are essentially the same, but a lot of European players like the bragging rights of being a National Champion (especially Tobias), so we want it marketed as a Nationals, not a Masters.

[pfti]

Why dont we put together a list of like 12 cities (inc GenCon/Indy) in the US that would be great places to hold Trek Masters. Then we hold four of those 12 cities each year hitting a "region" of the U.S. and they go on a three year cycle. Based on multiple factors like attendance/side events/feedback from the community (we are still all a community here), the next time that area runs a Trek Master, we turn it in Nationals/Continentals/Worlds there that year. Here are my thoughts, subject for vote/opinion but based on playgroups:

Northwest:
Seattle
Portland
Sacramento (not sure on playgroup but aiming for Northern California)
Minneapolis

Southwest:
San Diego
Las Vegas (not sure on playgroup but great place)
Phoenix (not sure on playgroup but great place)
Texas (was it Austin play group?)

Northeast:
Indianapolis/GenCon
Chicago
Maryland
Ohio/Kentucky

Southeast:
Orlando
Charlotte
Atlanta
Tennessee

Thats four major events each year and you know each quarter we are going to have a big event. Its an easy layout. We dont have to make things complicated to make this work...

~D

Lincoln, NE, dead smack in the middle of all of them. home of the SUPER MASTERS!!!!! (I can dream)

[Fritzinger]

From what I can see, Nationals both award byes directly to Continentals as well as awarding Masters Points. (This, for instance, states that Andrey Gusev earned 20 MPs for his first-place finish at Russian Nationals.)

Yes nationals earn masters points, I want continentals and worlds to do the same.

Fritz:

Yes, but Nationals are still open tournaments. For instance, Tobias Rausmann has been Danish champion on multiple occasions, Michael Van Breemen won 2E Canadian Nationals last year, and Chris Clarke won a US National in "2009". They are effectively part of the same series as Masters tournaments, with the same K-value, and I don't see any particular reason to maintain any illusion that they're not.

Again, Canadian Nationals is THE Canadian Nationals. If the VBs choose to show up, that's cool, but if they don't it doesn't take away from the event which is for Canadians to decide who is bestest in the land.

Trek Masters - Canada National Championships is a different beast. It's a masters tournament IN Canada, not THE championships for Canadians. If no-one travels to it, and lots of people travel to Trek Masters - Orlando, then we start to ask: why does Canada have a masters?

It's a distinction over which I will burn this place to the ground be moderately annoyed.

I'm not saying that Nationals should be stripped of their Continentals byes (though I do think they should award byes slightly differently than they currently do), just that they should be acknowledged as Masters events.

They already are the same in function, same k value, same masters points. That's all the acknowledgement that is needed. Changing the title in my mind isn't acknowledgement, it is diminishing crucial flavour. Hands off the title! Say No to one size fits all OP!