Everyone is entitled to their two cents, so I wasn't going to say anything, but I'm pretty sure that pre-made maps are a dangerous idea. The idea behind any card that requires a type of terrain is that it may not be on the map and it may not be where you want it. We don't need premade maps because the 2 out of 3 helps to ensure that luck has less to do with it. If someone, anyone, makes a map, they can try to be as balanced as possible but there are just too many facets to the terrain issue.

How do you decide how much forest to use, or whether there are hills or mountains next to that flux well, and what about deserts? Where do we put the deserts? I feel it's just too dangerous to fairness.

No, this is much easier to make everything good: just generate many maps, remove seriously unfair maps and use all maps that wasn't removed.

I'm still not sure that it's really necessary. You should be ready for bad maps and I remember only one really unfair map: and even on this map I won.
Of course you can say that you can start on tiny island, but it is not unfair it is just bad move because you should start on another side if you see dangerous start position or you can make risky move with chance of starting on tiny island
And after all it will be at least double elimination tournament, so you always have second chance.

It shouldn't be a problem. It's the way almost every major tournament of any kind in the world works. If you had a national Russian double-elimination chess tournament, you wouldn't put Kasparov and Karpov against each other in the first round.

In a tournament like this, the top 4 players (which I am NOT one of, statistically) should never have to play each other in the first two rounds. They earn that right because of their record of success. It doesn't mean some of them won't get knocked out in the first round, but it does increase the likelihood of more interesting and exciting play in the final rounds.

This is technically the only relevant portion of your post to what I'm going to say here...

That's actually exactly why the seeding thing is unnecessary for the grand clash, Seeding is used entirely to make the final rounds more epic and exciting to watch, it is used to make viewing and following the tournament more entertaining to spectators, but the only real value in that is commercial, and unless our matches are going to be broadcast on tv or recorded in some way to make money for the devs.... it's not really extraordinarily necessary to seed people.

Granted it would increase the entertainment for the TFW players who don't make the grand clash and instead follow it and watch the people playing in it, but for the players themselves it's not exactly fair.... some people aren't rating highly because they're new, and other people are rated highly BECAUSE they're new... we've had the default sylvan deck win how many times? Someone who plays 12 ranked games in a row and wins them all could be ranked #1 overall...

Granted, almost everyone who plays knows the names to fear playing against, and yes those players deserve respect, but not necessarily advantageous positioning.

Cornix, I agree with you that the value of seeding is decreased without media hype.

The above quote, however, is a completely inaccurate statement. Rating "uncertainty" brings your rank down. On the Top 20 board for example, all of those players actually have higher ratings than what displays... and they pretty much all have the minimum uncertainty value, but since it never drops below 35, it will always bring their average down. So if I created a new account today and won 12 games, my massive rating 'uncertainty' would bring my average waaaaaaay down...which is also part of the reason why you don't see that Top 20 board change too often... but I digress.



In my post I gave a chess example, and I'm looking at the future of this game with professional chess in mind... since it is a fairly successful model. Rating has meaning, but it's meaningless if we choose not to observe it. What WOULD be unfair is if the top 8 players randomly ended up in the top half of the bracket, and the other 8 players ended up in the bottom half of the bracket. Why, you might ask? Just as you think it's unfair to give people who have earned high rankings a preferred position, it's even more unfair to give someone who hasn't earned a respectable rating a 'random chance' at a preferred position that might offer "easier passage" to the final rounds.

Again, even if we do seed players based on rating, I still think some of the top players will be eliminated in the first two rounds. Preferred seating doesn't guarantee anyone will survive, but it does ensure a degree of 'fair play' that you simply won't get out of a random bracket.

I've actually seen random names jump to the top of the list quite often, they normally don't stay too long but I have seen it happen. I know dragonatheist had a limited ranking well over 1900 (-200) or so with only 20 wins, and he also had 1500+ constructed at the same time. Regardless, yes it doesn't stay that way long since one loss to someone with a regular ranking brings them down like 300 points.

Not really important either way though.

In reality I almost figured that we would seed this tournament based on when qualification occured...

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 on east.. 1 v 15 3 v 13 5 v 11 7 v 9
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 on west 2 v 16 4 v 14 6 v 12 8 v 12 etc.

But I guess seeding by ranking works as well.

Seeding by qualification order would work too. Good suggestion.

you sure you want me first round sun?

Stupid crickets.. grumble grumble.

Well if I can take you down doiron, then I probably have a good shot at the others I need to worry about. And if I can't take you down, then I might as well call it a day.