CLINCH
Clout International Challenge

What is CLINCH?

CLINCH is an extension of the Clout hobby. It’s a great reason for Clout fans to play, trade, and interact with each other all across the globe. Unlike other organized play systems, CLINCH does not revolve around a strict ranking system. CLINCH is more like a game within the game, with winning and collecting the object.

How it works in brief – Players go to tournaments and win CLINCH Medallions. They collect an assortment of Medallions to gain access to bigger tournaments, including Nationals and Worlds. Each player’s Medallion collection doubles as his or her CLINCH ranking.

CLINCH requires no centralized database:

If we don’t keep track of who wins and who loses, who does?
• Players keep track of their own ranking with the simple tools and system we’ve provided for them.
• CLINCH is unique in that the players keep track of their own rankings by collecting the CLINCH Medallions, which work like trophies or medals.

CLINCH requires no reporting

Instead of reports being filed and processed, Medallions are awarded instead.

• Medallions
• Players are given non-playable metal chips…Medallions…which act as a sort of currency in the system. The more Medallions you have, the prestige you have acquired, the higher you are “ranked”.
• Different Medallions have different Clout values, known as Personal Clout. The bigger the event, the more Clout each Medallion is worth.
• Medallions are only officially available through CLINCH events, but once players have possession of a Medallion they are free to sell, trade, or keep them as they wish.
• As long as a player knows how much Clout they need to participate in a given event, they will by-default know if they’re qualified.
• If a player is short for what they need for an upcoming invitational tournament and there’s no events coming up, they still have the option to buy or trade with other CLINCH players for more Medallions.
• Each Medallion is worth between 1-6 Personal Clout each. There are over 20 Medallions, including the specials we’ll make for nationals and worlds.
• Only one copy of each Medallion is valuable to the player. You can’t count the same Medallion twice.


A typical CLINCH Medallion collection:




1 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 2 = 8



This player has 8 points of Personal Clout. Multiple copies of these medallions will not increase it further. To go further, the player must win new medallions.


CLINCH Event Hierarchy
Throw Downs and Rallies are the events that require mass production of Medallions. These are normally ‘open’ events, not requiring Personal Clout for entry. Exceptions could be made for special events. Roundtables, Summits, and the Worlds will normally be invitational (all players with adequate Personal Clout may attend) and will feature custom made Medallions, either unique or run in extremely small numbers.



Throw Downs
• Kits are available to TOs upon request. These kits contain the lowest level of prize support.
• We’ll keep an eye on TOs to see how they handle prize distribution, but generally we let the players and TOs regulate themselves.
• It’s expected that all active Clout players will collect a full set of Throw Down Medallions in a few months.

Rallies
• Next level of CLINCH events.
• Reserved for trusted, active TOs and Distributor/Publisher run events at conventions. We will establish criteria for what TOs we allow run Rallies. It may be very loose and we simply tightly control how many rally kits get released.
• Rally Medallion distribution is kept under relatively tight control. These Medallions really determine who goes to invitational events.

Roundtables
Roundtables include Nationals are events run by Hidden City Games in the US and our Marketing Partners around the World. We call them Roundtables

To enter the nationals, players must have (X) Personal Clout. This year we will lower the requirement to make up for the system’s late start.
Nationals winners win Medallions, just like any CLINCH event, but the Medallions are valuable for life (rather than just a year) and are worth even more Personal Clout.
Nationals winners are granted automatic entry in the Worlds event at GenCon SoCal.
Nationals faction winners should also have enough Personal Clout to attend Worlds, should they make the journey.
Travel arrangements to GenCon SoCal primary prize in nationals tournaments. We’ll work out arrangements with each marketing partner to arrange the prizes.
Summits
Summits represent large international tournaments, generally reserved for regional championships (APAC, North American, or EU CLINCH Championships,ect.) These are optional events for MPs who wish to have a “Worlds” style event with a smaller travel burden on the players.

Worlds
Higher Personal Clout requirement for entry than Nationals. Nationals winners will automatically get in.
GenCon SoCal, Anahiem CA
Unique Medallions, again more valuable than even Nationals
Great additional prizes, to lure players from all over.


How Medallions are Awarded

The winners of a CLINCH event include the overall winner, plus the highest placing player of each faction (called faction winners).

The faction winners are rewarded regardless of how the player placed overall. If they are the best in their faction, they win a Medallion. In addition, the overall winner gets both their faction winner Medallion as well as the event winner Medallion.

In addition to the colored faction Medallions is the “special” Medallion. It is reserved for players who play Dragons and eventually players who play out of print expansions. The special Medallion is faction neutral and designed as a ‘catch all’ so any Clout expansion may be used in a CLINCH event, no matter what Medallions we have available. No Clout expansion will ever be banned from tournament play.

Prize Chips
• Non unique
• Collectable
• Faction specific
• English only.
• There’s one prize chip for each faction, plus one neutral, plus one winner chip created along with each new Clout Expansion. When a new expansion is released, a new CLINCH kit is released with new prize chips.
• Prize chips don’t change with tournament level. You win the same chip for Purple at a Throw Down as you do at the Nationals.

Players want to come back and play. Our prize chips are designed so that player will want to collect multiples of them. To win all the playable chips, a player will have to participate in seven tournaments, winning at least one of them.

Tournament Organizers
• CLINCH depends on trustworthy TO’s, but doesn’t require 100% perfection.
• Tiered system allows lower-levels to be open ended, while we retain more control over events up the ladder.
• In the US, TO’s are rewarded through the Venture Demo Team. Among the rewards are the same Medallions players can win.
• Removes the ‘prize penalty’ for running events.
• Reduces the temptation so ‘steal’ prizes from players.

Marvel and the Future of CLINCH

• CLINCH has a modular format.
• Tournament Organizers can order Base CLINCH plus one or more modules like Fantasy Expansions, Marvel, or both for a combo event.
• Stand-alone Genres will also have their own CLINCH kits, for playing without Fantasy at all.
• As new Fantasy expansions are released, CLINCH will stop supporting the older expansions. Defenders of Undersea will be the first expansion to ‘rotate out’ of CLINCH when the third Clout Fantasy expansion is released in 2007. The chips will remain tournament legal, but they will join Dragons as a ‘special’ faction.