Clout Formats

Hidden City Games doesn't want to tell you how to play. We'd rather not tell you how big the play area should be. We really don't want to tell you what makes a good play surface. Heck, there's four different range increments on the measuring tape (and we didn't use any of them for playtesting...we used 2" range increments.)

Tournament formats are another area where people expect guidelines, or worse, rules. After running a lot of tournaments over the summer, I've come up with some basic formats that *I* think work best for me, at conventions. I like:

One-on-One tournaments. 3-5 rounds. Each round consists of a single game. The winner of each game gets 4 tournament points, the loser 0. If there's a tie, both players get 1.

Multiplayer tournaments (2-3 players). 3 Rounds. Each round consists of a single games. The winner of each games gets 4 tournamnet points, the loser 0. All other players get 1 point, including players who tie for first or last place. Match up as many 3 player games as possible each round, with the remaining games being 2 players.

I don't like 4 player games because they take too long, and unless everyone is playing 4 players, to many people end up standing around waiting for the slow games to finish. The odds that somebody plays out of turn and has the wrong number of chips at the end seems to increase sharply at 4 players, as well.

Does this mean I'm not running any other sort of tournaments? Heck no! Now that Clout is taking off, and I can go to shows where players with constructed stacks will be attending, I'm really looking forward to reducing the number of "starter" events I run, and replacing those events with some wackier stuff. Stuff that players wouldn't normally play. For now, we just run these games after hours, but I'm going to start scheduling them soon. If you have an idea for a tournament format you'd like to see. Post it to the forum. I see them, and I'm keeping notes.

-Adam!!!