Concerns

[Podfrey]

For me there are a couple of reasons why I'm not 100% convinced over the World Cup as it stands:

1) I personally do not want to see Eurobowl replaced with "Eurobowl + 1 Rest of the World Team". For me, the raison d'etre of the World Cup should be to have at least 3 non-European competing sides to be valid. If it was "Eurobowl + 1 Rest of the World Team" then why don't we hold Eurobowl as normal in Spain in 2007 and invite an American/RotW Team to attend (with the obvious proviso that the tournament would not be hosted by them if they won). The "Euro" bit of Eurobowl could stand for where it's held; not necessarily its participants.

2) The format, so far the major sticking point, should be unique AND should be the first thing announced, not the last. Once this has been decided, then country should be next and finally date and venue. It seems to me that everything's been done back to front.

3) All nations should have a fair and equal chance of challenging/winning.

As it has now been over 6 months since the World Cup was announced, and it's proposed date is less than 12 months away, I am worried by not seeing a lot of firm ideas about what it is supposed to be. Given that Australasia/New World players have indicated a minimum of 12 months notice it may be worth considering delaying the World Cup until later (early-mid 2008) and spending the next couple of months thrashing out the best ideas for a format without the pressure of a looming deadline.

[Hangus]

I think Geoff if you don't set a date and keep putting it back it will never happen i think they needed to set a date so the teams that said yes could make plans and the ones who said maybe could get their backsides in gear.

Maybe the fact CyberHare (the creator and main organiser) has "retired" from all things BB had put things on hold till OMM grabbed the WC by its sack and got it going again.

I think the first one will be eurobowl plus one and thats not a bad thing. Its like the first Eurobowl, once people see it works and its not going to fall apart, more teams will go to the second and third.

Cost is a big reason why you cannot have both Euro and WC. Also you may take away some prestige of the WC (especially if only one or two teams turn up from ROTW) if you have both.

Format is a weird one as a total team event will have people say its just Eurobowl. If its an open event people will say its a bigger BB. I think all we can do as a community is put ideas forward and discuss the pros and cons of each so the organisers can try one.

[Lycos]

I am you Lucifer, I agree with much of what you say there.

The WC and Eurobowl should be two completely different things.

[Longshot]

biggest difference will be :
Big Individual side tournament
Painting awards
Small tournies (Street/rat Ogre...)

Team tourny (eurobowl+ other country) should be a part of it but not only.

[grotuk]

biggest difference will be :
Big Individual side tournament
Painting awards
Small tournies (Street/rat Ogre...)

Team tourny (eurobowl+ other country) should be a part of it but not only.

Big? I dont think so...

You are going to put like 140 of the "usual suspects" playing in the teams tournament. So...the list of people willing to travel will be down to half-dozen (in the best case) extra from each country...plus fifty (or the rest of the places) assigned, many of them, to english "casual" players (just like in the Grand Tournament)...

For that...its better not to do a side tournament.

And with this im leaving this conversation until the NAF, who are the responsible of this choices make a move. If they have not clear what they want...

[Indigo]

My idea:-

As I see it, the problem is this. People want to come, but not if they aren't playing for their country - the lure of a SEPARATE individual tournament simply won't be enough. So if we make it a Eurobowl clone with the north americans not only is it not special but it also will ostracize most of the community.

My idea is this...

We make the whole thing one MASSIVE 3 day individual event. BUT...

1) A coach, on registration, chooses a country. Coaches cannot play someone from the same country.
2) Each coach is then a fully "qualified" member of their nation. They play 3 games a day for three games. At the end, the top scoring 8 coaches from each team have their points added together - this forms the score for each country. Not only does it mean everyone feels like they are having a go at helping their country, regardless of skill, and the 9 games means that even if you lose once or twice your chances are still good at getting into the top 8 overall. Everyone gets an England shirt too, for example, so they are definitely part of it.

I can't see any other way of reconciling team and individual events.
Naturally we have LOTS of prizes to make sure as many people go home with stuff as possible!

This is the main crux of my idea and I have more to go round the edge (such as a proper, Golden Daemon style painting competition) but think it's important this is hammered out.

[Kheldar]

My idea:-

As I see it, the problem is this. People want to come, but not if they aren't playing for their country - the lure of a SEPARATE individual tournament simply won't be enough. So if we make it a Eurobowl clone with the north americans not only is it not special but it also will ostracize most of the community.

My idea is this...

We make the whole thing one MASSIVE 3 day individual event. BUT...

1) A coach, on registration, chooses a country. Coaches cannot play someone from the same country.
2) Each coach is then a fully "qualified" member of their nation. They play 3 games a day for three games. At the end, the top scoring 8 coaches from each team have their points added together - this forms the score for each country. Not only does it mean everyone feels like they are having a go at helping their country, regardless of skill, and the 9 games means that even if you lose once or twice your chances are still good at getting into the top 8 overall. Everyone gets an England shirt too, for example, so they are definitely part of it.

I can't see any other way of reconciling team and individual events.
Naturally we have LOTS of prizes to make sure as many people go home with stuff as possible!

This is the main crux of my idea and I have more to go round the edge (such as a proper, Golden Daemon style painting competition) but think it's important this is hammered out.

I like the idea, that everyone has the possibility to count for his nation. But the problem with your suggestion is, that by ranking the Top 8 players of each country, the bigger countries have a much bigger chance on winning then small countries like belgium, or holland. The more players play, the higher is the probability that 8 of them have a good run.

[Indigo]

Also, in response to the comments that a big individual is just like the BB under another name:

a) The BB has no team element. For example, after your games at a normal tourney you hit the bar. At an international team one, you check how your team mates are doing, offer encouragement etc. THEN hit the bar The BB will never ever have the undercurrent of international rivallry that the world cup can have.

b) The BB is not nine games. It's not run BY coaches FOR coaches who are there to have fun, the BB is there to make GW money and we go mainly for the vain hope we win and get our team written down in the BB rulebook. I also think the BB will lack the atmosphere that this will have - it'll be BB and wargaming history after all. Nothing like it has been done.

c) The BB is GW - we can play variant competitions. What I mean is if you lose 6 games and decide you'd rather step out of the "main" event you can play a streetbowl game or something. Or even just a NAF ranked friendly with someone from the other side of the world. Hell we could even have an award for the person who fits the most NAF ranked games into 3 days of playing.

[Indigo]

I like the idea, that everyone has the possibility to count for his nation. But the problem with your suggestion is, that by ranking the Top 8 players of each country, the bigger countries have a much bigger chance on winning then small countries like belgium, or holland. The more players play, the higher is the probability that 8 of them have a good run.

True, but only to a certain extent. For example, a lot of countries with lots of good players also have a lot of bad players, which will in effect be giving points to other nations. So if England have 8 great players and 88 really really bad ones, the really bad ones will not give points to England (no England v England matches) but will instead "boost" the foriegn teams they play.

edit: that is admittedly a polarised example but you see my point. You could also argue that only coaches who rate themselves will spend hundreds to travel to an international tournament, meaning that teams who can only barely field 8 are at least going to be made up of 8 proven international coaches!

Also, I think it's important to bear in mind the reason for playing. Yes we do want to see a country lift the world cup at the end of the tournament but more importantly it's getting everyone together under the NAF banner and being part of a genuinely unique tournament. So although saying the winning doesn't matter is naive, it certainly isn't the be all and end all. We plan on having many other awards worth winning to make sure as many people can compete for as many things as possible.

[Indigo]

Also, teams that bring less than 8 players. It is entirely possible/probable this will happen and as with the freebooter system with eurobowl, it's entirely allowable for these below strength teams to bribe other coaches to play for them. e.g. Brazil come over with 4 players and approach half a dozen coaches with the prospect of free beer all weekend if they register for brazil. Not only are Brazil's chances improved, these freebooted coaches have more chance of their results being counted for an overall position. And get beer

[Rab]

I'm with Indigo on this (although on a purely selfish note I'm not sure I can swing that third day from the boss), particularly as regards national team selection and I've posted something similar on the NAF site already.

@ Those who are making the decisions - please do not have pre-assigned teams. It will discourage anyone not from that prechosen team from attending. I really hope the WC will be a big success, but I fear it will become something that most coaches only read about if they don't feel they have a chance of contributing to their national glory over the course of the event.

@ Kheldar, okay, maybe 8 players is too much for the less well represented countries, but I don't think you could have less than 6 for it to be a meaningful national team, and the more the better. I reckon 8 would be ideal.

[Panico]

Indigo, I'm with you on most of your post.

Ok, let's assume to start from your rough idea of having everybody playing and count the first 6/8/whatever for the national result.

Next step is: how to avoid that the first 8 players will all be dwarves/undead/norse (and veeeery few others?)
One of the great charachteristics of EB is the tactics every contry have to made in assigning the best (different) race to every player, in order to get the most of the points (ie, a very strong player undead is nonetheless the best orc: he prefer to play undead but for the good of the team he play ocs and let undead to another player: the sum of the 2 is better in this way).

I mean, I wouldn't see all first rankings filled of same races...

[GalakStarscraper]

Indigo, I'm with you on most of your post.

I mean, I wouldn't see all first rankings filled of same races...

I'm actually in agreement with a lot of what Indigo said as well.

I think the one modification I would make was already hit on by Panico. I would make it so that its the top 8 players from the country whose score counts but its also a requirement that it be the top 8 races.

So you only take the top Dwarf player from Spain. If more Dwarf players come ... they don't count toward Spain's national finish for example.

So top 8 players with each player being the top finisher for that country for the race they played.

This also means you are encouraging diversity of teams at the World Cup.

I also agree with the freebooter system to bribe lose coaches to join a country to represent it.

I think that in my mind this makes the World Cup truely its own unique event and not the EuroBowl+.

This would also solve Jim's question of if 6 games was enough as you'd now have 9 games. Also with only 3 games a day ... its not rush and you could offer side events as well.

So if I'm playing for team USA and I'm playing Humans and there are 2 other Human teams and they are doing WAY better than me. Then I can elect to drop out of the team individual events and enjoy myself if I choose for the rest of the team by playing in the Street Bowl or Beach Bowl or BB 7s events ... which I'm hoping are one day events. No I don't want to encourage folks to drop ... but I think if it was designed with folks looking and realizing they don't have much hope of being in the top spot for team XYZ ... that there are other events for them to do instead.

Also be nice for someone who would attend but wouldn't necessarily want to play in the 9 game tournament. He could just play in one of the side events for a day here or there and watch and socialize for the rest of the time.

Galak

[Grumbledook]

probably the best compromise so far though I would say take the 8 highest ranked teams of a nation that are of different races

for example gavin and paul were 1st and 3rd at the chaos cup both using dwarfs, in that case just take the highest ranked dwarf team

[Valen]

for example gavin and paul were 1st and 3rd at the chaos cup both using dwarfs, in that case just take the highest ranked dwarf team

But we are from different countries

I actually really like this idea