The Kingdom of the Emerald Hills

this is a work in progress and all rules are subject to change.
nothing is what it seems! (it said this at the beginning of first post too)



WBW RULES 2007 Team Sign-Ins: 9am-10:00am @ War Field
Only the captain of the team needs to be present to sign-in. Each captain must provide:
1. A unique banner which should display your company/household/team symbol.
2. Two copies of every magic-user spell list. You may NOT change spell lists between rounds.
3. classes that get choices of abilities must submit two copies of their choices
4. A complete listing of all team members. Members not on this list will be unable to participate.
5. Every team needs to submit to two Reeves to aid in Banner Wars when not fighting. Note: a Reeves test will be given Friday night by the GM of Reeves.
6. Armor will be rated Friday night.

Team Composition Rules:
1. Teams are comprised of up to 16 people and up to four alternates.
2. Alternates may be swapped into the active line-up between rounds.
3. Team members are assigned classes before the tournament starts and may not switch classes.
4. Alternates may have two classes.
5. Your team may only have one of each magic using class on the field.
6. Teams may have no more than two bows.
7. Teams may only field two members as knightly classes.
8. Teams may have only one siege weapon.
9. Players may only sign up with one team, though pages may be shared
10. Teams do not have to all be from the same company, household, kingdom, etc. They merely need to all play together and present a banner with a unique symbol
Banners must be a MINIMUM 2 feet by 3 feet in size and reflect your company/household/team's symbol on it.
General Tourney Rules:
1. Tournament will be Double Elimination style.
2. Teams must be ready and in the On-Deck area for head count and safety check at the start of the round preceding theirs. When two teams leave to take the field, the on-deck teams immediately step into the area.
3. The battle can be determined in two ways:
a. Pillage your opponents flag, and return it to your base.
b. run out of time ( you both loose, amount of time yet to be determined 15 minutes?)
4. Stepping out of bounds will result in a player being unable to move their feet for twenty seconds and being returned to the point where they crossed the boundary.
5. Good sportsmanship with be expected and enforced. Arguing with the reeves or getting into altercations with other players will result in that person being ejected from the round and their team will be forced to play short a position.
6. Each team may have up to four pages. These pages may only be used to retrieve your teams spent balls and projectiles. Pages must have a gold pages belt.
7. You may not use other teams magic balls, projectiles, or equipment.
8. Lich,Transform and Reincarnate may not be used.
9. No mass spells may be used.
10. TBA
11. Your Banners are considered a game item.
12. Dead players must immediately take a knee and put their weapon on their head. You may not move from where you are when you die unless Summon Corpse is used or to avoid mundane danger/impeding play.
13. All rules disputes will be settled by the field-o-Crat, who will not be playing in the tournament.
14. TBA
15. TBA
16. All sneaky, underhanded, or questionable rules interpretations or tactics should be cleared with the War-o-Crat BEFORE attempting to use them.

_________________
nothing is as it seems!
bitch less, party more

Suggestions in text below



I would denote specifically whether or not ability sheets may be changed between rounds or not.



Many people travel to this event and not all of them will be able to attend the Friday night meetings. Will there be another meeting on Saturday morning?



Perhaps the alternates 2 classes could be the class of the player they replace or a class they specify when rosters are turned in.



Still not sure why we are deviating from the rulebook. Multiple classes can use bows and this limits those classes effectiveness. It also is discouraging to pick up teams who couldn't plan all the classes ahead of time and may have multiple archers/scouts who want to play. The rulebook balance works very well.



Why? I don't see the reasoning at all. Paladins and Anti-paladins are part of the game. People who worked hard have been given the chance to play those calsses and I don't see the benefit of taking those classes away. Talk to me at MR about this please.



If I get your flag and run to my base the game is over? No hold time limit?



So both teams are out of the bracket? Why not default to the team with most lives remaining wins if the time limit expires?



Does this mean if I move I am severed? Or dis it mean to read that if I move for treasons other than those given that I may only be rezzed if Summon Corpse is cast first?



Why the TBAs?

Overall a good draft, and going up to 16 people will be interesting. My only issue is that you seem to want to change the core rules to benefit the last minute or pick up teams and penalize the teams that organize in advance. As I said previously, this is a best of the best tournament for teams. We don't handicap sword knights in one on one figthing, why try to handicap skilled teams?

Hope to talk to you at MR.

_________________
Forest Evergreen

Puppet Master of the EH

"Of course you are Forest. You're like the Mr. Burns of EH." - Finn

(insert titles and awards here)

Thank you for your suggestions Forrest. You do have some good points. I look forward to discussing them with you this weekend.

_________________
nothing is as it seems!
bitch less, party more

Bards and Druids are part of the game. People who worked hard have been given the chance to play those classes and I don't see the benefit of taking those classes away by limiting how many you can have on a team.

reductio ad absurdum.

This reasoning is faulty. Having too many knight-based classes on a team will cause it to be overpowered versus teams from smaller, newer lands or parks who don't have 90% of active population made up of knights & squires. Banner Wars is about who can assemble and operate the best /team/ when given a specific set of rules to work within. It is not about who can assemble the most knights, nor about who can assemble five knights.

By continuing this line of argument, you are /inherently/ advancing the argument that your strategy lies not in building a TEAM, but in AMASSING THE MOST KNIGHTS. You are inherently advancing the argument that what matters most is not the integrity or quality of your teamwork, but what gives it value is the knights.

The benefit of limiting these classes is because they have spell-like abilities that have, in the past, been abused - and have been abused /egregiously/. We don't have the infrastructure to assign a personal reeve to every paladin and anti-paladin who chooses to take the field. We don't have time to work out on the field just how many heals and ressurrects were actually handed out and by whom after the fact.

The benefit of limiting these classes is in making the tournament open to TEAMS from many different lands, from many different experience levels, who may or may not be able to field even a single Paladin/Anti-Paladin.

This line of argument is munchkin, pure and simple. It will be discontinued. You will not bother Shamus with it at MidReign - he will be /enjoying himself/ instead of fielding a lot of objections from people who want to take his time and waste it with "You nerfed my favorite class!". You can muster a competent persuasive argument and post it publicly. Shamus - and everyone else - can see it and respond on their own time.

Spellcasters are limited by a ratio of 1 per 10. Bows by a limit of 1 per 5. Paladin and Anti-Paladin are restricted to knights. That isn't the same thing as being limited by a ratio.

The magic classes and bows are limited because of their power. Paladins and Anti-Paladins are no stronger or weaker, on the whole, than the other non-limited classes. That is why it is pointless to limit them. It would be like limiting any other class to only two.

Banner Wars is about TEAMS. Not individual classes. Including many knight-based classes overpowers the TEAM. It makes the TEAM difficult to reeve. Paladins and anti-paladins special abilities are for their TEAM (mostly). They sure don't resurrect or reanimate themselves.

Spellcasters are limited by a ratio of 1 per 10 to prevent a TEAM from being too powerful. Bows are limited to prevent a TEAM from being too powerful.

Paladins and anti-paladins /are/ restricted to knights. At one point, knights & squires were not 90% of the active population of an arbitrary fighting company, park, or kingdom.

Advancing this argument is equivalent to stating that being an integral part of your TEAM is less important than YOUR preference for being able to field as a paladin / anti-paladin.

Stop jockeying the rules and play by them. Do what everyone else does. Pick your best.

Is your game plan dependent upon having three, four, or five paladins/AP's? Everyone is restricted to two knight-based-classes. So, by continuing to complain, you are admitting that the only way you could feel confident in creating a winning team against someone who has two knight-based-classes, is by having /more/. This is the definition of munchkin.


I know - I'm not a knight, (and you're not the guy warocrating WBW) - but let me make a lot of suggestions about what knights ought to behave like, in the vein of y'all making suggestions in what WBW parameters ought to be.

Knights ought to be held to a higher standard of behaviour and set a GOOD example.

Knights ought to have a set of values, and defend those values.

Knights ought to be willing to walk out on the field of battle alone, or with only one other, and take on an entire army (or maybe only eighteen people! Even if they are all peasants!) alone, if it means defending their
honour
virtue
beliefs
king
country.

If the knights who are continuing to whine about "limiting knights is unfair" want to keep whining about it, I think that I would gladly advocate as /strongly as I can/ that they be allowed to create a team at WBW where they can be guaranteed the ability to play a knight-based class and demonstrate just how knightly they are, just how deserving they are of standing on the field as a knight. Why should we limit you from your chance at proving your knightly prowess in trial by combat!? Glory Awaits!

I know - we could drop the bottom limit on team size, and you can enter with a Paladin/Anti-Paladin friend as a team of two! Then your desire to field as a knight-based class, regardless of game balance, can be fulfilled.

You,
and your other knight buddy.

Against eighteen diverse fighters.

Thats a great arguement Finn...


... except for the part where history doesn't support it.

In WBW 2- The winning team had 3 knight classes on a team of 18
WBW 3- winning team had 3 knight classes on a team of 18
WBW 6- winning team had 3 knight classes on a team of 14
WBW 7- winning team had 2 knight classes on a team of 14

3 out of 18, 3 out of 14, 2 out of 14...

Thos teams fielded FAR more warriors, archers, or other classes then Paladins.

Please note: This is a proper argument.

Thank you, Larin.

Which is not the same as a superior argument.

Past Performance is not a guarantee of future success. A team might come along in the NEW 7.0 rules and have 4 paladins and mop the field with everyone who doesn't. They might have five.

It still doesn't make it any easier to reeve the team with four or five paladins who all have three resurrects, if the historically winning team chooses to only have three paladins. Or two.

It doesn't invalidate the argument that was presented immediately prior, which is that if someone /really feels/ that it's /really that important/ that they field as a knight-based class at WBW, they have the same option every other restricted-in-this-game class has: Convince their team that they are the right choice as Paladin/AntiPaladin, or field their own team.

You aren't being told you can't play Paladin or Anti-Paladin.

You're being told that you can't gang up a bunch of Paladins or Anti-Paladins or combinations thereof.

And if the historically winning team has done so without a large amount of knights in the past, And wishes to appeal to historical trend data, then they can pull it off again, can't they?

A brief summary of Finn's argument:
Finn: Forest, you can't waste Shamus time making suggestions about the rules even though he asked for suggestions. And wanting to field Paladins/Anti-Paladins is cheating!

Brennon: There isn't a good reason to restrict those classes; They simply aren't more powerful than other classes.

Finn: You field a lot of paladins and anti-paladins, so you're clearly biased. Also, I'm going to throw in some non-sequitors about knightly behavior.

Larin: Okay. All that aside, the winning Bannerwars teams don't generally field more than a couple Paladins/Anti-Paladins. So really, what's the point in limiting them?

Finn: Just because history proves that it doesn't matter, doesn't mean that it doesn't matter! We should limit them because you never know when somebody might field an all-paladin team and tear the very fabric of the universe or something. Also, you're a munchkin.

And my final response to Finn: Dude, you're an idiot.

If the intent of limiting classes is to make the game easier to reeve, safer to play and limit down time due to arguments and misunderstandings, the you should look at the barbarian class closely.

Those playing barbarians have been the cause of far more of the above issues than any other in EVERY WBW. Since obviously those of us that have been succesful in past events opinions mean very little then look at the available videos and talk to the people that have won in the past.

I am curious if Finn's past tactical success's are what have made him such an expert on how the classes match up and should be played.....

Sparhawk Kingfisher

I can go back to videotapes and watch a paladin hand out thirty-plus ressurrects single-handedly. I cannot say anywhere near the same for barbarians as a class.

The fact that I reeved many, many battlegames in the past ::fourteen:: years - including several WBW, where I've had to put up with Brennon's Anti-magic zone (the reason anti-magic zones and other large field-of-effect spells are not allowed in wbw) McFadden's extension-cast-firewall-flamethrower-effect (which is now specifically disallowed), teams shuffling illegal weapons onto the field behind my back, whether ballistas were legal, what cheese-of-the-week was legal, people threatening to break my arm because I'm about to check and declare illegal their questionably legal weapon after they were told repeatedly that unchecked weapons were not allowed on the field -

Having watched nearly every way the 5.0 rules could be raped,
Having watched nearly every way the 6.0 rules could be raped, and having come up with some of the more notable ones;
Having dissected the 6.0 rules and put them back together again, the 6.1, 6.12, and 7.0 rulebooks.

I've played in a few WBW tournaments, but none of the screwy things pulled on the field ever benefitted my team, because where we thought of screwy things, we shot the ideas down.

Now, I might be rusty, having been unable to attend Amtgard events for fifteen months through no fault of my own because Brennon threatened to break my arm because I was reeving (yes: it's a fact.) and the ensuing problems with two monarchs and a BOD who couldn't figure out how to say "We don't tolerate threats of violence against anyone, much less the people who are running the games" (Yes: it's a fact) so I haven't reeved a lot lately and I couldn't reeve last WBW (because, really - I like my arm unbroken and authorities who don't leave their officials hanging in the wind because they have difficulty with the distinction between what is right and what is popular.).

To translate that into English:

No, my team's track record is not "we've won a majority of the past N WBW" - and that reasoning (You should listen to us because we are historically the winners and first-runner-ups) is faulty. One does not put the fox in charge of the henhouse.

I /do/ hate cheaters, with an inflamed and burning passion. I've watched cheaters field and exploit and rape the rules and enjoy themselves at the expense of others and myself. I'm not field-o-crating, but intend to be reeving at WBW. I've been told that I'm not allowed to throw entire teams off the field, that such a decision has to be made by the field-o-crat.

What makes me qualified is that I have experience in general and in specific, and am zealous regarding safety and individuals and teams following the rules.

Please produce this video. I can give you access to an FTP site, or you can give it to me on the medium of your choice. I'll provide you with a mailing address or arrange for any other transfer you prefer.



True, Barbarians cast very few resses, historically. I'm glad we can agree on something.

Please produce the video where you apologised for threatening to break my arm for reeving and stated you'd do no such thing again.

Oh.

right.