OP Cup 2015

[Jack]

OP Cup 2015 is happening this year on August 7 and August 8 in Columbus, OH, USA.

The venue is Heroes and Games located at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

[joe_fixit]

Will proxies be allowed? Chained attacks on DoW?

[OP King]

Yes proxies will be allowed and yes we are going to continue with activator dumping on DOW.

[chuu]

will my Babe Power cards be legal? eh? eh?

[OP King]

Chuu if both you and breadmaster make it to the tournament you can play your babe power cards.

[chuu]

I see...well played Sir...well played.

Hey everyone,

My babe cards aren't legal, make sure you switch them out well in advance

[OP King]

Chuu so I'm guessing that means you're a no go for the OP Cup?

[chuu]

Yes, this is correct. Sorry about that.

[breadmaster]

i suggested these before, but i'll put them out there again

1) top 10 players in rankings cannot use any heroes

2) retire characters once they are on a tournament winning team

[OP King]

Andy are you planning to make it to the OP CUP? If so you're in the top 10 so we can take a vote regarding your suggestions.

[MHC]

i suggested these before, but i'll put them out there again

2) retire characters once they are on a tournament winning team

How would option two be implemented?
1) Would you retire the entire team as a unit?  For example, if Jubilee, Doppleganger, Morph, Doc Samson won a tournament, would you just ban that team configuration?  Or, would you retire all four characters, i.e., no one can play Jubilee, Doppleganger, Morph, or D. Samson in any deck in any subsequent tournament? 
2) Would the ban also affect clones or variants?  For example, if 3-stat Iron Man is to be banned, does that also ban 4-stat Iron Man and Iron Man: Original Armor? 

It seems like the underlying goal of option two is to increase team diversity by removing some of the very powerful or very frequently used characters (e.g., Dr. Strange in reserve).  One option, which you have proposed, is to ban those characters when they win tournaments.  I see two disadvantages to this approach:
1) The bans would occur regardless of the power of the deck and regardless of whether the deck is actually reducing diversity. For example, Chuu won the last tournament with a deck that has a mix of common and uncommon characters (Beast: Brute and Daredevil are common; Capt America and Sabretooth are less so). Similarly, a recent tournament was won by the team Beast, Silver Sable, Lex Luthor, and Starjammers.   It seems counterintuitive to ban any of those characters or teams given that both teams team are increasing team diversity.  In addition, those teams also fill important roles in the meta-game (namely, decks built specifically to oppose energy-based decks).   
2) The above approach also does not account for the fact that some characters are used in a large number of decks that do not make it to the finals.  For example, Dr. Strange has not been on a tournament winning team in the last two tournaments, but Jack's statistics from a while back show that he is being used in close to 50% of all decks.  Should we ban chuu's deck or a character from his deck even though Dr. Strange is really the character that is reducing diversity?
3) While banning characters forces players to use different characters, it can greatly constrain deck building options, which would then decrease team diversity.  For example, imagine if Spawn was banned.  The advantage of banning him is that we force people to build energy teams without an 8-stat character with a team-wide avoid.  The disadvantage is that we lose the only character in the game with an 8E and a 7F.  This now makes it much harder to build a dual-stat team in energy and fighting that has two eight-stat characters, which would effectively remove that archetype from the tournament scene (at least for a while).

I have an alternative suggestion for how to increase team diversity.
Alternative suggestion: Ban or create errata for specials of characters that are becoming very common or suppressing team diversity.  As a last resort, ban a character from tournament play. 
This does not have the two issues listed above because (1) you don't necessarily have to ban something related to a new team that does well at a tournament (i.e., allow the metagame to adjust), (2) you can ban the special for any character, including those that aren't on tournament-winning teams,  and (3) editing specials will still allow people to play with any given character (albeit a less powerful version).  For example, instead of banning Spawn, one could just ban his special "protector of the innocent" or create errata that changes it to being like Wonder Woman's special ("Teammate may avoid one attack of nine or less").  The latter option would still allow people to play with Spawn, but would no longer be one of the main pillars of defense in the deck.  As another example, instead of banning Dr. Strange, one could alter his team-wide avoid so that it can only be played when he is on the front line.  This would still make him a playable character, but force people to build teams with different reserves. 


More generally, there should be a community-wide discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of using different banning/errata methods; it would be much better to have all options on the table.  Once a particular method has been chosen, guidelines should be created that determine when bannings should be used and how strong they should be. 

[chuu]

Sabretooth in reserve will eventually get banned...lol

Great write up MHC, looks like you put a lot of thought into it and I agree.

[AO user]

I see a time in the FAR Distant future where Rhino and Blob will be banned.

[OP King]

That's the problem I see as well if we start banning characters from tournament play, you will eventually see less diversity of heroes that would get played. You will see everyone playing the best of whatever characters are remaining. On a side note I don't think we want to take the competitive part of the game out of play. If you show up to tournaments with 4 average heroes, it won't have the same type of important, if you beat a player that's typically a better player than you are.

[breadmaster]

I'm not sure if i'll be going in august

once a character is on a winning team, they would be retired.  I would include varaiants, clones and 3-stat versions

by my count there are 8 different characters that can use AO-negates.  if there are 4 tournaments a year, the rosters could be reset, and all characters become available every 2 years.  sure, this will switch up deckbuilding, but that is the goal