Voyages of Marco Polo Tournament Format

Voyages of Marco Polo 2022 BPA PBeM Tournament Format

GM: Chris Wildes (chriswildes@gmail.com)

Assistant GMs: Connie Vogelmann and Eric Freeman

Boardgame Players Association:

All players must have at least a PBEM-level (Associate) membership for 2021.  The cost of an Associate membership is $10 and you can apply for membership on their website: http://www.boardgamers.org/forms/MemberForm.shtml. The current member list can be found here: http://www.boardgamers.org/wbc_preparation_prereg.html

Approximate Schedule:

  • Registration will be open via email (chriswildes@gmail.com) until October 2, 2022 at 11:59pm EDT
  • Games will start one week later (October 8th) pending BPA membership confirmation.
  • Round limits will be flexible, although players will be penalized for slow play.  I am hoping rounds will go no longer than 2 months.
  • The first round will consist of 4 simultaneous games for all players, approximately October 8th to November 1st.
  • The second round will consist of 4 simultaneous games for all qualified players, approximately November 1st to January 1st.
  • The third round will consist of 4 simultaneous games for all qualified players, approximately January 1st to March 1st.

Website:

We will be using Yucata for gameplay: https://yucata.de/

Players must register on Yucata and let the GM know of their usernames. The site is free of charge. I strongly recommend that you play a game or two on the site ahead of to get a feel for the mechanics of how the interface works.

We will be using the standard setup with no optional variants.

The site generally allows you to backup and restart your turn if you have not completely finished.  However you will not be allowed to backup from certain actions that result in new information: re-rolling a die, acquiring a black die, acquiring a contract from the stack. If there is a difference between how something works in the online implementation, and how it is typically implemented in person, we must abide by the online implementation.

The unfortunate nature of online board games is that sometimes mistakes are made that would not be made in person, but cannot be taken back.  There is no way of resetting or rolling back a move once it has been committed.  That said, if you encounter an actual bug in the software, please let me know.

Players should check the site at least once daily, when not on vacation.

Reporting Games:

We will use a Google Sheet for reporting game results.

Rounds:

First round will be 4 simultaneous games for all players. Players will score points for each game according to the following formula:

  • 1st place finish: 1000 points plus (your score/second place score)
  • 2nd place finish: 100 points plus (your score/winning score)
  • 3rd place finish: 10 points plus (your score/winning score)
  • 4th place finish: 1 point plus (your score/winning score)

Ties within games will be broken by the following:

  1. Most Camels remaining (Enforced by the Yucata implementation)
  2. Reverse order of character selection. As an example, the player with 4th character choice would be preferred over the player with 3rd character choice.

If there are 39 or fewer total players, the semifinal will cut to the top 13 players of the first round field (rounded down). If there are more than 39 players, the semifinal will cut to the top 1/3 of the first round field (rounded up). The final round will cut to the top 7 players from the semifinal.

For 2022, 13 players will advance to the semifinal, 7 will advance to the final.

Both the semifinal and final rounds will consist of 4 simultaneous games. In the semifinal, a player will play each other player at most once. Assuming 7 players for the final round, a player will play each other player exactly twice. 

After all three rounds players will be ranked to award laurels to the top six finishers.

Round Length:

The average game of The Voyages of Marco Polo on Yucata consists of roughly 115-120 turns.  Assuming 2-3 actions a day, the round length should be about 6 to 8 weeks.

If players will be on vacation without internet access, they must let the GM know and post a message within all their current games.  If you plan to take more than one week of vacation, please clear that with the GM before starting.  (You can, in addition, set your status on the page to show you are on vacation, if you wish.)

Slow Play:

If a player has not taken a turn after 72 hours (without alerting me that they will be on vacation/unable to play) and another player in that game issues a complaint to me, there will be an escalating series of penalties for the slow player.  The penalty levels will be:

Level 0: First Warning
Level 1: Second Warning
Level 2: Loss of 10 points from your round score
Level 3: Loss of 100 points from your round score
Level 4: Loss of 1000 points from you round score

Repeated infractions after reaching Level 4 will result in the same penalty. At the start of a new round, any advancing players who have earned a penalty in the previous round will be reset to Level 1.

Drop Outs:

Players are expected to complete all games they are invited to.

If a player drops out DURING a game (or doesn’t take a move for at least 1 week with no vacation or other notice), the GM and assistant GMs will consult and decide whether to adjudicate the game or restart the game without the player. This player may also be barred from playing in events run by me in the future.

Any player may drop from the event between rounds. If an advancing player drops before the start of the next round, their spot will fall to the next player in the standings.