Oct 2021 Mail-In

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2957

Tourney announcements have arrived!

- The October Mail-In is occurring on October 31, 2021.

- Strategies are due on the Wednesday before (Oct 27), although they usually accept late strategies that arrive before they run the tourney.

- The living TC prize is 1 potion of Resurrection, Immortality, or Rejuvenation! This is a new twist on the old Res or Imm prize. So you can bring a dead warrior back to life, make a living warrior immortal, or reset an unmodified, ungraduated warrior back to 0 FE to run through basic all over again.

- There will also be stylemaster awards in the ADM and living basic classes. The highest ranking member of each style that does not TC will earn a +1 bonus potion. Primus potions must be used on a Primus warrior of the same style. ADM potions must be used on an ADM warrior of the same style. Basic potions must be used on a warrior from the same team.

- There is a Tourney of the Dead! If your warrior TVs a dead class, it gets resurrected. If your warrior TCs a dead class, it gets resurrected and granted immortality.

- The ADM freeze occurred on September 18. Reminder to newly returned folks: THERE IS NO BASIC FREEZE. Basic warriors are classed based on their FE on the day of the tourney.

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2957

The due date for the tourney is today, so get those strategies in!

I used faxzero to fax in 3 strategies yesterday, and 5 more today, to bring me up to 88 total entrants (which is a BIG tourney for me).

The breakdown of my entries is...

By fighting style: 28 ST, 24 AB, 11 LU, 6 PL, 5 BA, 4 PS, 3 SL, 3 TP, 2 PR, and 2 WS.

By class: 6 Primus, 5 Contenders, 3 Eligibles, 2 ADM, 2 Freshmen, 7 Challengers, 0 Champions, 1 Adept, 2 Initiates, 6 Apprentices, 44 Rookies, 3 Dead Challengers, 3 Dead Champions, 1 Dead Adepts, 2 Dead Initiates, and 1 Dead Apprentice

I have never TC'd Rookies before, so I decided to save up my Rookies for one big blowout in a tourney where Rookies aren't often a priority for managers (because they are concentrating on the dead classes instead). There are usually around 400 Rookies in October, so if my 44 Rookies are as good as my competitors, I could have an 11% chance to TC the class. I don't love those odds, but its not nothing!

Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:30 am

sent 49 here
one, at least of every style
seem to have been chastised for 7 being bashers (2 in dead tournaments)
hoping to provide some competition for all of OAB's rookies

GOOD LUCK TO ALL

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2957

I don't have any big favorites going into this tourney, and I rarely do. What I have this time is a class with a 15% chance to TC, a couple of classes with a 10% chance to TC, and a few more with a 5% chance to TC. Throw in some additional 1% shots (there are 16 classes in this tourney, after all) and before you know it, you discover that you have a 50% chance to TC this tourney.

Here are my best shots:

Rookies

I am not a successful Rookies manager. Part of that is my shortcomings as a manager, but part of that is strategic. This instinct comes from my gambling experience. If you are a professional poker player, and you enter the casino and see the highest stakes game going with a bunch of guys you have seen on TV coverage of the World Series of Poker, some people want to sit in that game and prove they are the best. Not me. I want to sit at the next table lower, or the table below that, where instead of the best players, there are some rich tourists who are just having fun for the weekend. I am not interested in a manhood measuring contest, I am interested in winning the most I can with the least amount of risk.

I like to focus on classes where other managers are weak. The traditional tourney manager playbook is to buy lots of team sheets, roll up lots of Rookies in the transfer arenas, then run a Rookie horde each tourney and then cull the weak. This feeds "the pipeline" to Apprentices and Initiates, and then Adepts, then Champs. After Champs, people automatically sandbag their best warriors in Challenger Champions, and then when they eventually graduate from that class, they are too highly skilled for Freshmen and land in ADM. A bust-out in ADM then leads to Contenders. I have traditionally done well by concentrating on Freshmen and Eligibles which other people are overlooking. But things have gotten tougher there lately. There are no more weak classes, plus I like to shake things up now and again.

October is a special tourney with 5 extra dead classes, and a weaker living prize than in the other three tournies each year. So managers tend to emphasize their dead entries and skimp on Rookies. You can see this by looking at past newsletters. October averages around 400 Rookies, while the other three tournies each year generally fall in the 600-800 range.

Having never done well in Rookies, I wanted to take a shot at a Rookies TC. So I combed through my old sheets looking for overlooked gems, bought new sheets, saved up my Rookies and used a TC prize to create a clone. I ended up with 44 Rookies entries for this tourney, which should hopefully be about 10% of the field. Factor in the clone, who has Rookie TC pedigree, and I think my odds might be 15%. Not amazing, but my best shot at a TC this tourney.

All told, I am running 17 Strikers, 10 Aimed Blows, 6 Lungers, 3 Bashers, 2 Walls of Steel, 2 Parry-Lungers, 2 Parry-Ripostes, 1 Total Parry, 1 Parry-Striker, and 0 Slashers in Rookies. I would have preferred more ABs and less STs and at least 1 token SL, but sometimes the setups and rolls you get dictate things for you.

Adepts

I have a single entry in this class, ARENAMUSTARD, a 12-4-11-21-15-10-11 ST.

In April of his year, I entered ARENAMUSTARD in Apprentices. I knew he was hosed in Decise, but I was timing another warrior on that team and $1.50 to prep him from 3 FE to 4 FE and another $7 to run him in Apprentices seemed like a small price to pay with that design and his good learns so far.

ARENAMUSTARD went on to squeak out my first ever Apprentices TC by going 14-2. That landed him at 12 FE, so I began the long slog to 20 FE for Adepts. Along the way, I used a ZAP to reroll his -4 Decise (he got -4 again), then another ZAP to reroll it a second time bringing him to +2 Decise.

At 20 FE, he has learned 65 skills, 42 of which are in the critical areas of Ini, Att, and Dec. How much of his Apprentices TC run was knack, how much was great learning, and how much was being in the right place at the right time? I am using largely the same strategy under the principle of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". He still has great learning. His performance in this tourney and Champions will show me whether he has moxie, or whether he just got lucky once.

I don't often get TCs in lower basic, so I find it difficult to rate this warrior's chances in Adepts, but I give him 10% odds.

Challengers

It has been a while since I have had a competitive Challengers squad, but I feel like I am finally there. I have some budding ABs that could TV at any moment, but they are just below 50 FE so could still need some seasoning. My main hopeful in the class is a LU named CADAVER DOG.

His is a tragic story of a trade and prize gone wrong. About 10 years ago, Marmaduke had gotten a 21-21 WT-WL replacement that I had never seen before, and I agreed to trade for the team so I could design and run the warrior. Naturally, the warrior rolled up Little damage. Not to worry, as I had recently won some max damage potions, so I placed one on the fledgling 21-21 LU. He died at 3-2 in Rookies in January 2012, and spent the next several years fighting in dead tournies trying to get back.

Eventually, he won a TV in Dead Champions, and then began prepping for Challengers with 0 political points. So in theory, he should have room for four TVs before graduating. In the first two tournies this year, he passed the 50 FE mark and went 7-3 twice. After some stat training, I had the requirements to try a new weapon without penalty, which I did last tourney. He went 11-3!

Did I find CADAVER DOG's favorite weapon? Was the 11-3 a fluke? Or has he finally done enough physical training that he can compete in the class? Between him and his AB wingmen, I rate my chances in this class at 10%.

The Rest

I have a group of three Contenders that all TV'd back in January, so one of them probably has a shot. I have some bust-outs in Eligibles, ADM, and Freshmen. They aren't high quality stuff, but you add enough skills to a warrior after the freeze and you have some chance of a great run. And of course, I have some dead entries, and a handful of Initiates and Apprentices too.

I'd like to win somewhere, but since I am never expecting it, I never get upset when I don't.

Good luck to everyone in the tourney! I hope the USPS delivery people are on their A game this coming weekend.

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2021 12:42 am

Great and classy write-up, OAB.

Good luck on your "estimates".

Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2021 9:05 pm

I found an extra $30 in my budget, so I sent in 4. The most I have fought in a tourney since 2013.

First one is the last Dead Challenger I want back off my Sorcery Covenant team in Osksi, he has 166 skills, but has always underachieved. His best results were 5-3 in the class about 15 years ago.

Second one is actually one of Purple Sage's warriors off an old team we shared, he gave me the team after all his warriors died and mine were still alive. I promised him if I ever got any of his warriors back alive I would return them to him. He fights in Dead Challengers with around 150 skills I think and has not done well in any dead tourney. If I can ever get him back alive I will never let Ken forget. LOL

Third one is my Dead Apprentice TC from 2008. This is her first tourney in Challengers, she fought in Champions last 2 mail-ins and went 0-2 and died and 2-1 and died. She is wearing out her immortal prize, so I don't expect much from her. Hoping she lasts a few rounds and gets some skills.

Lastly I sent in one of my favorite warriors. I renamed him awhile back, so he hasn't fought under the new name. He got my first ever Grandmaster rating, he now has 5. He started with an 11 Will and has raised a stat 50 times. He used to TV regularly in ADM and Eligibles back in the mid 90's. The last time he fought was in the 2010 Orlando FtF and he was the top Contender Parry Strike at 1-4-0. His best results in Contenders was 4-3 about 15 years ago. I am hoping he can be the top of his class. <shrug>

Well I hope I didn't bore you too much, just trying to get my 30 dollars worth.

Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2021 1:06 am

Good luck, Visionist. I hope you get something BIG!. Bringing up Purple Sage, one of the greatest characters in old Duelmasters, gave me pleasant thoughts of old. I was never able to convince him to call a scimitar a "simitar" rather than a "skimitar"!

Visionst01 wrote:

I found an extra $30 in my budget, so I sent in 4. The most I have fought in a tourney since 2013.

First one is the last Dead Challenger I want back off my Sorcery Covenant team in Osksi, he has 166 skills, but has always underachieved. His best results were 5-3 in the class about 15 years ago.

Second one is actually one of Purple Sage's warriors off an old team we shared, he gave me the team after all his warriors died and mine were still alive. I promised him if I ever got any of his warriors back alive I would return them to him. He fights in Dead Challengers with around 150 skills I think and has not done well in any dead tourney. If I can ever get him back alive I will never let Ken forget. LOL

Third one is my Dead Apprentice TC from 2008. This is her first tourney in Challengers, she fought in Champions last 2 mail-ins and went 0-2 and died and 2-1 and died. She is wearing out her immortal prize, so I don't expect much from her. Hoping she lasts a few rounds and gets some skills.

Lastly I sent in one of my favorite warriors. I renamed him awhile back, so he hasn't fought under the new name. He got my first ever Grandmaster rating, he now has 5. He started with an 11 Will and has raised a stat 50 times. He used to TV regularly in ADM and Eligibles back in the mid 90's. The last time he fought was in the 2010 Orlando FtF and he was the top Contender Parry Strike at 1-4-0. His best results in Contenders was 4-3 about 15 years ago. I am hoping he can be the top of his class. <shrug>

Well I hope I didn't bore you too much, just trying to get my 30 dollars worth.