Background
Over the last couple year, I've fallen in love with the tabletop wargame for A Song Of Ice And Fire. Over that time, I've found myself as a tournament organizer and eventual leader in my community here in Sacramento.
Quarterly Events
It began with running big tournaments every 3 months instead of monthly. These became my Quarterly events, and by the third installment, we grew the participation from 8 players to 22 players.
The Quarterly events were set up as a loss leader. It was important to focus less on the competitive players, and more on the mid-to-low tier players, in terms of prize support investment.
I made sure that every player received more than the value of their entry fee ($20), selecting from an assortment of unit boxes ($35 retail). I also donated Starter boxes ($100 retail) to go to the lowest ranking player at the end of the tournament.
The top players were still playing for store credit and a small trophy for the winner.
Small Council
The idea for Small Council began at the end of 2023. There were a lot of different formats to play ASOIAF, but most revolved around spending a full 8 hour day playing in a tournament. There was room in the space for a League format. The League would provide the following advantages compared to tournament play:
- Less time commitment than tournament play (One game per week vs. 3-4 games on a Saturday or Sunday)
- In a 10 week league, players are much more likely to interact than in a 3 round tournament
- The 10 week format allows for more variance in record, helping us address what is a sub-optimal tournament scoring system
Tracking
It was important to have tracking simplified from the very start. I partnered with a good friend and fantastic Data Analyst Will Hurd to help me build and manage all of the data and tracking on the backend using Google Sheets. For season 1 we tracked the following data:
- Win/Loss record
- Total Victory Points
- Total Units Destroyed
- Units Destroyed Differential
Weekly Leaderboard
I created a weekly leaderboard that featured custom created avatars for each player in the league. These avatars were a big hit in our league Discord. Eventually I saved each avatar down and sent them out as profile pics. Most league members adopted these personas and it added a really cool layer to the experience.
Each Monday, I went over the data collected the week before to update the weekly leaderboard. Per player request, we even added a little arrow up/down element showing how much each player moved in terms of their positioning from the previous week.
Conclusion
The first season of Small Council has just finished and it was a great success. We're currently working on the Playoff picture which is an entirely different beast. I'm working with my team to identify and overcome these challenges, and I'm really excited to finish this up and crown a winner. I can't wait to start on season 2 so we can iterate on what we've learned.
