DixieCon 32 is underway!

[Jack007]

Photos to follow, but David Miller won this year, with a 2 way draw in the final round to edge out returning Champion Andy Bartalone.

I tied for 6th. 5 boards per round, 41 individual players. Very nice turnout for a year when it isn't WDC/Dip Con.

I consider DixieCon the REAL world diplomacy championship. Cause it's the only big tournament played by the Diplomacy rules. The other is just a mutilation of Diplomacy. Another game. A variant. A bad joke. It's like Go versus Gobang.

It's time for a change.

[Nanook]

Any game played in a tournament format is essentially a variant in and of itself.

[Nanook]

I’ll be doing a write up of some sort, some time in the next week. Short version is: awesome tournament, amazingly fun, dip was strong, and the non-dip games were a ton of fun too. Great games, better people, I highly recommend it.

And, there were 3 regular playdippers present (myself (Nanook/clem), nonpunin10did/Ronke, and GhostEcho/John), and two people that have a presence here (DQ/Chris Martin and StarMonkey/Grinnel). So that was pretty cool to see Playdip reasonably well represented!

Now it’s time for some sleep before driving back tomorrow. Will probably do a write up of some sort in the next week or so.

[Jack007]

Any game played in a tournament format is essentially a variant in and of itself.

No, that's a platitude. You know what I mean.

[NoPunIn10Did]

Any game played in a tournament format is essentially a variant in and of itself.

No, that's a platitude. You know what I mean.

That’s as may be, but it’s not wrong. Dixie’s scoring system is one of the few tournament systems left that uses draw size as a component, but that’s still a type of variant.

[Jack007]

Any game played in a tournament format is essentially a variant in and of itself.

No, that's a platitude. You know what I mean.

That’s as may be, but it’s not wrong. Dixie’s scoring system is one of the few tournament systems left that uses draw size as a component, but that’s still a type of variant.

Please explain.

[NoPunIn10Did]

That’s as may be, but it’s not wrong. Dixie’s scoring system is one of the few tournament systems left that uses draw size as a component, but that’s still a type of variant.

Please explain.

First and foremost, the original Diplomacy rules give no explanation or numerical value to the value of a draw as compared to a solo. Nor does it clarify whether one type of draw is better than another.

So, as a result, any scoring system applied to a game of Diplomacy has to make judgment calls about the relative values of those results. Those judgment calls will shape trends in the way the game is played.

There are roughly three schools for how to score draws:

1. Score based on the number of players in the draw.
2. Score based on the supply centers owned by each player.
3. Score based on the relative rank of players, with rank calculated by final SC count (and year-of-elimination for those no longer on the map).

PlayDiplomacy solely uses method (A) to score draws prior to Elo adjustments. Sum-of-Squares is a common scoring system that lands in the (B) camp. C-Diplo, popular in Europe, uses (B) and (C). Carnage, which has become popular in North American tournaments, uses (C), with (B) as a tiebreaker.

Dixiecon's scoring system is unique in that it uses all three of those measures. (A) determines the biggest chunk of a player's points, but there's a reasonably sizable point-per-SC score that makes (B) more than just a tiebreaker. (C) is used to grant points to those who lose the game.

[Pootleflump]

Next WDC should be in

GLASGOW!!

At a conference today in the perfect venue. I'm entertaining Vikings, Russians, a Finn, some people from NZ, a man who sounds just like Woolgie, and a random woman from.... wait for it..... Washington DC. Shall I make a mad video for DQ?

Deep fried haggis balls and beetroot dip for lunch. And cake. Lots of cake.

What more could you ask for.

[VGhost]

Good tournament!

Not for me though - I Got Hammered (and have a little gavel to prove it!), with an eliminated England, 2-center Italy which I voted out of a draw, and eliminated Russia. Oddly, I felt like the Italy was my worst game, but that was the one that survived... may post longer AARs later.

I'm not sure whether I actually had the worst scored of the tournament, because somebody told me they got eliminated three times, but I'm about 98% sure I managed to post or tie the worst result within each round for the country I was assigned (the round I got Italy there were a bunch of good Italys... darn the luck).

There's a bunch of other yearly non-Dip events Memorial Day weekend I'm interested in, so I may not go every year but I'll definitely return to DixieCon.

[NoPunIn10Did]

GhostEcho and I also got several rounds of Mah Jong in. He picked up on the rules rather quickly and left the table with more than double the points of the next-highest scorer.