With the Discord group planning and organizing tournaments for forum members, I was thinking if there are people interested but afraid to join in, thus a beginner’s guide.
Will concentrate on the ‘remote’ tournaments and can be later expanded on to ‘localized’ tournaments / bigger events.
Questions, Help and Inputs are welcome.
Introduction
What are Tournaments?
What the the common formats and what they mean?
Time Management
How much time I need to plan for, if I am interested in joining a tournament?
How do I manage my time? on deck build, testing
How to prepare deck/s
Basic deck building guide
What to do if I don’t have specific cards, or small card collection?
How to know if my deck is well balanced?
How to test my ideas/decks?
Logistics
What do I need to plan for? Money, accomodation, travel plans, insurance…(section for future use)
The format guide is a bit out of date. I’m going from memory here, I’m sure someone will correct me if I am wrong:
Conquest:
The current (GM) Conquest format is Bo3. You submit 4 decks, choose to “save” 1 that cannot be banned, then ban one of your opponents remaining 3 decks. First player to win 2 games, with 2 different decks, wins the round.
For our (standard) Commoner’s Cups, we run a 3 deck submission with 1 save, 1 ban, to lower the entry barriers a bit.
Specialist:
I think (?) this is still being used in the Masters Tour, This is the most accessible of all the formats. It is Bo3. You submit a “main” deck and 2 “secondary” decks. Secondary decks must share a minimum of 25 cards with the main deck. In the first game of each round, you have to use your main deck. You can then choose to swap to one of your secondary decks for the next game(s), or continue using your main deck.
I will have a think about some of the other topics and get back to you, but this one:
Allow around 1 hour per round. Most will be done quicker (probably 40-45mins at a guess), but better to overcompensate on time as 1 hour rounds are not unheard of, especially if control mirrors are on the agenda.
I’m pretty sure Specialist is 100% done now.
That wouldnt surprise me. It was pretty damn boring to play, and even worse to watch imo. I’ll leave it in there regardless as some organisers might use it at times.
Also, they seem to have dropped the “shield” part.
Masters Qualifiers is now Conquest, best-of-three, 3 decks with a ban, and Masters Tour is Conquest, best-of-five, 4 decks with a ban.
lol shows how much interest I have in watching their tournaments right now. I guess that means I should delete my post as its all redundant info 
Hmmm, not sure. They are using “no shield” for Masters, but there is no mention of GrandMasters losing the “shield” portion… Either way, I think “shields” are the way to go for our tourneys.
Them switching from Specialist to “Shielded” Conquest got me interested in watching Grandmasters Season 2. I hardly watched Season 1 as watching the same matchups over and over again was so boring.
Honestly, I have difficulty sitting down for more than part of a match myself. Just can’t get into it, but that’s not unique to HS for me.