The scenarios will be provided by the Boots & Tracks design team. They will be historical/semi-historical scenarios for the most part, and never before seen by the community.
The scenarios may or may not be balanced. Don't count on a fair fight! The scoring system will determine balance. It is possible to "lose" the battle based on your raw score and still win if you perform better than the the other participants playing that side of the scenario. I will explain how this works later.
You do not need to understand the nitty-gritty of the scoring system. You need only be aware of the following:
I'm telling you all this because it is quite possible you will find yourself in a very bad situation due to deliberate scenario imbalance. Do not give up!! Withdraw!! The median score for your side of that scenario may only be 20 points. In other words, you can "lose" and still win if you get your people to safety so they can fight again another day.
Each player will receive the schedule for his section only. Where your name is on the LEFT you will play the Allied side for that scenario. Along with the schedule of games you will receive a contact list with all the email addresses of your five opponents. When you receive these, the tourney is officially underway.
After this, over the course of the next several days, you will receive an email for each of the five scenarios. For games where you are the Allies you will find two briefing files attached, a general briefing and your Allied briefing. This email will also contain your password for that scenario. Your German opponent will start the game. To open the first file from him you will need to use the password I provide you. This will put you in the Allied setup phase.
If you are playing the German side you will also receive a secured saved game file in addition to the two briefings and password. By 'secured' I mean that the briefings have been stripped out, the game begun, and the passwords entered. This is the file you will use to start the PBEM game. It will be a .cmg file, not a .txt file. Start the game just as you would any other new PBEM game. The only difference is that you will have to enter the password I provide you. You will find yourself in the Axis setup phase.
If you are playing the German side you will also receive a secured saved game file in addition to the two briefings and password. By 'secured' I mean that the briefings have been stripped out, the game begun, and the passwords entered. This is the file you will use to start the PBEM game. It will be a .cmg file, not a .txt file. Start the game just as you would any other new PBEM game. The only difference is that you will have to enter the password I provide you. You will find yourself in the Axis setup phase.
You will have 120 days to complete your games, starting on the day I send out the last file. This deadline will be strictly enforced!
Both the winner and loser report the game results. This is done in response to experiences with ROW III, where one player assumed the other sent in the results, only to find out neither did.
Game Report email needs to have the subject, "Game Report". The body of the email must contain the following information:
Tourney Number (1-3), Scenario Title, Your username on this forum, the side you played, your score, your opponent's username and his score. The body of the email should then look like this if you are Fred:
Tourney 1, The Ambush, Fred (Axis) 37, Joe 43
Reporting games in this manner will save us a great deal of time. With 72 people games MUST be reported in this fashion. Do not send us final game files. Keep these in a safe place in case of disputes.
No discussion of scenarios is allowed on the forum until ALL players in all three tourneys have completed a scenario. I will let you know when it is alright to talk about a scenario. It won't happen until near the end of the tourney.
No game results are to be revealed on the forum. You won't know who beat who until all is revealed at the end. Think before you post, and remember, no game scores, no blow by blow descriptions of the last movie, no general discussion about the scenarios, etc..
The first two ROW tournaments used the original Nabla scoring system as designed by Jarmo Hurri (Nabla). Unfortunately, the program which calculates the scenario score and converts it into a ‘Nabla’ score is no longer available, so a modified version was used to calculate the ROW III finals, and will be used for all subsequent ROW tournaments.
Here is how the system works:
Unlike previous ROW tournaments, submitting an AAR will be mandatory for ROW IV and beyond. Keep in mind that we are not expecting you to write a book, but do expect at least a paragraph explaining the strategy you chose, how it played out and (most important of all) feedback to the designers.
In return you will be awarded Bonus points for each AAR you submit, and these points can mean the difference between sipping the wine or just reading about it. Each full credit AAR will be worth 4% of the highest player's tourney score (before adding his AARs). If you write five full credit AARs you will receive additional tourney points equal to 20% of the highest player's tourney score.
AARs will receive either full credit or half credit. You must write more than just a few short paragraphs for full credit. I will let you know if an AAR is too short soon after you send it to me. You could choose to write a piece on a scenario that is more of a scenario review than an AAR if you want. The main thing we're looking for is constructive feedback.
The primary purpose of the AARs is to provide the scenario designers with feedback on their work. If you've ever designed a scenario for the community, you know how rare it is to get this feedback. Writing AARs is one way to express your thanks to the designers. Even negative feedback is welcome as long as it's constructive and not mean spirited.
In addition, the best of the AARs will, with the author's permission, be posted to the Boots & Tracks website for public consumption.
Another thing AARs do is help people learn to improve their tactics. Every scenario is played 36 times in a tourney such as this. There are 36 other people who had to deal with the same tactical situations you did. It can be very instructive to learn how others handled things, especially if you did worse than most. Should you want to see how your fellow players fared, all the AARs will be sent to you upon request once you have completed your games.
Lastly, by writing an AAR (or review) you are doing the community a small favor. This is because the designer can tweak the scenario based on feedback before releasing it to the community. Having a scenario played 36 times by 72 different people is a great test of a scenario. I think it's safe to say that very few, if any, scenarios get that degree of testing before they are put out to the public.
Those of us who enjoy these tournaments need new scenarios (security). In return for these scenarios the designers should get the feedback they like.
Everybody makes it to the playoffs if they want! However, only the four section winners from each tourney of 24 will be eligible for the prizes. The section winners of each tourney will do battle among themselves in a 3 game round robin using new Boots & Tracks scenarios. This means that, in the end, there will be one winner for each of the 24-player tourneys.
All non-section winners who want to play the Finals scenarios will be separated into groups of 4 for the same 3 game round robin. The sections will be determined at random.
These non-prize eligible sections are still important to the tourney. Their scores will be used to give us an accurate median with which to score the prize eligible players. Players in these sections can consider the Finals to be a mini-tourney. Their scores will be crunched and the section winners announced.
Bonus points will be awarded to the prize eligible finalists for AARs as described above.
Charl "WineCape" Theron, of South Africa, will send each of the three tourney champs 12 different bottles of fine South African wine, shipping paid by him.
NOTE: Since the 9/11 nightmare, laws concerning the importing of wine have been tightened, especially in the US. For example, in Arkansas, you cannot receive wine from abroad unless you are an official importer. So far, only one prize has been undeliverable. That involved a shipment to Brazil that occurred BEFORE 9/11.
Still, it is quite possible that your state (or country) will not let you receive the wines. If this is the case, your prize can be shipped to a friend or relative somewhere else where the laws are not so strict. WineCape is familiar with the import laws and can help you find a place if there is a problem. That is the best we can do.
[Editor's Note: These wines are flipping amazing. And I drink alot of wine.]
Incomplete games are the one thing the Nabla Scoring System does not tolerate well. We will try to maintain a sizeable pool of replacement players, and these players will be ready to take over at any point in the game. They automatically inherit the scores of the player they replaced, which means that they could end up going to the finals. But this does not mean dropping out can be taken lightly. If you drop out, do not expect to participate in future ROW tournaments.
If a situation arises where a player drops out, and no replacement can take over in time, the player will be awarded a win, with the score being standard deviation from the median.
It is the player’s responsibility to inform us if his opponent is slow in returning files, or has disappeared. Do not post to the CM boards. Instead, a simple e-mail should suffice. I will then e-mail your opponent, informing him that he needs to pick up the pace. If I do not receive a response in a reasonable amount of time I will assume that he has gone AWOL, and will replace him. An exception to this rule would be if a player requests a short break to take care of real life issues. These situations can be worked between the players, with an understanding that the time taken off will not penalize his opponent.
The 120 day deadline for game completion will be strictly enforced!! This is because the tourney is big enough that I can get accurate medians even if 1/3 of the games go incomplete.
Do your section a favor. Finish your games. If you are losing badly, keep in mind that your opponent is winning and probably enjoying himself immensely. Let him have his fun, and do your best anyway. Dropping out of sight when you are losing is desertion under fire!