Rules for the Torchlight Tournament and Skills Competition

For this year’s Torchlight Tournament, we’re going to be trying a few new things that some Terrasylvans may not be super familiar with. To ease the confusion and help encourage members to prepare in advance, I’ve listed out the following rules and details that will be presented the day of the Torchlight Tournament.

If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments.

The Skills Competition

Stabbing Accuracy

This simple event will ask each competitor to stab 5 targets as quickly and as accurately as possible. Each competitor will be timed and the clock will stop as soon as the fifth target has been hit. They will be fairly small targets to promote point control.

Fastest Footwork

This footwork event will have each competitor run through a basic square pattern in either refused or basic stance. Swoop or slip steps will not be permitted and each instance of “running” will add 3 seconds to a competitors final time. Competitors will start advancing to a point, transition to side-stepping to a point, retreat to a point, and then side-step back to the starting position. Each competitor will be time and the clock will stop as soon as they return to the starting line.

The Most Positive Pressure

This interesting event will attempt to see who can land a stab with the softest touch at regular speed. Each competitor will stab a sheet of paper three times, attempting to touch the paper but leave little to no marks. Whichever competitor has the most pristine piece of paper will be determined the victor.

Woodland Relay

Starting at the Woodland Entrance by the pavilion, one at a time, each competitor will be told the same location by name. This will not be indicated beforehand on the map. On GO! the competitor will have to race to that spot as quickly as they can, grab an item, and then return to the pavilion. They must enter Woodland through the same starting point, but may traverse Woodland along any path they wish.

The Torchlight Tournament

How a Swiss Tournament Works

In a Swiss tournament, competitors are never eliminated. Instead, competitors are paired in every round. There will be a total of 10 rounds and each match will be the best of 3. In the end, the winner is the competitor who earns the most points by the end of the tournament.

Competitors will earn a single point for a win and a half-point for a tie, for a total possible score of 10. In every round, each competitor is paired against an opponent who has the same, or a similar number of points in the tournament. In the event of an odd number of fighters, a bye is awarded to the lowest scoring fighter who has not yet received one and will be awarded 1 point.

Choice of Weapons

Throughout the tournament, you will be able to fight with whatever you wish, except if you are fighting an Initiate or a Newcomer. Because Initiates or Newcomers have not had the opportunity to learn additional sides and weapons, any person facing an Initiate or Newcomer MUST use a single short sword. You will be informed of this condition as you are assigned your opponent each round.

Time to Prepare

At the end of each round, you will be randomly assigned with your next opponent. This may give you very little time to prepare for your fight. We encourage you to watch and observe all tournament fighters and consider what you might do if you are assigned to fight against each person.

Double Kills equal Ties

We will have quite a few fights to get through in the tournament. Therefore, Double Kills will count as Ties and WILL NOT be refought. At the end of the 3 fights, a winner will be determined based on wins and ties. If there is still a tie at the end of the 3 fights, each fighter will be awarded a half-point.

How the Winner is Determined

For this Swiss Tournament, there will NOT be a final bracket of Semi-Finals or Finals. At the end of the 10 rounds, everyone’s final scores, out of 10, will be tallied and the person with the highest score will be determined the champion! In the event of a tie, we will use the Median-Buchholz system. It works by taking the sum of each fighter’s opponent’s scores, excluding the best and worst score and comparing them. Yay for math (and computers that do it for you)!