NationStates

The room was rather plain. A simple wooden podium with a royal blue screen behind it was place at the front of the room, with around 100 seats placed in rows in front of it. Above the royal blue screen hung the flags of both Legalese and Erathore. Along the walls were football pictures from both nations, as well as several team kits.

Marcello Dizarino, the great goalkeeper of Erathore and new President of the Erathore Football League, took a deep breath before entering the stage to no more then a few stray claps. He was tall, standing around 6’3’’ and in relatively good shape. He wore a simple blazer with an EFL logo on the breast pocket. He walked towards the podium in calm, purposeful strides; hoping to draw attention away from his fidgeting hands.

Dizarino glanced down at his notes before looking up to address the crowd:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to Eliodoro, the capitol city of Erathore and home to several football teams. I know that you don’t know of us and I’m not particularly surprised. We’ve only competed in one World Cup, the 54th hosted by The Babbage Islands and Cassadaigua, where we barely missed qualification from the Interzonals. We’ve participated in some other smaller non-World Cup Sanctioned tournaments and are even hosting one right now. We have never won anything minus the 9th Aeropeg Invitational, in which Juvillian Martinax, my old club and one of the best in Erathore, won. Thus it may come as a surprise when I say, with pride I must admit, that the Free Empire of Erathore and the Legalese Football Association hereby submit a bid for the 42nd Baptism of Fire.

[Now let’s head back to OOC for the purposes of laying out the bid]

If the Erathore & Legalese bid is accepted, the 42nd Baptism of Fire will welcome a new format never before attempted in BoF history: a power-paired round robin! All entrants will compete in a single table, and will be randomly drawn into their pairings for the first match day. All following match days in the group phase will be done using power pairings to match teams of similar positioning in the standings. The technical details of the pairings follow in the spoiler.



The round-robin phase will last for six matches, before giving way to a knock-out phase, which will consist of (at least) the Quarterfinals, Semifinals, the 3rd Place Playoff (to be held in Erathore), and the Baptism of Fire Championship (to be held in Legalese). Due to the nature of the competition, all teams level on points with the team that is eighth in the standings (using tiebreakers to sort the order) will advance to the knockout phase, with a single play-in round used to pare the teams down to the eight. Teams will be seeded for the play-in round (if necessary), and will be re-seeded for the quarterfinal, however all brackets will be fixed from that point.

We believe that the power-pairing format (which has also been called Swiss-system format) provides a number of good benefits to the competitors in the Baptism of Fire, the most important being that it is more likely to pair teams who consistently RP - and RP well - than nearly any other conceivable format. This also means that every match is important, either in the immediate (i.e., eligibility for the knockout rounds) or in the near future (since for even the teams out of the running for the knockout stage, a game against a similarly-placed opponent is possibly the difference in which pot you end up in for the World Cup Qualifying draw). This format was used for the 30th Cup of Harmony, and was considered by many of its competitors to be the most competitive and interesting CoH in memory. We feel that given a chance, it will do wonders for the Baptism of Fire.

Scorination will be done using NSFS v.2.0.7, which due to the need for custom fixtures to run this properly, is a necessity. The rank-based formula will be used, with the max points value set at a level to create an appropriate scale for the allocation of RP points. Style modifiers will not be used, for a variety of reasons.

With regards to RPing: in most competitions, RPing is the only way to participate in a tournament, and to encourage that, a bonus that enhances the chances of the RPing team is added. However, for the Baptism of Fire, it is the only way a team can improve their chances of winning, and will be treated as such. The first RP posted by a team will provide a significant boost to the team’s scoring rank, to give teams who participate better odds. The other portions of the formula are designed to balance consistency and quality - posting with quality is strongly encouraged, and is rewarded at a greater value to low-quality RPs churned out daily - but of course, quality and consistency together is what will make the difference.

We look forward to answering your questions, and thank you for your time and consideration!

Legalese, for those who don't know you quite as well, but know you go back to days in which they weren't here, could you briefly include your hosting experience?

I like your format for a Baptism of Fire quite a bit.

Newmanistan wrote:Legalese, for those who don't know you quite as well, but know you go back to days in which they weren't here, could you briefly include your hosting experience?

I like your format for a Baptism of Fire quite a bit.

And thank you for reminding me that I forgot to put that in the post - sorry about that.

Anyways, I have hosted two World Cups (one as a former puppet, Novapsolu), as well as four Baptisms of Fire - one as Vilita's co-host during the days where he was the semi-permanent host and mentor, one with Rejistania in a pairing of equals, and two as the semi-permanent co-host/mentor; additionally, I have hosted three Cups of Harmony - two as Legalese, and one as Novapsolu. I mention the last one most prominently as it is not only one of my more enjoyable hosting experiences, but also one done with a similar format to this bid, showing that this isn't just a pipe dream of a format. That, and I have confidence that Erathore is nearly as crazy as Casari and I were back then

Not a member of the WCC, but I absolutely believe Legalese is well-qualified to run a tournament the size of the Baptism of Fire.

I do hold some deserved reservations about Erathore, but I think he'll be fine. He's a better minority co-host than Mangolana, imo. I'm a little worried about his relative lack of hosting experience, but hopefully he can prove me and everyone else wrong.

I can't speak for the other bid, but with regards to the design of this, something that I sort of alluded to above:

The Baptism of Fire was, at one point, a good breeding ground for future World Cup hosts; in fact, there was a stretch where Vilita's co-host went on to host a World Cup sometime in the next couple of cycles. I'd like to see the BoF get back to something of that sort, which is why I approached Erathore, and hope that future BoF bids consider a similar model of an experienced host teaming up with a relatively new co-host, to give us a future of numerous well-trained World Cup hosts.

Thanks for that insight, Legalese.

Erathore has done what I wish Saugeais and Mangolana did, and find an experienced partner to team up with. I have no reservations about this bid and it is at present, my choice.

I have more then full confidence in Legalese as an experienced and capable host and mentor. As for myself, I'm quite confident in my abilities to co-host. And thank you for the support Newmanistan.

I agree with Newmanistan. I have interacted with Erathore and have found him to be very well-mannered and level headed. I think a Legalese-Erathore Baptism of Fire would go very smoothly. He seems to be more than capable with a scorinator in his domestic leagues and in his independent soccer tournament at the moment. As for Legalese, no qualms there of course.

I'm a bit skeptical about the odd format, but I'm sure that just like in WC54, the irregular format will make for a more exciting tournament. Anyways, this bid is my first choice at the moment.

I remember that CoH of which you speak of Legalese (CoH XXX if i remember correctly); it was interesting (not in the Chinese sense) to follow and compete in it. I think one of my puppets was involved with that event (Prux) had a roster of cheese in honor of the Swiss-style event.

A much better sort of combination, here: a long-time host with a newcomer who is at least hosting something of their own at the moment. I like the Swiss-style option, too, and feel it could be more utilised in BoF, CoH and unrelated tournament play to mix things up a bit.

I agree that a Swiss by any other name is still a great BoF format.

Good luck with your bid.

I accidentally omitted one item from the bid post: if selected, we will be using NSFS v.2.0.7 for scorination. The primary reason for this is the need for the custom fixtures feature, which is not usable with NSFS v.3.0.1. The scorination formulae/methods are identical between versions, as attested to by the designer, Vephrall.