Hello, I want some answer from your experiences.

MTR says in Regular Head Judge may require deck registration (decklist).
My idea is, though, if I want decklist I will do it in Competitive. I'm not sure why we still want to do decklist/deckcheck in Regular. Decklist is lots of work for players, so I want avoid it as much as possible (and we still can catch cheating without decklist)

So, I want your opinion. What is a merit of Regular and decklist combination?
Specifically, when do you actually want this combination?

In the past, I've used sealed pool registration sheets at prereleases. Players in my area will play in multiple prereleases at different stores all weekend, so the idea was to cut back on the temptation to bring in good cards from a previous event.

The only time I do it is when I have a lot of new players at an FNM before a GPT on Saturday.
I want the players to know what is needed at Competitive and forcing them to do it once before the “main” tournament is a good way (at least in my city).
I try to count all the decklists, tell people about the mistakes without penalties and still have a good time :)
On the other hand, if your community dislikes decklists it won't work.

I have seen this mainly for local Eternal format tournaments. These are often run at Regular REL due to having very low prize support and mainly being a chance for people to play. However, players not at the tournament want tk know what decks performed well, and getting decklists at the start allows the Tournament Organiser to provide that information.

Usually, if we use this option it's because people are interested in seeing what decks are doing well. So mostly coverage purposes (especially as Kim mentioned, eternal events where there is less coverage/exposure).

I'm not sure, but I really think this depends on the countries/areas. Regular REL tournaments with decklists are pretty common in Germany, but I've seen judges and players from other countries give me a strange look when I told them.


Even when not doing deckchecks, decklists still can help in case of an investigation, however, this is not their primary function at Regular REL. The players want to have their tournaments with decklists because they want to see what decks performed well in the tournament. To me, this is customer service. The players want this, the tournament rules allow me to do this, so I'll do it.

Edited Jasper König (June 24, 2014 10:23:47 AM)

Generally, the player community should probably drive this - if they feel it's needed, might as well do it.

However, if they feel it's needed, that suggests something else might be happening:

1. cheating is suspected
   
2. prizes are significant
   

In the first case, you should probably take a close look at the concerns, and then tell those players that you've confirmed everything is OK - or catch & DQ a cheater; word will spread.

In the second case, I would talk with the TO and urge them to run at Competitive REL instead. When the prize pool is roughly equivalent to entry fee (e.g., 2 packs per player, $5 entry), then Regular REL is a great idea, esp. for a friendly, local event. When the entry fee goes up, and/or the prize pool goes WAY up (e.g., Power 9 cards for a $20+ entry), players are going to behave competitively, no matter the REL - it's a good idea to match the REL to their behavior and expectations.

d:^D

I agree with previous posts, but I also do kinda “training” to local community before they will attend bigger limited events, i.e. GP, PTQ.

I often organize regular REL limited tournaments, and those players sometime no experience of card pool registration etc. Prerelease was used to be such introduction event who don't play in competitive event, but use of decklist was almost a decade ago.. (That's good thing for the very fun event, though).

I use decklist for tournaments with decent Prices when we want to publish the decklists. It is much easier to collect them before the event than afterwards :)

We've done it at pre-releases where we knew there might be cheating - but since we haven't seen any in a while we've stopped for now. I've had to fill out a deck list so that it could be shared to generate interest in the Tiny Leaders format.