Introductory Scorekeeping - Lesson 2
Setting Up An Event
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Hello there!
Welcome to the Cascade Games Scorekeeper Lessons. As always, I’m your host Jonah, and today we’re going to cover the steps to setting up an event, in broad strokes.
What to Expect
The general concepts and procedures described in these lessons can apply to any software and Star Wars: Unlimited event. Most of them are common to other card games too!
However, we will pair these with practical instructions and examples of how to do all of this on Melee, the official tournament and event platform. As we proceed, keep in mind that you’ll be learning both how Melee works and how Star Wars: Unlimited events work - these are independent aspects of your job Scorekeeper, but come together to create great events.
Setting up
First things first: head to melee.gg and create your account if you don’t have one already (or would like to have a separate one for your studies). You can do that by clicking on the person icon on the top-right corner and selecting ‘Create an account’, then filling in all the necessary info:
Now, while logged in, head to the Organizers menu, click on ‘Become an Organizer’ and fill in the required info:
You should now be ready to create your first tournament!
Creating a tournament: Settings
You may have noticed the Organizers menu also includes the option ‘Create a tournament’. Go ahead and try that. Just make sure to check the ‘for training’ box!
The details of the following screen will be better explored in intermediate and advanced lessons. For now, fill in the mandatory fields (those not preceded by ‘Optional’), the starting time, and click on ‘Create Tournament’:
Creating a tournament: Phases
Now that our tournament has a name, let’s start giving it some characteristics.
The first screen we’ll explore in the Tournament Controller is Phases. Select ‘Phase Actions’ and ‘Create a new Phase’.
The first parameter of a phase is the format: Draft, Sealed or Premier Constructed.
Then we must choose a matching method. When selecting each one, Melee will briefly explain what they mean so you can check that’s what you want. You may explore and experiment with other methods besides the ones we use for Star Wars: Unlimited if you’d like, but the ones we use have been covered already in the previous lesson.
Next, select how many games a player must win in each match. The default option is best-of-three matches. The Tournament Regulations provide a deeper explanation of these concepts in case you’re curious.
The next (very important!) parameter is the number of rounds. It depends on the number of players you have, so what we usually do is setting an initial number based on the expected attendance and, if we get more or fewer players than that number we can adjust the number of rounds just before starting the tournament.
You can consult how many rounds a tournament should have in the tournament documents.
Finally, by clicking on Table Numbers you can define a starting or ending table for your tournament. If you don’t set anything, it will start at table 1. But maybe your LGS already has another game being played from Tables 1 to 7, so you may move yours to Table 8:
Or even choose to place in the last tables of the store, ending at table 20. We call this process “backfill”:
Backfilling is useful when have multiple events, and want to maximize the amount of space you have between them.
If you’re having a cut to top-eight, for an event like a planetary qualifier or another more competitive event, you’ll want to create that phase now as well, and make sure to set it to single-elimination, as opposed to Swiss.
Registration
SWUID
We’ve created a tournament and the phases to be played. Now, to the most important part of any event: the players!
Before anything else, we must ensure all players have a valid Unlimited Identification Number (UID) linked to their Melee account. This number is personal and cannot be shared or transferred. It is tied to the player’s AsmoConnect Account.
If a player does not have an AsmoConnect, ask that they sign up at https://account.asmodee.net/en/signup. If they do have an account but can’t locate their UID, ask them to consult https://starwarsunlimited.com/profile.
They should be able to head to their Profile Settings, then at the Game-specific Info submit their UID:
It is important for players to have this ID, because it links their event history to FFG. For events with qualifier points, they need to have the ID or they won’t earn their points or qualifications!
Adding players
The simplest way to add a player to an event is by heading to the Players screen, clicking on ‘Enroll Players’, and submitting their email address in the ‘Search Players’ field. If that player has played in your events before, they can also be found by their username and other information:
Please note while your tournament is ‘for training’ you’ll have access to the option “Enroll Test Players”.
In a test event searching emails will find nothing, but it’s good to be familiar with the UI, so you are prepared to find players for a live event.
New players
Now, if a player does not have a Melee account yet, you can create one for them from the Enroll Players overlay:
After you’ve finished this process, the player will receive an email with a link to claim the account. They’ll be automatically enrolled in the tournament and assigned a generic username based on their name (they can change this username later). This way, your player can deal with the intricacies of signing up later and get to play immediately!
Minors and other Guests
If your player cannot or doesn’t want to create an account, you can create a guest account for them:
Fixed Tables
Finally, if some player has any kind of mobility impairment, requires extra space or for any reason would benefit from using the same table throughout the event you can assign them a fixed table.
This is done by clicking on a player’s name, which brings up the player overlay, and assigning them a table:
What Melee does internally is pair the round, and then exchange the ‘original’ table number for the player with their ‘fixed’ table number. This can cause some confusion as someone undefeated in round 5 may end up being assigned to table 16, for example. This is expected and not an error (but you may want to check if their record is correct, just in case).
Staff
Finally, before we launch the tournament, we must give the staff members access to the tournament!
Of course, you have full access to your own test tournament. For other events or larger teams, however, roles have limited scopes according to what each team member is supposed to be able to do. Providing access to only a limited number of actions protects the tournament (so someone doesn’t click on something they don’t understand) and also players’ and TO’s data.
By accessing the Staff screen, a Staff Admin or the TO can add Staff Members:
The full list of each role’s permissions is available on the Melee website, but you’ll hardly need to know it in detail. Instead, you just need to have a general idea of each scope, so you know who can do what:
- Coverage has access to matches and player data, especially decklists.
- Judges can access players’ data and decklists, submit results, enter penalties and deal with End-of-Round procedures.
- Scorekeepers can do pretty much everything related to running the event: all judges and Coverage do, besides matching a round and deleting or editing data.
- Staff Admins have full access to the event’s data, including adding other staff members and editing advanced tournament settings.
And with that, the event is all set up and you’re ready to launch! We’ll take care of launching in the next lesson!
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Until next time, good luck and have fun!