BPA Through the Ages PBEM Tournament 2020

This is the home page for the 2020 Boardgame Players Association “Play By Email” tournament for Through The Ages. It is open only to members of the Boardgame Players Association (BPA). It you attend the World Boardgaming Championship (WBC), and are up to date on your registration fees, then you are already a member. If not, you can purchase a “PBEM Membership” for $10 from this website: www.boardgamers.org. This tournament will award laurels and contribute to the annual Caesar award, all of which is tracked through that same website.

GM: Randy Buehler

Format

Games will be 4-player games whenever possible, using the app that launched in 2017 for iOS, Android, and Steam. You must own the app in order to participate in the tournament, and you must also own the New Leaders and Wonders expansion. Games will use “Random Mix” for the card set, “Rules: Digital” (which, yes, is slightly different from the tabletop version of the game but the massive quality of life gains are worth it), and “Default Asynch” timing (which means you have 24 hours to make a move once it is your turn, plus a time extension bank that refills whenever a new age begins … if you run out of time you will be dropped from the game and replaced by a bot). 

Heat Stage: Everyone who joins the event will play in 3 asynch games, which will launch simultaneously. They will be paired randomly within the constraint that we will do our best to avoid putting people into multiple games together. If you win any of your games, you advance to the semifinal.

(Quarterfinal Stage: If more than 50 people enter the event then single winners from the heat stage will be entered into two quarterfinal matches each. Winning either earns advancement to the semifinals along with the double winners from the heat stage.)

Semifinal Stage: You will be placed in 4 simultaneous asynch games. They will be seeded based on the results from the Heat Stage as much as possible (details will depend on the number of semifinalists who qualify). In addition, we will avoid giving anyone repeat opponents if possible.

You will be awarded 10 points for winning a game, 6 for finishing 2nd, 3 for 3rd, and 1 for 4th. The top 7 point-earners will advance to the finals, with heat performance serving as the first tiebreaker and percentage of winner’s score in the semifinals as the second tiebreaker (and from the heats as the 3rd tiebreaker).

(This stage will be eliminated if there are 7 or fewer heat winners.)

Final Stage: You will be placed into 4 simultaneous games. Each of the other finalists will be in 2 of them. We use the same scale of points for each finish position as in the semifinals and the final standings go by these points. (Ties in the overall standings will be broken by semifinal points, then heat points, then % of winner’s scores in the finals, then semis, then heats.)

Note on Ties: We will not use the in-game tiebreakers for finish positions. In the heats, anyone tied for 1^st gets credit for a win. In the semis and finals the points for tied positions will be divided evenly among the tied players.

Pace of Play: You are expected to check your games and take your turns (at least) once per day. It’s OK to have an occasional break of a couple of days, but we expect most games to finish in less than two months. Games that haven’t finished in 2 months are likely to be adjudicated, and the adjudication will include demoting slow players to lower finish positions.

Platform

Games will be played exclusively on the (awesome) app from Czech Games.

Schedule

Registration Opened: March 2020

Registration Closed: May 15, 2020

Heat Stage Began: May 30 2020

(There was no Quarterfinal stage) 

Semifinals Began: August 2, 2020

Finals Begin: October 2020