we did group strikes and it went pretty long. We did both phases but I think more it had to do with excellent players and standard game setups for location vs making them harder and/or using more SS/EMs 
I ran a group 3 strikes CH tournament last night.
We had 16 players. It went 13 rounds, and lasted just under 5 hours. But that included instructions and an auction phase where each player could bid and add 1 card.
Congrats to Brian OâNeill for winning it all!
There was a really good example of when itâs useful to add a ball to another player: in the quarterfinals group 4, after ânormalâ play had concluded, Jay Collins was low man with less than 10M on Tron. Billy had the 3rd place score, meaning that the standings at that moment were Mark 6, Billy 6, Derek 5 and Jay 4. Derek thus stood to be eliminated. Derek used a âheal playerâ card on Jay to give him one additional ball. Derek was hoping that Jay would score enough to pass Billy but not enough to pass him. Passing Billy would produce the 6-5-5-5 result you see, thus getting Derek into a tiebreaker with a chance to move on. Note that in this particular instance, if Jay also passed Mark, Derek still gets a tiebreaker, since now Jay is the player with 6 and Mark drops to 5. As long as Jay passes one or both of Billy and Mark but doesnât catch Derek, Derek is in a tiebreaker. And, of course, Jay will play fully motivated since this also gives him a chance to get in that otherwise he wouldnât have. The getting into the tiebreaker part worked; alas for Derek, he didnât win the tiebreaker - - Jay made the most of the opportunity by winning the game on Paragon.
Sidebar note and caution for future players: beware the âfrozen card handâ. As in a set of cards containing two invert cards and not much else of use. One invert is a great opportunity - - swap for something better. Two stops you - - if you use one, the player you swap with gets your hand and the other inversion card, and seeing that thereâs little to use there, theyâll likely swap right back.
5 Likes
Yep, made the most of that opporunity for sure⌠and made it through two tiebreakers on Paragon (THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME) to make the finals and the semis respectively. Unfortunately, what Paragon gives, it also takes away, so of course after I kick off the semis with a solid game rolling Jungle Queen (for 2 points), I had 3 balls disappear with only a couple flips.
This tournament also made it apparant to me that nudging and flipper skills wonât make up for a lousy brain and poor game knowledge on modern machines. I obviously donât have what it takes when the game is more complicated than⌠1. Shoot that spinner 2. Hit those drops 3. Profit
Thanks Karl, I was miserable all weekend and still had a blast. Great tournament!
3 Likes
@PAPA_Doug tried his hand at a Critical Hit style tourney a few years ago and it ran until after 7AM. 
1 Like
It didnât run quite that late⌠but it was too late.
2 Likes
Match Play Decks are now available to order. I also have a limited number of t-shirts available on the order page as well.
United States orders:
https://www.neverdrains.com/criticalhit/order.php
International orders need to go through this ebay listing so I can take advantage of the Global Shipping Program and not spend so much time filling out customs forms and waiting at the post office again.
1 Like
Ordered. Our October monthly will be using them. Hope it doesnât run too long, but itâll be small, so we should be ok.
Will there be a tourney directors guide like the 3-strikes version for Match Play? I am running a womens tourney match play and got some good input from Robin who was down at the tourney and will be happy to integrate. Most of it is similar/the same aside from the listing of the cards/explanationsâŚ
1 Like
@kdeangelo : I enjoyed watching a bit of the stream you did for the match play Critical Hit. Having you miked up was imperative to have a chance to follow the card-playing action.
One very minor piece of feedback, should you ever stream Critical Hit again: having the card images show up in the stream on a rotating basis was VERY helpful. But if possible, slow down the rotation rate â Iâd suggest at least twice as long as they were displayed (before cycling to next one) for the last stream.
Thanks again. This format seems very fun, and I hope I get to play in one soon.
Yes, Iâll have something akin to the current document up within a week or two Iâm hoping.
Noted, thanks!
2 Likes
@kdeangelo heard about some of the fun bounties you had at CH down there like â3rd place player in round âxâ earns a cardâ. What were some of the other non-game specific ones? Since we have different machines for a womens CH tourney upcoming I wanted to get an idea for some other fun ones that arenât game specific - or anyone really can offer up some fun ones?
Most of them were machine-specific. The ones that werenât were freebies like âplay this game and get a cardâ on AMH or âcome in 1stâ / â2ndâ / â3rdâ. My plan was to hand out around 8-10 cards each round so I needed some very hard goals, a few giveaways, and the rest to be medium challenges.
3 Likes
The âplay AMH and get a cardâ went over pretty well since most of the people were unfamiliar with the game and some were not thrilled about getting randomly assigned to it. The freebie card proved more than enough compensation for them.
That might be a good tactic in general - - freebie or âeasyâ cards for the less-popular or âI-havenât-a-clueâ games in an event. And harder goals for the most popular games.
2 Likes
For âConfusionâ card, if a player is allowed to choose any game and the game they choose another group was already on, does that bumped group get randomly assigned to a new game or is it only on âavailableâ games? often there arenât that many open games so itâs not so usefulâŚ
Yes, they can choose any game. If a group was already on the chosen game, that group gets booted to a randomly assigned available game.
2 Likes
Added a lot more comments to the Google Doc in the 3-strikes tourney director guide since thereâs no Match Play version although a lot is similar/overlaps especially when related to how cards are played, general etiquette, etc.
We ran a womenâs tourney this past weekend that went really well and was a ton of fun!
3 Likes
I found out about this the week before Expo when a young lady from LA showed up at my tournament in Chicago and told me about it. Ordered a deck that same day. Weâre running this at Logan Arcade next week, canât wait! 
3 Likes
FWIW one deck is good for like 10 people for sure but if you are over 20 you might wanna get another deck. Itâs more fun when people have lots of cards and/or chances to earn cards so you need to have enough to make that happen. If you have any 3-strikes ones you can re-use most of those too which Iâve done in the past but full Match Play decks are ideal
2 Likes