Munchkin

(Reuel Miller, local MiB) Because the InSpectres game finished really early, I had quite a lot of players (around 15 - 20) for the Munchkin demo. For each winner of each game, I gave a Bookmark that they could use in the tournament that would run on Sunday and Monday. They were also playing the tournament rules, which included some house rules that helped the organisers move some of their merchandising (I had special rules for the CLAWs t-shirt, and if you wore last year's SchpatCON t-shirt). We started at 5pm, and at around 9pm the last game ended and people sat around for a while telling their war stories. I distributed a few more bookmarks to some of the people that told really fun stories and called it a night.

On the Sunday and Monday, I ran the Munchkin tournament. Since I was not given a dedicated time slot for the Munchkin tournament, I ran it along side the roleplaying modules. This meant that while the roleplaying modules were happeneing I only had one, and sometimes two games going, and when the modules were over, all my tables were busy. I let the non-competative players (those that had not paid to play) play with the competative players (those that had paid, and were trying to win the prize), as I hoped they might sacrifice their attempt to win just to mess with the competative players. Which most of them did, but some did not which gave some advantage to the competative players playing with them. And since there were experienced Munchkin players playing with people who had never played before, I blended all my games together (Munchkin, UA, CE, CX, Star and Fu), and then split the piles evenly amongst the tables assigned to me... So experienced players might know of a cards existance, but would not know if that card was even on their table. And every so often I would remix the cards, shuffle and then split them up again.

I used the following rules for my Tournament:

  1. All games played to level 5 (this did not stop one game for lasting a touch over THREE hours), and there must be 4 players per game. You can play in as many games as you can, but only your top three finishes will count to your standings total
  2. Total effective level at the end of the last combat counts as your score. If you beat three monsters in your final combat, your actual level would count as 7 (assuming they were all worth one level; and then you can add your bonuses)
  3. If you won, you get an extra 5 levels
  4. You get the treasure from your last combat, and equip any items you can (if you have the empty slot, I treated it like equipping items during combat... So you could not get the win because you used the Mallet from Munchkin Fu, and then swop it for the Chainsaw from your backpack for extra levels)
  5. There were added rules for wearing a CLAWs t-shirt (if the logo was on the front, you could equip human only items regardless of your current race & if the logo was on the back you could equip an Elf only items, regardless of your current race), and for wearing a SchpatCON t-shirt (+1 to all die rolls... I am a co-ordinator of that con, so I wanted to help my con's main co-ordinator sell some old t-shirts)
  6. Top 4 people go into a final, where the winner of the final wins the tournament

The average good result was around 25-30, and in the last game the winner picked up a Mook, which he Demon Possessed, which helped him get a final score of 43 (which went to a 48 with his bonus 5 levels for the win).

On the Sunday, I started play at 11am, and was going to stop at 6pm, but my date cancelled on me, so I kept playing. Eventually, at 9pm, I stopped the day's play as I wanted to go watch Chronicles of Riddick. On the Monday, I started at 11am, and stopped the round robin play at 6pm. The last game that was still being played at the 6pm cut off went on for about another 20 minutes. It then took me 10 minutes to get the final started as one player had to go get money for a t-shirt (to take advantage of the extra rules). I then started the final, which went on for about half an hour before the comedy of errors was over. The winner eventually won because his gross error was not quite as bad as the errors made by the three other players.

In total, 4 glaringly bad errors were made by each of the finalists. In order, they were:

  1. Alex's Error: AFTER Dave and Adam had charmed the high level monster away, to get it's treasure, Alex wandered in a low level monster they could easily kill. So not only did Dave get the level for the low level monster, he and Adam also got all the treasure from the high level monster AND the low level monster.
  2. Adam's Error: In an attempt to stop Sed from stealing an item from him, Adam played the "Senseless Act of Kindness GUAL" card. He thought he could give away the item (that was in his backpack) that Sed was trying to steal. He ended up losing his +4 Mallet of St EEEEEEEEEUUUUUUUWWWWWWW. This was especially bad, as in his next combat, Sed played the "Undead" card. If Adam had still had his Mallet, he would have been +4 up, and could have thrown in the three cards for a +9. In the end, he had to run away.
  3. Dave's Error: Dave got hit by the Hungry Backpack curse. So at the end of his turn, he rolled a 4 (which turned into a 5 due to his recently acquired SchpatCON t-Shirt, which gave a +1 to all die rolls), and lost the 3 cards he was holding in his hand... which were two alley cards and a WISHING RING!!!!! Eventually, he did get rid of the backpack when he rolled a 5 (that turned into a 6 due to his recently acquired SchpatCON t-shirt).
  4. Sed's Error: Sed had both the Thief and Warrior equipped for most of the game. None of the other players noticed (even though most of the audience were biting their tongues trying desperately not to blurt out the mistake) until he got into his final combat. And since he had used his Thief abilities, but never used his warrior abilities, he lost warrior.

But since no-one could stop him in that last combat, he won the tournament. And to think that he had not played one game the day before, and had only come into the con for about 5 minutes to negotiate the selling of ALL his Magic cards to our FLGS representative. So, one Magic player converted successfully ;-)

This was a great con. I really wish more people from the other cities in South Africa could have attended, but with Icon (South Africa's largest con) happening just a month earlier, not many showed up. But it was still very well attended by the Cape Town roleplayers.

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