It's All Relative

On Saturday the 18th, the day before Father's Day, we held an open Grand Melee using relative scoring. All board-game legal 'Mechs were allowed (as well as all stock and beta 'Mechs) but with a twist - score multipliers were assigned to the 'Mechs based on rough types:

150% multiplier - Stock 'Mech
130% multiplier - Beta 'Mech
100% multiplier - board game legal variant
80% multiplier -
Variant with 4 or more missile racks,
or Variant with more than 20 double heat sinks,
or Custom
70% multiplier -
Custom with 4 or more missile racks,
or Custom with more than 20 double heat sinks

In order to make it easier to tell what kind of 'Mechs you were facing in battle, a color code was assigned to each group. 150% 'Mechs were blue, 130% were green, 100% were yellow, 80% were orange, and 70% were red.

Some players had spent quite a bit of time digging through Zax's database to find the best 'Mechs, while others just showed up and played. Stock 'Mechs (blue) were easily the favorite class, accounting for 26 of the 48 'Mechs taken in the preliminary rounds and 5 of the 7 in the finals. Betas and Variants were close during the preliminaries - 8 betas vs 7 variants, but the last 2 'Mechs in the finals were both betas. 5 people took orange 'Mechs, of which 3 were missile boats, 1 was a heat beast, and 1 was a custom. The last 2 picks were both red Templar Roadkills.

Overall, stock 'Mechs did very well due to their 150% multiplier. Only 8 non-stock 'Mechs scored more than 5 points in any round, and 5 of those came in round 3 in which there were only 4 stock 'Mechs. Clearly the multipliers need work if we're going to run this style of tournament again!

Justice ran away with the first 3 rounds in stock 'Mechs, then took 4th in round 4 (behind 3 stock 'Mechs) using a Phantom C. He finished the preliminaries 8 points ahead (out of 40 possible) of Oblivious and KwikPain.

In the finals, though, it was Black Mantis who was running away with everything in a stock Masakari. At the halfway point Black Mantis had nearly double the points of 2nd place, over which he also held a multiplier advantage of 1.5 to 1.3 over KwikPain's beta Kodiak. But that's when things started going downhill... there were no more kills to be had for Black Mantis. Slowly the gap started to narrow, but he still held a commanding 3000 point lead with just 2 minutes to play. With 1 minute to go Justice had moved into 2nd place, 2000 points behind Black Mantis. Then Justice went on a killing spree, including a triple kill with less than 10 seconds remaining. Not only did he overtake Black Mantis, he won by 1200 points! That's an incredible comeback in a very short period of time.

The final results: 1st place went to Justice, 2nd to Black Mantis, and 3rd to Gurn. All three were in stock 'Mechs. Congratulations guys!

Next time I think we'll cut the range of bonus points to 120% for stock and beta 'Mechs and leave the rest the same.

-- Roadkill OUT