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The Midwest Circuit: 2014

viperboy_74

Smash Master
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Hello Midwest,

As some of you have heard from our Facebook group, we are going to start a circuit in the Midwest. If you're unfamiliar with this idea, it involves around 5 or 6 large tournaments, with a points based system. Your points vary, depending on how you place at each event. The top few players with the most points at the end of the circuit get a large pot bonus, as well as every event along the way having their own, usual cash prizes.


Now, with that out of the way, there are a few things to address, thus the point of this thread:

1) we need a mini board to make decisions, probably 3 or 5 people who are active, know the scene, and know the players. These decisions must always be at the benefit of the community, and This board must be able to communicate at least once a week, likely more.

2) we need people who are willing and able to run massive events. Im sure there are an overwhelming amount of people who will want to do this, but things as location, venue options, and accommodation's will come into play

3) we need mass amounts of hype to get this in full swing as designed!

These are early stages of big plans, and there is a lot to discuss. Please, for the time being, refrain from discussing things such as:

1) what are pay outs
2) what games or events will be featured
3) rule sets in general


If you're interested in this as a player, as a TO, as joining the board, or anything else, this is the place to do it!

Lets do this up right, midwest




Update 2/14/14
The Discussion so Far is as follows:

Breaking the region into MW:E and MW:W, to accommodate both location extremities of the region.

I've taken Juggleguy's idea, and I'm going to run with it a bit and elaborate a few minor issues I foresee.

One of the problems that I foresee is that if the points from each circuit come together for a grand finale, there's likely going to be someone who attends most of these on both sides, thus giving an unfair points advantage. Our idea to fix this:



A centralized first tournament (I'm looking at you, Champaign and SMYM) where both circuits start their points, and a centralized last tournament (I'm looking at you, Chicago or South Bend FC.) From there, we split to 2 circuits, 3 or 4 tournaments for MW:W and 3 or 4 for MW:E (same number required, though)

From there, any single person is only allowed to capitalize on the 5 or 6 tournaments worth of points, with the first and last being 2 of them, thus only allowed to accumulate circuit points at any 4 events in between. Anyone is welcome to go to any MW:E or MW:W tourney, obviously, but your points only count for 4 events outside of the Opener and the Finale (the highest 4 you've received, to make incentive for going to multiple tourneys.)




Ideas on this?

Edit: a more visualized breakdown

MW:W Circuit....................MW:E Circuit
SMYM (shared).................SMYM (shared)
Event 2.............................Event 2
Event 3.............................Event 3
Event 4.............................Event 4
Event 5.............................Event 5
FC (shared)......................FC (shared)

You can attend any of these events, on either side, you're allowed 6 total tournaments worth of points, if you attend 8 events, say, your best 6 placements are the points used.
 
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MegaRobMan

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I've been the TO in Nebraska for a while, probably been the most active player in NE for a few years, I know the Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and some of the MN/WI/OH/KY players.

I'd be willing to help, host, or help host an event.

Lux and I ran a Brawl MW:W circuit and it was fairly successful, so I have some experience.
 
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Chronodiver Lokii

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Ohio might somehow be up for something like this

i can ask the melee crews as well

i know i want to host RAGE2 sometime......
 

Roux

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I've not run a larger-than-local tourney before, but I have TO'd about 5 tourneys in the past year. I can't travel much as having kids and a wife and multiple jobs is restrictive, but I would love to make St. Louis a spot on the circuit. I know there are also other actives here that are willing to TO, and I've found the smash community here to be extremely helpful and faithful when it comes to running tourneys.
 

Oro?!

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Definitely need to run logistics on this. Is this going to be the entire MW, or just one of either MW:E or MW:W? Illinois can realistically do either, especially since this idea came from you Viperboy.

Is this Melee only, or PM/Melee?

BunBun has the point/payout system he used for the old circuit still, so we could probably use that.

I'm down to help in whatever ways I can if this works out. Sounds like it could bring some massive hype and motivation to the MW.
 

Juggleguy

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Realistically I think there might have to be two isolated circuits, Midwest East and Midwest West, like suggested above. Think about the relative travel distances for all parties involved and I think you'll come to this conclusion, too. With two circuits you could have a grand finale in Chicago to cap it off and accurately pay out to the best performers of each half of Midwest. The best part is, if anyone is crazy enough to attend events in both circuits and do well enough, they'd still have a chance to earn prizes in both circuits.

Midwest East
1 Illinois event (counts for both)
1 Indiana event
1 Michigan event
1 Ohio event
1 Pittsburgh event

Midwest West
1 Illinois event (counts for both)
1 Wisconsin event
1 Missouri event
1 Nebraska event
1 Minnesota/Iowa/Kansas/somewhere event

Circuit Finale in Chicago (again counts for both)
 
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Juggleguy

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Yeah, I think so too. With every circuit the most common issue is how to balance geographic locations to ensure fairness in terms of points structure. And that issue is magnified in the Midwest due to giant travel distances. This isn't a criticism of Midwest players' ability or willingness to travel at all, it's just an age-old fact that our region has to deal with.
 

viperboy_74

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Theres a lot of helpful input here already, this is exactly what I was looking for. I'll post more constructively this evening on some of my thoughts with these ideas
 

Shadow the Past

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Why play Brawl anymore? Soon Smash4/MK8 will be out and we'll all be playing that. Just like how we ditched Melee for MK:DD.
Please don't let this become a Melee/Brawl debate. Brawl has just as much representation in the Midwest as Melee and PM, so there's literally no reason to exclude it.
 

MegaRobMan

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Realistically I think there might have to be two isolated circuits, Midwest East and Midwest West, like suggested above. Think about the relative travel distances for all parties involved and I think you'll come to this conclusion, too. With two isolated circuits you could have a grand finale in Chicago to cap it off and accurately pay out to the best performers of each half of Midwest. The best part is, if anyone is crazy enough to attend events in both circuits and do well enough, they'd still have a chance at earning prizes in both circuits.

Midwest East
1 Illinois event (counts for both)
1 Indiana event
1 Michigan event
1 Ohio event

Midwest West
1 Illinois event (counts for both)
1 Wisconsin event
1 Missouri event
1 Nebraska/Iowa/Minnesota/Kansas/somewhere event

Circuit Finale in Chicago (again counts for both)
I like this idea.

Also, I kind of undersold myself earlier. I am also very much involved in the South and North Dakota smash scenes, more so than the KS, MO and IL melee scenes, to the point where Rayku (old GA player) and BlubbaPinecone traveled like 14 hours to attend a 15 man tournament of mine. There's a car of 4 high schoolers coming from SD for a touranmetn I'm running on the 22nd.

A few of them have let me know that they are interested even though it is unrealistic to have one there and having one in MN or NE would be the best alternatives for them, if you include the ENTIRE MW.

Please don't let this become a Melee/Brawl debate. Brawl has just as much representation in the Midwest as Melee and PM, so there's literally no reason to exclude it.
I'm assuming this is specifically meant for melee, and he was more or less asking if PM should be involved, it would be hard to coordinate a 3 game circuit, though I personally think having an all 4 smash game circuit would be the most amazing thing ever.

Speaking of KS, the only person who has consistently held events for melee the last ~2 years that has had darkrain or Jace or OOS attendance, etc...is DeLux, who is primarily a brawl player. Though StrongBad and darkrain actually ran the tournaments.

Edit: Also what is the facebook group?
 
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DeLux

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I support the idea of a circuit, but I don't think I'd support a full blown Midwest Circuit for obvious logistics reasons.
If I have to drive more than 5 hours, I better be able to go skiing in Colorado for my troubles.

But if this happens, 4HYPE! is already in preliminary planning phases. I've been working on some potential sponsorship deals in secret :p
 
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Strong Badam

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just do mostly MW:E only and include a St. Louis tournament or something. and/or me & delux can run a KS tourney.
im not driving to minnesota/wisconsin for a tourney no matter how much $ i'd be making lol

re: brawl:
if the TOs of brawl step up and the players are motivated to go, it should be there. but there are many hubs of mw smash where there's not really any brawl happening, while the other two games are. so idc.
 
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Flashlight_Eyes

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Seems like a really great idea. Contrary to popular believe, Iowa does have a smash scene these days, albeit it only became active again recently, so it would be awesome if a tournament got placed not so far away for our players.
 

Dekuscrub

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Hey I am the representation for our small melee group in South Dakota! We love the idea of a split circuit, especially if one could be hosted in South Dakota :D but honestly a Nebraska/Minnesota would be amazing
 

standardtoaster

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I really like Juggleguy's idea the best so far. Actually gives people from the outer edges of the midwest a chance to be in the circuit without having to drive like 10 hours to an event.
 

T-Murder

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Kcmo smash bros may b interested in the missouri side of things. We already host a monthly called di or die we brought out 30 people. We have pretty good quality people too jace and r-frizzle have been to every tourney and strongbad is coming to the next one. I'll have to talk to other admins but it is possibility.
 

Massive

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Splitting a circuit into East/West halves makes loads of sense.
I don't know why it wasn't done before, it seems no obvious now, lol.

Somebody plan another SMYM already so we can start this up.
 
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Strong Badam

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Kcmo smash bros may b interested in the missouri side of things. We already host a monthly called di or die we brought out 30 people. We have pretty good quality people too jace and r-frizzle have been to every tourney and strongbad is coming to the next one. I'll have to talk to other admins but it is possibility.
trey if our area is going to have a circuit event it's gonna be 4hype, srry dude
 

Loring

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Minnesota recently starting running triweekly tournaments at the UofM with good response (expecting around 70-80 entrants at our next one), I'm sure we could turn one into a regional event.
 

Loring

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Next one being the one on March 2nd?
Yeah next one is scheduled for Sunday March 2nd. I think the plan is to get a bigger venue this time and we are shooting for around 75-80 total entrants for all events, also considering raising the entry fee to attract you WI kids to make the journey
 

viperboy_74

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Edit: I really like Juggleguy's idea, so I'm going to run with it a bit and elaborate a few minor issues I forsee

I really like the idea of splitting this into 2 circuits as well, the only problem that I foresee is that if the points from each circuit come together for a grand finale, there's likely going to be someone who attends most of these on both sides, thus giving an unfair points advantage.

This leaves two ideas:

Both ideas revolve around the same concept, a centralized first tournament (I'm looking at you, Champaign and SMYM) where both circuits start their points, and a centralized last tournament (I'm looking at you, Chicago or South Bend FC.) From there, we split to 2 circuits, 4 tournaments in between for MW:W and 4 for MW:E.

Idea A) is that any person is only allowed to capitalize on 6 tournaments worth of points, with the first and last being 2 of them, thus only allowed to accumulate circuit points at any 4 events in between. Anyone is welcome to go to any MW:E or MW:W tourney, obviously, but your points only count for 4 events outside of the Opener and the Finale (the highest 4 you've received, to make incentive for going to multiple tourneys.)

Idea B) involves a lot more coordination, and honestly I'm already leaning towards idea A, but we could attempt to coordinate the middle events on the same day, I.E. MW:E does event 2 in Ohio on May 24th AND MW:W does event 2 in Kansas on May 24th, which only allows players to attend 4 middle events either way.

Ideas on this?

Edit: a more visualized breakdown of Idea A:

MW:W Circuit....................MW:E Circuit
SMYM (shared).................SMYM (shared)
Event 2.............................Event 2
Event 3.............................Event 3
Event 4.............................Event 4
Event 5.............................Event 5
FC (shared)......................FC (shared)

You can attend any of these events, on either side, you're allowed 6 total tournaments worth of points, if you attend 8 events, say, your best 6 placements are the points used.
 
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Juggleguy

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I like idea A a lot. It is what I had in mind, but you explained it much better.

What timetable are you envisioning for this? April - August? Just wondering.

Also, regarding the point someone made about events being a month apart -- I think that's unnecessary. Smash turnouts in 2013 and even the beginning of 2014 so far have indicated to me that tournament oversaturation is no longer a major issue these days, with the Melee and PM scenes booming as much as they are. I think two weeks of separation is just fine for events in the same half-circuit, and one week of separation is fine for events in the overall circuit. I still think we should avoid straight-up date conflicts though, even if two events are in different half-circuits.
 
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viperboy_74

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Threw you credit in my last post since its just an elaboration and small expansion of your idea, didn't mean to plagiarize you :)

Also, i think the time span and timetable would be something for the board, when that becomes a thing (soon, I hope, still waiting on active volunteers)

Though I, personally, do enjoy a month a part, as I'm married and have a few other life conflicts from time to time, though I can always reschedule outside smash life, its nice to switch it up every few weeks, again, something for the board :)

Also, updated first post to include this information.
 
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EddyBearr

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The distance from one metro to another averages about 300-350 miles in the upper midwest. That's the distance it takes to link the Tri-State Area to NoVa/MD. To be honest, the midwest is way too spread out for what basically amounts to a few melee tourneys.

It sounds like a legit idea, but I would recommend waiting until smash 4 comes out and including that. It'll then have potential to be grandiose. Right now it just seems less-than-worth-it.

If a "North-west/Upper Midwest" circuit were to happen, it'd be best of the tournaments just took place at different spots in Iowa. Iowa is a nice middle-ground state for us.
 
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viperboy_74

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This isn't the first circuit the midwest has featured, it was quite successful the first time around. Its more inconvenient for us as a region than it is for others, for sure, but that's how midwest rolls
 

Roux

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I really like Idea A in viperboy's proposal, and I tend to think that spanning it over a longer period of time would be more preferable, as in having a month-ish between each circuit event. I think it will give smashers with busier lives a more likely chance to participate in all the circuit events.
 
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MegaRobMan

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People should be allowed to attend both sides of it, and tournaments should not be on the same date as other circuit events, at least a week between them. People in IL shouldn't be punished because they are 10 hours away from everything at max.

Supposedly the midwest is Montana (idk if they have a scene), Wyoming (U of M has a scene), North Dakota (2 players at apex thuis year), South Dakota (growing fast), Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky. I guess I don't get why Colorado isn't in the MW.

I think we 100% need to do a tournament in STL, and that's really South for some people to get to, so we just need to keep track of that stuff and make sure there are ones closer to other people. Going against that same logic, I do also think Kansas should get an event in like Lawrence or whatever, too.

If we do those realistically we need to have two in places like Omaha (or Council Bluffs), Des Moines (maybe Iowa City) Sioux Falls, and Minneapolis for the MWW are very centralized for the least amount of travel per MW:W person to maximize traveling.

It'd be nice for Nebraska to host an event, but if we did STL, Lawrence, Des Moines (or Iowa City) and Minneapolis, it's pretty fair traveling for us. It's my opinion that Wisconsin should be in the MW:E.

If we did 5 events per sub circuit, the MW:E could have MI, WI, OH, IN, and KY all host events so there wouldn't be any "home field" advantage for anyone other than our central hub, IL..

And then Nebraska could host one or have one in Sioux City if that would be "fairer" to the Dakotas, but they would have to find a capable TO.

Recap
The Midwest is too ****ing big.
I think we should do 5 events per MW:W and MW:E
MW:W MO, KS, IA, MN and NE host events.
MW:E MI, WI, OH, IN and KY host events.
We all meet up at the 1st tournament and last tournaments in IL.
No events overlap.

The sound you hear is kels pockets get fatter.
 

KishPrime

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Historically, the Midwest Circuit HAS been split into two halves before. It's a good idea.

Also historically during circuits, I don't think we've ever had Smashers past Kansas and Nebraska, so I think Missouri as about as far west as Circuit events went back pre-2009.

I swear if we don't have at least one 4-man Brawl tournament on this thing BECAUSE WE ARE ALL A FAMILY I will protest, possibly violently. FOUR MAN BRAWL. FOUR MAN BRAWL. I don't care if you slap those suckers into a FFA tournament, but we're holding it.

Also historically, I won the first-ever MW Circuit event. Aw yeah.

Finally, if I remember right, we used a points system that went something like this:
1st = 40
2nd = 30
3rd = 25
4th = 20
5th = 15
So on and so forth down to 1 point for 25th place, in order to give proper weight to winning a tournament, and also to allow someone who missed a tournament but won the events he was at to still have a shot at #1 overall. It's not hard to make a scoring system but this one worked well for us.
 
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viperboy_74

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I've edited the first post to exclude Idea B, I agree, trying to coordinate tournaments on the same day across the region really is a horrible idea, and idea A was much more solid.

What we need from here really entails getting 2 boards together, one to run the MW:E and one for the MW:W. If you're interested in something like this, please send me an IM so we can get some discussions going.

Also, I'd still like to refrain from discussing what games this circuit will be featuring until the boards are set up, that's not a decision that a single person should make.
 

MegaRobMan

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Like I said, Ideally we would actually do 5 tournaments per subseries.

I mean, what is the MW:E if Wisconsin isn't in it? Just Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Indiana? In terms of pure land mass, that's crazy talk to think that the MW:W would be 9 states taking up almost triple the amount of land mass.

I personally think it makes it a lot easier to do.

If we kept it at 4, for the MW:W it would have to basically be KS, MO, IA and MN, so WI would probably get the shaft either way. especially since they can realistically make the IA event without too much trouble and MO as well as the OH, MI and IN tournaments.

As far as travelng, having a 5 stage tournament is easy to travel to for everyone except for

KS-Would be far to make any 5th event outside of KS/IA/MO/NE, MN is far, KY is far, WI is way further, etc...
KY-Would realistically need to attend the MO event instead of the WI event.
SD-Would be far to make more than 3 events outside of IA/NE/MN.
ND-SD but IA is too far, but if WI did a MW:E event, it would be feasible for them to attend 3.
Wyoming and Montana get screwed but I think that's okay :o
 
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viperboy_74

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I see where you're coming from, and I agree, 5 tournaments including the into and finale is likely best, especially since a point tie is much more likely in an even number of events, on top of logistics reasons.

Any other input on that subject?
 

viperboy_74

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I see where you're coming from, and I agree, 5 tournaments including the into and finale is likely best, especially since a point tie is much more likely in an even number of events, on top of logistics reasons.

Any other input on that subject?
 
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