Nations Cup 2007

From Tickipedia

The Nations Cup 2007 (NC 2007) was the third tournament of the Nations Cup series. At that time it was the NC with the most participating teams (16) and players (125). In the run up to the tournament there occured some troubles and arguments concerning the recruiting of transnational teams. After a very intense and sometimes rough discussion the NC 2007 started with two groups of eight teams in Round Robin which finished with 8 teams (4x Germany, 2x Transnational, 1x Austria, 1x France) advancing to the playoffs. After the quarter- and semifinal phase the final clash was determined. For both the Austrian Troublemakers (AT) and the German Train Smashers (GTS) it was the second final participation. AT managed to win this clash and their first Nations Cup as well as to prevent GTS from defending their title from 2006.

Contents 1 Registration phase 1.1 The Nations Cup Meat Market 1.2 Arguments with the recruiting of Transnational Teams 2 Participating Teams 3 Players 4 Initial Seeding 5 Round Robin 6 Playoffs 7 Ranking 8 Further Links

[edit] Registration phase

[edit] The Nations Cup Meat Market

The run up to the Nations Cup began with a new list, generated by Zeno, known as the Meat Market. This was an attempt to increase the number of participating teams, by listing top players by their country. The top 300 players were listed by their overall ELO and the country listed on their user info page.

[edit] Arguments with the recruiting of Transnational Teams

After the registration of the SOS-Team there occured some troubles about the rules of recruiting transnational teams. The complaint was that it seemed a team without a nation, intended for winning the Cup with a bunch of top players from minor countries. A controversy erupted, mostly played out in a nasty thread NC 2007 - all information and rules. At the height of the argument, by the time you read all of the new posts, you could refresh the page and find more waiting for you. The arguments created significant rifts in the community with reputations damaged and respect lost. At various times almost everybody who does work for the community quit, though most rejoined, remaining disgruntled. Lost at this point was the TD, thadd, who bore the brunt of the attacks for providing rulings that followed the letter of the law. The TD position was never replaced in that NC. Perhaps the biggest loss to the community was through shamogi who had spent so much time making the 2006 contest a success. His site was hardly used at all and is now mostly defunct though some links remain active. Eventually a committee of captains (NC Board) was put together to try to fix the rules and make the letter of the law match what people variously perceived the spirit of the law to be. At this point Masimo was running the NC Board and deserves much of the credit for keeping NC alive.

[edit] Participating Teams

After the registration phase 16 teams were registered to play in NC 2007. It was the first time without a team from Days of Wonder. They stated officially that it have had nothing to do with the problems occured in the run-up to the NC 2007, but was due to work constraints, especially those surrounding the Essen game fair Spiel Essen. It was the first NC with a team from Canada (Canadian Crazy Canucks), a second team from Austria (Transalpin) and a third team from France (Rosé TGV). A new team from Germany, the NewComerZ, full of relatively young, but well-regarded gamers, tried to reach the NC title in their first attempt. Another new German team, also a bunch of relatively inexperienced tournament players, registered as The Incredible Champion Hunters (TIC). Besides the Suomi-Oranje-Schweiz (SOS) team, which was a successor of the FINg-ShUI team from 2006 there was another transnational team (TNT) with strong but inexperienced tournament players.