Bringing your own letters to a "Bristol Style" Co-Event?

[JackHurst]

(This post will be continually updated as the discussion progresses)

So some co-events work by splitting players up into triples and making them play each other with one player hosting using the board game. When I say the board game, this usually means a pack of consonants, a pack of vowels and a suitable tool for generating random numbers. The system is a good way of doing things, and the events normally run smoothly. Now as the event organiser isn't really expected to have 20 odd copies of the board game, a lot of the players bring their own version of the game to ensure that there are enough copies of the game for all groups to be playing at the same time.

An issue that arises from this is that the contents of letters packs in different editions of the board game can vary significantly. I believe this introduces an element of random luck to the tournament in the sense that if you end up playing four of your games at a table with a poorly distributed set of cards, then you will have shorter words available, and therefore stand to get less points and not place as highly in the tournament as you'd like to. Of course, there is always luck involved in the game of countdown, in the sense that cecil might generate 105 when you are looking to claw back andget within 10 points, having picked 6 small in the final numbers round, or perhaps you'll be fishing for a letter A and it just so happens to come out when you ask for that final vowel. I consider this sort of luck as something beyond our control, which ultimately levels out in the long run. However this issue of the cards on tables at co events, people could be tempted to try and swap packs on table to avoid playing with that dodgy pack they just had to play with, or if you are a fair person, you might just sit there and play with the cards you're dealt and get really pissed off that everybody else is getting better scores than you and there's nothing you can do about it.

Because of this, I believe it would improve the play at co-events if there were a set of guidelines for letter packs that people bring with them for playing 9 rounders. At this point, I'd like to highlight to you guys that you are encouraged to post any points you see that give a good reason to disagree with me.


If there is a strong consensus that having a good set of guidelines that events could adopt (if they choose) would be a good idea, then I propose that we can work together to create a set of guidelines that:

-Gives a wide range of selections, distributed similarly to those on the show/apterous
-Most packs can be streamlined (i.e can have sufficiently many cards removed from them) to meet the guidelines
-Allows a little bit of variation (i.e doesnt specify exatly how many of each card) so that we don't know exactly what to expect whenever we play, and also so that the above bullet point can be achieved
-Have sufficiently many consonants and vowels in the pack to make card counting not worth doing

[Andy Platt]

Interesting point, particularly as I'm standardising the Leamington ones by printing them out myself

[Graeme Cole]

Don't you mean Edinburgh/Lincoln style? Bristol style is when everyone gets the same selections.

Anecdotally, the newer board game sets have poorer letter distributions than the older ones, but I've never heard of anyone actually checking them to see what the distribution actually is. The numbers distribution is universally agreed upon (one each of 25, 50, 75, 100, and two each of 1-10), but I'm told the newer versions of the game only come with one of each small number rather than two, and no means of generating the target (the instructions say "the host thinks of a 3-digit number"). Not exactly progress when 10-20 years previously the board games came with a fruit machine-style device for picking the target, and you'd think the people tasked with making a Countdown board game might have done the bare minimum research necessary to learn that you need two of each of the small numbers.

With letters, I'm not so sure. I don't have a board game so can't check myself, but do the contents of the letters packs really vary that much? Some of the packs I've seen have a huge number of letters in them, so it's feasible that they might have more than one Q, X, J, Z, etc. And if a lot of these letters happen to be in the top half of the pile, and they all come out in the same game, it's easy to assume that the pack is "dodgy".

Perhaps those of us who have board games could post a list of how many of each letter they have, so we can get some data?

Incidentally, I quite liked Raccoon and CF's approach at Co:Lon in 2011, where each table was provided with a home-made set of letters and numbers and a 10-sided die for picking the target.

[Andy Platt]

Incidentally, I quite liked Raccoon and CF's approach at Co:Lon in 2011, where each table was provided with a home-made set of letters and numbers and a 10-sided die for picking the target.

Good

[Heather Styles]

As a generally lazy person, I prefer tournaments where everyone gets the same letters selections, because it cuts down on the amount of faffing around. But the home-made set of letters thing sounds like a good way of making sure that things are fair for Edinburgh/Lincoln-style events - wd Andy That said, I am not opposed to there being some guidelines on letters selections for event organisers. I didn't get a board game in my goodie bag, so cannot provide any data

[Ian Volante]

At CoBliv, I played firstly on a table with a well-organised and sorted letter set, and we got reasonable selections. The other two tables I was on were the standard mish-mash of EEEESEETR-type selections. Definitely adds an element of luck.

[Andy Platt]

How do you feel about the distribution itself? Looking at what Graeme suggests the distributions are, I'm going for a mix of S62 and S67's distributions. I toyed with stuffing a few extra 'nice' letters in there, like NRSTDLC and stuff, but that seemed to be too nice when we had a few games with it on Skype - three nines in ten letters rounds or something, haha.

[Ben Wilson]

At CoBliv, I played firstly on a table with a well-organised and sorted letter set, and we got reasonable selections. The other two tables I was on were the standard mish-mash of EEEESEETR-type selections. Definitely adds an element of luck.

I usually use my own sets at COLIN, and typically they've been played with enough times that the letters are well-randomised enough to prevent the horrific selections that frequently came up in the early days. I've been tempted to invest in custom decks on occasion but I doubt they'd be all that different distribution-wise than the ones I already have. An easier solution would be to just chop and change the existing decks to meet a pre-agreed standard- no one will ever do an Edinburgh-style tourney with 15 rounders so you know each game you'll only need a maximum of 36 consonants and 30 vowels.

[Thomas Carey]

I think each set should be checked against Graeme's set to seehow different it is to the standard, and it needs to be close enough - someone could approve them. Mine for instance is the same ad his with onemore B and one more F, which I think should pass.

[Johnny Canuck]

Anecdotally, the newer board game sets have poorer letter distributions than the older ones, but I've never heard of anyone actually checking them to see what the distribution actually is. The numbers distribution is universally agreed upon (one each of 25, 50, 75, 100, and two each of 1-10), but I'm told the newer versions of the game only come with one of each small number rather than two, and no means of generating the target (the instructions say "the host thinks of a 3-digit number"). Not exactly progress when 10-20 years previously the board games came with a fruit machine-style device for picking the target, and you'd think the people tasked with making a Countdown board game might have done the bare minimum research necessary to learn that you need two of each of the small numbers.

Wow. Just... Wow.

[Johnny Canuck]

Anecdotally, the newer board game sets have poorer letter distributions than the older ones, but I've never heard of anyone actually checking them to see what the distribution actually is. The numbers distribution is universally agreed upon (one each of 25, 50, 75, 100, and two each of 1-10), but I'm told the newer versions of the game only come with one of each small number rather than two, and no means of generating the target (the instructions say "the host thinks of a 3-digit number"). Not exactly progress when 10-20 years previously the board games came with a fruit machine-style device for picking the target, and you'd think the people tasked with making a Countdown board game might have done the bare minimum research necessary to learn that you need two of each of the small numbers.

Ouch.

[David Barnard]

Generally I thought the letters distribution at cobliv was quite fair, although there wasn't any 9's available I think I only saw 1 or 2 horror rounds and if I'm not mistaken people were shuffling and discarding the bad letters all across all the sets, the letters sets were certainly better than last year