Mutant League 2015 (?)-

[worstblogever]

For those who weren't around pre-forum reboot, every year in January/Februrary March going back since... shoot, 2004? There was a fantasy fan-fiction league run by now legendary CBR Member mattbib, amongst his many, many contributions to the CBR Forums.

In 2013, the mantle of leadership on it passed to Justin K, who I'm not so sure made the jump to the new CBR post reboot.

In any event, an annual tradition has not come to be... yet. At the moment, this thread exists to ask the question of if the moderators want Mutant League to continue for its 11th iteration, and if anyone is interested in it being brought back to participate. Because if there is a demand, I'm willing to put the work in to create a draft list, matchup locations and so forth.

What does everyone think?

[The Big G]

I'd be down for it

[Justin K.]

It started off fun, but turned into a toxic popularity contest that did more harm than good. There were so many posters who got along that were brought apart because of this.

If it is brought back, I would still participate, just because I enjoy writing the strats, but I feel like we should have a different voting system. So, I vote maybe (?)

[Darkgreed]

I never did it before, but if you teach me I'm down

[blinkingblah]

What were you supposed to do? Can you explain the tradition?

[Mari]

I may be interested in trying, but I can't find any information on the game format, etc.

[worstblogever]

It would work like this:


There's a list of characters that team "owners" draft from. You'd have 7 draft picks. A portion of the characters, like Magneto, Magik, or any time-manipulator or teleporter would cost 2, 3, 4, or 5 draft picks. So if you took one of them, it would cost you 2, 3, or 4 single 1 point characters.

From there, the teams would then be put into a double-elimination tournament, and each week, a location would be picked for the "battle". A match or two a day would come up to be read, and the next week, a new opponent would await. Team owners would write a strategy with their X-characters to defeat the opposing team in that location, but had to write it "in character". For example, having Nightcrawler being written to decapitate everyone would be a bit "off".

Each battle gets its own separate thread, and in it, a poll would go up for people to vote for who wrote a more plausible, and entertaining strategy for victory.

[Wedge Antilles]

I may be interested in giving this a try, depending on my work/life schedule at the time. How much of a time commitment is typically required to participate?

[worstblogever]

I may be interested in giving this a try, depending on my work/life schedule at the time. How much of a time commitment is typically required to participate?

It takes a couple hours a week to write a strategy, and then a couple hours on the day of your match to have a friendly debate/rebuttal about why yours worked better than your opponents. (Although, we might want to limit the amount of rebuttal time, because that's usually where the extended flame wars started).

[Newcloak]

It takes a couple hours a week to write a strategy, and then a couple hours on the day of your match to have a friendly debate/rebuttal about why yours worked better than your opponents. (Although, we might want to limit the amount of rebuttal time, because that's usually where the extended flame wars started).

The match debates could get decidedly heated and unfriendly, although hopefully the new forum rules will discourage most of that. As has been pointed out, adjusting the voting system might help in that respect as well. Something else that became a problem over recent leagues is general interest from the voting public. It's a bit demoralizing to lovingly craft a strat and only see five people or less vote in the entire match, which really comes down to three votes or less when you don't count the votes from the competitors themselves. Especially in the later matches.

Apart from that, Mutant League has always been one of the most enjoyable events on the X-forums and I'd love to see it come back.

[worstblogever]

The match debates could get decidedly heated and unfriendly, although hopefully the new forum rules will discourage most of that. As has been pointed out, adjusting the voting system might help in that respect as well. Something else that became a problem over recent leagues is general interest from the voting public. It's a bit demoralizing to lovingly craft a strat and only see five people or less vote in the entire match, which really comes down to three votes or less when you don't count the votes from the competitors themselves. Especially in the later matches.

Apart from that, Mutant League has always been one of the most enjoyable events on the X-forums and I'd love to see it come back.

I know what you mean about voting. Case in point, only 10 people have voted on the poll to say they want it back.

Also a problem? People saying they're in, and then disappearing before the draft, or not submitting strategies on Week 1.

[Mari]

The game seems interesting, and some say it was fun. But is there a reason why people drop out? If so, would it be possible to modify to possibly reduce the drop outs?

[worstblogever]

The game seems interesting, and some say it was fun. But is there a reason why people drop out? If so, would it be possible to modify to possibly reduce the drop outs?

I'm sure there were reasons. I mean, sometimes life just gets out of hand, and people don't get strategies done on time. It's really that simple.

It seems like maybe 2-4 of the 16 teams would have this happen on any given year.

[ChaZX]

I loved drafting strats for Mutant and Other Leagues. Hated the Popularity contest aspect but would be willing to participate as well if revived. Keep me in the loop.