Welcome to the Anachronism Cup. Based of the realization that, with Set 8, there were 32 cultural sweeps - as there are 32 teams in the World Cup.

Thus was born a fun way to kill time and play a format outside of Open. The set-up is pretty simple: each culture sweep in a set is one team (e.g., Set 8 Briton is a separate team from Set 2 Briton). The format is a modified best-of-three Super Culture Shock (SCS).

Instead of having 15 cards (3 builds) in a team's tournament stable, they get to use all 25 cards from their sweep, along with any eligible promo cards (see below). The first culture to win two games, wins the match.

Benches: But there's more. It just wouldn't be a team sport if the same two warriors sat out from each culture. To that end, during each round of play (qualifiers, group play, playoffs), each culture must play each of their 5 non-promo warriors at least once. For example, in their three group play matches, Ariki and Kupe and Hatupatu and Te Raupraha and Maui-tikitiki must play at least one game each.

Promos: Each culture has access to its corresponding promos. When a culture has more than one team (due to a revisit), the promos are split by set. The original sweep gets all the promos up to (but not including) the set where the revisit came out. For example, the Set 2 Chinese team gets all Chinese promos before Set 6; the Set 6 Chinese teams gets all Chinese promos from Set 6 and beyond.
Bokken: Set 1 Japanese get an extra Bokken. 'Cause I said so.

Stats & Tie-breakers: Teams get 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a tie. In addition to match W-L-T, I also keep track of total Games Lost (GL), and Life Differential (Life). In the case of a two-way tie in the standings, head-to-head is used to break the tie. A three-way tie is broken by 1) fewest games lost, then 2) highest life differential. If two teams are still tied after this, then it comes down to head-to-head.

Predictions: Getting it right and getting it wrong are half the fun. For pure sport, and the occasional prize, we encourage folks to make predictions during the Group Play round, and then again in the Playoffs.
Group Play: There will be a thread for folks to post their predictions. All you gotta do is guess where all 32 teams will finish. For each first place team you get right, you get 4 points. For each correct second place team, 3 points. Third place correct = 2 points, last place correct = 1 point.
Playoffs: Similar to the COTT, guess the brackets. A correct guess in the Round of 16 gets you 1 point, Quarterfinals gets you 2 points, Semifinals gets you 4, and if you guess the Finals winner, that's 8 points.
Prizes: There'll be some. Depends what folks want.

-J.

Ill participate in this. Dont really need a prize though as it seems fun to predict winners and read the reports anyway. Maybe ill accept the mailins that i need if you have any extras if i win.