BlogNomic on BoardGameArena

BlogNomic players take part in occasional boardgame tournaments on BoardGameArena.

On Discord, in the #online-board-games channel, you can react to the message at this link to opt-in to the @bga-ping-group group that will be pinged when new tournaments become are available or are put up for a vote.

Tournaments are generally two-player - we can do 3+ player ones, but should probably be wary about those with a lot of short turns, as they'll take a while spread across timezones.

Invalid games: solved or easily cheatable games like chess, Hardback and Buyword are all currently banned by BGA from being run as tournaments, even privately. Coup is unable to be played turn-based due to the amount of at-any-time challenges (even with just two players, where this wouldn't matter). Note also that games which are still in Beta can't be run as tournaments.

Regular tournaments

For a while we posted this group-curated list to the Discord so that people could emoji-vote on what to play:

🤠 3000 Scoundrels / 6️⃣ 6 Nimmt / 🗿 7 Wonders Architects / ⚔️ 7 Wonders Duel / 📜 Ancient Knowledge / 🍎 Applejack / 🟥 Azul / 🔙 Backgammon / 🐻 Bärenpark / 🐱 Boop / 🐰 Bunny Kingdom / 🧑‍🌾 Carcassonne / 🌐 Cartographers / 🏡 Castles of Burgundy / 🖼️ Caper: Europe / 🥣 Century: Spice Road / ☯️ Chakra / 🗺️ Colorado / 🔱 Conspiracy / 🕵️ District Noir / 🧛 Dracula vs Van Helsing / 🦕 Evolution / 🧚 Fairy Trails / 🛣️ Faraway / 🌳 Forest Shuffle / 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Haggis / 🌸 Hanamikoji / 🏎️ Heat: Pedal to the Metal / *️⃣ Hex / 🐝 Hive / 💡 Innovation (no expansions) / 🔊 Innovation (Echoes expansion) / 🏺 Innovation (Artifacts expansion) / 🌇 Innovation (Cities expansion) / 🏰 Kingdom Builder / 👑 Kingdomino / 🪓 Knarr / Ⓜ️ Machiavelli / ⏳ Mandala / 🌒 Nova Luna / 🪡 Patchwork / 💰 Pax Renaissance / 🪐 Planet: Unknown /⚡ Quirky Quarks / 🧙 Res Arcana / 🏗️ Santorini / 🪙 Scopa / 🧂 Sea Salt & Paper / 🐕 Spots / 💎 Splendor / 💍 Splendor Duel / 🎲 Super Mega Lucky Box / 🍣 Sushi Go Party / 🚩 Tapestry / 🧌 Tash-Kalar / 🎷 Uptown / 🐦 Wingspan / 🔖 Wizards of the Grimoire

If at least four people vote for a particular game, we started a tournament for it.

This system was put on hold in September 2024 when we were struggling to get four votes for anything. We're currently trying a system of people just pitching games to play (maximum one per player per week) and any that get 3+ interested reactions get a tournament.

BlogNomic Random tournaments

Starting in August 2023, BlogNomic is playing a number of tournaments of randomly selected two-player games from the BGA collection.

Ground rules for those tournaments are (and by all means propose amendments on Discord):

• Each tournament is a random game from this list (derived from https://boardgamearena.com/gamelist?specificTag=30), selecting from games that nobody has flagged as being a game they have already played.
• Players can only join a BN Random tournament if they have never played the game before.
• Players unfamiliar with a game are only allowed to read the game's rules: they cannot read up on strategy tips, or play any practice games.
• Tournaments will run in the Swiss format, with three matches.

BN Tourney tournaments

A series of tournaments where players agree to play a series of games chosen by others in the group, without knowing in advance what will be picked.

Quoting Clucky:

1. Everyone signs up ahead of time. Might limit it to 8 signups just to keep the numbers working right.
2. Randomize the list of 8 players. In order, each one adds a game to the tournament. (If people are concerned with getting stuck playing a game they hate we could do a system that allows vetoes but I don't wanna over complicate things). Game must be playable with 2 people.
3. Tournaments are swiss style, 3 games, played over the course of 2 weeks each. (Note that with 8 players swiss, in order to win you have to go 3-0 but you can still lose the first round and finish 2-1)
4. After all 8 games have been played, see who has won the most tournaments and most games overall to be the Grand Champion