How to Test for Tournaments
Even though I've probably never done it.
Fantasy Flight Games just announced some details for Star Wars Unlimited's competitive play scene. You can watch the whole announcement here. If you don't have 30 minutes, here are the highlights:
Season 0 (the first competitive play season) will culminate in the Galactic Championship. This tournament will be an open tournament.
Planetary Qualfiers begin at the LGS level in October 2024. Winning a Planetary Qualifier grants you a day one bye at the Galactic Championship.
From Season 1 forward, Galactic Championship's will require a certain number of “tournament points" to qualify. Planetary, Sector, and Regional Qualifiers will give these tournament points.
I'm so excited. I've been (and continue to be) nervous about whether FFG will give SWU long term support. This announcement, however, motivates me to press even harder ino this game. I've been playing more on Karabast than ever before and even joined a competitive testing team.
The frequent playing and team discussions has me thinking about the testing process and how to optimize it.
What is “testing"?
First, we should probably define terms. By “testing”, I mean playing the game methodically to improve your deck, skill, or prepare for a particular tournament. It's akin to “practice” for traditional sports. It stands opposed to just “playing games". There's a difference between cracking open a starter deck, playing a few games with friends, and putting the decks away until next time.
For example, you might test in order to try out a new card, or you might test to see how a particular sideboard strategy works against a popular deck.
Notably, testing cares about the process more than the results. When you play 10 - 15 test games with your team, it doesn't really matter if you won or lost. Whether a deck is good or bad is certainly a thing we care about (if your deck always loses, why are we playing it?), but the goal of the game isn't to exclusively to beat your testing partner - it's to figure out why your deck performed the way it did. This is is different than in a tournament, for example, where we just want to win and don't care about the “why".
So, how do you test?
Full disclosure: I don't actually know. I know that a lot of people are actually just “playing games" when they say “testing”, and I know a lot of people wouldn't actually like testing if they were actually tasked with doing it. I've also spent a lot of time thinking about the process, and I guess I’m considering this my forray into explaining my theories behind testing.
Full caveat: I know a lot of good, competitive card game players. From world champions and pro tour caliber of players, I've been lucky enought to develop friendships with great players. In all this time, I've never once asked how they test. It’s probably silly I haven't, but I consider that kind of information proprietary (as I'm sure they do), and never wanted to pressure them to ask their process. I say that to say: I expect them to laugh at some of my thoughts and ideas here. I'm probably missing the forest through the trees.
Goals - gotta have ‘em
To productively do anything in life, you need to have goals. Goals both with the people you do things with (that is to say, do your testing partners share similar goals), and goals within the individual activities themselves (this series of games we're about to play should have a stated goal).
Whenever goals aren't aligned, there are problems. A teammate wanting to only do well at local organized play has much different goals (and thereby ideas of what testing is) than a teammate wanting to win a National Championship. The expectations will be so far apart that it won't be productive.
Likewise, if Player A wants to work on a sideboard strategy against a meta deck, and Player B wants to try a couple of wonky cards out in an established deck, neither will leave the games feeling satisfied.
So to that end, when you organize your testing, you should be able to articulate two things:
Are the people I'm testing with likeminded? Are we all here for the same reason? Note: this goal is a lot more difficult to nail down than the next one. This goal gets into the nitty gritty of how frequently you'll test, where, and many other details that are hard to agree on.
When playing individual games, are we in agreement as to why we're playing these games?
The benefit of playing the same deck
Some teams (I'm going to use “team" to describe testing groups from now on) advocate for each team member playing the same deck at a tournament. I've gone back and forth on this issue in my mind, but lately, I agree.
Each teammate playing the same deck streamlines the testing process. Let's imagine a tourmament where we all agree to play The Team Deck. In the testing process, when everyone plays The Team Deck, everyone benefits from all games being played. Player A plays The Team Deck into Player B on a meta deck. Both Player A and Player B, as well as all other team members, benefit from that data.
But let's say Player B isn't on The Team Deck and is instead on another deck. Anytime they aren't playing their chosen deck, they are getting nothing out of the process. At least when testing against The Team Deck, they get the benefit of learning more about The Team Deck.
Here is AzulGG (Pokemon TCG content creator) describing this concept way better than I can:
Of course, a large part of the testing process is identifying The Team Deck, but once this is established, it's everyone's best interest to “bend the knee" and play the best deck. Those who deviate hurt their own productivity, as well as that of their teammates.
Takebacks, allow them
Earlier, I mentioned how the results of testing games don't really matter. I emphasized the process, not the result. A large part of this is allowing takebacks and making sure both players are learning the most they can. If you make a critical error, and your teammate wins the game only because of that mistake, I don't know how useful that data is. After all, an opponent at a major event likely isn't going to make the critical error.
Hoping your opponent makes bad decisions isn't a good way to succeed. If you discover your teammate took a suboptimal line in a testing game, go back and fix it. Yes, it may change the result of your individual game, but remember: that doesn't matter. What matters is being most ready for your major tournaments.
There is something to be said about learning from your mistakes. The player comitting the error, if forced to live with it, is less likely to commit that error again. I don't dispute this; I just don't find it helpful for the team testing process. If an individual player needs more reps to avoid commiting routine errors, they should get those in at locals or online - not in focused testing sessions.
Tracking data
Thanks to the modern marvel that is Discord, tracking data is easier than ever before. When testing “The Team Deck” (or trying to determine what The Team Deck is), tracking how matchups play out, noting variations on decklists, and discussing nuances with teammates is important.
If information isn't centralized and accessible, it becomes impossible to facilitate your goals. I'm a big proponent of data tracking in most aspects of life, but in trading cards, I'm aware that sample sizes are a problem. Even still, having a place to collaborate and further your goals is important. Ultiamtely, if the testing sessions don't live anywhere beyond the game itself, it probably wasn't useful.
For example, let's say you want to test The Team Deck into a new deck that has been making its rounds on Youtube. How does The Team Deck fair? If it's good, we should probably note a sideboard plan, why The Team Deck doesn't require any changes, and why we're not worried about the new deck.
If The Team Deck struggles into the new deck, we need to know why. Are there changes to the sideboard that could shore up the matchup? Is the matchup totally lost? Tracking games so that other teammates who weren't there to watch the game is important to let them further the conversation. It's another reason to all play the same deck - you can all further the team's conversation all the time.
Conclusion
I don't know if I said a lot here. I feel like it was a conscious stream of thought, and the only real controversial idea I had was “play the same deck as your teammates”, which isn't controversial at all.
I do hope it gives something to think about with respect to the testing process, what you do to improve at games, and how to make your teams' efforts more useful.
Also - if you liked this, check out the Trading Card Game Podcast I do with my good friend Dan Norton: