The X-Ball Saga....cont...Chapt 23

[Robbo]

My head hurts

After about 7 hours talking between one Frenchman, one country Yokel, one sex god and a guy called 'Beard', here are the provisional ideas :-

X-Ball, will be played this year with as many as 8 teams playing a round robin thru the year depending upon how many teams wanna play and can afford it.
Each X-ball team will therefore be playing something like 1 X-Ball game per event and at one event, the team has to play 2 games.
Each team having to play all seven others one time, over the course of the season.
X-Ball will be played after the Millennium has finished for the day at each event.
Judging will be done by X-ball teams.
X-Ball teams will be allowed to play Millennium as well as Super 7's.
X-Ball teams will be required to come up with a moderate cash input to help offset running and promotion costs, to be paid in full prior to the opening event.
The teams involved will be contacted over the next few days.
This is still not yet a done deal because of so many variables that may yet influence any plans, but what will be come clearer over the next few days is the identity and number of the teams who wish to play in the X-ball league.
This is not an ideal solution, as Sergei, Laurent and myself wanted a full commitment to X-ball where we played something like 2 to 3 games an event with X-Ball teams only concentrating on X-ball and not playing the Millennium but this proved impractical for many reasons, not least of which was the distinct lack of sponsorship most teams have over here in Europe.
It was found that only the Russian Legion, Ton Tons and Nexus were able to afford the full commitment proposal with no other teams able to respond.
It was pointless running a three-team league.
So what we have is the best we can do considering our economic disadvantage, it keeps European interests alive in X-Ball but we end up sacrificing a big lead, in playing terms, to the Americans as they can concentrate 100% on playing X-Ball.
We'll see what happens !

Robbo

 

[sjt19]

Originally posted by Robbo


After about 7 hours talking between one Frenchman, one country Yokel and one sex god and a guy called 'Beard'

i thought you were at the meeting too Robbo.......


sam

 

[Robbo]

Originally posted by sjt19
i thought you were at the meeting too Robbo.......
sam

Mildly amusing young man, just mildly

 

[sjt19]

Well, i have been trainng all weekend and only just got out of bed...(its a tough life being a student.... ), but it was the best i could come up with on the spot. next time i will try harder Mr Robinson Sir, .

Humbly yours, sam

 

[manike]

Robbo,

Can you inform us of which teams are looking to be eligible or in the running? or when can you? I think I am asking for information a little prematurely maybe, that you will release in a few days anyway (hopefully)

Is it an invite only situation or are there opportunities for application?

What are the criterion? Sounds like funding is one of the major ones.

It sounds like a difficult set of circumstances to make all this work. Fingers crossed it could actually cover all bases and opportunities.

thanks.

 

[Robbo]

Originally posted by manike
Robbo,
Can you inform us of which teams are looking to be eligible or in the running? or when can you? I think I am asking for information a little prematurely maybe, that you will release in a few days anyway (hopefully)
Is it an invite only situation or are there opportunities for application?
What are the criterion? Sounds like funding is one of the major ones.
It sounds like a difficult set of circumstances to make all this work. Fingers crossed it could actually cover all bases and opportunities.
thanks.

Si, ok, the first and foremost criterion is obviously money, and I think this is going to be the only criterion that is needed in the end because it is basically a self-defining situation.
Generally the better the team, the better the finance situation of that team and so we have teams like the Russian Legion and Ton Tons etc who exemplify exactly that point.
We also then have other teams who have the quality in terms of player base and will have to find the money required.
Certain teams have been targeted and to this end, these are being contacted, so I suppose the criteria are skill base, finance and approach.
‘Approach’ being the way a team organises itself with regard to the modern game and training etc.
The next couple of days should see it all finalised.
Pete

 

[raehl]

I still don't get it....

Why is X Ball significantly more expensive than just playing regular milleniums?


- Chris

 

[sjt19]

paint for one thing, you would use far more in the course of a 40 min Xball game, right?

sam

 

[raehl]

I'd say less, actually.

Let's assume they use NXL rules, which would be 40 minutes of time with 2 minute timeouts clicking the clock down, and 10 minutes of time where the game clock doesn't run during timeouts. Let's further assume each game only lasts 2 minutes, which is a pretty quick pace.

That yields 30 minutes of play time in total.

BUT... With 10 people on the roster, that's only 15 minutes of play time per person. Or 15 people knocks that down to 10.

Paint usage on a per-person basis is much less. (So is game time, actually.)


When you get down to it, any argument that paint consumption is more or less is stupid - 5-man is five-man. You're not going to use a significantly different amount of paint playing 5-man on an X Ball field than you are on a regular 5-man field. The question really is:

Are you going to play more or less 5-man in an X Ball match than you would a 5-man tournament?


A 5-man tournament you'd play, what, 8 prelim games, maybe 6 more in the semis and finals if you make it that far? 14 games on a roster three times the size would mean you would have to have a combined total FORTY-TWO points scored in an X-Ball match before your paint consumption (on a per-player basis) exceeded what you'd use in a 5-man tournament.

Hell, even if you only had 5 guys on your X Ball roster who played the whole time, you'd need 14 points for it to come out even.


Anyway, paint definitely does not cost more. If anything, it costs considerably less, or at least the same on a per-minute basis.

- Chris

 

[Robbo]

I still don't get it....

Originally posted by raehl
Why is X Ball significantly more expensive than just playing regular milleniums?
- Chris

I'll tell you why, coz it's obvious you ain't understanding the difference between the US circuit and ours; To have a dedicated X-Ball circuit would mean the promoters would have to put aside one field, assign a set of judges and so on.
This then puts up the cost of the promotion of X-Ball per event.
It was felt that some of this cost would have to be met by the teams and so the initial joining fee would have had to reflect this.
Teams / promoters / team owners, over here are not even in the same league as the Yanks with respect to finances and so what may seem easy for the US to adopt becomes a real problem when we try to follow suit.
A $25,000 price tag per team was being proposed as a possible joining fee and this would have meant that only 3 teams (Ton Tons, Nexus, Russian Legion) would have been able to consider it.
Also, if teams were going to go for X-Ball, paint usage at each tournament was maybe not going to be that much different, but the training associated with an X-Ball place was.
No way would existing European deals be able to cover this new demand for the vast majority of teams who were being considered.
So, we had to come up with a cheap version, a version that was relatively inexpensive to run and therefore the financial demands put upon the teams was accordingly lessened.
In fact, even now we have a price tag of something like $4000; it's still not a done deal as far as some teams are concerned.
This season coming is going to be more expensive for all X-Ball teams because of the training, because of the fact we are also playing the Millennium and so on.

And there you have it !

Robbo