Today I'm happy to introduce a new event format which was the brainchild of several key personnel at AdeptiCon including Hank Edley himself. The main goal of the format is to make it easy for people to get games in at a convention on their own terms while working around their other scheduled events.

The Flex Event

Flex events have two key differences from traditional tournaments:

Competitive versus casual

Getting a bunch of players together in a room always results in some players who want to play super competitively with their finely-tuned, optimized lists and others who want to play more casual games with their armies that favor fun combos or shenanigans.

Sometimes the right answer is to declare the intent of an event right at the beginning. One goal of a Flex event is to allow these people to participate in a single event without needing to find multiple locations or have different schedules.

When registering for a Flex event, each player may choose if they want to play competitively, casually, or if they are willing to play either way. During the event, our automated pairing system will avoid pairing players who want to play competitively against those who want to play casually.

Popping in and out

At gaming conventions, players often have to make tough choices about which events they will attend based on scheduling conflicts. What if you want to play in an all-day tournament and want to attend a 1-hour painting demo in the middle of the day? What if you just want to have a long lunch but your tournament doesn't have a lunch break?

All events hosted on Longshanks allow players to withdraw from an event at any time if they choose not to continue playing. Flex events go a step further by allowing players who have withdrawn to rejoin the event whenever they choose.

Need to skip a round to attend a different session? No worries, just withdraw from the event before the round is generated and you will be omitted from pairings. Rejoin when you return and you'll be added to the next round. No fuss, no muss, and no need to ask a host or organizer for permission or to assist you.

That's it!

You'll see the option to choose "Flex event" for the style of new events instead of "Tournament" or "League" starting today. Choose that option and off you go.