The Quizbowl Resource Center

This announcement is for THUNDER II: Lightning Bolt Action, a follow up to last year's similarly named tournament this year. This time, the set is being written mostly by myself, Eric Mukherjee, Mike Cheyne, and Dominic Machado, with Trygve Meade providing a few social science questions. The distribution for this tournament is as follows:

Per Packet:

4/4 Literature
4/4 History
4/4 Science
3/3 Art (1/1 Painting, 1/1 Music, 1/1 Other Arts)
3/3 RMP (1/1 each)
2/2 SS
1/1 Trash/Geo/More Big 3/Your Choice

From this, I will be writing all of the literature, auditory arts, and religion. Eric will be writing all of the science, visual arts, and mythology. Mike Cheyne will be writing all of the American History, and Dominic Machado will be writing all of the other History. We will probably split or find new people to cover SS, philosophy, and the 1/1 Trash/Your Choice category.

We are looking to make improvements over last year's tournament. This edition will be carefully copy-edited, difficulty appropriate, and consistent. It will be around ACF Regionals in difficulty. Power placement will be fairer. All in all, this will shape up to be a polished and enjoyable set for all to play.

We also need some mirrors. We will have 14 packets written by the time the tournament runs. Get in touch with Eric or me if you would like to run one. Pricing information is forthcoming.

Will this tournament be open?

grapesmoker wrote:Will this tournament be open?

We're going to encourage mirrors to have people stick to their college teams, but exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis by TDs.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:

grapesmoker wrote:Will this tournament be open?

We're going to encourage mirrors to have people stick to their college teams, but exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis by TDs.

Any word on possible mirrors?

Jesus vs. Dragons wrote:

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:

grapesmoker wrote:Will this tournament be open?

We're going to encourage mirrors to have people stick to their college teams, but exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis by TDs.

Any word on possible mirrors?

We have confirmed Northern Illinois University as a mirror. Chris Romero wants to mirror this set as well. We would love to have more sites, so email me at [email protected]. Our fee is $30 per team, but we can negotiate if need be.

If plane tickets go down a bit I'd be interested in attending the San Diego mirror of this tournament.

I saw that NIU is canceling their mirror of Thunder. Are there plans for an additionaly midwest mirror site?
Matt Church
U of L

Church51907 wrote:I saw that NIU is canceling their mirror of Thunder. Are there plans for an additionaly midwest mirror site?
Matt Church
U of L

UIUC will be hosting a mirror of this tournament.

Papa's in the House wrote:

Church51907 wrote:I saw that NIU is canceling their mirror of Thunder. Are there plans for an additionaly midwest mirror site?
Matt Church
U of L

UIUC will be hosting a mirror of this tournament.

Coolness. On the same date as in the title of this thread and was announced for NIU, I assume?

Secretary of Bobcats wrote:

Papa's in the House wrote:

Church51907 wrote:I saw that NIU is canceling their mirror of Thunder. Are there plans for an additionaly midwest mirror site?
Matt Church
U of L

UIUC will be hosting a mirror of this tournament.

Coolness. On the same date as in the title of this thread and was announced for NIU, I assume?

Yes.

UDel is planning on sending 2-3 teams to the UPenn site of this tournament.

U of L is planning to send two-three teams to the UIUC mirror.
Matt Church
University of Louisville

Michigan will be sending at least 2 teams to the Illinois location. More details to come later...

I will announce the Illinois site after our mirror of EFT, but if anyone has any questions post here or email me.

Ike

I just booked my ticket for San Diego. If anyone has a place for me to stay, that'd be great.

Are high school teams welcome? If they are, and my kids continue to develop, Saint Joe's of Metuchen expresses interest in attending Thunder II at U Penn.

Edward Powers wrote:Are high school teams welcome? If they are, and my kids continue to develop, Saint Joe's of Metuchen expresses interest in attending Thunder II at U Penn.

Yeah, high schoolers are absolutely welcome.

Can the field and/or any other information unique to Penn's mirror be posted, either in this thread or in a separate announcement thread? (I guess UCSD, too, but that's inconsequential to me.)

State College will bring a team to Penn

Trevor Davis and I are playing together at Penn.

Penn State would love to bring 1 team to UPenn.

Also, we need some pricing info and something that can be called an itinerary in order to get funding. Can you provide a time and base cost for registration?

Info for the Penn site is here.

TheKingInYellow wrote:State College will bring a team to Penn

&%#$ you Graham Moyer.

One of my people has inquired about the possibility of writing a packet for a discount. (This of course assumes he and other ASU players actually attend. None of us who want to go are really sure if we can, given the proximity of this tournament to our finals. However, I thought I'd check into the possibility just in case.)

I think we'll stick to not accepting packets for discounts. If your team is interested in attending and finances are a problem, email me and we'll work something out.

As of right now, just over 1/3 of this tournament has been written -- we are looking to get to 1/2 by the end of today.

I feel like this tournament could perhaps be described as "Regs +" in difficulty after seeing a lot of the answer lines, but I'll let the other editors weigh in, I guess.

Cheynem wrote:I feel like this tournament could perhaps be described as "Regs +" in difficulty after seeing a lot of the answer lines, but I'll let the other editors weigh in, I guess.

Yeah id agree with that. Id ask people to look at TIT from last year to see what to expect.

The literature should be around Regionals or a little bit easier.

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:

Cheynem wrote:I feel like this tournament could perhaps be described as "Regs +" in difficulty after seeing a lot of the answer lines, but I'll let the other editors weigh in, I guess.

Yeah id agree with that. Id ask people to look at TIT from last year to see what to expect.

I'm glad there are all these wonderful regular difficulty tournaments to choose from this semester.

I'm glad there are all these wonderful regular difficulty tournaments to choose from this semester.

I mean, this tournament hasn't even happened yet, and you seem to be blaming it for the wider difficulty landscape of the last few months of college quizbowl. Surely that's a bit premature, and even if it's not. . . come on, this tournament was basically invented last year. You're making a good point that this semester has had serious problems with event availability, but acting like the editors of THUNDER have some kind of civic duty to craft it in a certain way is silly. And, you know, it's not like regular difficulty tournaments can be received only by divine revelation - there's a fairly clear way one can try to bring them about, and it doesn't involve snarking at pre-existing events for no particular reason.


On the other hand:

Yeah id agree with that. Id ask people to look at TIT from last year to see what to expect.

To be fair man, I didn't even like the difficulty of last year's TIT all that much. As long as this is clearly a sub-nationals event though, I'd say it's marketed appropriately. Of course, if it's "Regionals plus" like MO was "Regionals plus," well. . . oops.

DumbJaques wrote:

I'm glad there are all these wonderful regular difficulty tournaments to choose from this semester.

I mean, this tournament hasn't even happened yet, and you seem to be blaming it for the wider difficulty landscape of the last few months of college quizbowl. Surely that's a bit premature, and even if it's not. . . come on, this tournament was basically invented last year. You're making a good point that this semester has had serious problems with event availability, but acting like the editors of THUNDER have some kind of civic duty to craft it in a certain way is silly. And, you know, it's not like regular difficulty tournaments can be received only by divine revelation - there's a fairly clear way one can try to bring them about, and it doesn't involve snarking at pre-existing events for no particular reason.


On the other hand:

Yeah id agree with that. Id ask people to look at TIT from last year to see what to expect.

To be fair man, I didn't even like the difficulty of last year's TIT all that much. As long as this is clearly a sub-nationals event though, I'd say it's marketed appropriately. Of course, if it's "Regionals plus" like MO was "Regionals plus," well. . . oops.

Hey, man, MO was "Regionals++". There's a clear distinction here.

Cernel Joson wrote:

DumbJaques wrote:

I'm glad there are all these wonderful regular difficulty tournaments to choose from this semester.

I mean, this tournament hasn't even happened yet, and you seem to be blaming it for the wider difficulty landscape of the last few months of college quizbowl. Surely that's a bit premature, and even if it's not. . . come on, this tournament was basically invented last year. You're making a good point that this semester has had serious problems with event availability, but acting like the editors of THUNDER have some kind of civic duty to craft it in a certain way is silly. And, you know, it's not like regular difficulty tournaments can be received only by divine revelation - there's a fairly clear way one can try to bring them about, and it doesn't involve snarking at pre-existing events for no particular reason.


On the other hand:

Yeah id agree with that. Id ask people to look at TIT from last year to see what to expect.

To be fair man, I didn't even like the difficulty of last year's TIT all that much. As long as this is clearly a sub-nationals event though, I'd say it's marketed appropriately. Of course, if it's "Regionals plus" like MO was "Regionals plus," well. . . oops.

Hey, man, MO was "Regionals++". There's a clear distinction here.

Thankfully, we've long since dropped that delusion.

We're making a very genuine and concerted effort to curb down some of the "regionals +" difficulty that has crept into the set. Suffice to say that teams that played MO last weekend will notice the decrease in difficulty from that event to this one.

That promise doesn't mean a whole lot, to be frank! MO was a very hard event intended for open teams, while this was theoretically announced as a regular difficulty tournament.

Why do you have to ruin my fun, Mike Cheyne? I was hoping for some dramatic understatement.

Regardless, I just want to mollify any fears that this event will run out of control difficulty-wise as it did last year.

Your inscrutable Asian-ness makes it difficult to detect understatement. Fair enough.

Also, some credit where it is due: Thanks to Ike Jose for knocking out all of the philosophy and much of the social science, to Chris Chiego for stepping up to take some of the history, and to Jonathan Magin for stepping up to write all of the classical music tossups.