About a year ago - I made a years worth of team tournaments, as I do not get on this site as much anymore (and think I went a few months without even checking in.)

As some point, I may try to sit down and make another years worth of team tournaments -

ANY SUGGESTIONS - IDEAS - Please let me know. I will of course hit the most popular games....

Feel free to post ideas in here!

In a week or so, I'm going to try to sit down and make another batch of Site Team Tournaments (Like to get them up early so teams have plenty of time to find members).

Any suggestions - ideas - any games I've been overlooking.

One of the things I love about fellowships - is joining a team (for a game I like), and then being on that team in a "Site Team Tournament" against other fellowships.

There are a few different types of fellowships.

There are "Big" fellowships, with a lot of people - and a lot of people on their teams. IN MY OPINION, It is nice to join those fellowships, but NOT to join their teams. A lot of site team tournaments limit the number of players a fellowship can send, so if only 5 will play, and there are 10 on that fellowship team - 5 will be left out. (So stay off those teams, and possible just play in their "Fellowship Tournaments" - which are tournaments just for those in that fellowship)

Small, Private, Chat - These are usually ran by a player, and usually just a select friends of that player belong. Possible not many tournament/games, but mostly around for the discussion boards.

Small, Tournament Bound - These usually try to get teams together for Site team tournaments or Fellowship vs. Fellowship tournaments. These are GREAT to get on since you will most likely play more and help out your team more.

I've added a few more site team tournaments, including a 21 point Hyper Backgammon one - Hyper Backgammon is a quick game, so playing to 21 points shouldn't take *super* long time to complete.

I try to shake it up with different games, so if you think I'm missing a game, let me know and I may give it a try.

We could use 2 more players for our Dark Battleboats Team in the BIG BAD Battleboats fellowship. It's not a very active fellowship - mostly just play site team tournaments - but is open to all paid members - so feel free to join - sign up for our team - help get our team into the tournament.

* BIG BAD * Battleboats

Created a batch a team tournaments for June.

Random Chess was the #2 picked from the opinion poll - http://brainking.com/en/OpinionPoll?poid=894

#1 was a random backgammon, but since there was one of those in October that is still running, I went with the #2 choice to get more variety on the site.)

As always - feel free to post site team tournament suggestions. I'm always open to suggestions.

Brf: I don't support deleting inactive fellowship (since it's a pain to look at old site team tournaments and see the winning fellowship was "fellowship deleted")

But would LOVE to see a way to "hide" inactive and/or deleted fellowship (rather than just delete them.) This would also help in lets say a big boss comes back after many months (years) and would like to try to continue an old fellowship - could just "unhide" and let them continue if they wanted.

There are 4 new site team tournaments up to start in March 2010 - with 3 of those CHALLENGES, and the 4th is a game which has not had a site team tournament yet - so a side challenge to see if we can get at least 4 fellowships to join.

Cheshire Cat Chess - CHALLENGE - Společenství přátel won the last one.

Dameo

Linetris - CHALLENGE - ALL L.I.N.E.S. won the last one.

Crowded Backgammon - CHALLENGE - Monkeys Swinging Madhouse won the last one, and ◙ The Gammon Cube ◙ & ***Jason's Backgammon Fellowship*** tied for the 1st tournament.

Good Luck to all - Thanks to the person who help suggest 3 of the 4 games for this round... I always take suggestions.</li></li></li></li></a>

There are 5 new site team tournaments up. For this round, I went through the list of games, scratched off any game that has had a team tournament in the past year and a half - found at least 1 gammon & 1 chess, and 3 other misc games. Since most major holidays are over, made all tournaments with a little shorter 3 days per turn. (Yea, still more then some people like - but 3 is a nice standard for most.) And even have 3 new "CHALLENGES" for fellowships.

#1 - Triple Poker - A challenge to the 2 fellowships who won the last team tournament - Radost z vítězství & The Untouchables

#2 - Fevga - A challenge to the winners of the last team tournament: The Untouchables

#3 - Frog Finder - A challenge to the winners of the last team tournament: Monkeys Swinging Madhouse

#4 - Japanese Chess

#5 - Espionage

Good Luck to everyone

Thanks for the suggestions & ideas - I was able to use a few, and put a few in my notepad for later use.

I create 4 new Site Team Tournaments for November... ALONG WITH A COUPLE OF CHALLENGES to all the Fellowships.

First is for Sphere Froglet - The first site team tournament had been completed with the fellowship Republic of Uganda as the winners. Can they repeat or will another fellowship step up and take the unofficial crown?

Second - Cheshire Cat Lines of Action. CAN WE GET 4 TEAMS - 16 players total?

On the active game list, out of the 128 games listed, Cheshire Cat Lines of Action is #127 with only 42 current games going.

I know it's hard to get teams for these less popular games, but lets see if we can scrap enough up to get at least 4 fellowships entered into this game which has never had a site team tournament before.

Also site tournaments for Breakthrough & Dark Battleboats has been created. Since these will start in November & the "holiday" season is getting close, all these tournaments are created with standard vacations.

Good Luck to all - and as always, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas about site team tournaments - please feel free to share them with me. (Private message is best since I can organize it better, but if you wanted to post it publicly here - that would be OK... but I might lose track of it easier.)

MadMonkey: Triple Gammon is currently not an option, but I know a few months ago Fencer had no problem in moving over the "Auto pass" option to the site team tournaments (like they are on regular tournaments)

.... so since it is already on regular tournaments, might be something that can be moved over to the site tournaments also.

I don't play the triple gammon games, but from what I remember - they basicly work just like cubed gammon games but the scoring of each game is a little different?

Hum.... actually it might take a little more work....

HEY - It will still be a week or so before I start to think about the next "batch" of site team tournaments set for November will be, so why not make some suggestions??

What Game - How many players - Time frame for games - even tournament name suggestions will be accepted.

Not saying I will follow all suggestions - What I normally do is check when the game last had a site team tournament (spread it out too all the different games) and such....

SO, got an idea? Send them to me. (Sending me a private message is best since I can collect them all in one place and take a look at them - but also if we wanted to have a small discussion here probable would be OK also.)

A new set of Team Tournaments that are set to start in January are now up!

3 of the 5 never had a team tournament before, and the other 2 had only 1 before.... but both have been completed.

Hopefully I got a nice mix of small team size, and faster times including a couple with no vacations allowed.

As always - I take suggestions (which is where a few of those team tournaments came from)..... and if you could, PLEASE send me a quick message. (I then can easily save all the messages in one place so when I get ready to make new ones, I can see all the suggestions & ideas in one place - posting them here.... well is nice, but I might forget about it when the time comes.)

tinksbell: Here is the trick that I use to get that to stop.

Don't do anything. Don't accept - don't decline - just delete the message.

If the Fellowship owner tried to send another invite, the system will stop them saying that you already have an open invite to the fellowship.

FIRST: The Turkish Checkers Team Tournaments needs 1 more team to start. I like to mix it up with different game types, so I would love to see some get together to get one more team signed up so this can start.

There is a team with 4 players, a team with 3 players, and a few teams with 2 players. Lets see one of you try to recruit from these players to see if you can get a team of 5 to join this tournament!

SECOND: A suggestion was made to spread out the tournaments a little - instead of having them all start on 1 day - so for September's group, I have them starting about a week apart from each other.

FEEDBACK WANTED: How do you like that? Do you like them spread out like that, or all starting at the same time? Hopefully being spread out a little will help get more to join since they know they won't be bombarded with a lot of new games all at once.

As always, I'm always open to suggestions & ideas. (In private message the best since I can organize it and look at them when I start to make new site team tournaments..... but in here to discuss them with others would probable be OK also.)

I've created 6 new team tournaments for fellowships to compete in. Fencer has allowed the "time per game" time control, and also allowed for us to make them with hours in the standard time (since 2/3 days seemed too short for some, 4 days seemed too long - a good 3 day, 12 hour is nice)

Anyway, I have heard 2 main complaints/suggestions. (1) team size for the popular games is too high for smaller fellowships to get teams and (2) Team Tournaments last too long.

Well I've tried to mix things up to hopefully help those 2 things. There are 2 backgammon TT's that have a small team size - plus 3 of the 6 use the Fischer Clock time control which have NO DAYS OFF - no vacations - no weekends. (SO CAPTAINS - Make sure your team understand how these time controls work - have them check out this article if needed: http://brainrook.com/archives/54-Time-limit-for-games-on-BrainKing.html )

The other 3 TT's use standard vacations, two with 3 days, 12 hours - and one with a little quicker 2 days, 12 hours time limit.

2 of the games (Open pente & Fevga) never had a TT before
2 of the games (Turkish Checkers & Logik) have not had a TT for awhile - both pretty popular (31st and 21st most popular according to current games)

So hopefully this was a good mix. As always, suggestions and ideas are always welcomed.

WOW - With so many new games and such, it was hard to pick which games to make site team tournaments out of. Sorry I did not get to all the suggestions given to me, but I still have all the suggestions and will try to get them in next time.

Here are the new site team tournaments:

May 2008 Mojo's Triple Dice Poker 6

May 2008 Plopper's Plakoto

May 2008 Pinchy's Cheversi

May 2008 Strangles Frog Legs

May 2008 Snowball's Cheshire Cat Chess

May 2008 Stampy's Knight Fight

5 of the 6 have never had a site team tournament. Cheversi has had a site team tournament before, but did you know there was a recent rule change to make this game more even? So if you have not played Cheversi for awhile - well now is the time to start playing again.

Oh, and a bonus game. Can anyone figure out where I got the 6 names for these tournaments? (Stampy, Pinchy, Strangles, Plopper, Snowball, and Mojo)

Have Fun!

At the end of this month, the new batch of team tournaments is set to go. For a team tournament to start, there needs to be at least 4 teams signed up. Currently, there are 2 teams which NEED HELP:

Small Espionage - Only need 4 players per team. Any Fellowships looking for members? (Are you a player looking for a fellowship to play with)

Grasshopper - Only need 4 players per team. Any Fellowships looking for members? (Are you a player looking for a fellowship to play with)

Lets post in here what is needed.

= = = = = = = = =

My Gammon Cube fellowship is in need of 2 more Grasshopper players. The fellowship is open to all Bishops & above. ALL SKILL LEVEL. (meaning you don't have to be good or an expert to join my team - just need to have fun) - so please go and join if you are interested: ◙ The Gammon Cube ◙

Nirvana: (1) They do show up in the public list, but you don't see them - you only see challenges that you can accept - not all of them.

Little Bosses - When the Little Boss invites someone, I would also like to see the accept/decline to go to both BIG & Little Boss. (Still a copy to go to BIG so they will still know what is going on.)

MadMonkey: I would like to add comments to one of your suggestions:

2. The ability to put challenge Matches in a Team Challenge waiting room, so Bosses & Captains from all Fellowships can look through and except or get Teams for them.

YES YES YES - this would be great. Just like a person can put a game in the waiting room, have a captain be able to put a team challenge in a "waiting room" for other fellowship captains to accept.

There are 6 new team tournaments set to start in March 2008 - all of the games were requests game. (4 of the 6 never had a team tournament before!) So feel free to send me a message with what you would like to see - I keep track of the requests and try to fit them in when I make more tournaments.

http://brainking.com/en/TeamTournaments

Pente
Battleboats
Sphere Froglet
Frog Finder
Small Espionage
Grasshopper

Good luck to all, start getting your teams together, and HAVE FUN!

BadBoy7: You have to wait for them to request a membership to the fellowship. They you will have 3 options - accept, reject, and ban. Pick ban then submit.

Ban basically stops them from requesting membership over and over which at one time some immature people would do on this site to others.

KewlGuy: It takes a little bit before the Fellowship list is updated - look on your profile, in the fellowship tab:

Hooters Saloon

I see that sort of thing all the time when a fellowship is first created - well not all the time, but often enough. Still say wait until tomorrow - and if still having issues, then send Fencer a message. There are processes which automatically run that fix many things - some of those processes only run ever few hours - or even once a day.

KewlGuy: You might have to wait until tomorrow (or later - not sure how long) - I'm not sure how often, but there is some process that will "reset" your fellowship count back to 1 - allowing you to then create a new fellowship.

Why did you have to delete to create a new one? Just about any setting should be able to be changed in a fellowship so a delete/new would not be necessary.

If it still does not let you create a new fellowship tomorrow - then send a message to Fencer and he should be able to manually reset that count back to 1 for you.

Oceans Apart: Yes, they should. Actually I don't think it is even possible to delete a fellowship while a team tournament is still running.

In the past, it was possible & I think messed some things up - so Fencer made it so a fellowship can't be deleted until those team tournaments are complete. (I believe)

New site team tournaments - for Fellowship members

Me & Tanein will try to create 6 new team tournaments to start every month. (Probable take turns - each creating 6 every other month).

I have just created some to start around November 1st (and decided to keep a "movie" theme of names of some of my all-time favorite movies):

Groundhog Day - Nackgammon - 8 players

Back to the Future - Linetris - 5 players

Ghostbusters - Go - 5 players

Beverly Hills Cop - Checkers - 7 players

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - Dark Chess - 6 players

For this batch - Nackgammon is the main gammon game which has been longest since last team tournament.
Dark Chess, Go, & Linetris never had a team tournament before
Checkers - only 1 team tournament before, very long time ago.

I'm always open to suggestions on what to create - as time goes on, I will try to mix in different times, maybe a "fast" 1 or 2 day game, some cubed gammon, etc... Please feel free to send me a PM with any suggestions.

Have fun!

MadMonkey: Fencer probable just gave it to you to shut you up since you bug him so much for extra features!

I also tried it with each theme to make sure it wasn't something that my .css theme was blocking - but no luck.

My guess he put it in your fellowship to test it since I think it was you that originally requested an option like that, but forgot to roll it out to all fellowships.... but that is just my guess.

MadMonkey: Hum.... I don't have that option in any of my 3 fellowships.

http://coan.net/temp-stuff/2007-aug23.gif

MadMonkey: I don't see that - I only see a way to send all team members a message.

I thought the only way to remove someone from the team was to remove them completely from the fellowship.

MadMonkey: I was thinking the opposet - that is they set a lot of vacations when they were a members, so they could be used now that they have less vacation days - taking advantage of a loophole of when you become a pawn.

Of course that is just my opinion. Has anyone talk to the person to see if they are going to be back or not? Otherwise, like someone else said - Fencer would be able to move control to someone else... and if sometime Kili does come back, it can always be given back to them at that point.

rod03801: Hum... Tigger makes a good point - hard to get new players.

Plus I don't think my following suggestion will work since the BB can't make you captain again, but here was going to be my suggestion.

1. Remove yourself from your Ludo team
2. Go to the Ludo Team tournaments - and at that time, it will list the fellowships which have Ludo teams, and how many players are on their Ludo teams.
3. Go to the ones which have 1-2-3-4 or so players, see who is on those teams - then try to recruit them to your team in a nice private message.
4. Sign back up to your team & get made captain again.

.. I did this the other day and found 2 for a team I'm captain of!

Create Fellowship: http://brainking.com/en/Fellowships - there should be a link I think at the bottom of the page to create a new fellowship.

Restriction: none really. If you plan to have "adult" type language, it is recommended you put that warning in the description so those who are offended by it will know not to join.

Tip: Fellowship name should be some-what unique - not the same exactly as a game, discussion board, or other fellowship. So for example if you have a backgammon fellowship, don't just call it "backgammon" - but something a little unique - for example "backgammon fellowship"

Other then that, jump in and start to play. Feel free to ask questions here - plenty of people who will be happy to help!

rednaz23: No (other then ask Fencer)

but like Vikings said, you can basically hide it.

Change it's name to something like " . "

Then change the read/write level to the highest, so no one can read or write to it. They could still click on the " . ", but they will not be able to see anything.

PLEASE keep discussion about Fellowships. Other posts are being removed. Thanks.

Tuesday: What is on the public boards are suppose to be family friendly, but Fellowships are private fellowships - so those same "family friendly rules do not apply there. It's kind of funny that the only 2 times I personally have seen that board is when others who don't like it actually post a link to it on a public board for everyone to find!

Oceans Apart: I believe the BIG BOSS changed the board name, not Fencer. Fencer was looking into doing something about it, but once the BIG BOSS knew of the problem, they changed it themselves. (at least that is what I believed happened - I may be wrong.)

MadMonkey: I agree a "Mini Boss" would be nice - currently I know of a few fellowships who have "temp" BIG BOSSes because they are unable to be on for awhile - a Mini Boss would be a great solution for situations like that.

As a side note, if a fellowship has a BIG BOSS which is no longer on the site, I'm pretty sure that if the current members of that fellowship would like to keep it going with a new BIG BOSS, Fencer could make the switch for you. (Then again he might not - this is just a guess.)

Of course deleting idle & old fellowships can be nice - sometimes it is nice to keep just to see what was there and such.

What I would like to see is if a fellowship has a pawn BIG BOSS, then just "hide" it in the fellowship list.... and include a "show all including hidden fellowship" links to view the old ones.

Since you also have to be careful to make sure all tournament games are complete in a fellowship - and now you also run into a problem if there are current stair games, etc.... So hiding them would be the best option in my opinion.

"Snoopy": Yea I know - I meant to add a with my answer but forgot.

But actually I mistyped. If they do apply, you can either accept, deny, or ban - if you do the ban, they can not apply again. (But I don't think you can "ban" anyone without having them apply first.

"Snoopy": 2 ways I can think of. If they apply, deny them. The other way is to not invite them.

Geri39: If the page is not in English, find the England flag in the upper right hand corner and click on it. Clicking on different flags will change the language, and possible you got started out on a different language.

joshi tm: Or as someone said on the other board - maybe do what they do with ratings and just "hide" the inactive fellowships from the fellowship board list.

I'm not sure what the best way for the system to determine what is an inactive fellowship.

= = = = =

Another idea is some fellowships now are basicly "open" fellowship for anyone who wants to come in - while others are very private invite only for friends type of fellowship. Since private fellowships don't really need to be on the list (since they are not looking for people to request to join), be able to "hide" them also.

... with of course an option to "show all even hidden fellowships" on the list.

A discussion started on the Feature request board, but I will continue it here.

So what to do with inactive fellowships. I've went through only the first page, and here is what I found:

Noodleland - inactive pawn BIG BOSS - with ongoing tournament. Plenty of members, possibly have Fencer post in the fellowship if anyone wanted to take it over from current BIG BOSS

Survivor - inactive pawn BIG BOSS - with only 3 active members still on the site - no running tournaments, probable safe to REMOVE

Dodo Club - ACTIVE pawn BIG BOSS, but only 2 active people in the fellowship - Probable need to ask pawn if they plan to renew, and if not - remove the fellowship

Club 2000 - inactive pawn BIG BOSS - only 1 active person still on this site, and they are a knight - no active tournaments, fellowship needs REMOVED

Kwyjibo - active pawn BIG BOSS - only 2 pawns in the fellowship - probable need to check with BIG BOSS to see if they are planning on renewing, if not - remove the fellowship

ArnieAddick's UK Reversi - inactive pawn BIG BOSS - no active tournaments, no active members - REMOVE fellowship

Wombats United - inactive pawn BIG BOSS - only 1 users still active rook on site. But has active tournament still, and possible active stairs - see if active user wants fellowship - if not, make sure no stairs games are going and tournament is complete and remove.

PENTE-TENTIARY - inactive pawn BIG BOSS, and only users - REMOVE fellowship

Crissie's Clubhouse - inactive ROOK BIG BOSS - since a rook, don't delete - also has plenty of members - say wait if BIG BOSS comes back, and if not - see if another members wants to take over.

Crazy Pente - inactive BIG BOSS, with few active members - no active tournaments - remove fellowship

Sherlock Humbug - inactive ROOK BIG BOSS - like other, since rook, don't delete - also has other active members - say wait if BIG BOSS comes back, and if not - see if another members wants to take over.

Rocky Horror..... - inactive pawn BIG BOSS with no members - REMOVE fellowship

Angels Among Us - inactive pawn BIG BOSS, with a few active players. See if one of them wants to take over, if not remove the fellowship

Checkers Tournament Room - inactive pawn BIG BOSS, with no members - REMOVE fellowship

Gothic Practice - inactive pawn BIG BOSS, with 3 inactive members - REMOVE fellowship

Banda od informatikov - inactive pawn BIG BOSS, with 1 inactive member - REMOVE fellowship

.... that is my suggestions - and only from the first page of fellowships.

I beat you I know what happened - Fencer earlier made a change to the order of finished team tournaments in a fellowship - and somehow this messed up the page load for fellowships that did not have any complete team tournaments to list on their fellowship. Should be an easy fix for Fencer.

Jason: What other fellowships? Does it stop at the Finished tournaments area? If so, my guess some code in a name of one of the tournaments is causing the page to not load completely would be my guess.

ustica tnp: Looks like some sort of bug on the page which does not let it load completely (Since I can not even see the copyright information at the bottom of the page.)

Let Fencer know about that fellowship - some kind of bad code on that page or something.

ustica tnp: On the bottom of the main fellowship page there is a check box and a "Leave this fellowship" along with a text box to leave the BIG BOSS a message.

If you currently have fellowship tournament games going, you can't leave - but will have a message that says "You cannot leave this fellowship until you finish all following internal tournament games:" along with a list of the games.

Marfitalu: If you are talking about fellowships which are in all 22 site team tournaments, then Monkeys Swinging Madhouse is in all of them also I believe.

Dolittle: http://brainrook.com/

Marfitalu: You can also ask the user to leave the stairs - most will - since they probable did not notice they were still in the fellowship stairs.

Other then that, like Dolittle said - Fencer should be able to. (but asking the user is easier for Fencer.)

xmas is soon: yup - that is correct.