Well, technically, there are currently 66 with Abby Brand and Elektra. But we are nearing the 64th retiring from Latest Legends tokens in a few weeks.
Upon the release of the 64th 4* character in March 2018, I ran a tournament here on the forums to determine which was the best. I constructed a thematic bracket, then ran a series of polls where people just voted for which of a set of two characters was better. (Spoiler alert: It was Captain Marvel by a 3-1 margin over Vulture in the final.)
One of the significant downsides of that tournament was by being here on the forums there wasn’t heavy participation; most rounds only had about 100-120 votes (though we probably got to a decent consensus just off of that). Another significant strike against it was how much of a no-brainer many of the early matches were (see: Riri v. Sam Wilson or America v. Sandman).
Big Wheel was the 64th 5* character to be released, and when he rotates out of Latests, those who are keeping up with new releases will probably have him champed. So that seems like a good time to run a tournament for which 5* is the best.
Last time I sort of generated all of this in-house, bouncing some ideas off a few members of my alliance. But this time I’d like to throw the door open to some wider cooperation and suggestions from some other members of the community. Basically, there are two items that I’d like to get some feedback on:
1.) How should the bracket be organized?
It appeals to me to just seed the characters in released order. So your first bracket would be Silver Surfer v. OML and the last bracket would be Sersi v. Big Wheel. The advantage to this method is that you don’t have too many dud first-round matches. The major disadvantage is that some “regions” of 16 are more densely-populated with great characters than others – I don’t think anybody will be too impressed with the representative of the first “subregion” of 8 (Surfer, OML, Phoenix, BSSM, Green Goblin, IM46, FACap, Bruce), but maybe that’s okay. (Of course, this method also pits Okoye v. Wasp in the first round.)
Another option is to take a pass at ranking them ahead of time, then slot them into the bracket and see if the community agrees. (This might also pit Okoye v. Wasp in round 1.)
A third option is to group them thematically like I did for the 4* tournament to sort of split the difference.
I’m sure there are other options, and I’d be interested in reading the pros and cons.
2.) How should the voting be done?
I would prefer not to use the forum. I’m sure there are many services out there that could be used; one I found is at https://www.poll-maker.com/. I am really open to ideas on this one, as it seems like it would be easy to get wrong.
My target start date for this endeavor is April 4th, the date that Big Wheel leaves tokens. So I have about four weeks to get this thing set up, publicized, and running.
I have a long day at work tomorrow, so I may not be able to devote time to long posts in response, but I look forward to hearing what anybody who’s interested in contributing ideas has to say.
