Priority system rules for 3rd teams at the WTC

In consultations with the country coordinators of USA, Canada, France, Germany, and England, the WTC Committee has developed a points system to prioritise the application of 3rd teams to the competition.

In the registration process, initially any country can enter up to two teams each until a certain deadline which will be published in the rules pack.  At that stage, we will consult with the host nation to decide how many teams total their venue can accommodate.  We will then open the registration process to those nations who wish to enter a 3rd team and accept them in order of the priority system until the event is full.
WTC 3rd Team Priority System

1) Each country is awarded 1 pt per team that participated at the previous WTC, up to a maximum of 2 pts.

(We believe that a country shouldn’t ever be able to score points off their third team, to avoid creating the feeling that once you’re in the club, you’re in the club.)

2) Each country with multiple time zones is awarded 1pt.

(This helps account for the size of a country, which may cause pockets of the Warmachine community to have difficulty intermingling.)

3) Each country will be awarded 1 pt if it is among the 10 most populous countries, or 2 pts if it is among the 5 most populous countries that participated at the previous WTC.

(Under this system, China/US/Russia/Germany/France would get 2 pts; Italy/England/Spain/Poland/Canada would get 1 pt.)

4) A country will be awarded 3 pts for winning the last WTC. Otherwise they are awarded 2 pts if their highest placing team went X-1 and 1 pt if it went X-2. Countries are also awarded 4 pts if their 2nd highest placing team went X-1 and 2 pts if it went X-2.

(This gives significantly higher weight to the performance of the second-highest team. We feel this is the most important metric, because it is a measure for how strong your players are. Again, the third team doesn’t score points to avoid creating a “club”.)

5) Countries which previously hosted WTC are awarded 2pts. The currently hosting team is always awarded a third team as a reward for hosting.

6) Tiebreakers are resolved from the position of the second placing team at the previous WTC, unless both teams in question had a third team participating. In that case the tiebreak is determined by the third placing teams.

Sample numbers under this system for the 2016 WTC

Netherlands [host nation status]
Australia 9 pts
USA 8 pts
England 7 pts
Finland 7 pts
Poland 7 pts
Germany 6 pts
Sweden 5 pts
Canada 5 pts
France 5 pts
Ireland 5 pts
Russia 5 pts
Italy 4 pts