Superpolo

Superpolo™ is the ultimate in team sports®. It combines aspects of soccer, handball, water polo and rugby into one fast paced, action-packed extravaganza. The field changes constantly between ice, land, water, underwater and air. The aim of the game is to get the ball into the back of the net. Its played in a giant plastic rectangular prism, set in the middle of a stadium.

Rules

THE COURT

The court size is constant and given as 80m x 40m x 5m (or 80m x 40m x 3m depending on medium) with a goal in the centre of the dimensions 1m x 2m. While the court does not change, the medium played in by the Marmadukes does. Each quarter, a randomly selected medium is chosen to play in. This means that the first quarter may be aerial, using AG (anti-gravity) packs attached to the Marmadukes, but the second quarter may be underwater with the Marmadukes using standard issue Oxygenators®. There is no standard order and once a medium is used, it may be used again in the same match - its random. The key to success is getting your Marmadukes to cope with the changes in setting, however, no team can excel in all areas and normally teams have a speciality. It should also be noted that ice quarters aren't played in ice but on it, as is the same with land quarters. Water quarters are played on the surface, like standard water polo.

GAMEPLAY

To score a goal, a Marmaduke must get the ball in the back of the net, past the goalkeeper. Team with the most goals wins. They can carry the ball as far as they can and can use whatever body part they wish to propel the ball but must not use any other instruments. Not that they should have any, given that all the Marmaduke players are allowed to take onto the court is their jersey, the Oxygenator/AG pack (if necessary) and the ball. There are only a few limits on contact: no biting, no scratching and no gouging but otherwise, anything goes. The game is divided into four twenty minute quarters where six players (one of which is a goalkeeper) are fielded.

TACTICS

The ball acts differently in different mediums. Underwater, the ball is equipped with a device that decreases its buoyancy so that, if thrown from the top of the court, it will naturally begin to curve down to the floor. Underwater quarters are difficult to play because of that and when combined with the constant swimming, it usually takes it toll on Marmadukes that aren't well trained. In aero quarters, the ball is also equipped with an AG pack, this means that it will not follow the laws of gravity and so if the ball is hit, it will keep going, until air resistance stops it or someone changes its direction. The aero quarter is similar to the underwater quarter, in that they are both more like chess games than a contact sport and to get momentum, Marmadukes use their claws to move along the walls and their strong legs to push off them, but unlike underwater quarters, it is very difficult to start moving in the middle of the court without a push. In ice, land and water quarters (these three quarters are known as the 2-D quarters, as opposed to the 3-D aspects of the underwater and aero quarters), the ball follows the normal laws of physics. Marmadukes find the ice quarter a bit difficult with the lack of traction but a smart and well trained one will be able to run and use his (or her) claws to find grip, that is unless they are tackled into a wall by a defending Marmaduke that's set itself on a collision course. Land quarters are probably the most familiar to people. Here the game takes on aspects of rugby as the defending team tries to smack the living crap out of the attackers. By comparison the other quarters are fairly passive and, as such, a passive team will be crushed. Finally, there is the water quarter, very closing resembling water polo, except that the violence tends to be far more open. Swimming is important but so is dolphin-like jumping out of the water. In all the 2D quarters a goal range is activated. Its a semicircle in front of the goal that no player may enter. An attacking player may jump into the range but must get clear of the medium and release the ball before they hit the ground/ice/water, similar to handball. The Marmaduke ability to form giant shapes is also of an advantage to teams. On land, teams can form effective rolling mauls, like in rugby or in the air, Marmadukes can form what's known as a "dart", a triangle with the tip pointed at the goal where the bottom layer pushes off its wall, then each successive layer pushes off its own team members in an effort to get the team's scorer as close to the net as quickly as possible. In underwater quarters, the dart is inverted to be the "fist" where the line of the team swims ahead of the Marmaduke with the ball, clearing the path for them and at the last moment they peel off, giving the shooter a clear shot at goal.

TOURNAMENTS

So now you have an idea of how Superpolo works (changing mediums of play, court, scoring, etc), now its time to find out how to become a champion. Teams will compete in tournaments. Tournaments are ranked by prestige, the new ones starting with a low rating, then working their way up to medium and then high. Newbies to the hosting circuit will start with a low prestige rating, meaning that the winner of their cup will need to play off against a winner of another low prestige tournament for qualification to the MarmaCup. Medium prestige tournaments will give the winner direct qualification and high prestige tournaments will give their finalists direct qualification through to the MarmaCup.

Calculations

Here is how the results are calculated in the real-world. Most of the result is decided randomly, based on some of your decisions when you start a side. The guts of the system is in four die rolls (or random number generations), one roll per quarter. In dice terms, a one on a die is equal to a goal scored in a quarter, a two is two goals, a three is three goals, a four is four goals, a five is no goals and a six means that you get another roll of the die plus one goal on whatever you get with the next roll. In random number terms, no goals is denoted by zero, the bonus roll is the five and the six is removed. So the odds of scoring 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 goals in any quarter is equal. 5 goals requires a 6, then a 4 or a 6, then another 6 and then a 3 and so on. Each team does this for four quarters and the goals are totaled, giving the "raw score". From there we determine the team's three bonuses: the "E Bonus", which is the bonus that you gain from the randomly generated environments (each of them is equally likely) for each of the quarters, the "P Bonus" which is the bonus you gain from how well you play as compared to your playing style and your "D Bonus" which only goes to the team with the higher Elo Ratings (see official site for more details) and is the difference between the two ratings divided by five hundred. Depending on your team's specialty, depends on what your E Bonus will be. We add the four E Bonuses for each quarter and then divide it by four, giving us an average (refer to the site, link provided, to see E Bonus distributions).

The average of the E Bonuses is added to the P Bonus, which is based on your team's style of play. If you opt to have an attacking team, if you score more than 12 goals in your raw score, you will gain a bonus of (n-12)/2.5 where n = the number of goals scored in the raw score. If you do not manage to score more than 12 goals, then you will receive a P Bonus of 0. Choosing a defensive style of play results in a similar P Bonus if you manage to keep the opposing team to less than 8. The P Bonus = (8-n)/2.5 where n = the number of goals scored by the opposing team in their raw score. If you choose a neutral team, and the goal difference is 2 or less, then you also receive a P Bonus according to the formula 2.5/4n where n = the absolute value (meaning there's no positive or negative; if there's no difference, then n = 0.5) of the goal difference between the two teams' raw scores. The E Bonus and the P Bonus is added together to give the bonus multiplier and then multiplied by the raw score of the team to give the multiplied score. The D Bonus is, as explained above, the difference between the two teams Elo Ratings divided by five hundred. After the bonus multiplier comes into play, the D Bonus will be added and while it may not seem as much, 0.1 can make the difference between 0.4 and 0.5. The number after multiplying the raw score by the bonus multiplier and adding the D Bonus is rounded off (0.5 or higher is rounded up, less than 0.5 is rounded down) and you have your final score.

Let's use an example. The most famous upset ever was in the Nahgallac Mail Championships was Gradburg defeating the Liamist States 20-0 which was before the Elo Ratings system was introduced. Before the match, the quarters were decided to be Air, Air, Ice, Air. Gradburg were aerial specialists and the Liamist States favoured land. Obviously the odds were against the LS. Across the quarters, Gradburg scored 2-4-2-4, giving them a raw score of 12. The Liamist States scored 1-1-0-1, giving them a raw score of 3. So the Liamist States had not only played badly but received poor bonuses. Their E Bonus was 0.125 ([0+0+0.5+0]/4) and their P Bonus, given they liked attacking, was 0, giving a Bonus Multiplier of 0.125 (0+0.125=0.125) and a final score of 0.375, rounded to 0. Gradburg, with their attacking style, had faired much better in the bonus stakes. Their E Bonus was obviously much higher ([2+2+0.5+2]/4) with 1.625 and their P Bonus was 0 ([12-12]/2.5 = 0) with a Bonus Multiplier of 1.625. Their final score was 19.5, rounded up to a final score of 20. So with some bad luck on the Liamist States part, drawing incredibly bad mediums and playing badly, and Gradburg playing reasonably well but with well-suited environments, Gradburg had managed to thrash the living crap out of the Liamist States. If Gradburg had trained to defend, then their score would have been 48...

History

The modern form of Superpolo is a relatively new sport. It was only recently that the anti-gravity technology was developed enough to allow the introduction of an aerial quarter. Before that there were merely underwater, ice, water and land quarters. The ice and underwater quarters were also only brought in a short time prior to the introduction of the aerial quarter, as snap-freezing water had up until that time been difficult and the best underwater breathing apparatus around was clumsy SCUBA gear. However the roots of Superpolo go back thousands of years into Liamist States cultural history.

Throughout the millennia, Superpolo's ancestors has primarily been played by humans but in actual fact, the first version of Superpolo, or Prepolo, as it is called by historians, was a naturally occurring cultural phenomenon amongst Marmadukes. They would take a aeusk, which is a round, hard but elastic fruit, and seemingly throw it at a target. The local pre-Liamists noticed this behaviour and began to replicate it, turning it into a game of sorts. When mathematics was developed some three hundred years later, the first scoring system was introduced - the team who managed to throw the aesuk through the trees used as goals the most, won. Defensive tactics were invented when a particularly aggressive Liamist was sick of losing. His rage was so great that he ran from the sideline into the opposing thrower. This brought a revolution to the sport. Soon, every team was tackling the opposing team to stop them from scoring. The next development came several weeks later in the form of passing. An attacker had been tackled rather brutally just as he was going for goal. The shot went off target and into the hands of a team mate. Not sure what to do, the team mate threw the aesuk between the trees - and the goal counted! So now we had violent defence, passing and scoring all combined together to form the first team sport in recorded NationStates history: Prepolo.

Prepolo became popular all over the Liamist States but it was not for several thousand years that the next breakthrough was made. Of course, offensive and defensive tactics evolved somewhat but the next important breakthrough in Superpolo history was the environment change. The first ever organised Prepolo Championships were held next to a large lake. It was the final and the team that hailed from modern Gradburg were up by two over the team from modern Fairbank. Fairbankian players were dropping left and right (in those days instead of having timed periods, they just played until everyone on one team died) and one Fairbank player was left. The Gradburgians were lining him up for what is now known as the "Crunch", where the entire team rushes and tackles the player with the ball. The Fairbankian was clearly scared and ran for the lake in an attempt to escape. Not to be deterred, the Gradburgians followed him in. Now because the Fairbank goals were on the edge of this lake, the Fairbankian was able to swim up next to his goal and throw it in. He then ran out while the Gradburg team was struggling with the water and the mud, retrieved the ball and threw it through the trees again. He again grabbed the ball and threw it one final time to give his team the lead. It went through and he died from exhaustion. The game was declared over and the first ever Prepolo Championship was awarded to Fairbank posthumously. When Prepolo players realised the potential for this, all Prepolo matches were played by lakes or rivers with the goals accessible by land and water. It is at this stage of history that the game is renamed Bipolo.

We skip forward several hundred years into the Liamist Reformation. Games to the death had been replaced with timed periods and Bipolo was more popular than ever. People would play it in the streets, next to their sewage ditches. Disgusting by modern standards but fun by Reformation standards. This convention explains the extremely high cholera rates during the Reformation and the saying "You smell like you've been playing Bipolo" used for people who smell really really bad. Tactics had been refined into an art form with the advent of professional coaching and players were lauded far and wide. You may have noticed that we have only discussed human athletes. What about the Marmadukes? Good question. Its about this time, well after the domestication of the Marmaduke but before their amazing intelligence was fully revealed, that Marmadukes and humans started to play side-by-side. Legend has it that a young boy named Jamus Liam let the first ever Marmaduke play Bipolo when his team was one player down. Little did he realise that he wouldn't have to explain the game to Jamus Jr, a Common Marmaduke. Jamus Jr was sent to play in the ditch, for obvious reasons, and after scoring a double hat-trick, became a regular member of the team. This was the beginning of the end for human Bipolo players. As Marmaduke talents were further and further explored, people quickly realised that they were far better, with their relatively superior strength, flexibility and trainability, at the game than humans.

To the modern era now. Human number quotas have been removed and Marmadukes have taken completely over from humans, except in coaching roles where the superior human intelligence is advantageous. Underwater breathing apparatus has been refined enough to fit in a player's mouth. Water snap-freezing has been developed effectively enough to snap-freeze 6400 m^3 of water in less than five minutes. Bipolo has evolved into Superpolo and the first Nahgallac Mail Superpolo Championships are held. Teams from all over the modern Liamist States Empire arrive by the new speedrail. Liamopolis comes through the round robin group and wins the first Championship by beating off a determined City de Liam. Trenport triumphs the following year over the new Liam Island Monkeified Marmadukes. Under the old system that was in place during the NMC2, Liam Island played off against Liamton at the end of the group phase for a position in the semi-finals. Liamton was strong favourite to go through, after defeating the other two teams in its group. Liam Island won a convincing play-off and went on to finish second. Under the new system, Liamton would have automatically gone through to the semi-finals and who knows what they could have achieved? It was this incident that sparked a multitude of rule changes for NMC3, including the introduction of the aerial environment. NMC3 will be forever remembered for a few things. It was the last non-international Superpolo Championship. It was also where the powerhouse Liamist States, well expected to take out the entire Championship, lost to Superpolo minnows Gradburg, 20-0. With the removal of the revitalised LS, City de Liam, bridesmaid two seasons ago, cruised to first place, overpowering a determined Fairbank.

With the new decision from the MSA to become an international organisation, the Liamists could well lose their grip on this sport. However, it will bring Superpolo to a whole league of new nations, freshly armed with new Marmadukes, to the fray to see how they shape up in this sport of kings, tycoons and Marmaduke enthusiasts.

External Links

Marmaduke Superpolo official site [1]

Marmaduke Sports Association [2]