Alright, first I will verify that Joachim won by my forfeiting. Having said that, who the hell made up the rules/guidelines for this thing? Last dueling bracket I did was when Exile made them, and they were much better. The fights took place wherever the two players wanted to fight (which most of the time was 23/24). It was deck merges, and there wasn't all this "Show up by X time, or you forfeit" crap. If someone couldn't show up, it was no big deal and it was just re-scheduled.
These canyon fights and 10k merges really ruin the point of dueling IMO. If you insist on keeping the 10k merges, (lame IMO as everyone just dives down before the merge to get speed anyway), why not use the 10k bases? That would save having to spend half the flight time to the other base climbing.
The rules have evolved over time as people, unfortunately, took advantage of any gap in the rules to get ahead. Frankly if we had only the most basic rules I'd be a lot happier but then I, or the committee, would be called on the carpet for playing favorites so they've evolved to create as many balck and white situations as possible.
The canyons were chosen for two primary reasons; they are the easiest place to find in the DA for those unfamiliar and they have the most fields available. As a secondary consideration they add another element to the duel and for those that don't want that there is flat terrain on both sides of the canyon. Merge alt was somewhat arbitrary but was chosen to allow an initial downhill fight. Flight time to merge is generally about 3 - 3 1/2 minutes.
I'm not opposed to moving the duels to other fields or altering merge alts but several elements of the tournament are meant to allow lesser skilled pilots to participate and stand a chance and I wouldn't want to lose that as we'd lower the appeal to newer players.
On a side note I've been considering when the right time will be to do an invitational only tournament invlolving only those who have made the final rounds and at that time I suspect many of the rules will change considerably regarding many of these issues.
I hope that answers your questions.
On the Yarbles/StokesAk issue it's really up to Yarbles at this point if he wants to try to rearrange the duel or take the forfeit. The duel was scheduled and StokesAk didn't show up. Some people only have limited availability to play the game. I happen to be among them. In my case being gone for 13-14 hours per day for work would make rescheduling difficult.
