The 'Shroom:Ultimate Character Tournament

=Welcome= Welcome to the 1st annual Ultimate Character Tournament! I'm Ralphfan, and I'll be your host. What is the tournament? It's a series of polls in a bracket to determine the best character from the Mario, Sonic, Kirby, DK, Zelda, Banjo, and Conker games! Right now, we're in the sixth round, and you can vote in the polls listed below. Meetings were held in #mwUCT, which can be accessed here, on Userpedia, Darkmyst, Mibbit, mIRC, PJIRC, Chatzilla, or etc. We are also on the forum !

 Click here to see the bracket

=Meetings=

Meeting 1
 SUMMARY 

SMB and I covered the Banjo and Conker series with help from MG1 and SLNO.

Agenda
We determined a schedule:
 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda and DK
 * 9/30: Sonic and Kirby
 * 10/7 - ?: Mario

Mario might take a long time.

Entrants
14 Conker and 7 Banjo characters were accepted, and 4 more from Conker are on the bubble:
 * Jolly Roger
 * Gobi
 * Cheato
 * Roysten

Meeting 2
 SUMMARY  We covered. SMB missed a lot because of dinner, Tucky was there for most of the meeting, SLNO was logged on but inactive, Castle Toad was there towards the end, and MG1 was there throughout. We didn't have time for DK, plus I pinged towards the end.

Agenda
New schedule:
 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - ?: Mario

Entrants
We added 18 Zelda characters, and two others are on the bubble:
 * Agahnim
 * Evil Wizard

Meeting 3
 SUMMARY  We covered DK. SMB was there for the last half-hour because of dinner, but MG1 was able to cover, and Tucky was able to drop by.

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - ?: Mario

Entrants
We added 18 more, and put 6 on the bubble:
 * Bjorn
 * Kiddy Kong
 * Swanky Kong
 * Kalypso
 * Kutlass

Meeting 4
 SUMMARY  We covered Sonic. SMB helped out, as did MG1, Turboo, Noahp89, and Tehchomps. Tucayo was probably watching the Yankees-Twins game.

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - ?: Mario

Entrants
We added another 17, and put one on the bubble:
 * Super Sonic

Meeting 5
 SUMMARY  We covered Kirby. SMB was my only assistant, but he did a great job!

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - ?: Mario

Entrants
We added 11 characters and 0 maybes.

Meeting 6
 SUMMARY  We began Super Mario and got about halfway through because we ran long. We got through every game from Jumpman to SMRPG. We're going in chronological order by when the games were released. MG1 was there for most of the meeting; Tehchomps was very active as well; Packy was there for a good chunk of time; SMB, SLNO, and Yoshario also pitched in. Hopefully, we'll finish Mario next week, but I have the feeling it will go into November 4th's meeting.

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - 11/4?: Mario

We hope to finish next week, but it'll probably run through the start of the November 4th meeting.

Entrants
We added 46 more characters and 0 maybes.

Meeting 7
 SUMMARY  We finished the Mario series. SMB was there, but busy, SLNO was there for a while, and Tucayo dropped by for a while, and Tehchomps was there for a bit.

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - 10/28: Mario
 * 11/4 - ?: Brawl, Seeding, and Bracket

Entrants
We added another 63 characters for a total of 109 from the Mario series and 194 total.

Meeting 8
 SUMMARY  We did final touch-ups, covered SSB, and began seeding, but we didn't get much done, due to the World Series and people not really wanting to pay attention. However, I was able to work with a few users during the week, so we were able to make progress nonetheless. For seeding, we have 222 characters. To narrow it down to 128, we will need to eliminate 94 of them. Therefore, 34 of the entrants are being given first-round byes and will advance directly to the second round. The next 94 will be matched up against the bottom 94.

Agenda
Continue seeding and fill out bracket.

Entrants
We added 28 characters, for a final? (unintentional) count of 222. I was going for something between 128 and 256, so it worked out well.

Meeting 9
We worked on the second tier of seeding. SLNO was there for a bit; Tucky and MG1 were the major contributors. We didn't add any new characters, but MG1 suggested the SMG bosses; you can now vote whether to include them or not.

Meeting 10
MG1, SMB, and SLNO helped nearly round out the second tier of seeding in a short meeting. It looks like the SMG bosses are going to pass; the poll will close at the start of the next meeting.

Meeting 11
MG1, SMB, Noah, and Tucky finished out the seeding groups. Since the Galaxy bosses pass, we finished with 231 characters. We're going to organize them into a bracket and set up dates beginning next week.

Meeting 12
MG1, SMB, Tucky, SLNO, and Noah helped organize the bracket. Because of the number of characters, 25 characters get byes, or free passes, to the second round. They have been placed throughout the bracket. We plan to open the first round of the tournament on January 6th or 13th.

=Info= The characters The bracket

=Dates= Here are the dates:
 * Round 1: 1/7-1/27
 * Round 2: 1/28-2/24
 * Round 3: 2/25-3/24
 * Round 4: 3/25-4/28
 * Round 5: 4/29-5/26
 * Round 6: 5/27-6/29
 * Round 7: 7/4-7/29
 * Round 8: 7/30-8/28