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Anvil · for clan staff5 min read

Formats, and how tiles open

Two decisions shape an event more than every tile in it: what shape the board is, and how tiles become playable. They are independent — any format can use any reveal policy — and together they are the difference between a week-long grind and a nightly race.

7 formats the shape of the board5 policies how tiles open3 modifiers what a completion is worth
Step 1

The shape of the board

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The format decides how the board is scored and what the create form asks you for next. Everything else on this page composes on top of it.

Classic bingoA square N×N grid — teams complete tiles in any order, each worth 1.
Point HuntA task list where each tile carries a point value — any number of tiles.
Tile raceAn ordered track — teams reach tiles in sequence; furthest reached wins. The host can branch it into routes that split and merge — finishing a tile picks your way.
ShowdownTiles stay hidden until their scheduled moment — set each reveal time on the Tiles tab. Points-scored, DMM All Stars style.
Lucky drawA bingo caller: hidden tiles go live in random draws on a fixed interval. Points-scored.
Bounty huntOne open tile at a time — the first team to finish it claims the points and the next bounty is drawn.
LadderA points-scored task list ranked as an individual leaderboard (teams optional). Tasks rotate — progressive, one-at-a-time or a rotating window — and can decay in value. Monthly-ladder style.
Fixed grid or task list

A classic board is a true square, so “N of 5” means exactly 25 tiles and the count can never change. Everything else is a task list of any length, which is also the only kind of board a bulk spreadsheet import can grow. If you are generating a hundred tasks, that decision is made here.

Step 2

How tiles open

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Independent of format. The event-level reveal switch is still the master gate — while a board is hidden, nothing is visible and none of these engines run, so you always arm a board deliberately.

All at oncethe classic. Every tile is playable the moment you reveal the board, and teams pick their own order. Choose this unless you have a reason not to.
Scheduledeach tile carries its own reveal time, set on the Tiles tab, and goes live as that time passes. A tile-of-the-hour board: it sets the tempo for you and needs the times authored up front.
Intervalthe engine draws hidden tiles on a fixed interval — a batch every N minutes, at random or in board order. A bingo caller. Zero authoring beyond the tiles themselves, and the board reveals itself while you sleep.
Bountyexactly one tile is open at a time, and the first team to finish it claims it — the tile closes and the next one is drawn immediately. Ruthless, very watchable, and unforgiving of time zones.
Rotatinga rolling window of a few open tiles: each draw opens new ones and expires the oldest. Unlike bounty, everybody can complete an open tile before it goes. Built for individual ladders.
The time-zone question

Bounty and interval boards reward whoever happens to be awake. On a clan spread across the world, that is a real advantage handed out by the clock rather than by play. Rotating windows soften it — an open tile stays open for the length of the window, so a sleeping player still gets a shot at it.

Step 3

What a completion is worth

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Three modifiers, all points-mode only, all frozen into the completion the moment it happens — so a change you make later never rewrites history.

First-team bonusextra points for the first team to finish each tile. The cheapest way to make an all-visible board feel like a race without changing anything else.
Decaya tile’s value scales linearly from full at reveal to a target percentage after N hours, then holds. Below 100% it decays and rewards racing; above 100% it grows, which rewards clearing the old tasks everyone skipped. The growing direction is the one people forget exists.
Lockoutthe first completion closes the tile for everyone else. Implied by bounty. On a board with a big spread in team strength this can end the contest early — it is at its best when the teams are close.
Step 4

Missions: surprises mid-event

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Missions are tiles authored up front and held back — announced from their own pool while the rest of the board stays visible. They are independent of the reveal policy, so a plain all-visible bingo can still have them.

Drop them by hand when the board goes quiet, on a fixed interval, or on a per-mission schedule. Each mission carries its own scoring: its own lockout, bonus, decay and expiry, set per tile rather than for the event.

They are the cheapest way to wake a board up on day five, which is the day every long event needs waking up.

Step 5

Tile race routes

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A tile race is a track of numbered steps. Teams move from step to step, and whoever gets furthest wins. The host can turn the track into a map with roads that split and join.

Every route has one start, roads that can split and merge, and one finish. Every road is the same length. A team’s progress is the road it has walked so far.

  1. Open the event’s Tiles page and find Route.
  2. Pick a Route template and press Apply template. Diamond is the default: one start, two roads, one finish. Two roads, Braid, Straight line and Free (no links) are there too.
  3. Choose How a team’s road is set at a fork: by achievement, or choose and lock in.
  4. Add or move steps with + Step before, Move step earlier/later and Remove step, then press Save route.
  5. If the event is already live, Anvil asks what to do with finishes the new route cuts off: Keep them or Roll back.
By achievementevery tile after your current one is open. The first one a team finishes sets its road, and the others close for that team.
Choose and lock inthe captain (or team staff) picks the next tile with Pick this road before anything counts. Only the pick is open. A pick can’t be undone, except by an admin reset.
Bank early finishesoff by default, so only tiles open on a team’s road count. Turn it on and a finish on a tile the team hasn’t reached yet is kept. It completes when the road gets there. It never skips a team ahead or opens anything early.

Players see a Race track on the event page, with a gold You marker on their own team’s tile. Fullscreen board makes it big, and Esc closes it. In the plugin, the side panel shows Your road and After that.

Step 6

Choosing, in one page

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If you know the feeling you want, this is the shortest route to it.

A normal clan bingoClassic grid, all tiles visible. Add a first-team bonus if you want a little urgency.
Hundreds of tasks, scored by difficultyPoint Hunt, all visible. This is also the only shape a big spreadsheet import can grow into.
A week that builds toward somethingPoint Hunt with scheduled or interval reveal, so the board opens over the week instead of all at once.
An evening people watch liveBounty. One tile, first team takes it, next tile immediately.
An individual competition, not a team oneLadder with a rotating window and decay. Tasks come and go and nobody can bank them.
A race with a finish lineTile race — an ordered track, and whoever gets furthest wins.

Whatever you choose, the tiles themselves are the same job: see Building a board that tracks itself.

Format is fixed at creation but changeable afterwards from the event’s Settings → Event tab; reveal policy and the scoring modifiers can be changed any time before the tiles they affect are revealed.

Stuck, or something looks wrong? Ask in the Anvil support Discord