Odd footnote to Jon Couture's post: Two of the
biggest advocates of requiring submitted packs to be
grouped by category went to and pack-edited tournaments
at Boston University. We were also two of the
biggest control freaks the circuit has seen.
Not
sure what Peter Keshavan is up to these days but in my
own hindsight, grouping by category is more trouble
than it's worth.
Samer is absolutely right that
it helps make pack deficiencies more readily
apparent. However, one can discover the problem in due time
anyway. Having them pre-grouped by category seems to be
most useful for the editor who has very high standards
but also has better things to do with free time (or
no free time).
If you're laid back and short
on time, you'll want to trust the teams' ordering,
with some obvious corrections for distribution. If
you're the kind of editor that Matthew Schneller speaks
of, hand-crafting a good balance, it actually turns
out that getting a pseudorandom distribution to begin
with makes the process less
painful.
Matt
(Obviously my comments apply strictly to tourneys where
teams submit packs. Question suppliers will do things
their own way.)