Mr. T has one rather good point he made in an email to us: Blind scenarios might favour the attacker. We are in the process of thinking about remedies for that. Personally, I would like to think that reported ROAR values are assuming setup times for the defender, that are different from what is possible (and in fact wanted) in blind rounds.
Other than that, I think nobody is forced to come to the tournament, and those who attended seemed to enjoy it. There are other and more competitive formats. I think it is beneficial to try to find a niche that is unfilled instead of trying to compete with all the other fine European events. Having blind rounds is our main motivation for doing the event, if you take that away, there would be no tournament at all to begin with, so this leaves me a bit puzzled.
@fairness:
As I played Björn in the finals, I feel right in saying that I lost due to my own mistake in the penultimate turn. Had I placed just some MMC differently, even Björns snake-eyes with his kill-stack (which brought him back from a rather hopeless position) wouldn't have helped. So I feel the Blind Scenarios, none of which Björn had played or prepared a setup for, were positive additions to a positive experience. And the better player won. I am sure, had we switched sides just for the last one and a half turns, Björn would still have won.
As for the other points Mr. T is making: I am very grateful for him taking his time and sharing his experience and would love to attend a tourney where he is TD/DO, in order to get inspired & learn from him. I think there is no other game that is as much an example of "lifelong learning" as ASL is.