Match directors are most welcome.
It's easy to come up with fun stages.
The hardest part of the job is time-motion. Assembling stages together that flow, get rounds down range, and do not take a long time per shooter.
For instance, a lot of the stages we do have five or six shooters firing at a time. If it were done where it was one shooter at a time, yes - it would provide for a very rich individual experience, but it would take literally six times longer, and shooters would spend far more time waiting around than shooting or doing anything. Then you have to start cutting stages because stuff took too long, and less stages mean less rounds and less fun.
Match #4, where we had three rolling stages that each went 1 by 1 was an experiment, and it worked fantastically. The prep time was built in and once we got rolling, scores started hitting the paper even faster than I had hoped for. Off a 10am start, by 2pm we had 25 shooters through six stages with well over 100 rounds each downrange.
When I came up with the idea for this series last year, I said that it would be more like "eating at the casino buffet" vs. "dining at the french restaurant on the top floor."
So as a general guideline if you have three stages with 5-6 guys shooting, and 2-3 stages that can roll either independently or in rapid sequence, that's a very good formula to start with.
The real question is who the heck is going to stop Jack "be the bullet" K?
I am also writing up a document for next year that will spell out exactly how the series will roll regarding the scores, series points, etc. Addressing gun problems, stage malfunctions, etc. Roles & responsibilities, e.g. "Series coordinator" & "Match Director." Target size/presentation general guidelines and such. A lot of this we are already doing, but it's a good idea to have a guiding document.
After the finals we will go over this and see what everyone thinks. The series belongs to us, the shooters, so all of us decide how it works together.
