GWJ SolForge Tournament - #6 - Mono-Faction Mayhem - Done!

Congrats LtWarhound

The new set won't be craftable for a while. I am guessing February. But really don't know. Will see what I can find on that.

Three out five is fine with me.

Not sure what a good format is. Unheroic is more fun in a way. Then again, we all have legendaries we want to use as well.
Maybe just have a free for all for the next one. With some cards banned maybe, in order to evade the meta. Unless that is
something we do want as well.

Or maybe limit it to one legendary in the entire deck. As long as I'm not getting beat to the point where it feels like no matter what I bring to play I'm going to lose. Those games just leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Kyekye wrote:

Or maybe limit it to one legendary in the entire deck. As long as I'm not getting beat to the point where it feels like no matter what I bring to play I'm going to lose. Those games just leave a bad taste in my mouth.

And no BroodQueen! lol (heroic, but it should be a legendary really)

Here's my current idea for the next tournament:

1) Unlegendary format
2) Alpha set is banned (same as with the draft pool).
3) Best out of 5, maximum of 2 weeks to play matches
4) Start 1st or 2nd week of December

Yea, nay?

I'd be all for the format (need to work on getting newer cards) but don't know my availability. We're having our first child right around Thanksgiving.

Mark me as tentative

Sparhawk wrote:

Not sure what a good format is. Unheroic is more fun in a way. Then again, we all have legendaries we want to use as well.
Maybe just have a free for all for the next one. With some cards banned maybe, in order to evade the meta. Unless that is
something we do want as well.

So I'm not entirely opposed to doing a free-for-all tournament, but my main concern is whether or not that'll be fun for people who aren't playing regularly or at least loading up the client to collect the daily login bonus. I'd rather matches not be completely one sided because someone is packing a really well-oiled deck that capitalizes on synergies with select Legendaries. I also don't have enough of a grasp of the meta in the game to really make a good judgement call as to which specific cards need to be banned. And in general I find banning large swathes of cards (ie. by rarity and/or set) makes it a lot simpler for people to build decks around.

However, with sharing and crafting now being ways for people to get their hands on some legendaries I am definitely considering doing a legendary tournament at some point. There might be some other restriction in place but I'm not opposed to letting the reds in.

Totally agree that it has to stay fun and chances should be the same to everyone.
Maybe a next tournament Alpha only, unrestricted with common and rares only from the rest.
Just making it up as I type.

Your proposal looks good. I am only worried about everyone going for a BroodQueen deck.
As that is just too strong not to go for.

A few notes about this tournament:

1) We're doing "best of 5" this time because I want to see if adding additional matches helps smooth out the RNG swing factor. If people like this change I'll use it in future tournaments.
2) Since there's more matches, I've increased the amount of time for each round to 2 weeks although I don't think we'll need that much time.
3) Restricting Alpha is partially out of laziness but I think that also changes up the meta enough to be interesting. This doesn't mean future tournaments will also be Alpha-less.
4) We will probably see nerfs and a new set introduced at some point during this tournament. Be expected for the meta to change suddenly, although I have no objections to banning the new set if that's what people want. Obviously, I can't do anything about nerfs or other changes to existing cards.

Signed up!

I'm in. Gonna have to get building new decks. I think my existing ones are pretty reliant of Alpha cards :/

F2P players will be impacted the most here, since the rewards draw from a pool of all the cards. Its a sadly rare thing for me to get a card that isn't Alpha. I'll have to poke at the library, see what decks can be tuned to adjust for this. Shouldn't be a major issue, though it does gut my current go-to deck.

LtWarhound wrote:

F2P players will be impacted the most here, since the rewards draw from a pool of all the cards. Its a sadly rare thing for me to get a card that isn't Alpha.

Interesting, because I think with the daily login rewards it's the opposite for me, although I don't have any data on it. Packs definitely seem to give out more non-Alpha cards these days.

Also, I'll be posting a list this weekend of Legendary/Heroic cards I have available for sharing if anyone's interested in swapping cards.

Doublechecking, I mentally lumped some cards together that shouldn't have been. Not getting as many Alpha as I was thinking.

I just redeemed the 10 free packs and got two legendaries and two heroics. One of each were Alpha :/

Is Duskmaw ok to use?

IMAGE(http://solforgegame.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Duskmaw.jpg)
IMAGE(http://solforgegame.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Tendrils.jpg)

Ugh.. that card. I'm not totally sure what to do since I feel like banning cards opens up a large can of worms that I'd particularly not have to deal with since I don't know the overall meta that well. (Legendaries also tend to be the most OP cards in the game which is probably the main reason I've been reluctant to run a Legendary tourney until now).

However, I know that's one of the cards they're looking at nerfing. Are there other cards that people would prefer are not part of the tournament? I'd rather have that discussion now rather than later.

EDIT:

As a point of reference, here's a banlist from one of the upcoming tournaments on SolForge Ladder:

Uterra: Bramblewood Tracker, Wegu, the Ancient
Tempys: Rage of Kadras, Frostmane Dragon
Alloyin: Oratek Explosives, Relic Hunter. Nexus Core, Brightsteel Sentinel
Nekrium: Duskmaw, Twilight Drake, Dysian Broodqueen

This pretty much locks out the majority of the current deck archetypes that I'm aware of.

EDIT 2: Another list but for Unheroic:

Citadel Guard
Ebonbound Warlord
Batterhide
Shardbound Invoker

That is the flaw in these type of games. I get to face off against players using the overpowered cards. But by the time I get my hands on them, they are nerfed.

Sorry to have opened that can of worms Shoptroll
Asking, because the amount of legendaries might be quite off balanced without our
group of players. I am fine banning all mentioned in the list.
Otherwise, my deck will be a Duskmaw/Wegu deck Or will it ?!?!?!

I think that list is okay to ban. I have a Rage of Kadras card and it truly is bonkers.

Do we need to ban the heroics?

LtWarhound wrote:

That is the flaw in these type of games. I get to face off against players using the overpowered cards. But by the time I get my hands on them, they are nerfed. :(

It's also not fun that some (like Duskmaw) are easy to procure if you're willing to drop some cash on the pre-constructed decks. I really don't get how that one was released in its current state. Ungated removal is ridiculous.

Sparhawk wrote:

Sorry to have opened that can of worms Shoptroll
Asking, because the amount of legendaries might be quite off balanced without our
group of players. I am fine banning all mentioned in the list.
Otherwise, my deck will be a Duskmaw/Wegu deck Or will it ?!?!?! :P

I don't have a problem with banning cards, but I hadn't done my homework before setting up this tournament to see what the current problems were. I'd rather have an interesting tournament than one where everyone is just going all in on whatever is currently dominating the meta.

Of course I'm sad I likely won't get to build a Wegu deck (although I have a poor man's version I'm currently testing), but that's how it goes.

I'm also not sure what Legendaries we all have and if anyone's going to throw money into the game in order to build a monster of a deck. I know I've got some Gold left over from the Humble Bundle and the promo code I didn't know about, but that's probably enough to get me like one legendary chest, and not enough to get any of the pre-con decks. I think in the future I might put a cap on the number of Legendaries for a deck so things don't get too crazy. On the other hand, there's nothing really on the line so I can't imagine anyone would really spend money on this tournament.

Kyekye wrote:

Do we need to ban the heroics?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure I understand the reasoning on all the cards in that list (ie. Nexus Core), but my concern is if we were to ban things like Duskmaw and Rage (I think Wegu is one that can go either way given how much support it needs to get going) that we'd just end up with everyone playing NU Broodqueen decks (Although I think BQ is more of a problem in draft and/or unheroic than the standard meta)

Of the heroics in that list the one I'd be most concerned about is Bramblewood Tracker (it's weird that Ashurian Flamesculptor isn't listed since that's the Tempys spells version of that creature cycle and another card they've got on the possible nerf list). I think if you take Tracker out of the pool that breaks one of the Broodqueen synergies too.

Since it's been almost 48 hours with no further discussion I'm going ahead and banning the following cards:

Uterra: Bramblewood Tracker; Wegu, the Ancient
Tempys: Rage of Kadras; Frostmane Dragon
Alloyin: Oratek Explosives; Relic Hunter
Nekrium: Duskmaw, Twilight Drake; Dysian Broodqueen

This is in addition to the existing "No Alpha" restriction. While this is probably a little more restrictive than what I would prefer to do, I'm assuming that SolforgeLadder has a better grasp on the overall impact to the meta than I do.

Announcing: GWJ SolForge Tournament V: Out with the Old!

New year, new tournament (finally!). Let's do this thing.

The rules this time are simple:

* All cards from Alpha set are banned.

Since everyone's been asking for Legendary cards in the tournaments, I decided we should give it a shot. However, with great power comes great.... restrictions. In exchange for Legendaries, we will not be using cards from the original (Alpha) release, which is the same card pool currently used by the draft queue.

Signups are now open here (Use the 02/2015 Tournament tab). I will close down signups on 02/13/2015 and we will start the tournament on 02/20/2015. This should give everyone ample time to craft any cards they want and to field test their decks.

Rules:

  • This will be a swiss tournament consisting of 4 rounds.
  • Each matchup will be determined from a best of five games.
  • Participants should try to have their matchup completed within 2 weeks. I will decide how to enforce this at a later point.
  • If all matchups are completed before the 2 week deadline, we will start the next round ahead of schedule.
  • Asynchronous games are allowed, but live games are the preferred manner of play. It is up to the opponents in each round to agree on how they wish to play their match.
  • Please do not change your deck between games with your current opponent.
  • See above for a list of deck construction restrictions.
  • See below for a list of specific banned cards
  • Signups are in the Solforge GDoc
  • The bracket will be administered via Challonge, please make sure you have an account there and list it when signing up
  • Tournament will start on 02/20/2015.
  • Top/first name in each pairing should send the invite/challenge for each round.

Banned Cards:
All cards from Alpha
Uterra: Bramblewood Tracker; Wegu, the Ancient
Tempys: Rage of Kadras; Frostmane Dragon
Alloyin: Oratek Explosives; Relic Hunter
Nekrium: Duskmaw, Twilight Drake; Dysian Broodqueen

Sounds good to me. Way to make an executive decision!

Signups are now closed! As stated previously, we'll be starting on the 20th.

Also, what are people's thoughts on the upcoming set? Would you prefer to keep it out of the tournament or would you like to see the meta change once we're underway?

No preference. It would be a gentle way for me to see the new cards if people are playing them

Let's get this started!

Round 1:
shoptroll v. Sparhawk
cyrax v. Rowyn
Kyekye v. LtWarhound

First name sends the challenge to the second. Best of 5.

This round ends at midnight EST on 3/6/2015. If everyone is done before then we will advance to the next round.

shoptroll wrote:

Let's get this started!

Round 1:
shoptroll v. Sparhawk
cyrax v. Rowyn
Kyekye v. LtWarhound

First name sends the challenge to the second. Best of 5.

This round ends at midnight EST on 3/6/2015. If everyone is done before then we will advance to the next round.

Cool

Sparhawk took me out 2-3 this afternoon. I managed to come out of the gate swinging in the first two matches, but he was able to revise his strategy and come back from 2-0 and took it all the way to the win. Great tense and lightning fast matches in the back half of the round. A great start to the tournament

Also, everyone should be aware that the game will be offline Thursday starting at 7 PM Pacific as they are updating with Set 5 at that time.

shoptroll wrote:

Sparhawk took me out 2-3 this afternoon. I managed to come out of the gate swinging in the first two matches, but he was able to revise his strategy and come back from 2-0 and took it all the way to the win. Great tense and lightning fast matches in the back half of the round. A great start to the tournament

Also, everyone should be aware that the game will be offline Thursday starting at 7 PM Pacific as they are updating with Set 5 at that time.

After 2 times losing so quickly, I really thought there was no coming back from that. Was already happy winning 1 game after those.
Last two matches I had in each a point where either of us could have taken the match. Great matches all in all

Just finished the matches with LtWarhound. I took it 3-1.

Game 1 I got lucky and pulled out a last second win. Game 2 he trounced me. I don't remember how game 3 went and game 4 had me in control the whole time. Some tense moments for sure. There's a lot of synergy in that deck.