Eirias

To spread out the prizes, I would suggest running something that is known as "sections." In chess/battleforge once rankings are in, you can split the tournament into smaller sections based on ELO, so there is not such a high skill gap between players. I would suggest self-selected sections, with section A having prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and section B only having a prize for 1st, which is lower than the 3rd place prize. This way players can choose which section to be in, but there is a strong incentive to be in the top section, so only rookies would choose section B.

I'm guessing your 2 units are cultist master and ashbone pyro? TBH pure shadow t3 is not that good. Splashing with frost is much better. The rest though...are pretty mediocre. That said, shadow insect can be quite good with excellent micro. I've seen it in many shadow nature decks.

Well, there was definitely a tome system the prevented you from bringing non-tome cards into the tome match. Is it so much different to redefine the groups so that it things regular cards are "tome" and "testing cards" are not-tome?

Couldn't you utilize the way it was done in the final days? I.e. Utilize the "tome" feature and give all players all cards at U3, but then add some condition that forbids players from using tome cards ingame (or perhaps, in any game except sparring grounds). Just a thought.

I have pretty variable lag. It feels like it takes 300-500 ms on average, but there are definitely lag spikes that last a second or longer. I always just assumed it was because of the server distance... But definitely I sometimes have enough lag that I try to spawn units, but my ground presence moves too fast so the animation/sound starts like I'm going to spawn, and then it checks with the server and realizes I have no ground presence and no units come out. You can see something like that here at around 3:50--I try to spawn some sunstriders and the sound triggers, but then my scavenger walks too fast and they don't come out. My bigger issue is that sometimes it feels like packets are dropped, or I try to right click to attack and enemy and somehow it doesn't register that there is an enemy there, so my units walk instead.

I believe you need to play a minimum of 3 hours ingame (total) before you can unlock quests. So it's possible that you played less than 3 hours when they rolled in the implement?

Well if it's a round robin, count me in. Who wants to carry me?

@ImaginaryNumb3r I agree with your progression system. Nothing to add, far better than anything I could come up with. This is a whole other topic, widely debated and possibly the most-replied to thread on the forums (well, productive thread where people actually theorize). That monstrous thread has even spawned half a dozen other threads.

Um, what is the point of offering more than 1st place prize in a single elimination tournament? Imagine xHighTech and RadicalX played game 1 together in the last tournament. Despite them clearly being the 2 best, one of them would not get any prize.

I wonder if it should be something more unusual than that? Something like, "mail 50 bfp to 5 strangers." That would be in the Christmas spirit. There would probably be people who would try to scam the system by making deals with people and making sure they haven't added each other to friends or something, but I'm not sure how to make it fool-proof without an additional interface. Still, something like that would be nice. Or perhaps the quest might be something like "beat MAP X" without playing any cards. That way you would be dependent on other people for your quest. You'd have to team with them and let them carry you for the entire map.

I mean...I guess it's possible you can replace ghostspears with twilight brutes....They really lose to enforcer and nightcrawler, but they beat scythe fiends and don't get hurricaned? So perhaps it's a useful tech against fire nature....but idk. It might be useful in 2v2....their special can combo with nasty surprise...

Oof, shots fired I think he means when fire has taken a well and has a 100 power disadvantage? For example, let's say you both take the first well on haladur, then fire takes well #2 immediately. If frost rushes, you think fire should be able to hold (without mortar)?

I agree. The problem is that any time you change rooms (for example, from Introduction to PvP, which happens when a game is created, among other things) the chat automatically resets to "global." I also wish that would change, because it's super annoying to lose the message you're trying to send just because someone creates a game.

Eh...twilight brute is an M/M melee unit in t2. Those are terrible because t2 is filled with amazing M counters. At least twilight minions are S/M (and have exactly the same stats). And even they are exactly like ghostspears except without the ability to counter S units...

haha, yeah if you count only primes as successful....idk, there's like 4 successful decks? The person I'm thinking of didn't play nature t1, afaik. You might be thinking of GreatKudi, who plays nature t1 for fire nature? But idk if he played any twilight units... (Btw, there is one very small advantage that twilight units have, which I'm considering trying to exploit in a super cheese deck....)

Actually, there was one player...I'm probably mixing things up, but I think his name was MutantFischeCZ or something like that. Of course he didn't use only twilight minions, but he did use several twilight creatures in t2 and t3 instead of more optimal units. He was about on my skill level; I often won but he beat me enough to keep me frustrated at losing to his garbage deck @Loriens if you want to see a deck in action with twilight, I played this game with 4 twilight minions:

Finally someone who understands! Sorry, I must not have read carefully. You want to assault an extra well? Hmm...it has been done successfully against me before. That doesn't mean that it's easy, but I've lost to MA spams before (unless I use mortar). IIRC, there was also at least another unit, probably a lightblade or ice guardian, that runs some slight support. I know MaranV likes to start with lightblade because a single t1 unit autoloses to lightblade. So he might use one lightblade to deflect the 1st scavenger, then focus the 2nd with homesoil, and now you have removed 2 scavengers before they can do anything. Assuming he has power for 3 more scavengers, you should be able to easily target them with homesoil + ice barrier + 4 MA. (roughly 400 power vs 400 power). I'd say the main trick is to make sure your army is large enough before attacking. 3 MA +homesoil + ice barrier will probably lose to 2 scavengers. But if you have like 5-10 MA, they can focus the scavengers very quickly. That's something important--for ranged units, having more gives you a massive dps increase. Fire can't respond with ss, because they die instantly. Firesworn is too squishy to use in defense at a power deficit. You don't *really* need to worry about eruptions either, because erupting a dazed MA will result in a dazed squad with 1hp on every unit, that will get healed after the daze ends. Regarding whether you should move your units: it's true that running with one unit from the scavenger will cause the scavenger to do less dps, while all your other archers do constant dps. However, it's probably not a huge deal because you won't be erupted. The fire player wants to bite a group of MA, leaving them at 300 hp each, and erupt them all. Especially since micro will be hard with lag, it's probably best just to clump all the MA together (along with some ice barriers to absorb damage), that way eruptions will spread out ineffectively and not kill anything. If you try to spread your MA out, there's always that chance that the scavenger will move, possibly causing you to clump 2 dazed MA next to each other, and then an eruption + orb hit will save him. If you just start building a massive army as you march, most of them will be at full hp by the time you arrive, and only a mortar or mine will do enough damage to actually kill them. That said, if I ever take a well and I see you rushing toward me with a giant frost army, I'm building a mortar ASAP My initial motivation to add mortar to my deck was actually because MaranV explained that it was the only way I'd survive while taking a well against a frost rush. Hope that helps, and hit me up in the forge if you want to see how it goes vs my (relatively bad) t1

I feel you on the lag...I have to be predictive. So if you can get a feel for how much damage your MA arrows will do, switch targets before the unit is dead and count on the lag leave the units shooting until it dies. Depending on how good you are at predicting that, you can reduce the impact of the lag (while also saving your MAs from wasting arrows at a target that will be dead before the arrows reach) And no. MA spam (alone) will not work against scavengers. Do you know about unit counters? You can read more about it on some guides (i'd recommend checking out a tour of guides here), but in short, scavengers do 50% more damage against small units. MA does 50% more against small units as well, but that doesn't matter because scavengers are medium. The best counter to scavengers are ice guardians. With good micro, mixing ice guardians and MA, (plus frostbite and homesoil) you can defend with no problem. The main issue is that you need to be careful so the enemy scavenger doesn't just run away and attack another base. I'm no expert on this though, so you should ask for 2nd opinions on specifics. IIrc, @MaranV spent a lot of time training against fire players on haladur, but he hasn't been to the forums in a while.

So that way anyone with an unstable internet is immediately eliminated? I'd rather see a Swiss that takes place over a month, with players having a few days to organize the games themselves, and then retroactive casting of interesting games.

Not gonna lie, I'd love a replacement S-counter for scythe fiends. Still doesn't synergize terribly in pvp, except to heal vilebloods (and I'm not sure if the s knockback is worth it because of hurricane). But i guess this is a pve card?

Haha, for the last year I've been trying to make a video explaining why single elimination is poison. Maybe this will be the motivation to finally finish

I don't believe in single elimination, so I'm not playing....

Yeah, there are a lot of variations that might work. For instance, it could be totally random. Or maybe you get a choice of 3 decks each week, and you can choose 1 until the next rotation. Perhaps you get to choose your t1, and then t2 is random. Or maybe it's a kind of draft system, where you get 2/4 options for t1, then 2/4 options for t2, and from there the deck is generated. Or perhaps you can just rent exactly the deck you want, from the marketplace. Maybe you get one random one, and if it's not the one you want, you can rent whatever you like. I kinda lean toward the last option, because even if renting exactly the deck I want removes my need to buy cards on the market, I'd still rather have my own cards to be in the hotkey order I want. I don't think you should be so quick to disregard this. We have a tiny playerbase for PvP, so anything that splits it up might be bad. That said, I do think there is room to have some kind of beginner mode PvP, where you only play against beginners, but there would have to be some strict regulations. Somehow top players shouldn't play. Probably the best solution would be to have a high 1-time reward for restricted PvP. As in, you choose a composed deck, your opponent chooses a composed deck, and if you win with your composed deck for the first time, you get a booster. If you choose the same deck again, you get no reward. This would prevent veterans from stomping on new players, while still having a quest-like feel so new players all try it. I'm not entirely sure that a "restricted PvP" would be much different, or have extra benefits, from unranked pvp though.

@ImaginaryNumb3r Nice analysis. This suggestion was made a while ago, but perhaps it bears resurfacing: The general idea is to rotate a 100% competitive PvP deck to each player, every week or so. This deck would be like a tutorial deck--it would be locked, you can't modify it, and you can't use the cards in any game mode except when you use the deck as a whole. We'd have a panel of top players decide what decks exist, and we'd include variations (like perhaps 100 decks total, with 2 variations for pure fire, 10 variations for fire nature, etc.). Perhaps the ratio of decks would change depending on popularity and the metagame, but it would essentially be random. This prevents it from being useful in PvE or from collectors. And it allows PvP players access to play competitively from day 1, while retaining their incentive to get their own cards (even if they end up with exactly the faction they want, they might prefer the cards in a different order for hotkey reasons). I've been thinking about this problem for a while now, and my proposed solution is the culmination of my analysis. Of course, that doesn't mean a better solution isn't available, but I offer this as a starting place.