Celestial Tournament: The Real Show Begins

The final standings are out. And, ouch, OoX finished at 127th while Main finished at 68th. Just good enough that they get one more potion than us, in other words. But only 10 spots ahead of Reign of Xen at 137th. Oh well, better in the middle of the road than at the bottom with the teams that didn't win at all.

But, enough of that, it's time for the actual competition. The round of 16 elimination tournament begins soon. The first series of matches to be played on the 31st will whittle the field down from 16 to 4 and the championship rounds will take place the next day. [QQ], as feared, didn't make the cut but some other strong teams did. One thing to note is just how many American guilds are represented in the final count. It might have something to do with the schedule favoring those teams and it might not but either way, there are a lot compared to how many entered the tournament.

Here are the Round One match-ups:

• #1 Estoric Warriors [EW] vs. #16 Supernova Jpn [SpNv]
• #2 Idiot Savants [iQ] vs. #15 Zero Files Remaining [LaG]
• #3 Mostly Harmless [MH] vs. #14 (Something Korean) [one]
• #4 Winners Remorse [wR] vs #13 Listen To [iPod]
• #5 Ominous Latin Name [tag] vs #12 Temporal Flux Reality [acid]
• #6 Team Everfrost [eF] vs #11 Serious Sin [SiN]
• #7 Rus Corp [RUS] vs #10 Time Is Running [Out]
• #8 Battery Powered Best Friend [Vibe] vs #9 Bambis Don't Say [meow]

Some fierce matches there. According to the official rules, the rounds are supposed to take place at 16 and 19GMT on the 31st and 1st. I'm not sure just how accurate that is, though, but that would be 2PM and 5PM EST. These matches should definitely be on observer mode, though, so it shouldn't be too hard to catch them. Who knows? I might even try to post a write up or two as I've done for past events. Or maybe I'll get wacky and try my hand at live-blogging, as it were, or something completely different. Any requests out there?

Another thing I'm unclear on is just how the bracketing goes, I believe it's set up as a standard elimination tournament so, for example, the winner of [EW]/[SpNv] should play the winner of [Vibe]/[Meow]. Which if I recall is the way it's been done in the past. But it could also be reseeded after every round in which case should [EW] survive they'd play the lowest seed available (Which if every top seed wins would, in fact, be [Vibe] but I really doubt that's going to happen).

We'll find out, I guess, as for those of us on the outside there's the fun of the Xunlai Tournament House to concern ourselves with. I'd rather it was just a straight bracket as the current system of picking the order of finish and getting points based on how close you are adds too much variance for my tastes but I'll take what I can get, I guess.

In any event, I'm at a bit of a loss here as, dirty secret time, I don't tend to watch much obs mode. I only have so much time to be in game and when I am I'd rather be doing something rather than just passively watching so I don't fanatically study the top teams as I have done in the past. Which means that, although there are some old stand-bys involved – like Rus Corp and even [one] – there are also some names which mean absolutely nothing to me beyond their ladder position. At this point, the ladder's out the window, though, as it's not really an accurate account of how teams do in a best of three tournament setting. iQ, for example, has one of the worst ratings (Although, you know, rampant smurfing means they probably make up half of the top 50 and a quarter of all the tournament rosters. In all seriousness, though, one of their known alternate guilds, [dixie] is something like 30th but they've, smartly, I believe, kept their main guild out of obs mode territory.) but they're exactly the sort of tested, experienced, and above all smart team that I think should do well.

In a tournament setting, especially at this level, you can assume everyone's a good player so what really separates teams is their ability to come up with a plan heading into the match. But, more importantly, their ability to adapt that plan from game to game. And to adapt their strategy to encompass what their opponents are doing. So, before I make my predictions, (And according to the Xunlai site, I have until the 31st) I think I have some studying to do. Until then, my preliminary choices are to go with experienced teams. I don't think a higher rank in the seeding is all that good an indicator given that doing well in the Swiss rounds depends in no small part on the teams you're randomly matched with but I need to examine the teams and their records a bit closer before I could say for certain that a team like, say, Winner's Remorse is aching for an upset.

But, man, I haven't had this much fun since the GWFC.