Quick writeup for our first tournament experience.
First of all: Many thanks to Hybrid for organizing and all the teams for coming out to play. It was a wonderful day of matches.
We were online about kwarter to starting time (noon for me in Montreal, 6pm for Astr0x).
We only signed up Friday night so we didn't know for sure if we were going to join.
Due to the large amount of last minute signups, it took a little bit of time to get everyone ready, but we got our matchups a few minutes after the starting time.
Our first match was against Blin and Olbas on Twin Rivers.
Yours truly lined up vs Blin and Astr0x lined up across from Olbas. We duked it out heavily. Blin took a first few good kills on my engineers and got into the back line mexes, but about 10 minutes in I got my acu upgrade and stormed his front with my army. Astr0x had gotten the upper hand and was turret creeping towards Olbas' base. When blin came out to fight my ACU with his army and ACU I managed to draw him. After that, Olbas, who got out of the fight with 2000 hp on his ACU, gave up.
Second match was against GBnoRE with F-Odin and Freedom, on Adaptive Monument Valley.
We played this map once or twice in a 5v5 or 6v6 setting, but we didn't really do well. We were slow to expand, got harassed, didn't reclaim enough, and eventually got overwhelmed by T2 and then T3 bots, T3 air, and everything in between. Not surprising versus opponents that were about 15 points short of the division limit of 3600 rating.
Third match we played the other low end team in our division: FDDNNR with Farizm and Chelduck. This promised to be a close match, on Crimson Feud.
I had played this map once or twice, so I knew it was important to go for the mass in the corners. However, my engineer didn't finish building the Factory in that corner. I should just have reclaimed, but I got greedy I guess. I successfully fought off the first few tanks that came there, but then the ACU arrived. I was late moving my ACU and tanks there. I skirmished with the opponent ACU and eventually got stuck without an army and lost my ACU. Chelduck got away with a little under 2000 HP but Astr0x was quick to build a few bombers and send some of my remaining army in to finish him off.
Farizm had build the gun and tried to chase Astr0x down, but Astr0x quickly ran away, used his bombers to harass the ACU while in the mean time raiding on every front. Farizm was too late building air of his own and died to the T1 bombers.
Fourth match was on Open Palms against Evan_ and Picoo. Their total rating was over 3500, so also a lot higher than our combined 2600. We got totally wrecked. Even though early on my first lab managed to harass and kill an expanding engineer, the opponent's acu just walked into my base with a bunch of supporting tanks and destroyed everything.
Astr0x tried to tie his lane but lost with just two thousand HP short, and I succumbed soon after.
Fifth match was over just as quick, on Miracle, which was the first time we played this map, against Resistance and Explosive. I tried to move my ACU to the middle to reclaim the mass there, but stalled on power, and then got horribly raided for about 10 minutes while frantically trying to keep my base intact. Not much else to say about it, other than that there was a huge gap there.
For the sixth match we had to wait almost two hours for Morax and Skwoll (the Massachusetts Bawhstonians) to be ready to play since we had a break, and then they had run behind for some reason. Once we joined Stella Maris, we realized that we were way out of our depths. I scouted the early hover arti come but had no way to deal with them, and they killed all my expanding engineers. I tried to build navy but when I sent my scout to the expansion on the right side it already had half a dozen T1 factories spamming tanks and artillery. I walked my ACU forward but it died to a PD that was built right next to it! Another stream-roll defeat.
Overall , it was a great experience and fun to play these high level players.
Certainly, the match-ups were we were closer in ratings were the more fun matches. We couldn't do anything against the stronger players.
Thanks again to the organizer. We really appreciated this opportunity and are looking forward to trying again in the future!
Suggestions and comments:
- As first time tournament participants, it was a little unclear as to what to expect, but the info on the forum, and the participation of the more experienced players helped us a lot.
- Timing wise it did take a good 5 hours from start to finish, including a long break time. I don't think that's something that can easily be prevented, but it's good to know for those that join to expect such long period of playing.
- Commitment: Of course this is an online, unpaid, no-stakes event. Therefore it is to be expected that people either sign up late, or cancel. Be a good participant and try your best to plan according to the requirements and make it on time to the tournament and help everything to run smoothly.
Wishlist: More of this
With different ranges of tournament brackets perhaps, or different formats, but overall, I love this game and I'd like to play more tournaments
Best regards,
-Conorach