[BoA2] Tournament Overview

Announcement | Registration (closed) | Handbook | Questions & Answers | Maps | Brackets | Discord

Redbull Wololo is over and what a fantastic event that was. We got to experience some incredibly impressive performances from everyone in a brand new game mode - an absolutely wild and, dare I say, unexpected grand final. Fortunately for all of us, Battle of Africa 2 is just around the corner, so you won't have to wait long to get your next high-level gameplay fix. With Hera and Liereyy playing for Aftermath, TheViper playing for Team Secret and the incredible Mr_Yo playing for the new YinYang team, I think it's safe to say that we will get to experience a lot more amazing games very soon. With the expanded qualifiers, the timeframe is looking slightly different, essentially adding another week of great content to the event.

All the games are to be streamed on MembTV in the upcoming weekends throughout May and June starting 13.00 GMT.
The Grand Final will begin 14.00 GMT instead of 13.00 GMT.

Participants
The incredible teams competing for the 20.000$ prize pool has been seeded and divided into the two qualification stages. The sixteen lowest seed teams will be battling to earn a spot in the main qualification stage where they will have to face up against the eight highest seeded teams. From there, they will be divided into the Main Event and the Gold League as shown above.

Qualification Stage

Pre-Qualification Stage

To see who's playing for each team and see their current average rating, click here.

Bracket & Standings
Once the tournament truly begins, there will be a lot of games played, and it will be challenging to keep track of everything. To check the brackets and current standings, click here.
Use the tabs/sheets at the bottom of the document to see the different stages.

Discord Server
It's also a great time to announce our Discord server where you can chat about the tournament and get more immediate responses from us if you have any questions. It's also a great place to find general news about the event and get notified when we go live with the official tournament matches.
Join us here.

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If you're missing any information about the event, please do let me know. You can use the navigation bar at the top of every official thread to quickly get to exactly what you're looking for. Let's get this show on the road - I hope you're all hyped for several weeks of high-level team games!​

 

An opinion is not drama. you sensitive one.

And that will never happen, they are both moral teams. so gg no re

do not take it as BO5, but BO4 with penalty shoot out for an extra point

i see no problem in winning 3-2 gets less points than 3-1/3-0, and this also encourages underdogs to put up a fight

 

Try look at this another way. If YY has 6 points from the two narrow victories, they would have won the group and their match against Heresy would have be meaningless. But now, with this scoring system, all 4 teams still have everything to play for, even almost every game counts. That's excitement all the way.

Well... you are right, if they allready won 2 games against the guys that can be 1 and 2 and 3 teams will pass the group, then thei 3rd set SHOULD BE MEANINGLESS. What is this? xD positive discrimination in aoe too?. You win 2 sets, you are at least in the top 3 of a 4 teams gruop, is just basics. Just imagine nadal winning 5 matches in a row going to 3 sets but someone wining 4 matches 2 sets to 0 and then nadal do not win the tournament. Makes 0 sense. This is just wrong from a competitive point of view. You can have a team that beat potential n1 and n2 in the group, and loose only to 1 team, a team that also loose to n1 and n2, but then that team goes along because they beat that one. Just use a hierarchy logic, just make no sense.

A beat B and C

B beat D

C beat D

D beat A

Is D better than A in overall strengt? nope, and isnt that what a round robin look for (because it avoid just single elimination)? yes. This is a penalty for a "potential bad day", and that is not how a group supposed to work. You allready beat 2 sets and did jour job, now you should be able to relax and have a bad day. In the other end, you loose 2 sets, well mate, you are out.

 

I don't understand the points system at all. I mean I understand what they were going for but why not just have each game count for a point?

I think most people would intuitively agree that it is totally unfair that yingyang could potentially win all three of their group games, and still finish second to a team they beat. Doing it in the aforementioned way avoids such scenarios and gives more significance to a 3-1(for the loser), while still encouraging the underdogs to take games and it still keeps the groups tight till the end.
For instance the current group A would instead look like this:
1.Yingyang 6
2.Secret 5 (+1)
3.Suomi 5
4.Heresy 3

 

I don't understand the points system at all. I mean I understand what they were going for but why not just have each game count for a point?

I think most people would intuitively agree that it is totally unfair that yingyang could potentially win all three of their group games, and still finish second to a team they beat. Doing it in the aforementioned way avoids such scenarios and gives more significance to a 3-1(for the loser), while still encouraging the underdogs to take games and it still keeps the groups tight till the end.
For instance the current group A would instead look like this:
1.Yingyang 6
2.Secret 5 (+1)
3.Suomi 5
4.Heresy 3

That's a different setting. It is fine if the rule is stated clearly at the beginning even the three wins team can end with up 2nd position. The players and audience need to understand the rule well.

 

That's a different setting. It is fine if the rule is stated clearly at the beginning even the three wins team can end with up 2nd position. The players and audience need to understand the rule well.

The setting here actually pull up very intensive fights in Group A, however it may kill the underdog since you potentially (99% in this case) need to win your opponents in the same group TWICE in order to get into the FINAL.

There is no perfect solution. Let's see what will happen.

 

Ban on sling is the best thing that happened to aoe2. Amazing games earlier today.

 

I just thought of something I want to share here.
The tournament obviously is played on an old patch that each player has to install first. So what I just did is to look on https://aoe2.net/ if the players played on the current patch or for how long they havent been playing 1v1s.
The Suomi players and AM players stood out the most. All AM players played within the last 24h, so they currently have the latest patch installed. The Soumi players had been inactive from the ladder for the last week or even longer. My conclusion from that is that Suomi won the semis against AM and still practise for their last fight in the finals.
If we similiarly look at the other matchup Secret vs YinYang then we can see that the whole Secret squad played some games online on this patch in the last few days. In contrast to the YinYang players who had been inactive for at least 5 days. The only problem is that even the Secret players played fewer games then normally in the last days.

With this analysis I assume a final between YinYang and Suomi. It would be pretty stupid for later tournaments that should be played on an older patch, if you can find out whos still in the tournament with simply comparing those stats. Maybe its something that livegames could fix, but the teams still have to practise on the old patch. I dont know right now what we can learn from this, but we surely should acknowledge this.

 

The Soumi players had been inactive from the ladder for the last week or even longer.

That's not true for Villese. And TheMax and Zuppi were never that active on the ladder so you could use the same argument to assume that they are back to "no-tournament mode"

 

also mbl streams almost daily which he couldnt do when he stays on the old patch all the time.

 

All Secret and AM Members stream regular (except liereyy, but he is never very active), so when streaming they have to play on the new patch.
It does seem a bit suspicious for the chinese guys, but it could very well be that the games are not even played yet. Even if youre right though, I think theres no reason to post such analysis before the games are streamed. Do it after the games maybe as constructive criticism, but right it has zero positive effect.

Aaaaaaand if we would really have a YinYang vs Sumoi final that would be sick!

 

I just thought of something I want to share here.
The tournament obviously is played on an old patch that each player has to install first. So what I just did is to look on https://aoe2.net/ if the players played on the current patch or for how long they havent been playing 1v1s.
The Suomi players and AM players stood out the most. All AM players played within the last 24h, so they currently have the latest patch installed. The Soumi players had been inactive from the ladder for the last week or even longer. My conclusion from that is that Suomi won the semis against AM and still practise for their last fight in the finals.
If we similiarly look at the other matchup Secret vs YinYang then we can see that the whole Secret squad played some games online on this patch in the last few days. In contrast to the YinYang players who had been inactive for at least 5 days. The only problem is that even the Secret players played fewer games then normally in the last days.

With this analysis I assume a final between YinYang and Suomi. It would be pretty stupid for later tournaments that should be played on an older patch, if you can find out whos still in the tournament with simply comparing those stats. Maybe its something that livegames could fix, but the teams still have to practise on the old patch. I dont know right now what we can learn from this, but we surely should acknowledge this.

You know that we can switch from current patch to boa2 patch and viceversa anytime we want, right?

 

Even if youre right though, I think theres no reason to post such analysis before the games are streamed.

To wait until my theory cant be proven? Now everyone can find prove for this themselves. The Streaming is a good argument against this method, but we will see.

 

And why exactly do you think it can't be possible they just switch between patches during the tournament, because they are also fulltime streamer?

 

And why exactly do you think it can't be possible they just switch between patches during the tournament, because they are also fulltime streamer?

You know that we can switch from current patch to boa2 patch and viceversa anytime we want, right?

Well his assumption is that you wouldn't play on a new balance while preparing for a tournament (final) which is played on a different balance.

But yeah, as stated already, what else should you do when streaming?

 

Finns and SY mainly play TGs ( except for Yo) and they were forced to do it with Boa patch to avoid drops.

 

Also, the loosing teams will probably continue playing to help the winners train

Suomi's team is known to train much much more than AM

It's only Wednesday morning, I highly doubt that both SF have already been played

Hera, Mbl, nicov, Viper, Daut, Tatoh, Yo (and I think Paladin & lyx) stream almost daily for a living

takes little amount of time to change patches

 

It's only Wednesday morning, I highly doubt that both SF have already been played

The semis have been played in the last week of may if the BoA2 handbook is correct

 

The semis have been played in the last week of may if the BoA2 handbook is correct

wasn't everything pushed one week after they decided to include the pre-qualifications?

I might be wrong here, do you mean that all BOA matches were playes in w-2 than when they were streamed?

 

The semis have been played in the last week of may if the BoA2 handbook is correct

love the speculation because always fail

Hanbook is a reference amigo, there is circunstances that usually change a bit the timelines, the games were not played last week and during all the time you were doing your guessing, it was all wrong, it was fun though, hope you enjoy with the event next weekend.

 

sorry for people expecting secret to win. I think we have a 4-2 or 4-3 for YY (also we havent see a TOP viper performance still, and in EE he also didnt see at his peak, wich is logical, so I think secreat can be out and will not be a surprise) and most probably skill will win in suomi and AM probably some 4-2 and 4-3. I expect both really close series tho.

In finals I belibe YY vs AM, and if YY play to their full potential, I dont think AM is a mature team enought to beat them.

Anyway just speculation, so hype for this weekend!. GG!

 

If you watch the group match between YY and Secrets, team Secrets was more passive, trying to boom too much. The maps reward aggression. I don't think Secrets will play the same style again. Not easy to predict winner, but probably Secrets still the slight favourite.

 

If you watch the group match between YY and Secrets, team Secrets was more passive, trying to boom too much. The maps reward aggression. I don't think Secrets will play the same style again. Not easy to predict winner, but probably Secrets still the slight favourite.

I totally agree, Secret went for a "greedy" approach too often. I think that only Am could defeat them 100% try hard mode.

 

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Cheers!

 

To wait until my theory cant be proven? Now everyone can find prove for this themselves. The Streaming is a good argument against this method, but we will see.

No, but because if it's true you just kill the suspense for some people who don't like to know beforehand.
All you try to do is showing how great you were in finding out if your theory was right

 

The Grand Final will begin 14.00 GMT this upcoming Sunday instead of 13.00 GMT.
I hope you're all looking forward to the last weekend of Battle of Africa 2!