Delicious Whirled Cup 2023 Official Announcement

The strangest and most delicious team game tournament of Age of Empires II is finally making its debut. A 3v3 tourney. A $24k prize pool sponsored by Microsoft. Tilting features like land fish and even some maps with flying trade or fish under golds and/or stones….What else but a Delicious Whirled Cup?

It can now be revealed that the AM vs GL show match tomorrow at 14 GMT, 2 May 2023 features the GRAND FINAL settings on the Qualifier Map Pool (actual grand final will have a map draft first). They will be playing for first seed overall of the tourney.



As for the tourney itself, please join our Discord for detailed information! A few highlights though:

The main event will be from 8 July (Saturday) to 30 July (Sunday) 2023, which will feature 16 teams in a new format:

• An abbreviated 2-day live group stage
• A Quarterfinals Weekend
• A Round Robin Final 4 over 1.5 weekends
• A live Bo7 Grand Final on 30 July between the top 2 from the Round Robin

Open Qualifiers

While there are 16 teams in the main event, only 4 are invited and the others will come from a 36-team sign up process open to ALL and a single elimination qualification process in June:

• Sign ups from May 1 (today) to May 28
• Groups announced June 1
• Winning a Bo3 followed by a Bo5 gets you qualified for the main event; 3rd week is for seeding

Please see the Delicious Player Guide on the Discord for more information!


A few Notes...

As you may notice, there are fewer games in earlier stages and more games in later stages. This format is intentional. The prize pool is scaled to incentivize deep runs, while all teams still receive a good chance at advancing without having to play a high number of games to reach earlier stages.

Furthermore, we also have allocated most of money from our sponsor Microsoft to the prize pool. The trailer and logo are essentially what we have spent on production. In short, we have minimal production value of our own and are relying on the community!

Therefore as a viewer, you will catch the name of every player in the tournament, experience amateur casting, probably miss the player’s point of view during intense moments, as well as imagine what goes on in voice communication during games. We can practically guarantee that you will not see every single civilization in the game given the drafting system, as global bans mean teams will have to think outside of the box.


Prize Pool

The $24k USD prize pool generously sponsored by Microsoft will be split as follows:

Place	Payout
1st place	6900​
2nd place	4200​
3rd / 4th	2700​
5th to 8th	1350​
9th to 12th	213​
13th to 16th	105​
12 promoted	69​

While the pool may look a bit top-heavy, keep in mind that group stage can consist of losing 3 games day 1 (13th to 16th), or losing the Bo5 deciders day 2 (9th to 12th place). Yet victory will secure your team $1350 even if you end up losing the quarterfinals.



Map Pool

And of course, this tourney involves a completely customized map pool that grows with each stage. Of the 11 total maps, 5 are available for the opening Bo3 qualifier, 7 for the rest of qualifiers and group stage, and the full 11 from quarterfinals onward. These maps are summarized in the Delicious Map Atlas. For now, they can be found in Dragonmilk's Delicious Dozen in the mod center but will be published at the start of qualifiers separately in case any changes are made from now until then.


Once again, please join our Discord for more information, including an area to ask questions!

 

Amazing!!!!! Really good news!!!! More TG!!!!! I love it!!!!!!!!!! Really nice idea, congratulations!

 

Excellent! The showmatch maps have been super fun and it's great to see a tournament use these unconventional maps. Plus, TG tournaments are always great. Thanks for putting in the work!

 

NICE payout numbers

 

Very good time.Last year there was King of African 3vs3 in June,this year the 3vs3 is in July,but there is another big tire in June,so every month we can see great matches.That's fantastic!
In adition, due to the Arabia competition,I can't see some great Arena players for a long time.And as we can see,there is an Arena map in

Delicious Whirled Cup 2023.I hope Dracken can enter this competition.​

 

Ya the name, presentation and the maps give it a fun vibe which hopefully doesn't push the players not to take this too seriously. I feel like this is going to be the largest TG tournament of 2023 (mostly because tg tournaments are on a decline).

 

How is this not an S-Tier tournament?!