I want to close MoA6 with a summary as the competition definitely deserves it, also in case of any feedback for future tournaments - this is the thread for it. Gotta say my post will be quite long!
Qualifier Brackets: https://challonge.com/moa6quali
Main Event Brackets: https://challonge.com/moa6main
Masters of Arena 6 came to an end and what a tournament it was! 72 players (and way more signups), 3 000 $ prize pool from the clown community and 6 weeks of intense Arena high level gameplay - that was MoA6 in 1 sentence. It was the MoA6 we hoped for it to be because of:
1) The players
I have to start with DauT as the tournament champion - that was maybe the most dominant 1v1 tournament path I've ever witnessed! Being seed number 9 (and going through the qualifiers therefore - apologies!), it was no surprise to see DauT in the Main Event. However, his way there was shocking - BacT, Villese and Babaorum - none of them could take a single game against DauT. Together with 4:1 win against Slam in the Grand Finals, DauT played 24 games in the tournament and won 23 of those. There's not a single player, who could argue that the clown title isn't in the right hands.
Every player in the tournament has his story and we could spend days talking about those, but if I'd have to go for the best story of the tournament, I'd choose Slam's one. I've always been a huge slam fan for his style and personality and I'm sure everyone in the community agrees Slam deserved to go far in a major tournament after his not as sucessful runs in the previous events. If you'd tell me Slam is going to make it in the Finals though, when he was 0:2 and very behind in the 3rd game during his opening Main Event set vs Vodka (Vodka eliminated Slam 3:0 in Clown Cup 3 last year on top), I'd give you 1000:1 odds for that. However, Slam pulled the best comeback of whole MoA6, won 3:2 vs Vodka and then eliminated TaToH and Modri on his way aswell. In the Finals he took the 1st game and looked to be in a convincing position to even take the 2nd one, before DauT started to dominate. Slam's story doesn't have a golden finish in MoA6, but I'm more and more convinced he'll again make it very deep in a major tournament soon.
Both of the Semifinalists deserves the credit for their run too. Despite being seed 11 (Modri) and seed 12 (Babaorum) before the tournament, everyone would expect the Slovenian player to go way further. Modri played a great tournament, making it into the Semifinals while losing 1 game. I'd say the Semifinals could definitely go in his favour too, although combination of unfortunate matchups and very poor maps cost him the first 2 games and facing godlike playing Slam it was very tough spot to comeback.
If there's a surprise of the tournament, it's Babaorum. After first two convincing rounds he did face me in a qualifier match which was influenced (and likely decided) by killing 99.3% imp TC. Beating both ACCM and Running in the Main Event afterwards, Babaorum lost only 2 games on his way to Semifinals, where he couldn't stop DauT. Still a great tournament and the most positive (well...) surprise of the tournament. Also, he changed his work schedule to play the Semifinals (originally scheduled for different time), that allowed everyone to finish MoA6 without a major delay. Big thanks for that!
One more player we really have to thank: Mr_Yo for replacing TheViper who couldn't participate due to his wrist issues. He helped us avoiding AW in the Main Event this way.
Final results including the payouts:
Total Prizepool: 3 000 $
1st Place: DauT 1 200 $
2nd Place: Slam 600 $
3rd Places: Modri and Babaorum 300 $ each
5th-8th Places: Villese, Running, TaToH and Miguel 150 $ each
The competition brought way more stories and I have to mention few more: Stefan's comeback from a break for MoA6 and a top16 performance. I was also really happy about Feanor's comeback after more than a year, he had extremely unfortunate set in the 1st round against repard though, we could easily see more of him in the tournament, but hopefully again in the future! Vinchester vs TaToH Main Event match being easily the most hilarious set of whole MoA6. On the other hand, GodOfTheGodless getting the award for the most creative player of the tournament (as expected). I mean, his 20+0 khmer FC into 2x forward siege workshop is an absolute must watch.
Credits to Blackheart, Ovenka, Alperen, dave_hun, Rise, Simvall, Lobo, Ganji and more for their qualifier performance, they either pulled major upsets or were close to those and made MoA6 great show to watch since the first qualifier rounds and that's because of every single player in the tournament.
Because of:
2) The sponsors, supporters and viewers
While players made the tournament great to watch, there wouldn't be any tournament if we wouldn't have the incredible support allowing us to make this happen. And that's really not just having the funds for the prize pool, showmatches and a prediction contest, although it would be impossible for us to organize MoA6 without that. Watching the event, giving us the feedback, discussing stuff - that's the point of hosting tournaments and the motivation for the future.
Because of:
3) Other casters and people in the background
The first part is connected with the viewers, every streamer helping us to cover the event deserves a credit, we wanted to promote high level Arena towards as many people as we could and that goal was fullfilled because of open streaming and other casters taking part in the event. Also thanks to Chrazini for making the Clown Arena - version of the Arena map that is how we believe Arena should look like, to CtrlArtDel for the tournament banner and my personal special thank to enmipho and Rottinator for handling the prediction contest.
Because of:
4) Jonslow
Both of us would likely be able to host MoA6 on our own, but it would always be a smaller event than what we could do together. Also, both of us were able to take days off during the tournament, knowing the admining won't be affected by that. Not saying we instantly agreed on everything, it took hundreds of 'shut the **** up' messages between us to make MoA6 happen, but I'm sure it was still worth it.
What could go better:
1) Finals schedule
While the tournament was going extremely smooth with only 2 AWs (both in the 1st round of the Qualifier) and literally 0 delays, the original schedule was supposed to be Saturday (yday) Semis, Sunday Finals. In the end I'm really happy we managed to finish the tournament on Friday, otherwise we could have more than a week break between Semifinals and Finals. Again, that's mainly due to Babaorum who made this happen and also good coordination between Slam, DauT, Modri and admins. Still, when going into Friday afternoon we couldn't tell whether there will be Finals on Friday evening or not wasn't optimal.
2) Seeding
And that's admin fault and we take full responsibility for that. In the Main Event, 6 out of the top8 players (aka invited right into Ro16) were eliminated in the 1st round against the qualifiers and the combined score between invitationals and qualifiers during the Main Event was 18:33 (or 7:24 without Slam's results). While we couldn't expect that much of a dominance of the qualifier players, it is fair to say that players like DauT, TaToH or Modri should be top8 seeds and we knew that before the tournament already. Seeding based entirely on rating wasn't optimal, likely shouldn't be used in Arena tournaments and next time we should ask few players to seed top16 or top24 manually instead to give us better and more balanced brackets.
3) Meta
Not gonna lie, that was a bit dissapointing to me. As you know, neither me nor Terror (and also other clowns), none of us is a big fan of the scout + spear (or just LCavs) + boom meta. While I'm generally not as much against the opening itself, it became way too dominant (something like maa + arch on Arabia). However, Arabia was always repetitive map, Arena's biggest magic always used to be the variety of playstyles and openings and that there are many different ways of playing the game with a decent chance of success. That's what is disappearing when both players just go spears + scouts + boom in most of the games.
This is why we made Clown Arena - version of Arena where player walls are closer and therefore opens the door for more aggresive strategies like monk rush, unique unit plays, siege pushes, castle drops and more. We tested the map for weeks with clowns and we were happy with the results - aggression is more rewarded than on normal Arena, but it's not OP and it felt balanced with defensive (boomish or scout boomish) playstyle. However, what we didn't consider enough is that top players who didn't play as much Arena games lately and therefore mainly developed defensive style will keep playing that style anyways when both defence and aggresion is balanced. I guess for the future Arena events the solution now is to get even closer distance between the players to further reward the aggresion and we'll see how it goes.
I'm still really happy with the event, it was one of my main goals when I started to stream in October to make MoA6 happening once again. Afterall, this is definitely a great point but likely not the peak for either me or Jonslow and the point is to keep improving Arena in the future even more.
Thanks and any feedback is welcome!
Qualifier Brackets: https://challonge.com/moa6quali
Main Event Brackets: https://challonge.com/moa6main
Masters of Arena 6 came to an end and what a tournament it was! 72 players (and way more signups), 3 000 $ prize pool from the clown community and 6 weeks of intense Arena high level gameplay - that was MoA6 in 1 sentence. It was the MoA6 we hoped for it to be because of:
1) The players
I have to start with DauT as the tournament champion - that was maybe the most dominant 1v1 tournament path I've ever witnessed! Being seed number 9 (and going through the qualifiers therefore - apologies!), it was no surprise to see DauT in the Main Event. However, his way there was shocking - BacT, Villese and Babaorum - none of them could take a single game against DauT. Together with 4:1 win against Slam in the Grand Finals, DauT played 24 games in the tournament and won 23 of those. There's not a single player, who could argue that the clown title isn't in the right hands.
Every player in the tournament has his story and we could spend days talking about those, but if I'd have to go for the best story of the tournament, I'd choose Slam's one. I've always been a huge slam fan for his style and personality and I'm sure everyone in the community agrees Slam deserved to go far in a major tournament after his not as sucessful runs in the previous events. If you'd tell me Slam is going to make it in the Finals though, when he was 0:2 and very behind in the 3rd game during his opening Main Event set vs Vodka (Vodka eliminated Slam 3:0 in Clown Cup 3 last year on top), I'd give you 1000:1 odds for that. However, Slam pulled the best comeback of whole MoA6, won 3:2 vs Vodka and then eliminated TaToH and Modri on his way aswell. In the Finals he took the 1st game and looked to be in a convincing position to even take the 2nd one, before DauT started to dominate. Slam's story doesn't have a golden finish in MoA6, but I'm more and more convinced he'll again make it very deep in a major tournament soon.
Both of the Semifinalists deserves the credit for their run too. Despite being seed 11 (Modri) and seed 12 (Babaorum) before the tournament, everyone would expect the Slovenian player to go way further. Modri played a great tournament, making it into the Semifinals while losing 1 game. I'd say the Semifinals could definitely go in his favour too, although combination of unfortunate matchups and very poor maps cost him the first 2 games and facing godlike playing Slam it was very tough spot to comeback.
If there's a surprise of the tournament, it's Babaorum. After first two convincing rounds he did face me in a qualifier match which was influenced (and likely decided) by killing 99.3% imp TC. Beating both ACCM and Running in the Main Event afterwards, Babaorum lost only 2 games on his way to Semifinals, where he couldn't stop DauT. Still a great tournament and the most positive (well...) surprise of the tournament. Also, he changed his work schedule to play the Semifinals (originally scheduled for different time), that allowed everyone to finish MoA6 without a major delay. Big thanks for that!
One more player we really have to thank: Mr_Yo for replacing TheViper who couldn't participate due to his wrist issues. He helped us avoiding AW in the Main Event this way.
Final results including the payouts:
Total Prizepool: 3 000 $
1st Place: DauT 1 200 $
2nd Place: Slam 600 $
3rd Places: Modri and Babaorum 300 $ each
5th-8th Places: Villese, Running, TaToH and Miguel 150 $ each
The competition brought way more stories and I have to mention few more: Stefan's comeback from a break for MoA6 and a top16 performance. I was also really happy about Feanor's comeback after more than a year, he had extremely unfortunate set in the 1st round against repard though, we could easily see more of him in the tournament, but hopefully again in the future! Vinchester vs TaToH Main Event match being easily the most hilarious set of whole MoA6. On the other hand, GodOfTheGodless getting the award for the most creative player of the tournament (as expected). I mean, his 20+0 khmer FC into 2x forward siege workshop is an absolute must watch.
Credits to Blackheart, Ovenka, Alperen, dave_hun, Rise, Simvall, Lobo, Ganji and more for their qualifier performance, they either pulled major upsets or were close to those and made MoA6 great show to watch since the first qualifier rounds and that's because of every single player in the tournament.
Because of:
2) The sponsors, supporters and viewers
While players made the tournament great to watch, there wouldn't be any tournament if we wouldn't have the incredible support allowing us to make this happen. And that's really not just having the funds for the prize pool, showmatches and a prediction contest, although it would be impossible for us to organize MoA6 without that. Watching the event, giving us the feedback, discussing stuff - that's the point of hosting tournaments and the motivation for the future.
Because of:
3) Other casters and people in the background
The first part is connected with the viewers, every streamer helping us to cover the event deserves a credit, we wanted to promote high level Arena towards as many people as we could and that goal was fullfilled because of open streaming and other casters taking part in the event. Also thanks to Chrazini for making the Clown Arena - version of the Arena map that is how we believe Arena should look like, to CtrlArtDel for the tournament banner and my personal special thank to enmipho and Rottinator for handling the prediction contest.
Because of:
4) Jonslow
Both of us would likely be able to host MoA6 on our own, but it would always be a smaller event than what we could do together. Also, both of us were able to take days off during the tournament, knowing the admining won't be affected by that. Not saying we instantly agreed on everything, it took hundreds of 'shut the **** up' messages between us to make MoA6 happen, but I'm sure it was still worth it.
What could go better:
1) Finals schedule
While the tournament was going extremely smooth with only 2 AWs (both in the 1st round of the Qualifier) and literally 0 delays, the original schedule was supposed to be Saturday (yday) Semis, Sunday Finals. In the end I'm really happy we managed to finish the tournament on Friday, otherwise we could have more than a week break between Semifinals and Finals. Again, that's mainly due to Babaorum who made this happen and also good coordination between Slam, DauT, Modri and admins. Still, when going into Friday afternoon we couldn't tell whether there will be Finals on Friday evening or not wasn't optimal.
2) Seeding
And that's admin fault and we take full responsibility for that. In the Main Event, 6 out of the top8 players (aka invited right into Ro16) were eliminated in the 1st round against the qualifiers and the combined score between invitationals and qualifiers during the Main Event was 18:33 (or 7:24 without Slam's results). While we couldn't expect that much of a dominance of the qualifier players, it is fair to say that players like DauT, TaToH or Modri should be top8 seeds and we knew that before the tournament already. Seeding based entirely on rating wasn't optimal, likely shouldn't be used in Arena tournaments and next time we should ask few players to seed top16 or top24 manually instead to give us better and more balanced brackets.
3) Meta
Not gonna lie, that was a bit dissapointing to me. As you know, neither me nor Terror (and also other clowns), none of us is a big fan of the scout + spear (or just LCavs) + boom meta. While I'm generally not as much against the opening itself, it became way too dominant (something like maa + arch on Arabia). However, Arabia was always repetitive map, Arena's biggest magic always used to be the variety of playstyles and openings and that there are many different ways of playing the game with a decent chance of success. That's what is disappearing when both players just go spears + scouts + boom in most of the games.
This is why we made Clown Arena - version of Arena where player walls are closer and therefore opens the door for more aggresive strategies like monk rush, unique unit plays, siege pushes, castle drops and more. We tested the map for weeks with clowns and we were happy with the results - aggression is more rewarded than on normal Arena, but it's not OP and it felt balanced with defensive (boomish or scout boomish) playstyle. However, what we didn't consider enough is that top players who didn't play as much Arena games lately and therefore mainly developed defensive style will keep playing that style anyways when both defence and aggresion is balanced. I guess for the future Arena events the solution now is to get even closer distance between the players to further reward the aggresion and we'll see how it goes.
I'm still really happy with the event, it was one of my main goals when I started to stream in October to make MoA6 happening once again. Afterall, this is definitely a great point but likely not the peak for either me or Jonslow and the point is to keep improving Arena in the future even more.
Thanks and any feedback is welcome!