The Grand Melee - Announcement and Discussion

Some time ago, the secretive Order of the Sheep teased us The Grand Melee, an Age of Empires II: DE happening in Hannover at the DreamHack LAN event, from the 15th to the 17th of December.

We are now happy to deliver the full message to you.

Settings specifics
The whole event will be played using the DWL game mode, also known as 9 villagers start game mode. It will allow for quicker action, while keeping the openness and strategic diversity of the standard RM mode.

Main event
The Grand Melee main event will consist of a single elimination bracket, featuring a total of 8 players.
15th of December
Quarter finals best of 5
16th of December
Semi finals best of 7
17th of December
Third place match best of 7 and Grand final best of 9

Participation
Firstly, as per their performance in the RedBull Wololo: Legacy tournament, Liereyy and TaToH has been granted an invitation to the main event.

Secondly, the other 6 participants will have to come on top of the entirely open qualifiers happening on the 3rd and 4th of December. The registration is already open and you can sign up here on start.gg

Prize money reward
The monetary reward will amount to a whopping $100,000 split between the 8 main event players as followed:

1st place: $40,000
2nd place: $20,000
3rd place: $14,000
4th place: $10,000
5th to 8th: $4,000

Where to watch?
The whole event will be streamed on Twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/theorderofthesheep

On top of that, the qualifiers will be completely open to broadcast, so you can catch them live at your favourite streamer’s channel on the 3rd and 4th of December!

Details for the broadcasting policy of the main event will be announced soon. Stay tuned...

Join the Discord server now!
Chat with us and get all the latest updates regarding The Grand Melee at https://discord.gg/vT9NWJJtp5

You can also use this announcement thread to discuss about the tournament and to send your questions and feedback.

See you soon!

 

Why are we trying to play six consecutive best of 5s tomorrow? Nobody wants to watch that much aoe

 

Seriously is no one else casting the qualifiers than the pick me girl who talks about plugging holes?

Chill out. It's fantastic that GL have picked Ellie for this. New talent needs chances to be able to grow.
Though OrnLu is also casting if you really can't stand her for whatever weird reason.

 

Seriously is no one else casting the qualifiers than the pick me girl who talks about plugging holes?

have you even looked? literally every live channel in the AOE II category is providing a cast of the game.

 

have you even looked? literally every live channel in the AOE II category is providing a cast of the game.

Thanks. Was just manually going through my usual favorites for streaming and couldn’t find a cast of the game.

 

+1 for OrnLu, today is a good reason as ever to tune to his channel for the first time, super knowledgeable and competent caster who's just nice to listen too and blows a lot of other casters out of the water with game knowledge etc..

 

went to check fire's stream trying to figure out why he did this because he doesnt have such reputation before

Twitch

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here's a cool story time from mr fire

tldr back in good old days people such as edie was much nicer and tolerated more in tourney
pretty ironic considering what he did himself

Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

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sup [EN & PT/BR] | !coaching !donate !pix - f1reaoe on Twitch

f1reaoe went live on Twitch. Catch up on their Age of Empires II VOD now.

www.twitch.tv

so basically he thinks people whos unlikely to travel (based on his own assumption) shouldn't be playing
and he gets to decide for lyx, although it also has to do with chinese players' own communication, which is in his right to use the rule
i wonder if bigger names with more exposure internationally like mbl or viper kept him for 1hour, would he take the aw too?

on a side note, people like hera waited extra minutes for ibuypower, jordan vs dogao was like 1 to 2hours delayed because jordan would wait for dogao

yknow what they say, it hurts to watch the most when u compare from person to person (some overused chinese internet slang)

 

went to check fire's stream trying to figure out why he did this because he doesnt have such reputation before

Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

www.twitch.tv

here's a cool story time from mr fire

tldr back in good old days people such as edie was much nicer and tolerated more in tourney
pretty ironic considering what he did himself

so basically he thinks people whos unlikely to travel (based on his own assumption) shouldn't be playing
and he gets to decide for lyx, although it also has to do with chinese players' own communication, which is in his right to use the rule
i wonder if bigger names with more exposure internationally like mbl or viper kept him for 1hour, would he take the aw too?

on a side note, people like hera waited extra minutes for ibuypower, jordan vs dogao was like 1 to 2hours delayed because jordan would wait for dogao
View attachment 204540

yknow what they say, it hurts to watch the most when u compare from person to person (some overused chinese internet slang)

intresting mindset that f1re shows there - good to know how he thinks - and he is the money overall typ of guy - i can confirm mr f1re there are still people out there that hold values higher then money
I hope he never comes in a situation were he needs help and his opposite things "fu you"

 

So we have another guy who is considered as "bad" because he was following rules 11

 

It's always funny how these stuff always happen to F1Re, Capoch,... A different ethic than Jordan_23 or Villese for sure.

Hmm, are we forgetting the Rage Forest semis vs Tatoh team?

Yeah, it's a similar scenario

 

Wonder why Memb isn't casting this tournament

 

Wonder why Memb isn't casting this tournament

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1598850188860616705

 

Hmm, are we forgetting the Rage Forest semis vs Tatoh team?

Yeah, it's a similar scenario

You mean picking their opponents civ after they picked the wrong civ? Feels like a completely different league of issue

 

You mean picking their opponents civ after they picked the wrong civ? Feels like a completely different league of issue

It was an obvious mistake intended for picking Bohemians.

Different category of issue in some sense, but both are instances of lack of sportsmanship.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1598850188860616705

I see, thanks.
The qualifiers is still not closed stream right? Memb could've still cast this.

But I suppose he didn't want to case the qualifiers when he can't cast the main event

 

It is less fun without Memb, at least for me

 

There will be only 8 matches in the main event. Please tell me Ellie is not one of the main casters. I have nothing against her personally but holy **** this is hard to listen to. Even Ornlu co-casting can't save it.

Thankfully Nova is also casting, although having only one alternative English cast is kinda underwhelming.

 

There will be only 8 matches in the main event. Please tell me Ellie is not one of the main casters. I have nothing against her personally but holy **** this is hard to listen to. Even Ornlu co-casting can't save it.

Thankfully Nova is also casting, although having only one alternative English cast is kinda underwhelming.

Nova is good but that 30fps stream...

 

on a side note, people like hera waited extra minutes for ibuypower, jordan vs dogao was like 1 to 2hours delayed because jordan would wait for dogao

yknow what they say, it hurts to watch the most when u compare from person to person (some overused chinese internet slang)

JorDan vs dogao was the last round of the day though so a delay in this set didn't have any impact on other players.

 

Congratulations to the organizers on the viewer numbers so far, alienating other renowned casters in the process is also a nice touch.

 

It's always funny how these stuff always happen to F1Re, Capoch,... A different ethic than Jordan_23 or Villese for sure.

I’m kinda lost here. What did I do?

 

Chill out. It's fantastic that GL have picked Ellie for this. New talent needs chances to be able to grow.
Though OrnLu is also casting if you really can't stand her for whatever weird reason.

Why there are so many people like you with this nonsense? I keep reading this same thing in chats. What chance? She had her chance in RBW and she was good as interviewerer, but she had tons of bad comments there, is just obvious is too early for her or at all, point is, she is not good enough for such event at this moment.

There will be only 8 matches in the main event. Please tell me Ellie is not one of the main casters. I have nothing against her personally but holy **** this is hard to listen to. Even Ornlu co-casting can't save it.

Thankfully Nova is also casting, although having only one alternative English cast is kinda underwhelming.

Personally I would wish Ornly was casting alone. I just can't stay positive hearing in 100k event "Ballistics effects castles, correct me if I'm wrong". I mean.... Everyone can fail something, but I completely see where bad comments comming from.

As for giving chances for new people, I can totally agree with that, but you can't make them out of nowhere to be main caster. That just makes zero sense.

 

F1re, u dont need any explanation or anything. You followed the rules, and Lyx did not. If i were you, i would not even waste my time with this kind of comments. Good luck for the next events and keep going tryhard

 

So we have another guy who is considered as "bad" because he was following rules 11

F1re strictly followed the rules so there is nothing more to say about this subject. And especially not the personnal attacks that have been flying around in this thread. Please move on to something else now.

 

I tuned in to a stream of RBWL where Daniel was 1-0 ahead of Liereyy and seemed on the verge of winning the 2nd game. Then a caster says (I paraphrase) "Who knows, maybe someone else is playing on Daniel's account!"

I have never heard anything that disrespectful said about a pro player, by any caster. Regardless of their gender or nationality. Maybe you actually need to be decent at the game (e.g. not stuck below 1100 elo) to actually appreciate the hard work and talent it takes for anyone to even get to top 16 in RBWL. Then you'll stop throwing sarcastic shade at them.

And yet, after this, and all the other crap, somehow this one caster gets another chance to exclusively cast an S-tier, while better casters (/ better players / respectful human beings) are shut out from streaming it altogether.

Why do we keep giving chances to an incompetent, disrespectful caster, just because they have different sexual organs?

 

I tuned in to a stream of RBWL where Daniel was 1-0 ahead of Liereyy and seemed on the verge of winning the 2nd game. Then a caster says (I paraphrase) "Who knows, maybe someone else is playing on Daniel's account!"

I have never heard anything that disrespectful said about a pro player by any caster. In any game. Regardless of their gender or nationality. Maybe you actually need to be decent at the game (e.g. not stuck below 1100 elo) to stop fanboying a few top players and actually respect other players.

And yet this caster keeps getting more chances to officially cast tournaments, while better casters (and better players, and respectful human beings) are shut out from streaming them altogether.

Why do we keep giving chances to an incompetent, disrespectful caster, just because they have different sexual organs?

If you are implying I said that check the rec and you'll find that wasn't me.

 

Alright, I went through the discomfort of rewatching the rec and it starts at 26:50. Transcript:

• Survivalist: Daniel is playing insane right now..
• Ellie4k: Ooh my gosh.. you know what? It's the mYinsanity, y'know? They just give him the insane skills, apparently, you know?
• Survivalist: Maybe? I mean he's on a smurf account so is this really Daniel I don't know.
• Ellie4k: Oooooh yeaah we don't have any of the player cams, we don't know.
• Survivalist: Yeah exactly.
• Ellie4k: We don't know.

I was wrong in stating that only Ellie4k was being disrespectful. Both casters were disrespectful.

When a player works his ass off for years and gets to the most important tournament of his career, and is close to upsetting a higher seeded player, you'd expect the official casters to say something meaningful - about the gameplay, about the player - other than puns about his clan ID and insinuations that he's not playing himself.

This is just one thing on a list of inappropriate/dumb remarks from a caster. But for one of these two casters, that list is getting pretty long.