Hi everyone!
I’m excited to present you my very first tournament
But first of all, let me introduce myself: my name is ClemoL, and I’m a French 27-year-old pleb.
I’ve been casting Age of Empires II for a bit more than a year, after having watched the competitive scene and all the major tournaments for many years as a viewer.
I started with just a few community events during the first quarantine in France due to Covid-19, and then I got the opportunity to co-cast with OGN.
Approximately at the same period we casted a few series of the first Red Bull Wololo, and since then we pretty much casted everything together, including a lot of major events (RBW2, RBW3, HC4), as well as his own tourneys (French Rumble, European Rumble).
In november 2020, I became a streamer myself as I moved to Lyon, and started to cover several tournaments on my channel (RBW3 qualifiers, HC4 qualifiers & Main Event, Queen’s Clash, TP2 …).
So here I am, as I want to move on to the next step by hosting my own tournament.
Let me introduce to you the Yolo Cup Invitational, a 1v1 Sudden Death event with a 1,000€ prize pool!
For those of you who might not be familiar with this particular game mode, Sudden Death’s rules are simple: you cannot build extra Town Centers in the whole game and if your starting TC gets destroyed, you lose the game!
I decided to make this event invitational for three main main reasons :
- I didn’t want my first tournament to be too heavy in terms of organization
- I didn’t consider the prize pool big enough to attract and motivate the very top players
- As the tournament is encouraging offensive gameplay and doesn’t have a set meta established as far as I know, I wanted to put players with whether (or even both) an extremely aggressive gameplay or creative/exotic style in the spotlight.
So let’s not keep you waiting and unveil the 10 players invited : Babaorum, classicpro, Cyclops, Dracken, JonSlow, Modri, repard, saymyname, Sitaux & SongSong.
Choice was obviously very difficult as many players could have been there. Just know that in addition to the players listed above, some have been contacted but didn’t respond.
Note that Hoang, Lyx, Rubenstock, StrayDog & Vivi were initially part of this group of players but couldn't participate for various reasons.
Along the whole event, donations will be collected for a French charity taking care of abandonned cats. If you wish, you can donate through this link : Une patte vers l'avenir - French charity.
Prize Money
The prize pool of 1,000€ has been sponsored by lovely members of my community (Loco51100 500€, Mister Imples 200€, Pidipoules 200€) and by myself (100€).
Distribution :
1st place 500€
2nd place 250€
3rd-4th place 125€
Timeline
Group stage (recs) : June 9th - June 11th.
Quarterfinals (recs / live) : June 12th.
Semifinals and Grand Final (live) : June 13th.
Maps
KotD3 Arabia will always be the first map played in every stage of the tournament.
Home maps will be picked among 9 different custom maps:
- African Waters
- Arena (ladder version)
- Canberra
- Cape of Storm
- Chaos Pit
- Desert
- Dry River
- Hill Fort (ladder version)
- Sand Forest
Streaming policy
The entire event will be fully open-streaming for casters, in both French and other languages.
Players are allowed and welcome to stream their point of view during live games only, as long as it doesn’t affect their performances and their focus on the game.
The only requirements are the following:
- having the tournament logo while playing/casting and banner in-between the games (you can find them below)
- mention “hosted by ClemoL45” in the title of your stream
- having a !yolocup command in which the link of my twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/clemol45 & the following link https://www.leetchi.com/c/yolo-cup-patte-vers-lavenir regarding the charity structure must both be included.
Due to the different players’ timezones and the fact that the tournament was designed as a 5-day event, all games will be casted as recorded games, except for some quarterfinals, the semi-finals & grand final.
You can find the complete rules of the tournament here: Yolo Cup Rules
For further questions and info, you can reach me or my admin team on the AoE2 Tournaments Discord server : https://discord.gg/m9XAQhzAav.
For example, you will find there soon a description of all 10 players translated for streamers who will cover the event and might want to introduce them briefly to their community.
Least but not last I would like to address a tremendous thank you to all the people who have been involved directly or indirectly in this project:
- first of all of course the sponsors of the tournament without whom it wouldn’t have been possible
- all my admin team @Tarsiz, only_ju & @Phare_Macie who has worked a lot behind the scenes for weeks now
- the casters who have accepted to co-commentate on my channel @oGN, Slide, Tarsiz & Pharmacie
- the players, for participating to this tournament although they didn’t know me for the most part and despite the POV streaming restrictions
- the map makers who have allowed me to use their maps, and even reworked them for some
- the charity “Une patte vers l’avenir” for trusting me
- Vince, Tarsiz and only_ju for the amazing graphics they produced
- my community and globally the French community who is always so supportive and isn’t lacking when it comes to tournaments.
Hope this tournament will grab your attention as I am curious and impatient to discover and share with you the meta of this game mode by seeing experts playing it in a competitive way !
Last edited: