In this post I will share my experience with the Alpha only tournament: Gobson Masters Bronze. This is the first time I play such a restricted tournament, and it was an interesting experience.

The tournament I will discuss is the following: Gobson Masters Bronze

"The Gobson crime family spent considerable resources to build the massive and spectacular Great Gobson Arena. They spent even more resources bribing officials to obtain the requisite rights, permits, and permissions to host the esteemed Alpha Tournament Series in the Anumun city of Gobson. Judging by the increase in trade (not to mention the renovations and expansions to the Gobson family estate), the price they paid was well worth it."

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Tournament structure

The tournament had two rounds. A total of 74 players in the first round, and 50% (37 players) advanced to the second round. The tournament entry fee was 2 SPS and the prize structure was this:

Position	Reward
1-4	80
5-8	63
9-16	41
17-24	31
25-32	14
33-40	9
41-48	5
49-56	3
57-128	2

With 74 players entered, there is zero risk playing the tournament. Just one or two wins might be enough to secure a small amount of sps above the entry fee.

Preparation

I dont own a single alpha card, so I had to rent everything. I chose to simply rent every card I could get my hands on, except for Neb Seni and Shin-Lo which were ridiculously expensive, and Royal Dragon Archer and Dragon Whelp were simply not available. The total rental cost was less than 200 DEC, so I had a good chance of earning that back. At the time of writing, 200 DEC is roughly equivalent to 12 SPS. That means I have to get 32'nd place or higher.

I like to simplify stuff for myself, so in case I want to play this tournament format again, I created a deck for it on Peakmonsters. Now I have a one-click rental option for the whole deck, and I can easily check how much it will cost me. This is particularly useful when you are not sure if you will be able to earn back the rental cost for a tournament. Below I have provided a link to the deck:

Peakmonsters Deck

As you can see, there are only 61 cards in the Alpha edition. Each color has 11 cards, except gold (dragon) which has 8 cards. There are no neutral cards. I like these limited game modes, because I can to some extent evaluate most of my team selection options, which is not really feasible in the standard modes.

In addition to these, Gladiator cards can be played in the Alpha tournaments, but only when the "Are You Not Entertained?" shows up.

Battles

The table below contains links to all my battles in this tournament. Each result is given as either W (Win), L (Loss), D (Draw), or S (opponent Surrendered). The letters W,L,and D are links to the battle.

Round 1 opponent	Result	Round 2 opponent	Result
lukabotcic	D	yrol	W
orangechip	L	ys1409	W
xhardbeast	L	jaki01	W
bluedevil0722	W	jakkal	W
bechibenner	S	fighter4-freedom	W
mrflibble	W	edmark1	W
jacekw	L	oleksandr-3811	W
isko011	W	mrflibble	L
godly-rich	W	yrol	L
godly-rich	W

My Score and Top 10 Results

My final score, as you can see above, was 13-5-1 (W-L-D). That was sufficient to secure the 11'th place in this tournament. The reward for 11th place was 41 SPS.

Position	Player	Wins	Losses	Draws
1	byzantinist	18	1	0
2	jacekw	17	2	0
3	bobcatg	15	4	0
4	byzantinekitty	14	4	1
5	lebotjames	14	4	1
6	cymgamingguide	14	4	1
7	pladozero	14	5	0
8	lord-wolfen	14	5	0
9	backtoreality	14	5	0
10	mrflibble	14	5	0

Battle Highlights

Selenia Sky vs Selenia Sky

This battle was interesting because of the combination of relatively high mana and the Return Fire combination. High mana in Alpha tournaments means dragons are the default choice, but Return Fire punishes ranged attackers, which usually would be great to pick with Selenia. I opted to go for red as the secondary color so that I could play Elemental Phoenix. I also went with one ranged attacker, the Lightning Dragon. The idea was that it hits hard enough to be useful, while also being a good protection against sneak units because of the combination of high speed and flying. @bluedevil0722 chose to play a team very similar to mine, but included another ranged attacker and Shin-Lo.

Tyrus Paladium vs Lyanna Natura

Here was a battle with Gladiator cards. These cards are significantly stronger than most the alpha edition cards, so they are the biggest factor to consider whenever they are available. Earth was available, so Quora Towershead must be considered. That was also what I tried to counter here. Marisol Contuma is also an incredibly powerful card, and I thought that frontloading my damage would be sufficiant to take down a Quora, and likely send Marisol snowballing through the enemy team. To my great annoyance, @Jacekw steals this match with a 10% chance dodge by the Quora, but I can be satisfied that my team selection was better than his. Based on Splintertools, my win chance here is above 90%.

Tyrus Paladium vs Alric Stormbringer

For this match, I chose to go with Tyrus because the bonus armor was sure to provide a lot of value. With Aim True and Close Range rules, both melee and ranged attackers are stronger than usual. Therefore, I put a Silvershield Knight in front, and added support for it with the Divine Healer. Life also has two strong ranged units available: Peacebringer and Air Elemental. The tank heal really made the difference here, healing back a lot of the damage done by Alric's magic attackers. If I didnt include that, I'm pretty sure @jaki01 would have secured the win here.

Is it worth playing?

In my opinion: A clear YES. I like the restricted format, and the relatively even playing field. In other tournaments, I often face players with much stronger decks than me, but this is not the case here. Also, with only 11 cards in each color (or 19 with dragon), I can have a good idea of how the match will work. The tournament doesn't come around too often either, so it would take a while to get bored of the more limited format.

The rewards are not huge, but it comes with low risk. A 50% winrate would have been sufficient to pay back both the rental cost and the tournament entry fee.

Complete Tournament Results

Position	Player	Wins	Losses	Draws
1	byzantinist	18	1	0
2	jacekw	17	2	0
3	bobcatg	15	4	0
4	byzantinekitty	14	4	1
5	lebotjames	14	4	1
6	cymgamingguide	14	4	1
7	pladozero	14	5	0
8	lord-wolfen	14	5	0
9	backtoreality	14	5	0
10	mrflibble	14	5	0
11	kalkulus	13	5	1
12	babysheep	13	6	0
13	yrol	13	6	0
14	aubryd	13	6	0
15	catzy20	13	6	0
16	wer-gewinnt	12	5	2
17	shadowch4ser	12	6	1
18	davethegreat	12	7	0
19	uwelang	12	7	0
20	roinkris-spl-1	11	8	0
21	oleksandr-3811	11	8	0
22	edmark1	11	8	0
23	jaki01	11	8	0
24	orangechip	11	8	0
25	imperfect-one	11	8	0
26	omg-sp1	10	8	1
27	noname73	10	9	0
28	babypuppy	10	9	0
29	ys1409	10	9	0
30	byz8tine	10	9	0
31	queeg500	9	8	2
32	jakkal	9	10	0
33	kobold-djawa	9	10	0
34	fighter4-freedom	8	11	0
35	terrius01	8	11	0
36	xhardbeast	8	11	0
37	roinkris	7	11	1
38	ding3435	7	12	0
39	lukabotcic	5	4	1
40	harayatim	5	5	0
41	coppersmith	5	5	0
42	roguepatton	5	5	0
43	mawit07	5	5	0
44	mdasein	5	5	0
45	reconnectnature	5	5	0
46	kittenz	4	6	0
47	anubis85	4	6	0
48	hutorou	4	6	0
49	infiniteworld	4	6	0
50	bladex69	4	6	0
51	rudston	4	6	0
52	middle-earthling	3	7	0
53	cryptoreaper	3	7	0
54	fatjimmy	3	7	0
55	bluedevil0722	3	7	0
56	isko011	3	7	0
57	penass	3	7	0
58	krizalid	2	8	0
59	vortek	2	8	0
60	mrskjp	2	8	0
61	godly-rich	1	9	0
62	asert0	1	9	0
63	splinterfarmer	1	9	0
64	dieselnoi	1	9	0
65	victor-alexander	0	10	0
66	jimmy174	0	10	0
67	sinnis	0	10	0
68	oldschoolhouse	0	10	0
69	andreinaabril	0	10	0
70	acidosis	0	10	0
71	bechibenner	0	10	0
72	panana	0	10	0
73	sith-storm	0	10	0
74	burnsurface	0	10	0

Final words

I hope you found this post interesting. If you did, you might also enjoy my other content:

Battle mage challenges

Battle Mage Challenge: Going the Distance
Battle Mage Challenge: Ferocity
Battle Mage Challenge: Fog of War
Battle Mage Challenge: Fire & Regret
Battle Mage Challenge: Explosive weaponry

Brawl Reports

Peakmonsters [Legion] Brawl #161 Report
Peakmonsters [Legion] Brawl #160 Report
Peakmonsters [Legion] Brawl #159 Report

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Best of luck in Splinterlands!
Kalkulus