Hello there.
Welcome to my Tournament post. It's been a while since I last talked about tournaments. A big part of that is because I haven't been getting top finishes in SPL created tournaments for a while now. After the tournaments were revamped, they now have higher SPS rewards for the top finishers compared to before. This meant that stronger players were also playing even the Novice tournaments. Just for comparison Novice tournaments before had a first place reward of 20 SPS. Bronze Tournaments had 40. But in the current tournament setups, the top four players can get 112 SPS. So tournament rewards are so much better now.
The rewards aren't top heavy as well. For this novice tournament, just getting within top 32 is already close to the top 4 rewards in the old Bronze tournament rewards. And getting top 64 gives close to the top 4 rewards in the old Novice tournaments. This change has been in effect for a while now, but I noticed that I haven't really given it much emphasis.
Of course, when rewards are this good, it will attract more players. The old Novice tournaments only reached around 150 players. While the old Bronze tournaments reached around 200. But for this Novice tournament there were 300 players that entered. With only the top 128 players getting a reward, one needs to be better than half of the players.
In the old tournaments the competition was easier. Since the rewards were lower, only weaker players entered, with a few tournament pros mixed in. These tournament pros as I like to call them are usually the ones that place in the top ranks of the Novice and Bronze tournaments. A lot of them were silver tanked players with a few gold and diamond players. But after the tournament revamp, a lot of diamond and champ players are also playing in the Novice and Bronze tournaments.
I have a diamond border because I reached diamond rank in Wild but I no longer play there, and I'm just a silver player in modern. It isn't too far fetched to say that the additional 100 players can be a mix of gold+ players that also want to get the rewards. Which makes the competition that much more difficult.
For newer players, this might be a little daunting. But if they think about it in a different way, it is a good way to get better at the game. This can be a good way to build up experience, and find different strategies that other players are using. If they are looking to buy/rent cards, seeing what cards are powerful and popular can give them a better idea on what to get. If they get a good result, players can also get a piece of the rewards and get SPS.
Like in my other tournament posts, I usually only do these posts when I do well in one, so I'll also share a little of my experience in this tournament. For the first round, I had a very nice record of 10-1, with 3 of those wins coming from opponents that fled the battle. I think a lot of times, players decide what they want to do after a few of their battles resolve. Those that got a lot of losses early tend to just quit early and don't submit a team for the rest of their battles.
For the final round, I also got a record of 10-1, with 3 fled wins as well. I ended up with a 20-2 record, which is enough for the second best record in the tournament. My losses came from Abzolutezero123 and Ehvinho. It is interesting that I didn't face any of the other top 5 players. When I have a good record, I usually want to face the other top players so I can hopefully beat them and get a better placement. In the end, Samji got first place with just 1 loss, and there was a 4 way tie for the second position. Since the top reward is up to the 4th placer, we each got 102.775 SPS instead of the 112.1. Overall, I think I was in good condition when I placed my teams. It has been a while since I last got a piece of the top rewards, so this one felt nice. I hope I can get good results in the other tournaments as well.
That is it for my tournament post. Have you been playing tournaments as well? How have your experience and results been? Don't hesitate to let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions for improvement.
And as always, these are Not Financial Advice, and Do Your Own Research.
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