Update for this week!
First and foremost, thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed to the Patreon so far. It means a lot to see this level of support as we continue our mission.
Earlier this month, we held a poll to determine how this event would play out, and I’ve compiled the results of that and will address how the event this Saturday is going to work.
Firstly, of the people who took the poll, 72% of you expressed intention on entering the event. Naturally, in regards to things like structure and timing, I prioritized answers given by the people in this group.
As one could have assumed based on the time zones of our audience, it was relatively close, but the afternoon on the American East Coast came out ahead. I will however try to accommodate for the results by and large, so start time will be
3 PM EST on Saturday January 17th.
Next, as we had decided this tournament would use the Genesys format, we asked how many points the entrants would like the tournament to have. Nearly 100% of you said 100 points, so that’s what we’ll go with. I still, however, fully intend to experiment with point amounts going forward in future YGOrg tournaments.
Which segues me to my next topic: We will be holding more than 1 tournament now!
This first tournament will be internally called the “growing pains” tournament as it’s our first one, and I’m sure there will be hiccups, but my hope is that we will learn from it and improve going forward. I hope to host at least 1 event a month, but I can foresee every two weeks. The biggest priority is that I never hold one the same weekend as a YCS event or Continental level WCQ such as the European Championship.
This means none on the weekends of February 14th, February 27th, March 14th, or April 18th, for example. Due to the unpredictable nature of YCS scheduling, an exact “every 2 weeks” would not work, so instead I will simply announce the months’ schedule during the previous month. Since we are currently in January, February 7th would be the next and only event in February.
93.1% of people who participated in the survey said they’d like these tournaments to become a monthly occurrence, so that is the goal at minimum.
Remarkably, when asked if you would prefer Advanced format tournaments run through YGOrg instead of Genesys, the results were precisely 50/50. Due to this, the event on February 7th will be Advanced format, and Genesys events will be the 2nd tournament run each month that we can squeeze in.
I plan to explore the potential of events during Monday to Friday to allow us to fit additional events into the calendar as well.
The vast majority of poll participants who said they would actually enter the event, concluded the ideal structure was Swiss + Top Cut, as opposed to single or double elimination. This is what we will use going forward. I will use the same tiebreaking system you’d find at a Regional level Yu-Gi-Oh! event.
This event will take place on Duelingbook. This choice was made due to our own simulator not being ready yet, due to programming pipeline constraints, and DB providing the most realistic experience compared to an actual IRL event. We will not be using their administrative staff and will provide our own for the purposes of judging. If you are interested in being a Judge in these YGOrg events, let me know on Discord.
Prizing provided a more interesting obstacle. The point of this event was to actually raise funds, but since we plan to continue these going forward, I want to make sure that we have something in place. I did have an open field in the survey for prize support suggestions, and most people said they simply didn’t care, which for the sake of our charity event is great, but ongoing isn’t ideal. For this event, I’ve chosen to give a box of Phantom Revenge to 1st place. (I will cover the shipping to you up to $20, you’d have to cover the difference if it’s more than this.)
Going forward however, I’d love to partner with potential sponsors for these events to provide prize support, such as store credit for your online store, TCGplayer inventory, etc. Please reach out to me if you’re interested in sponsoring this and/or future YGOrg tournaments and we will get something going.
One keen poll taker also suggested a hall of fame listing on the website. This actually was something we were planning on doing! We are going to incorporate a new page on the site, starting with the launch of the new 4th YGOrg layout, currently called YG4rg, that has two leaderboards on it — a Hall of Heroes, for Patreon supporters, and a Hall of Champions, for tournament players achieving success.
Decklists from this event will be published for any players making Top Cut. We will be doing larger Top Cuts than the current “top 8 always” system you find at a YCS event. They will be more classical for those who remember the format from the 2010s decade. For example, with at least 129 entrants, we would cut to Top 32, and with 2049 entrants (lol), we would cut to Top 64. Every power of two the participant total increments by will add another round of Swiss starting from 8 at 129-256 players. In the likely event of 128 or less participants, we will cut to Top 16 no matter what, and play a number of Swiss rounds proportionate to the turnout.
To enter the event, you can choose to either enter via PayPal with a one time transaction, or subscribe to our Patreon to be pre-registered each month (and can always opt out if you do not wish to play). Decklists must be made and submitted using my website Spellbook. I recommend saving the deck as a Private list to keep its contents hidden from other competitors. The link URL will still work fine. A sign-in form will be generated for our Discord server on the day of an event where you can submit your decklist URL as well as your Patreon ID or other proof of entry.
We are also going to be streaming these events on Twitch. You can find our Twitch Channel here.
If you are interested in doing commentary during and between rounds, this too is something you can reach out to me via Discord for. I’m also interested in some stream elements such as interstitials and loading screens being created if anyone capable is willing to contribute to that goal, and I’d be happy to try and negotiate a fair value with you for the work.
Join our Discord to discuss this article, consider joining our Patreon to help keep the lights on for our decade-plus all-volunteer effort, and also consider joining our Genesys fundraiser tournament to help us through an unusually rough patch (with a chance at cool prizes).
