2021 Spring Invitational

Hello and welcome to the 2021 Spring Invitational Tournament. This will be a 1v1 tournament based on the format of the 2020 Summer Invitational and 2020 Fall Invitational with some minor tweaks. For those who aren’t familiar, there will be series of invites sent out to previous tournament winners, and an open qualifier on March 13th to fill the remainder of the 16 slots. This is followed by a group stage on March 20th where the top 8 players will advance to a single elimination finals bracket whose winners will receive prizes and glory .

What’s changed?
The faction veto system for LoTS made games a lot more interesting so for this tournament we are going to use it for the group stage and finals bracket. The need for the qualifier to be fast paced means it will continue to use the old system.

In order to encourage finishing out the qualifier, qualified players will be allowed to choose which group the want to be in with the highest placing player in the qualifier choosing first, followed by second place, etc. In the interest of time and organizational complexity, invited players will be still seeded as normal.

Lastly, in order to encourage participation of up and coming players in the qualifier, all players with ladder ratings 1500+ are guaranteed a spot (up to a max of 32 players). In the event that this causes the qualifier to have more than 16 players, the first 2 rounds in the Winner's Bracket will be BO1.

It is because of these changes that I am looking for 2-4 assistant tournament directors to help out with the faction vetoes for the group stage and finals bracket. If you are interested in this please leave a post below or message me on FAF.

Would you like to contribute to the prize pool?
You can donate via Paypal to support this tournament.

Prize pool:
$500 total

• 1st: $225
• 2nd: $100
• 3rd: $75
• 4th: $40
• 5th-8th: $15

Results:
1st - Nexus
2nd - Tagada
3rd - Petric
4th - Paralon
5-8th - Espi
5-8th - JaggedAppliance
5-8th - Yudi
5-8th - ZLO

Donated by:
$265 – Swkoll
$200 - Morax
$35 - archsimkat

The schedule:
March 12, 2021 – Deadline to accept invites
March 13, 2021 - Open Qualifier
March 20, 2021 – Group Stage
March 27-28, 2021 – Finals Bracket

The qualifier:
This is an open qualifier, all players who have not received invites are welcome to participate. It will be a double elimination tournament with BO3s in the winner's bracket and BO1s in the loser's bracket. Maps will be selected by myself from a pool for each round. Players will be seeded by ladder rating.

The group stage:
This will consist of 4 groups of 4 players playing a round robin style tournament with the top 2 of each group advancing. Games will be BO3s. Groups will be seeded by Invitational points followed by position in the qualifier, and finally by ladder rating. Maps will be chosen by players from a pool of 10 using a veto/pick system with 2 vetoes each, players will make alternating vetoes and picks with loser seed vetoing first and higher seed picking first.

The finals bracket:
This is a single elimination tournament with all BO5 matches expect for the championship match which will be BO7. Maps are chosen by players in a pick/veto system from a pool of 15 with 3 vetoes each, players will make alternating vetoes and picks. Players advancing from the group stage can submit one map to the finals bracket map pool (subject to Tournament Director veto). There first two rounds of the Finals Bracket will be played on Saturday and the 3rd place and championship match will be played on Sunday. The 3rd place match will start at 14:00 UTC and the championship match will follow it.

Invitational points:
Invitational points have been updated with results of major tournaments since the Fall Invitational, all players have lost 25% (rounded up) of their points for decay, and then 8 points were given for 1st place in the Fall Invitational, 6 for 2nd, 4 for 3rd, 2 for 4th, and 1 for 5th-8th. 4 points were also given for 1st in 2020 LoTS, 3 for 2nd, 2 for 3rd, and 1 for 4th. This produced the following list of 13 invites:

16 - Petric
15 - Nexus
11 - Tagada
7 - Blackheart
7 - TURBO2
5 - Adjux
3 - Espeperant
2 - Mephi
2 - Turin
1 - Zock
1 - Farms
1 - archsimkat
1 - BlinChIk

Accepted invites:

• Archsimkat
• Espeperant
• Nexus
• Petric
• Tagada
• TURBO2

Thanks to Javi for the new banner image!

Accepting.

I accept the invite

What time does the groupstage start at

@TheWheelie Group stage will start at 14:00 UTC.

Spring Invitational Playoffs:

Date: March 27th-28th
Start Time: 14:00 UTC
Chat: /join #spring
Challonge: https://challonge.com/2itfd9d6
Tournament Directors: Swkoll, Moose

March 27th will feature the Quarter Finals and Semi Finals and March 28th will feature the Bronze Match and Finals.

For this stage of the tournament, in the interest of creating an interesting stream, the 2 semi-finals will happen in sequence. Players in the semi-finals are asked to please wait for the streamers to join their games before starting.

Predictions have also been enabled for the challonge if you would like to see if you can predict who wins the bracket!

All matches are BO5, except for the Final which is BO7.

Map Pool:
5x5:
Cobalt Valley
crazyrush
Map Gen 5x5 - 2 Spawns - Unexplored
Rusting Iron Roundel

10x10:
Africa Ultimate
Farce in the Forest
Goodlands
Map Gen 10x10 - 2 Spawns - Tournament
Open Palms
Sweepwing Sanctum
Twin Rivers

20x20:
Bermuda Locket - FAF version
Map Gen 20x20 - 2 Spawns - Tournament
The Ditch
Therum

Procedure:

1. Players veto maps alternatingly until both have vetoed 3 maps each, lower seed has the 1st veto
2. The higher seed picks the map to play and faction vetos are sent to the Tournament Director with 1 faction vetoed and 2 factions picked in order of preference
3. The lower seed picks the following map and faction vetos are sent again.
4. Steps 2-3 are repeated until one player has won the series
5. Results are then reported to the tournament director

2021 Spring Invitational
March 27, 2021
List of Games Played

Round of 8

Series 1 - Paralon vs ZLO
#14165053 on Africa Ultimate (Cybran vs UEF)
#14165485 on The Ditch (Cybran vs UEF)
#14165704 on Therum (Sera vs UEF)
#14165940 on Neroxis 10x10 (UEF vs Sera)

Series 2 - JaggedAppliance vs Tagada
#14165072 on Crazyrush (Sera vs UEF)
#14165258 on The Ditch (Sera vs Sera)
#14165680 on Goodlands (Sera vs Sera)
#14165867 on Africa Ultimate (Aeon vs Sera)

Series 3 - Nexus- vs Shinobu
#14165095 on Twin Rivers (Sera vs Sera)
#14165193 on The Ditch (Cybran vs UEF)
#14165548 on Rusting Iron Roundel (Sera vs Sera)

Series 4 - EspinoZa vs Fremy_Speeddraw
#14165086 on Rusting Iron Roundel (UEF vs Sera)
#14165246 on Crazyrush (Sera vs Sera)
#14165473 on Goodlands (Cybran vs UEF)
#14165717 on Neroxis 20x20 (UEF vs Cybran)
#14166110 on The Bermuda Locket - FAF version (UEF vs Cybran)

Semifinals (Round of 4)

Series 5 - Paralon vs Tagada
#14166255 on The Ditch (Sera vs UEF)
#14166638 on Crazyrush (UEF vs Sera)
#14167160 on Goodlands (Sera vs UEF)
#14167421 on Africa Ultimate (UEF vs Sera)

Series 6 - Fremy_Speeddraw vs Nexus-
#14166613 on Cobalt Valley (Aeon vs Sera)
#14166751 on Crazyrush (Sera vs Sera)
#14166962 on Goodlands (Sera vs Sera)

Also: here is a search string that you can enter into the Java client to pull up all tournament games (copy it to your clipboard, then in the FAF client, check the box for: display search query, and then paste this into the query input field, and press enter to perform the search directly from the query input field).

id=in=("14165053","14165072","14165086","14165095","14165193","14165246","14165258","14165473","14165485","14165548","14165680","14165704","14165717","14165867","14165940","14166110","14166255","14166613","14166638","14166751","14166962","14167160","14167421")

Factions Statistics:
UEF: 14/46 (30.43%)
Aeon: 2/46 (4.35%)
Cybran: 6/46 (13.04%)
Sera: 24/46 (52.17%)
Mirror: 7/23 (30.43%)

Faction Win Statistics:

Aeon vs. Seraphim: 0-2 (0%)

Cybran vs. UEF: 4-2 (66%)

UEF vs. Cybran: 2-4 (33%)
UEF vs. Seraphim: 3-5 (37.5%)

Seraphim vs. Aeon: 2-0 (100%)
Seraphim vs. UEF: 5-3 (62.5%)

2021 Spring Invitational
Bronze Match
March 28, 2021

Fremy_Speeddraw (Petric) vs Paralon
#14174782 on Therum (Sera vs Cybran)
#14175041 on Cobalt Valley (Aeon vs Sera)
#14175289 on Cobalt Valley (Aeon vs Sera)
#14175391 on Rusting Iron Roundel (UEF vs UEF)
#14175564 on The Ditch - FAF version (Sera vs Cybran)
#14175795 on Neroxis 10x10 (UEF vs UEF)

Also: here is a search string that you can enter into the Java client to pull up the Bronze Match games (copy it to your clipboard, then in the FAF client, check the box for: display search query, and then paste this into the query input field, and press enter to perform the search directly from the query input field).

id=in=("14174782","14175041","14175289","14175391","14175564","14175795")

2021 Spring Invitational
Grand Finals
March 28, 2021

Nexus- vs Tagada
#14176322 on Twin Rivers (Sera vs Sera)
#14176566 on Crazyrush (UEF vs Sera)
#14176749 on The Ditch - FAF version (Cybran vs UEF)
#14176975 on Goodlands (Sera vs Sera)
#14177239 on Open Palms (Cybran vs UEF)
#14177726 on Africa Ultimate (UEF vs Sera)
#14178173 on Neroxis 10x10 (Aeon vs UEF)

Also: here is a search string that you can enter into the Java client to pull up all Grand Finals games (copy it to your clipboard, then in the FAF client, check the box for: display search query, and then paste this into the query input field, and press enter to perform the search directly from the query input field).

id=in=("14176322","14176566","14176749","14176975","14177239","14177726","14178173")

7 games played in the final, I am very excited to catch up on the games!

Congrats to Nexus for his hard fought win in the grand final over Tagada 4-3, winning the 2021 Spring Invitational. A really incredible series of games that showed off some of the amazing things that competitive 1v1 can offer.

Thanks to all 26 players who participated in the Spring Invitational and to all those who tuned to watch at twitch.tv/FAFlive. This event would not have been possible without the support of this community.

Thanks to Morax and archsimkat for their generous donations to the prizepool of this tournament and to all the people who subscribed and cheered on the twitch stream.

Thanks to Moose and Angelofd347h for their assistance TDing for the Spring Invitational. This was my first time running faction veto for the Invitational series and you guys made sure everything ran very smoothly.

Thanks to my fellow casters, archsimkat, Tex, TheDuelist, and JaggedAppliance for helping me out with the stream. Thanks as well to arma for compiling statistics for the whole tournament.

Results:
1st - Nexus
2nd - Tagada
3rd - Petric
4th - Paralon
5-8th - Espi
5-8th - JaggedAppliance
5-8th - Yudi
5-8th - ZLO

Players should contact me with a paypal address or other payment information to receive their prize money.

Honorary Titles:
Yudi - Master of Janus - For their use of best unit
boom - Metagamer - For the most effective use of faction vetos in the tournament
Paralon - Kamikaze pilot - For killing a critical expanding engi with bomber crash damage
"theonlycorrectprediction" and "yes" - Soothsayer - For predicting the entire playoff bracket correctly on challonge
Tagada - Doom Dropper - for dropping an entire army into his opponent's main base

Players map choices for the playoffs:
Zlo - Bermuda Locket - FAF version
Tagada - crazyrush
Yudi -Therum
Nexus - Goodlands
Jagged - Open palms
Espi - Unexplored mapgen 5x5
Paralon - Africa Ultimate
Petric - 20x20 map gen