We’re back to kick off 2019 with a bang by talking about some of the changes to the Guild Ball World Championship Circuit! Last year, over 600 Guild Ball fans participated worldwide in at least one of the National Championships or the SteamCon Last Chance Qualifier! In 2019 we’re incredibly keen to keep this figure marching onwards and upwards.

Wait, What’s All This?

If you’re new to the game, the World Championship Circuit is the pinnacle of competitive play for Guild Ball. There are a series of official National Championships run in 15 countries around the world. National Championships are open events which anyone can attend. The winner of a National Championship receives an invitation to play at the Guild Ball World Championship Finals at SteamCon UK! On top of that, if the National Championship achieves a high enough attendance level, Steamforged Games will pay for the winner to travel to SteamCon UK for the World Finals!

The list of official National Championships in 2019 is:

Australia

Belgium

England

Canada (East)

Canada (West)

France

Germany

Hungary

Poland

Scotland *new event*

Spain

Sweden

USA (East)

USA (West)

+ Roaming Championship

+ SteamCon UK Last Chance Qualifier

In the coming weeks there will be event pages set up on Facebook for each of these National Championships where you can find the most up to date information on each one, including tickets.

A Wild Championship Appears!

We’ve been keeping a close eye on how our National Championships have been performing and we’ve been massively impressed by how these events have progressed and grown. Both the Spanish and the French Championships only ran for the first time in 2018. The Spanish Championship achieved 37 attendees while the French achieved a whopping 58, both are incredible for a first year! Congratulations to Jesús Moreno Ramos who organised the Spanish Championship and to Guillaume Verdier & Julien Gerard who organised the French Championship.

We’ve seen some fantastic growth in our existing Championship events too. The Australian Nationals jumped up from 26 attendees in 2017 to 37 in 2018 which is an excellent result for the exceptionally hard-working pundits and other volunteers led by Aaron Hartwell that we have down under.

For 2019, we have a brand-new National Championship which has been earned by Scotland. The Scots have been putting in some incredible work for their local Guild Ball communities and have been consistently running a good number of events which have been attracting consistent attendance levels. They even ran an international team tournament last year which 8 teams turned up for including teams from Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland! As a result, Pasha Korniyenko will be organising the first ever Scottish National Championship for Guild Ball.

As a result of this, the British Championship has been renamed the English Championship but will otherwise exist in the same manner as it has in previous years.

A Roaming Championship Has Not Appeared… Yet

Last year we trialled our ‘Roaming Championship’, which is a Championship that moves to a new country each year. The idea here is to spotlight an up and coming Guild Ball community that is already running a lot of its own Guild Ball events but hasn’t yet earned its own National Championship. In 2018 Italy ran the Roaming Championship, this year we’re once again looking for a new country to host it!

If you’re country doesn’t currently have a National Championship and you would like to apply to host one, please submit an email to support@steamforged.com with the title ‘Roaming Championship Request – [name of country]’. Remember to include as much information as you can about how much Guild Ball is being played by your local and National community, as well as any details you can provide on where and how you’d like to run the event if successful.

The deadline for 2019 Roaming Championship submissions is the 31st of January.

Onwards and Upwards

As we said earlier, we’re incredibly happy with the growth in Guild Ball organised play which can be at least partially attributed to the success of the World Championship Circuit. In order to continue to encourage growth we’ve made a few changes to attendance requirements in order to earn the free flight for the winners of National Championships.

In 2018, a National Championship required 30 attendees (either paid up beforehand or ‘on the day’, whichever is higher) to earn its winner free convention entry to SteamCon UK, free accommodation for the duration of the convention, and free international travel. Most events in 2018 absolutely smashed through those requirements.

In 2019, there will be three attendance levels, which are customised for each country (it wouldn’t be fair to put the same requirements on the USA East Championship as the Australian one, since their communities are vastly different sizes). The first level earns the event winner free SteamCon UK entry, the second level earns the event winner free SteamCon UK accommodation, and the third level earns the event winner free international travel for SteamCon UK.

Let’s take a typical example of a European Championship, Belgium. In 2018 Belgium achieved 30 players for their National Championship. In 2019 if the Belgian Championship achieves 30 attendees it will earn free convention entry for its winner (as well as the invitation to the World Championship). If the Belgian Championship achieves 40 attendees, it will also earn free accommodation for its winner for the duration of SteamCon UK 2019. Finally, if it achieves 50 attendees it will also earn free international travel for its winner to get to SteamCon UK.

The full list of attendee requirements is listed below - these will be included on the Facebook Event Pages.