I’ll start off by saying that this isn’t my tournament report (i write way too slow for that this soon) and is instead about how Worlds was as a whole. Worlds ran from Wednesday through Sunday and we shared the Roy Wilkins Auditorium with X-Wing. There was more than enough space for the both of us (X-Wing and Destiny) so that was a resounding success, especially in comparison to last years at the FFG center which was crazy packed.

Pods / Side Events

There were two types of pods roughly, “speed” ones and “real” ones. Speed ones usually involved an 8 man group going in and agreeing to not cast die removal and jam massive damage in an attempt to finish the pod in about an hour and 15 minutes. Real ones often took the whole hour and 45 minutes or more. The prizes were pretty sweet, even if you never won a game. The breakdown was 1 ticket for entering, then 1 ticket each round, 1 ticket for each win, then the undefeated gets 2 more tickets.

Cost to Play: $5

Tickets based on Record:

0-3: 4 Tickets

1-2: 5 Tickets

2-1: 6 Tickets

3-0: 9 Tickets

I saw a ridiculous amount of pods going on so I’d say that it was a success and far less feel bad than the old pods.

The side events had a lot of different things going on and they had some delays at times, but overall it seemed to go swimmingly too. The prize structure was similar to pods, 1 ticket to enter, 1 for each round, 1 for each win, then 2 bonus tickets for 4-2, 5 bonus (instead) if 5-1, and 8 bonus tickets (instead) if 6-0. The side event entry fee was $10.

Overall, people seemed very happy to play both pods and the side events and I too was happy with them. I found myself to be very exhausted after doing 4-5 speed run pods in a row.

The Main Event

The main event was split into that of Day 1A, Day 1B, and Day 2. 2 Tickets for entering, 1 per round played, and 1 for each win. There were no additional prizes for records. There was also a box that they gave out for entering which seemed pretty decent (i never looked at it, i tossed it in my bag and moved on). Top 64 got a Bitter Rivalry Playmat, and Top 32 got some resource tokens. There were no additional prizes all the way from Top 16 until the Finals (Winner got Lightspeed Assault Mat and a glass trophy? and 2nd place got the big wooden die [OG Vader sides i’m told]) and the two finalists also being invited to next years Worlds event which is invite only.

Edit: Top 16 received invite to next year’s Worlds and it was 2 tickets for entering.

It’s really not easy to go the distance and I feel the lack of additional prizes was a mistake. Even just some extra stacks of tickets removes the feel bad taste in your mouth when you win your Top 32 match, but lose at 16 (i died at 64 so don’t look at me!). There were tons of the monochromatics left at the end of the event. Would it be so bad to have given away some more of those? Maybe a full set to the winner, and going down it could be the set of reds, yellows, or blues or something if they didn’t want to think of additional prizes. Very few people are affected by it so it’s not a huge thing, but it is a thing nonetheless.

(Runner Up Wooden Trophy Pictured Below [ignore the plexiglass trophies behind them from old events]. I don’t have a photo of 1st place trophy yet)

Monochromatics / Foils

I don’t know who came up with the idea of putting out foils, but people do love good foils. The issue here is that they need to actually be good. The first photo depicts a foil Beckett on the left and the regular monochromatic on the right. The second photo has the monochromes on the left and the foils on the right all sleeved. I think the concept was nice, but the foils themselves are pretty terrible. Instead of just a foil film over the entirety of the card, they likely should’ve went with only certain parts of it being foil so that it stands out much better.

The monochromatics look pretty nice though and whilst i’m not a big fan of stuff like this for myself, they can be pretty cool prizes to go home with. I’m curious as to if they’ll be releasing the leftovers elsewhere or if they’ll just be putting them into storage until another major where they might be available. It’s not easily view-able on the foils, but there is some layering for certain parts of each character that is easily seen on the monochromatics and I liked that a lot. It’s too hard to show that via photo, but if you had the luck of getting some for yourself, then you can look for it.

The Top Cut Format

The overall format of all of the X-2 players getting into top cut and it being split into 1A and 1B was great. There was one downfall though and that involved how it broke down for this particular event. We ended up with 2 total 8-0 players, and only 63 players made the cut, so that meant 1 of the 8-0 got a bye and the other didn’t. From a “fairness” standpoint, that stinks, but at the same time it’s just how the cards were dealt, so it’s hard to complain. We could have easily ended up with 64 players exactly, but it would have required some of the paired down people to win that lost and vice versa. I still view the whole tournament format as a success even with that little blip. The next question becomes, do they adjust it to have the play in rounds when the x-2’s are larger than the expected cut, but then allow the top x-3’s to fill in the cut when it is a smaller amount?? That’s a question that we’ll see answered at the Las Vegas Grands happening in January.

Swapping To Invite Only

It’s widely debated as to if swapping to an invite only system will make any large changes to attendance or add prestige to the main event. With the availability of the side events, last chance qualifiers, and lack of prestigious prizes (my opinion) for doing well, I don’t see there being a huge issue if you didn’t qualify for the main event, but wanted to go to worlds anyways. Of all of the events, the main event was probably the least enjoyable as far as time vs reward is concerned, so I think it honestly won’t be a large hit to the more casual player or at least hope that they won’t view it as such.

Streams

The effort put in by the people streaming was a ton and I’m thankful for being able to be a part of it at times. I hated every moment of trying to quickly set up and take down the stream setup each of the days and we only did it Friday, Saturday, and Sunday whilst the others did Wednesday / Thursday as well. If you want to check out the streams available, you can go to.

Destiny Council (No Commentary)

Dice of Failure

Entourage Games (They did the Red Zone / commentary for DC during cut)

TheHyperloops

There was a very small amount of commentary done via the Arrowbrookgaming twitch, but the setup was very haphazard and I messed up on smoothing that out before i had to run to my Top 64 Match and only got that done properly during Top 32.

Overall

I loved hanging out with everyone and already miss it dearly as I type away at home to get this out to you. My body is still struggling to recuperate from the abuse. I’d give Worlds a 5 out of 7 and would do it again. The things that I’d like to see be done better involve talking to hotels in the area and potentially getting some blocks of the hotel reserved for attendees (maybe they did that and i didn’t know), event bracelets that are removable because I don’t think anyone wanted to shower with those on or swapping back to badges, and getting the dates information out further in advance so that people can properly plan the trips.

Edit: So I’ve had the question come up a lot. To my knowledge / what was told; Entering the Last Chance Qualifier (which is before the main event) also allows you to enter the side events and pods, even if you don’t qualify for the main event itself.

~HonestlySarcastc