The lull between VGL qualifying rounds and updates feels almost peaceful. It’s a chance to experiment with the new changes and barely keep yourself form rage pinging when your solo queue teammate obviously hasn’t gotten the message that the jungle creeps will straight wreck you. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t news!

VGL Second Qualifier Seeds Announced

On February 13th, the 2nd qualifier for Vainglory League winter season begins. The 1st qualifier was important, but this tournament is the deciding factor in making it to the Winter Season finals. 64 teams are once again divided into four separate brackets and the number one seeds are; GankStars Sirius, Alliance, Nemisis Hydra and GankStars Vega. The accompanying articles gives some great insight into what this 2nd qualifier means for the Season.

Hero Sale

In case you wander blindly through life, or just tend to log into the game and immediately smash your greasy finger on Ranked Match, you might not know that Ardan, Joule and Skaarf are dirt cheap right now. Through February 13th you can get these three for a paltry 2,000 Glory apiece. All three are definitely worth picking up, which I say even though I’m only good with one. It’s Ardan. I love Ardan. You know, I’m not done talking about him yet.

Thunderdome Ardan

Forget Fury Rona, Update 1.14 Thunderdome Ardan is the real apocalypse. A bug in Ardan’s energy to crystal power conversion resulted in obscene amounts of damage from his Gauntlet. SEMC was quick to address and issued a hot fix repairing this and several other problems including; Reim’s root mechanic not working, Petal’s minions not increasing in power with levels and items, Ozo’s Bangarang knocking back turrets and Kraken and tutorial bots dying to jungle creeps. Ardan may be back to being a decent support behind Catherine and possibly even Adagio this update, but we will always have the memories.

Red Envelopes

Daily Red Envelope gifts were announced with the new update, but sneaky Super Evil didn’t mention you have the potential to receive bonus Red Envelopes after casual and ranked games. Each drop will give 50 Glory, which is almost like getting double Glory! Oh yeah, they’re also doing double Glory days. These guys, am I right?

Guild Fame Requirements Increased

A visual bug caused bile to rise around the world when players thought SEMC had inexplicably lowered Guild reward payouts for fame. This was addressed and corrected, but it should stand to mention that the fame required to level up has gone up. In short, your guild will need almost twice as much experience to reach level 90 in Season 2.

GankStars Roster Change

In a professional goodbye to CullTheMeek, GankStars announced that FooJee will be moving from Vega to Sirius to fill the vacancy in the roster. Vega and Polaris are in turn getting new additions to round out the teams. GankStars look good moving toward the next round of VGL. Best of luck!

Team Phoenix Tournament

As of this writing, I believe Team Phoenix is still only about three weeks old. Despite their infancy, they held a tournament this past Saturday and all the cool kids came. 32 teams fought single elimination, best of 3 for semis and finals, and GankStars Sirius came out on top with their new roster. Halcyon Hammers Velocity took second place and Nemisis Hydra and Titan were awarded 3rd and 4th place respectively. This is some of the first competitive play on the new update and could say a lot about what we can expect for VGL next week. Team Phoenix put together this most excellent highlight reel if you didn’t have a chance to watch the streamed finals.

Vertigo Studios

Another great move in our little community is the promising growth of Team Vertigo. Just announced this weekend is Vertigo Studios, a series of streams promoting friendly match ups and more. I’ve had the pleasure of casting for Vertigo and look forward to what they have in store for this new venture.

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Season 2 is shaping up to be quite exciting for the Vainglory community, but what I’m most jazzed about are all the big ways guilds are growing and evolving. Every week it seems like our world is becoming something greater, and I’m just happy to be a part of it. Until next time, may the Fold smile upon you year of the monkeys and draft last pick flunkies.