Hello friends, and welcome to a slightly different type of article. I have a piece about Ferocca and the choices made en route to winning the Duelyst World Championships (DWC), but it seems more relevant at this moment to actually address a different but important member of Ferocca’s supporting cast – the tournament format.

The Format used for the DWC was Conquest with a single ban and no sideboards – we will discuss the shortcomings of this method in the next article, but the primary point of contention is that you are essentially tested on the strength of the weakest deck in your arsenal. No sideboard also makes it impossible to add counters during the match even if you have figured out the opponent’s strategy and how to work around it. Then there’s the issue of enforcing the decklists – it’s often difficult to detect whether a player has 2 copies or 3 copies of a certain card in their match deck, intentionally or otherwise, which almost nullifies the intention of limiting the player via decklist submission.

Thinking about it from a purely Duelyst-focused angle, I am proposing this method for our tournaments. I want you, the reader, to find holes in the idea, and critique the concept, and comment upon its good and bad elements. Together, we can try and find a more robust tournament format.

ZyX method

(TLDR Summary Image – read the text for more on these ideas)

I will split the actions into three sections: Player, Tournament Organiser (TO) and Viewer – because the viewer (on stream) is actually a crucial part of the system, and overburdening the TO often leads to unsatisfying tournaments. Matches are assumed to be Best-of-5 – modifying the rules for Best-of-3 and -7 is quick and painless.

PLAYER –

– Select 4 Generals and build your decks.

– Provide a ‘decklist’ for each deck to the TO.

– This list consists of 18 unique cards from your General’s faction and neutrals.

– You are allowed to use 1, 2 or 3 copies of ANY card in your decklist.

TO –

– Receive decklists and set up schedule, making note of the Player 1 and Player 2 status for each match. Enforce the ban system and maintain side parity for each game within the match.

Ban System:

Player 1 bans a single General from the opponent’s selection.

Player 2 then bans one from the player 1’s selection.

After the first game, the loser can ban an additional General from the opponent.

now Player 2 bans first, then Player 1, then Player 2 does the extra ban.

If the match goes 2-2, then in the final game there are NO BANS.

– Use a third-party website to log the bans.

– Display the bans on the stream in the top corners.

– Allow 5 minutes between games for both players to adjust decks.

Side Parity:

If a player goes first in games 1 and 2, they MUST go second in game 3, remaking the game if necessary (the players can be given this responsibility for their particular games). In any match, a player should not go first (or second) more than 3 times out of 5, or more than 4 times out of 7.

VIEWER:

– Able to understand what’s happening with one glance at stream screen. Bans on top corners beside player name, General picks shown in the intermission between games and a high chance of seeing each player play 3 different Generals on average. If matches go to the final game, get to see what each player thinks is their best deck in action.

Some clarifications –

18 Unique cards is the first big rule. A Unique card is any card from your chosen General’s faction and the neutral set e.g. Serpenti is a unique card, and you can run 1, 2 or 3 of it. I looked at a lot of tournament decks, all of the DWC decks, many Team Wars decks, Bagoum tier list decks and some special high quality decks from individual players as research – and NONE had more than 17 unique cards. Well, apart from one 39 card Argeon deck. We will safely ignore that one.

This limitation acts as a sideboard, allowing players to add in cards like Crossbones, Hollow Grovekeeper, Night Watcher and Sunset Paragon to their actual deck which consists of 13 to 16 unique cards. Crucially, the second part of the rule allows them to run as many as 3 Crossbones if they so wish – this is a side-effect related to the fact that we cannot enforce exact numbers of any card even with spectating by adjudicators. So to make their job easier, they just have to check against the list for the 18 cards. This also allows players to be creative with their decks, creating varieties of their deck for specific match-ups while not allowing them to just Houdini from aggro to control completely. (As an interactive exercise, please count unique cards in your two best competitive decks, and let me know if you use 18 or more uniques!)

The Ban System enforces 1 ban each, so 10/12 Generals are available in the first game. The loser of a game gets to ban an additional General in the next game – resulting in a total of 9/12 Generals available every game thereafter. The final game has no bans.

Let’s take an example Best-of-5 –

Both players ban a General each. Player A beats Player B in game 1.

In Game 2, A bans the same General as before.

B bans the General A won with in addition to the same one from before. A loses.

now A gets to ban an additional General against B, while B only gets one ban for Game 3.

If A wins 2, and B wins 2, then in Game 5 there are NO bans.

A and B get to pick their strongest choice, and potentially can play some mind games to produce an advantageous final game.

This provides a minor game-to-game advantage to the player with the loss, making sure that a winning player does not just win with one of two strong decks (the second being the banned one). To 3-0 someone, the winner would be expected to play their second and third decks having a first deck banned out. In a 3-2, the winner would be expected to have played their second and third decks, and their first deck in the final game, providing ample room for demonstrating skill and mastery over a variety of decks, but making sure that they get to pick their strongest weapon in the final game that decides the match.

Side Parity is something that seems to be largely ignored for Duelyst Tournaments – but even a 1% difference between the win rates of the two sides is significant over a large number of games, so minimising the effect is at least desirable. This will only need to be enforced when the random roll for starting first is unusually one-sided, and even then, only in the third game or later.

So – in summary – players bring 4 generals with decks that get a maximum of 18 unique cards each, a revised ban system that doesn’t limit your entire selection and some background work to improve smooth sailing for both TO and viewer.

That’s it for now! As mentioned above, comment here or on Reddit, the good and bad things that you think come from this system.