Last year as a part of our Worldbuilders fundraiser, the folks at Cards Against Humanity helped us put on a very-last-minute Overwatch Tournament.

It was a smashing success, and this year we decided to try something similar and have a 2v2 Starcraft Tournament.

Now first off, I’d like to make it clear that I did not pick the game. At first I thought we might be playing PUBG. Which I am hilariously bad at. Or maybe Rocket League, which I have never played at all.

But they picked the original Starcraft. A game I actually used to play back in the day. Back in the beforetimes. Back when you could even have considered me to be, in some small way, l33t.

Now I’m not saying I was the best at Starcraft or anything. But I *am* saying that I used to play against 3 AI opponents set to the highest level of difficulty. And I would win. I would win while laughing maniacally.

Admittedly, that was… oh sweet christ… More than 17 years ago. So there might have been some *minor* skill degradation since then.

What I’m really getting at here is that if I’m awesome at this game, I expect you to be really impressed and assume it’s because I’m possessed of nigh-godlike powers. But if I suck at it, it’s really not my fault. Can we agree to those terms?

Okay. Great. Good talk.

Last year we pitched our Tournament as kind of a Hunger Games style thing. Which is fairly appropriate, as we *are* combating hunger.

What’s more, we have ten teams, and each of them will have a donation page. (see below) All that money will be part of the Worldbuilders fundraiser, and 100% of it will get passed along to Heifer International. (Also, you’ll be entered into the Worldbuilders prize lottery, getting a chance to win cool swag for every $10 you kick in.)

The meta-game, if you will, is that each team will be trying to raise more money than their opponents. Fundraising will be incentivized by the simple fact that when each team goes head-to-head, the one that’s raised the most money (as of 10 minutes before the match starting) will get a tactical advantage over their opponent.

The other team will not get an advantage. Very much not. In fact, they will be exiled to the outer darkness, where they will doubtless wail and gnash their teeth in impotent rage.

Here’s our full list of the teams:

The links will take you to their pages where you can donate to support them (and, of course) feed hungry kids.

The tournament starts on Monday, December 4, with our first round of matches. Wednesday, December 6, will have the second round of matches and the Championship Game.

Even better, this tournament will have honest-to-goodness commentators hosting the full event from the Cards Against Humanity office studio. Pre-game talk will be beginning at 7:30pm CST both days, with the first matches of the night starting at 8pm CST.

Our commentators will be Chris Geiger and Mary Beth Smith of The Nerdologues, some real professional comedians, and they’ll be explaining what’s going on, as well as keeping you up to date on the funds raised and other interesting facts about Worldbuilders and the tournament in general.

You’ll be able to watch the entire thing on the Worldbuilders Twitch channel, and I’ll be rebroadcasting it on my channel as well. The first night is scheduled to run until about 11pm CST or so, and you’ll be able to pop into the twitch anytime and see the games or the hosts working their magic.

Below we have a lovely bracket graphic that breaks down the schedule, as well as shows you who all of our teams are in a more graphic sense, in case that is a little more up your alley than a bulleted list.

If you’ve never been on Twitch before, I’d encourage you to create an account (it’s free) so you can join the chat. (You can also follow my channel if you like, so you can catch me when I stream games, do Q&As, or have conversations with cool folks.)

Okay, that’s it. Donate to your favorite geeks team’s pages to make sure they have an unfair advantage during their melee. Join us next Monday and Wednesday to watch people blow each other to kingdom come. For charity.

Later Space Cowboys,

pat