Hey there sports fans, we hope everyone’s having a lovely festive period, we’re back with a quick pre-Christmas update for the Guild Ball Regional Cup document!

Organised Play is hugely important to us, and we spend a lot of time talking over potential changes and looking at how we can make the best possible Organised Play Guild Ball experience. We know this is particularly important for the Regional Cup document since this is the most common form of tournament run in the community.

We’ve updated this document to better reflect the future of Guild Ball, as well as to attempt to make Regional Cup tournaments more fun and enjoyable for everyone, both new coaches and veterans.

The Painted World of Guild Ball

The first and largest change to this document is something we think a lot of people have seen coming for a while; plastic models like the ones in the Blacksmith’s Guild: Master Crafted Arsenal box no longer have to be painted to be used in Guild Ball Regional Cup events.

One of our major drives going forward is ease of access to the game for new coaches. The plastic complete team boxes are a major aspect of that drive, and it feels like removing the need for those plastic boxes to be painted at events is the obvious next step. This pushes the ‘play right out of the box’ aspect that we really want to be a big part of the game going forward. We saw great success with this strategy at both SteamCons this year, and indeed, Alex Botts won the US Championship with Farmer’s Guild models he bought earlier during that weekend. (although he did have to paint them for the actual World Championship!)

We do still encourage all coaches to play with fully painted teams, of course. The game is much more thematic and cool when both teams playing are fully decked out in their coach’s chosen colours, but we feel this removes one potential barrier to entry for newer coaches. T.O.s of course may still enforce painting requirements at their events if they chose to, and the World Championship will still require fully painted teams to play.

It’s worth also noting that metal models still have to be fully painted and based; only the new plastic models are exempt from these rules.

Change Places!

The second change in the Regional Cup document comes in the Tournament Pre-Match Sequence. The roll to see which Player is kicking and which is receiving now takes place before the blind pick of Captains and Mascots.

Not too much needs to be said on this change, it’s something we’ve heard many voices in the community ask for, and we think it will help adjust the captain pick rates, which is something we always keep an eye on. As a result, it feels like an strong change, and one that we hope will prove popular.

So there you have it; two changes to the Regional Cup document which we hope will improve the experience of all coaches! Let us know what you guys think of these changes on social media, and on our forums. Merry Christmas and happy holidays all!