The following is a guest post from our good friend Eric Wainright. He discuses possible ideas for Star Wars Destiny Worlds 2019, its a very ambitious and grueling competition that would test the best of the best. If you’d like to be guest poster on the TheHyperloops please submit your ideas at thehyperloops@gmail.com.

After listening to various content creators talk about what they would have liked to see from Destiny worlds and then being part of Covenant’s excellently executed Master series I thought I’d share a possible idea of what Destiny Worlds 2019 could look like.

FFG will have 5 supported Destiny formats next year (assuming set 7 comes out before worlds): Standard, Trilogy, Infinite, Draft, and Sealed. My guess at the most popular formats are:

1) Standard

2) Draft

3) Trilogy

4) Sealed

5) Infinite

If FFG has access to market research showing the order is different the below plan can be adjusted to have more players at the most popular events.

The big assumption with the following plan is that with X-Wing getting its own Worlds, most of the event center will be available for Destiny for the week. I am also assuming that festivities start on Wednesday (as they did last year). More (or less days) would necessitate a change.

The main goal of this plan is to have a premiere level event for all 5 formats where a world champion can be crowned as well as a final event among the best players of the week for a unified destiny world champion.

Below is a possible timing of all events:

Wednesday

9am Sealed Event (including finals)

10am Flight A Standard

Thursday

9am Infinite Event (Including finals)

10am Flight B Standard

11am Flight A Draft (includes play-in games to cut to top 4)

Friday

9am Flight B Draft (includes play-in games to cut to top 4)

10am Flight C Standard

evening (after Standard and Draft completes) Draft Day 2 top8

Saturday

9am Trilogies Event (including finals)

10am Flight D Standard

evening (after trilogies completes) Standard Day 2 (including all play-in games to cut to top 16 (or 32))

Sunday

9am Multiplayer or Team event

10am Standard top 16 (or 32)

Afternoon (after Standard completes) 8 players compete for Unified championship

Some benefits to this layoff are that players that are only able to come for the weekend will be able to compete in Standard (or Trilogies). Players that can make it on Friday will have the option of playing in Standard/Draft, Standard/Trilogies, or even Draft/Trilogies. If players can make it on Thursday or Wednesday they will have lots of options for what events to play in.

For the unified event there would be 8 players who qualify. The 5 event winners get a spot automatically, and the remaining 3 spots will go to the 3 other players who have accumulated the most match wins (not counting multiplayer/team) throughout the week. Some players may need to leave before Sunday afternoon, so these spots will pass down. Most results will be tallied by Saturday night, so players should have a good idea if they are close to the cutoff before Sunday begins.

Players trying to complete for the unified crown will have to choose 4 of the 5 events to complete in. With the above schedule, they choose which event to skip.

The most suspect part of this plan in Saturday evening. If the Trilogies event goes long, it may be late before the “Day 2” of Standard can start. The benefit is that the Flight D Standard players will get a dinner break before coming back to play with the players from Flights A-C. But if Day 2 Standards starts at 8, it should be complete well before midnight (assuming it is 3 rounds, plus a 4th round for any play-ins).

I’d bet Flight C standard will complete before Flight B Draft, but even if not it won’t be going too late for the top 8 of draft.

The above schedule can work independently on how each of these events are run, but since this is my article I’m going to throw some specifics down just to initiate a discussion.

Sealed

Aside from the deck building phase, this should run like a normal constructed event. You could have multiple sealed pools throughout the day, but I think it is normal just to get a single pool.

I’m also a huge fan of the play-in games that were used at GenCon this year. I am also good with the play-in games being best of 1. If you want to avoid the play-in games just go X-1 or better. If you are X-2, that puts you on the bubble, and getting 1 more game to earn your way into the top cut seems fair. And one game means that everyone else gets a 30-45 minute break, but isn’t waiting 90 minutes.

Infinite

This is a constructed event, so it should be run as any other Advanced Structure event. Hopefully with play-ins.

Draft

I expect Draft to be pretty popular, maybe even more than Standard, but Standard is going to need to be the headliner that finishes Saturday Night/Sunday morning since it is the event that determined the 2017 and 2018 world champions. I think that means Draft would make sense to wrap up on Friday night where it will be the focus. Having two flights that both generate a top 4 would leave you with a top 8 on Friday night. That would culminate with an 8 player draft and a best 2 out of 3 top cut. I know official draft guidelines are for 6 player draft pods, but that is just to make the single box fulfill the pod, I think the ease of a top 8 trumps the need for all the cards to come from one box.

The cut to top 4 each day might not be ideal, but the other option is to let each flight cut to a top 8 which leaves you with a top 16. Friday’s swiss is already probably going to be 7-8 rounds (8-9 if they use a play-in round). With 4 drafts and 12 rounds of swiss Covenant wrapped its master’s draft in about 12 hour (that included a 90 minute lunch/dinner break). If you want the top cut to be best 2 of 3, having a top 16 might be pushing the whole party pretty late. Also with 16, are you going to have two drafts? and use those cards for all 4 rounds of top cut? or do 2 rounds and then have the top 4 draft again? I’m sure there are other ways to make this work, I just settled on a top 8.

This might mean that there should be an increase in the number of swiss rounds from the standard “advanced structure” to make sure that everyone that is X-2 is either in the top 4, or gets a play-in game for a shot at top 4.

I expect each draft should support 3 or 4 rounds of play.

6 rounds (3/3), 7 rounds (3/4), 8 rounds (4/4), 9 rounds (3/3/3). If play in games are used

I am a big fan of how Covenant ran their Draft Masters events. The drafting pods were 6 people, but after drafting it was like regular swiss where you would play against any competitor not just your draft pod. This does means that some pods will have stronger decks than other pods, and it really reduces the desire to hate-draft, since the chance you see someone in your pod is much reduced. The plus side is that you won’t have wonky pairings at the end of regulation swiss where you have people with no shot of getting into the cut playing against people that need to win, which leads to concessions. I mean that still can happen but it is less likely to happen.

I also enjoy Covenant’s method of keeping the swiss record intact though the top cut, and making the winner the player that had the best day overall, but for a world championship a knockout format seems more conventional, and probably better for spectators, “Wait you mean he lost, but he still won?”

If everything else in this article is disregarded by the powers that be I hope the one take away is that there should be some kind of draft championship at Destiny Worlds 2019

Trilogies

If I’m wrong that draft is the 2nd most popular event, then trilogies will almost certainly be in 2nd place. Putting it on Saturday, means having a popular finals Saturday night. I don’t have much to say about the structure of this event. The one stress on someone attempting to go for the unified championship is that if they are in the top 2 of Trilogies, and they are part of day 2 standard, it is going to be a long day. With 5 days and 5 events to cover it was going to happen to someone.

Standard

Does Standard need 4 flights when there were only 3 last year? I’m not sure. It sounds like most people that wanted to get into worlds (and that signed up early, and tried to get a last chance ticket on the day they came out) were able to get a seat. I think Destiny is doing well, and would expect there to be more demand next year. Having 4 days also allows for some schedule flexibility for players wanting to play in multiple events. You could cut the Thursday Flight of Standard and anyone who wanted to play in 4 events could still choose any of the events to skip.

Starting Day 2 after the completion of the Trilogies event is probably the sketchiest part of this proposal. If Trilogies gets 289+ people playing in it. That is 9 rounds of swiss and 4 rounds of top cut. Could put you deep into the evening before the standard plays come back to complete day 2.

If you move Standard day 2 to Sunday morning that problem goes away, but it will move the time crunch to Sunday where I don’t know how much time you’d have for a unified championship.

Whatever decision is made for Standard, I hope that all X-2 get a shot to at least have a play in game to make the top 16 (or 32).

Unified

Once you have 8 elite Destiny players and 5 different formats there are all kinds of crazy things you can do. One of the ones that tickled my fancy the most was playing 7 matches of round robin – everyone plays a single game against everyone else. The order of pairing and therefore what format you will play each person is random. So a possibility is:

Draft

round 1: Draft

round 2: Standard

round 3: Trilogies

round 4: Draft (same deck as before)

round 5: Standard

round 6: Infinite

round 7: Draft (same deck as before)

I know this leaves sealed out in the cold, but draft gets an extra round of limited play. (One of those draft rounds could easily be sealed if you wanted to fit in a sealed deck building session).

There is a possibility someone losses the first 3 rounds and wants to drop, but I doubt it, since you are playing against the best of the best, and getting 6th best is much better than coming in last (Editor’s Note: I’d also hope that the prizes would reflect position to incentivize staying in. This would hands down be the most grueling weekend of cards I would’ve ever played. I could see myself getting tired and wanting to leave if the prizes are the same from say 5th to 8th and I have no shot of making it in a higher spot. This is certainly some Iron Man shit. -NJCuenca)

That’s a possible 5 day Destiny event that would have championship matches showing on: Wednesday evening (Sealed), Thursday evening (Infinite), Friday evening (Draft), Saturday evening (Trilogies), Sunday afternoon (Standard), and Sunday evening (Unified). I would be super excited to attend an event like this and hope FFG incorporates some of these ideas.

-Eric Wainright

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