Gwent

Journey Quests - Week 5

The fourth week's Journey quests require players to do the following: 

• Finish 3 matches in any online mode (Regular)
• Win 2 matches (Premium)
• Play 3 matches using a Nilfgaard deck (Regular)
• Play 10 tactic cards (Premium)
• Play 15 units with move (Regular)
• Play 15 cards with Zeal (Premium)

Here are suggested decks for these quests:

• Play 10 tactic cards - Nilfgaard Tactical Decision Hyperthin
• Play 15 units with move - Scoia'tael Guerilla Tactics
• Play 15 cards with Zeal - Northern Realms Stockpile
• Play 15 cards with Zeal - Northern Realms Shieldwall credits to TheaBeasty

Events

Wild Hunt Online

The Wild Hunt tournament series by 983 Media is back, this time in an online format. For complete details, click here. Be sure to join their Discord server for the latest updates. 

Claymore Open #September 2020

The Claymore Open is back. For more details, join Claymore's Discord server. 

Team Aretuza

Stream Schedule

Here is the stream schedule of Team Aretuza’s Pro and Stream Team for the week of September 7 to September 13.

Videos

Lionhart - Nature's Gift

TheaBeasty - Shieldwall

Welcome!

Driftbling and TheFoxBride just joined us as content creators. We are very happy and excited to have them on board. 

Manager Spotlight: Phoenix

Hi Phoenix. Thanks for allowing us to have this interview with you. How are you and what have you been up to in Gwent so far?

I’m doing great! Lately I’ve been mostly making sure I’m up to date with the way the meta evolves and the different changes in the patches. They are indeed very important in my current role of Tournament Manager. I’ve also had a blast watching Gwent Open #3!

Could you please tell us something about your new role as the Tournaments and Events Manager?

I will aim to bring the most enjoyable and refreshing tournament experience to everyone in the Gwent Community! I’m hoping to achieve this by experimenting with different ideas and by listening to feedback and ways to improve the initial concepts I come up with.

Who are you most excited to work with from the team? 

I’m equally super excited to work with everyone from Team Aretuza, especially since managing tournaments and events often provides the opportunity for a lot of people with different skillsets to work together. Getting to know everyone at Team Aretuza is very heartwarming and I can’t wait to interact more with everyone from the team.

What projects are you excited to start and/or bring back? 

As I am currently the main admin of Gwent League, the first project would be to migrate this tournament format to being backed by Team Aretuza. This will come with a remake of the format, as well as greatly enhanced production value. The details of this rework will of course be shared with everyone in the Gwent community once they are more fleshed out, and I sincerely hope it will provide everyone with a fresh and awesome tournament experience!

For now, almost all of my efforts for Team Aretuza will be dedicated to this project. :)

Team Aretuza has been mostly involved in Gwent. How will you, as one of the new managers, start working on LOR?

I think the first step for me will be to get accustomed to the way tournaments are organised in Legends of Runeterra. It is a very different game after all, with very different dynamics from Gwent. Getting to know the current tournament scene for LoR will also be crucial, in order to find out what niche could be occupied by our very own projects. For LoR, my goal would be to create the same tournament experience quality Team Aretuza is known for in Gwent.

Could you please tell us how you started organizing and implementing events?

In the year I started Gwent (2017), I joined a tournament called the Gwent League. You’d play one match per week for a few weeks and I loved the format at the time. I played in multiple seasons after this and based on my player experience I eventually accepted an opportunity to lead the efforts for the following seasons of Gwent League, with multiple enhancements to the system of play which were very well received by the community.

What do you consider the most fun part of organizing such events and what drives you to keep going? 

I love seeing the variety of strategies people come up with and how they adapt under different formats of play. I feel that creativity in format-building for tournaments is matched with great creativity from the players in deckbuilding and gameplay, and this is mainly what keeps me going. Tournaments also allow highly increased proximity with the Gwent community, everyone gets to know each other much more and it is a very comforting experience.

The Team Clash tournament was very successful. Tell us how you and the rest of the team planned and organized these events.

For the Team Clash, Damorquis asked me to help during the preparation of the tournament. We shared the preparation work with Kochua as well, which included writing the ruleset, setting up the infrastructure for players, casters, graphic designers and editors to meet and work together. Then, we decided on schedules for matches and casts. Using this schedule we proposed deadlines for video editors and graphic designers.

My goal was to make sure everyone knew what they were asked to do and coordinate everyone’s efforts together. Many people from the team were involved of course: Elis and Annkett designed beautiful graphics; Shinmiri2, Apero, Johaggis and Green Cricket provided very entertaining and enjoyable casts for everyone in the Gwent community, plus Green Cricket and Kafunow edited the recorded videos for the casters (spectator mode was not yet available back then). Wilson did an awesome job at keeping the website and the info in the Aretuza discord up to date.

What do you think are the challenges in organizing a tournament? 

The major challenge in my opinion is time: The time needed to nail the preparation, but also trying to predict how long your tournament will run for. If you plan on starting a Double Elimination Best of 5 bracket with 16 players at 5pm CEST, you can expect most European contestants to spend the entire night playing in your tournament.

Swiss stages can also be highly unpredictable in terms of length. I have already seen rounds of Bo3 lasting for more than 2 hours - where a Bo3 usually lasts around 45 to 50 minutes. Delays inevitably happen when you have 40 matches played at the same time. Some matches are started 30 minutes after everyone else for no apparent reasons.

Depending on the production value you aim for, a tremendous amount of work can be expected for tournaments as well. For the Team Clash, we had around 20 people from different Gwent Teams working together on the same tournament, not counting the players. Every one of these people had an extremely meaningful contribution to the project. It is also crucial to make sure all these efforts are properly coordinated.

Do you have any tips for other tournament organizers?

Planning ahead is THE concept that has to be mastered. One must ask what resources they will need to make sure their tournament is a success. Among all the preparations one must know as soon as possible what will be done by who: ruleset, infrastructure, graphics for announcements and casted streams, moderating the tournament, video editing if needed, casting of the tournament. There are also a thousand ways you can manage announcements and advertising, from a simple tweet to a dedicated webpage.

The paperwork and structure has to be on point. I’m thinking mainly about the ruleset, it has to be clear and concise while delivering the most important information about many different cases. The format of your tournament especially must stand out, especially if it is not standard.

One should also set up a clear infrastructure that is as simple as possible to accomodate for all communication purposes between you and the players and between the players themselves. Many organisers do everything via Discord which is a great way to do it, but make sure you don’t overwhelm your server with too many channels, or gimmicks. The channel where you make your announcements must stand out and be separated from the main discussion channels.

If you plan on adding production value to your tournament you will most likely need to contact people and request their talent. Make sure you do not do this at the last minute since most people will be likely to - rightfully - refuse.

Do you have any message to the Gwent community? 

Try varying your gameplay experience. Always take breaks when needed, and if you are tired of ladder, you can try your hand at various tournaments and “meme” tournaments. There are plenty of possibilities to enjoy Gwent at the moment with a lot of communities proposing varied tournament formats and rulesets, which is something I find wonderful.

Season of the Dryad has just started. The new leader abilities provided a fresh experience for all players. Now is the best time to experiment on decks and get creative. Good luck!