This past weekend saw yet another online Lorcana tournament from The Pack, 🐷a semi-weekly event played on Pixelborn that saw 297 players competing for 🌊a $2000 prize pool. That makes this tournament the biggest Lorcana event to date, but what may be even more noteworthy is that it’s the first time Ravensburger’s recently revealed 2-Game Rounds format has been used. After the event, I spoke with several players, including winner Brennan ‘BDeCandio7’ DeCandio, to hear their perspectives on the new Swiss format.
Rave💮nsburger revealed its plans to implement the 2-Game Rounds format, or 2gr, during last month’s inaugural Lorecast. In the traditional best-of-three format players have 50 minutes to ꦿtry to win two games against their opponent. In a 2-Game Round, players will play a total of two games against each opponent. Each game won rewards one point, and winning both games in a match rewards three points.
Community and engagement manager Richelle Brady and game development manager Tim Schilder explained that using a 2-Game Rounds format provides a number of benefits to players competing at this year’s Lorcana Challenge events. For one, it helps ensure fewer games will end in a tie since players will only have to finish two games instead of a maximum of three. It also helps alleviate the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:coin-flip advantage, since pl🐟ayers will always have to go first one game and second i🤡n the other.
They also believe this will help players feel like every game played matters, and that the new point system will help players be able to recognize their personal progress from event to event. Brady says Ravensburger wants people to play the game rather than play the tournament, and this new format is, in part, designed to eliminate intentional draws𓆏 and encourage players to stay in the competition and push for a comeback when they would otherwise give up.
This new format represents a big departure from the standard set by other TCGs, and some competitive players who already have a lot of experience playing in big tournaments have expressed their reservations about the change. There were c🌟oncerns that players would be incentivized to game the system even more than they could in a best-of-three environment by taking early losses to lower their rank and then quickly climbing to the top by going 2-0 against less skilled players.
Some worried that reducing the number o🥀f games played would have the effect of narrowing the skill gap, as fewer games played necessarily give more weight to bad luck and variance. However, until 2gr could be tested at a big event, any misgivings about the system were only speculation. This weekend’s The Pack tournament gave us our first look at how the new format actually plays out.
After the event, there were a range of reactions on Twitter and in The Pack’s Discord server. Many felt like the format served its purpose by giving players credit for the game they did win, and providing opportunities for a comeback later in the day. Though there were no big come-from-behind qualifiers after Day One in this event, the hope that one could climb out of a negative win rate was enough to keep players invested and playing their best the entire day. If there’s a way to game the system by i꧋ntentionally losing early games for weaker opponents, that possibility didn&rsqu📖o;t present itself in this tournament.
Others were less enthusiastic about the format. Savjz, one of the world’s most accompl🐲ished Hearthstone players and a current top player on Pixelborn’s Hardcore Ranked leaderboard, had a few points of criticism. After finishing the event well outside of the top 16 with a record of three 2-0 matches, six 1-1 matches, and not a single 0-2, Savjz noted how unsatisfying it feels to finish a match with a record of 1-1 while feeling like you would have won the theoretical 🤡third game and taken the set. Without a way to determine who ‘won’ each match, a 1-1 record feels the same as a tie.
“Ties feel really bad, and they happen a lot,&rdqu๊o; Savjz tells me. “The goal of having both players feel okay or good with both winning 1 game doesn’t work the way they intended due to the scoring system. Both players feel like they lost instead.” Savjz attributes this to the bonus point earned from winning a match 2-0. He says finishing a match 1-1 feels closer to a loss than a win, and even though you still earn a point, nobody is happy.”
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pixelborn creator Pavel Kolev has been paying close attention to the feedback from tournament attendees over the weekend, and has noted similar sentiments. “After a match is completed and you end up 1-1, you talk to your opponent and you feel you did nothing,” he says. “There is no satisfaction from winning, there is no anger from losing, it just feels dull.” Kolev, and others I spoke to, share concerns abo🐷ut how this format will influence the meta. “A system like this pushes people to play more polarizing decks that gamble more or push for risky 2-0s,” he says.
The standings in the tournament bear this out. All 𝐆of the top 16 players, with the exception of DeCandio, lost at least one match 0-2, while many players like Savjz, who never finished a single match 0-2, were far from making the cut. Despite having🎀 the best record, DeCandio agrees that this format will have an impact on the meta. “Decks with more polarizing match ups (decks that have scattered high win percent and low win percent match ups) are more likely to try and play a match up lottery and do well rather than a deck that’s close to even against most of the metagame.” DeCandio says he himself was influenced to change his strategy, not because of the meta, but because of the format. “If Thea [Boysen]’s event was bo3 Swiss I would have played R/Y Mufasa again vs having played Amber Steel.”
Savjz thinks 2-Game Rounds favor Emerald decks because the mulligan strategy against discard decks is so different. There were three Emerald/Steel Discard decks in the Top 16, making it the second mꦦost prolific archetype after Ruby/Amethyst.
No one should expect a brand-new format like this to be perfect right out of the gate, even with Ravensbuger’s internal testing. But as we’ve seen all along with Lorcana, from the 1st Edition cards, to today’s announcement that Lorcana Chall꧂enge events will have aဣ dramatically increased capacity, the Lorcana tea👍m is always listening to feedback and willing to change strategies when necessary. In a statement provided to TheGamer, Brady emphasized that the new format will be shaped around t꧂he needs of the players:
“We're grateful for the community's support and engagement as we embark on this exciting journey together. With the new 2-game format, our aim is to bring even more fairness, strategy, and excitement to every match. While our test events for the new format have shown great results, we will continue to refine and incorporate new learnings as our official Challenge events unfold. Our goal is to provide a format that evolves in response to player needs and experiences.”
The first Disney Lorcana Challenge in North America will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on May 25. If you we💎ren’t able to secure a ticket yet, make sure you’re and checking your email from Sunday. Those lo༒oking for tickets to the on May 25 will have a second chance to buy tickets on Monday, April 8 starting at 20:00 CEST.
