February 5, 2018 December 6, 2018
Tourneys for Beginners
You might have been wondering how tournaments work. Maybe you’ve never tried them, but you’d like to. Maybe you tried them, but didn’t really get into them properly. Whatever the case, misthead teamed up with ADawny to bring you the information about tournaments you might have been waiting for!
What happens in a Tournament?
You need to be at least level 10 to join a tourney. A tournament consists of four matches. A new round of matches starts once all the matches of the previous round have played out. This means that, if you kill really quickly, you will have to wait till the slowpokes finish their matches. You can go watch their matches if you’re bored or want to know how they play. Each round has a time limit and if a match takes too long, Diego the Duelmaster will come and declare a winner.
What kind of Tournaments are there?
Firstly, you can do a tourney on your own or as a group. Depending on how many players there are, the matches’ length differs.
- A 1v1 Tournament lasts for 60-115 minutes.
- A 2v2 Tournament lasts for 80-135 minutes.
- A 3v3 and a 4v4 Tournament lasts for 120-175 minutes.
Secondly, there are different styles of tourneys. Make sure you read the rules when you sign up, so that you know what you’re getting into. Tournaments can, and usually will, end before the time limit. It just depends on how quickly each round ends.
Quick Match Tournaments
A Quick Match Tournament has 10 minute matches. The damage is increased each round by 10%, with the maximum damage being 200%. All your spells will also have 20% added pierce. These tourneys are really quick, with matches often taking only 3-4 rounds.
Small decks are the goal, because you need to be able to draw what you need to kill ASAP. Shielding can lose you a round that you could benefit in other ways, but that extra bit of defense might save you. You could try packing 1 tower for emergencies. You shouldn’t heal, although some players go for a generally frowned upon strategy called setting. In this strategy, they use ward pets to a player’s specific school and spam heals.
Classic Tournaments
Classic tourneys have no pets, no treasure cards and no amulets allowed. It’s supposed to be like “old school” PvP. If you’re a Life wizard used to using Myth spells in ranked PvP, please remember your Myth mastery amulet will not work in this tourney style! You might want to play these matches like you would play ranked PvP, which means, among other things, saving your pips until you can pull off a combo.
Try to stick to your own school spells, but don’t be afraid to explore! Infection is a really crucial spell for classic tournaments at the lower-to-mid-level range. In addition, weakness shines all the way to max level. For this tourney style as well, you should use small decks, and apply efficient offensive play. Some life wizards heal and bladestack, but you have to be fairly comfortable with Diego to do this successfully.
School Perk Tournaments
School Perk tourneys give a bonus to spells of a certain school. There are Myth-Storm tourneys, Ice-Fire tourneys and Life-Death tourneys. There is also one for Balance, where only Balance gets a boost. This tourney style is not popular. As you can expect, people often set with high resist for the two schools in question.
Turn-Based Tournaments
Turn-based tourneys are a little bit slower, because each team will select and cast their spells before the next team gets their turn. In this tourney style, you actually benefit from going “second” because you get an extra pip. No more guessing what your opponent will do when you’re second! For once you’ll have time to triage rampage’s damage off! This is a complex type of tourney because we’re not used to this kind of play. It’s hard to pull off combos.
What happens when you can’t kill?
If you’re not able to kill within the maximum time allocated for the match, Diego will jump in and declare the winner. Unfortunately Diego is currently a little blind, so the winner might not be the one you’re expecting. You will get less points for a Diego-win, in 1v1 it is 90 points vs. 100 for outright win!
There are certain things we have found that help you please Diego. He especially likes whoever has more cards in their deck. This matters more than both your amount of pips and your health. So don’t discard too heavily if you can’t reshuffle and it looks like Diego will need to decide the winner!
Some careful testing of Diego’s decision making process led to the following results: in a controlled environment, the amount of cards left in your deck carried a lot of weight in Diego’s decision. The participants’ health also mattered, though on a much lower scale. The amount of pips you have matters even less than that. Being first or second had no influence on Diego’s decision making at all.
How much does a Tournament cost?
Tourneys cost a different amount depending on two things. Firstly, it depends on whether you have membership or not. If you have membership, tourneys will cost you gold. If you don’t, tourneys cost crowns. For someone without a membership, the cost is 849 crowns per tourney.
Secondly, for members, the price also differs depending on your level. The gold cost goes up 2k every 10 levels, so a level 11 wizard will only pay 2k gold if you have membership. On a grandmaster wizard, the tourneys will cost you 10k gold. Even higher up, a level 125 wizard will pay 24k gold.
What types of opponents can you expect?
Tourneys attract different kinds of people, so you can expect both very experienced people and newbies as opponents. In tourneys, your rank doesn’t matter at all, so privates do end up fighting warlords.
Try-hard tournament duelists often use another account to scout matches. That way, they know what school the opponents are and what strategies they might use. This in itself is fine (you could do it too!). Sadly it also leads to setting. Setting means that – if they see you’re from a certain school – they will put on gear with super high resist for your school. We’re hoping Kingsisle will do something about this by making it impossible to see who’s in your tourney.
What badges can you get from doing tournaments?
You can get four different badges for doing tourneys. A tourney win means you’re in first place. If there is a tie, both wizards in first place will get a gold trophy, but only one will get a win point. Tourney points are given based on how each match goes. Even if you lose, you will get some tourney points.
How are the points for each match counted?
At the conclusion of each match, you automatically get points. Winning and losing give you different amounts of points. Look at the image below for the amounts. These points determine your position in the tourney. In addition, the points of every tourney you do are counted together. Based on the total amount, you might end up on the leaderboard. The people highest up in the tourney leaderboard have the most points. As such, your leaderboard position isn’t determined by winning, but rather by how many points you’ve gathered. Even if you end up in the last place for every tourney you do, you will still be placed on the tournament leaderboard if you do enough matches to gather points.
What happens if you flee or have to go offline during a Tournament?
When you do this, you will gain zero points. You will, however, still be part of the tourney! If you fled, this means you will still be called for the next fight.
If you went offline, you will get your rewards when you sign in the next time. Note that, to get rewards, you have to be online when they tourney starts and accept it. If you don’t, you will get no rewards, but your next tourney will be free of cost.
What happens when less than 16 players sign up for a Tournament?
A full tourney consists of 16 people. However, tourneys with less people are still possible. The least amount of participants for a tourney is 4 people. If less than 4 sign up, the tourney will be canceled. It is beneficial for you when there are less people in a tourney, because you will get prizes based on your position. If there are only 4 people in a tourney, the lowest place you can get is fourth and, thus, you will get the rewards of someone who’s fourth.
What does it mean when you get a bye?
A bye is essentially a Diego-win. You get 90 points without having to fight. Just enjoy yourself while you wait for the next round! These byes are given when there is an uneven number of participants in the tourney. Usually it’s a different person getting the bye every round.
What’s an “uneven” tournament?
Uneven matches mean there’s a person five levels below or above you in your bracket. This can lead to slightly unfair matches sometimes, so you get to opt out if you want to. If you don’t accept the uneven tourney, your next tourney will be free of cost.
What kind of rewards will you get from Tournaments?
To start with, you will get tickets. The amount of tickets depends on how you succeed in the tourney. First place will give you 1250 tickets, while last place will give you 250 tickets. Many tournaments also reward “bonus” tickets. You can see the amounts specific to your tournament before signing up by clicking the “prizes” icon for that tournament.
| Place | Tickets |
| 1st | 1,250 |
| 2nd | 1,000 |
| 3rd | 750 |
| 4th | 650 |
| 5th | 550 |
| 6th | 500 |
| 7th | 475 |
| 8th | 450 |
| Place | Tickets |
| 9th | 425 |
| 10th | 400 |
| 11th | 375 |
| 12th | 350 |
| 13th | 325 |
| 14th | 300 |
| 15th | 275 |
| 16th | 250 |
In addition, you can also get a trophy. First place will get a gold trophy housing item, second place a silver one and third a bronze one. Display these in your house to impress visitors! Furthermore there are also random items you can win. These include seeds, pet snacks, reagents and treasure cards.
If you want to, you can pay a certain amount of crowns when you get your rewards. Just click “reroll” to get a random amount of extra tickets. The first reroll will cost you 50 crowns.
