September Cup Round 1 Preview

The bracket for the inaugural AWBW Cup was put up today. Twelve brave warriors have entered the tournament, but only one can take the Cup championship. We'll be keeping track of the tournament's progress over the next few weeks, but for now I'll be offering a preview of our Round 1 matchups. Four players were seeded for the tournament and received byes, those players being Hellraider, Kamuscha, walkerboh01, and frostylight (in order of seed).

From the other 8 contenders there are four Round 1 games.

1) lolabunny vs. Der Pazifist
No one can envy either of these two players, who arguably received the short stick of the draw with a second round match versus Hellraider pending. However they'll have to make it there before they can start worrying about that. Both players are fairly new to the site, but lolabunny appears to have the edge on paper with 134 games under his belt as opposed to Der Pazifist's 6 games. Normally that means a blow out is in order. However, I wouldn't count Der Pazifist out right away, as his current games show that he isn't your average newbie! I'm predicting this one to be a pretty close match, with lolabunny eventually emerging as the victor.

2) ramdalucksta7 vs. forbs
This is another match featuring two newer players, although I suspect this will be a relatively high-skilled match. Forbs is the only player of the 8 that I have faced recently, and after playing a league match, I rate him as a very decent player. I've never played ramdalucksta, but judging from his league games, he appears to play with a disproportionately high skill level for someone with only 57 games. This will likely be one of the best matches of Round 1, but in the end forbs' greater experience pays off and he advances to a second round date with frostylight.

3) Cereal Killer vs. Janusmarine
In an unfortunate twist of fate, both of the most experienced non-seeded players find themselves in an early elimination match. Cereal Killer is a player who was once one of the higher mid-tier players around, but after a prolonged absence from AWBW, he has yet to regain his true form. Janusmarine has been around just as long if not longer than CK, and has collected impressive records in many of the old leagues. The advancing player gets no respite in the next round either, with Kamuscha laying in wait. I predict that Janusmarine takes this one though.

4) Azzaphox vs. marxistplot
At first glance, Azzaphox should have an easy time of this game, having played 140 more games than his relatively new opponent. But as I've pointed out already, game count is not necessarily indicative of a player's skill, and most of Azzaphox's games have come in FFA and team games. This leaves him with relatively little 1 vs 1 experience, giving marxistplot a fair shot at achieving the upset. I pick marxistplot to come away with the victory, to face walkerboh01 (that's me!) in the next round.

The Round 1 games will start tomorrow, and after that the tournament is officially underway. Good luck to all of the participants!

Until next time,
- Walker

AWBW Cup Unveiled

As some of you may have noticed, a new competition has surfaced on the site today: The AWBW Cup! In case you can't be bothered to click the link and read the thread yourself, here's the Cliff Notes version: the Cup consists of a series of 16 player, single elimination tournaments with one tournament starting each month. At the outset, this might seem somewhat implausible. After all, by AWBW standards one month is the equivalent of the blink of an eye. There's a lot of games that take longer than a month to finish just by themselves, and we're going to try starting a new tournament every month? Ludicrous, surely.

AWBW tournaments have always had a few problems, which have consistently managed to halt, mangle, and generally just destroy promising tournaments. The biggest culprit is the length of time tournaments traditionally take, as I noted above. The YOLT tournament took 2 years and 5 months to finish. The Grand Tournament is 3 years deep and has been abandoned. The No Holds Barred Tournament is almost to 2 1/2 years with no sign of finishing soon. The 2nd season of DART took just shy of 2 years. Even the quickest tournaments take a long time - the AWBW Pro Classic is in the championship round after 20 months, and DART Season 3 wrapped up within a year. The length of time that it takes for tournaments to finish kills tournaments as surely as anything, as people become disinterested and the participants begin to go inactive, as well as the tournament organizers in some cases.

I have a theory about this. Tournaments take forever because the individual games themselves take a long time to complete. The games take a long time because people take a long time for their turns, and stall when they begin to lose. This happens because people take the games extra seriously, which makes sense considering that tournaments don't start very often, are fairly prestigious, and the stakes are high - if you lose, you're out. And that brings us back to the AWBW Cup.

The AWBW Cup won't be a tournament of the same style as previous tournaments on the site. The idea is that if the tournaments are started more frequently it will lower the prestige of each individual tournament, making people less likely to stall and take their games so extremely seriously. It will also make people less afraid to lose, because they can always just try again the next month. Similarly, if one tournament does stall, it's not the end of the world because there are other opportunities to play. The AWBW Cup also puts other measures in place to prevent stalling, such as Rule #10. A low boot/AET, an emphasis on casualness, and a request that players make sure they will be active when they join should help to prevent each individual tournament from stalling. Further, keeping the tournaments small and choosing a single elimination format will allow them to move along faster than in the past.

The Cup also offers another advantage over traditional tournaments. In tournaments like YOLT, the GT, and NHB, there was not much hope for players who were not among the 3-4 favorites. If you drew Hellraider or Ultra Storm in the first round, for example, you knew you were screwed. And for most players, that meant an early out, making the tournaments uninteresting and pointless to play in. But the AWBW Cup fixes this problem. Each player can only play in 2 Cup tournaments at once. While this also helps prevent multiple tournaments from stalling at once, it mainly means that not all of the top players can play in each tournament (unless each tournament finishes within 2 months, which would really need a miracle). This gives more players a chance to advance into the deeper rounds of tournaments than before, and it gives players a chance who would have never made it past the second round otherwise.

Now, this isn't to say that there's no place on the site for "old school", traditional tournaments. Obviously the big, epic tournaments (see GT), are still good to have. It just doesn't work as well when those are the only types of tournaments available. So the inaugural AWBW Cup tournament will begin on September 1st. Don't worry if you can't participate this time, because there will be plenty more to come.

Over and out,
Walker

Introduction to the AWBW Blog

Greetings, and welcome to the AWBW Blog.

With this blog, we are aiming to provide the best, or at least most convenient, source of news, updates and general information about the site. Along with that, we will shine light onto previously hidden gems of AWBW, bringing much deserved attention to players or maps who may fall under the radar. A short summarization of the main topics:

- Monthly recaps of the biggest events around the site
- The latest competition updates and results
- Insightful game commentary and review
- Spotlights on new maps, players, and map-makers
- Sneak previews of upcoming site events and features

Please feel free to post comments in this thread. We will be updating this first post with the newest posts, and will include an archive of old posts in the future too.

For our inaugural post, let's focus on the brand new competition gracing our site, fittingly named the Global League. The league is still in the beta-phase and is only available through the forum. But barring server breakdowns or other apocalyptic events, it will go public on the main site in the near future as well. Big shout-out to Glenstorm for designing and implementing the league!

Although there have been doubts, we can safely assure you that the Global League in its current state is the pinnacle of the evolution of competitive AWBW. At the beginning of its long history, the site saw a lot of official tournaments. These were eventually abandoned in favour of unofficial tournaments, which had the advantage that they could be run by anyone. There was the speed league, an old, nearly forgotten competition, but the first one which aimed to provide games between equally skilled opponents using several divisions. Later the Ladder appeared, a more casually oriented way to allow people to play against each other. At around the same time the original leagues on the main site were made, but unfortunately weren't able to provide competitive games due to the inherent randomness. As the Ladder began to die and the leagues mostly depopulated of competitive players, the Colosseum was born, trying to provide fair and fun games for all players.

The Global AWBW League is the next chapter of AWBW competition, and it improves on its predecessors by taking all of their advantages, while removing the negatives. Automatically created games free the players from the hassle of doing so themselves, while still allowing the choice of CO. Meanwhile the inbuilt matchmaking system takes care to only pit players against opponents of a similar level, assuring that everybody will play against people with roughly their own skill level.

But the best thing about the new league is that it can appeal to all AWBW members. It is the biggest competition on-site in terms of participants, which gives everyone the chance to measure themselves against all others and fight their way up, contending for top 10 spots. At the same time, everybody who enjoys AW as a fun pasttime has the unique chance to find games against people of a similar level. If you are busy in real life and like to go on vacations, you can still participate easily, knowing that you can simply set your amount of games to 0 when other obligations prevent you from committing as much time to AWBW.

So no matter whether you enjoy AWBW for the thrill of competition or for the casual enjoyment of a good strategy game, as long as you like playing the game it is highly recommended that you give the new league a try. You can find information about the league and how to join here, and you can find a list of all the maps and settings being used here. For those who want to compare a certain e-bodypart already, we have a rough scoreboard here (just note that until more people have finished games, the ratings on the scoreboard won't be an accurate reflection of a player's skill for the most part).

And while the league takes the spotlight for now, that isn't to say that it will be the only source of competition for AWBW. In addition to the continuing Colosseum and Neo Ladder, a bunch of new tournaments and competitions will be coming to the site soon. Stayed tuned to the AWBW Blog for further developments and information.

Signing out for now,

Hellraider and Walker