GCS Tournament Announcement no.2

There has been a huge amount of focus on how much money we raised together and how quickly - now allow me to take a few moments to show you where we’re going. With several huge announcements that will mean the brakes on the hype train are cut, we’re on an unstoppable rampage, and there’s no going back.



We’re currently in advanced talks with an amazing e-sports venue in Leicester England to rent out a venue that can house players live on stage, casters, a professional production, a huge screen set up, a bar, and up to 100 CoH2 community attendees live. This event will be a dream realisation and a true party for the community. More to follow as soon as details become available. However let me assure you now, this will smash any expectations you may have, it is going to be a defining event in the history of our community.

Also although this remains a community not-for-profit project and all the kickstarter money goes into the tournament, please be aware that the live venue owners may use sponsors on the finals live stream to help pay for the venue and production staff that they will provide. This is common practice in e-sports. We pay for the tournament and community elements, they help pay for the venue.

This will be a pilgrimage for all fans of CoH2 as a competitive game and over the next two weeks we will get all of this announced in full - however we are half-announcing this now so you can start planning your trips.





As we’re clearly now on our way to £6,000 (dream amount when this was all drawn up), the prize pool rests at a staggering haul:

Prizepool: 1st: £1,200 and trophy, 2nd: £550, 3rd: £250. 4th: £120, 5th - 8th: £50 each

Bonus awards: Best newcomer, RNG award, Non Meta award (£50 each)

This is just over 50% of the funding leaving plenty of room for the live event budget, travel, and improving the quality of the overall production.



That’s right no best-of-threes in this tournament, due to the high stakes and single elimination, we think it’s right that players are given a fair chance to comeback in a series. A best of five secures this. (And of course the tournament culminates in a best-of-seven!)

To ensure all matches are cast live, and to keep to our four match a day format for the first two weekends, for The Round of 32 (16 games total), we are bringing in two extra casters to provide a simultaneous stream of the additional games for the first two weekends.




"Wherefore art thou Romeo" you ask? He’s casting epic best-of-five matches in the first couple of weeks of GCS on Saturdays that’s where. The living legend himself, the renegade, the prodigal son of CoH2 has returned.

The Master of Propaganda, Hero of the Reich, Defender of the Fatherland. He is back to tournament casting with all the furor of a crack SturmGeschutz III crew on the Steppe. And with him being the most prolific caster in CoH history you can ensure the Dane has not missed a step. Catch him on the first two Sundays of the tournament.



As the stakes and prestige of this tournament have skyrocketed and we’re now aware thanks to players such as Aimstrong (1st game in 18 months, gets rank 4 Wehr) that there is no decay in CoH2 ranks, we now have to introduce a more detailed process for producing seeds for this tournament.

This involves the following five steps but for a more in depth look and more importantly if you’re a competitive player looking to enter then head over to the entries thread. It will close one week from now at 9pm GMT on 7th April.

A summary of the seeding process:

Step 1 - Automatch ranking: we will calculate average of highest Axis and highest Allied 1v1 automatch rank, as before

Step 2 A - Tournament history: eight tournament players have gotten to the final stages in multiple tournaments OCF onwards, and therefore already have enough recent history to seed them.

Step 2 B - Placement matches: Other players are invited to compete against three opponents in two games: one Axis and one Allied, six games total. To judge their performance in tournament conditions and adjust their rank. This will be at player-organised times from 8th April until 16th April, the groups will be released once entries close.

Step 3: Provisional seeding: the above is combined to produce a draft tournament seeding list.

Step 4 - Expert consultation: several trusted top level players whose inclusion in the tournament is not in doubt - will be asked to slightly nudge up or nudge down everyone on the provisional seeding based on their knowledge. We will take an average of this to alleviate any bias.

Step 5 – Final seeding: Taking in all the above and weighing it against each other, a final decision and judgement will be made. The overall aim being to try our hardest to ensure the best 32 players are selected from the pack, and to keep the best players away from one another for as long as possible.



Relic are on board the hype train, and are helping with this independent community project as much as they can. Kyle and also the community balance mod team have been quite simply awesome thus far.

They’ve worked with us and created more professionally produced art that’s free for the tournament to use, and most importantly are allowing the community to work on an obvious OP unit busting mini patch, which is being tested as the Grand Championship Series Patch. It will seek to balance units, not nerf them into disuse.



This very small patch will have some very big and much longed for ramifications looking to balancing all of the following:

• The Command Panther
  
• The Comet and Cromwell
  
• Land mattress
  
• Maxims as a spammable unit
  
• M4C Sherman call-in
  
• Artillery Cover
  
• And add some cool changes such as hold fire for any anti-tank unit.
  

As soon as this hits publicly we need your support testing this as much as possible this is make or break situation. Relic are giving us a very cool opportunity to fix several overpowered units before a big tournament hits, let’s make it happen! If everything goes as planned there is a reasonable chance this could make it into the live game. Links:

• Original Relic Post
  
• GCS Balance Preview Steam Workshop Link
  
• Official Feedback Thread
  
• Bug reporting thread
  

Of course automatch now won’t be the ideal place for people looking to practice in tournament conditions. For two reasons:

Firstly the map pool is not represented in automatch - garrison heavy maps are categorically harder for factions without non-doctrinal mortars and flamethrowers and with line-of-site dependent defensive play-styles, and so won’t see use this tournament.

The map pool is now finalised:





Secondly the tournament will be competed under the conditions of the mini patch which won’t hit until late April (hopefully) but until then any activity should be under the tuning pack.

To alleviate this there will be several competitive events for you to participate in under the conditions of this balance mini-patch including King of the Hill this Sunday, Currahee’s 2v2 tournament the following weekend, and of course tournament placement matches commencing 8th April. Other than that skrim, practice, and prepare.