The Grand Melee - $100,000 AoE2 LAN tournament at Dreamhack Hanover announcement

The Order of the Sheep has announced a $100,000 AoE2 LAN tournament at the DreamHack LAN event taking place in Hannover from the 15th to the 18th of December 2022. It will be played on the 9 villagers start game mode, “The Grand Melee” main event will feature 8 of the best players in the world battling over the title of Grand Melee Champion as well as total prize money of $100000.
You can read more information here:
https://www.start.gg/tournament/the-grand-melee/details

Finalists of Red Bull Wololo Legacy, TaToh & Liereyy have been invited and 6 spots will be open for qualification.
Registration begins on 16/11/2022.
Qualifiers start on 3/12/2022.
The Main Event will be played from 15-18 December.

What are your thoughts regarding the 9 villager start and qualification format?

7 Likes

I love the Deep Water League start it looks like it will become the new standard sooner or later. At least most pro players are convinced of this concept.

This is very suboptimal, how should anyone outside of Europe get a visa in such a short time until the main event starts?

I mean actually I shouldn’t complain, we get a $100,000 LAN tournament right after Red Bull Wololo Legacy and Warlords which is insane. However, Microsoft should really think about a tournament calendar for 2023, announcing tournaments at such short notice should not be the way to go.

2 Likes

i think it pointlessly messes with the balance. it takes a bit over 2 ingame minutes to make the extra vils, I think I’m patient enough and would rather see players scout well in that time.

However I also look forward to seeing how pros adapt to the different start

3 Likes

Just 8?
I feel that’s a bit slim. we have currently more than 10 players that can do it:

Viper
Liereyy
Hera
Yo
Daut
Tatoh
Jordan
Mbl
Villese
Vinchester
Valas
Nicov
Sitaux

I think it’s a big mistake to restrict the numbers of players in exactly this phase where we have so many new players threatening the top.

Well, I assume the qualifiers will mean most of them have a chance at doing it. Isn’t much different from like, the ‘top 8’ reaching quarterfinals of Red Bull and so on, no? At least, I assume there’s some prize pool for the qualifiers stage as well, or is it one person taking 100k and rest get nothing?

For such a huge prize pool, it is a little weird if the ‘main event’ is just the top 8 too, I wonder if that’d even get wanted viewership over such a short period of time.

Edit: I think I’m not fully comprehending the timeframes either. Since everyone has to qualify, and this tourney is pretty much in a month, does that mean people who need visas will be unable to attend? Would be pretty awful for players not in Europe to not be able to attend not because they didn’t qualify, but because they can’t get a visa. Would the visas they got for Red Bull still work, assuming they weren’t single-trip? Surely players would know about this in advance if this was something to be considered, right?

One of the reasons why it would be really useful, for at the very least the professional players themselves, to have a calendar of upcoming events so they can prepare for out-of-game logistics as well…

3 Likes

The 9 villager start seems perfect for a LAN tournament, especially for the map pool. Its nice to see some maps from the previous tournaments like RMS Cup 2, Resurgence etc. I hope they replace Graveyards with some other interesting unconventional land map like Wings and hope the undecided map is Koala from RMS Cup 2.

As far as qualification goes, its probably better to just start from RO96 or atleast RO192. Its extremely unlikely to see some 200+ seeded player winning all rounds and qualifying to the main event.

For the main event, its awful to do a single elimination 3-day event. Hope they change it eventually to a double elimination or 4 swiss round or something like that. Lets say someone qualifies and travels from halfway across the globe only to lose the first round and return back. That would be awful.

1 Like