[AAR] E-UNI Cup - Day 2

[JohnPlayerNotSpecial]

Alright, let me apologize to Breeze for taking this AAR over, but i want to have this written down now.

First, Results:
1st: Les Sauvages Chaud.
2nd: Cheeky Girls.
3rd: The Outcasts.
4th: Bait Squad.

Second, thanks:
-> Kelon for commentating.
-> Tiberius for streaming.
-> Breeze for organizing (!!!).

Now, from my point of view:
What worked:
-> Getting people involved.
-> Preparation with rules from organizer.
-> Afaik Training sessions have been organized between the teams and/or sparring partners.
-> Mobile Depot.
-> Captain discipline during pick & ban.
-> Setting up whisper (Good to be forced to have it set up).
-> Best Cleanup Ship EU (AMC is the real winner tbh).
-> Organizer was highly prepared (related to location + citadel + all the ships there in abundance).
-> Having a tournament experienced guy doing commentary.

What didnt:
-> Setup for organizer was probably a pain and fairly time consuming.
-> Poor commentator was left hanging without having someone else to help him bouncing off with input.
-> Everyone joins corp X for hangar where the ships are located.
-> Ppl leaving corp for practise (killmail) hiding so additional delays on day 2.
-> Streamer didnt catch the awesomness of having cleanup ship jumping in.
-> Pod implant checking was tedious.
-> We could have done the last 2 matches on the first day.


Suggestions for next time: (if someone decides to run another one, pls do btw)
-> Ask for setup help.
-> Have someone in station to hand out ships & stuff in case sisi is being retarded again. (I should have done that tbh but only came to this conclusion afterwards).
-> Maybe have different teams form their own corp for the killmail hiding thing ? That'd then require previous point tho.
-> Ignore pods & assume everyone is in high grade slave ? It's Sisi after all.
-> To counter previous point, depending on team numbers, have everything play out on the same day (will require 3-4h time investment from everyone)
-> Have the streamer practise with showing off a fight.
-> Force Team captains to write an AAR for their preparation & training. ImHo this is where the meat is in such an event, and i'm really bummed to not have been part of this.


Overall, despite the shortcomings on some parts in my opinion (upon iterating is super easy for the next time, like for example not using a blackops for cleanup & showoff and then not having it seen on stream :'( ), i think this was a huge success ! Mister One should get a reward for having done this Cup !

Thx all, and congratulations to the Low Skill Cucumbers.

Edit: Tiberius stream from when it started to pick up audio from mumble: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/230355666?t=33m09s.

[Breeze One]

Many thanks to John for being our clean-up crew and generally a massive help, thanks to Kelon for commentating, and special thanks to Tiberius for stepping up to referee the last matches when I couldn’t!

Congratulations to Les Sauvages!

The Prizes from my side are as follows:

Winner: 1x Pirate Cruiser for each team member

2nd Place: 1x Pirate Frigate each team member

3rd and 4th: 1x Faction Frigate each team member

Please evemail me or post below any preference, otherwise it’ll be a random pick for each person

In addition!

Our esteemed commentator and all round awesome guy Mr Kelon Darklight has kindly donated 2x IGC Skins!

I’ll be giving one of these each to the Captains of our top 2 teams. I’ll leave it to the captains if they wish to reward one of their own for some special services, or sell it and distribute around the whole team

What went well?

It happened!

People learned (and hopefully enjoyed learning) things about tournament play, piloting, and Sisi

Logistics mostly went smoothly

Referee’ing/Streaming went pretty smoothly

Anti-cheat seemed to work…but was admittedly really annoying and fiddly and…meh

Good fights were had!

What could have gone better?

First time doing logistics for something like this – few mistakes, mostly around use of a single Corp etc…it was a good idea in theory…practice was a bit messier. Sorry about that

If I was doing it again, I’d have a go at editing some of the fits to make them more newbro friendly for Uni, rather than pure EVE NT fits (which are designed for very high skill players)

It COULD have all fitted into 1 day, OR had a double round robin over 2 days. Buuuut that would have been 3-4 hours per day. I asked if folks wanted to try, but understandably most people preferred to keep it to just 2 hours per day. A few more teams and we could have done a funkier set up across the 2 days, or something, but….yeah

Next Time…

There will definitely be another round of this, in the future – maybe in H2 018. Until then…well, apparently CCP are still intending on having an Alliance Tournament this year, and yes, we still plan on having a team entered (for the initial Feeder Rounds)

Anyone who got bitten by the Tournament bug this time, keep your eyes open for (hopefully) some imminent announcements….

[Laser Skaron]

-> Force Team captains to write an AAR for their preparation & training. ImHo this is where the meat is in such an event, and i'm really bummed to not have been part of this.
.

I guess we can still do that. Team? which one of us should write an AAR for training sessions?

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

-> Force Team captains to write an AAR for their preparation & training. ImHo this is where the meat is in such an event, and i'm really bummed to not have been part of this.
.

I guess we can still do that. Team? which one of us should write an AAR for training sessions?

I've got the notes etc from our practices and can transfer those into the forums here. I'll just need to fill in some gaps where I didn't write everything down.

edit: our team will work on it together, and post the finished AAR when we're done

[Breeze One]

Friendly bump as I've updated my post above with prizes and other juicy information!

Thanks again to Tiberius, John and Kelon

Congratulations to all the participants!

[Turlough Dominian]

Big well done to all involved was a nice event to watch and alot of work put in by the people helping to run/organise it, and ofc the people taking part put in alot of prep work also

Spoiler

[Troven Smalvard]

Said it in the stream and in slacks but I'll say here again.
Great event, had fun being a practice target while I could, and cheering on our local team in the event.

Big shout to breeze for taking time to organise and get it buzzing. All the behind the scenes team for making the days run (even if you were bribed with a cameo and deprived of being internet famous)

As I was away wouldn't have been able to enjoy/spam local/become a channel MOD without Tiberius stream and it was made even better by Kelon giving his Jedi insight.

Hope it runs again,
The second day with graphics and practiced camera man (who could lock 10 targets :p) was boom.
Here's to hoping we could be thunder dome next time.... if only for explosive boundary violations

Hopefully peeps watching will fancy the chance to throw their hat in next time for glory
If the sausages can win anyone can - completely not bitter gf's <3

and next time we can get a wall poster so we can fill in the brackets at home a la the world cup

Go sports!!!!

[Biwako Acami]

As with all tournament preparation I like to play with spreadsheets get an understanding of the playfield.

• Data on Previous Tournaments were to get an idea of comps and pick and bans strategies
• Ship comparisons came in handy to see what ships were capable of
• Recorded some practice matches in there for reference

While the AT style format was something I've worked with in the past the EVE-NT format posed unique set of challenges and had more emphasis on pick and bans. We didn't crack the pick and bans as I'd hoped.

Forming Teams
The goal was to get as many to participate from WHC but we didn't get enough to form two teams. Gatt had the displeasure of having to decide who is in and who is out. Unfortunately we had some good pilots who couldn't make it.

Matches
Match 1 vs The Bait Squad (WIN)

• Pick and Bans went in our favor; we got the Scythe to bring out a kitey comp that we practiced
• Opposing team burned out of Logi range which made it easy to pick off the big ships
• Only Domination victory of the tournament I believe

Match 2 vs The Outcasts (WIN)

• We intended to go armor kitey here
• Having forced our opponents a choice between AB armor logi and EWAR we planned to go heavy into Amarr ships to mitigate possible Blackbirds presence
• Opposing team burned out of Logi range here as well but made it back to keep the Armageddon alive
• We underestimated the Armageddon a bit and allowed it to put pressure on our ships and even lost a ship to it despite being ahead

Match 3 vs Les Sauvages Chaud (LOSS)

• The match we were truly preparing for due to the combined experience on the team for tournament related prep (Kora, Decklin, Union)
• While preventing a Domination victory doesn't mean much in a 1 round RR setting, we were at least glad to draw blood
• I attribute the loss to poor captaincy (I got cold feet)
  • Poor job on comms for the prep talk and shot calling mid fight.
  • Failed on communicating how the roles should play as I had done in past games.
  • Fumbled pick and bans. I could see where the opposing team was going but I didn't act on it probably because of the jitters and not having a PnB buddy (mentioned below in Things that could improve)
    • Cyclone ban telegraphed the need to cripple Shield Brawly fits (got dismissed as a random ban on comms)
    • Griffin was a good anti-armor EWAR pick
    • Algos pick raised flag in my mind that opponent were going logi less
    • We tried to force our comp and just forgot the strengths of the Hyperion when logi less

Highlights
Practice Sessions

• Practice sessions in general started off as 5v5, 4v4, 3v3. When we were short on numbers it became more role focused; tackle practice vs screening practice. We even did some controlled tests to check application of various ships.
• We had great practice sessions prior to Day 1
  • We had support from WHC campus for some of our practice sessions which gave us a good head start
  • Proud of the improvement in teamwork from Day 1 till match day especially between Donkey, Sketchy and Zana our dedicated Frigate, Destroyer and Logi Cruiser pilots respectively
  • We had some experienced EVE players in Conci, Ulrik and Urban so we were able to focus quickly on ideas for comps.
  • We pivoted around the BC role with much success thanks to multiple practice controlled practice tests with Conci
• While we didn't crack all possibilities for comps like I'd hoped, I think we did a decent job at coming up with workable comps based on practices
• Scrim against Les Savagues Chadue was an eye opener for pick and bans (we didn't give priority to it until then)

Organization

• Great first attempt at the Tournament style
• The Anti-cheat was great plan to keep things fair. Despite the amount of time it took I was happy with it for Day 1
• Again must say the whole restricted citadel access, pods only entry, arena etc was well done

Things that could have been better
Practice Sessions

• We did not have enough practice sessions prior to Day 2. Was more of a schedule thing but if we wanted to win we needed a little more practice especially around our Armor comps.
• While I would have liked to involve other teams in our practice, our schedules just didn't match except for the one Scrim session with Les Sauvages Chaud. This could have broadened our views on comps.
• Should have designated a co-captain for pick and bans. I thought I could figure out the combinations but it would have been easier to bounce ideas off someone. I tried to keep everyone involved here but I think having two dedicated people with practice on this aspect would have been more focussed
• I should improve my shot calling. Conci and Urban took over well during other games but I crippled the third match.

Organization

• Day 2 Anti-Cheat would not have impeded someone intent on cheating because of the uninterrupted access to the structure for a week. Perhaps if the access was restricted again at end of Day1 it would have been relevant.
• Could do a live coin flip for captains for the pick/ban side instead of providing predetermined positions or running RNG without being transparent.

Thanks

• Thanks to my team for dedicating time to practice sessions and at the games. I think we all went away with appreciation for the tournament format and with
• Thanks to Gatt our glorious secretary-who-should-have-been-a-team-member for driving practice sessions and being ever present in all practices/matches to support us
• Thanks to everyone who participated in the event and made it possible despite schedule/timezone issues.
• Hats off to Breeze for organizing the event successfully. And props to Tiberius for the stream and carrying the reigns when Breeze was unavailable.
• Thanks to JohnPlayerNotSpecial for dedicating his time to the event especially as staff.
• Thanks Kelon for your inspiring presence at the games (and prizes.)

[Kora K]

Nice AAR Biwako, I was waiting for it Ours will be out this week, but it confirmed some assumptions we had about your team. Especially since we also prepared solely for you in the last week.

In the last week, we mainly practiced execution, especially flying the BC/BS. We thought that we could "beat" you in picks and bans, but once on-grid, you had the advantage. We also supposed you wanted to bring something armour and brawly, so we also planned our strategy based on that.

Regarding picks and bans, having 2-3 people in the team doing it is essential for me, to bounce ideas. We had at least a full evening of practicing that with Decklin, Laser and I, and we talked about it a lot. It helped us cover a lot of possibilities, tactics, ... Also, a lot of choices will be based on the BC/BS you want to pick. Having the BC/BS pilots for picks and bans around is really nice, since they know all their ships "pretty well".

Anyway, it was a fun tournament, and the rest of the AAR will be out soon

[Tiberius Auduin]

Hey guys, thanks all for watching and organizing.

My original goal was to enter a team, but busy RL schedule would not leave much room for practices. Breeze asked during day 1 if someone would be able to stream in 1080p. I tried and it looked OK (I still need to run a UTP cable, so it was streamed with WiFi :p) at max 3.8 mbps. This was my first stream ever. I thought I had trained all appropriate skills for being a decent logi, but adv targeting proved me wrong Anyways, learned on the go.

For Day 2 Breeze was stuck at work so I had the honour to referee this match. Thanks John for helping me out, you da real MVP! I screwed around with streamlabs, and I must say I like it :p Too bad I forgot I've hit "mute desktop audio" hotkey and figured it out 30 mins later; I need to see how other streamers handle their audio piping.
At times I tried my best to keep at least some interaction with Kelon going, but I found it hard due to multi-tasking and failed at times, thanks everyone who stepped in.

One comment for the organisational side: Make teams have their own corp. You kill umpteen birds with one EMPs round. No spying on corp lossmails, easier to set standing to one corp than all pilots individually AND you don't have to fool around with individual hanger access rights. Those for some reason didn't work and we had some delay and frustrations.

[Breeze One]

Prize contracts are up for all those who requested ships!

None of "The Bait Squad" have requested ships (Prize: Faction Frigate for each pilot)

I'll give you another week to express a preference, otherwise I'll just give you some random ships I have in my hanger

[Ulrik Elristan]

Quick and dirty note specifically for Tiberius' streaming concerns : VBaudio's Voicemeeter is your lifesaver. It's a donationware and allows for great control. (I run the banana version for video recording and to patch in Spotify to the team during practices )

Thanks to everyone who made the tournament happen, both organization- and participation-wise !

[Yrgrasil]

A bit late, and I just stole the template from Biwako More or less

The Team
Well, we were gathered by Manolius Theodorous, who just wrote short before the deadline all us leftovers a Mail and then we were called a Team.

Teamlead was intended to be run by Jax, but for whatever Reason he didn't really was around. So we somehow tried to make some comps and assigned the pilots for specific roles. For the comps we tried something stupid, means Brawly, and lots of Tackle,Dmg and/or Tank. The younger pilots were using the smaller Ships, also because of Skill Injector Reasons. Since we even had pilots who didn't really have done pvp and also some without the possibility to speak in Mumble, this approach was probably not the worst choice.


Matches
Match 1 vs Les Sauvages Chaud (LOSS)

• We went in for banning ECM, since we had some disgusting Practice Session with them where a Scorp played a Role... Anyway, the Comps were until the Cruiser quite default, then they banned the Cyclone, which was kinda annoying since Jax could only fly Minmatar/Amarr and i Caldari/Gallente, so we picked for some Reason the Drake/Tempest and started the fight.
  Start went ok, we went for the Prophecy, and got him at least in Structure when i recognized that i burned my Guns... fight over, i feel still ashamed because of this, but yeah at least we got the Dragoon and it wasn't a Domination.
  
  All in all a horrible Start, we should've taken more time for the alternative planning, since we were really limited on the choices we could make. An Typhoon or maybe Hurricane would have been a much better pick. But still, i burned my goddamn Guns.

Match 2 vs Cheeky Girls (LOSS)

• We intended to go Armor here to get Ooklay also a Match, who could only fly Gallente Ships. The good thing was, that the WHC guys directly banned the Shield Logi, and we didn't really needed to switch.
  Tactic was the same as before, we try to kill the BC on the other side and ... Well, their wasn't more planning.
  
  We learned sadly the hard way that a Brutix isn't the tankiest BC in EvE, actually its really bad for this, so Ooklay got wrecked pretty fast. On the other side the enemy logi went into the Armageddon Neut Range, so we could kill at least the Harbinger. I would actually say lesson learned, but in fact we nearly did this mistake again.

Match 3 vs The Bait Squad (WIN)

• We didn't had practiced the whole week, lost the fights before and we also should do the first fight on this day, which was suprising. So i think the motivation was probably quite low, at least from my side.
  Since Jax didn't showed up, we were forced to go for the Armor comp, since we were Team B we could at least choose the Cruiser first and decided to ban the AB Logistics.
  Ooklay messed up the warpin and jumped at 50 instead of 0, but afterwards this was probably the perfect choice (see Match 2). We send our Destroyer/Frig for the Griffin and hoped that our Brutix will arrive before the Geddon dies.
  Gladly the Logi went into 40km of the Geddon and i called him directly as target, he probably just panic overheated the mwd and got of out boundry. No idea if he would've survived at this point, but well, happened.
  
  Next Target was the Cane, my Geddon was already taking Heavy Damage and got <20% Armor, at this point also our Brutix finally arrived to the Battle and we didn't needed that much time to take him out. Really nice was at this point that the Destroyer and BC both switched to Repair Drones on their own and got me in the Geddon at ~10% Armor stable.
  Short before the Cane popped the Typhoon also went out of the 125km and was forced to warp off.
  
  In short i would say, we won because of some happy accidents.

Highlights

• We got a team together I would actually say this was the most important Highlight.
• We actually had only 1.5 practice session, some nonesense where we did some 2vs2 (or 3vs3) without any goal, and then we had the saturday before day 1 ~3 fights where we could at least test some 5vs5. For this amount of training, or actually the lack of the training, the team worked pretty well. And of course thanks for the teams which trained with us.
• The Stream was great, we love the poll were all of the viewers voted against us, well: Sup Bros
• And some response as i asked for Stuff i missed in this AAR:

  "Highlights: -Fullfilling Yrgrasils dream of winning a fight. I did not dare to hope so."

Things that could have been better

• We should've done much more Practice actually...
• Also we should probably have done much more Individual Training, expecially for our newbros. Basic Stuff like building up transversal early, overheating mwd to catch stuff earlier etc. No idea if this would've helped, but i think it would also some better use of time.
• Also some more theory crafting would be nice, not the amount the Cheeky Girls did with all these sheets and numbers, this would be too much for us, but some Basic Stuff.
• Regarding to the organization: It was a bit suprising that the shedule for the day 2 switched, no idea if there was an announcement before or not, but i think we got the info about 10 minutes earlier as we didn't even had all pilots logged in