Welcome to the Victory Road Spring Challenge, our first live ONLINE tournament powered by AVerMedia Gaming!
Our team over at Victory Road wants to make sure that you stay safe and sound at home in the tough times we are all living now due to the SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) outbreak. In order to make this period as bearable as possible for everyone, we thought of giving everyone the chance to earn exclusive AVerMedia products and prize money while keeping in shape for the eventual return of Pokémon events.
Structure
The Victory Road Spring Challenge will be hosted online the upcoming Saturday March 21st at 6 PM UTC (2 PM EDT, 7 PM CET, 3 AM JST/KST) for the the Swiss rounds, and on Sunday March 22nd starting at 6 PM UTC as well for the Top Cut. The event will follow these regulations:
- Event structure: Best-of-3 Swiss rounds on Saturday 21 + Single-elimination Best-of-3 Top Cut bracket on Sunday 22. Each round is played within 60 minutes upon pairings are announced.
- Up to 64 players: Swiss rounds on Saturday 21 + Top 8 Cut on Sunday 22
- Over 65 players: Swiss rounds on Saturday 21 + x-2 Cut (all players with 2 or fewer losses advance) on Sunday 22
- Platforms:
- All games will be played on Pokémon Sword / Shield for the Nintendo Switch family of consoles
- Given that the games have no VS Recorder feature, all players are required to take a pic of the WIN / LOSE player cards showed at the end of each match (game 1, game 2, game 3) so that we can have a proof of the winner.
- Players will contact with each other through Battlefy, where pairings will be randomly generated for each round and standings can be followed by anyone.
- Any anouncements to be made by our staff will be posted on Twitter and/or our site.
- All games will be played on Pokémon Sword / Shield for the Nintendo Switch family of consoles
- Regulations: all events will follow the Sword / Shield Series 3 ruleset, which can be found here.
- Entry fee: $7.24 USD / €6.50 EUR / £5.79 GBP
- Entry fee can be paid through PayPal or Bank Transfer. (you will receive an email with the instructions after filling the registration form)
- Prizes: based on attendance (check out down below)
Prizes
Regardless of attendance, roughly 92.5% of all entry fees will be directed towards the prize pool, whereas the remaining 7.5% will cover delivery of the prizes and management.
Thanks to our partner AVerMedia, we are able to offer an extra prize for the winner, valued at over $150 as well.
- Winner: 40% of the event’s prize pool + an AVerMedia GS333 SonicBlast Gaming Soundbar (with 2.1 channel), valued at over $150 (check it out here).
- Runner-up: 20% of the event’s prize pool.
- 3rd and 4th Place: 10% of the event’s prize pool.
- 5th to 8th place: 5% of the event’s prize pool.
For example, if 150 players sign up, the winner gets roughly $400 from the prize pool, whereas the runner-up wins $200, both top 4 finishers earn $100 and all Top 8 players get $50.
Penalties
- Late Show: if a player shows up late to its game, regardless of the status of the tournament or the round played, it will receive one or multiple game losses:
- 10 minutes (after pairings are posted): Game 1 loss
- 20 minutes: Game 2 loss (thus, round loss).
- Multiple late showings might result in a disqualification at the TOs discretion.
- We strongly recommend you to avoid delaying your games upon contacting your opponent for the sake of everyone’s playing experience.
- Ghosting: if any player is proven to be ghosted (helped by other players already eliminated or not playing in the event), the aforementioned player will be automatically disqualified from the event.
- Behavior: All players competing on our tournaments or taking part in any of our activities are expected to have a respectful behavior with other players and the Victory Road staff alike. Any player whose behavior is against our standards of conduct will be disqualified from the tournament, losing any right to the prizes earned, such as prize money or other products. Victory Road will evaluate each situation individually and will decide on the most appropriate measures.
- Team Sheet modifications: should any player modify any of his team’s Pokémon, items, moves or any other characteristics, the player will be automatically disqualified. All players will be required to deliver both 1) a CryptoBin of their teams
- Alt accounts
- Fake identities are forbidden. Each player must use its real name when registering.
- No players can enter the tournament multiple times by using different accounts. Should any cases be detected, all accounts will be disqualified.
- Connection issues
- If a connection error occurs during a match, both players will be allowed to consider the in-game situation of the match. We highly recommend both the players to be honest and assume as lost any disconnected matches when the connection issues happen at a point where the game was essentially lost for them in order to keep the tournament’s timings as short as possible. This is just a suggestion we highly encourage, but are aware not everyone will agree. Therefore, if ONE or BOTH players don’t reach an agreement, one of them will have to flag the match so our TOs check the issues. BOTH PLAYERS are also required to:
- Take a pic or a screenshot with the screen capture button (◙) on their Nintendo Switch and send it to the TO via Battlefy, Twitter (at @VGCVictoryRoad) or email (victoryroadvgc@gmail.com). The player causing the connection issues will receive a different error message than the one who didn’t and thus will be assigned a loss for the game.
- Check if the internet connection to the game remains after the match concludes by pressing “Y” and then taking a clip by using the screen capture button (◙) again (you will have to hold it down for 3 seconds to start recording.)
- Based on this, the player who got the disconnection error will get a game loss in that match.
- If one of the players doesn’t send the mentioned pic and clip to the TOs, they will receive a game loss in that match.
- If any of the players send the mentioned pic and clip to the TOs, both of them will receive a game loss in that match.
- If a connection error occurs during a match, both players will be allowed to consider the in-game situation of the match. We highly recommend both the players to be honest and assume as lost any disconnected matches when the connection issues happen at a point where the game was essentially lost for them in order to keep the tournament’s timings as short as possible. This is just a suggestion we highly encourage, but are aware not everyone will agree. Therefore, if ONE or BOTH players don’t reach an agreement, one of them will have to flag the match so our TOs check the issues. BOTH PLAYERS are also required to:
- Any situation not detailed will be individually studied by the event’s TOs.
Sign ups
Fill out the form down below in order to register for the Victory Road Spring Challenge, taking place on March 21, 2020 at 2 PM EDT (6 PM UTC). Once you have sent your form, you will receive an automatic email detailing the rest of the sign up process.
Sign ups will close on March 21 at 1 PM EDT / 5 PM UTC (an hour before the tournament starts).
