Last month joelker41 ran a vault warrior style tournament, hoping to bring FFG’s announced, but never run, 3 day event to the community. It was a resounding success. I personally was not able to qualify for day 3 due to only being able to play 3 rounds on day 1 instead of the full 6, and only winning 2.
I’m writing this because joelker41 announced Vault Keepers #2 in a video and that is very inaccessible and hard to reference. So here is a summary. I’ve added some commentary, you can skip those if you only wish to know the content of the videos.
Event Feedback
After the event joelker41 ran a survey, and the key questions where regarding 2 vs 3 weekend event, and regarding the format (variant!!!) of day 3.
joelker41 says he would would have likely ran a 2 weekend event regardless of community feedback due to his limitations, but is happy that the majority prefer it that way. As you can see from the second chart, the vast majority (myself included) prefer Adaptive for day 3.
Commentary: I am known to not be a fan of Adaptive, so why did I vote Adaptive? Adaptive is a vastly different variant when you bring a deck that has to win straight up Archon. There is far less potential power gap between decks, so chains are not going to go very high, reducing almost all of the negative effects brought on by the variant. I still maintain chains are a terrible balancing mechanic, but it is what we got!
Format (and variant!)
joelker41 intentionally ran a Dark Tidings heavy set limitation in the first run of the tournament, as he wanted to give DT a chance to show up. He’s happy a DT deck won the event.
Day 1 and 2 will have the same format (and variant!) of the first vault keeper tournament, but the set limitation for day 2 will be Mass Mutation and Worlds Collide.
Day 3 will be changed, according to community preference, to Adaptive. Games up until top 4 will be Adaptive best of 1, while top 4 will be Adaptive best of 3.
To summarize:
Day 1: Dark Tidings Archon Solo.
Day 2: Mass Mutations + Worlds Collide Archon Deck Elimination
- Must bring one deck of each set.
- Before the match you will have time to review your opponent’s decks, you will then ban one of them. You and your opponent will play the unbanned decks.
Day 3: Bring a deck that you have brought to the tournament on Day 1 or Day 2.
- Adaptive Best of 1 until top 4.
- Adaptive Best of 3 for top 4.
Commentary: I think the variants chosen are excellent. Adaptive Best of 1 traditionally benefits a slightly different deck that Adaptive Best of 3 in my opinion, but since all the decks must be Archon Solo viable, I don’t think it will be an issue.
Tip for Deck Elimination: When using the triad ban tool to ban a deck in the deck elimination variant, always use the set name rather than the deck name. Some people in the previous vault keeper accidentally reviewed the wrong decks and then banned a deck their opponent didn’t have. The ruling on this is that you do not get a ban and your opponent will get to pick which deck to play. If you name a set instead of a deck you may ban the wrong deck, but you’re at least banning a deck.
Dates
Not much to say here, the time will be the same as the previous vault keepers, as he felt it is the best he can do. The time difference is too big to do anything to improve the time for south east Asia and Oceania.
Day 1 – May 14th (Saturday) – 8am Pacific / 3pm UTC
Day 2 – May 15th (Sunday) – 8am Pacific / 3pm UTC
Day 3 – May 21st (Saturday) – 8am Pacific / 3pm UTC
Qualifiers
To qualify for day 3 you must win a number of games equal to the number of rounds in Day 1 + 1 more game. Day 1 and day 2 will have up to 6 rounds. So if Day 1 has 6 rounds you’ll need to win 7 rounds to qualify, but if fewer players register there may only be 5 rounds and so you’ll need 6 game wins to qualify. joelker41 says 33%-40% of players will qualify.
Prizes
joelker41 adds any money he gets from deck sales to the prize pool so prizes are subject to change, but only upwards! You can go to his dok, buy some decks, and know that the money goes back into the community.
1st place: $200
2nd place: $100
3rd/4th place: $50
5th-8th place: $25
Signups
You can sign up to the event in the Vault Keeper Discord sever. Sign ups will remain open until May 13th 10pm PST / 5am UTC.
You may change decks after sign up, so do joelker41 a favor and sign up as early as possible. In fact, sign up even if you’re unsure if you can make it or not. As a tournament organizer myself, I can say that early signup really help keep me motivated to run the event. So just sign up and change decks later!
Furthermore, if you need practice, FightingWalloon runs an Adaptive league starting April 3rd.
And KarenB will likely run some events with similar variants to Vault Keepers running up to the event on the final swindle discord.
