Open Tournament 13, Draft Tourney & Future Events

We hope everyone enjoyed the last draft tournament and Open Tournament! A big thanks to Jackson and GreenRex for their excellent casting of the Open Tournament, and congrats to Sticky Den for taking first place!

In case you missed it, you can find all of the replays here:

                        Jackson (UWE stream): https://www.twitch.tv/naturalselection2/videos

And if you would like updates when streams go live, please join our discord!

After a short break, it's time to announce the next events we have in the pipeline. We'd like to announce a No-Sanji Draft Tournament, Open Tournament 13 and a Combat tournament!

No-Sanji Draft Tournament Info:

A Draft Tournament enables all participants to play, and will be sorted into teams through a drafting process which will be hosted prior to the tournament starting. This is a great way to meet players in the NSL community and a fun way to dip your toes into competitive NS2! If you're interested, please sign up here by Thursday, February 9th.

The drafting process will begin on Friday, February 10^th and the games will take place from Saturday, February 11^th to Sunday, February 12^th.

This tournament differs from our previous drafts in that players around the Sanji skill level (~4000 ELO) are not allowed to participate. This should allow for a more level playing field and we hope our newer players will feel a bit less pressure this way.

For more specific details:

- Signups are now open and close on Thursday, February 9th

- You can sign up here

- During the Drafting Stage, Captains will pick players to play on their teams (Friday, February 10th)

- On both Saturday and Sunday, games will begin at 09:00 PDT / 12:00 EDT / 17:00 GMT / 18:00 CET

- Teams will play one another in a Round Robin format on Saturday. Teams with the most points will advance

- On Sunday, the remaining teams will face off in a single elimination bracket to determine the winner.

Rounds to be played on Sunday will be in a Bo5 format, and use the same pick/ban method as the Open Tournaments.

Open Tournament Info:

The signups for the NSL Open Tournament #13 are now open! An Open Tournament allows everyone to participate with preformed teams to duke it out and see who can claim the top spot in the NS2 competitive community! The format of the tournament is double elimination, which means that a team has two lives and ceases to advance if they lose two matches. The Early Stage and Semifinals conclude on Saturday, March 4th,and the Finals and Grand Finals will take place on Sunday, March 5th. Maps and sides will be determined by a coinflip where the upper bracket team is heads, and the lower team bracket is tails.

More specific information:

Rules: Can be found here. Several rules have changed (team sizes capped at 8, Grand

            Finals completion, server choices), so please read through them!

                        Brackets: Can be found here on Challonge

                        Code of Conduct: Can be found here

The games on Saturday, March 4th will begin at 09:00 PDT / 12:00 EDT / 17:00 GMT / 18:00 CET. Matches consist of up to two maps with three rounds played in total. The team that wins the coin toss decides whether they want to choose map and server or to choose Aliens/Marines first. Picked maps can only be one of the following (please note not all rounds may be needed):

Round 1 (First): Jambi, Tram, Unearthed

Round 1 (Loser): Veil, Summit, Caged

Round 2 (Winner): Veil, Descent, Nexus_Fixes

Round 2 (Losers): Summit, Jambi, Ayumi

Round 3 (Winner): Jambi, Mineral, Tanith

Round 3 (Losers): Tram, Veil, Summit

The games on Sunday, March 5th will start at 09:00 PDT / 12:00 EDT / 17:00 GMT / 18:00 CET. The Losers Finals will be in a Best of 5 format, while the Grand Finals will be Best of 7. They consist of up to three maps with five rounds played in total. Both teams are allowed to ban 3 maps, and the team choosing the first map gets the first ban. Teams alternate in their ban choices until 6 maps have been banned in total and then proceed to alternate in picks of maps until 3 (4 in Grand Finals) maps have been chosen. Map bans are in effect until the conclusion of the series. Below you can find a larger map pool for the Semifinals, Finals and Grand Finals where picked maps can only be one of the following:

ns2_ayumi

ns2_biodome

ns2_caged

ns2_descent

ns2_jambi

ns2_mineral

ns2_nexus_fixes

ns2_summit

ns2_tanith

ns2_tram

ns2_unearthed

ns2_veil

If this piques your interest, join or form a team and make sure to sign up by March 3^rd! Signups will be done on the NSL website, so please ensure your team is registered. If you have any questions or trouble with this, feel free to reach out to any NSL Admin or infamous directly.

Combat Tournament Info:

After the Open Tournament, we will be hosting a Combat tournament! The ruleset is still be drafted, but this will likely be a 4v4 or 5v5 format on specified Combat maps, utlizing the original Combat mod (not the DMD mod).

More info will be ready soon, and we will update this post once it’s available. Stay tuned!