Empire Deluxe Tournament 2020 – Preliminaries

Today is the start of our yearly Empire Deluxe Championship Tournament.  Played on the final two weeks of every year, the top players from the leader board pit themselves against each other in a moderated game to determine who will carry the title of Empire Champion for the next twelve months.

This year’s tournament is unique as it will be the first time that we are streaming instead of playing an in-person hotseat game.  The tournament is being hosted on Empire Deluxe Combined Edition which is also a change from years past.  We will be using Steam’s built-in streaming service to broadcast the game and, technical glitches withstanding, it will be available to spectate for a select group of tournament participants.

This year we have four finalists participating in the tournament.  Niefsa is returning to defend his crown as Empire Champion for another year.  Meanwhile we have Dalian, Holak, and Mara who will be attempting to stop him and obtain the crown for themselves.  Three of our four players are long time veterans of legacy Empire Deluxe and participated in a qualifier match on EDCE earlier this year.  In other words, this game will pit some of the greatest Empire Deluxe minds against each other.

The map chosen for this year’s tournament is none other than the Island or Harn.  This was one of the original tournament maps from over a decade ago, re-created in EDCE.  history may be prophetic of events to come, as it was WyvernsBane who ultimately dominated this map with his “Flight of the Valkyries” during the 2006 tournament which made this map infamous.  Now, with a new ruleset, we will see if history repeats itself or if the ruleset provides a new strategy to winning the game.

Good luck, everyone!