“Just subtract 30!”
Who could have known that an FFA beginner tournament can be so interesting, thrilling and highly entertaining? Honestly, I didn’t! On October 14, 2018 we had the first iteration of our new SauerDuels offshoot: JS30! (“Just subtract 30!”) ran by SauerDuels staff (This time only h8, Redon and Lokio). Originally, notas came up with the idea to create a tournament only for beginners to give them the opportunity to improve their skill without getting stomped by professionals.
Just for those who don’t know: This is a special event for FFA beginners and people who are intermediate at playing it. The top 10 ranked FFA players (in SauerDuels rankings) are BANNED from this event, means that they can’t play there. The guy who wins this event is also BANNED FROM ALL future events of JS30!.
Many players showed up, featuring really old-school players like shakey, newcomers such as Josh22, Master, Doko, Daemes, and hamon plus some very known and hard-working FFA players named h8, Rotti, and ZCrone. Someone who I didn’t expect to ever set foot on an FFA tournament was Skillzful, but he actually played! And, as always, our FFA expert notas did a very entertaining stream along with his co-moderator Lokio. The link to this stream can be found below or by clicking here.
The group stage was probably more interesting and entertaining than ever – The games were really exciting. I will not name every result here since this is too much. I just want to sum up the – in my opinion – most striking ones.
Closest Game:
The closest game that was played when we look at the scores was hades, facing Skillz and Doko. The last one seemed to be a BIT laggy and managed to win 21 / 18. Well played by both. (Also to Skillzful who I’ve never seen playing FFA yet).
Most exciting game:
The most exciting game was the game of third place: nmp8 with Master and Rotti. For the first minutes, Master seemed to be very dominating but unfortunately lost control in the second half. Though he showed some impressing moves almost nobody can perform, he lost the game 24 / 17.
Most memorable game:
And the most awkward and memorable game was Skillzful versus h8 on tumwalk. H8 did an impressive job and was able to take down Skillz with an end score of 46 / -1. At this point I don’t think I have to go further.
The four people who advanced to the semi-finals were h8 and Master from group one, plus shakey and Rotti from group two. Semi-finals are a best of three which means there are three games to play and whoever wins two of them, advances to finals. The losers of those matches play against each other in game of third place. And, the guy who has won all of his group stage games gets an one-win-advantage in semifinals. First, Rotti and h8 faced each other. H8 had an advantage of one but then he obviously forfeited a map (I suppose nmp8 :D). Still, he won the game on hades by 5 (27 / 22 end score) making him being the first finalist.
On the other side, shakey and Master were crushing their skulls and only fought on nmp8. It was a tough match but in the end, shakey surprisingly won with a score of 20 / 17. Since shakey also had an advantage of one point, there was no other match required to find the second finalist.
The finals were pretty weird this time: H8 did again forfeit nmp8 (Giving shakey one win for free) because he really hates that map – Well, I can actually understand that pretty much. Then, they played on metl4. On this map, h8 showed an overall solid dominance and won with 33 / 11 against shakey. The second match (actually the tiebreaker) was played on tumwalk. Again, both players played excellent but in the end, shakey lost the control and sadly lost with 20 / 30 making him finishing 2nd and placing h8 on the first position.
So in a nutshell, h8 being the supreme champion of the first JS30! event, shakey finishing 2nd and Rotti being the 3rd this time. An also honorable mention is Master who actually performed pretty good and finishing 4th.
Since I only shared my thoughts in the previous comments, I decided to also ask some people who played, for their opinions. Firstly, thanks to every guy who spent the time writing me, but I got four texts that I just want to share with you now:
Josh22: “The tournament was sick! I would never see myself competing in a ffa tourney gave me the opportunity to do so, this may be the case for others to as I saw many new ffa faces. Great for the community hope o see more in the near future!”
Jomra (Master): “The JS30(imo 31) #1(i know you only added that to prevent people from adding up the 30) was a overall great tournament. Everybody was nice and the whole atmosphere was very pleasant. One thing I really enjoyed was the casting by Lokio and notas, throughout the tourney I was always a little nervous going into the games but after only hearing the two for 30 seconds I just felt very comfortable and welcome. They weren’t taking it super serious, of course they were analyzing a lot of plays which helped me especially looking back at the tourney and looking at what I did wrong and what I need to work on, but they were still having fun and that encouraged me to have fun too. To sum up, the JS30(still 31) was a great tournament with great servers, great people, a great cast and a very relaxing and fun atmosphere and I’m looking forward to playing more ffa and of course to future JS30 events”
Skillzful: “It’s unfortunate that we had some laggers but I don’t think it really changed the outcome skill wise. Wish there could’ve been more games but I get time constraints. On the upside it was good to play ffa and not get stomped (fuck you h8) for the most part. I think if I were actually prepared to play I probably would’ve shown some better compete. Overall not bad for a dueling tourney.”
h8:
What ws good: everything! nice turnout, more players than we get for normal ffa. master and shakey were nice finds.
what ws bad: couple of players who should’ve played – toph and benz
conclusion: happy I won, I think the semi-finals and finals were pretty exciting as they went to tiebreaker.
I do not need to add anything, obviously. These guys already said everything! Thanks for the thoughts!! Well, what do we need to say in the end? Right! Thanks to everyone who played and watched, thanks to those who sacrificed their time to run the event and of course thanks to notas, and this time also Lokio, who made an amazing VoD. I personally had much fun watching the games and the stream afterwards.
And of course, I almost forgot, thanks for reading (This time it’s a REALLY long post!). I appreciate any kind of constructive criticism, please don’t be shy and tell me. I’m not going to rip off your head :D
Links:
Notas’ and Lokio’s stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/322730413
Bracket: https://challonge.com/de/js30october2018/groups
tl;dr! Nice article! Keep up the good work Topf!
Nice to see ffa getting so much attention. I watched a bit of the stream where h8 was being a coward with the map decision. It was a lot of fun to watch also big thumbs up to the casters!
Sewers on hades for the win! 200 IQ plays!
Great article!
really good article. I felt excited by reading it
Great article, feels professionally written and well-researched. You can deny it all you want but you care about ffa more than other modes and that passion shows in this article.
Shit on skillz more, good article otherwise.
Thanks for the writeup! I’m thrilled everyone had a good time, and I’ll definitely consider running another one of these since this one was so damn fun
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