Alliance Tournament Sixteen started yesterday, July 28, and as we predicted, it was an explosive day in the arenas. 46 alliances fought for slots in the winners bracket of this AT, and 23 victors emerged, each winning 10 Triglavian Victory SKINs for their alliance and the right to progress along the shorter path to the Grand Final.
So Who Won?
The victors of the first day are:
Villore Accords
Solyaris Chtonium
Brave Collective
SAMURAI SOUL’d OUT
WE FORM V0LTA
Of Sound Mind
We want your ISK
Templis CALSF
Goonswarm Federation
The Initiative.
Red Versus Blue
The Bastion
Triumvirate.
Snuffed Out
PURPLE HELMETED WARRIORS
Exodus.
No Handlebars.
Bright Side of Death
Salt Farmers
Pen Is Out
CAStabouts
A Band Apart.
Fraternity.
Match Byes
This year, a number of Alliances have received automatic byes to further rounds of the tournament, for a number of reasons. Following the first day results, though, we can now announce the byes through the first round of the losers bracket on July 29, occurring as a result of alliance withdrawals outlined in this EVE-O forum thread. The alliances automatically progressing to losers bracket matches on August 4 are Holesale Operations, and Odin’s Call, and No Vacancies.
Not Quite to Plan?
It should be noted that Solyaris Chtonium’s victory was automatically granted after Holesale Operations suffered captaincy issues that prevented their scheduled match from taking place. We can only hope Holesale can pull back from their issues by August 4, having received an automatic bye to the second round of that bracket due to the withdrawal of The Bastard Cartel.
There were shenanigans surrounding the match between Quebec United Legion and The Bastion. Three members of the QUL team activated tournament Micro Jump Units before the official start of the match, in a clear violation of AT rules. As a result, the match referees intervened, destroying just enough of QUL’s team to grant an automatic points victory to The Bastion before terminating the match simulation after two minutes and thirty seconds. The amusing thing to note with this is that QUL did have time to destroy two of the six Bastion ships with no losses before officials intervened, suggesting that had their MJD tactic been used just a few seconds later, QUL would have been total victors in this encounter.
The most interesting match of the day, though, was Goonswarm Federation versus League of Unaligned Master Pilots. This was one of INN’s recommendations to tune in for, and boy did it deliver. Not only was this fight the single match to be resolved by points scored at the end of the ten minute simulation, GSF autocrat The Mittani was a member of the ten-man team flying a polarized Augoror Navy Issue. Alongside Mittens, team captain Asher Elias flew a polarized Absolution, with the team executing a fantastic metagame play on the typical role for these ships. Ultimately, Goonswarm edged out LUMPY on points, scoring 83 points to LUMPY’s 59. You should absolutely check this fight out if you missed it, the fight was down to the wire until almost the last second.
The Imperium came away from Saturday rather smugly overall, too. All four Imperium alliances to enter the AT this year – Goonswarm Federation, The Bastion, The Initiative., and Snuffed Out – came away from the first day victorious. This AT success compounds with two keepstar kills in the past week, and the Imperium seems to be going from strength to strength in their present endeavours.
Flagships
Approximately half a dozen alliance Flagships were fielded on the first day, of which only two died. Interestingly, both dead flagships were Leshaks. The Triglavian battleship hull is also the most popular flagship of AT XVI, with 25 of 43 declared flagships being the Leshak.
The first to die was fielded by Unspoken Alliance, and sported something of an odd fit. The combination of a small and medium smartbomb is unconventional because there is no comparison to the range and damage of a faction or officer large smartbomb. This is important because remote repair drones are a large part of tournament play, and the larger radius bombs will allow a battleship to remove not only hostile drones attacking it, but also the drones repairing or attacking other ships in a much larger area.
The second dead flagship belonged to Phage and Terror, the Pandemic Horde AT alliance who lost a Leshak worth 32 billion ISK. This ship could be worth more than the zkill-quoted value as well, due to the two abyssal-rolled modules used. Abyssal modules, of course, are impossible to value from external killmails, due to limitations of the ESI data. This is a more traditional flagship fit, with the four officer modules being expected upgrades – large smartbomb, 500MN MWD, large armour rep, and damage control – as well as abyssal upgrades to a second large armour rep and a warp scrambler.
These are only the first flagships to be lost and (potentially) looted in the AT XVI, but we guarantee they won’t be the last. You should continue to tune in and enjoy the destruction!
Sunday’s Fights to Watch
- ChaosTheory. Vs. lllllllllllllllll at 1420 UTC on the Plus10Gaming Twitch. The barcode alliance hosts whatever remains of the previous Thermodynamics team, but those remnants were very easily pulled apart by a modern take on the alpha-striking ‘Flyswatter’ setup. It should be really interesting to see how well they can come back from this early loss.
- Brave Collective Vs. SAMURAI SOULD’d OUT. Both teams put on a very strong showing on Saturday, and this should be a great fight to watch today. Tune into CCP Twitch at 1440 UTC for this one.
- Pandemic Legion Vs. Templis CALSF at 1540 UTC on the CCP Twitch – Templis have a history of causing upsets early on in the AT, and this will be PL’s first foray into AT XVI due to a bye in the first round. This has some huge potential to put PL in the losers bracket before they even get going.
- Goonswarm Federation Vs. skill urself. Following straight on from the PL/Templis match at 1600 UTC on the CCP Twitch, this is the second GSF fight we recommend you tune into this AT. The first was action and tenterhooks right to the very end, and it should be an awesome matchup if GSF can bring their A-game!
- Our final recommendation is Pen Is Out Vs. CAStabouts. Neighbouring alliances on TQ, this is effectively a local derby for these teams. Despite that, though, they are good teams with a tournament pedigree, and this should be a fantastic watch. Check it out at 1900 UTC on the CCP Twitch.