Dice-a-holics! The time is nigh! Here on good old Earth 616, a pandemic has caused the cancelation of what would have been an incredible Dice Masters event at the annual Origins Game Fair in Columbus Ohio. Alas, Origins had been scheduled to transpire over the weekend of June 20th. But what if we could bend the multiverse to our collective will and re-write our gaming futures?
Well, Wizkids reached out to us and thanks to some very generous prize support from them (a wormhole in the space/time continuum?) we are pleased to announce…
When: Saturday, June 20, 2020 – Starting 12pm Eastern Standard Time
What: Modern Constructed Dice Masters with no bans. It’s a no-holds-barred event. For a list of the available cards please see the Wizkids rotation announcement here – Dice Masters 2020 Rotation. Because we are seeking to include players from many international time zones – we will be playing best 2 out of 3 Swiss matches. If we have between 17-32 participants, we will have 5 rounds of Swiss (6 rounds if there are more than 33) best of three’s. 50 minutes total for all 3 games when time is called. If there isn’t a winner at time, 0-5 turns (turn 0 is the active player’s turn when time is called). Please see Dice Masters Tournament Rules for specific details. To repeat, most likely 5 rounds of best of 3 Swiss – no top cut due to time constraints.
Prizing: Wizkids is providing the Exclusive X-Men the Animated Series Promo cards that were available at the 2019 World Champions including:
Professor X: No More Magnus! (Animated Series Promo card) – 5 to give away.
Storm: Misspent Youth (Animated Series Promo card) – 5 to give away
Storm: Morlock Champion (Animated Series Promo card) – 5 to give away.
Jean Grey: Professor’s Protégé (Animated Series Promo card) – 5 to give away.
The Blackbird: Under the Radar (Animated Series Promo card) – 5 to give away.
Jubilee: Mallrat (Animated Series Promo card) – 1 to give to the top place finisher.
It is our intention to prize the top 8 finishers with scaled prizing. We are trying to keep down the entry fee and balance that fee against the cost of shipping prizing. Whatever excess we receive will be donated to The Origins Game Fair or used to ship additional prizing to contestants finishing sequentially outside of the top 8. ** Also, to help encourage folks to play throughout the event and not drop, we will be holding a raffle for those who finish outside of the top 8 and who also stayed in the tournament to the end. The winner of that raffle will receive prize support equal to that of the eighth place finisher + their choice of either a Magic Missile Promo, a Human Paladin Promo, or a Mr. Mxyzptlk: 5th Dimension Promo.
The first place finisher will receive a full set of the Animated Series Promos including Jubilee: Mallrat, (3 promos cards of their choice – pick either the Promo Magic Missile (4 total to give away), the Promo Human Paladin (6 total to give away) the Promo Hulk: Green Goliath (4 total to give away), the Promo Blink: Exile (6 to give away), the Promo Mr. Mxyzptlk: 5th Dimension (4 to give away), or the Promo Oracle: Master Investigator (6 to give away) Plus the extras below.
The second place finisher will receive 4 of the remaining Animated Series Promos (their choice) – their choice of 3 of the remaining Promos from the list above, plus the extras below.
The third and fourth place finisher will receive 3 of the remaining Animated Series Promos (their choice), plus 2 of the remaining promos from the above list, plus the extras below.
The fifth through eighth place finishers will receive 2 of the remaining Animated Series Promos (their choice), plus 2 of the remaining promos from the list above, plus the extras below.
The top 6 finishers will also receive a Wizkids Dice Masters Premier Event Playmat (4 total) or a custom designed Earth X Origins Roll Some Thunder playmat (2 total) designed by Lonni Wilson for the event.
The top 8 finishers & the raffle winner will also receive –
• D&D Dice Masters: Strahd Rainbow Draft Promo
• DC Comics Dice Masters – Batman Beyond Promo
• Marvel Dice Masters: Civil War Squirrel Girl GWP
• Marvel Dice Masters: Melinda May Agent of SHIELD Promo
Images of some of the available prizing can be seen here…
Here’s a link for some morning of announcements
https://rollinthunder.xyz/announcements/
Who is involved?
First off we want to acknowledge Ryan and the CR Gameroom Crew for volunteering to funnel this event through their Challonge account and once again provide the technical know-how and architecture to pull off an event of this scope. I also want to thank Jourdo with DM-North and Stephen aka DM Armada for helping with the artwork and promotion.
How to Play in the Event:
Challonge.com
For the Earth X Dice Masters Origins tournament, we will be using challonge.com to deal with registration, entry fee, signing in and assigning pairings and rooms, with the Dice Coalition Google Hangout Rooms as an emergency back up, in case there are any server issues for our European players on the day.
If you haven’t yet created a challonge account, please do so here…
Discord
We will be using the EARTH X ORIGINS channel on the CRGameroom Discord Server to communicate about the tournament both before the event and on the day of the event as the tournament progresses. If you’re into Dice Masters and you haven’t yet joined the Dice Masters Discord community, you’ll find it extremely fruitful when you do! The best news (from a tournament organizers point of view) is that the CRGameroom server has a bot that will integrate with challonge and you’ll be notified in Discord of the room assignments (stations) that challonge assigns when it’s time for you to go to your next match.
To integrate Challonge with Discord, sign into Challonge on either Chrome or Firefox (for the purposes of this tournament avoid Safarai as it’s more finicky) and go to your personal account. Under “Authentications” click “Connect with my Discord Account” and enter the required info.
If you are not yet a member of the CRGameroom Discord server, use this link to join…
Join the CR Gameroom Discord Server
If you have any trouble, please send us an email and we’ll get you a different invitational link to join that will be good for 24 hours.
You can register for the tournament on challonge here…
You will be asked to agree to a Online Dice Masters Code of Conduct, enter your Discord handle, and let us know your mailing address (so that we can send you prizing if you win the raffle or finish in the top 8).
To cover shipping costs, there is also a $6.00 entry fee.
Team lists are due Friday, June 19th at 5pm (eastern standard time) which is 10pm in the UK (11 pm on the Continent). Ryan has created a bot to facilitate team submission on Discord.
To submit your team, visit the CR gameroom Discord server and click on the Earth X Origins channel. Once you are there, type “.submit [TB URL]” (don’t actually type the quotes or brackets). Your team will immediately be sent up to a google sheet where no one but the tournament organizers can see it. PLEASE DOUBLE CHECK YOUR TEAM BEFORE YOU SEND IT – THE CARDS YOU SUBMIT ON YOUR TEAM-SHEET ARE THE CARDS YOU MUST PLAY WITH.
Finally, you will need to officially sign in to the tournament on challonge 1/2 hour (11:30am Eastern Standard Time) before the tournament starts on June 20th to let us know you are online and ready to play. You will not be properly entered into the tournament and assigned to a bracket until you do this so remember to sign in! Registration on its own is not enough. You will be able to sign in here…
Sign In Here – 1/2 hour before start time
Sign in here 30 minutes before the event!
Proxies –
Because this is a Wizkids prized event we are going to follow their tournament guidelines. Neither card nor dice proxies will be allowed. Please reach out to us if you have a specific issue regarding a particular card and we will try to find a solution.
Advanced Rulings for the Event –
You can find our list of advanced rulings for this event here…
Advanced Earth X Origins Rulings
Please familiarize yourself with them.
Practical day-of “how-to’s”
Use the CRGameroom Discord server to communicate with everyone on the day, in particular their Earth X Origins channel. After each match, please report your scores to the channel so that we can keep the brackets coming.
Also, please keep the challonge event open as well. You will also be able to see the brackets and get the links to your stations there – just click the purple bar above your match up in the bracket and it will take you to a meet.jtsi.com station/room in your internet browser. If possible, please use Chrome or Firefox (Safarai doesn’t play nice with jitsi). See Ryan’s FAQ below for setup and other deatails.
Content Creators!
If you would like to stream or record the events please get in touch with us on the Earth X Origins channel on the CR Gameroom Discord server. We would love to help you participate and we can get you looped into all the information that you’re going to need to make day-of streaming and recording much easier.
Please check out this video for how to work with OBS and Jit.si…
Frequently Asked Questions answered by Ryan from CRGameroom (An on the day how-to)
- Will jitsi work for people that use a phone/tablet combo?
Yes. For mobile devices/tablets there is an app that you should download to make for a better experience.
Apple: jitsi App for iOS devices
Android: jitsi App for Android devices - How do I configure the camera & microphone in jit.si?
Once you are connected to the Conference Room, you will have an icon in the lower right corner of three buttons (More Actions). Click on that and then select the Settings option. On the Devices tab you will have the option to configure your Camera, Microphone, and output device. While here change to the Profile tab and put in your name, and if you have one your Gravatar email address (which can also be used in https://win.wizkids.com). If you are needing to change the language of the interface, you can go to the More tab and select your language of choice. Select Ok to return to your Conference. These same options are available in the upper right corner using the gear icon if you visit https://meet.jit.si if you would like to configure these settings in advance. - Is there a Chat option (in Jitsi)?
Yes in the lower right of the Conference, the third button will open a chat window that will allow you to chat with everyone in the Conference. There is no way to send private messages currently in Jitsi. - What’s the advantage (of Jitsi) over Google Hangouts or Discord?
This is a very subjective question, as what one may see as an advantage, others may not see, so I will answer with why CRGameRoom has switched to using Jitsi. From the point of view of organizing a tournament, Discord video is not very user friendly as it requires people to be friends, and the rooms can not be created beforehand so you cannot use the Stations feature of Challonge to help facilitate Conference rooms for matches. Discord rooms work very well for adhoc matches, just not for larger tournaments.. As for why the move to Jitsi away from Hangouts, is multiple. The three main reasons is that it doesn require an account, it has better video quality and finally human readable URLs are used for the rooms. This final reason is very helpful in a tournament environment in case people are having problems with access to the links provided in Challonge. Additionally from a content creator aspect Jitis allows for hotkey controls so it allows for easier integration into your recording workflow. - Does Challonge generate the links to the rooms for them or have a bunch of rooms set up somewhere? Just curious how their setup worked…
The links used by Challonge for the matches are provided by us before the start of the tournament. It is using a feature of Challonge called Stations, and provides details (including URL, but not limited to) where the players are to play their match. These URL’s are 100% under our control and management, and are not part of Challonge. - What’s the deal with registration/sign in? Do I have to do both? How does that work?
Registration is used so that we know who is playing in the tournament, and Sign-in allows us to make sure everyone is ready and online before the event starts. Registration can happen at anytime once the tournament is announced, but Sign-in starts 30 minutes before the start of the tournament. - How does this work practically for me as a player? How do I find and get to my room/station?
So the flow from a players point of view is as such, anytime between now and the doy of the tournament, you can login to Challonge and join the Event/Tournament. You can (and we recommend) that you link, or use, your Discord credentials to access Challonge as then our Discord Bot should be able to send you helpful reminders as well. Next within 30 minutes of the start of the tournament you will need to login to Challonge and Sign-in to the tournament. This lets the organizers know that you are online and ready to start. If possible join the Discord channel for the tournament as well, as there may be last minute announcements made there, and you can directly ask questions that may arise. Once the tournament starts, and all future rounds of the tournament, on Challonge you will see a purple bar on the top of your matchup. This is a direct link to your “Gamerrom”. Just click on the link and your opponent will arrive shortly (if not already there). No more trying to figure out which room is open, and coordinating in chat to find a room. Once your match is over, announce your results in the Discord chat so the TO’s can verify and record the results. For these tournaments we have disabled the ability to self-report your winnings, but that is an option that we do use in other tournaments. Then you wait for the next round of pairings to be announced (you should get an email, and if your Discord account is linked, a DM in Discord. Click the link in the purple bar again and you are off to your next match.
