2024 Starter – Winter Cup #1 Competition – Results
Another competition is in the history books as our first-ever cup, a single-elimination style competition was a success!
To watch (or rewatch) the tournament in its entirety with chapters to jump to specific matches:
WngMan and YoshnJa had a post-event interview talking about February 11, 2024’s event, which can be found here:
The 2024 Starter – Winter Cup #1 Champion, WngMan
WngMan has successfully fought to maintain his champion title, though it wasn’t a breeze; Pista, the 2nd runner up, took a win during their 3-game series with their first game and it really set a shocker throughout. WngMan was met with a tough opponent, one who was his first time competing in a Tactics League competition!
Pista’s team had an overall successful run through the event, and he proved that faith-based magicks are definitely viable in the metagame. Using the zoning potential of Summons and Time Magicks, Pista was a force to be reckoned with, lowering his opposition’s mobility options by controlling sections of each map he played on and enabling his power stacked Agrias to move in and sweep for the finish.
Jokerfisch, a returning player from the 2023 Opener, performed very well with his new team; definitely pushing more aggression against his opponent and even ran an interesting set up on his main unique, Cloud, which was equipped with the Steadfast Ring, an accessory that gives its bearer a short period of invulnerability, allowing Cloud to be able to engage with his arsenal of AoE attacks in Limit when he was able to do so early without fear of retaliation initially.
We also had a new competitor finished 4th, Mistral! Mistral led her female-only team (with a Bard included but he was dubbed “Fayt(Girl)” so that counts :p) to the semifinals where she put up a gracious fight against Pista for the chance to take on WngMan directly. Though she was bested this time, I am positive she will be coming back in full force for the next competition.
Dr. Jay, known for his innovation and antics with team compositions, brought a new team into the competition led by a 20-Speed Mustadio, which was capable of casting turn-one Hasteja due to blistering high speed and Swiftness, enabling his team to get the leg-up on his foe. Though he was bested by Jokerfisch in Round 1, he put up a fight that pushed to Game 3, though ultimately finishing in 5th. He truly is one of the best theorycrafters in our community and I can’t wait to see what else he has cooking in the future.
Rumer, another returning player from the 2023 Opener, brought a team that followed inspiration from the Golden Sun series, led by Meliadoul. His first match was against WngMan, so he had a tough ladder to climb automatically. Though he didn’t succeed in stopping WngMan’s winning streak, I love the fact that a thematic-esque team put up a fight especially in their first game which you can find here: https://youtu.be/GEYg79T42KI
Lastly, for our 7th and 8th ranked competitors; Space Monkey and Hew, both came into the event as first-timers with ambition to perform well and get a first-time experience in Tactics PvP competition. Space Monkey has taken a lot of effort to ask questions, reiterate, and improve as a whole to do his best within the days leading up to the event. Hew is also new to the Tactics League Discord, but he has shown some very interesting builds before and even during the event. I would definitely keep my eyes on them in the future.
Results and Registered Team Rosters
With our second ever-event and our first-ever single elimination cup completed, it is once again proven that people enjoy Final Fantasy Tactics and even more so, a fierce, live competition. We also had a phenomenal uptick in viewership, both on Twitch and the Discord’s streaming channel, and we are just getting started!
While the event is over, the match data and team rosters are now publicly available to view on both Google Sheets and PDF format which can be found below:
2024 Starter – Winter Cup #1 Competition Data – Google Sheets
