Atomic Mass Games Shifts From ‘Worlds’ To ‘Grand Tournaments’
Atomic Mass Games has made the decision to change the Worlds Tournament System to Grand Tournament formats. And the community is shook.
Yesterday, Atomic Mass Games put out a statement about the major change to their tournament structure. This effectively ended the Worlds Tournament circuit and launched the new Grand Tournament structure for Organized Play for their game systems. They also released more information the actual Grand Tournament events. Before we get into what all this mean there is one important date to know for any future Tournament Organizers:
Applications must be submitted by May 1st, 2024 to be considered.
So if you’re running an event for the following game systems, and you want it to be a Grand Tournament, then you need to get that application in:
- Star Wars: Legion
- Star Wars: Shatterpoint
- Star Wars: X-Wing
- Star Wars: Armada
- Marvel: Crisis Protocol
Grand Tournaments vs Worlds System
So the major difference is spelled out by AMG pretty plainly:
The key thing here is that the Grand Tournament events don’t feed into a larger event. I think that’s really the big takeaway people are seeing with this change. Again, AMG goes into their reasoning in more detail but it seems that it really boiled down to restrictions and costs.
Later on, they do mention for the cost of sending one person to Worlds was nearly equal to the cost of providing event support to a 32-person convention event. They do acknowledge the value of the aspirations of winning Worlds as it was a very exclusive event. However, they ultimately decided that providing support to thousands of players was worth the trade off.
Ultimately, I can see their logic: They want to grow their games. By providing support for more players and more communities the game(s) can grown to reach more people. However, as noted by lots of folks in the community and even by AMG, they’ve essentially rebranded their previous “Regional-level events” as Grand Tournaments.
More Events Is Better, Right?
This is really the question that is being posed by AMG here. There’s lots of arguments on both sides of this one as well. The key thing that Worlds did was that it provided a very high-level and very exclusive event. You had to “earn” your spot by winning tournaments along the way. There’s certainly a pride that goes along with that and, as noted by AMG as well, a value in that.
On the flip side, now these GTs can be run more independently and there should (in theory) be a lot more events. This should create more opportunities to play at more high-level events. Just maybe not quite as “elite” as Worlds was. It’s also going to be easier for folks to go to a competitive event that’s closer vs having to plan for travel to Worlds, too.
I think there should have been a middle ground here. The Worlds event at Adepticon was pretty massive. And the World Champions got crowned there. I don’t know why that still can’t be a thing. With the requirements that AMG is stating for their GTs, it doesn’t seem too hard to track the winners from a GT and offer them a spot at a big event like a Championship Event later. Or maybe it’s still a cost problem.
I’m all for having more chances to play in events. And I can certainly see how having one final event to crown a World Champion for a respective game system would drive people participate, too. This is a big shift and AMG will have to see how this plays out over the 2024-2025 “season” for their games now.
What do you think? Are more GTs events (32+ player events) better? Or would you rather have the Worlds System and fewer events in total?
