The Big Picture: Worlds 2015

The weekend of March 20th and 21st brought together 25 players presenting five different countries to battle for the title of the first ever Krosmaster Arena World Champion. The format of the event was a round robin style group stage where the lowest scoring member of each group would exit the event and then move on to a standard double elimination tournament. The event was broadcast live over Twitch.TV in English for the entire world to see. The Videos are currently available as previous broadcasts on Twitch, but should be posted to YouTube shortly after the writing of this article.

Day 1 was a slug fest in each group as the battle of the varying metas would come to pass. When the dust settled the entirety of Team USA would be watching from the sidelines for the remainder of the event as Team France commanded a strong showing moving into Day 2. After several rounds of eliminations on Day 2 the final battle would be set between Julien Otlet (France) vs Leoda Vinci (Germany) pitting a team of old Enutrofs vs the battle tested might of Merkator and friends.

Otlet’s team of Ghett Outadier, Henual, Coa Gulary, Diver Birel, Fern Sock'em, and Moe Lawr helped him climb out of the “loser” bracket and into the final round. Between the two different harassing summoned creatures, and various forms of debuffs available from Moe, Ghett, and Diver, Otlet was able to control his opponents and search for favorable engagements and piece trades. Vinci went undefeated to the final round with Luk ylook, a pair of Coa Gulary, a pair of Moe Lawr, and Merkator. He used this group to great effect by having high damage output on demand with several different threats, also combined with Luk’s board control.

The final battle ended in game two by the deciding blow of fern Sock’em, which crowned Otlet the 2015 World Champion. Each game saw players with a slight lead, but the purchase and timing of the use of the demonic rewards gave Otlet the advantage. Vinci’s command of Merkator was very strong, but Otlet’s combination of ranged threats and pieces to tie up Vinci’s front line ended up being too much at the end of the day for even the strongest Foggernaut to overcome.

There's a lot of great things to take away from the event:

• We have our first World Champion!
• It was won by a team that was creative and not a standard Meta list.
• Since the event global Krosmaster communities have opened up more to each other to debate the merits of game related things on social media.
• We all have a new year of events to look forward to!

-Jeric is an established miniatures player who provides tactical insight, event reports and a few odds and ends along the way