Let’s Get Competitive

I’m more than just crits and trophies.

Once again the UK was free from my tyrannical tournament trails, so today I’ll be looking at my competitive progress within Shadespire. It’s been a while since I’ve done this but I think the time is right to look again. Firstly we’ll focus on my store tournament success. FYI, all the results are from my Tournament Tracker page which has a history of all my competitive Shadespire events since the game started.

Store Tournaments

I’ve been to 20 of these bad boys and won most of them too. Here’s the breakdown:

Orruks: 4 Tournaments played, 0 won, 3 2nd place finishes.

Steelheart’s Champions: 3 Tournaments played, 3 won, 3 1st place finishes.

Skaven: 13 Tournaments played, 10 won, 10 1st place finishes, 2 2nd place finishes, 1 3rd place finish.

Looking in detail, technically I performed best with Steelheart’s Champions as they have a 100% event win rate. Skaven come in 2nd with a 76.92% event win rate but with more than 4 times the number of games. Also, 3rd place was the lowest placed position. Orruks come in last with a 0% event win rate but a 75% rate of coming 2nd. Personally I’d still rank the Skaven better due to the greater number of games played and the belief that my Stormcast would not have done well in the tournaments I ran my Skaven.

Still, I would chart my Orruk phase as my learning curve for the game. It took me 3 months of solid playing with them from launch till I got a firm grasp on Shadespire and switched to Steelheart’s Champions, the kickstart to my competitive success. My Stormcast phase was short (about 2 months of play) but powerful and what helped build a name for myself until my Skaven happened.

Overall I’ve played in 20 store/club tournaments and won 13 of them with 5 2nd place finishes and 1 3rd place finish. I have a 65% win rate but a 95% success rate of placing in the top 3 or higher. While my win rate is a bit misleading, I think the latter statistic more than makes up for it 😉

Grand Clashes

Since March 2018, I’ve been to 5 Grand Clashes. In order of attendance I’ve placed:

1. Warhammer World Grand Clash March 2018: 11th (Stormcast)
2. Warhammer World Grand Clash 2 April 2018: 24th (Skaven)
3. Warhammer Fest Grand Clash May 2018: 3rd (Skaven)
4. London Grand Tournament Grand Clash May 2018: 2nd (Skaven)
5. UK Games Expo June 2018: 5th (Skaven)

So what can I take from these results? Well, apart from that I’ve been to a lot of Grand Clashes, I’ve done pretty well at these big events despite not being able to win one (yet). I have an 80% rate of placing in the top 16 and 60% rate of placing in the top 8 with 40% finally for placing in the top 4. While there are no 1st place wins there it does show how consistently good I am as a player.

Things get more interesting when you look at the ITC (Independent Tournament Circuit rankings for Shadespire: https://www.frontlinegaming.org/shadespire-2018-itc-rankings/

From the Global Rankings I’m placed 18th in the world (and 2nd in the UK) from my results at the London GT. However, if you take into account all my results at the other 4 Grand Clashes, I should be ranked 1st in the World and UK. Now of course it hugely depends on how those results would be processed on the Best Coast Pairings app but I wouldn’t consider myself the best player in the world unless I won a Grand Clash and also competed internationally. Plus I know there are strong opponents out there that I haven’t been able to play yet.

I would love to see an app made that handles tournament matchmaking and player rankings but currently such a thing is just dreams at this point. It could be done by GW or fans but the wait and testing would be long.

In short, I think I’ve done pretty well for myself since I started with Shadespire back in October 2017. My 2 goals currently are to win a Grand Clash and win a Grand Clash best painted trophy, seeing as I’ve won everything else. There’s still a long way to go for my competitive progress but there’s no harm in calling myself one of the best players in the UK/world, or at least the one that rolls the most crits 😉