Tournament Q&A

MMORPG.com:

SAGA is hosting their first tournament series this August. What was it like putting the event together?

SAGA Team:

We don't so much "put events together" the way it was done in dark ages of dial up. Back when I was a community manager with the world's first CCG on the Sony Station in 1998, we had to plan events weeks in advance, have players sign up and show up at a specific time to compete. Players these days want instant gratification on their own schedule. We designed the SAGA tournament system with the modern player in mind.

The SAGA tournament system allows players to start a tournament any time 8 players join the queue, and there is no limit to the number of queues that may be running at any one time. The first tournament format to be released will be the Sealed Deck format. This format is very inexpensive to play, rewards players with some pretty great items and requires no prior grinding to be competitive.

MMORPG.com:

Can you tell players how SAGA Tournaments will work? Do you have to have a top level SAGA deck to compete?

SAGA Team:

We didn't want players to have to grind to the top levels as they do in World of Warcraft to have a chance to compete, or gather the best gear and spend weeks trying to tweak the deck (army) such as in Magic: the Gathering. The first of the SAGA tournaments is designed to award skill with quite a bit of luck thrown in, so that a brand new player with some RTS experience can have a decent chance of taking the prize.

For this format, each player receives 3 SAGA booster packs containing 1 rare, 4 uncommon and 5 common units or spells. The player then chooses which of the 6 SAGA factions to play and receives all the units from that faction and all neutral units to play with. Each card then gets multiplied into a full unit at maximum level, so if you pull 3 archers for example you will receive 3 units of 25 level 10 archers to play with.

The main reason the Sealed Deck format has been so popular in other collectible games is not only that it evens the playing field (removing the advantage that "suitcase" players have, who have spent $1000+), but also allows players to try strategies and play with units and cards they may not normally use. In SAGA, it even gives players the chance to play a completely different faction without the need to collect an entire army of that faction.

MMORPG.com:

Will you be promoting SAGA tournaments at GenCon or PAX? How can players get involved?

SAGA Team:

Silverlode Interactive is currently working on a few new projects. We are very excited about these new games but do not yet have anything to show for GenCon. We do however have plans for a SAGA world championship similar to the World of Warcraft and Magic: the Gathering tournaments. After players have become comfortable with the new format we will turn on Tournament ratings and invite the players with the highest ratings to world championship events.

Pax Boston is an event I personally am very much looking forward to. I will be attending as a speaker already and would love to hold the first ever SAGA tournament championships there. The specifics are still very much up in the air; however, expect an announcement regarding the SAGA world championship in the next couple of months.

MMORPG.com:

What prizes and rewards will be offered to players? Can these be used in the regular game?

SAGA Team:

We wanted players to have a choice of prizes rather than sticking them with a few boosters as is done in other collectible games. Each time a player wins a round they will be awarded 3 tournament tokens, so 9 tokens total for winning all 3 games. These tournament tokens can be used to join another tournament or they can be used as currency in the SAGA tournament store.

The SAGA Tournament Store will offer many items not available in the regular SAGA Store and hard to find rare items such as the Great Dragon which only drops once every 200 packs. We will also have old favorites such as the now discontinued Faction packs and Dragon packs which used to be available in physical boosters sold in hobby stores. Lastly, we will give players the chance at some promotional items such as the Rhyax unit which was previously obtainable only by agreeing to wear a SAGA stamp on your forehead for the duration of a convention. As you can imagine, this didn't happen all that often, and out of 200,000 SAGA accounts only 20 Rhyaxes exist.

MMORPG.com:

If I am a new player to SAGA and wanted to enter the tournament, how can I get started?

SAGA Team:

If you are not yet registered for SAGA you should create a free account on one of the many sites hosting a SAGA account giveaway often with some promotional units, or visit our own page at www.playsaga.com/tactics.php . Once you have a nation all you need is 30 credits which will cost you $3, although I recommend you go through the tutorial first and get a feel for the game and the way spells work in SAGA.

The best part about tournaments is that they do not cost $3 every time. Since you win 3 tokens per match and 1 token even if you lose the first match you can in effect continue playing and winning prizes for free after your very first game. While we have to charge a small fee to justify the cool prizes in the SAGA Tournament store or risk ruining our in-game economy, we wanted tournaments to be very easy to pick up and deliver superior entertainment per dollar.