April 4–5 Ironspike Tournament Schedule

The restoration of Nyroth has sent waves of thaumic energy through Valoran’s nexus network. Though no serious damage was done, flashes of wild magic have triggered a variety of potentially dangerous arcane phenomena across the land. The Summoners and Champions of the League work frantically to stabilize these nexuses and deal with their aftermath.

Meanwhile, two surges have collided in the leylines running along the Ironspike Mountains, triggering the formation of a new nexus. When the League’s delegation arrived, they found four factions of Valoran on the scene: a Frostguard patrol from the Freljord, researchers from a Zaunite megacorporation, a Noxian legion brought in via Zaunite warpgate, and mystics from the sands of Icathia. Together with the League’s Summoners, they were able to temporarily seal the nascent, unstable nexus, but they fear that the next lunar cycle will break the runic locks that hold the containment field in place. The nexus must be brought into a stable alignment.

These four factions shall meet upon the Fields of Justice. To the victor will go the sole right to stabilize the nexus, likely reshaping the Ironspike Mountains in the process, and gaining access to a new nexus.

Stream

Matches will be streamed to twitch.tv/LeagueFactions.

Signups

Although the teams have largely been set, if you’d like to put your name forward as a fill-in, please use the signup link below.

• April 4–5 Signup

Schedule

A draft schedule is available here.

There will be three matches per day this weekend and the next. The first match will begin at 1:00 p.m. Pacific (4:00 p.m. Eastern) each day, with the second match beginning at 2:00 Pacific and the third at 3:00 Pacific.

The first weekend, April 4–5, will be a round of low-tier preliminary matches. The winner of the first weekend will gain a “bye” into the finals. (The second-place winner of the preliminaries will win ties in the semifinals.) The next weekend, April 11–12, will begin with a set of semi-final matches between the three other factions, and the winner of the Saturday semi-finals will advance to face the first weekend’s winner in a best-of-three set of finals. The second weekend will use premade teams, with tier compositions slanted toward higher-ranked Summoners.

Match I—Noxus v. Zaun

• Saturday, 4 April, 25 CLE
• 1:00 p.m. Pacific (2:00 Mountain, 3:00 Central, 4:00 Eastern)
• Summoner List
• Match Recording
• Streamed by Sgt Porkchop
• Casting by Nebuiosus and LightPhyXer

Match II—Zaun v. the Freljord

Several Freljordian Summoners—InsertCleverNckn, Frackdozer, WreckingFist, Whitakker, and exiledFromBadmen—were apparently called away from the Institute to assist with a domestic emergency, and failed to appear in time for the match. Despite a spirited attempt to complete the necessary rituals and paperwork to authorize replacement Summoners, in the end a team of only three Freljordian Champions faced a team of five Zaunites.

• Saturday, 4 April, 25 CLE
• 2:00 p.m. Pacific (3:00 Mountain, 4:00 Central, 5:00 Eastern)
• Summoner List
• Match Recording

Match III—the Freljord v. Icathia

Note: Icathia overfilled (taking a Gold in place of a Silver), giving the Freljord a ban. However, the Freljord declined to use its ban. As the Freljord also underfilled, the matchup was GGSSS v GSSBB, giving Icathia an 80% predicted winrate per the winrate calculator. Baron of Bread was unranked last season and is currently unranked, leaving them technically ineligible. Given that the Freljord is already facing an 80% winrate imbalance due to over/underfilling, and given that the error was only detected after the match had begun, we decided to overlook it.

• Saturday, 4 April, 25 CLE
• 3:00 p.m. Pacific (4:00 Mountain, 5:00 Central, 6:00 Eastern)
• Summoner List
• Match Recording

Match IV—Icathia v. Zaun

• Sunday, 5 April, 25 CLE
• 1:00 p.m. Pacific (2:00 Mountain, 3:00 Central, 4:00 Eastern)
• Summoner List
• Match Recording

Match V—the Freljord v. Noxus

• Sunday, 5 April, 25 CLE
• 2:00 p.m. Pacific (3:00 Mountain, 4:00 Central, 5:00 Eastern)
• Summoner List
• Match Recording

Match VI—Icathia v. Noxus

• Sunday, 5 April, 25 CLE
• 3:00 p.m. Pacific (4:00 Mountain, 5:00 Central, 6:00 Eastern)
• Summoner List
• Match Recording

Stakes

The victorious faction will gain control of the Ironspike nexus. Nexuses are phenomena created by the convergence of leylines and other ethereal forces. Though the process is still not fully understood, such intersections sometimes trigger the crystallization of magical energy into physical form. Sometimes, these crystalline structures remain stable; more often, left alone, they will rupture or even explode. It is believed that such events are responsible for shaping much of Valoran’s physical and thaumic geography. In some cases, this meant the formation of mountain ranges, or the blasting of craters; in others, it charged mundane earth with ethereal power, sometimes of a distinctly toxic nature. The Plague Jungles and the Shadow Isles, as well as Icathia itself, are suspected to have arisen from nexus detonations. Long ago, Valoranians learned to use rune magic to achieve nexus stabilization, preventing such catastrophic events and sublimating vast quantities of magical energy into usable form.

Whoever controls the Ironspike nexus will be able to use their particular variety of magic to align and stabilize it, channeling energy to their homeland and increasing their strength. While the nexus will then be placed under League oversight, as all nexuses have been since the Rune Wars, the faction that wins this tournament will be permitted to channel spells through the nexus within the boundaries of League law.

In system terms, this will be reflected by a gain of 20 stat points. It will also likely recur as a story element.

The second-place faction will gain 10 stat points.

Discussion

We’ve created a discussion thread on the Factions forum for this tournament.

Rules

Factions will use Intermission rosters.

Factions will be permitted to overfill one slot once per weekend, at the cost of granting their opponent a ban. Any faction that invokes the overfill rule will lose any ties against other factions. Factions may, as usual, underfill without penalty.

If a faction cannot field a full team 10 minutes after the start time, it forfeits. (If both teams are missing Summoners, the faction with fewer Summoners ready to play will forfeit. Although heavily discouraged, we will allow Summoners to fight for a faction other than the faction they signed up for in order to avoid a forfeit. If both teams are missing the same number of Summoners, the match will begin with however many Summoners are available, e.g. as a 4v4.) For purposes of this rule, the start time will be the latter of the posted start time and 5 minutes after the nexus explodes on stream in the previous match.

Teams will each be allowed 5 minutes of pause time to be used in the event of, e.g., disconnections.

In the case of a disconnection or similar problem within 5 minutes of the match start, not counting pause time, a faction will be allowed one restart per match. It will have 5 minutes to find a replacement Summoner if necessary. If a team is found to be noncompliant with regard to Summoners or Champions during the first five minutes of the match, not counting pause time, a restart will be called. (This will consume the restart right of the noncompliant team or teams, if they have not already used it; even if they’ve already restarted, it will be force-restarted once for noncompliance issues. Further noncompliance will result in automatic forfeit.) If noncompliance is discovered after the match, the match outcome will be retroactively changed to a forfeit for the noncompliant team. (If both teams were noncompliant, no action will be taken, unless staff rules that one team had a grossly greater advantage as a result. As a rough guideline, for these purposes, one “point” of unfairness will be assigned per extra 10% win chance or per noncompliant Champion.) If the noncompliance is discovered after midnight Pacific time on Sunday, April 5, the awarding of the “bye” will not be affected, but the assignment of “tiebreaker” advantage for second place (etc.) will be. Owing to the multiplicity of possibilities that may arise from noncompliance scenarios, staff may deviate from the letter of these rules if necessary to address unforeseen circumstances or avoid unfairness. The fundamental principle shall be that a team should never profit from breaking the rules.

Staff will attempt to identify noncompliance. However, the primary responsibility for compliance is with the teams.

No special faction-specific rules (such as Pharmakon II) will apply for this tournament.

Deviations from the rules are generally allowed if both teams agree to do so, and it would not have an unfairly deleterious effect on a third party.