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Hey Banders and Bladers! Here we are at the end of Season 3 of the Warband Native League. We changed the general concept of the league, managed to get a sponsor on board with Phreaky Gear and we feel like the the league has improved as a result. As usual with these threads, I'll congratulate the top 3 teams then move onto some observations and thank yous.
So first up congratulations to KURWA for becoming Warband Native League champions and picking up those prized t-shirts! You overcame all opponents and are deserved winners. You proved both skillful and tactically adept at all stages and are worthy winners.
ReneKB said:Commiserations to Apis Europae who were valiant in defeat. You've been at the top of the scene for so long but missed out this time. You should be proud of your past performances and your 2nd place.
Finally both commiserations and congratulations to Nameless. This was your first true attempt in a major tournament and you proved extremely capable participants. Taking 3rd place is an excellent achievement and I believe the whole scene is excited to see what you're capable of doing in the future.
As with the previous season, I'd like to say a thank you to a few groups and individuals.
First of all, a big thank you to our generous sponsors at Phreaky Gear who provided the prizes this season. The feedback of the little thread we posted to introduce you showed how much your sponsorship means to the community, it definitely made the WNL an even more interesting and attractive tournament than before. Thank you for the great cooperation we had from the admin team and for your involvement in the scene, a sentiment I'm sure every player will only wish to echo.
Next I'd like to thank the admin team. Duken was the initial driving force behind this season, managing to get Phreaky on board as a sponsor and handling all communication with them making this season more professional than ever before. Folms joined right after he just had finished hosting the Nations Cup and immediately proved himself to be a huge asset to the team, working extremely hard despite having a lot to do in his less important non-warband life. Toi who didn't have any experience as an admin before immediately proved himself to be a worthy addition working hard and his advice was particularly useful. ReneKB once again proved himself to be an invaluable part of the team, taking care of all the business regarding the WNL servers and the server mod. Well, and not much needs to be said about Deacon - he keeps the league running ever since Season one, all the stuff he does for all of us is absolutely tremendous and I'm seriously just glad we have guys like him in the community. Finally I also want to thank all the previous admins of the tournament, who set the basis for what the tournament is today – Goliath, Flecha, Mawi, Stuboi, Harman, Maynd, Prince Eugen and Greed.
Thank you to all the referees who kept the league running as smoothly as possible, spending their spare time to help out the teams, admins and streamers. Thank you to Aidan, Arkantos, Arraknia, Boris, Crazyboy11, Courroux, Dreaon, Fabio, Galahad, Grenade, KilleR, Kragen, Marda, Nero, Raven, OurGloriousLeader, Varsung, Watly and last but not least Zaharist.
Next up I'd like to thank our server sponsors and donators. Others have said it numerous times before, I can only repeat what they've said - without your extremely generous donations, tournaments like the Warband Native League wouldn't be possible. You keep this community and its tournaments alive and receive way less credit than you actually deserve in my opinion. Thank you to ReneKB, The Kingdom of Swadia and Wolfpack for the their servers and everyone who donated for the servers or helped them out in another way. Thanks also to Tomyboy who has done much of the admin work related to the Germany servers and kept the donations thread going.
I'd like to thank Captain Lust, Eman and all the other casters on MB_TV. The amount of work you guys put in to create interesting and entertaining content for the Warband community and others interested in the game is absolutely brilliant and deserves huge respect.
Thank all the guys that posted suggestions and feedback and shared their ideas with us regarding the tournament helping to constantly improve and develop it. You can't imagine of how much help you guys were.
Finally I want to thank every single team, every single player that took part in this season. I hope you enjoyed playing as much as I personally did and I hope you all come back next season. Apologies to anyone I may have missed out.
Observations
Let me go over some observations I made this season, would be good to hear your feedback on them! Will probably set up a thread with a few points of discussion for people to go over.
Divisions
So, as I already said, we completely changed the concept of the WNL this season. Whilst the dropouts are certainly a problem with the division system, I do like the idea that every team in the end has something to fight for which encourages teams to stay until the end. We are not sure if we will keep this format, we will obviously base it on your feedback as well as our own thoughts.
Playoffs
Given we stick to the division system, we should maybe have another look at the playoffs. Whilst I do think it is necessary to ensure that teams in the same division are on a similar skill level, I guess it's sort of frustrating for teams in lower divisions to not get promoted after a good season because they lost in a close match with a team that didn't play as good as them over the whole duration of the tournament.
Referees
Whilst in theory I believe the idea is a good one, in practice it has not worked out as hoped. Finding enough players to spectate the matches who aren't in some way biased is extremely difficult. Folms did an excellent job attempting to organise the referees but it was a very difficult task. We hoped at the start of the season to implement an "Admin by ID" system. We believe this would be the best path looking into the future and hopefully something will be in place by the time the next tournament begins.
What's next?
There will likely be a fairly lengthy break over the summer. Fear not though as there's a 5-a-side tournament being hosted that you can find in the guildhall. There's also the exciting prospect of the EU Campaign hosted by MaHud and Arch3r. Both of which should keep you happy until the next competitive tournament begins!