Hello, chaps!
We've reached the end of yet another Nations Cup tournament, the sixth of its kind. A number of knaves tried their best to frustrate the tournament, but the grit and determination of the teams involved saw them through some arduous matches late into the evening. The tournament can boast the highest live viewership of any Warband tournament match, as 418 people tuned in to watch a close-cut final between BeNe and Poland. Several other matches received impressive viewing figures and were as equally intense, with some of them being heralded on the Twittersphere as "Perhaps the best match ever played". Many of the matches put sweat on the brows of the players, tears in the eyes of the captains and adrenaline into the hearts of eager spectators.
I would like to extend my congratulations to team Poland on their victory, having picked up the first place for the second time in their tournament history. Only Harman remains from the 2011 team where he served as Vice-Captain, he's since gone on to Captain three of Poland's Nations Cup teams, his experience would no doubt have been a crutch for the Polish team. I also understand that CarpeDiem played a significant role in formulating tactics and sharing command with Harman throughout the tournament, contributing massively to their performance. In a shock filled tournament, team Poland exceeded all expectations in securing a place in the finals, giving us brilliant displays of skill along the way and achieving a well deserved victory.
BeNe made a huge achievement in reaching the finals, against odds just as fearsome as those faced by the Polish team. Despite not having left the group stages in last year's tournament, the zeal of Captains Le Roux, Ceasar and Watly reinvigorated the BeNe team and turned it into a team with very real prospects of seizing the first place. Having come back from a 6-2 deficit in the final, BeNe put viewers on the edge of their seats, giving us a spectacle to watch. Their performance is a testament to the virtues of motivation and dedication.
Grasping third place in the tournament is team Turkey, led by veteran commander Napoleon. Turkey had a confident start to the tournament, coming out on the top of their group and even beating the eventual winners in one of their early matches. They got stopped in their tracks when they came up against BeNe in the quarter finals and put in a sterling performance, taking the match to the tie-breaker. Turkey boasts some of the most frightening archers in the tournament in the form of Tirtl and Menethil, with solid cavalry play and infantry, being arguably the strongest team in the final three on an individual basis. Another day, another time and Turkey would likely have found themselves in the finals and winning. Their convincing victory over the UK in the bronze place match serves as a case in point to how serious a contender they were.
I would like to thank my fellow admins for their diligence and hard work in setting up the tournament in the face of tough decisions left over from the last tournament and new challenges in the form of server attacks. Each admin played their own part, some more visible to you than others, but all gave value and effort.
Collectively we would like to thank all of the clans and individuals that put forward servers for the teams to play on; these include Taleworlds (NL 1, 2, 3 & 4), The Kingdom of Swadia (France 1 & 2), Wolfpack (France 3), Dreaon and ReneKB (Germany 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6), Napoleon (London 1), The Paladins of the Round Table (Holland) and MarkModz (USA 1 & 2). Other significant server side provision has come in the form of emergency servers used when our main servers suffered from attack, paricular thanks must therefore be extended to: Aquilae Calradiae, Lux Aeterna, WappaW, Guard of Istiniar, Apis Europae and others. These clans were often contacted at short notice and their willingness to help out others is commendable.
We would also like to thank our referees who had the fairly tedious job of watching for illegal equipment drops from substituted players, spectators joining the team, handling the transition to emergency servers, enforcing the starting times and switching the maps. Thank you for giving up your time: Sebek, Hugo_von_Payens, Arraknia, DoctorPepper, Watly, OurGloriousLeader, Arthasan, Megamen, Dyktator, Rapez and Nero.
The streamers did a great deal of work to promote the tournament, hyped up the matches and allowed literally hundreds of people to watch the matches both via live stream and recordings. We appreciate greatly the commitment of the following people in making that happen: Captain Lust/MB_TV, Volcom, Konstrush, Oliveran, Aeronwen, Eman, yami_pirate, OurGloriousLeader, xls, Fabio, Chan124, Belandor and AZAN. All of the streams can be found here.
Help has been given by other individuals in a variety of ways. DatFrog! provided us with the template for this year's logo. MuivirT helped out with creating the fixture randomiser and Trivium put in work with regards to setting up the servers. Oliveran, M and Alene helped up out massively in understanding the nature of the attacks on the servers and acquiring the IP of the attacker, enabling us to contact their ISP. Osiris put a cool video together of match highlights and Scar wrote a comprehensive analysis of the BeNe v Turkey Match Our thanks are also extended to Folms for his ID database. Shemaforash's investigative services have placed him in hot contention for the position of the tournament's incumbent detective. Skitrel is thanked for services rendered.
Finally, we would like to thank all the players and captains for participating in this year's Nation's Cup and (most of you) for respecting the rules laid out by us. We wish you all the best of luck in the next tournament with your respective clans and hope that you all enjoyed it.
Kind Regards,
BlackTide, Aeronwen, Arys, Varsung, Fabio, ReneKB, Volcom and Madoc