Worlds 2023

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The WC logo designed by the Player's Council for this event.

Worlds 2023 was the first World Championship for the Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game ran in 13 years (16 years since a Decipher-ran event), and was the first major tournament ran by the Player's Council.[1]

The event was purely digital, being exclusively ran on GEMP (although some in-person events awarded invitations to their winners). The World Championship proper was split across 2 consecutive weekends, with qualifiers spread throughout the prior year. There was no cash prize pool, but various physical and digital awards were issued, including sealed card product and DGMA T-shirts.

Due to this digital nature, all games for the entire circuit have replays available to watch in Gemp, making this the most well-documented Worlds to date. The Group Stage replays were reviewed on-stream by PC members, and the Top 8 Championship Tournament was streamed live.

Format[edit]

Decipher's usual 3-day format (Day 1: open qualifier, Day 2: 8-round Swiss, Day 3: knockout tournament) was used as a starting point and tweaked to be more accessible to an international audience. Day 1 was converted to the Walk-on Qualifiers, Day 2 became the Group Stage, and Day 3 became the Championship Tournament.

The Group Stage and Championship Tournament both required players to bring separate PC-Fellowship and PC-Movie decks, with each being used during the event.

  • Group Stage
    • 8-round Swiss tournament
    • Scores were preserved between deck changes, not reset.
    • Top 8 move on
  • Championship Tournament
    • Double-elimination Best-of-1 bracket, seeded by placement during the Group Stage
      • This means that everyone starts in the Upper Bracket, and after losing 1 game move down to the Lower Bracket. Losing a match in the Lower Bracket eliminates you from the tournament.
    • Upper Bracket play matches using the PC-Movie deck
    • Lower Bracket play matches using the PC-Fellowship deck
    • Finals between the top 2 were a Best-of-3. The first game was PC-Movie, after which the loser of each game chooses the format of the following game.


Prizes[edit]

Prizes were sponsored by:

A showcase of some of the prizes, including the customized deck trophies.
  • Competitors (3rd - 8th Place):
  • World Challenger (2nd Place):
    • 1x Custom World Challenger Deck Box
    • 1x DGMA T-shirt
    • 10x Battle of Helm's Deep Booster Packs
    • 1x Mines of Moria Starter Deck
    • 1x 15€ Card Game Geek Voucher
    • 1x $20 CategoryONEGames Voucher
    • 4x Top 8 Competitor Promo (Physical + Digital)
    • 4x World Championship Promo (Physical + Digital)
    • 1x Challenger Plaque
  • World Champion:
    • 1x Custom World Champion Deck Box
    • 1x DGMA T-shirt
    • 1x Realms of the Elf-lords Booster Box
    • 1x Mines of Moria Starter Deck
    • 1x 15€ Card Game Geek Voucher
    • 1x $30 CategoryONEGames Voucher
    • Choose and help design the Top 8 Promo
    • 4x Unique Top 8 Competitor Promo (Physical + Digital) (This will be branded "2023 WORLD CHAMPION" to be distinct from all other Top 8 promos)
    • 4x Unique World Championship Promo (Physical + Digital) (This will be branded "2023 WORLD CHAMPION" to be distinct from all other WC promos)
    • 1x Champion Plaque

In addition, more T-shirts, sealed product, and shop vouchers were raffled off randomly to viewers who viewed the Group Stage and Championship Tournament streams.


Qualifiers[edit]

To enter the Group Stage, a player had to earn an invitation through one of the following methods:

  • Be 1st place at any monthly PC Weekend Qualifier League
  • Be 1st place during registered community-ran events
  • Be 1st place during the Format Championships in August
  • Enter and place highly during the Walk-on Qualifiers

There were a total of 64 slots allocated for invitations: 6 for Weekend Qualifier League wins, 6 for Format Championship wins, 4 for in-person events, and the remaining 48 reserved for the Walk-ons.

Weekend Qualifier Leagues[edit]

Every month a 3-day league would be ran on GEMP, beginning at 1700 UTC on Friday and running until 1700 UTC Monday (Thursday evening to Sunday evening US time). Up to 6 games could be played during each league, and decks could be altered freely between matches. The 72-hour events straddled the line between casual and competitive, with nothing besides the honor system enforcing match-fixing or other abuses.

Only the winner would receive an invitation to the Group Stage. If the winner had previously been invited, then the runner-up would be awarded, but only if their score matched the winner (in other words, if the winner went 6-0 but the runner-up was 5-1, they would not receive the invitation).

Due to the ability to update decks between matches, only the most recent version of a decklist is shown in the report threads below; the linked replays may show a slightly different version as a result.

Community Events[edit]

While the majority of games played by this point are done digitally, many fans still meet up in-person to run their own local events. Event runners were given the option to register their event, which would grant an invitation to the winner. No specific requirements were made regarding size, format, or venue.

Format Championships[edit]

Being that the World Championship itself was played with PC formats, the opportunity was given to players to prove their skill in the more long-standing formats by hosting competitive events for each of those major Decipher formats. Each event utilized Gemp's ad-hoc tournament system, meaning anyone could enter with a valid deck and go through a variable number of Swiss rounds based on participation. The winner of each event earned an invitation.


Walk-on Qualifiers[edit]

The last chance to earn an invitation, the Walk-on Qualifiers were the source of the bulk of invitations issued. There was a system designed for allocating remaining invitations based on performance[2], but due to a lower than expected turnout, only half of the 64 allocated invitation slots ended up being used. As a result, every player who showed up to the Walk-on Qualifiers earned an invitation, making the Group Stage a repeat event (as most invitees also participated in the Walk-ons).

Unlike the Decipher-ran Day 1 events, the Walk-ons were a series of events spread across multiple time zones to maximize the availability of the player base. 6 total events were ran: one for each of the PC formats, in both AM and EU time zones.

The World Championship 2023[edit]

The main event took place over two consecutive weekends. The Group Stage was a 7-hour Swiss on October 14th, 2023, and the top 8 players from that event moved on to the Championship Tournament the following Saturday on October 21st.

The Group Stage[edit]

The Group Stage (similar to Day 2 of the Decipher-ran Worlds) was an 8-round Swiss tournament with a twist: the first 4 rounds were played in PC-Fellowship, and the last 4 rounds were played in PC-Movie. This meant that players had to prepare decks for both formats and develop mastery across multiple strata. The score was preserved between rounds without resetting, meaning that players stronger in PC-FOTR than PC-Movie had a slight disadvantage as those decks were used first.

All players who made it into the top 8 were dubbed the World Competitors and moved on to the Championship Tournament the following weekend.

Due to an unclear policy and a lack of explicit disclosure, the PC decided nearly last-minute that replays and decklists from the Group Stage would not be immediately shared (as they had for all other events up to this point) until after Worlds was over. However, future events ran by the PC are likely to make it clear up-front that part of the dance is to deal with people seeing your strategies and reacting to them accordingly.

The day after the Group Stage, some of the non-Top-8 replays were reviewed on-stream by ketura, dstaley, balrog69, CoS, and Solarus:

The Championship Tournament[edit]

The top 8 Competitors from the Group Stage returned the following weekend for a 6-hour double-elimination knockout tournament. All undefeated players (i.e. those in the Upper Bracket) would play using their PC-Movie decks, while all players who had lost 1 game (i.e. those in the Lower Bracket) would instead play using PC-Fellowship.

The final confrontation between the last two Competitors was a Best-of-3 match, which deviates from the usual double-elimination arrangement. The first game was played in PC-Movie, but after that point the loser of the previous game would get to pick which format to play the following game in. The winner would be crowned the World Champion, and the runner-up would be dubbed the World Challenger.

Unlike the Group Stage, the Championship Tournament was streamed live (though Competitors were instructed to avoid watching the stream). The stream includes a post-match interview with the World Champion, basmelis.


Aftermath[edit]

Following his victory, the World Champion basmelis selected Goblin Runner (1U178) to be the 2023 WC Promo, which was given a unique full art treatment and distributed on Gemp as a prize to all participants.

Several weaknesses in the meta of the PC-Movie format were identified as a result of the 2023 Worlds, which as of time of writing are in an ongoing process of being addressed. A review livestream was conducted to go over the meta, as well as pick the minds of some of the Competitors: Aaron_Brutcher, Chadwick537, and basmelis.


References[edit]

  1. ↑ The 2023 World Championship
  2. ↑ The Walk-on Qualifiers



The Lord of the Rings TCG World Championship
Decipher 2002 • 2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006 • 2007
SWCCG Players Committee 2010
LOTR-TCG Player's Council 2023 • 2024
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