So, well... the reason why I had to cover (and mention) King of the Hill is that my Faction, SWEEP JR, officially made it as one of the participants in this second-level postseason tournament (and one of two final ones) for Silph Arena Factions. It's a bit of a prestige, yet it also is (and will be) quite a challenge, and more importantly it is and has been a "scramble" in some ways. This is true not just for me, my Faction, and all the other Factions that made it, but also for the organizers - the Arena Staff and Referees. As the tournament has started, I thought I'd discuss how that "scramble" has and had manifested.
That scramble began with the registration, or "RSVP" in common Silph Arena parlance. The process took place from Saturday (my time) last week up to Tuesday morning as is the traditional start of a Factions Bout, after which the first one for the tournament immediately began. By the end of the registration, 276 Factions had registered, but 5 had not completed the process and was therefore cut, while the other 15 were non-priority Factions that were cut due to others registering earlier and/or taking priority. My Faction (and its senior, SWEEP ID) fortunately registered as early as possible, so it was no surprise we made it past the scramble. Along with the 32 teams for the Worlds Championships, these 256 teams (288 altogether) are now the final representatives of the competition, approximately just over half of the 515 teams that were present in the previous and effectively final Cycle, a very good representation.
And then came the scramble to get the first Bout going. There was a brief time where the pairings were also in a scramble - not what they were supposed to be, a little like one moment in the previous Cycle - so that had to be fixed, and that came in due time. What seemingly didn't come in due time was the programming of the battle formats into the system, which was practically only able to be completed at the last minute as the player lineups were revealed and had come with a warning for players not to set lineups before then, a convenience that was forced to be absent. At least a few teams also ran into errors due to this quandary, and though the fix was not that complex, it was still a scramble to apply the workaround... and in general, it seemed to be as such for the organizers.
What may be the next scramble is actually proceeding through the tournament, as the competition may be any registered Faction from any region, even beyond one's origin. It's something that the organizers had stressed, in that Factions incapable of this should not have registered. But if they are, like my fellow teammates and I believe we do, then it's of course fair game. Our first opponents have already been set, and they come from somewhere over yonder and our work is cut out for that. But that'll have to wait for a Bout summary as I've done with other Bouts to find out how we did with the initial scramble and see if we can move on to the further scrambles ahead.
In any case, chaos was the order of the day as the first of the last great tournaments of Silph Arena Factions scrambled into existence. It is (and has to be) a profoundly different experience for many who have experienced its more previous orderly organization, although the closure of Silph Arena as one of its prompts is admittedly the prompt for such a scramble. Yet it is that scramble that has to be appreciated, as well as my Faction's timely entry into it - hopefully for a convenient length of time before all our scrambles are put to rest.
One year ago: Classes and Classification of Pokémon
Two years ago: Battle Box for Pokémon Go?
Three years ago: Game Freak with Mario on the Side
Four years ago: Pokémon Go Community Day, 6/8/2019
Five years ago: Pokémon Go Event Rollup, 6/8/2018
Six years ago: Poor Zygarde
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