A huge success#
Well, it was a long time coming, but community run Dublin FGC monthlies are back with a bang! We had 50 attendees across 4 games, with very even attendance across all events. It was a lot of work to this point so let’s start with some thank yous before we recap the day.
Thank you#
Day of Champions is the culmination of 18 months of organising weeklies, purchasing equipment, building trust, creating connections, and designating responsibilities. Thusly, some shoutouts are in order.
The first thank you has to go to the Dublin FGC for showing up week after week to YADW and Dublin or Nothing events, despite a lack of prize pools. That money was instead put towards buying equipment which allowed us to rebuild our community’s stash of monitors and consoles. This had been a huge barrier to running events and it is finally overcome.
Second thank you must go to Shane D who has been running events while I’m on paternity leave, and brought a huge amount of equipment in on Saturday. He also ran a bracket, as did SHIN-A, Mister Finer & Voa so thank you to them too! Everyone congratulates me on an event well run, but it wouldn’t have been possible without these 4 pillars of the community.
Thirdly, my thanks to the Dublin smash scene who have kindly helped the Dublin FGC back on its feet over the last year and a half. They have shared their space and equipment with us when we had neither and we’d still have nothing without Average, Greg and the gang. Thanks lads.
Fourthly, a quick thank you to my wonderful wife Kendell who not only ran the TO desk at many Tuesday events, but also relieved me for a day to go play and do fighting game things while a 10 week old baby had a very off-day. Thanks my love <3
Top 8ers#
Congrats to all our Top 8s from Day of Champions! It was a day of seriously competitive fighting games, and the quality of play was top notch across the board. Congrats to our winners Redslasher, Alumento, Fergus & Owen!
Lessons Learned#
I have learned a lot from Day of Champions XVI! Here are my thoughts from the day:
Staggering#
I wanted to stagger the events for DoC XVI but I also wanted to make sure we were done by a reasonable time, so for my first time TOing a monthly I decided to start all the events at noon. This created the predictable issue that top 4s were waiting yonks to be streamed. Originally I hadn’t event planned to stream these games, but the players were happy to wait to be recorded and so we did. Going forward we will definitely be staggering events.
Stream Woes#
So it turns out Twitch.tv does NOT have stream archiving turned on by default. My sincere apologies to anyone whose games were lost to the ether. This won’t happen again.
Game Spread#
I’m quite happy with our spread of games, but I think we could squeeze in a nostalgia bracket. Probably I would run one event with proper staggering before I run a 5th game, but expect more variety in the future!.
Feedback#
Have you ideas for Day of Champions? Games you’d like to see? Side events that would make the trip to Dublin more worthwhile? Feedback on how the event was run in general? You can give us your feedback here!
What’s next for Dublin#
We have YADW coming up Tuesday April 7th, running 2XKO & UNI! Sign ups are open now. YADW will continue to run every second Tuesday from then on.
As for Day of Champions XVII, it is absolutley happening, we’re just not sure about when. We can say that it’ll be May or June! Looking forward to seeing you all back in the capital for more good games.