HEX Organized Play has two goals: make sure that a player can log in at any time and participate in a tournament, and make the tournaments count for something bigger.
With that in mind, we designed a system of on-demand tournaments and scheduled events that awards invitation points towards the online World Championship qualifiers. Qualifiers, in turn, provide you with an opportunity to attend and play in our World Championship tournament. A little more on that later. For now, let’s talk about the tournaments that get you to Worlds. There are many to choose from and the range from on the spot 8-person pickup events, to weekly and monthly scheduled events.
On-demand Events[ | ]
When HEX launches, we will offer 4 different queues for players to jump in and play any time 8 people are interested. This is the most flexible way to play: any time you have 3 hours, you can start and finish a tournament. The queues are: Constructed, Competitive Draft, Casual Draft, and Swiss Play Draft.
Constructed Queue[ | ]
This is a single elimination tournament you can jump into with 8 people. Grab your favorite deck and go! Prizes go out to the top 4 players. As we get a few more sets out, we will definitely add queues for other constructed formats to keep things interesting. Constructed tournaments don’t require packs to participate in (unlike drafts), so they are typically cheaper to enter.
Booster Draft[ | ]
For an introduction to Booster Draft, please see our How to Draft guide.
A Draft Pod is made up of 8 players. Imagine 8 players sitting around a circular table. Each player will open a booster pack and select a card from it. They then pass the booster pack to their neighbor in the draft. Since everyone does this, everyone ends up with a new booster pack with one less card. Every player then selects another card and passes again. Players continue until all of the cards are gone. Then they repeat this twice more, with booster packs 2 and 3. At the end of the draft, players have the cards they drafted and may use them to construct a deck.
In a draft, a player gets to look at and pick 45 cards from a total of 276 cards that pass their view. Some players prefer this to Sealed play, as the cost to entry for sealed, requires twice as many packs, and you get a set 90 cards. There is no selection process to pick what you want in Sealed play.
Competitive Draft[ | ]
Competitive Draft is single elimination. The prizes go to the top 4 players. First place wins 5 packs, second place wins 3 packs, third and fourth place each win 2 packs each. Players also keep all the cards they drafted out of their 3 packs.
Swiss Play Draft[ | ]
Swiss is a draft tournament format where you can continue playing even if you lose (unlike the single elimination tournament format). Prizes in this tournament are awarded to anyone with at least 1 win - 1 pack per win. As such, this is a very forgiving environment to learn to draft, get the most play for your buck, or try out new draft strategies. We recommend that players who are new to drafting try this queue first.
Scheduled Events[ | ]
Scheduled Events happen at a specific time. They include daily, weekly, and monthly tournaments. Players will be able to find the schedule of tournaments within the client itself and on the website. Scheduled events use the Swiss tournament format. For those unfamiliar with Swiss tournaments, this means that you can play for the entire tournament, and you are typically paired against those with a similar record as your own. You are not out of the tournament if you lose.
Daily Tournaments[ | ]
Daily Scheduled Tournaments happen every 4 hours on the hour throughout the day. The tournaments are always 4 rounds and award prizes to those who win 2 or more matches. The tournament formats vary: we’ll offer Sealed Pack, Constructed, and other wacky formats.
Weekly and Monthly Tournaments[ | ]
These tournaments have scheduled start times, usually on Fridays and on weekends. Their start times alternate to accommodate player bases in Asia, Europe, and North America. They are Swiss tournaments, but unlike Daily Tournaments, do not have a 4 round cap. The number of rounds is dependent on the number of players in the tournament. The prizes also depend on the number of players and are typically given out to about 40% of the players in the tournament. World Championship Qualifier and Qualifier Points
All of the tournaments we mentioned above all award qualifier points. More prestigious and harder-to-win events like Monthly and Weekly tournaments award more points. A player will need 10 points in order to play in a World Championship Qualifier Tournament. Otherwise, the tournament entry is free! World Championship Qualifier Tournaments happen every 4 months and qualify you for the HEX World Championship. Qualifier Points reset after each Qualifier Tournament.
HEX World Championship Tournament[ | ]
The HEX World Championship Tournament happens yearly and requires an invitation to participate. Most players will get invitations through the World Championship Qualifier tournament. As we get closer to the launch of the game, we will unveil more ways to qualify for Worlds, as well as the details for the World Championship Tournament.
Other Tournaments[ | ]
To take a break from the qualification for World Championships, we’ll offer a few other formats. Some of these will launch with the game and others will be implemented later, once we reach a critical mass of cards. Constructed Formats
As we release new sets and our card pool grows, our constructed formats will expand. Examples include all commons tournaments and highlander tournaments (maximum number of any card in a deck is one). And, for the PvE players: tournaments that allow all PvE content!
Marathon Tournaments[ | ]
This is like league play on steroids. Players will sign up for this sealed deck tournament and play as many games as they can within a 6 hour period. We’ll allow entries into the tournament at any time while it runs. As a catch up mechanic and to keep things interesting, we’ll let players buy an additional booster after each hour passes while the tournament runs.
We will track players’ total games and their number of wins. The win-loss differential is what we’ll use to track standings in real time. The tiebreaker is the total number of games played. After 6 hours the top 40% of players get prizes. There are 4 tiers for prizes: Top 1% of the players, 2%-5% of the players, 6%-15% of the players and 16%-40% of the players.
Pre-release Tournaments[ | ]
These tournaments will happen prior to the release of the new set. Players will be able to preview the cards via sealed tournaments with special prizes.
Team Tournaments[ | ]
2v2 and 3v3 tournaments are definitely in the works. We’d like to introduce those to the players once we have an established community of players to make it easier to field teams.