Premier Play in 2024

Last week on our official Discord channel, we made some announcements about our organized play offerings in 2024 along with floor rules updates. Today we’re here to update the community on some modifications to those plans and what we’re seeking to accomplish with our play programs this year.

The Goal of Organized Play

The most important thing we aim to achieve with our organized play program is supporting the growth of play at the local game store level. We took a big step in that direction for our 2023 season when we shifted qualifications for our Nationals events to start with local play; the end result was the largest UniVersus tournament in company history! We’re building on that success with a Regionals qualification path that starts at your local game store and we’re already seeing fantastic results: the first qualifier season for 2024 has seen more game stores participate in scheduling more events than any organized play program we’ve ever offered!

(Live in a region without a local game store to play at? Reach out to our Retail Development Team and we’ll work to establish a community at your local game store! Community@UVSGames.com)

Our ultimate goal with our premier play program is to showcase the incredible talent of our UniVersus players through an aspirational tournament circuit. Our Regionals and other title tournaments help us do that by rewarding the players who have performed the best both through qualifying and through specific tournament play. We also want our premier events to feel premier for all attendees, which meant we added a few specific goals for events like Regionals in 2024:

• To end events in a timely fashion

• To have the best side events we’ve ever offered

• To ensure fans have a blast whether they’re qualified for the main event or not

Our original tournament structure allowed us to focus on ending Regionals in a comfortable time frame, but led to some players being concerned they wouldn’t get to play a complete Regionals after working hard to qualify for it. We’re updating how we manage our Swiss and Top Cut rounds to accommodate that concern in the following ways:

• Round time length is being set back to 60 minutes during Swiss

• Any player qualified for Regionals may play the entirety of the Swiss rounds

• Up to 7 rounds of Swiss will take place on Day 1 of Regionals

• If player population necessitates additional rounds of Swiss, they will take place on Day 2

• After Swiss is complete we will make our “top cut,” which is dependent on the size of the event (see infographic below)

• Players who qualify for the Top Cut may continue play, while everyone else is dropped from the event

As a bonus, all participants in the main event at Regionals will receive a unique coupon for use to play discounted or free side events. Even if your journey in one event is complete, we want you to be able to experience the awesomeness that is our continued side events throughout the weekend!

Limited and Premier Play

At UVS Games, we’re operating 1-2 years ahead of the “real world” when it comes to building the UniVersus Collectible Card Game. That means we’re playing sets that have been designed from the ground up to be fun for playing “Limited” events like Booster Draft and Sealed Deck. Unfortunately, fans of UniVersus haven’t yet seen all the awesome changes coming that help make that case, and that was apparent based on some of your reactions to the announcement that Booster Draft would play a role at Regional events this year. Here’s how we’re going to adjust our Limited play plans in 2024:

• We’re moving Booster Draft from the main event of Regionals tournaments to our side events to give players a chance to explore this format more; each Major Regional tournament will be a single Constructed format from start to finish

• We’ll be working to support Limited play at local game stores so opportunities to enjoy these fun ways to play UniVersus are accessible to all

• Regionals participants’ will receive coupons for free or discounted side events when they complete Regionals play

• Booster Draft is our biggest skill-testing format and will be a key part of our World Championship tournament to cap the 2024 competitive season

We’ll have more announcements about side events and how you can participate in Limited play at Regionals and locally as the year goes on.

Next Steps

Last year was a record breaking year for organized play at UVS Games with the largest single tournament in company history as well as the largest Prerelease events of all time. This year is already off to a fantastic start as Yu Yu Hakusho’s launch weekend set a new record for launch weekends and our first Regionals qualifier season has seen more stores and events than ever before! To stay engaged with organized play throughout 2024 here are some steps you can take:

• Sign up for the UGN here

• Find events near you with our event locator here

• If you’d like to help build a community in your local game store, contact us here community@uvsgames.com

Thanks to all our passionate fans who’ve taken the time to engage with UniVersus over the years, and here’s to a fantastic 2024 for organized play!