On Sunday 10 May TCK won the VESA Platinum & Under 2020 Split 1 tournament, but heres a more in-depth look at the tournament as a whole, including some of the best (and worst) performances of individual players and teams.

The Wellington Esports Championship group stage has concluded, and along with it came the stats. Here's a breakdown of the matches, champions, and individuals that stood out amongst the competition.

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We wanted to take this time to show you everything that's new since last year.

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First, lets start with the logo. It's had quite the face-lift. Below you'll see a breakdown of the logo as well as the shapes that accompany it. The triangular shape and the tapered edges of the logo all stem from the V in Victoria, which gives the overall theme a sharp but uniform feel.

INTRODUCING THE NEW 
VESA.NZ /NEWS and /TOURNAMENTS

You might have noticed that vesa.nz isn't just a homepage anymore, and you'd be right. 

Last year after tournaments were over, prize money was handed out and that'd be it for the communication between VESA admins and the players, this year we're changing that.

We want to do 3 things:
1  -  Give some recognition to the top performing players and teams of each tournament and show them off to all other VESA members.
2  -  Give you post-tournament and post-event insight in the form of stats breakdowns and articles on the key games and players.
3  -  Be more transparent and clear when tournaments start, earlier and fairer so you can get a team together in advance and start practicing.

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Vesa.nz now serves as our primary destination for all our Esports content where vesa.nz/news allows us to make vibrant articles with everything from the above points 1 & 2. You can look forward to more event recaps, announcements, written features and stats breakdowns to feast your eyes on throughout 2019!

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Previously, announcements, tournament information, and community chat resided on our Discord server which fell flat towards the end of 2018. With the addition of vesa.nz/tournaments there isn't a need for trying to read long walls of text for each tournament in the announcements tab. The Discord can now be more focused on actual community discussion and Q&A. Instead, now you'll be directed to the tournament page, where all the information you need to get signed up to a tournament is right there, listed clearly and concisely, giving you less hassle.

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Feel free to head over to vesa.nz/news. We thought it was important to make sure you get a feeling for how news will be displayed this year, so that's why we populated the news page with never-before-seen stats, photos and info from our best tournaments last year!

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Also check out vesa.nz/tournaments to see our upcoming tournaments for this year. The greyed out tournaments unlock and become full colour when the tournament nears its start date!

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Even thought we've got all these great new features of vesa.nz, it is still a work in progress - so feel free to let us know of any issues you're having by dropping us some feedback.

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VESA MERCH

Coming mid-late April, we'll be launching VESA merch! The goal with VESA merch is to have stylish and useful pieces of merch that you'll be proud to flaunt and represent the club with. The revenue from merch will help us bring you more exciting esports events, bigger prize pools, and help cover the costs of running VESA.

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At minimum we'll have mousemats, hoodies, and t-shirts, with more options and variants becoming available throughout the year!

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VESA HIGHLIGHTS

Sometime between March-April we'll be launching a new tab on the site called "highlights". A webpage similar to LoLesports' "VODS" where you can see all the best plays from each tournament. These highlights will be submitted by you, the player, to a dedicated 'highlight submissions' channel in our Discord. We'll be giving out prizes to the best plays too! We're super excited and can't wait to see your highlights.

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There’s going to be more stuff that we’ve been working on that we’ll be rolling out throughout the year, but we’re really excited about the immediate changes and we hope you enjoy them too!

Our 1st Tournament of the year starts March 15th at 7PM. To learn more about the League of Legends Wellington Esports Championship click here

Recap

Biggie Breezy has come and gone, records broken and rivalries tested. Bigger than Super Windbox the year before it, with even more out of region talent making the trip, its safe to say that Biggie Breezy lived up to its name. Even breaking the records for largest community Smash 4 (51 entrants) and Project M (36 entrants) tournaments in New Zealand history - records we set one year earlier. 60 total signups also means it was the largest community smash tournament at that time!

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Winners

Congratulations to Aluf, who not only won every main bracket at Super Windbox, but also made the repeat at Biggie, and all from losers side with close sets abound. Can this man be stopped? Let’s see how he will perform next year, with the brand new Smash Ultimate already out.

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Watch Aluf finish off Red, New Zealand’s highest ranked player, in Losers Finals with a flashy Mario combo:

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Auckland vs Wellington

Congratulations for Auckland for taking out the Regional crew battle vs Wellington. With over half of the total entrants being from outside of Wellington, and half of those travellers being from Auckland, the venue was overrun by invaders looking to make waves on the national stage.

On top of that the attendees were treated to Tommy Millions Pizza after the tournament was over, with money matches and king of the hills going on into the night.

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Prediction God

Congratulations to CC | Storm for having the most accurate predictions for how the tournament will play out, taking 1st place for the fantasy bracket.

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Rock Paper Scissors Bracket

Congratulations to MaoNZ for showing us how hype and skillful (!?) Rock Paper Scissors can be by taking first place. Watch the Rock Paper Scissors finals here


Keep your eyes out for what looks to be a even Bigger Breezy in 2019, hope to see many of you there then!

Photos by Xieee

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Thanks to the end-game screenshots we had stored after the tournament, we were able to dig up a whole heap of interesting stats from 2018's Inter Uni Masters - just for you. Enjoy!

Arguably our best year yet, in 2018 we connected over 200 VESA members to our esports and gaming related activities. These included 3 League tournaments, a League of Legends OPL finals viewing party at the local bar complete with phat yarns and banter, as well as NZ's biggest and best community Smash tournament to date.

VESA Rumble #1:

Our first proper tournament allowing players in and around Wellington to sign up and make teams, we got 9 teams signed up to play for a 77,000 RP total prize pool supported entirely by Riot Games. A total of 60 players were signed to teams for this event and it was a two-month long rumble with an intense 3-game set for the finals between the powerhouse HKC and underdogs TCK with HKC taking the victory with a statement game 3.

Here's a look back at the prizes each team received:

First:               HKC                29,000 RP + 5x Triumphant Ryze

Second:          TCK                15,000 RP

Third:              PengDab       13,500 RP

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VESA LoL 1v1:

16 Players signed up for an intense one-day, single elimination 1v1 tournament for a prize pool of $100 to be given away on that evening!

First:               SsammyA                $50

Second:          Xehanort                 $30

Third:              Lopex                      $20

NZ IUM 2018:

A tournament connecting over 50 university students across New Zealand to play in a two month long rumble. We learnt here that to make matches between teams as fair as possible we departed from the double round robin format in favour of a single round robin format, in which we broke up seeding into two MMR brackets to improve fairness and overall enjoyment for players taking part in the tournament.

First:                UoA                           29,000 RP + 5x Triumphant Ryze

Second:           EZ Clap                      15,000 RP

Third:              Bigpipe Esports         13,500 RP

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Biggie Breezy:

Biggie 2018 was the largest NZ Community Smash Tournament in history with 60 live attendees, over half of which traveled here from all parts of the country ranging from Dunedin to Northland.

This was a tournament that included 3 Smash games: Project M, Smash 4, and Smash Bros Melee.

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2018 Totals:

We worked hard to get our VESA members substantial prizes to get them excited and raise the stakes of our community tournaments. Here's a short summary of the prizes given away to the players who proved themselves in our tournaments in 2018.

With Riot Games Sponsorship:
$1480 worth of RP = 154,000rp given away in total
10 Triumphant Ryze skins

And along with all the other events and tournaments:

TOTAL: $2697 given away!

2018 has left us hungry for more, so that's why we're putting our 110% into this years events and tournaments, starting with the Wellington Esports Championship - with a huge $1000 prize pool and top 4 teams get to play on HP OMEN Sponsored PC's in front of a live Armageddon crowd!