Favorites in battle! - 5 The Battle of Favorites! - 5

"In those quiet times, now almost legendary..."(c) V.V.

...and Pit appeared, and we decided to jointly hold the second tournament in this series with the motto: "Your favorite faction is being removed, but you still want to play it? Then come here!"

"Decided" isn't quite the right word; rather, we "succumbed" under pressure. For several months, our master of words, holder of the "Golden Pen-3" award, Decontaminator, pressured us. It was at his suggestion that the second series emerged.
Kostya and I had argued several times about what meaning the organizers put into the tournament – playing a favorite faction that is being removed or proving the strength of your favorite Castle. And yesterday, I accidentally found an answer:

Choose a Castle. You need to choose a Castle to prove that your Castle is stronger; by choosing a Castle, you play with that Castle throughout the tournament.

I think that most players have both desires combined – they want to enjoy playing their favorite Castle and win the tournament.

...many strong players came to the forum, players from heroesportal actively joined, where many new faces also appeared, and heroes.by with its real community and unwillingness to play sm...

"But the fathers have their own minds, and as for us,
We looked at life quite independently..."

But this wasn't enough for a full-fledged tournament, so we introduced a true innovation for that time – THE BAN ON TEMPLATES.

Our newcomers probably think that the Ban on Templates was given to us from the beginning. In reality, this great idea originated in our ХВ (HW), not so long ago. After that, other resources also started banning templates. I believe that the copyright for the Ban on Templates belongs to Джавдет, at least personally, I heard it from him first. Shortly before that, Джавдет held the first HW tournament NOT IN SM. Guess what? Correct, on Jebus Cross. From heroes.by, 8mm6 came to us; we first heard about panic during an inter-portal match with Lithuania; Balance sneaked in from WCL and China.

Favorites-2. A Ballad of Childhood. Dragons or Butterflies?
In the halls of the royal palace, they began to whisper more and more often: "Old Galtran is starting to decline... He often goes to the dentist in a secret room... And he comes out with a new spell - ГГ. And his favorites - brothers Uran and Dudj - have found other values in life and gone to serve other Gods... And parliament passed laws severely limiting the power of the undead... Isn't it time to take up arms again?"
It was then that the widespread fascination with a foreign American game called POXER began, which greatly contributed to improving the material well-being of our inhabitants.
The population of the HeroesWorld world increased in number, decreased in remoteness, and the vbn program appeared for quick transfer of various weapons and troop movements... It became easier and more convenient to fight for power. Strong Knights appeared in other lands, ready to prove that not only Necromancers are worthy of wearing the crown.
And there was another tournament, and as never before, the Dungeon fighters were strong.
"There was a time and there were basements,
There was business, and prices were lowered."
The wings of Harpies, Scorpiсor, and Dragons overshadowed the Sun; Shakhti conquered half of the places in the top eight...
But "corridors end with a wall,
And tunnels lead to light..."
And... unexpectedly, in the next round, all four best Dungeon fighters suffered a crushing defeat, and the final victory in the tournament was celebrated by Elementals, who took 1st and 3rd place. The trophies were rich, especially the residents of Conflux liked the Sailor's Hat and the dried green shamrock. The elementals didn't know what these items were for...

"The Blue Brissa has a blouse with dragons and snakes,
Then the traveler Moner, our father, came to Conflux with trophies:
Trophy spells, breastplates, and vials,
Cloaks, Shackles, teapots, bottles, and jars..."

The "Favorites-2" tournament began in August 2009 and lasted almost six months. The default template was 2sm4d(3), but in the group stage, 25 out of 40 players chose a ban. The theme of the tournament is here.
As a result, the players receive this many points in our tournament rating:

The top 16 are taken into account in the Castle ranking. Dungeon occupied all places from 5th to 8th, which put it in first place in the ranking in this tournament. Swamp performed poorly, not taking any points in the Castle ranking. Therefore, the results of the next Favorites-3 tournament turned out to be unexpected.

During the tournament, I remember a very unpleasant situation in a group where three people scored 3 points each, and according to the rules (the worst result in the season), we had to eliminate Piterius; it was very upsetting for such an excellent player. Since then, I have been trying to solve this problem with tiebreaker matches.
Starting from the 1/4 finals, Kostya led the tournament alone because I was playing.
I remember the final game very well, as if we were playing yesterday. The report and saves are on this page. I remember the terrible minutes of waiting, whether Korbak would break through the Cyclops in the portal and kill them in one go. I remember the nonsense with chasing in the treasure zone and Roman's unexpected mistakes...
Of course, the 2sm4d(3) template is very successful for Conflux; now that banning templates is standard, the chances of Conflux have significantly decreased. I didn't make statistics for the entire tournament regarding templates, but here's how it looked in the group stage:

Templates: 2sm4d(3) - 52 games, 8mm6 - 8, Panic - 4, balance - 2, Jebus - 1.

That is, our innovation wasn't very popular at the time.

"Walk, lively thoughts, walk,
Word, dear lines, word!"