Hello everybody. I'm Vartan from the Guild (or 'Org' as some of you call it) and I run the EB Online site and system that manages tournaments for those who wish to play Europa Barbarorum for Rome: Total War online. We had a successful prototype tourney in July of 2009 and our pilot tournament on the anniversary, July of this year of 2010, has been just as successful if not more successful. The tournaments we run are, as you may have guessed already, monthly tournaments. In a nutshell, people sign up on a forum thread stating which faction they will use. This sign up process takes place during the 2 weeks immediately preceding the start of the month. Then people play with each other, gaining or losing 1 point for each win or loss, accordingly. (People can still sign up mid-month, but once the month has started you may not change your faction.) At the end of the month, faction and player scores are tallied and the top 3 players and top 3 factions are presented, both on the site (www.ebonline.tk) as well as the month's forum thread. And now, we have created a Champions Cup that will take place every season, or 4 times per year. This is a double elimination tournament where 8, 16, or 32 players are placed into a bracket and have a week to complete each round until the Cup is awarded to somebody. In this new system, however, people can choose a different faction to use each round. The reason we allow this flexibility is because the Cup's aim is to measure skill exclusively as opposed to faction strength.

That being said, I've only played Stainless Steel perhaps once or twice. You guessed it: it was on a friend's computer, as he is the M2TW player, not I. But a good friend and member of EB Online who is an avid player of SS came to me and told me he wants to host a similar-style tournament (monthly) for SS players. Moreover he stated that we could have a so-called alliance between the two systems, link-sharing between SS Online and EB Online, on both forums as well as sites (if and when SSO decides to go on the Net). One of the key reasons, I will admit, is the fact that when EBII comes out it will run on M2TW: Kingdoms, and those with SS and interest in EB already have the tools to install EBII when it comes out.

Now, I'm no expert. You players are the SS experts and it's your game. If my friend, who I believe has 'Ycarus' in his name here on the TWC, does indeed begin such a tournament for SS players (this will require an organised and managed system of Hamachi networks if he chooses to administer as we do at EBO), then I offer to provide my assistance with regard to administration, management and organisation of tournaments, players, scoring and web-management.

Good luck y'all,

Vartan