By Niels Viaene

As much as the end of season 10 was influenced by the events that happened around the world, season 11 will have to start. That means we want to make sure people can play Gentry when it suits them on Arena, while allowing for paper Gentry to come back into the picture when COVID-19 is behind us.

Start of the Season

Ikoria releases on April 16th on Arena. That is today. If I understood correctly, you will be able to play Ikoria cards in your decks immediately. That means the season can begin straight away.

The Leaderboard on Arena

We want to try and address a bunch of things with the new Arena leaderboard.

1. A higher frequency
   We want people to have more possibilities to play Gentry, so there will be a weekly Gentry leaderboard event.
2. Be more forgiving
   People that took the leaderboard seriously were often forced to grind out every event in order to get more points. In the future, only your top 5 results will count towards your score. That means a bad event when you are doing well won’t hurt you as much, yet you can always push a little higher with some decent finishes.
3. Be more inviting
   With the above mentioned top 5 system, it will also become possible for people to enter the leaderboard halfway through the season and have a feeling like they can catch up.
4. Unite communities
   For Arena, there won’t be different Leaderboard events, like the Bredene leaderboard we ended with last season. Everyone will be playing in the same competition.
5. Maintain Community identity
   Wait. Didn’t I just say there would not be any communities anymore? No, I said everybody will be playing on the same leaderboard. When you play your first leaderboard, you will be able to select your region. That region will be displayed next to your name on the leaderboard. (your real name and region are the only thing that will be shown). This way we can have direct rivalries between different regions and settle the discussion once and for all who the masters of Gentry are.
6. Keep it light
   Gentry Leaderboard events will use the ‘old’ template. they will be hosted in the evening and be 4 rounds long. Points will be won by reverse standings with an attendance bonus. A poll will be up on Facebook to look for the best time to do this.

The Gentry Arena Open

Even if paper events will be possible again, there will be an Arena version of the Gentry Open in addition to the tabletop one. The Arena Open will only give byes based on the Arena Leaderboard and possible Trials. The Tabletop version will give byes through every leaderboard available at the time. (So arena byes count there too)

To win a bye in your region, it needs to be at least 16 players. The leader gets a bye. As soon as there are 33 players, top 2 gets a bye. at 49 top 3, etc. If your region has less than 16 players on the leaderboard, it will get grouped up in the ‘other’ category, which grants byes just like any other leaderboard.

All official announcements about the Gentry Arena Open and Leaderboard will be on this site and the Gentry Facebook fan page. If your region has no forum of its own, you can join the Flemish Gentry Discord (this link has limited uses in order to avoid spam, if it does not work, contact us on facebook). It might be in Dutch but if you start talking in English, people will always switch languages for you.

MTGMelee

MTGMelee.com is the website on which all official Arena events will be run. Making an account there is free and after getting over the hurdle of your first event, it should be pretty intuitive and easy to use.
If that is too much of a hurdle for you, there are plenty of people that will want to help you. The organizing of the event will always be streamed on twitch. You can ask your questions there or on Facebook as well.

Arena events are free

Just like all other events we have organized online, all Gentry events on Arena will be free. This includes Leaderboard events, the Gentry Arena Open, and possible extra events. That does not mean there is nothing to win, though, as we will be trying to get sponsors in order to get incentives to play as well. These will most likely only be for the Open and showcase events, but if we find awesome sponsors, the sky is the limit.

Do you know anyone that might be interested in sponsoring, contact us!

The other side of this is that the organization of all these events does not generate any income from you and will rely on spontaneous donations and support. The easiest way to do this is through the stream and can be as easy as making a free twitch account to be able to interact with the live chat, or getting a free amazon prime trial and use the associated twitch prime subscription on the stream (just remember to end the trial if you don’t want to start paying, or do, and you can support the channel for free every month).

When will the events be?

We have not yet locked in a day or time for the event. You can leave feedback about your preferences here.

The Tabletop Gentry Open

We mentioned it a couple of times already, but there is no intention whatsoever to stop doing paper events. In an ideal world, the Arena and Tabletop versions will coexist forever, and foster a larger, healthier community of Gentry-fun-loving people. If there is ever any choice that needs to be made between the two, Tabletop will likely be the one that survives (barring overwhelming support and sponsoring for Arena that frankly, I do not anticipate)

Conclusion

That is all I have for now. Today and this weekend, focus on the release of the new set. On the stream, we will do a walkthrough of all cards for Gentry somewhere this weekend. In the meantime, we will be working on the tournament scene on MTGMelee, so go make your account there if you are interested in playing with us. We strive to have our first event be next week!

Hope you are at least half as excited as I am,
Niels