With Lock & Load looming closer, it’s taken up a lot of my thoughts, particularly the debut of the new world championship: Iron Gauntlet. Being a brand new format, it’ll be particularly interesting to find out how it’ll develop. Will you see the same big names dominating the tournament scene? Will the same lists be prevalent? Only time will tell.
All pertinent information is here (and here is the document. Go ahead and read, I’ll wait). One of the first things that you’ll note is that the world is divided up into several regions. I certainly appreciate the meticulousness of the map, otherwise who knows what chaos would ensue when a player from Greenland or Nunavut entered? But I digress…
After a year of playing in various qualifying tournaments and accruing points, the top 2 players from each geographic region and 8 wildcard players (similar to how the NFL does the playoffs – hopefully nerd cliches don’t always hold true and you have a passing familiarity with sports) are invited to play in the finals at Lock & Load in Seattle. Due to the tracking of player performance over the year, player seeding in the finals is possible, something that I’m a big fan of.