Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

The Caldari Alliance Championship 2005 (or Alliance Tournament I)

The plan was to write an article on Alliance Tournament dynasties, and then argue why the yearly debate for team parity is not something the Alliance Tournament needs. I was then sidetracked while doing some research.

The EVE Online past tournaments webpage has information on all but the very first tournament. Odd. I started asking around. I started looking into it. So that is what this article will be about. The very first alliance tournament. I'll link to some original articles, some original posts, and embed some video from that very first tournament.

I'm also going to tie this into Blog Banter 48, which is a question about lore: "How important is ?fluff? in EVE Online? Would EVE be the same if it were purely numbers and mechanics, or are the fictional elements important to the enjoyment of the game?" My answer is that while the fictional lore of EVE Online is important in creating the flavour of the game, it is not something that impacts my gameplay or even interests me all that much. The strength of EVE Online, in my opinion, are the player stories. It's player history that has shaped EVE Online most acutely. It's player history of which records should be kept. It's player history that should not be forgotten.

On December 24 2005, CCP Games announced the Caldari Alliance Championship. Open only to alliances, this was to become the inaugural Alliance Tournament. The tournament was to start on December 28 2005, just four days after the announcement. One capsuleer, Earthan, expressed some consternation at the short preparation period:

Why so little time to prepare for caldari championship??

I was looking for such great pvp occasion since the ammar one.

And CCP tosses this with absolutely no time to prepare.I cant believe this. if i had 1 weekto prepare im sure i could handle rl to participate. As it is im screwed.

I was never angry at CCP , not even when i lost ship to lag. Now i really am.

Seleene, of Mercenary Coalition, was also a tad annoyed:

TBH, they picked the absolute WORST possible time of year to hold this thing, much less try to build a team. We've got people on vacation in places without internet access, family commitments, snow storms and about 20 other things.

Damn near any other time of year and we'd be forced to hold an internal tournament first just to see who would win the honor to represent us. Now? Hell, if we can find a solid crew for this thing, I'll be amazed. I'm still hopeful, but RL at this time of year will always take priority.

Evil Thug was somewhat ticked-off that only alliances were allowed to participate in the tournament:

Why only alliance allowed to participate in championship ? ::Mad::

I bet, there is good amount of corp, who able to pick 5 members, who will be able to beat almost all alliances to dust. FIX IT !

People being mad at CCP. Some things never change. <grin>

While there wasn't much forum traffic concerning the upcoming tournament, the traffic that did exist was focused on betting. Of the sixty-four teams participating, Fenian was already confident where he would place his bets:

It will definitely be interesting to see who wins this thing. I think I'd put my money on BOB though.

If he did not end up placing a bet, he was likely kicking himself on December 31 2005. Another of the favourites, Mercenary Coalition, were bounced out of the tournament in the first round.

As is the norm with EVE players, where there is a demand, and where there is the potential of earning some phat ISK, a service will spring from nothing, even given limited prep time. Cdr Foxbat and Omber Zombie were able to throw together betting pools rather quickly. Both seemed to be relatively popular. Even The Big Lottery was able to put together a betting page before the tournament began.

Although 64 teams could enter the tournament, only 59 did so. Random draw determined which teams were afforded a bye through the first round. Each team fielded three players, one in a battleship, one in a cruiser, and one in a frigate. ECM and faction/officer mods were not allowed. The rules were simple, each team to fight until the other side was destroyed, or if time reached the ten minute mark the referee would determine a winner. The arena was 200km in diameter. Teams started 50km from each other.

There was no EVE TV for this first tournament. Whatever videos were available, were created by the players. Each team of three were allowed to bring a couple of spectators. Those specatators could video capture the match if they wanted, although they were hampered by being over 100km from the action, thus out of lock range and out of camera range. EVE Radio was invited to watch in cloaky ships and were able to get closer to the action. How many matches EVE Radio was present at, I'm not sure, but they did commentate the final match, which was streamed live via Chribba's EVE-Files service (using Windows Media Services and Windows Media Encoder.)

I'm not sure how many CCP employees it took to make this tournament possible. Probably just a skeleton crew, given that all CCP had to do was set-up matches, referee them, and ensure fair play. A dev by the name of LeMonde appears to have been present at every match as the in-arena referee. Still, considering how many matches that CCP ran in only three days, it was a monumental effort to make this tournament work. Considering, too, that CCP only announced the event 4 days before it started, they might have had as little prep time as the players.

Here are the brackets for the tournament. Some of the final matches are without results, but you can fill-in those blanks with the first thru fourth place finishers after the graphic.

(click for larger size)

1st Place ? Band of Brothers (Supercarrier, plus two Caldari Navy Rooks)
2nd Place ? KAOS Empire (Carrier, plus two Caldari Navy Rooks)
3rd/4th Place ? The ROCK and The Five (Caldari Navy Rook, plus two Caldari Navy Caracals)

This was early days of EVE, where certain ship classes were still uncommon and expensive for most groups. For instance, Ekliptika had to forfeit their match when their only battleship was destroyed in a conflict earlier in the day.

Another amusing moment, when Chribba entered as the only member of his alliance. He fielded a triple-rep Apocalypse. He survived past five minutes. Far longer than most of the three-man teams. He was, sadly, unable to kill any of his opposition before he went down. Unfortunately, no video of this exists.

CCP has complete write-ups for each of the three days of the tournament:

Caldari Championships, The First Day
Caldari Championships, The Second Day
Caldari Championships, The Last Day

What follows are some match videos.

Here are the three matches for Stain-Alliance. (Music only, no commentary.)


Here is the first round match for The Five. (Silent, no commentary.)


Here are the second and third round matches for The Five. (Silent, no commentary, the second and third rounds are mislabelled as round one and two.)


The final match of the inaugural Alliance Tournament. Band of Brothers versus KAOS Empire. Commentary supplied by EVE Radio. (No higher definition video exists, unfortunately.)


Best line of the final commentary: "He's not shield tanking, you tart. He's armour tanking."

A special thanks to CCP Fozzie for supplying me with the links to those CCP tournament news items. Those really helped me focus all of my additional research. Also thanks to Chribba of EVE-Files and EVE-Search, without which I would not have found many of the very old video files. It's a stellar historical archive for EVE Online.
Source: The Caldari Alliance Championship 2005 (or Alliance Tournament I)