Before we begin, I want to give a shoutout to parallel experiments ∈(・ω・)∋ for collecting The Rise of Composable Worlds and The Ultimate Guide to the Realms Ecosystem: Part 2 last week!

I really appreciate your support! 🙂

As always, you can collect this (and every WASD article) by obliterating the mint button above!

☝️☝️

If you do, you’ll gain access to the WASD Collectooor Telegram chat and earn the chance to be featured as the “Collectooor of the Week” at the top of each Monday piece!

Author: FaultProofBen

Gm!

Last week the inaugural season of World Sky League, the first-ever onchain esports league for Sky Strife, concluded.

The league, organized by WASD and our friends at ggQuest and [WE], wrapped in epic fashion, with our four finalist teams battling it out in a live-streamed playoff tournament to try and win $2K in prizes, an NFT trophy, and to secure their onchain legacies.

Today I’ll tell you all about this epic competition by walking you through the story of our first season.

By the end of this piece, you’ll see why we’re set up for an even more exciting second one.

As always, the following is my interpretation of a series of transactions.

It may or may not be correct, you’ll have to check the chain to see for yourself ;)

Before we get into how the season played out, let’s get a bit of context on how it was structured.

World Sky League ran over the back half of Sky Strife Season 0 from December 7-14.

For those who may not know, Sky Strife Season 0 was a three-week-long, persistent playtest for the RTS held on the Redstone Holesky Testnet from November 30-December 15.

Matches in Sky Strife are made up of 2-4 players.

Although the game does not (yet) have native support for them, to ease with organization and make things more fun, we decided to make the league team-based, with participants competing in 2v2 matches.

After many scheduling audibles, the season wound up being split into two parts:

1. The Regular Season

During this phase, teams were split into groups based on timezone and played matches in a round-robin tournament.

The teams with the four best records from the regular season advanced to compete in…

2. The Playoffs

The playoffs consisted of a two-round single-elimination tournament, where the top four teams battled it out in semi-finals and finals matches to determine who would be crowned champion.

The regular season ran from December 7-12, while playoff matches were played in one sitting consecutively and streamed on Twitch on December 14

There were several onchain tools that we used to help run the league.

For starters, we used the Sky Strife Season Pass NFT to create private matches of just league members.

Whereas “public” Sky Strife matches are open to anyone, the Season Pass (among other perks) enables holders to create whitelisted matches only accessible to a custom list of addresses.

I tried (and failed) to get a Season Pass for myself but, thankfully, was able to use one owned by [WE].

(Though I’m still out $50 from Holesky ETH OTC deals)

Along with the pass, we also used an alternative Sky Strife client to manage the league onchain, as it allowed us to create custom standings and view other metrics (Like Orb Counts) for teams.

The client is live at worldskyleague.xyz.

I have to give a major shoutout to WASD Guild member Selkie for deploying it, as, like the Season Pass, I tried and failed spectacularly to do this myself.

After an intense weekend of planning, World Sky League was officially announced on December 4!

Following the reveal, we had more than 25 teams and individuals sign up within 48 hours.

I was blown away by the level of interest (I expected only 6 or so participants).

These many sign-ups were also quite stressful, as it meant that I had to try to corral nearly 50 people into the Telegram Group we were using to coordinate matches.

At one point, my Telegram actually got rate-limited, as I was starting too many individual chats with people who were outside of my contacts, leaving me unable to add people.

However, we nonetheless were able to get everyone in, and matches began as scheduled at 4:00 pm PST on December 7.

Despite the large number of sign-ups, due to a combination of AFKs and logistical challenges (more on this later), we wound up having the following eight teams compete:

• Ordengg*

• Phantom Phoenix

• Ordengg+

• [WE]

• Composable Hub

• Force Prime

• IPFS

• KULI

And compete they did!

The season began with a bang, as Ordengg* faced off against Phantom Phoenix.

Due to some of the aforementioned AFKs, these were the only two teams available to play during the 4:00 pm PST window, and such, faced off in two back-to-back matches.

The clashes were epic, with fronts mobilized, gold mines captured and lost, and units exchanging blows.

Ultimately, Ordengg* emerged victorious in both matches and boasted a 2-0 record.

We then had our next slate of matches later that night at 4:00 am PST.

Yes, you are reading that correctly.

For some inexplicable reason, I wanted matches to coincide with the two times per day that the Lattice team created free, public ones.

So, I woke up at 3:30 am PST on December 8 to help ensure the league ran smoothly.

However…it was well worth the wake.

The second window was loaded, with the remaining six teams competing across many memorable matches.

For instance, [WE], represented by MephewC and 2-time Sky Strife tournament champion JK, went on a tear.

They ripped off three consecutive victories over KULI, Ordengg+, and Composable Hub.

We also had what I considered to be a major upset, as Force Prime, which consisted of ProofOfJoker and iNoob359, defeated WASD Cup champion IPFS and his temporary teammate ProofOfJake.

Yes…ProofOfJoker and ProofOfJake were two different people.

And no, their names were not meant to troll each other.

Anyways, by the end of Day 1, things were popping off.

However, we ultimately had to postpone the regular season soon after, as Sky Strife was put into maintenance mode and rendered unplayable until December 12.

While unfortunate, as it meant we had to cut the regular season short, I think it was 100% the right decision, as our matches had been plagued by very long loading times that would last upwards of 15+ minutes.

Nonetheless, we were able to finish out the regular season with the standings as follows:

As they had the four best records, [WE], Ordengg*, Force Prime, and Ordengg+ all advanced to the playoffs!

As previously mentioned, the playoffs consisted of two semi-final matches, followed by the finals.

Despite some technical difficulties on my end that almost rugged the entire stream, we managed to get things underway on December 14 on ggQuest’s Twitch thanks to the help of ProofOfJake.

The atmosphere was incredible, as Decio of ggQuest did an incredible job shoutcasting the event.

Anyways, the first semi-final match would see the breakout Force Prime team take on the grizzled veterans of [WE].

In another surprise, this was a very one-sided match.

Force Prime dominated, coasting to a convincing victory in which ProofOfJoker and iNoob ended the game with 15 combined units remaining compared to 0 from [WE].

Then, the two Orden teams faced off in the second semi’s match.

Before you ask, the reason why I decided to pit the Orden’s against each other (In what I called “The Orden Bowl”), is due to the potential risk of an Orden vs. Orden final.

(I thought that would be a buzzkill. Sorry, Orden).

Despite both teams being part of the same clan, the Orden Bowl was intense.

Each Orden squad was aggressive from the jump, jockeying for possession over gold mines and the center of the map.

Ultimately, Ordengg+, repped by ClassicJ and Dudendy, got the W, advancing to face Force Prime in the finals.

At long last, the battle for the championship was here:

The venerable Ordengg+ versus the upstarts at Force Prime.

The finals lived up to the billing, including some of the highest-level Sky Strife play I’ve ever seen over the course of the nearly 20-minute-long match.

Force Prime and Ordengg+ units clashed in intense melee combat, fighting tooth and nail for control over mines and every last ounce of gold.

For a while, it was a back-and-forth affair, with each team exchanging salvos and neither pulling away.

Eventually, Orden got the upper hand, repelling ProofOfJoker of Force Prime back into the nook of his own base.

Following this, Dudendy launched an all-out archer assault, raining arrows upon Joker’s units and destroying his forces.

iNoob fell to ClassicJ soon after, and with that, Orden was victorious and crowned the first-ever World Sky League champion!

GG.

All in all, the inaugural season of World Sky League was epic and a ton of fun.

Orden may have won the chip this time, but we’re shaping up for an incredibly exciting next season.

Are the champs going to repeat? Can Force Prime get revenge?

Will [WE] redeem themselves? Can Composable Hub and KULI break through?

And when will WASD Guild (Who is winning in Primodium v0.9 right now btw) enter the fray?

(I’m not biased at all with that point of intrigue)

These are only some of the questions we’ll get answers to when World Sky League returns upon the launch of Sky Strife Season 0.1 on January 7.

(LFG!!)

We don’t know how things will play out, but I’m incredibly hyped.

See you next season!

⚔️

Before you go…

If you’re a fan of World Sky League (whether from before or after reading this article) and want to own a piece of the first season, you can do so by collecting our free commemorative badge designed by Bushi below!

👇👇

subscriber-edition://0x97E1ada782AFd04BBAec31097FCdFb852CFa685E?tokenId=0

This mint is live for the next ~6 days, and we’ll be releasing new ones after each season!

Thanks for reading!

If you liked this piece, you can collect it at the top of the page. It’s free!

After you do, hop in our WASD Collectooor Telegram chat to meet other collectors, enthusiasts, players, and degens!

Finally, to stay current on all things WASD, subscribe below, follow us on X, and head over to our WASD Republic Discord server!

Have a great weekend, and see you all on Thursday!