The Invitational

The Invitational was a Cops and Crims tournament hosted by Fooey in late 2015 for the 4 major guilds at the time, Meiji, The Legend of ExCal, Veracity and Expendables. The Invitational was eventually won by ExCal with EXPD coming 2nd and Veracity coming 3rd.

## Format

The Tournament consisted of a 8v8 best of 3 double elimination bracket via Party Challenges, with the starting matches being Veracity vs ExCal and Meiji vs Expendables.

### Rules

* As mentioned earlier, each Match was a best of 3 unique maps with rounds determining ties with the exception of the Grand Final having an overtime map if a tie were to occur

* Each Guild was only allowed players from their current guild at the time of the match other than ExCal and Veracity who were each allowed players from their family guilds, ExCal II and Veracity II respectively.

### Analysis

After each match, the tournament organizer; Fooey would make a forum thread analyzing each round of every match. These were met with great support from the community who enjoyed spectating the tournament.

### Interviews

Midway through the tournament, Fooey conducted interviews with the leaders of Veracity (KingHakaka), Expendables (wootdude13) and ExCal (NavvyBlue). He asked them multiple questions regarding their teams play in the tournament, as well as their feelings regarding certain things. The interviews can be found [3]here.

## Results

Match 1 of the Upper Bracket took place between ExCal and Veracity, which ExCal won 2-0 (5-0 Sandstorm, 5-1 Atomic).

Subsequently on the other end of the bracket (Match U2) took place between Expendables (EXPD) and Meiji. EXPD ended up taking the match 2-0 (5-2 Alleyway, 5-0 Sandstorm). This brought EXPD vs ExCal into the Upper Bracket Match 3, which statistically was the closest match of the tournament and one of only 2 matches that were not 2-0 wins. ExCal ended up winning 2.5-.5 (5-3 Temple, 4-4 Alleyway, 5-0 Sandstorm).

After this match, Meiji ended up having the majority of their players go to Expendables, and thus Meiji forfeited vs Veracity in the loser bracket.

Veracity advanced to face Expendables in the Loser Bracket Finals. EXPD ended up taking the series 2.5-.5 (4-4 Temple, 5-0 Atomic, 5-0 Alleyway).

This brought EXPD to the Grand Final to rematch ExCal. ExCal ended up taking the series 2-0 to finish undefeated (5-2 Sandstorm, 5-2 Alleyway).

## Controversy

### Hackusations

Prior to the Tournament, two of ExCal's core players, MrHesus and Bones7918 (KnifingReaper) were under a significant amount of suspicion regarding their alleged use of hacks. Winning the tournament for ExCal brought under even more suspicion with Hesus and Bones as they were 2 of the key players in ExCal's victory. This was cited by KingHakaka in his interview with Fooey.

[Question]: How do you think VC performed against ExCal?

> "I think VC performed against excal really rubbish we were focusing on camping to gather proof for some things (According to the half of the CvC community some of their members use hacks and we have seen some players doing really suspisous stuff). Anyway we were pure focusing on gather proof (what we did (we did) very well but sadly chat was turned off in the replay mod). We never really intented to play the game at all."
>
>

Because of this (along with some in-guild controversy as well) Bones got kicked from ExCal and was outcast from the CvC Community. MrHesus, however, managed to regain his status in the CvC Community and still plays to this date.

### Meiji Guild Transfer

As mentioned earlier, the core of Meiji's team after losing to Expendables ended up joining EXPD, including their leader and #1 Leaderboards player, WileBGingy. The Expendables' leader, wootdude later said that this was an action that had been discussed between the guilds for a long time and was not mainly because of the tournament. This still however did bring along some issues with players as players who had fought against EXPD the previous match ended up fighting for Expendables the next.

## The Invitational 2

The Invitational 2 was a sequel tournament hosted by Fooey and M3L0N for 8 lower tier guilds in early 2016 after the update.

## Other Resources

* Wootdude interview: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awaHcI5BADt1ZcpNtgXiYiuLtcY5dCl3LePS7aa8CzY/edit
* NavvyBlue interview:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GNdYp0CkxyBqesaKxmgLc1OFztg\_Htt2oFuw6htJksg/edit
* KingHakaka interview: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GNdYp0CkxyBqesaKxmgLc1OFztg\_Htt2oFuw6htJksg/edit
* Tournament Page: https://hypixel.net/threads/tournament-the-invitational-information.465124/
* Match Analysis(es): https://hypixel.net/threads/the-invitational-veracity-vs-excal-analysis-match-u1.487021/ https://hypixel.net/threads/the-invitational-expd-vs-meiji-analysis-match-u2.470592/ https://hypixel.net/threads/the-invitational-excal-vs-expd-analysis-match-u3.515463/

## References

1. ↑ [1]
2. ↑ [2]