The Announcement!
In two weeks, Duelyst will be crowning its first Grandmaster since the Duelyst World Championship.
Counterplay Games, through current associate producer and former director of organized play JuveyD, have given their blessing for us at Meltdown Town to grant the winner of Meltdown League the official title of Grandmaster.
History of the Grandmasters
To those of you who are newer to the competitive Duelyst scene, Grandmaster is a title awarded to a Duelyst player for placing highly in specific large-scale events, and it represents someone who’s shown they can play at the highest level of the game.
The Duelyst “Grandmaster” was first referenced in the Contest of Grandmasters which was a tournament pitting the best and brightest from the Duelyst community against some well-known CCG streamers and personalities. Although I do not believe this officially awarded the title of Grandmaster, I’m sure that all those who know of them would agree that TheScientist is well worthy of the title and I include them when referencing Grandmasters.
The title of Grandmaster was most prominent during the Duelyst World Championship circuit. Over the course of the year, 16 players would be named Grandmaster and qualify to play in the World Championship by winning various invitational or open tournaments. These players would be representative of the top of the Duelyst competitive scene and many of them are still well-known regardless of whether or not they are a part of the community today.
Grandmasters crowned during Duelyst World Championships:
Yukarin
Unopro
Zayne
Humans
KolosTheDragon
Rmoriar1
Demmiremmi
AlphaCentury
Meziljie
Zaowi
Ferocca
TM87
Briguy77
Dragall
RHacker93
Munkbusiness
Future of the Competitive Scene
At the end of Meltdown League, we will be adding another name to the above list of Grandmasters. By the end of today we will have already have 12 players locked into the playoffs who will have a chance to win this title, discluding Briguy who is already a Grandmaster but still. There will also be four more who qualify through the Last Chance tournament being held this weekend.
While this is hopefully an exciting prospect for those who have a chance at the title, this is also an exciting moment for me as the organizer of Meltdown League. In putting this together I’ve been pushing for this tournament to work as the face of not only the competitive community but also as a place for new and refreshing content in a community which was and is feeling lost and alone right now. I cannot speak to what we can expect in the coming months, but I can say that I will still be doing what I can to grow and foster the competitive Duelyst community. The fact that our first big event has been significant enough to warrant the revival of this title means a lot to me. It means that even without the support of a larger figure we’ve been able to organize an event to fuel and tend a small but healthy competitive fire immediately after the Bandai removed their tournament support due to a lack of interest.
Our next big project will be running the popular Duelyst team event, aptly named Team Wars. There will be more information in the weeks after the conclusion of Meltdown League. In the interim between the events I have a number of smaller events that I have interest in pursuing.
While I can’t promise anything in terms of a DWC2, we were told that if we ever wanted to see one, we would need to prove that the interest was there. I’m not so naive as to believe that we’ll make something huge but I do think that we have the potential to create a sustainable group of people interested in pushing themselves to become better Duelyst players. If we’re able to do this, and hopefully even grow our numbers, it may become possible for us to host larger events. However none of that will be possible without the support of the community but so long as y’all are here and showing interest I’ll do my best to continue pushing Duelyst towards a stable community-run competitive scene. 
That’s all I have for now, so thank you for sticking with me. I wish you all well and and wish good luck to our aspirant Grandmasters in the coming weeks!
