Heya, short post today –just announcing the winner of the Uprising World Premiere Las Vegas Contest. I’ll have a full article on PT New Jersey later this week, and (hopefully) I’ll get the next big contest up by the weekend –we’re going back to flavortext.
Runners-up
I got a bunch of solid submissions, so real quickly I want to shout out a couple favorites:
The very first submission had a really solid set of names including: Azalea, Contract Killer vs Dash, Lightning in a Bottle
I feel like the Azalea one is really clean and calls out a particular point in her narrative which would help contextualize this version among ones that follow later. “Lighting in a Bottle” was a creative “non-standard” title that nevertheless feels very Dash. I don’t know that I imagine these two going head to head in the narrative –actually, I feel like they could both probably learn a bit from each other and be better for it, but this was a strong start to the competition.
I’ll bookend that with the final submission I got as the other runner up. This one framed Azalea vs. Lexi in a contest of Rangers. Putting two of the same class into a proposed product is a bold move – It would definitely a mandatory pick up for Ranger players, and I kind of like the cheekiness of it, though I feel like the product line is designed to juxtapose different classes as opposed to showing the more nuanced differences within a class, but that’s the fun of this sort of contest where anything goes. Here’s the back of the box blurb this contestant wrote.
The Everfest Carnival is known far and wide as a place of excitement and mystery. Naturally, something that attracts top talent from across the continent also sparks some of the fiercest competition! It could be a simple cards game for dibs on the last Kai’eo Fur Coat, or a quick “training spar” that draws a crowd.
For Azalea, though, it was about making a name for herself. Life in the Pits over the last few months as a nobody was rough. She could tell just by the way Lexi held her bow that she’d be a worthy opponent. And her fingers were itching to feel a bowstring again after not having knocked an arrow for the last few days. So, maybe out of a desire for a little… Fun? No, strictly business.
Lexi felt the cold eyes of the hooded stranger long before she approached. And though she knew she had nothing to gain or lose, she was more than happy to engage in a little competition. Lexi thought it would be as simple as hitting a few bottles before calling it a day. But the stranger matched her every shot.
Naturally, others aimed to join and prove their skill. But the only two holding their own were the two who started it all, even splitting each other’s arrows on a target across an entire field. By end of the day, everyone agreed there was only one way to decide the victor – a duel!
Give it your best shot.
We’ve got a lot of Rathe flavor packed into 250 words there, and a very solid closing pun.
Fun fact: Azalea was the most submitted hero in this contest, which goes to show that the community loves her despite her lackluster showing in competitive events. Maybe she’ll get an official Classic Battle deck at some point but first, we have…
The Winner
Dash, Out of Time vs. Kavdaen, Guileful Upstart
“Need a hand?” Kavdaen smirked. Dash collected herself and rose to her feet.
“Not from you. Never again…”
Classic Battles: Dash vs Kavdaen tells the legendary tale of Dash, an inventor on the run as her techno-heists begin to catch up to her and the shadowy broker, Kavdaen, ready to help her out…for a price. Their inevitable clash will foreshadow a larger battle between the technologically advanced Metrix and the oppressed ruins it was built upon, the Pitt.
Will you choose to assemble the ultimate steam-powered exoskeleton as fast as you can? Or will you bide your time providing small advantages to your opponent, before crushing them with the debt you’ve leveraged against them? The battle between ingenuity and cunning begins now.
Several entries keyed in on the strong thematic connections between Metrix and the Pits, and aside from wanting to see that showcased in a set generally, a Classic Battles set feels very natural for that pairing. I ultimately picked this one because it’s it a bit out of the box, but I can also see this encounter happening. Dash spends most of her time flaunting her inventions and thumbing her nose at the law, and I can imagine some disaster with her parents’ company that suddenly denies her access to her family’s wealth and resources. Were that to happen, we could definitely see her hard up on her luck. And who better to step in than everyone’s favorite creepy merchant/artist? I like that this description set up both a quick narrative hook for why these two would be fighting as well as giving a teaser of how the decks might play mechanically. The quick exchange of dialogue also does a good job of teasing a bigger story, which is the sort of thing I can imagine being expanded on by LSS alongside a product release via a lore drop or contained within a booklet that comes with the set.
Final Note
For the winner/runner ups quoted here. I’ve chosen to err on the side of anonymity, but if you’d like to be credited by name or pseudonym for your entries, please email me or shoot me a message via Discord contact (info here), and I’ll update the article for posterity.
FAB with Freyja 