Statement About X-Wing Finals

Statement About X-Wing Finals

After the drama around the stream of the X-Wing Finals at Canadian Nationals this past weekend and other incidents that have occurred in previous weeks, we at VTTV wanted to release a statement clarifying our position on the role of stream viewers and casters at an event as well as outlining exactly what happened this weekend. We are not looking to engage in a debate about the decisions that we or the judges made and intend for this to be our final word on the matter.

2018 Canadian Nationals

2018 Canadian Nationals

The 2018 FFG Canadian Nationals are only two days away, taking place at Breakoutcon on March 16-18 here in Toronto.  Just like the last two years, VTTV will be there to bring you as much live coverage as we can manage.  That means, this year, we'll actually be running two simultaneous streams for all three days of the tournament.  All of those streams can be found on our regular VTTV YouTube channel and we have created a second Twitch channel - vttvlive2 - for those that follow us there.  See below for a breakdown of all the events we will be covering.

X-Wing - 2017 Toronto Regional Championship

X-Wing - 2017 Toronto Regional Championship

Back in January, Face to Face Games Toronto hosted the 2017 Toronto X-Wing Regional Championship.  Over 100 of the best X-Wing players came to Seneca College and Victor and I had the pleasure of streaming the entire event.  Special thanks to Mike for sacrificing his spot at the event to provide insightful commentary throughout the day. It was a mad dash to get the venue set up, so unfortunately we weren't able to capture the first round.

Android: Netrunner - 2016 Store Championship @ Face to Face Games

Android: Netrunner - 2016 Store Championship @ Face to Face Games

On December 17th,  Face to Face Games Toronto hosted their 2016 Store Championship for Android: Netrunner. We were there to provide streaming coverage, featuring full commentary throughout. You can watch the whole stream here, but we'd highlighted most of the matches from the top 8 below. Unfortunately the recording failed for over 5 minutes of the winners semi-final match, so while it is available in the full stream, we don't have it as an individual match.

Star Wars: Destiny - Box Tournament 12/10/2016

Star Wars: Destiny - Box Tournament 12/10/2016

The first local Star Wars: Destiny tournament took play on December 10, 2016 at Face to Face Games Toronto and VTTV Live was there to cover it. The entry cost was $10 and folks that had pre-ordered a box in November were given free entry.  We had 17 entrants and played five rounds of swiss with 45-minute best-of-one rounds.   This was the first competitive event for these players and some of the first Destiny matches period, so please forgive the gameplay mistakes that were made.

Star Wars: Destiny - Preview Event

Star Wars: Destiny - Preview Event

Once again we were able to get our YouTube videos online in a timely fashion, but we were late with the post on our website.  To help celebrate the launch of Star Wars: Destiny on December 1st, we posted a number of videos we recorded during the Preview Event that took place on November 19th at 401 Games, including a head-to-head pack opening, a teaching match between Travis and Victor, as well as two casual matches.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault - 2016 Toronto Regional

Star Wars: Imperial Assault - 2016 Toronto Regional

This year, VTTV was lucky enough to provide live coverage from the 2016 Star Wars: Imperial Assault Toronto Regional Championship from 401 Games on November 12th.  While we got the matches up on YouTube relatively quickly, I never got around to collecting them here.

VTTV Fall Schedule

VTTV Fall Schedule

Victor and I have spent much of the past month recovering from Canadian Nationals, but our fledgling audience might be wondering if we will be producing any more content in the future? We have a number of live events coming up over the next few months:

Congratulations 2016 Canadian Champions!

Congratulations 2016 Canadian Champions!

What a weekend! Congratulations to all the new Canadian Champions!  If you are curious about the results from all of those events, you can check out our 2016 FFG Canadian Nationals hub for all the standings. This was the first time that Victor and I tackled an event of this scale, but I think our preparation paid off and we were able to provide some professional coverage of all the events from the 2016 FFG Canadian National Championships - even if we did have to call in some back-up in the form of Rob's Gaming Table to cover A Game of Thrones: The Card Game.  The only final table that was not streamed live, unfortunately, was Star Wars: The Card Game, though we were able to broadcast two rounds of the Top 8 before cutting over to the Star Wars: Armada final table. After spending a day recuperating, we are going to start working on cutting all the individual matches to post to YouTube from our local recordings.  That should make it easy for those that weren't watching live to find the matches they want to enjoy at the highest quality we can provide.  We have 30+ hours of video, so it's going to take us a while to work our way through the backlog.  The first match from the X-Wing Top 32 should go up tomorrow. We also have a few livestreams coming up next weekend.  On Saturday, September 17th we will be streaming a Warhammer 40,000: Conquest Summer Kit tournament at 1:00PM EDT from 401 Games. We will be doubling up on Sunday, September 18th with a Android: Netrunner Summer Kit tournament, again at 1:00PM EDT from 401 Games.  For both those events we will be running without live commentary.  We are working on putting up a calendar of upcoming events so that you can see if there is anything you want to tune in for. Although I tweeted out some thanks yesterday, I did want to use this forum for a fuller accounting of our gratitude. To Lion Rampant and Derek, Mike and Richard - thank you for booking such a great venue and making sure that we would have the space to accommodate everyone that wanted to compete.  And then being there to help facilitate registration, scorekeeping and doing whatever needed to be done (including putting out 80 X-Wing mats provided by Ultimate Guard).  And thank you for putting your faith in the volunteers who offered to help make sure the weekend ran smoothly. To the volunteers and TOs - Victor, Jon, Liz, Graham, Chris, Richard, Norm - this weekend would not have been possible without you.  All the events ran smoothly and we were able to accomodate well over 300 players over the course of three days.  Speaking of which ... To the players \- A big part of why we started this channel was because we love the FFG player community.  And this weekend was a perfect example of why.  Thank you!  The high caliber of play was impressive, but the high level of sportsmanship on display was what truly stood out.  Hopefully, win or lose, this weekend was memorable for all participants. To the commentators - Victor had lined up commentators for some events, but for others we had to invite tournament participants to join us on the mic.  I was delighted that, without fail, they were able to add of level of insight and fun to our broadcast.  Myself, Jon and Victor handled the duties for Conquest. Emily, Aaron, Mike and little George did a great job on X-Wing.  David & David stepped in at the last minute for Imperial Assault.  Adam, Mikhail, Terence and Dien took us through the Netrunner Top 8.  Rob St. John over at Rob's Gaming Table took care of Game of Thrones while we had Netrunner on the main stream.  Jonathan from the Ion Control podcast and Claude (father of the eventual winner) were able to help us through two rounds of the Star Wars LCG.  And Victor and Norm were able to take us home with whispered coverage of the Armada final table. And finally, to all our new viewers - thank you for tuning in to watch the events.  Hopefully you had as much fun watching as had putting it together.  Victor and I have big plans for the channel, so hopefully you'll come back.  Reach out to us on twitter (@vttvlive) or email (vttvlive@gmail.com) if you have any suggestions or requests for future content. And now it's time to sleep! Travis.

2016 FFG Canadian National Championships

2016 FFG Canadian National Championships

The first event that VTTV Live will provide coverage for is the 2016 Fantasy Flight Games Canadian National Championships, taking place September 9-11 at the Holiday Inn Yorkdale in Toronto, Canada and hosted by Lion Rampant.  We will be streaming a full, live coverage on both our Twitch and Youtube channels, focusing on bringing you as much of the elimination rounds as possible.  If you want to join us live at the event, tickets are still available. Our coverage begins Friday at 12pm with the Swiss rounds of the X-Wing™ tournament.  This is the only event for which we may not be able to offer full commentary, as most of our regular talent is either playing in the event or helping to run it.  We will switch over to the Top 8 of the Warhammer 40:000: Conquest at 5:30pm.  Commentary will be provided by some of the regular members of The Tactical Squad, but we will also look at getting some of the top talent in the Canadian scene to contribute. Saturday starts at 10:30am with the Top 32 for X-Wing™.  We'll follow that tournament until it's conclusion before joining the Top 8 of Star Wars™: Imperial Assault, already in progress.  That will probably happen between 6 and 7pm. Sunday brings our first major conflict, as the Top 16 for A Game of Thones: The Card Game and the Top 8 for Android: Netrunner occur at the same time.  We will be following the Netrunner elimination rounds on our stream, starting at 11:30am, but we are working with a partner to try to provide coverage of Thrones on a different channel that may be familiar to some fans.  Our Netrunner commentary will feature some of the top players in Toronto but also a guest appearance from The Metropole Grid. When the Netrunner finals conclude - between 5 and 6pm - we will try to bring you the first couple games of the Star Wars™: The Card Game Top 8 cut.  But, because Victor and I are such big fans, we will be ending our coverage with the Star Wars™: Armada finals at 7pm, provided we can find a good setup to film the large playfield.  It will be interesting to see if the North American Champion can repeat here.  I won't be there to defend my title, not that Norm was particularly worried about that possibility. We've published the full event schedule and our full stream schedule here on the site, if you want to make sure to mark your favourite event in your calendar.  In addition to live gameplay, we hope to bring you interviews with some of the players. If I don't see you in person at the event, I hope to see many of you in the stream chat on either Twitch or Youtube.

Welcome

Welcome

Welcome to VTTV Live.  Our names are Victor and Travis.  We play a lot of games, some of them competitively.  Many of those games are published by Fantasy Flight Games.  Between the two of us we have won regional and national championships and placed at both the North American and World Championships.  But more importantly, we have committed a lot of our time over the past few years towards helping to build the community around those games in the Greater Toronto Area. For the last 18-24 months, a lot of that effort has gone in to providing video coverage of local competitive events, whether that has been from monthly Game Night Kit tournaments, fully commentated Regional championships or full video productions from last year's Canadian Nationals.  Our focus has been mostly on X-Wing™, Android: Netrunner and Warhammer 40,000: Conquest.  We'd love to stream more Star Wars™: Armada, but haven't found a great setup for filming the large playfield. To date, that coverage has existed in various places, like the 401 Games Twitch stream or The Tactical Squad's Youtube channel and we have had modest success in building an audience.  Recently, Victor suggested that we try to step our game with that coverage and started purchasing some new equipment to increase the quality of our videos and to allow us to broadcast in more locations.  I recommended that we create a home for those videos to live so that we could build our audience in one place.  And thus, VTTV Live was born. Starting with the 2016 Canadian Nationals on September 9-11th - hosted at the Holiday Inn Yorkdale in Toronto, Canada,  tickets still available - we will be streaming our content live on both our Twitch and Youtube channels.  In the past our viewers have been split on their preference of streaming platform, so we haven't committed one way or another yet.  We plan on producing VOD content as well, so that will certainly live on our Youtube channel.  An upcoming post will provide the full details about our streaming schedule for Canadian Nationals.   Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/vttvlive Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk3Ylq2jwldNGynR7HLoFbA Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/vttvlive