Halloween weekend, October 31–November 1, was filled with some very expensive explosions. EVE Online’s Alliance Tournament XXII (or ATXXII), ended after two days of finals and a five-round Grand Final.
My first rough pass through the killmails puts the destruction worth of 7 trillion ISK. That is still a working estimate rather than an official figure, and I want to clean the data properly before treating it as gospel, this was not a cheap weekend. If you missed the setup, I covered the final 16, flagships and prize ships in my ATXXII finals preview.
Table of Contents
And the ATXXII Winners Are…
Deteriorated have immortalized themselves in EVE history. Their name now belongs with the Alliance Tournament champions, both inside New Eden and on the physical Alliance Tournament trophy.
They were not my obvious pick going into the weekend. Their route to the trophy was hardly clean either: after being knocked into the losers bracket by Psychokids., Deteriorated had to build a long chain of wins back through elimination matches before meeting Dracarys. in the Grand Final. That final went the full five rounds, with Deteriorated eventually taking the series 3–2. This was not a team cruising through an easy side of the bracket and arriving fresh for one last match. They were forced to keep adapting, survive the bans and repeatedly find another composition that worked.
One Tiny MJD Mistake That Changed the Tournament
Before the Grand Final, one fight deserves its own mention because it may have changed the entire ATXXII timeline: Rote Kapelle versus Deteriorated.
Rote had stripped away most of Deteriorated’s attacking wing and were left facing an Onyx, a Nighthawk and very little else that could realistically catch their small ships. Deteriorated were still ahead on points, but the Onyx shields began dropping surprisingly quickly under sustained pressure. The pilot tried to create distance with an MJD beacon, and as they approached it I could already see the problem—the ship was aligned toward the outer arena boundary 😀
Ten seconds later, the Onyx was launched straight outside the arena and evaporated into a wreck, plus put their team on -7 points. That left the Nighthawk chasing pack of Jackdaws and rest of the small things of the Rote. Short-range missiles and poor application. In another timeline, Rote Kapelle could have lose that match and taken Deteriorated’s place deeper in the bracket. Instead, one bad MJD angle pushed Deteriorated into lower bracket, and the same team eventually climbed all the way into the Grand Final and became champions.
Could it have gone differently? The obvious answer is better alignment before committing to the beacon. I also think Deteriorated might have extracted more value by having the Nighthawk screen the Onyx. With a warp disruptor on the Nighthawk, forcing the Jackdaws to pass close could potentially have caught one at short range and deleted it. Easy to say from the couch, naturally; tournament pilots do not get the luxury of pausing the match and drawing arrows on the screen.
The Grand Final: Deteriorated vs. Dracarys.
The Grand Final went the full five rounds, but it was not five rounds of constant bloodshed. Some matches were clean, some were slow, and several were decided more by positioning and composition than by spectacular damage races.
Round One — Dracarys. 1:0
Deteriorated opened the final with a strange Fleet Issue Phoon armor composition, and it simply did not work. Dracarys. took the first point cleanly enough, immediately putting Deteriorated under pressure and giving me the feeling that my pre-final read on the series might have been very wrong.
Round Two — 1:1
Deteriorated answered by bringing the Bestla and leveling the series. It was the most interesting match of the series, the balance shifter several times and finally Bestla and Loki managed to finish of the Dracarys. flagship! Below there is video with that particular fight (second part, see timecodes).
Round Three — Deteriorated Take the Lead, 1:2
Deteriorated did not field their flagship; instead, the Bestla effectively became bait and absorbed the opening punishment while the rest of the team worked through Dracarys.’ composition. The bait held. The Bestla survived the initial beating, the sweep continued around it, and Deteriorated secured the win.
That match was a revelation to me. I knew the Bestla was strong, but I had underestimated how much pressure it could soak while still remaining useful. Its combination of missiles, tank, utility and heavily bonused web drones can turn one cruiser into a remarkably complete problem.
If you want to play with the idea in Pyfa, this is the sample ATXXII-style Bestla fit I saved:
[Bestla, AT XXII]Assault Damage Control IIBallistic Control System IIBallistic Control System IIBallistic Control System IICo-Processor II50MN Quad LiF Restrained MicrowarpdriveMedium Capacitor Booster IIMultispectrum Shield Hardener IIMultispectrum Shield Hardener IIX-Large Ancillary Shield BoosterMedium Energy Neutralizer IIMedium Infectious Scoped Energy NeutralizerHeavy Assault Missile Launcher IIHeavy Assault Missile Launcher IHeavy Assault Missile Launcher IHeavy Assault Missile Launcher IMedium Core Defense Field Extender IIMedium Kinetic Shield Reinforcer IIValkyrie SW-600 x6Warrior SW-300 x9
Round Four — 2:2 and the Vindicator MJD Show
Round four was the slow one. While the rest of Deteriorated’s team was being dismantled, the Vindicator spent much of the match playing MJD positioning games and trying not to become the next wreck. There was no heroic comeback hiding in the maneuvering; Dracarys. had the match under control and tied the series.
The memorable part came right at the end, when the Vindicator survived on structure with almost nothing left. Dramatic to look at, absolutely. Strategically useful by that point, not particularly. My Twitch channel points got zeroed, again.
Round Five — Let the Vindicator Work
The fifth round was showtime for the Vindicator. The Widow was a major enabler for the overall control setup, but the visual story of the fight belonged to the Vindi: move across the battlefield, grab a target, and let Cormack’s Modified Ion Blaster Cannons unload Void at point-blank range. Shields, armor and hull disappeared in visible chunks.
It was also a satisfying way for Deteriorated to finish the tournament because their Vindicator had been the declared flagship all weekend. While so many other flagships had already turned into expensive wrecks, theirs survived long enough to become part of the composition that secured the championship.
Was ATXXII Spectacular?
My Twitch channel point betting certainly was not. On the first finals day I think I correctly called roughly two matches out of about twenty-five. At some point it stopped being prediction and became a recurring donation to the little number next to my Twitch account.
As for the fights themselves, the final 16 never quite produced my favorite kind of Alliance Tournament match: the long stare-down where two teams spend most of the clock positioning behind MJD Beacons, waiting for the moment to spring, and then the anti-TD time acceleration kicks in and the last two minutes turn into explosions on both sides. We had a couple of those during qualification. The first seven minutes can be almost painfully slow, then your palms start sweating while nothing has technically happened yet, and suddenly the final two minutes are pure adrenaline.
The finals also never gave us the perfect full-DPS race where both teams simply commit and twenty ships become two or three surviving wreck-dodgers in under 3 minutes. I missed that. But the weekend still had several moments where my son and I nearly flipped the snack table, both of us standing up and yelling at the screen while a favorite team tried to survive another few seconds. That is probably a better measure of whether the tournament worked than any spreadsheet I can build afterward.
Herald and Penitence: The Rewards Are Finally Real
We talked about the Herald and Penitence before the finals as prize concepts. Now the ships are in the client, and during the broadcast we got a much better look at what the winners are actually taking home.
I also have a clip with FC Bee, who worked on the ships, talking through them directly, with a high-energy fight at the end. Once that clip is embedded here, it is probably the better way to experience the explanation than another wall of module math.
Herald Bonuses
| Skill / role | Bonus |
|---|---|
| Assault Frigates (per level) | 20% bonus to Small Energy Turret optimal range per level |
| 40% bonus to Small Energy Turret damage per level | |
| 4% bonus to all armor resistances per level | |
| Electronic Attack Ships (per level) | 5% reduction in ship capacitor recharge time per level |
| Amarr Frigate (per level) | 12.5% bonus to Weapon Disruptor effectiveness per level |
| 5% bonus to Small Energy Turret rate of fire per level | |
| Role | 50% increase in capacitor warfare resistance |
| 50% reduction in Microwarpdrive signature radius penalty | |
| Can fit Assault Damage Controls |
Penitence Bonuses
| Skill / role | Bonus |
|---|---|
| Recon Ships (per level) | 50% bonus to Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer optimal range per level |
| 30% bonus to Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer falloff range per level | |
| 40% bonus to Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer drain amount per level | |
| Heavy Interdiction Cruisers (per level) | 10% bonus to Warp Disruption Field Generator range per level |
| Amarr Cruiser (per level) | 10% bonus to Weapon Disruptor effectiveness per level |
| 25% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage per level | |
| 7,500 m bonus to Drone operation range per level | |
| Role | Cannot be detected by directional scanners |
| Can fit Warp Disruption Field Generator and Cynosural Field Generator modules | |
| 20% bonus to all armor resistances | |
| 12.5% bonus to Drone microwarp velocity | |
| 50% reduction to signature radius penalty from Warp Disruption Field Generator |
D-scan immunity plus a Warp Disruption Field Generator is the part that immediately catches my eye. Forget tournament theory for a moment: this thing looks like an absolutely disgusting supercapital crab catcher. Someone, somewhere, is going to learn that lesson the expensive way.
ATXXII by the Numbers: 510 Ships and Trillions in Wrecks
My working finals dataset currently contains 46 fights across the two days and 510 destroyed ships. The ISK total is still being cleaned, but my rough pass is already north of 7 trillion ISK. Treat that number as provisional until I finish reconciling the killmail values; it is exactly the sort of figure where one strange cargo hold or officer module can make a spreadsheet look drunk.
Previous Alliance Tournament prize ships were not spared either. My current loss tally includes 5 Anhingas, 5 Bestlas, 2 Skuas and 2 Shapashes. Fourteen of the sixteen declared flagships also died by my count. Deteriorated managed to keep their Vindicator alive and eventually used it in the composition that delivered the final win.
One killmail deserves special mention simply because EVE occasionally produces sentences that should not make sense: a Shapash was killed with a Squall on the mail. Here is the kill.
And if you want to see the full list of ships destroyed during the EVE Online Alliance Tournament XXII finals, i made a list here.
So, ATXXIII Next Year?
With this many explosions, I am fairly confident we will be back here for Alliance Tournament XXIII next year. Official confirmation will probably have to wait for Fanfest, but ATXXII gave the tournament team plenty of reasons to continue the format—and plenty of new problems to solve before the next rules document appears.
I also expect the tournament team, whether FC Swift, FC Zelus or whoever ends up carrying the rules deck on stage, to keep leaning into the use of old Alliance Tournament prize ships. They did exactly what I hoped they would do: put genuinely rare, absurdly expensive hardware into situations where somebody had to risk losing it. After all, most of us came for the same reason. We wanted to see spectacular and expensive explosions.
For more of my EVE coverage, interviews and questionable spreadsheet projects, everything is collected on the EVE Online page.
Fly safe. o7
Leave a Reply