Sep 24, 2019
Sorare — New SO5 Tournament details: Everything you need to know to plan ahead!
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sorare CEO, Nicolas Julia. In our chat together, I got an insight into some of the next major upgrades that Sorare Managers should expect to see in their ‘Gaming Arena’.
Today, confirmation of some exciting changes to SO5 (their main Fantasy Football Game) were announced, and in this article, I will review these in more detail.
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A Brief History of SO5
SO5 is the first game that can be played with Sorare Limited Edition Collectibles.
Each week you can enter 5-a-side teams (hence the name SO5!) into a Fantasy Football Tournaments to compete with fellow managers for lucrative in-game prizes.
Your players score points for actions they make on the pitch in real-life and gain experience (XP) when played in Tournaments that in-turn helps them level-up and become increasingly more powerful over time.
Why the need for improvements?
With the game now already celebrating 7 months young, there is more diversity than ever before in terms of the Player Cards in-game ‘Power’ and the age of the Sorare Managers who collect and compete with them.
So, after the latest review, it was deemed necessary to create a couple of subtle changes that would provide a more competitive balance in gameplay and increase the opportunities for more Sorare Managers to win prizes!
NEW SO5 Leagues & Divisions
After the next update, Managers will be able to compete and use their Player Cards in the following SO5 Leagues:
ALL-STAR LEAGUE (all player cards eligible)
- Division 1 (entry uncapped)
- Division 2 (entry capped to Multiplier X)
- Division 3 (entry capped to Multiplier Y)
- Starter Division* (entry capped to Multiplier Z)
U21 ACADEMY LEAGUE (u21 player cards only)
- Same Division structure as All-Star League
DEVELOPMENTAL LEAGUE (all player cards eligible)
- Same Division structure as All-Star League
The inclusion of Divisions now gives the overall structure a much stronger ‘football feel’ and the main league categories allow for managers to specialise or participate across defined levels/age groups associated with real-life.
The biggest addition here IMO is the introduction of a Starter Division. This will provide New Managers joining the game, the perfect environment to learn the games basics and prepare for future challenges to come!
*I am planning a full article dedicated to the Starter Division — follow me to be notified when this is published!
NEW SO5 Entry Rules
In addition to re-balancing the SO5 tournament structure, there will also be the following changes to entry and eligibility:
- Managers will be able to enter 1 team per Division with the exception of the Developmental League which will allow for unlimited team entries.
- Each Division will have an upper Multiplier (limit) on the strength of the team you can enter, allowing managers the freedom to create teams that combine different scarcities and different powers of playing cards
NEW Divisional Multipliers
I’ll go into more detail about ‘Multipliers’ in a future article when I have more knowledge of exactly how these will work, however, my initial understanding is that each Division will have an upper limit value which corresponds to the collective ‘Power’ of the players you can select in your team.
At this early stage, it looks like the addition of Multipliers (effectively tiers) will really help to ensure that Managers of similar strengths compete together.
Then, depending on the Multiplier Caps, I see this opening up a lot more strategical options for Managers. To date, the entry eligibility of SO5 Leagues has revolved around the 3 different scarcities of cards and this will no longer be the case after the update.
With the creation of the new divisions, expect to now see teams of mixed scarcities competing together — for example, if the Multiplier Cap was set at 20, it would be possible to create and compete with any of these combinations or similar!
- Team A: 1 Unique, 3 Super Rares + 1 Rare card
- Team B: 5 Super Rares
- Team C: 2 Uniques + 3 Rare cards
NEW Progressive Prize Structures
After revising the entry eligibility to 1 team per Division, per Manager and creating the Divisions so that Managers of similar strengths battle more closely together, it is expected that we’ll see more and more Sorare Managers in amongst the prizes!
- Each Division will have a progressive prize structure that will initially be unlocked when a Tournament has 10 or more entrants.
- Increased prize pools and additional winners will be created as Divisions grow and trigger higher entry thresholds.
- New Prizes such as ‘XP Boosts’ can be won to help your players Level up and increase their in-game ‘Power’ faster.
It will be interesting to see in the early weeks which Divisions prove the most popular with Sorare Managers. I can imagine scenarios where we could have 30–40 teams battling out in some Divisions whilst others may start (perhaps the U21's) with a smaller amount of teams and build up over time (based on card supply).
Is it too early to say where SO5 goes next?
Nicolas made it clear earlier in the month that further tournaments will be added as more and more Managers join Sorare.
I can’t see it being long before we have other League Categories that mirror the Licensed Leagues in the game as well as Nationality and maybe even Club Leagues.
So, look for the signals and plan ahead. The U21 League is just a few weeks away and there will certainly be more to follow!
Summary
If you have evaluated the above in a similar way to myself, I would expect you to now undertake a review of your Player Card Collection to plan for the upcoming changes (expected mid-October)
For managers that have recently started or are just about to embark on their SO5 career, now could be a great time to add more depth to your collection in preparation for when the New Tournaments kick-off!
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Ready to compete for ETH & the games best player card prizes?
