The first weekend of the Gallente-sponsored Alliance Tournament XIX was full of spectacle and surprise. We asked the Just About EVE Online community for their most entertaining and insightful coverage of the intense series of clashes on August 12 and 13. Three different community members took up the challenge and filed a chunk of sports reporting that, frankly, leaves ESPN in the dust.

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A dramatic summary

"Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed capsuleers and intrepid spacefarers, welcome to the celestial arena of EVE Online's Alliance Tournament XIX."

The best place to start is with James ’s excellent, stylised roundup of all of the high-octane action. If you missed the first weekend but plan to catch the second, watch this first to get up to speed. Featuring the excellent production values and scripting we've come to expect from @MrUnluckie’s short videos, you don't want to miss this. Original post

An epic review stream

The latest streamer to make it into EVE’s partner program did not disappoint with their comprehensive and varied AT XIX Weekend 1 Recap stream. Alongside Chad Flame and Alliance Tournament team captains, Joshua Hicks kept the energy and enthusiasm high over a near four-hour stream. While it would be impossible to review all 38 matches played at the weekend, the stream took the ten most thrilling, analysed them, and put their highlights together in a reel for you to enjoy. Original post

Alliance Tournament market trickery

Whether by ticket touting, hot dog sales, or knock-off merch, where there’s a sporting event there’s money to be made and tricks to be done. Rather than covering the dogfights and brawls, Kane Carnifex created a breakdown of the Jita market shenanigans that accompany the AT.

Where EVE players go, chicanery and espionage are never far behind. It’s common practice among Alliance Tournament teams to buy up entire items on the marketplace then relist them to either glean information about their opponent’s potential fits or simply just to deprive them of key modules. All is fair in love and esports.

“So you didn't have the chance to play in the AT? No worries, you still can join the AT Market in Jita. Since the actual tournament is on TQ the Flagship has a real value. But we aren't talking about Officer Mods. That, my friends, is another story.

“So what happened on the first day of AT XIX on the Jita market? I’ll point to the following AT XIX rule: ‘The restriction on meta 1-4 Sensor Dampeners, Tracking Disruptors, Guidance Disruptors, and ECM will remain in effect.’”

Meta modules are all drops. So if people aren’t ratting, they’re not getting to market. Here’s Kane Carnifex:

“So META Modules only, hmmm. We should have plenty of them since nobody uses them; they come from NPCs, but they’re also kind of cheap, and T2 is just better. Watch it around 17:24 [EVE time], we have the following cherries:”

Tracking Disruptors

“If you’re a younger team in the AT, you may encounter an issue - that the module you need costs 150 million. So will you buy it or…? “Stay tuned for more market trickery.”

The competition will be even more fierce this coming weekend as the survivors of the first matches battle it out for the Adrestia and Utu variant prize ships. A new bounty covering these matches (19 and 20 August) will go live very soon. So if you fancy yourself as a sports commentator, get your microphone at the ready.

We’ll leave you with the words of James

“This is your interstellar sports anchor signing off for now, stay tuned. And until next time, goodnight New Eden.”

N.B. Some text has been slightly amended for grammar and brevity.