Editing and Additional Reporting by Nathaniel Cajuday

• The Araw ng Dabaw Axie Classic LAN tournament recently took place in Davao City where players compete while playing the popular version 2 (V2) of Axie Infinity 
• The tournament was organized by Davao-based Axie Infinity content creator Shanks and the Akagami crew to celebrate Araw ng Dabaw and supported by gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG).
• Robinson Uyamot Jr. was crowned ‌tournament champion, winning ₱10,000. YGG personalities and Axie players including Spraky, Kookoo, Hezelya, KooMander TV, and Chansanity also showed personal support for the event.

The “classic” second version (V2) of the popular web3 game Axie Infinity is still thriving in the Philippines, as the Araw ng Dabaw Axie Classic LAN tournament commenced recently in Davao City. Players played Axie Classic during the tournament and not the most recent version, Axie Infinity: Origins.

The Davao local area network (LAN) tournament was held in celebration of Araw ng Dabaw, a month-long celebration in the city every March. It was organized by Davao-based Axie Infinity content creator Shanks (or JC Isidro in real life) and his community called Akagami Crew and sponsored by the gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG).

“To all the solid supporters, both old and new! Thank you for being part of our community, and we can’t wait to do it all again soon!” Shanks wrote. 

Shanks also mentioned and thanked YGG personalities and Axie players themselves, including Spraky, Kookoo, Hezelya, KooMander TV, and Chansanity, for personally going to Davao City to show their support for the event. He also expressed his gratitude towards Sky Mavis’ co-founder Jeffrey “Jihoz” Zirlin and Philippines Lead Nix Eniego for supporting the event. 

“As a GAP Ambassador, my goal is to onboard more people to the program and one of the ways to engage and educate them is through live events like tournaments where I can also share the vision of the guild and answer all the questions pertaining to GAP so they can easily participate and start earning soulbound tokens and YGG tokens,” Kookoo told BitPinas.

The champion of the tournament is Robinson Uyamot Jr., who brought home ₱10,000.00. It was also his first time participating in an Axie tournament. Moreover, the top 10 players are Chansanity, Jukurisss Plays, John Francis, Andrae, Justine Dave, Mark Lester, Joey, Bernardozxc, and Rey JR.

Why Did Organizers Choose to Have a V2 Tournament? 

In an interview with BitPinas, Shanks revealed that they decided to have an Axie Classic tournament and not Axie Infinity: Origins because V2 was ideal for such events as people are more familiar with its gameplay, adding that it takes a faster time to finish a match in V2 compared to Origins.

“The original plan was to organize a community event and we decided that the best way to do it is to organize a classic tournament, kasi dun naman talaga tayo nagsimula ung karamihan. Super sanay na kasi tayo lahat on how the game mechanics work with v2 and some people are resistant to change. Not to mention that Origins might be pricey for some,” the content creator explained. 

[“The original plan was to organize a community event and we decided that the best way to do is to organize a classic tournament because almost, everyone started playing Axie Infinity in the version. We are all familiar with how ‌game mechanics work with V2 and some people are resistant to change. Not to mention that Origins might be pricier for some.”]

According to Shanks, V2 matches also add excitement to the audience because, even if the match is already calculated by the players, there is still the surprise factor, which is the crit. In Axie V2, critical attacks could multiply final damage by up to 200%, but the thrill is, the chances of a crit of an Axie depend on how high its morale is. This makes critical attacks almost unpredictable. 

Thus, seeing the excitement of the audience of the said event, he suggested that Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity’s developer, should consider organizing events in V2:

“But what I am thinking in the future if the people would still want to play the classic, maybe we can organize mini-tournaments with SLP as the entry fee then do it once a month.”

This was answered by Spraky, who is also the YGG Pilipinas’ Community Lead, hinting that YGG PH currently has an initiative called “Community Support Program,” where they support their sub-guilds and communities to host their own event. 

“So it’s up to our community leaders what event they want to host and YGGPH will support them. It seems like a lot of our community leaders wanted an Axie v2 tournament. I’m already in talks with Nate and we’ll be having an event (in) Batangas soon, probably v2 tournament ulit this April,” Spraky hinted.

What is Axie Infinity Classic?

Released in 2019, the Axie Classic is structured as a turn-based card battler where players create teams of Axies to duke it out in the arena. Axies draw cards based on the body parts they possess, where players must play these cards at the optimal time in order to maximize their chance of victory. Classic was the first game ever to distribute in-game resources as ERC-20 tokens.

Also known as V2, it is the gameplay during the height of popularity of the game in the Philippines. Attacking during player-vs-player matches is done in one go; players would pick an attack all at once, followed by the actual moves.

Axie Classic was the main gameplay before Origins was released. At first, it provided players with 150 smooth love potions (SLPs) from Player-vs-Environment (PVE) mode and missions alone; it was reduced to just 75 after an update. However, after ‌Axie Infinity: Origins took over the space, the SLP rewards were officially moved to the Classic. 

Currently, Origins is the main gameplay for the Axie Infinity ecosystem. Sky Mavis is also currently adding mini-games to the system. 

As of this writing, web3 guild LimitLess Guild Mobius will also have its own Axie Infinity V2 tournament with a $500 prize pool and more rewards.

Here are also the local Axie Infinity tournaments covered by BitPinas: 

This article is published on BitPinas: BUHAY PA ANG AXIE V2! Davao City Hosts Axie Classic LAN Tournament

Disclaimer: BitPinas articles and its external content are not financial advice. The team serves to deliver independent, unbiased news to provide information for Philippine-crypto and beyond.

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• Source: https://bitpinas.com/play-to-earn/araw-ng-dabaw-axie-classic-lan-tournament-2023/