Alliance Tournament
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The Alliance Tournament is a three-week-long annual event where the various alliances of New Eden assemble teams of pilots and try to defeat each other in combat. The event is organised by CCP, and the prizes include PLEX, ship SKINs as well as unique and limited blueprints to build special tournament ships. |
Tournament details
The tournament rules as well as the arena makes for a very different kind of PvP than what is offered in New Eden, but the potential spoils are well worth all the months of training and billions of ISK (if not trillions) people spend in these tournaments.
 The matches are presented with a graphical overlay showing various effects such as electronic warfare and remote assistance. |
 Here's an example of the "tournament prize ship" for Alliance Tournament XI, where some of the winners walked away with blueprint to make a limited amount of Fiends. |
Rules
The rules of the tournament tend to change slightly every year, as CCP make minor adjustments to keep the tournament fresh and entertain and avoid problems that crept up in previous tournaments. The full list of rules can be found on the official Alliance Tournament Rules page, but in general you could summarize them as follows:
- Each team can field up to 10 pilots per match and fleet compositions are limited to a certain number of points in total, where smaller ships cost less than larger ships. There are however many module restrictions (faction, deadspace and officer mods) and drone restrictions (varies depending on type of drone) and teams are only able to field one cruiser-class logistics or two frigate-class logistics.
- Before the tournament begins, team captains are allowed to assign one ship as a flagship. A flagship is allowed most modules (including deadspace and officer mods) and can be fielded even if the ship-class was banned (see below). This makes the flagship a very powerful ship, but one that must be used carefully as you are not allowed to replace the flagship if you lose it in a match.
- Before a match, team captains can ban the use of specific ships, which creates a sort of meta-game to either block or lure people into specific fleet compositions or force them to use their flagship instead.
- Matches are limited to 10 minutes, then if no side has outright won by destroying all the opposing team's ships, the winner will be determined based on ship-points.
- The tournament starts off with a modified double-elimination setup and ends with best-of-five final.
The arena
Each match will take place in an arena of sorts, that measures 125 km around a central beacon. Inside the arena are Mobile Micro Jump Unit structures, one in the center and then the rest spread out in a cube-like form inside the arena, that can be used by everyone. Warping inside the arena is not allowed, unless you're using said structures. You are also not allowed to leave the arena, punishable by immediate destruction.
This creates some interesting aspects for this type of format. The highly constrained arena size makes kiting around the edge of the arena dangerous, as minor pilot errors can easily lead to violating the boundary and getting blown up. Similarly, the jump structures can also lead to accidents if you are bumped while activating the jump, as that might throw off your alignment and hurling you outside the area of the arena. Screening as well as tactical maneuvering around the arena is also incredibly important, pushing player skill and nerves to the limit.
Worth noting is that the whole tournament takes place on the Tranquility server, in an area of space normally inaccessible by capsuleers. This means that all the ships, modules and implants players bring to the tournament are bought and paid for with real ISK, and the losses they suffer are therefore real losses. Since each team must have a large amount of ships for various fleet compositions as well as extras in case of losses, plus the fact that there are few limits on how much ISK you can spend on your flagship, it's a considerable cost to participate in the tournament as well as the potential for some hefty loot if you manage to kill the opposing team's flagship.
Prizes
Winners in the alliance tournament stand to gain billions of 
ISK (the higher they place, the larger the sum), 
PLEX as well as SKINs and blueprint copies for the highly coveted tournament ship prizes.
The tournament prize ships were introduced in Alliance Tournament VII back in 2009. Each year there's a theme based on one of the factions in EVE and the winners get a frigate-class ship as well as a cruiser-class ship. These ships are very strong and thematic, some downright overpowered by design. By design they are also finite, by having a total of 50 runs across all the blueprint copies given out as prizes for each ship. As such you can only ever produce 50 of each tournament prize ship and every ship that is lost means there's forever one less tournament ship of that class. However, in the announcement for AT XVII, CCP mentioned that they are working on a new prize ship mechanic, in which the prize ships are reintroduced rotationally. For example, one tournament would reintroduce the Freki and Mimir, and the next the Utu and Adrestia, etc.
Given their rarity and extreme cost (often in the magnitude of several hundred billion), they usually end up as collector's items and seldom undocked other than to show them off and even less often used in actual combat. You can encounter these ships in PvP from time to time though, as there are a few wealthy players or former tournament winners who decide it's worth putting in the field. It's also a relatively common tactics to use tournament ships in the tournament, as some tournament ships are highly suited for the tournament format and gives the alliance wealthy enough to afford them an upper hand.
In 2021, it was announced by CCP Aurora that future Alliance Tournaments may bring back old AT ships from Alliance Tournament VII onward.[1] If a ship is brought back as a prize ship, it won't return for at least 10 years.
Alliance Tournament history
When the tournaments first started back in 2005, it was called the "Caldari Championships" or "Alliance Championships". It wasn't until the second tournament that they started referring to them as the "Alliance Tournament" (AT for short), but even then it was sometimes referred to as the "Caldari PvP Tournament".
EVE University organized a public betting service for the first tourney, attracting a large amount of wagers. [2]
Previous winners
Below are a list of previous winners of the Alliance Tournament, along with whatever prize ships were handed out to the winners.
| Tournament | Year | Winners | Tournament Prize Ships | Results and YouTube-videos |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATXIX | 2023 (YC 125) |  Shapash (Frigate) and Cybele
|
AnnouncementFeeders & prizes | |
| ATXVIII | 2022 (YC 124) | TRUTH. HONOR. LIGHT. |  Geri (Frigate) and Bestla (Cruiser)
|
Bracket Announcement Ship Stats Wrap-up |
| ATXVII | 2021 (YC 123) | HYDRA RELOADED |  Raiju (Frigate) and Laelaps (Cruiser)
|
Bracket and AT17 on YouTube |
| 2020 (YC 122) | No tournament. | |||
| 2019 (YC 121) | No tournament. | News Article | ||
| ATXVI | 2018 (YC 120) | VYDRA RELOLDED |  Hydra (frigate) and Tiamat (cruiser)
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Bracket and final match on twitch |
| ATXV | 2017 (YC 119) | VYDRA RELOLDED |  Virtuoso (frigate) and Victor (cruiser)
|
Results and AT15 on YouTube (feeder rounds Day 1 and Day 2) |
| ATXIV | 2016 (YC 118) | The Tuskers Co. |  Caedes (frigate) and Rabisu (cruiser)
|
Results and AT14 on Youtube (excluding Day 1 and Day 2) |
| ATXIII | 2015 (YC 117) | Pandemic Legion |  Imp (frigate) and Fiend (cruiser)
|
Results and AT13 on YouTube |
| ATXII | 2014 (YC 116) | The Camel Empire |  Whiptail (frigate) and Chameleon (cruiser)
|
Results and AT12 on YouTube |
| ATXI | 2013 (YC 115) | Pandemic Legion |  Chremoas (frigate) and Moracha (cruiser)
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Results and AT11 on YouTube |
| ATX | 2012 (YC 114) | Verge of Collapse |  Cambion (frigate) and Etana (cruiser)
|
Results and AT10 on YouTube |
| ATIX | 2011 (YC 113) | HYDRA RELOADED |  Malice (frigate) and Vangel (cruiser)
|
Results and AT9 on YouTube |
| ATVIII | 2010 (YC 112) | Pandemic Legion | Utu (frigate) and Adrestia (cruiser)
|
Results and AT8 on YouTube |
| ATVII | 2009 (YC 111) | Pandemic Legion | Freki (frigate) and Mimir (cruiser)
|
Results and AT7 on YouTube |
| ATVI | 2009 (YC 111) | Pandemic Legion | - | Results |
| ATV | 2008 (YC 110) | Ev0ke | - | Results |
| ATIV | 2007 (YC 109) | HUN Reloaded | - | Results |
| ATIII | 2006 (YC 108) | Band of Brothers | - | Results |
| ATII | 2006 (YC 108) | Band of Brothers | - | Results |
| ATI | 2005 (YC 107) | Band of Brothers | - | No details available |
Other tournaments
Apart from the alliance tournament, there has also been several other tournaments such as New Eden Open and the Amarr Championships which led to victory for House Tash-Murkon and the Crowning of Empress Catiz in 2016.
CCP has also helped players start their own tournaments, such as the EVE_NT tournaments.
