Monday, October 30, 2017

Minion Master's Monday - The day after...



What an excitement! We have no other words for the weekend our first tournament took place. It’s fair to say, that The Master’s Challenge was a huge success. With 35 registered participants The Master’s Challenge was the biggest tournament in the history of Minion Masters. Unfortunately, 5 participants couldn’t make it in time. Nonetheless, we had a thrilling competitive event with a lot of surprises. And we are just getting started!

If you missed the amazing stream featuring Dipshit, BaboonLord, UncleOwnage & Sinilil yesterday, here are the VODs:


The Master’s Challenge continues


We had Masters from all over the universe fighting in intense battles during the group stage. Four groups contained 8 Masters and one group contained 6 Masters. This were the groups:

Adren, GReY WolF, Memfisto, Nastiii, RushSecond, Shadyhobos, Steven, Terroriza

Break Time, Jake, Ramidi, Salbei, Some boxes, Tengs, Vango, Zgriptor

Cole420, EdelweiƟ, GrafSchnecke, Jamez28, JTF Excalibur80, NuclearGoo, Tazzak, Videogamer77

Dirion, Khazlariko, EvilShuckle, katt, RatDoto, Simtheer

22 matches were played in a Best of 3 format. The flying arenas were overrun by Minion Armies, covered by Spells and drenched in fallen Masters’ blood. In the end 8 Masters advanced to the final stage. All eight are already winners, but the champion is yet to be found. And that is what will happen this evening at 6pm CET:

BetaDwarf presents the final stage of The Master’s Challenge in cooperation with the King Puff Cup staff live on Twitch! Your host and main caster will once again be everyone’s favorite Dipshit! He will be joined by our Community Manager Erythais for the duration of the evening. The matches will be played in a Double Elimination format, Best of 3 with the finals being Best of 5.

Who will fall first? Who will claim the first place? We’re just as excited as you are to find out. Don’t miss the show!

A new patch on the horizon


Last Wednesday, we introduced Update 49 - The Wicked Witching Night! Unfortunately, some players got very frustrated due to our changes to the economy system. We watched your discussions, listened to your feedback and suggestions and discussed internally. Finally, we came up with the following changes, that will come to Minion Masters next Wednesday:
  • PvP and PvE challenges in expeditions: Players who mainly care about Ranking feel annoyed by having to do PvE battles as well as using a specific card in a high rank match. We’ll make a big effort to make PvE and PvP fights in expeditions an opportunity but not a demand for those who’d prefer to focus on Ranking. Ideally it would be up to you if you would like to continue with regular PvP matches as an alternative and still progress, and players who like the challenges can still do those. 
  • Additionally, we will make some changes to the PvP challenges to make them easier and not mandatory. We will also reduce the total amount of PvP and PvE encounters in expeditions (but not the treasures!)
  • Rubies: Before the patch players were looking forward to unlocking new Masters with the Rubies gained from level rewards. It was a much bigger motivator than we first expected and supply boost didn’t make up for it, so we’ll get Rubies back in level rewards
  • Gold: We now realize that most players prefer getting more gold instead of other rewards from expeditions. And we can see why you’d feel that way, as it reduces how often you can gamble on the Power Tower as well as doing drafts. We had focused on giving players a larger variety of rewards through expedition, but we’ll rebalance it to fit your preferences better. We’ve found a cool solution! When you find a card in an expedition, we’ll give you a choice of receiving a gold reward instead. If you don’t like the card, you can take the gold for the power tower or a draft instead, similar to before. It’s like getting a card that you can re-roll into gold if you don’t like it :) We will also increase chance of gold spawning in expeditions instead of other stuff
Please note, that these changes are not final yet and there could be more.

More Skins, more to watch



We see more and more questions regarding more Skins and a Spectator mode. You want to watch your friends play, learn from matches on the highest ranks and enjoy live broadcasted tournaments. We heard your calls and are already working on a Spectator mode! But that’s not the only improvement on our list, so we cannot give you an estimated time, yet.
Many of you want to see more Skins. That’s something we’re also working on. We’re hoping to present brand new rare, supreme and legendary Skins soon!

We want to end this post now, but not without some shout-outs. First, we want to thank the whole community providing such valuable feedback continuously and for playing our game! Even when you’re frustrated, feedback and suggestions are still coming in, so we can work on making your experience better again. Our second mention goes to FFA & Dipshit and their King Puff Cup crew, which are working hard to bring you such an amazing tournament experience. Without you guys, The Master’s Challenge wouldn’t exist in its current state! Last, but not least, we want to shout-out thanks to our dedicated Streamers and YouTubers for their regular effort in supporting Minion Masters and spreading the word. We’re proud to have such an engaged and supportive community!

Cheers from BetaDwarf

Friday, October 27, 2017

Community Happenings - The Day before…



There's no doubt that we’re very excited! The Master’s Challenge is our first own tournament and we’re proud to present you a roster of participants that promises finest gameplay as well as thrilling matchups. Thanks to everyone participating & supporting The Master’s Challenge!

Please note, that you are still able to sign up until Friday, October 27th at 1pm CEST! To do so, here you go!

The Master’s Challenge will be casted by everyone’s favorite Dipshit. The tournament will be fairly long and thus the stream will be split as follows:

  1. The group stage will be casted on Sunday 28th at 3pm CEST live on Twitch! This time, Dipshit will be joined by one or more special guests. For instance, BetaDwarf's CEO Baboonlord will join Dipshit for some games!
  2. The final stage will be casted on Monday 29th at 7pm CEST live on Twitch

Halloween Update and changes to the economy system




Update 49 hit last Wednesday. There were a lot of changes introduced, but also Skins and a brand new Expedition map! Sadly, we see the community being frustrated about some of the changes.

Many of these changes came very suddenly and we feel sorry for any inconvenience. We're still learning a lot of things regarding communication. In the end, most of us are game developers ;)

We’re listening, watching and feeling you! We’re still open for feedback (good or bad), suggestions and adjustments. We're not just sitting around, but are working hard on adjustments. Our team has discussed changes, taking feedback and various suggestions into consideration. We already announced some of our future adjustments here. Additionally, we will go into more detail in our Monday blog post.

Please do continue to give us feedback and suggestions, let us know your results from Expeditions via Discord, Steam forums or Reddit! But please do so in an objective manner and detailed. That one sentence: “These changes are just bad” reflects your thoughts and feelings, but doesn’t give us a lot to work with.

That being said, we’re looking forward to your thoughts, feedback and discussions!


Another Master answers




Many of you remember the interview with Dipshit about Minion Masters and its competitive scene. This week, we got Salbei22 for an interview! We talked about Monday Night Masters and his opinion on the state of Minion Masters in the future:

Hey Salbei, nice to have you! You’re a known streamer in our community, but for those who still don’t know you, would you introduce yourself please?

My name is Sebastian, am 35 years old and live in Germany. I picked up Minion Masters around March and immediately got hooked. I just could not stop learning and improving. The game really rewards you for smart decision making and skill intense timings and even after my roughly 1000 hours into the game I still learn new tricks and interactions!

I started streaming my daily sessions about 3 months ago and fortunately became quite popular in the community. One day Sinilil (you probably know him from casting the King Puff Cup) approached me with the idea to broadcast our own Minion Masters league. We started to toy around with the idea, got PalaceOfDreams (an insightful, high level player) on board to do the casting and here we are now.

You’re running the Monday Night Masters for the 4th week now. Could you explain what it is?

Right now we are broadcasting a trial run of the planned league, and yet we managed to get 18 high profile players to provide us with entertaining games. We held a survey among those players if we need to ban potentially problematic cards, but ended up without any bans – so the tournament is as competitive as possible without any restrictions. Due to the nature of the format you will not get away with playing only one deck all the time.

The players are aware what the opponents played in the past, and thus are able to react with their deck choice, to potentially counter what they expect to see. This also adds another layer of strategy.
ShadyHobos for example is known for his triple Zeppelin cheese deck – which usually wins because of the combination of a timed push plus the surprise factor. The Poker term “going ALL IN!” describes this pretty well.

What new does the Monday Night Masters bring to the competitive scene around Minion Masters?

The one big edge we got over the other competitive Tournament names in the Minion Masters scene is our preparation time.

Since players have about a week of time to play their game, it is a lot easier to overcome scheduling issues, which usually are problematic. Also we have more time to prepare the visuals for the show this way.

I can spend about 4 days of work to prepare the show – and people really appreciate the extra effort spend towards the small animations, videos and on-screen deck lists.

Let’s take a look in the future: What do you guys plan for the Monday Night Masters?

The initial idea was to create a League style tournament where the participants battle each other weekly. Just like a football or soccer league. Right now we are still experimenting with the format, while also trying to figure out how much workload the players and our team can handle. We decided to set the initial hurdle low for the trial run, but we can definitely branch out bigger from here. My dream would be to broadcast the show multiple times a week.

I already asked Dipshit that: Where do you see Minion Masters in 2 years?

Minion Masters is highly skill intensive and very enjoyable to watch being played on a high level. It has got huge potential to become the next big thing in the eSport scene, since it is highly accessible for the masses and easily observable. This is its major strength in my eyes. Everybody can follow what is happening on the screen – even people who never played the game themselves can understand what is going on and get immediately hooked. I am certain the game will become a smash hit!

Thanks for the interview, Salbei! If you want to leave some shout-outs, feel free to do so.

Thanks to B4dhabit – wherever you may be now. Back in the day he was streaming and helped me to understand the game. Go check out his YouTube channel and his tutorials. Decks in there are outdated by now, but he still did a fantastic job explaining the basic principles of the game to us.

Of course a shout-out to FFA, Dipshit and their King Puff Tournament! You guys do an ungodly amount of work in just 2 days of time and I highly appreciate your work!

My Casters Sinilil and PalaceOfDreams, and of course the MNM Participants for providing us with those amazing games! You guys rock!

I would also really like to thank my fellow Twitch streamers Videogamer77 and ShadyHobos for all the kind words and moral support. Go check em out!

Last but not least, a shout-out to my loyal viewers! You guys motivate me to keep coming back and do what I do

Oh and BetaDwarf for creating this amazing game!

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Let's leave it at that. We wish all of you a nice weekend and are looking forward to The Master's Challenge!

Cheers from BetaDwarf

Monday, October 23, 2017

Minion Masters' Monday - The Challenge awaits you

We hope you enjoyed the King Puff Cup weekend just as much as we did. What an amazing tournament. Thanks to the whole King Puff Cup staff! We want to also shout-out 'Thanks' to all the participants. This time our congratulations go to Zgriptor for the 3rd place, RushSecond (2nd place) and the winner of the King Puff Cup 10 Some Boxes (Arrow on Discord). If you missed the stream yesterday, you can find the VOD here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OS-ZJqK_h8

The Master's Challenge awaits you



Saturday 28th, 3pm CEST. Masters from all over the universe will fight intense battles. Armies will rise, armies will fall. Only 5 more days until The Master's Challenge. If you haven't signed up already, do so now:
  • Reach Grandmaster in Minion Masters Ranked October Season (1vs1 only)
  • Create an account on Challonge (use your in-game alias as well as your avatar)
  • Message Erythais your Steam ID & Challonge username on Discord (you can also write an email to thomas@betadwarf.com)
  • You'll get an invitation to the tournament as soon as we have checked your rank
Please note, that the deadline for signing up is Friday 27th at 1pm CEST!

Whether you're already signed up or are about to do so, please check the official announcement on Reddit for futher information. We recently updated the announcement to reflect the final tournament format and added check-in rules.

Halloween Event and more



Halloween is just around the corner. King Puff & Co. are getting themselves ready to dress up properly. Yes! Skins are coming to Minion Masters! And for Halloween, there'll be 2 additional skins only available for a period of 2 weeks. In the first week, you'll be able to get the Demolisher Volco skin, in the second week Devil King Puff skin waits for you. They can be found in the Expeditions, which will return on Wednesday! These two skins can also be purchased in the shop during the 2 event weeks.

Can't wait for skins any longer? Well, we cannot give them to you right now, but we can at least share some pictures with you:

Sssnaky Halloween, Massstersss
We hope his new hood doesn't affect his shockingly good aim
You're terminated, ****er.

We have some more cool stuff in the pipeline for you. According to UncleOwnage
we're hard at work with halloween and they better get excited for that because it's gonna be great 
Furthermore,
we're getting ready to do some major economy changes too, which will lead to changes in quests, matches, level rewards and the Premium Upgrade
Fast travel for Expeditions, Spectator mode, further improvements, balance changes, overhaulings... there's alot in the pipeline for you! But for now, get ready for Halloween ;)

Monday Night Masters


Last but not least we want to announce the Monday Night Masters for today at 6pm CEST live on Twitch. Your host will once again be Salbei22, the matches will be casted by PalaceOfDreams & Sinilil. You can find the matchups for tonight right here.

Cheers from BetaDwarf

Friday, October 20, 2017

Community Happenings - Competitive Masters


Is it Friday already? We’re glad it is! Because this weekend is King Puff Cup weekend! The tournament takes place tomorrow at 3pm CEST and will be streamed on Sunday, 7pm CEST live on Twitch. Are YOU ready to participate and win cool in-game prizes? Then grab your spot last minute here: http://challonge.com/KingPuffCup10

This weekend and the next 2 following weekends are all about Competitive Minion Masters! King Puff Cup this weekend, Monday Night Masters on Monday (6pm CEST), The Master’s Challenge next weekend. Saturday 4th, King Puff Cup 11 is coming up! Votings for the ESL Go4 Series are still running until Monday 23rd of October. If you haven’t voted already, please do so now! It’s your decision, if Minion Masters is entering the ESL now or after the official release next year. Every vote matters!

Expeditions are over? Not really!


Lately, there was a lot of talk & rumours about the Expeditions. New players might not have known about this, but it was clear from the beginning that Expeditions would only be available for 3 weeks. Sorry for any inconvenience. Last Wednesday, we disabled the Expeditions temporarily. But they will return next Wednesday!

Additionally, we want to note again, that Expeditions are not meant as a seperate game mode. They are meant as an addition to the existing Ranked modes and Draft. You need Supplies for the Expeditions. These can be collected via campfires (Local Supplies which built up over time), via playing Ranked or Draft mode, via Daily Quests or via Watch & Win. With this you can see, that Expeditions and the other game modes are intertwined.


We are LAN!


Minion Masters enhances its popularity with LAN events & Game Conventions. A while ago, we were part of the Net.Con Playground Vol://8! This German LAN event is well known and attracted a lot of attention with tournaments in games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Call of Duty 4, Trackmania, Beer Pong, osu!, Enfo's Team Survival, etc. This year another title was introduced: Minion Masters!

According to the promoters, the LAN event was a huge success. Tickets were sold out a month before it was held. The visitors’ feedback was amazing. Local eSports teams competed in several tournaments during the amazing weekend. Also, a copy of Minion Masters was handed out to every visitor. There even was a little Minion Masters Contest! But what are we talking about, have a look at the Net.Con Playground Vol://8 for yourself.

And that’s not all! We’re proud to announce that Minion Masters will be part of this years’ Art to Play! In 2016 there was more than 27000 visitors. This years’ Art to Play takes place November 17th to 19th in Nantes, France. We’re excited to see the outcome and the feedback from the crowd!

Community Content


We say thanks to our community frequently and this Friday is no exception. We especially want to thank you for the rising activity on Reddit! That means alot to us and we’re glad that you engage in the discussions there. Furthermore, we want to look at some of this weeks’ Community Content:

EdelweiƟ presented two new videos. The first video was all about Stormbringer Control. In this video guide, EdelweiƟ explained the cards in the deck, strengths and weaknesses and commented on replays.  At the time he recorded the video, he was rank 8 on the 1vs1 leaderboards. Later on, he managed to reach rank 3 with this deck!

The second video featured a 2vs2 match. EdelweiƟ named it: Black Hole Wars. It’s hard to explain what happens in this video, so better see for yourself! Thanks to EdelweiƟ for the effort and the content!

Zgriptor was looking into the Expeditions in order to help new players. He produced a series of videos called “How to Beat Expedition Enemies”. He showcases several decks with several Masters and tries to help inexperienced players to beat the Expedition encounters. It’s definitely worth to watch the videos! Now you have some time, since the Expeditions aren’t available until next Wednesday ;)

Lately, some Puffs were talking about more Community Content in the future. Well… we don’t know for sure, but Puffs never lie. That brings us to the end of this Fridays’ Community Happenings as we prepare ourselves for the King Puff Cup weekend.

By the way: Do you know who that might be?


Cheers from BetaDwarf

Monday, October 16, 2017

Minion Master's Monday



Another Monday, another exciting week awaits us. Well, to be honest, it’s another exciting two weeks. Eventober started out with huge announcements, the kick off of the 2nd King Puff Cup Season, Kripparrian streaming Minion Masters and BetaDwarf presenting The Master’s Challenge. Our team presented a first version of Expeditions, introduced Scott to you and is currently working on new biomes and new factions for Expeditions.

Latest events and implementations doubled up the player numbers! Masters from all over the universe joined the battles on the flying arenas. Let’s see how new Armies of Minions arise and old ones fall.

Balance is always a huge topic and we’re aware of your concerns. Changes are already in the pipeline, as well as ‘Quality of Life’ improvements and additional features. By the way: Did you know that we’re working on a Spectator mode? Yes! Watching other matches live and watching live broadcastings on stream will become a thing in Minion Masters!



We're also looking into several reworks. Right now, we don't want to share details on that, but we want to let you know that things will change.

Halloween is also around the corner and we want to make sure that you’ll be ready for some visual changes! No, it’s not only about pumpkins and spooky decorations ;)




Eventober - Competitive Minion Masters x3



Competitively, things are stepping up. On the following two weekends we have the 2nd tournament of the King Puff Cup Season 2 and The Master’s Challenge. And don't forget about the ESL! Concerning this matter, we want to let you know that we’re watching the numbers of participants closely. While the voting is one of the core measurements for us (because it reflects the community sentiment towards the ESL Go4 Series before or after release), we have to make sure that there’ll be enough participants on a weekly basis. Researches showed, that other games have somewhere between 32 and 64+ regular participants. We’re aiming for similar numbers, so make sure to get your Minion Army ready and participate! Lately, we heard that The Master’s Challenge has 1000 reasons to participate. Might be exaggerated, but Puffs always speak the truth, right? That being said, let’s have a look at the upcoming King Puff Cup.

The 2nd tournament of the King Puff Cup Season 2 will be played 1vs1. FFA and Dipshit plan to run two stages: Group and Final stage. 8 players will advance from the group stage into the final stage to battle for the 1st place. Furthermore, participants need to plan ahead, because the following cards will be banned:

  • Illusory Cleaver
  • Scrat Pack
  • Scrat Horde
  • Spearthrowers

Changing decks and Masters between games is allowed, as long as these 4 cards are not used. This tournament will be played on Saturday, October 21st at 15:00 CEST. The official announcement and sign up information can be found here. We’re looking forward to an exciting first 1vs1 King Puff Cup!

We announced The Master’s Challenge several times now. It’s a 1vs1 Grandmaster only tournament, that comes with the incentive of a $1000 prize pool split amongst the Top8 players. We currently plan to run a similar tournament format like the King Puff Invitational (group stage -> main stage). However, this is not set in stone, yet. We will announce the tournament format as well as any changes regarding the rule set next week. As of right now, participants will be allowed to use all cards and Masters. The official announcement and sign up can be found here.

Last but not least we want to announce the Monday Night Masters today at 18:00 CEST live on Twitch! PalaceOfDreams and Sinilil will be your broadcasters, Salbei22 your host. Make sure to watch matches like Videogamer77 vs. Memfisto, RushSecond vs. SomeBoxes and many more.



Cheers from BetaDwarf

Friday, October 13, 2017

Community Happenings - Bright look-out


This picture was taken on Wednesday at our office. Happy developers after receiving headsets from SteelSeries. Hopefully, these guys will be more efficient, now that they don't need to move from desk to desk in order to talk to their colleagues. But that's not what we want to talk about. If one doesn't know who these people are, one might think: "They are happy and enjoy their time." But more important: This is a picture of a happy community.

Community Happenings


Another exciting week ends. October - I mean - Eventober has just begun, but is already everyone's favorite. If we had to choose the biggest happening this week, our votes would clearly go to Kripparian. We want to thank Octavian "Kripparrian" Morosan again for his effort and time invested to promote Minion Masters on three streams and in a YouTube video! We're also proud to tell you, that we managed to get roughly 100% more players, to date. Definitely worth a mention!

If you missed Kripparrians video, here you go:

Besides that big name within the Twitch and YouTube community, we want to shout-out 'Thank you' to all our regular streamer! You guys are amazing and we appreciate your support in spreading the word by streaming the game.

There's two more things we want to point out from this week. The first thing is The Master's Challenge. A 1vs1 Grandmaster only tournament that comes with an incentive of $1000 split amongst the Top8 participants. This tournament is not about providing prize money, only. It's not about a huge prize pool during Early Access. The Master's Challenge is also a trial run for more regular events presented by BetaDwarf. Furthermore, this tournament is important for us to evaluate possible numbers of participants for the ESL Go4 Series. We're also closely watching the numbers of participants for the King Puff Cup and the development of the Monday Night Masters.

The second thing is something most of you might already know. fdmfdm is one of our developers and a well known person in our community. He's also owner of a unique hashtag called #blamefdm. While we don't want to encourage you to blame him, we want to show you guys, that we listen to our community:


Taken from our office door

Forced To Talk


We mentioned in our post last Friday, that we'll present an interview with Dipshit. So here it goes!

Erythais: Hi Dipshit, nice to have you! Even though the vast majority of our community already knows you, can  you please introduce yourself? Mainly for the new players.

Dipshit: Greetings readers, I am everyone’s favorite Dipshit. I run the community discord and am half the leadership of the King Puff Cup tournament scene. I have been playing the game since December 3rd and am a Grandmaster level player. I’m considered to be one of the community filters for Betadwarf as well.

Erythais: You’re very active in the community indeed and part of the King Puff Cup staff. Where does this level of engagement come from?

Dipshit: Let’s call it passion. I believe this game has the ability to make it big and I try to help out where I can. I try not to let other people down, so I end up getting really involved in everything I touch. In the case of when the community discord was first founded, I was just a mod, but I was so active that I ended up as the head admin. And for the King Puff Cup, I wasn’t truly involved until the 3rd one when I was a commentator. And it was in July that I was moved up to the ranks where I am now.

Erythais: Let's talk about Minion Masters. The game is updated regularly. New features, new content, balance changes and so on. How do you feel about the current state of Minion Masters?

Dipshit: I believe it’s in the best state it has been in thus far. Many decks are technically viable all the way up until Grandmaster and it’s only when you’re facing down the best of the best that you honestly need the best decks in order to compete. I feel it’s a bit too easy to rank up these days, but I know that’s also been an issue of our less than stellar player count. But the solution to that, is that everyone just needs to help give their friends and communities a push towards our game. Once people see that the game is more than just simply a “Clash Royale” clone, they tend to become hooked if the genre is their type of game.

Erythais: We announced our aim to become an eSports title. Currently, we have the King Puff Cup, Monday Night Masters and The Master’s Challenge as main events. How do you feel about Minion Masters’  competitive development and the community?

Dipshit: I find it to be quite ambitious considering the size of both the community and the development team. However, it’s working. We have ESL looking at us and just waiting for us to give them the thumbs up to get started. All this game needs is a little bit more popularity and then it should cause a chain reaction. Having said that, there are still a few features that the game needs to truly ascend to the esports, things like a spectator mode and in-game tournament tracking. Of these, I know spectator mode is on the horizon.

As for the community, just about everyone that is active has participated in the tournament scene at one point or another. Especially at the higher tiers. So I believe it’s safe to say that the community really wants the game to be as competitive as much as we’re pushing for it. I mean, back during the first season of the King Puff Cup, the concurrent player count for the game was hovering around 160-230 and during that, we had over 80 unique participants show up to our tournaments to battle it out. And I find that rather fascinating. Normally the tournament scene for a game is some small niche of 1% or less, but we see upwards of half our community participating.

Erythais: We're absolutely surprised by the engagement of our community, as well. Let's come to the last question: Where do you see Minion Masters in 2 years?

Dipshit: Well next year the game will officially release and we’ll have the ESL scene running by then as well. So in 2 years time, I imagine this game has the potential to be the most popular card game based e-sport. It’s just a matter of getting the word out. 2 years might be too short to overcome a giant like Hearthstone, but the potential is definitely there.

Erythais: Thank you for your kind words and for the interview. Leave some shout-outs if you want to.

Dipshit: Sure I can do that. My first big shout-out is going to go to Betadwarf’s team. They’re one of, if not thee best development teams that I’ve interacted with in all my years. Not only do they actually listen to our feedback and actively engage the community on a daily basis in our discord, but they also sponsor all our King Puff Cups.

My other big shout out goes to 3FFA. Without him, the KPC wouldn’t be nearly as big as it is now and without his push, I wouldn’t be involved with it either I believe. It may very well have died off like the first tournament scene did way back in January. He also helps to keep me on track with day-to-day tasks with the KPC.

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We don't know about you, but we feel like that's the perfect ending for this Fridays post. Dipshit is one of our most active members, indeed. But we want to thank our community as a whole for supporting Minion Masters in many different ways and giving us the opportunity to look like in the picture at the start of this post. Let's share that happiness with more people!

Cheers from BetaDwarf

Monday, October 9, 2017

Minion Masters' Monday

Monday morning. What an exciting weekend! Yes, it feels bad to see the weekend is over, but we had a blast watching the King Puff Cup 2vs2 tournament yesterday. Here’s the VOD, if you missed it. Congratulations to the 3rd place Vango & snowpwn, the 2nd place Cole420 & Terroriza and the winning team EdelweiƟ & RushSecond! Amazing tournament, amazing matches and a big thanks to the KPC staff.


Well, Monday mornings aren’t always bad, especially when the following week comes with a lot of excitement. We have the Monday Night Masters live on Twitch, today. We were watching Kripparrian earlier this morning. Wednesday is patch day! And on Friday, we have an interview with Dipshit about the state of Minion Masters and its competitive scene.

A Challenge For True Masters


But for now, let’s talk about last Fridays huge announcement: The Master’s Challenge. BetaDwarf presents their first tournament in cooperation with the King Puff Cup staff. The Master’s Challenge is a 1vs1 Grandmaster only tournament. Participants compete against each other for the prize pool of $1000. In order to participate, players need to reach Grandmaster in Minion Masters' 1vs1 October Season (2vs2 Solo Queue and Premade Queue do NOT count). The sign-up process is as follows:

    • Open an account on Challonge and set your in-game avatar as the profile picture
    • Contact Thomas alias Erythais (our Community Manager) via Discord or Email (thomas@betadwarf.com) with your Steam ID and your Challonge username
    • After we checked your rank, you’ll get an invitation to The Master’s Challenge

The tournament is expected to start on October 28th at 3pm CET. The prize pool of $1000 will be distributed across the Top8 players! Details like Tournament format, special rules and so on are to be announced and largely based on the number of participants. So play Minion Masters, reach Grandmaster and sign up! C-SAR expects 40 participants easily, but we can top that, right?

The Master’s Challenge is also a trial run for a possible ESL Go4 Series and more regular events presented by BetaDwarf Entertainment.

Behind The Dwarves… ehh, Scenes


So, what are we working on right now? Listing everything would spoil too much, that’s why we want to talk about the most important things:

We’re still working on the Expeditions. With the event for Kripparrian implemented with Update 46, we can’t wait to finish the new biomes and the Drone faction. After all, it’s time to make your hard earned Relics worth it, right? We also have some cool improvements for Expeditions in the pipeline. Furthermore, we want to talk about Expeditions a bit, because we recognized some issues with their perception. Expeditions are not meant as a game mode on their own. Expeditions are meant as something you can come back to over and over again, whenever you want to. The Supplies system is meant to be interactive with 1vs1, 2vs2 and Draft. That’s why you see yourself running out of Supplies from time to time. In the end, Minion Masters is PvP-focused.

Our crew is looking into Spectator mode, also. We cannot promise anything right now, but we hope to present such a feature soon and enable live broadcastings of tournaments.

Halloween is around the corner. While new biomes with shadows and demons are creepy enough, we feel like we need something special for you. So stay tuned ;)

Balance is an ongoing process. We feel you and watch your discussions closely. That’s why we’re working on several issues. Polishing the placement mechanics around the nook near the master is one of them, as well as several mana costs. Some things require bigger reworks and therefore take more time, but we’ll try to address several issues as soon as possible. We also want to shout-out a big ‘Thank you’ to all our dedicated theory crafters over at the Steam boards. We appreciate your effort very much!

Like we said earlier, there’s much more in the pipeline. Big changes, reworks, new features, additional content and so on. Be patient, we will let you know.

Now, at the end of this Monday post, we want to remind you to watch the Monday Night Masters’ games at 6pm CEST live on Twitch. PalaceOfDreams and Sinilil will be your casters, Salbei22 your host. Enjoy your stay and the high level gameplay!


Cheers from BetaDwarf!

Friday, October 6, 2017

Community Happenings – A Challenge For The True Masters


Minion Masters!

Welcome to the ‘Community Happenings’. This is our first Friday post with this new topic and we feel like there’s more to discuss than one can fit in one post. Well, October turned out to be a real busy month. We have so many things going on at the same time:
  • King Puff 2vs2 Cup
  • Monday Night Masters
  • Kripparrian streaming Minion Masters live on Twitch
  • Expeditions with a new card obtainable
  • Revive of our Subreddit
  • The Master’s Challenge
October really turned into Eventober! So, let’s talk about these topics from top to bottom.

King Puff Cup & Monday Night Masters


We don’t need to explain the King Puff Cup, do we? Tomorrow, FFA, Dipshit and their crew kick off the 2nd Season of our well known Community Cup Series. They’ll start with a 2vs2 team battle tournament with a prize pool of 4,000 Rubies & 60,000 Gold. The broadcast for this event will happen Sunday at 19:00 CEST live on Twitch.

Monday Night Masters is a project of Salbei22 & Sinilil. They have planned a Swiss Style 1vs1 League with 18 participants playing against each other over the duration of 5 weeks. At the end of that 5 week period, the best 4 players will compete in a Double Elimination Playoff. The first broadcast of the weekly games can be watched live on Twitch on Monday 9th at 18:00 CEST.

Kripparrian – The Sensitive Savage


Yesterday, we had a real big name streaming Minion Masters: Kripparrian. The former well known top player of World of Warcraft, Diablo III, Path of Exile and current Hearthstone player was streaming his first steps as a new Minion Master. To date, he didn’t convince his Sensitive Savage to join the Kripp Army. Maybe he will manage to do so on his next stream live on Twitch on Saturday.

Don’t know what the Sensitive Savage is? Well, here’s a short introduction of Scott:

Rumours are that a unique minion roams through the Eternal Woods. A furious fighter of fierce ferocity, hailing from the Highlands in the north. It was told, that Masters frantically search the lands for this minion. But nobody was able to acquire his strength, yet. The savage carries a secret and the trailblazers who have seen him speak in riddles: "Only those with a good shoulder will convince the savage to join them".

Kripparrian streaming Minion Masters is a huge thing by itself. But we also thought about our Community. Therefore, we changed the way ‘Watch & Win’ works: instead of a free key for Minion Masters, streamers can now win Supplies Codes for their audience. Just watch Minion Masters streams and win free supplies for your expeditions!

Want to surprise others with a free copy of Minion Masters? Well, here you go!

Official Minion Masters Subreddit


There’s a lot of discussion happening about Reddit, lately. We want to bring our Official Subreddit back to life and need your help, Masters! Some of you don’t like Reddit, some just want a simple forum, others enjoy the platforms for discussion as they are (Steam Community Hub & Community Discord). Well, we’re happy that these platforms are used so much, but Reddit is another platform we want to focus on. That doesn’t mean, that we’re aiming to switch everything over to the Subreddit! We encourage you to discuss with each other whatever platform you like the most. Reddit is just so well known amongst gamers, that we feel it’s worth it to bring the Subreddit back to life.

If you don’t like Reddit, we will not force you to use it. But we would like your help nonetheless even if it is just a comment every now and then. The vast majority of gamers seem to follow the known names of a given scene, the so called Community Influencers & Leaders. But not only the big names could make some impact, every single user posting and commenting on our Subreddit makes it more findable via the Reddit Mainpage and Google. Just head over there once in a while, leave your vote on some posts and comment or share a cool video clip! That’s all it takes, really.

The Master’s Challenge


We announced a new challenge for you on Wednesday together with Update 46. It’s not a new boss in the expeditions and not just another competition. Not a new game mode, not a new Master (sorry for that). It’s just the biggest competitive tournament ever happening to Minion Masters since its Early Access! We’re proud to present you

THE MASTER’S CHALLENGE

From today onwards, you can sign up! But there’s one restriction: Only Grandmasters of the current season are allowed to compete against the very best players for a whopping $1,000 prize pool. Not enough incentive to participate? Okay… how about that:
  • The Master’s Challenge at the end of the month is a trial run for more regular tournaments from BetaDwarf
  • The Master’s Challenge is also a trial run for something bigger
  • Furthermore, The Master’s Challenge is a trial run for a possible ESL Go4 Series. We need to make sure that the number of participants is as high as possible, to make an ESL Go4 Series worth it! Therefore, we test the activity and interest of our players and watch the numbers of participants for the King Puff Cups, Monday Night Masters and The Master’s Challenge, closely. We will get 40+ participants easily, won’t we? No problem with an amazing community!
Now, that you know you are competing for more than $1,000, here’s everything you need to know:
  • The Master’s Challenge is a 1vs1 Tournament
  • Only Grandmasters of the October Season (1vs1) are allowed (2vs2 Solo Q or Premade does NOT count)
  • The tournament is expected to start on October 28th
  • Details like Tournament Mode, special rules and exact times are to be announced and largely based on the number of participants. So play Minion Masters, reach Grandmaster and sign up!
The sign up process is a little more complicated than you might know from the King Puff Cups, though. Since we don’t have a Tournament feature in-game yet, we have to make sure, that only Grandmasters are able to participate. Therefore, you have to do the following steps if you want to compete:
  1. Open an account on Challonge and set your in-game avatar as the profile picture
  2. Send Thomas alias Erythais (our Community Manager) an Email (thomas@betadwarf.com) with your Steam ID and your Challonge username. You can also message him on the Community Discord
  3. We will check every Steam ID for the current rank
  4. If you have reached Grandmaster in 1vs1 Ranked October Season, we will send you an invitation to the tournament
As easy (and complicated) as that. The reason for the Challonge account is simple, by the way: We want to have the matchups looking good with avatars instead of names only ;)

Community Happenings


We’re sorry that this post isn’t only about you. But as it stands, we have to announce so many new things on a high frequency, that we needed that space. To make up for that, we will present an interview with Dipshit in our next weeks Community Happenings on the state of Minion Masters and its competitive scene. Don’t miss that!

For now, we advise you to play Minion Masters and reach Grandmaster fast! We want to see you compete in The Master’s Challenge.


Cheers from BetaDwarf

Monday, October 2, 2017

Kripparrians Minions – Forced to Stream

Some days are special. Do you know that feeling? When you wake up in the morning, grab some coffee and all of a sudden, you feel pretty darn good. Not because of the coffee, but because of the day itself. Well, we had that feeling today. And there’s a good reason for that. Before we go into more detail, let us tell you a little story.


A Streamer Was Born

Octavian Morosan was a known World of Warcraft player. He was not even a streamer, but he got popular within the World of Warcraft scene. He completed the WoW Ironman Challenge as the first person, had a position in a leading raiding guild called Exodus and was recognized as a competitor for the top Hunter DPS. Octavian “Kripparrian” Morosan started his career on screen with Youtube videos. He made World of Warcraft Tutorials.

When Diablo III finally got released, Kripparrian produced in-depth videos about the Diablo III mechanics. He became more famous. Together with his “Team NoLife” teammate Krippi, he also gained fame for getting the world first Hardcore Diablo kill on Inferno difficulty. This time, live on Twitch.

After Diablo III, Kripparrian started playing Path of Exile. Another success story. Kripparrian became the Season 1 Champion after winning the most race points in Path of Exile's Hardcore Race Series. His presence in the Path of Exile community was so beneficial to the game's growth, that he gained special thanks from the developers (Grinding Gear Games) in the end credits!

Finally, Kripparrian obtained a Hearthstone beta key. That caused a huge spike in popularity and competitive growth, coming close to winning his first ever live tournament in the 2013 BlizzCon Innkeeper's Invitational and participating in the prestigious tournament ESGN Fight Night both as a player and a caster.

True Masters are Forced to Stream


Today, we want to announce Octavian “Kripparrian” Morosan. Yes! Kripparrian, the former top player of World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Path of Exile will stream Minion Masters. So far, Kripparrian plans to stream on October 5th, 7th and 9th.

We don’t know about you, but for us, this October truly turned into “Eventober”. We have the King Puff 2vs2 Cup coming Saturday, October 7th. The Monday Night Masters League starts today and the first games will be broadcasted on Monday, October 9th. Here's the VOD of the live introduction! At the end of the month, we have a big Grandmaster Tournament with a serious incentive to participate. Also the voting for the ESL Go4 Series is still ongoing. Right here, we want to shout-out thanks to all of you! Our community, your effort, loyalty and feedback is the true success story of Minion Masters. And now, we take it to the next level.

Experience Kripparrians Minions


Now that you know who Kripparrian is and that he’ll stream Minion Masters, we want to make sure that you don’t miss a single minute. Therefore, we highly recommend you to follow Kripparrian on Twitter, Twitch and subscribe to his YouTube Channel. He’s usually streaming at 11pm EDT / 5am CEST, so it can be a little late (or early, if you want so) for Europeans. But we’re pretty sure you can catch him streaming and by following him via social media, you’ll get noticed when he goes live. He also uploads to YouTube on a daily basis.

Let's talk about some other things!

Furthermore, we’re still working on the Expeditions. Actually, we're preparing an event for the start of Kripparrians stream. That entails a new card you can obtain through the expeditions. Maybe, you will meet Scott very soon. Our art team is working hard on new biomes. They are working with shadows and demons… creepy. Oh, and did we mention the new faction? Well, now we did. It’s all about the drones…

Our latest balance changes involved Bridge Shrines. We’re aware, that the possibilities to place them can prevent interaction. Therefore, we’re working on polishing the placement mechanics around the nook near the master.

We have some more in the pipeline for you, but we don’t want to spoiler everything right now. Just keep the term “Eventober” in mind. For now, it might be worth to play some Minion Masters, especially 2vs2 with a friend. Because the King Puff Cup is just around the corner.




Cheers from BetaDwarf!