In a shocking turn of events, three time champion Pandemic Legion was knocked out of the tournament in the first round of the finals, paving the way for last year’s runner-up HYDRA RELOADED to take the crown.

Shamis Orzoz (PL) and Aannet (Darkside) attribute the win to the Amarr fleet composition and capacitor warfare of DarkSide.

The seven minute fight began with Pandemic Legion reaching out for DarkSide.’s Curses. With the cruisers and frigates skirmishing around the arena, PL lost their Worms, opening the door for DarkSide.’s Cruors to lock down the PL logistics ship.

With the loss of the logistics Basilisk, Pandemic Legion couldn’t hold their ships together and DarkSide. swept through them losing only a single Curse.

DarkSide. went go on to the semi-finals where they faced Outbreak. for the chance to reach the final fight. The match started slowly as both sides waited for the other to rush. Outbreak. played it cool and eased some ships around the arena to form a pincer. Once the moment was right, they sped in right for DarkSide.’s Guardian and took it down, leaving DarkSide. without logistics for the remainder of the fight. By the end of the match, Outbreak. had lost seven of their ships and only had a Claymore and two Sleipnirs left alive.

Outbreak. would now be the team to face in the Final.

HYDRA RELOADED started the finals facing Negative Ten. After making a complete, flawless sweep over Negative Ten., they moved on to face Paisti Syndicate and crushed them as well losing only a destroyer and a frigate in the process.

The third fight of the day for HYDRA was against RAZOR. HYDRA again had no trouble with their opposition. The early loss of RAZOR’s Scimitar damaged the RAZOR fleet such that they were not able to recover and were only able to take out a destroyer and three inderdictors. HYDRA then moved on to the Final where they faced Outbreak.

The Final was exciting as everyone hoped it would be. Outbreak. looked to be in a great position when the match opened and they downed HYDRA’s three Sabres, two Vindicators and two Kereses in short order.

Outbreak. began concentrating on the HYDRA Oneiros logistics ship. While their attention was on this tough nugget, HYDRA began to roll through Outbreak. targets until the match concluded with only one ship left of the 20 that started the match; a HYDRA Vindicator.

After the match, it was revealed that the Outbreak. team was actually an additional tournament entry of HYDRA RELOADED. As Duncan Tanner explains, “If people are wondering what the true final was, it was Darkside. versus Outbreak, that was the true final.” He refers to the last fight before the Final in which DarkSide. was defeated by Outbreak. This was confirmed by Zarathustra of Outbreak. who stated that “Everyone should realize this was one team that won first and second.”

The first rounds of the Group Stages are complete as we continue to move towards the Finals scheduled for next weekend.
With twice the ships and twice the points, field choices have been more varied as teams jostle for a position in the Finals.

Returning champions Pandemic Legion debuted today in Alliance Tournament IX and performed as anticipated, wrecking Ushra’Khan for the first flawless victory of the day.

Cumulative statistics still show the Tengu as the #1 choice of ship with 88 fielded to date. Cyclone (80), Scimitar (69), Sabre (67) and Sleipnir (57) continue to dominate the Top 5 as well.

Match reports and statistics are available on the Interstellar Correspondents’ website.

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Alliance Tournament IX returns to our screens again today in glorious high definition! Tune in to the live stream at 14:50 UTC to make sure you witness all the thrills and spills from today’s live matches. If you are unable to watch the stream for any reason, our Interstellar Correspondents will be keeping you up to date with statistics and match reports on their AT IX site.

We have great prizes to give out today in our Predict a Winner competition. Please refer to this news article for full details.

Alliance Tournament IX is coming to EVE TV in glorious high definition this weekend. The hosts, CCP Soundwave and CCP Sunset, along with the Alliance Tournament team and experts, invite you join them as 32 teams battle it out to be crowned champions. Will Pandemic Legion retain their crown or will a new challenger come and usurp them? The only way to know for sure is to tune in to EVE TV from 14:50 UTC on Saturday, June 11.

In addition to the many matches this weekend, our friends at Logitech, EVGA, NVIDIA, Shattered Crystal, EON Magazine and Alienware have provided us with a ton of goodies which you can win by joining in the many giveaways and competitions on the EVE Forums, EVE Online Facebook and Twitter pages.

Further details can be found here.

At 15:00 UTC today, Capsuleers will begin entering the tournament arena to participate in the first weekend of qualifying matches. The Interstellar Correspondents have a dedicated site which will bring you up to the minute ship choices and scores. You can also follow the results through Twitter @evetournament.