Grand Arena
Grand Arena is a mode that was added to SWGoH with the Title Update 14 on Dec 4, 2018. It is similar to Territory War but instead of the guild, it pits two players against each other in a battle for dominance.
Contents
Requirements
You must be level 85 to participate in the Grand Arena.
Phases
Preview Phase
Each Grand Arena event will have 1 preview phase. This allows a user to join the Grand Arena and locks in the GP and mods.
Defense Phase
During this phase you will set your defensive teams. The number of defensive squads/fleets scales based on the GP of the lowest player in the group. The total number of defensive squads can change per Grand Arena event. It's important to note, the Grand Arena interface only shows 2 teams per sector. It's possible though, that a sector requires more than 2 teams. This has caused a lot of people to not play all of their defensive teams.
Attack Phase
During this phase you will be able to attack your opponents defenses.
Review Phase
This phase allows you to review the winner of the Grand Arena event.
Matchmaking
Players are placed into a group of 8 opponents that have similar collections so that all players have fun and challenging fights throughout the entire Grand Arena. Once players are in a group, matchmaking pairs players with a similar number of wins rising the highest skill players to the top of the group.
- Matchmaking avoids players that have already fought whenever possible.
- Grouping Edge Cases: In the instance that the number of participating players is not divisible by 8, we create 8 person groups starting with the strongest collections to the weakest collections. The final two groups are then split such that both groups have 4 or more players. For example, if there are 9 players between the final 2 groups, they will have 5 and 4 players respectively.
- Byes: In the instance of an odd number of players in a group, one player will receive a bye each round. Matchmaking continues to try to match players based on wins, but that will not always be possible.
Once matchmaking has completed, each player's GP and characters are locked in for the entire rest of the Grand Arena matchups. This means that further improvements to units including changing Mods will not affect the Grand Arena event for any of the rounds.
Schedule
Each Grand Arena event is a week-long event that consists of a series of 3 rounds against different opponents. There are seven 24 hour phases: Join, Set Defense (Opponent 1), Attack (Opponent 1), Set Defense (Opponent 2), Attack (Opponent 2), Set Defense (Opponent 3), Attack (Opponent 3).
Earning Banners
Similar to Territory Wars, banners are earned for setting defenses, successful attacks, and conquering a territory.
| Team Members | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | |
| Offense Win | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| First Try Bonus | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 |
| Survival | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Full Health | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Full Protection | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Unused Slot | 0 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 |
| TOTAL | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 |
| Team Members | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | |
| Offense Win | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| First Try Bonus | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Survival | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Full Health | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Full Protection | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Unused Slot | 0 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 |
| TOTAL | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 |
| Team Members | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | |
| Offense Win | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| First Try Bonus | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Survival | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Full Health | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Full Protection | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Unused Slot | 0 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 16 |
| TOTAL | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 |
Strategy
Always set defense, first of all. Good defensive teams would be KRU, Revan, Bastila, Nightsisters, and several more teams. Try to save CLS and Nightmare for offense, and if there is an easy team, don't underestimate it, but use an undersized team for more banners and try to get some of the grand arena awards. If your main fleet is Thrawn or Ackbar, save it and put Tarkin on defense with your backup team and put your main team on offense. The AI does not know how to use Thrawn or Ackbar properly.
Rankings
Grand Arena uses the Swiss-system tournament where each competitor does not play every other. Grand Arena is current set up so each event has 1 winner. Three people tie for 2nd rewards. Three people tie for 3rd rewards. One person for 4th.
Rounds are broken down as follows:
- First round 4 people get 1, remaining 4 get 0
- The 1s get matched with the 1s, and the 0's matched with 0's
- After the second round you have 2 with 2, 4 with 1, and 2 with 0
- The 2's get matched together, the 0's get matched, and the 1's get matched
- In the end you will have 1 with 3, 3 with 2, 3 with 1, and 1 with 0
Tie Breakers
In the rare occasion of the event ending with tied banners, the player with the higher GP will win. In the extremely rare chance of equal Banners and equal GP, a random player wins.[1]
If two players tie in Grand Arena with the exact same amount of Banners at the end of a round then Galactic Power will be used to resolve the tie. The Galactic Power of both players is captured at the time of matchmaking and does not update at the end of a battle. This means at the end of an event both player's GP may have changed and will not be representative of who would win in a tie.[2]
Formats
Grand Arena can run in different formats for each event. It's important to notice the format before starting.
The number of active territories on the map can change from 2 to 4. When four territories are active, the back territory isn't visible until the territory in front of it is defeated. During the preview phase it can be hard to see how many territories are active. The easiest way to tell is to look at the territory borders to see which ones are solid.
5v5
This format is similar to TW and has ran with and without ships.
3v3
This format first ran on Dec 21st, 2018 without ships. It is the first time the game has ever had 3v3.
Season 0 (Exhibition)
Season 0 launched Dec 6th 2018.[3] Lots of technical problems, including wins not counting towards your banners, caused the event to be ended early and a redo to start immediately.[4] Season 0 is still in progress and has had a number of different formats.
External Tools
DSR Bot has added a ",ga" command which allows you to compare key parts of your roster against your opponent.
Scorpio has several commands to help with looking up your opponent.
swgoh.gg is in process of making a new Grand Arena tool on their website.
Territory Wars and Grand Arena Counters - Server and Discord - type =counter <faction/leader name> to get counter for that team.
