Equinox is teaming up with the AWOL tournament on Board Game Arena for a Whispers from the Maze Demo Deck Online Tournament on May 25 starting 4 p.m. UTC+2. Registration for the event, which is open to players of all skill levels, opened May 21 at 4 p.m. UTC+2. Within literally five minutes of the registration open, all 512 spots in the tournament were filled.

“The demo deck saw a massive, previously unheard of demand for online events,” said StarshineSimon, AWOL event organizer. “The AWOL server itself grew from 1500~ members to 2000~ in just under a week. I hope that the players excited for said tournament are able to participate in more online tournaments in the future, whether Equinox-partnered or ran through any of the various, dedicated communities running their own Altered tournaments.”

Players will choose from among six 40-card premade demo decks built featuring cards both from WFM and previous sets. Heroes for those decks will include Subhash, Atsadi, Nevenka, Teija, Gulrang and Akesha. For Atsadi, Subash and Gulrang, this event also serves as their preconstructed deck debut. Decklists were shared at the same time as the registration link on the announcement article and are available for testing on BGA currently.

The best-performing player for each faction will receive 20 WFM promo boosters as well as six WFM boosters.

Slightly different from previous AWOL tournaments, the event will run in two stages. The first is a standard best-of-1 set for eight Swiss rounds that can accommodate up to 512 players. The Swiss rounds will run roughly from 4 p.m.-8:30 p.m. UTC+2, with a Top 16 cut following for about another 2.5 hours. Once a player is registered, gameplay will start if they are logged into BGA at the appropriate time on the day of the tournament.

The tournament will be streamed live in both English and French, from Kaaleb’s stream (French) and Team AWOL’s stream (English). Streamers are encouraged to stream the tournament from their account, and should let the Equinox team know they’re doing so through the official Discord server.

The AWOL and Equinox teams will be available on the day of the tournament for support. A FAQ about the tournament and how it operates on BGA is already available on the AWOL Discord server.

While the tournament will be designed around premade decks, players are still determining new strategies after the WFM season patch removed Helping Hand (Yzmir) and Baba Yaga (Ordis), as well as dulled the threat of Small Step, Giant Leap.

WFM will go into prerelease beginning May 30, officially releasing June 6.

(Editor’s note: This article has been updated reflecting the speed at which the event filled.)