Minecraft Speedrun Showdown II

I happened to stumble across a few videos on Minecraft Speedrunning via Tumblr (for example) and thought it was really impressive, with some bonus fun storylines. (Some very impressive detective work to catch cheaters, too.) Then two weeks ago via fruitberries I stumbled upon the Speedrun Showdown II event, a charity tournament with an unusual format: 2v2 speedrun to kill the ender dragon in the same world with PVP enabled. I checked it out on a whim (probably also because I recently felt a bit nostalgic about the Hermes Cup, the Hades speedrunning tournament) and immediately had a lot of fun. The players and teams are really good, the commentators do a good job, and all the matches were very exciting. Spectator mode is very convenient especially when teams are lost or chasing each other – the PVP added so much to the tactics and gameplay! (They were allowed to keep their armor and tools if they died, but still lost the rest of their inventory.)

Last weekend were the finals (Twitch VOD – no idea how long it will be up, sadly, my least favorite part about Twitch), and the grand finale was a best of three. I got so excited about the first of these that I even managed to convince DD to watch the next two with me. ( It was very dramatic. )

Not sure how many previous matches I will manage to go back and watch until they disappear especially considering it is almost Christmas, but hopefully a few, and hopefully there will be a part three of this tournament one day.
In the meantime, while MCC is on break, I might also check out Blockwars... maybe. If I happen to find a time turner.