Calgary Beyblade League
The Calgary Beyblade League is a fictional competitive league where my friends and I take on the roles of common anime tropes and battle out in a pretend beyblade world.
The whole thing started in 2016 when my father dropped off a box of old toys early new year's eve.
Inside the box was my old collection of Plastic Gen Beyblades, I had left this box on the table when I hosted my annual New Year's party. The box got the attention of a few of my friends and before long we were having a beyblade tournament.
The evening was a great success, and so I went out and looked for what was new in the beyblade world, finding Beyblade Burst series to be new and exciting. I picked up a few of the original series, and hosted another tournament on my birthday four months later. After that tournament a friend of mine said "We should have recorded these."
And thus, the Calgary Beyblade League was born, I have hosted several tournaments and recorded the battles to share amongst friends. Now we are bringing these battles to the public, stay tuned on the CalgaryBeybladeLeague youtube channel.
The 2021 League was filmed mostly in late 2019 / early 2020 before the pandemic, but production took a lot longer than anticipated. This resulted in us releasing during the pandemic and giving it an appropriate name for the time.
The league starts off with a double round-robin where each character battles the other two players twice each. Scoring points for each type of victory obtained in the battles. After the points are tallied, one character will be removed and a best of 5 tournament bracket will take place to determine who is the "World Champion" of this fictional world.
Each player has 3 beyblades which are part of a themed set. These sets were designed to be balanced against each other, with interesting themes to differentiate them. In each battle, the blader has to use each of their blades once, which is where a great deal of the strategy comes from. Anticipating the opponents choices and making good decisions in ordering is almost as important as skill itself in the arena.