Champions of the Era (abbreviated as CotE) was a weekly ARMS tournament series organized by Era. The series began in the Summer of 2018 and ran until its 100th event on October 10th, 2021 where Era also announced her retirement from ARMS tournament organizing.
Like most weekly events, Champions of the Era ran double elimination brackets, regardless of entrant count. Players utilized Era's Discord server to communicate with their opponents as the brackets were ran on Challonge, a site that lacks player-to-player chat functions. Many of the early CotE events were streamed and commentated by Cedge whereas later events were streamed by Era herself with various co-commentators over time. On occasion, there were pre-event warm up lobbies ran by Rashiko and LiteraryFirearms of Casual ARMS prior to the bracket beginning. After some tournaments, movie watch parties have also been held including one for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and another for Jurassic Park.
Unlike most other tournaments, CotE does not use the "Backroom" stage list. This means that players have the option to play on traditionally non-legal stages such as Spring Stadium, Ramen Bowl, Sky Arena, and/or Ribbon Ring (Ramen Bowl and Sky Arena are no longer included in the current stage list however).
The unique stage list for Champions of the Era has been considered a breath of fresh air by many, but some players also feel that a more traditional set of stages would be better for a competitive tournament. After many complaints about the stages, Era decided to create a new weekly tournament series, titled Temple Tantrum that utilized the "Backroom" stage list while still continuing to run CotE.
Champions of the Era was not initially region locked, but in early 2020 it became locked to North American players only. This allowed CotE events to count toward the ARMS North American Power Ranking without having European or Japanese players interfere with North American players' results. Prior to Champions of the Era's region lock, in order to provide an event for the European players interested in a CotE like event, Era created Champions of the Erapean Union which was region locked to European players only. This event was ran at a much more reasonable time for European players to play at compared to traditional Champions of the Era tournaments. In Fall 2021, CotE became region-free once more and shifted to a slightly earlier time to better accommodate players from regions other than North America. This continued into the series' final event which even managed to have a full international Top 3.
The unique logo used for Champions of the Era 100.
With 19 wins, Asqew has the most Champions of the Era wins out of all 28 unique victors.
AstroNinja has the highest win streak in the series, winning 5 tournaments in a row.
Champions of the Era 25 had the most participants out of any CotE tournament with 34 entrants.
The logo for Champions of the Era was created by Gryffical. He also created the logo for Mega League Monday and Temple Tantrum.
Hamma was the co-owner of Champions of the Era up until early February 2019.
When the tournament series began there were bi-weekly prize pots donated from Radio and Cedge.
During the time that Era was sponsored by Milky Way eSports, it was requested that Champions of the Era also came under the MWe umbrella. This sponsorship was somewhat short lived as only five events carried the MWe name.
For the 69th event, due to its infamous numbering, many players donated to a prize pot that eventually totaled to $169.69.
This event was also streamed by Neru with Mungus as his co-commentator, who used VTuber avatars based on Mechanica and Min Min respectively.
Frosty and LOSER have organized a couple of CotE events (#64, #73, and #99) for Era under circumstances in which she was too busy to do so.
Champions of the Era is the first ARMS tournament series to reach 100 events.
CotE 100 was initially announced on September 26th, 2021 with a trailer parodying the trailer for Jurassic Park.[1] To fit that theme, it was given the official nickname "Erassic Park". It also featured a unique logo based on the aforementioned movie made specifically for the occasion by the artist bucketart.[2]
