CCP Mindstar has announced the Sixth Alliance Tournament. It will consist of six days of competition.

These are the dates we have in mind:

• Tournament Signups - Dec 19th - Jan 9th
• Qualifying Round 1 - Jan 24th, Jan 25th
• Qualifying Round 2 - Jan 31st, Feb 1st
• Finals - Feb 7th, Feb 8th

Signups are not open yet, but you can read about the rules here and the format here. If you want to be considered as an expert/commentator for the EVE TV broadcast, which involves flying to Reykjavik, Iceland, to join the team at CCP headquarters, all the information is here. Lastly, the official tournament forum will be updated with the latest information. Keep reading after the jump for Mindstar's full announcement.

Yes... You read correctly!

It is with great pleasure that I announce that we are in the initial stages of organizing another Alliance PVP Tournament. There have been a few threads on the forums over the last few weeks while we have been finalizing this, and I have been itching to reply to each one with this news!  As with previous tournaments, it's going to have excitement, explosions, extravagant setups, exotic dancers and plenty more (well maybe not exotic dancers; we will see how we go on that one!). This blog is the "early warning blog" to let you all know that it's on so you can plan accordingly.

Fancy a Date?

The tournament will consist of six days of competition - the same as previous tournaments. One key difference is that it will take place over three weekends and not two, which means that there will be no competition on Fridays - only Saturdays and Sundays (something our North American subscribers will appreciate I am sure).

These are the dates we have in mind:

• Tournament Signups - Dec 19th - Jan 9th
• Qualifying Round 1 - Jan 24th, Jan 25th
• Qualifying Round 2 - Jan 31st, Feb 1st
• Finals - Feb 7th, Feb 8th

Rules with an Iron Claw

Following the highly successful FanFest PVP tournament, we have enlisted the help of CCP Claw for the alliance tournament team. We don't anticipate a huge change in rules (although I already told him NO MINING!), but we do want to change things up a little from previous tournaments to keep everyone on their toes. The primary goal we have in mind is to tweak the points system so we see some more heavy hitting combat from both battleships and battlecruisers. I won't steal Claw's thunder, but I think we have some good tweaks to the points system in the works, so head on over to his rules thread in the tournament forum.

Sign here...

Signups are not open just yet as we want to give everyone a fair go and avoid any mixups. We will, however, confirm the signup dates and procedure well in advance. Our initial idea is to reserve a few slots for alliances that have performed well in the last two tournaments. These slots will be filled in order of finishing position and how recent their participation was. The remaining slots will be filled on a "first come, first served" basis. We will outline the exact signup process in the coming days.

Would you like to watch?

The final weekend will be covered live, with commentary from experts and devs alike. Expect mayhem! If you fancy yourself as some kind of internet spaceship expert and would like to kick off your budding e-lebrity career, then head on over to CCP Charlie's Expert applications thread and apply!

That's all from me for now! Please do keep an eye on the Tournament Forum, where we will be posting updates and information as it comes to hand.

Let's kick the tires and light the fires!