Esports|Age of Empires IV|MarineLorD — The 4-0 Grand Final at Heidelberg Castle

Inside Heidelberg Castle on 30 October 2022, Alexis “MarineLorD” Eusebio of France and Greece’s Themistoklis “TheMista” Bonidis met in the Age of Empires IV Grand Final of Red Bull Wololo: Legacy. The tournament handbook scheduled that final live at the castle and defined it as a best-of-seven, so the championship went to the first player to win four games. Red Bull organized the offline event, while World’s Edge and Microsoft supported it; the official Xbox account described the week as the culmination of the Age of Empires anniversary celebration at Heidelberg Castle. Sixteen Age of Empires IV players competed from 26 to 30 October for a separate $300,000 prize pool, distinct from the Age of Empires I and Age of Empires II competitions staged during the same festival. The final used Age of Empires IV on Windows PC with the Season Three Anniversary Update, build 24916, which went live on 25 October. The handbook’s civilization draft includes the newly released Ottomans, confirming that this was the ten-civilization Anniversary-era client rather than the earlier eight-civilization launch build. Age of Empires IV is a one-versus-one real-time strategy game: each player directs villagers to gather food, wood, gold and stone, advances through historical ages, and converts those resources into armies, fortifications and technology. A game ends when one player resigns or a standard victory condition is completed, and the series score counts games—not rounds, maps, kills or points. MarineLorD reached the final after defeating Beastyqt in the semifinal, while TheMista advanced past LucifroN. Their championship series ended without requiring a fifth game: MarineLorD won four games to none, taking the Age of Empires IV title and the $100,000 first prize; TheMista received $50,000 as runner-up. Red Bull’s official recap records the 4–0 result, and the independent Esports Charts event report separately identifies both finalists and the same score. The clean sweep makes this a discrete, consequential castle moment even though another Metablox memory covers TaToH’s Age of Empires II final at the venue one day earlier; the two games, builds and competitive formats are not merged. The pin marks Heidelberg Castle’s courtyard complex in Heidelberg, Germany, where the handbook and official event promotion place the live final. The cover shows the Ottheinrichsbau courtyard façade itself, photographed by AnRo0002 in 2018 and released under CC0 1.0; it documents the venue, not the match. Primary evidence: https://www.redbull.com/int-en/red-bull-wololo-legacy-recap-what-happened ; https://bulldrive.redbull.com/dl/GFurtYWZG2 ; https://www.ageofempires.com/news/aoe_iv_update_24916_live/ ; https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/09/28/celebrating-25-years-of-age-of-empires/ Independent cross-check: https://escharts.com/news/red-bull-wololo-legacy-2022-recap Venue: https://www.schloss-heidelberg.de/en/visitor-information/contact-us Photo: AnRo0002, CC0 1.0, Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20180810Ottoheinrichsbau1.jpg