Beginner Tournament
Playing with level 5 perks on Suicidal might be even more challenging than playing level 6 on HoE. So if you really want to run Beginner tourney, I think difficulty must be lowered to Hard. I doubt we need 2 different competitions at all. New players wouldn't be interested, especially when they're supposed to pay entree fee. But experienced ones should participate in Veteran completion only, and not trying to "steal" easy win in Beginners. And since server is running ServerPerks, then level 6 perks can be set up for everyone, including those, who reset their perks. I think it is better to run 1 tournament with 10 team than 2 tournaments with 5 in each. Or even worse: first tournament having 6 teams while second one had been canceled due to lack of competitors.
Entree fee and winning prizes
I support entree fee. First, it filters out small children, who has no credit card and who don't take such things seriously. Second, it confirms the seriousness of the participation. It is better to have smaller amount of teams in fact than having a lot of teams "on a paper", where half of them can't even collect together for a signed up game.
But I don't support money prizes. As some say, entree fee costs only "a couple of beers". Then we can also say: "The winner gets beer 6-pack". Which sounds ridiculous. I mean, if you can't put reasonable amount of dosh for a prize (