Said I'd edit the original post, but with a suggestions and questions it felt best to make a full one. So my thoughts on the individual tiers are:
SS ND Ubers - I don't dislike SS ND Ubers, I also don't love it. That being said, my personal opinion doesn't really matter. What matters is whether or not the tier's playerbase does. The thing is... SS ND Ubers doesn't really have a distinct playerbase. There was the kickoff tour and then the seasonal last year had 16 signups. On top of that, pretty much every person that signed up for that regularly signs up for SV tours as well. This isn't to say it shouldn't be included, but that doing so does come with some level of risk. It isn't a bad or unplayable metagame, but it is dead at the moment. For context, it has its own channel in the ND Ubers discord and the last time it was used to discuss the metagame was during that seasonal (August). The metagame would definitely benefit from a slot, but is also difficult to justify if the community doesn't express interest in it. I'm just neutral on it personally.
SV ND Ubers UU - ND Ubers UU does have a semi-active community that is more than capable of filling a slot. It is an easy include from my perspective. It is also the current spotlight ladder so give that a whirl!
ND Ubers Draft - Draft was included for the first time in NDCL and it has been a success by every metric. Things went incredibly smoothly behind the scenes thanks to Hacker's assistance! The circumstances are similar and the only issue I see with ND Ubers Draft is potentially setting it up. If that can be done then there is no reason ND Ubers Draft shouldn't get a slot imo.
I think a good guiding question for discussion here is what is the purpose of NDUPL? Is it meta development for the main tier? Is it for providing the highest level play for ND Ubers? Is it an opportunity to give some of the subtiers high level play? Answering this question will help determine what tiers we want to include.
Everybody probably has at least slightly differing opinions, so I'm only speaking for myself. Last year we did a ghosting tour around this time that was a fun community thing. The circuit was success with a lot more participants than anybody was expecting. This is the spiritual successor to that and the trios tours we've had previously as the community is seemingly large enough to host a 'proper' team tour. The primary purpose of this tour is for the community to have some fun. So long as that happens I'd consider it a success.
Generally, I'm a pretty big proponent of collaboration between different areas of Smogon when possible. There is room to include additional tiers / formats so why not imo? Is this tournament going to feature the highest level of play for ND Ubers? Probably not, but that isn't a bad thing as long as the level of play is high enough. The level of play is somewhat subjective at the end of the day. For some people it is solely the names in the draft pool, for others it is the actual games. At the end of the day I just want people to have a fun time playing the tiers featured. I don't care if they're a long time mainer or some outsider giving the tier a shot as long as they have fun.
I think using DNUPL's slots as a model works well here. This was 4x main tier, 1x UU, 1x Doubles. I know ND Doubles Ubers wasn't mentioned in the main post but I'd like to vouch for it anyways as it is a really fun tier that I know would pull some signups. Draft and SS I'm not opposed to including but don't feel super strongly about.
I mentioned this on discord, but ND Doubles Ubers was overlooked in the council discussions which is surprising given ND Mono Ubers was brought up. I've reached out to ND Doubles leadership to get their opinion on including it and would personally like to if they give the go ahead. It is a cool tier with a large enough playerbase for a slot.
I think usually for team tours with 6 teams, the format that top 4 teams would qualify the playoffs is not very competitive in the regular season. It's either a three-stage format (in stage 2, top 4 teams play another round with each other to decide the two teams in the final, but it might be too complex) or a final between the No.1 seed and the winner of No.2 vs No.3.
Also, a prize pool for such non-CA team tour would always be great.
The playoff format can and will be discussed. I'm not personally married to anything in particular. A prize pool would be great, but who is going to fund it? Last year I chipped in roughly $600 into prizes for ND Ubers tours and I'm not particularly keen to do that again. What is the purpose of a prize pool? Pressuring anybody to contribute to one is obviously a non starter. If someone wants to for whatever reason then sure. However, if the purpose is to attract people from outside of the community then it requires a deceptively large amount of money to do that. Sure a $300 prize pool sounds great, but that is going to be split between 10ish people and if the money is your incentive are you really going to spend a couple of months learning and playing a new tier for $30?
There are some things we could offer such as a unique role on discord or maybe something in the NDOT room? Any and all suggestions are welcome, but a cash prize likely isn't happening. If it made a difference I could offer $50 or something to the winners, but once you split that up you can't even buy a footlong these days.
