Tournaments BWLTL - Format Discussion Thread

With BWLTL finally getting ready to start it's inaugural season, we have the post for this year's format!

This year, due to the timing of the tournament and the prize being 5k likes (a banner for those uninitiated), staff has elected to have the tournament be smaller this year, with plans to expand the tournament in 2027. That being said, this tournament will be 6 teams, and 8 slots.

We understand there might be some shock not seeing OU in the initial format discussion! Alternate proposals to include OU in the smaller format were considered prior to this, but in interest to gauge the lower tier community primarily with this year's tournament, the plan being to expand to 10 slots with 2 OUs the following year.

Nara said:

We understand there might be some shock not seeing OU in the initial format discussion! Alternate proposals to include OU in the smaller format were considered prior to this, but in interest to gauge the lower tier community primarily with this year's tournament, the plan being to expand to 10 slots with 2 OUs the following year.

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I'm glad this is going to be a tournament in BW, I'm also not sure why people would be shocked that OU wouldn't be included, as this is primarily for lower tiers.

Assuming we are following the similar principle to ADVLTL, would BW DOU be considered as a slot, if not this year, in the next edition? I don't think OU should be included generally.

Incognition said:

I'm glad this is going to be a tournament in BW, I'm also not sure why people would be shocked that OU wouldn't be included, as this is primarily for lower tiers.

Assuming we are following the similar principle to ADVLTL, would BW DOU be considered as a slot, if not this year, in the next edition? I don't think OU should be included generally.

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Not opposed to the idea, especially with the tournament moving to a set slot format. However, especially next year, our custom avatars are primarily allocated for OU. My personal opinion (not the moderator teams as a whole) is that tournaments with CA:s included should have OU slots. I am from this standpoint against having potential CA tours with no OU slots.

Aleksanteri said:

Not opposed to the idea, especially with the tournament moving to a set slot format. However, especially next year, our custom avatars are primarily allocated for OU. My personal opinion (not the moderator teams as a whole) is that tournaments with CA:s included should have OU slots. I am from this standpoint against having potential CA tours with no OU slots.

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That's understandable, and it was something I personally suggested when the hosts for ADV were discussing introducing a CA for the next edition of ADVLT:

My comment would stand for this format as well - I would like to see lower tiers represented more, and introducing a CA would potentially gatekeep people who genuinely invest/enjoy these tiers despite having more sign ups.

YEEEEEEEEEES BW PU

Bw nu ftw

Just because there might be a custom avatar involved does not mean you guys should include OU no matter what, imo. If you do so, you'll just end up playing some goofy BWPL farmers league and not a lower tier tournament on its own.
The goal for this type of tour should be attracting people into lower tiers for those to get more teamtour representation and actual focusing, not going for yet another 2x OU + lower tiers tournament like the billion of them existing on this site, with yet the usual CA chasers that dont care about lower tiers and will just sign up saying "busy will play games send teams or i cancer ty".
I dont know what the "CA policy" is for BW subforum tours so I wont speak on that, but one thing that I do know is that you DO NOT put OU into a lower tiers tour. If people wanna play BW OU they might as well sign up for the very niche tournament called BWPL.

If you guys eventually decide to go for 10 slots, I think it would be interesting to have Draft x2 and CAP as the final slots.
The communities are pretty active and invested, I feel like it's impossible to lose both quantity signups and "quality signups" (altho i hate this word) with any of these. Plus, unlike DOU, they were not featured in this year's BWPL, so I think they have a pretty good reason to be featured in LTL. SS CAP had a slot in SSCL, and the community seemed very happy and satisfied about the outcome, so... why not try it in BW?


I'm a BW RU enjoyer so I'm obviously interested to see how the LTL format exports into other generations. Best of luck to everyone hosting and everyone playing you have all my sympathy

Thank you all for the feedback and input this year!
The format for BWLTL 2026 will stand as proposed.

BW Draft
BW Ubers
BW UU
BW RU
BW NU
BW PU
BW ZU
BW LC

manager signs shortly after this goes up, best of luck!