Announcement BW Circuit Discussion

[Monai]

Moving forward, the BW Mod team would like the public to have a more organized place to provide feedback on our yearly circuit. The planned 2026 circuit as of right now is:

BW Winter Seasonal - January 13th
BW Slam - February 17th
BW Global Championship - April 7th
BW World Cup - April 21st
BW Cup - June 16th
BW Ladder Tournament - August 4th
BW Premier League - August 25th
BW Last Chance - October 20th

Italicized tours do not contribute to the end of year circuit tournament

We are willing to introduce tournaments based on popular demand, such as reintroducing summer seasonal or a potential new format proposed by the community. However, the tournament schedule is decently packed as is, so new tournaments will very probably supplant a less popular one. Please let us know what you think!

 

[leoperi]

Isnt possible to remove last chance and do another ladder tour? Or maybe just award more points in ladder tour. I kinda dislike how fast paced last chance is like specially given how its very likely your opp will have a different timezone than you and you cant have extensions aswell as having a short deadline so what you do if both players cant find a time to agree on coinflip bc the deadline is shorter doesnt seem fair. Also why Bw Gc is so close to bw worldcup.

 

[magialice]

i'd prefer no ladder tour personally, the last two weeks of it the ladder felt super dead making it v hard to qual unless you were on at the right time, i'd prefer a second seasonal like in 2024 which i thought was good.

 

[Incognition]

- One week deadlines for BW Last Chance tours
- Replace Ladder Tour and bring back the BW Summer Seasonals

Ladder tours are nice, but some people aren't able to have the time to grind each week.

Although not official, it would be good to see the return of BW Trios, I thought that went well last time (not saying it because our team won lol)

 

[Tack]

i have the same selfish request pretty much every year, but can we move bwpl to a month or 2 earlier so it isnt during my busiest rl time? it's pretty much the only tour i go out of my way to make happen every year but it'd be nice to be consistently available after thursday for more than ~2 weeks of the season

 

[VictoriasDelibirds]

I’m with Incognition and Magialice; the ladder tour feels much less like a true tournament than the other ones that are hosted, so I’d prefer for it to be replaced with the Summer Seasonal.

The Last Chance tour has been fun, but it’s also been pretty hectic. I understand needing to get it done quickly due to the impending end of the annual circuit, so maybe it can be pushed up a bit (say, to late September or early October) to allow for more lenient deadlines.

 

[monchooo]

Helpful visualization of the circuit this year for anyone wanting to discuss the dates of the tours

text format

BW Winter Seasonal
- sign ups Jan 13
- finals May 9

BW Slam
- sign ups Feb 16
- finals Jun 5

BW Global Championship
- sign ups Apr 7
- finals Aug 8

BW World Cup
- sign ups Apr 21
- finals July 18

BW Cup
- sign ups June 16
- finals Aug 24

BW Ladder Tournament
- sign ups Aug 4
- play offs Sep 1
- finals Sep 28

BW Premier League
- sign ups Aug 25
- finals Nov 3

BW OU Last Chance
- sign ups Oct 19
- finals TBD (probably November 22/23)

Some personal thoughts:

Ladder tour
Was not a fan of the Ladder Tour replacing Summer Seasonal. Circuit playoffs is a BW OU tournament and the Ladder Tour is that for only 16 people making it more exclusive then even the team tournaments. If you exclude it from the schedule there is a big gap for individual tournaments between the end of Cup until the beginning of Last Chance (56 days), where as the other tours try to overlap their sign ups with the end of the previous tour. Bringing back Summer Seasonal in place of the Ladder Tour would solve this.

GC and Cup dates
Not a fan of how big the overlap is between GC and Cup. Assuming Cup starting date can't be changed, if ladder tour is kept it would make more sense to swap their places in the schedule. If ladder tour is swapped back with summer seasonal then I don't see how the overlap can be solved. Winter seasonal and GC already start as early as they can.

Last Chance
Love the No Johns single elim format and am against extending the deadlines to full weeks . Feels very refreshing compared to the slog of gc having to play 2 or 3 sets each round. Anecdotal but I played more rn's in this tour than the rest of the circuit combined. If ladder tour and its starting date are kept I wouldn't mind moving last chance up a few weeks.

Also thank you to the council for making this thread

 

[Cow]

the format is good, personally would keep it the same