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Announcement BW Circuit Discussion

Monai

Monai

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Moderator
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!
 
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.
 
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- 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)
 
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
 
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.
 
Helpful visualization of the circuit this year for anyone wanting to discuss the dates of the tours

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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
 
Just my 2c I enjoyed ladder tour right before PL, giving me some chance to derust / try new stuff against solid competition to see if I felt like playing more BW or not lol. And as a manager in RoAPL/RBYPL I highly highly appreciate the RBYLT leading up to it as it's quite good to judge active talent ahead of the tournament.

It might be not that desirable for the top players but I think it's a clear net positive for development, having people who are actually good and tryharding available for games on ladder is amazing for anyone trying to get better. Nothing makes you improve faster than on-demand good quality games against good quality opponents.

Practically there might not have been enough top players pushing in BWLT for it to be worthwhile given what people are saying? I didn't keep up too closely. But then maybe go for a tighter cut (2-3 weeks, top8 or top12) rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

With that said, I don't think it should ever be replacing a real tournament. It's an addition, not a replacement. 2x ssnl + GC + Cup is a tried and true formula that works for just about every oldgen. Then if a community can sustain a decent Ladder Tour I think it's a great benefit, even a smaller one would be good. If not I suppose it can be scrapped.
 
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I think the schedule looks solid overall, but considering how many tournaments we already have and how difficult it is to fit everything into the year without overlaps, I’d really like to see more tournaments using a no johns format. It’s simply not realistic to say that someone can’t find 30 minutes to play a BO3 within a 3-day window; and if they genuinely can’t, then they probably shouldn’t be signing up in the first place. The no johns structure keeps events moving, prevents long delays, and makes the whole circuit healthier time-wise, especially when there are so many tours queued into the calendar.
I think this format could be expanded beyond just the Last Chance type events. For example, a second Summer Seasonal (if reintroduced) could easily adopt a no johns format, or really any non-flagship tournament that tends to drag or overlap with others. With the schedule this full, tightening up deadlines feels like the most efficient way to keep everything running smoothly without cutting potential tournaments people might want.

As for ladder tournaments, I still find the format pretty flawed for the same reasons discussed here — but that’s secondary compared to the importance of adopting more no johns events overall.

Lastly, I think it would be really cool to have a Smogon Tour-style event that includes the old gens, BW included, but I’ll probably make a separate post about that in the proper section.
 
live tour format circuit tournament would be very fun but finding hosts for it would probably be a nightmare. if that could be worked out i think that would be great.
(doesn’t even have to be just bw there could be one for multiple old gens but since we are talking about bw just mentioning a prospective bw version)
 
Sorry for the late response due to holiday. I've drafted a prospective schedule for 2026 circuit with the 3 main takeaways being;
  1. Return the very popular summer seasonal
  2. Ladder Tour and Last Chance / No Johns are somewhat controversial, but have fanbases owing to their unique formats
  3. Three gigantic individual tours will make overlap inevitable
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This was the schedule I put together to the best of my ability with these requirements. Overlap was always going to happen, so I tried to fit the beginning of tournaments in once the vast majority of participants in previous tournaments had been knocked out. The Black Sheep of the circuit was always going to be Grand Slam due to its length, independence from circuit playoffs, and exclusively no ou format. This would make it the tournament easiest to justify the most overlap with, so I fit the rebranded No Johns tour during it. The fast nature of No Johns would also take away the least from players wishing to play both Grand Slam and whatever circuit tour had to be fit then. There was a lot of demand for a second BW team tour, and WCOP seemed to be a popular inclusion for that, so it will be kept and overlapped with the beginning of Summer Seasonal. The aforementioned Summer Seasonal will be making its return after the outcry for its return, and will be overlapping with Classic's BW Cup, which cannot be adjusted. Ladder Tour, while also somewhat controversial like LC/NJ, brought in some much needed diversity to our circuit. We agree with complaints that it began to slow down towards weeks 3 and especially 4, and will be trying to remedy this by shortening the ladder portion to just 2-3 weeks. Finally, GC will round out the tournament season and will overlap with BWPL, which is inevitable due to both of their long lengths.

TLDR, I did my best to minimize your overlap while keeping a no johns format and a shortened ladder tour.
 
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Made some changes to what Monai proposed
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Didnt touch the team tours because I don't follow them as much and they also require some coordination with stuff like roapl.

Main changes:
- Have second big tour start in april(same as last year) instead of may to lower overlap with cup.
- Swap places of Ladder Tour and No Johns and then push No Johns to the end of the year as well. This makes it overlap with just the ending of 1 tour instead of the end of 2 and the start of 1. Having ladder tour be your last chance to qualify for circuit playoffs seems much worse because of how different the format is and you get to keep the Last Chance name.
- Remove the sinful google sheets dark mode.
 
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