Proposal "Draft" in Smogon Champions League

[lax]

Despite SS and Head TD starmaster talking about supporting the Draft tier in SCL, he is too much of a coward to make a thread on it. As a result, the next most influential Smogon Draft player (me) will do the dirty work and get the ball rolling

SCL is coming to a close shortly, so I wanted to bring this idea up ASAP so timing / short notice doesn't become an issue that would potentially hinder the chances

Clarifications: this is not a thread about adding or removing any tiers besides Draft as ik goobers love to be like "hmm this idea is interesting, but what if we added SU" (which is a real tier).

Idea: Gen 9 Draft in + OU4 to make 12

Symmetry enthusiasts would love to have SPL and SCL have the same number of OU slots and total slot numbers.

I've started exploring Draft since joining my first tournaments for it about two years ago, both individual ones (an insane amount of these exist) and team tour ones (DCL, DPL). It's honestly quite incredible how much passion and effort goes into these tournaments and the amount of times people can showcase skill gaps and innovation gaps, two prime mechanics of competitive Pokemon. Every Draft team tournament I've been in, the managers and players are always so active and enthusiastic about supporting one another and helping them bring the dubs in, and this is a climate I seldom see in most other subforum PLs. Obviously, this specifically could be bc of me or the teams I've been drafted to, but the level of activity in effort in Draft tours would shock you guys greatly.

There are a ridiculous amount of draft tournaments people play for 0 reward at all (crazy, right?) besides their enjoyment of the game and striving to improve. There are also many enormous leagues that offer a level of prestige or cash prizes. These get hundreds of applicants that get filtered through and people get picked based on their accomplishments in other leagues or (now) Smogon Draft tournaments. Draft has an enormous community and an abundance of players considered The Best as every community tier in SCL does.

The Best part: to me, I really like that every single member of an SCL team can be involved with the Draft slot. Not to say that it's best that they do, but anyone curious or interested can easily build a fast team to test (mock in draft) and provide their own unique spin on the matchup. If you keep up with any tier that your teammates play (ok besides LC probably, but sometimes ppl be pulling up with crazy LCs), you'll be able to recognize Pokemon and provide input on what they can do.

An example of how draft functions:

game

(with points)

Prior to week 1, teams draft different teams with the other 7 teams and select Pokemon in a snake pick order (THIS IS AWESOME BC SCL ALWAYS HAS A WEEK 1 BREAK!!!). There is a set point allocation limit to your draft. You designate Tera Captains that have certain costs higher than others. Then, you pick the team you'd like to use and your opp picks theirs, so pretty straightforward stuff. For actual prep, I would just make my own teams and roll with it, but teammates would always have valuable input that I'd take into consideration. Ex: I wouldn't have thought of Punching Gloves Tera Electric Blast Urshifu as being my biggest threat until it was pointed out to me, and look what they ended up bringing .. wow!

Any teammate of yours (for better or worse) is able to chime in with anything they deem helpful, so for the first time in SCL history, we would have a universal tier that anyone can support and be involved in without having to play a million ladder games or watch a bunch of replays.

HOW SCL WOULD WORK WITH DRAFT:
- Week Break: all 10 teams' Draft players (and anyone else they'd include such as managers or other players) will draft two different teams with a randomized pick order. So my team 1 might be Pick #3 while my team 2 might be Pick #7. There are guidelines and rules on draft timers and skips on picks (if you run out of time), so the teams will always be done before Week 1, and can be set to be done before Sunday completely.
- Sunday night: the Draft player will pick 1 of 2 teams that they think has the general favorable matchup into their coming week's opponents
- Prep and scheduling follow as usual

Long ass post so tl;dr: It is the most potentially interactive tier of them all and teammates can all contribute without compromising a lot of their own personal time/personal prep time. The week gap that always exists is perfect for teams to draft their picks.

As necessary, definitely check out the Draft team tour threads to get an idea

EDIT: fixed to add 12 tier symmetry with SPL.

 

[Luigi]

Clarifications: this is not a thread about adding or removing any tiers besides Draft as ik goobers love to be like "hmm this idea is interesting, but what if we added SU" (which is a real tier). This also isn't to say OU4 quality is bad, but in general people seem to love the idea of 3 SV OU slots, which this would help

Idea: Gen 9 Draft > OU4

where's this 4th ou slot bro?
i suggest we remove LC for draft instead

 

[lax]

This mistake was intentional to further my agenda.

 

[Maia]

Just chipping in my support for this, as someone who has been heavily involved in the Smogon Draft scene since its literal inception.

Smogon Draft is a huge fucking section. We serve both our own growing playerbase of Draft players as well as players from outside Draft communities. Our circuit is regularly the largest apart from OU on the site, our team tours regularly dwarf those of other forum PLs (400 signups for both editions of DCL, 130 for DFL, 740 for DLWC), and we are fortunate to have some amazing resources available from experience draft players in the form of TFP articles, guides in our forum, YouTube videos, and more that make the barrier of entry into Draft fairly low. It's really no secret that not only is Draft one of the biggest sections on Smogon in general, it's also one of the biggest draws for outside players to join Smogon.

To touch on some potential logistical concerns:

• lax already outlined above how drafting week fits neatly into the already-determined SCL schedule, as well as how team picking works to prevent counter-teaming.
• As far as a Draft board, we would likely use the DCL or Summer Seasonal (whichever is most recent) as the baseline for the SCL board with minimum adjustments. Our boards are created by a council of top-level players who convene before and/or after each tour to refine the board based on metagame trends and needed balance changes. You can find all of that info here.
• The wonderful incredible lovely Princess Autumn is the one who handles all of our sheet-wise infrastructure for Draft, and is already involved as both a host and sheeter for official tours, so all of that is already in place with no concerns.

Something that is probably for its own thread is the expansion of SCL to 12 slots to accommodate both Draft and either an SV OU 4 or a Monotype slot (no strong opinions but I know Monotype will have Opinions on this thread and I expect them to be expressed)

tldr: Draft is one of our largest communities and one of the biggest draws for new users in recent years. We have the infrastructure and processes in place to seamlessly integrate into the already-existing schedule and tournament, and it would be remiss of us as a community to exclude Draft from a tour like SCL that's meant to celebrate our lower tiers, even if it isn't a traditional lower tier.

Thanks a bunch for this thread lax and looking forward to the results of this discussion!

 

[Icemaster]

Dont like this idea. Seems pretty unfair in a tiebreaker scenario if one teams draft naturally hard counters another

 

[Star]

well I did say I'd support it so obligatory post.

Despite an OU4 not actually existing, I do want to integrate Draft in SCL. Draft is relatively new to Smogon, but it's been a massive success. Their tournaments are much much bigger than any other non-OU tier and it's not really close. As someones who's participated in a lot of it, I've found them to be generally well-run and enjoyable and I don't think there would be any issues from a logistical standpoint running it during SCL. We already have a gap week that we use for PRs and could easily run the draft alongside that.

From a competitive standpoint, I think Draft is very interesting and offers something different from other tiers. The draft itself is big obviously and the whole team can be involved there which is cool. The teambuilding aspect is the other big difference given its a defined set of 8 mons vs 8 mons and obviously focuses a lot of specific preparation. I think this is also something that encourages a lot of team involvement even with people who may not be super familiar with the tier because it's not that hard to think of ideas for this restricted scenario compared to like trying to suggest ideas in a tier as big as UU or RU. I do think Draft is just as competitive gameplay-wise as any other tier in SCL. Well-drafted teams realistically won't have too many terrible MUs and this can easily also be mitigated by having each SCL team draft 2 teams and then pick whichever one they want each week (before the week goes up as part of lineup submission). This is a common practice in draft team tournaments to have more teams than number of slots, and drop a team or two each week.

As for how this fits into SCL, the main options are obviously either drop a tier or do Draft + OU4. Probably lean towards the latter myself since 12 slots isn't exactly unprecedented territory.

 

[chimp]

Dont like this idea. Seems pretty unfair in a tiebreaker scenario if one teams draft naturally hard counters another

Rarely is there a match-up so one-sided and if that is ever the case, it likely means you drafted quite poorly and were not adequately considering threats to your team.

 

[Vertigo]

As for how this fits into SCL there the main options are obviously either drop a tier or do Draft + OU4. Probably lean towards the latter myself since 12 slots isn't exactly unprecedented territory.

How does Monotype fit into this? This is a debate that has been around for a while at that point and if the idea of adding another tier to the existing structure—which I fully support and all the points I could possibly make have been brought up by Maia or you—is being entertained, then why couldn't we also hold this discussion for Monotype?

 

[Eeveeto]

where's this 4th ou slot bro?
i suggest we remove LC for draft instead

LC is awesome (except for Mienfoo being allowed), shut up.

 

[Princess Autumn]

Unsurprisingly I'd support this, shocker I know. I do want to find the SV4 lax is cutting to make this work though #FreeMonotype

Draft's been integrated with Smogon for just over two years now, but the community itself has roots stemming back to late 2013. Specifically the team tournaments scene has grown massively over the past 6 years, loosely following the format lax mentioned, and having experienced both draft and standard team tours, I will wholeheartedly back what lax is saying here:

Every Draft team tournament I've been in, the managers and players are always so active and enthusiastic about supporting one another and helping them bring the dubs in, and this is a climate I seldom see in most other subforum PLs. Obviously, this specifically could be bc of me or the teams I've been drafted to, but the level of activity in effort in Draft tours would shock you guys greatly.

The community has relatively unparalleled levels of enthusiasm and drive to play, something which I've not really seen captured in most team other team tours. That's not to put others down, that's me saying that there is the drive and there isn't the risk of this developing into an isolated island slot, as it's also something anyone can easily grasp. Any player on a team can look at a matchup and see how X mon performs, that's a fundamental skill that any SCL calibre player possesses, this is just in the builder not in game.

HOW SCL WOULD WORK WITH DRAFT:
- Week Break: all 10 teams' Draft players (and anyone else they'd include such as managers or other players) will draft two different teams with a randomized pick order. So my team 1 might be Pick #3 while my team 2 might be Pick #7. There are guidelines and rules on draft timers and skips on picks (if you run out of time), so the teams will always be done before Week 1, and can be set to be done before Sunday completely.
- Sunday night: the Draft player will pick 1 of 2 teams that they think has the general favorable matchup into their coming week's opponents
- Prep and scheduling follow as usual

Throwing this in a spoiler since it's not the most relevant but for those unaware of how draft works in a team tour setting, please do read.

Drafting itself

To expand on this a little, teams will draft from a preset board, such as these, which are determined by a tiering council. They have a budget of 90 points for 8 Pokémon total and a separate budget for Tera Captains (the only Pokémon who can Terastallize). Every team tends to have 2 or 3 drafts (historically it's been 2, this DCL experimented with 3) and each week they declare which one's being used, and the matchups posted as something like:
SV Draft: (1) Princess Autumn vs Hacker (2)
The numbers before/after the player names dictate which of their team's drafts they are using, you can see a full example here.
These are the basics of SV Draft and it leaves the format very open to teammates who'd like to contribute. The one thing not outlined here is that given the nature of draft, a midseason is almost always required to prevent a team being stuck with drafts that are wholly unusable.

Draft team tours tend to run a break week for a midseason, usually just before the half way point of the tour. It usually consists of 5-6 transactions (assuming 2 drafts, up to 8 if its 3 drafts) per team which they can spend on swapping out Pokémon on their draft so long as they do not exceed their budgets. While that's not completely feasible in SCL, running a midseason alongside the midseason auction for players in week 5 does seem feasible to offset this.

There also are rarely, if any, matchups that are truly unwinnable. You can see all of this year's DCL matchups on the sheet linked earlier and while some are better than others, we saw many upsets in matchups that on paper looked favoured, and we never saw any matchups that were completely dead on arrival. Drafting well is a skill and while a midseason exists to help offset experimentation, it is something that teams have to account for, they do ultimately make the final choice on which draft they bring into a given week.

Smogon Draft is a huge fucking section. We serve both our own growing playerbase of Draft players as well as players from outside Draft communities. Our circuit is regularly the largest apart from OU on the site, our team tours regularly dwarf those of other forum PLs (400 signups for both editions of DCL, 130 for DFL, 740 for DLWC), and we are fortunate to have some amazing resources available from experience draft players in the form of TFP articles, guides in our forum, YouTube videos, and more that make the barrier of entry into Draft fairly low. It's really no secret that not only is Draft one of the biggest sections on Smogon in general, it's also one of the biggest draws for outside players to join Smogon.

Maia posted this while I was typing this up and while I wasn't going to originally bring this up, Draft's also one of the biggest ribbon circuits in terms of player count, with out type B old gen tours blitzing past all current SCL tier circuit seasonals/majors/[insert largest tour of the year], let alone our seasonals which consistently sit at 450-500 signups. This is an absolutely massive tournament section with 0 representation in officials.

The logistics of actually fitting Draft into the tour aren't that hard either, having seen SCL from the hosts end this year, it absolutely could fit in with minimal disruption, and I don't want to see that as an argument against the formats inclusion when it bluntly isn't.

I'd also like to use this as a chance to address the fact that this is a new community, and thus there will obviously be fears of isolation given that people just don't know one another, and while we do have some top players who don't interact outside Draft, the overlap in player bases has only grown over the past few years, with players such as GeniusX, Hacker, and PZZ all making names for themselves in Smogon circles. On the flipside, we've had many a Smogon player come along (with the likes of lax, Finch, Star, TDNT, and Aberforth to name a few) and integrate themselves into the format.

tldr Adding Draft to SCL would bring a slot that allows for all players to engage in, while integrating one of the largest communities into an official tour. It would not create an island.

 

[Star]

How does Monotype fit into this? This is a debate that has been around for a while at that point and if the idea of adding another tier to the existing structure—which I fully support and all the points I could possibly make have been brought up by Maia or you—is being entertained, then why couldn't we also hold this discussion for Monotype?

I don't really want to get into a whole Monotype debate in this thread, but personally speaking at least my opposition to Monotype has never been about not wanting an extra tier in the tour. From my experience in prior years playing a lot of the Monotype team tours I just don't think Monotype is inherently competitive enough to belong in an official. I summarized this in a post the last time we had that thread.

Implemented Post in thread 'Tiers in SCL'

May 25, 2021

Given that I've been brought up as an example like 5 times due to having a good mono record, I feel sort of obligated to respond. I've played quite a few mono tours over the past few years and while I've found it enjoyable, I definitely don't think it belongs in SCL. The issue of matchup has been discussed at length, but the counter-arguments have been rather myopic. Monotype being matchup heavy doesn't just mean that you automatically lose if you bring Psychic vs Dark or Flying vs Ice. It's irrefutable that when you have six pokemon of the same fucking type, your weaknesses overlap. The...

• Star

• 
• 
• 

 

[teal6]

Please do not discuss Monotype in this thread. It is not the point. Discussion about it will be deleted.

Re: Draft - Drafting is one of the most fun ways to engage with mons that I've ever partaken in. Even when it's a small Discord server tournament, I have a huge amount of fun in the format. If Maia thinks that logistically it can be done then I agree, and I really think it'd be a huge huge draw for SCL.

If it goes terribly we can axe it the next format. But I personally would like to see it played out. (Draft mains: note that this may not increase your pickup chances a ton, still cool tho)

 

[ABR]

logistical annoyances aside, the philosophical essence of draft is incompatible with smogon team tournaments. drafting a team of pokemon within the drafting of pokemon players? distasteful, incongruent, and blasphemous. hate to rain on anyone's parade but gonna have to deny this.

 

[Tony]

^ lame. draft is really fun and i think it'd be a great addition to scl. it's a format that would naturally suit a team environment. it inherently lends itself to collaboration amongst the group since it doesn't require any pre-existing metagame knowledge. you look at the teams together and see what makes sense and what does not, especially since everyone will be familiar with the generation in scl. the structure outlined by princess autumn seems good; two drafts per team and a mid-season period. great idea and post lax, let's try this next year.

 

[Finchinator]

I support giving Draft a try next year. I support expanding to 12 slots to do this as odd numbers aren’t viable and cutting a tier is icky. I support OU4 being paired as an addition, but that discussion can go on in future months. I support banning the phrase “philosophical essence” as well!

 

[Drifting]

Not to be a party pooper, but is there any actual basis to this other than Draft being popular and some people finding it fun? Snake's mission statement is ostensibly being the SPL mirror for lower tiers (or official/core metagames, whatever they’re called). If being a popular way of playing pokemon is all it takes to be included then what's the difference between this vs adding vgc or natdex or anything goes or uubers or fuck it, randbats (the latter being an exaggeration but you see what I'm getting at).

Maybe I'm wrong, but this comes off as people who seem to think SCL is somehow inherently less serious than the other trophy team tours just wanting to punt some funny gimmick into the tour, because fuck it, it's just SCL right? I also agree with Icemaster that this sounds like a tb nightmare. I'm not gonna act like I've played much draft (though I did do well in the last tour I entered so I'm not just talking out my ass completely), but the emphasis on techs and specific-counterteams and the out-of-game factors in general feels very different from every tier currently in SCL, and not in a way I personally find enjoyable as a standard formats player (though of course that's subjective).

I don't have anything against the Draft community, but I can't help but feel this is just unnecessary meddling.

 

[abriel]

Support this proposal. I think a decent bit of opposition comes from viewing draft as inherently unserious or lesser than low tiers, which I think is a flawed position. As Maia and Autumn point out Draft has a long history, massive community, and developed and interesting metagame, and its impossible to argue its integration into Smogon as a whole has not been a massive success. Tournaments such as Draft Champions League, World Cup, and draft circuit tournaments are full of competitive and high stakes matches where both longtime draft players (many of whom have also shown success in individual and team trophy tours following draft's integration into Smogon) and established tour players can find success.

I also think draft as a format fits well into SCL, draft is inherently prep-heavy compared to other formats both in the drafting and building phase, and reliance on teammates for prep and mock help is even more critical to the success of draft teams than other team tours. Draft is a format where all members on the team can contribute in the prep phases, compared to many other tiers where the mainers can somewhat be left to their own devices and get support when needed.

Agree with Finch on supporting going to 12 over replacing a format to make this work, although the specifics seem outside the scope of this thread.

 

[Amaranth]

i can't be the only one completely bewildered by this whole idea

draft is a COMPLETELY different format from regular singles play. i would literally rather have any OMs in SPL/SCL over this. the builder restrictions enforced by the draft mode make it an entirely different game, it just makes no sense at all to toss this into SCL

i don't think draft is less valid than traditional smogon formats, but it is absurdly different, and i do not think it belongs in the current set of official tournaments

i am more than happy for the Draft section of smogon to get their own trophy (or even trophies plural!) because most of the positive things that have been said about Draft in this thread are generally true, but it is just a completely different way of playing pokemon. this to me is not much different from proposing to add pokemon unite slots, it should be a complete nonstarter, it is not the same game. it can exist on smogon, it can have its own trophies if the community is big enough, but mixing it with normal Smogon tiers makes negative sense

 

[Kate]

Is there any actual reason to include draft? I don't even want to argue if the tier is mickey or not or how alike it is to other scl tiers, but personally I fail to see a reason to add it. The current SCL format is genuinely amazing and incredible as is, I'm not the biggest fan of 12 slot tours because of how overcrowded it can get but that's more subjective. I'm just left perplexed on what exactly is necessary about the inclusion of new formats here. I mean to begin with, one of the founding parts of SCL was to not include 4 OU slots and we'd almost assuredly have to add one here now.

Don't fix what ain't broke

 

[chimp]

i can't be the only one completely bewildered by this whole idea

draft is a COMPLETELY different format from regular singles play. i would literally rather have any OMs in SPL/SCL over this. the builder restrictions enforced by the draft mode make it an entirely different game, it just makes no sense at all to toss this into SCL

i don't think draft is less valid than traditional smogon formats, but it is absurdly different, and i do not think it belongs in the current set of official tournaments

i am more than happy for the Draft section of smogon to get their own trophy (or even trophies plural!) because most of the positive things that have been said about Draft in this thread are generally true, but it is just a completely different way of playing pokemon. this to me is not much different from proposing to add pokemon unite slots, it should be a complete nonstarter, it is not the same game. it can exist on smogon, it can have its own trophies if the community is big enough, but mixing it with normal Smogon tiers makes negative sense

Can you elaborate on this "this to me is not much different from proposing to add Pokemon unite slots," argument because that is the most absurd thing I have ever read and I am trying to assume you are being hyperbolic for the sake of exaggeration. The core ideals between draft and standard singles are not so great that they deserve such a wild claim as that.

 

[Amaranth]

Can you elaborate on this "this to me is not much different from proposing to add Pokemon unite slots," argument because that is the most absurd thing I have ever read and I am trying to assume you are being hyperbolic for the sake of exaggeration. The core ideals between draft and standard singles are not so great that they deserve such a wild claim as that.

i'm not sure what there is to elaborate on, it is a different format. maybe it's slight hyperbole to say that it is a different game, but it is just a fundamentally different format

magic the gathering professional circuit has constructed formats, it does not mix draft formats with them because they are fundamentally not the same apparently mtg does do this, which somewhat weakens my point, but the rest stands
hearthstone world championships (constructed) don't have an arena section or an arena slot, because they are fundamentally not the same
any other card game i've ever played has clearly distinct constructed and draft ladders and competitive ecosystems, because they are fundamentally not the same
football with 11 players and football with 8 players are different sports that do not share a competitive scene, and so on

just because the mechanics of the game are the same doesn't mean that it makes sense for the competitive scenes to be merged, when the fundamental rules are so completely different
i think draft is great but it just has nothing to do with classic smogon formats. give it its own trophy or trophies, do not force it into SCL

 

[King L5]

hi it is me king l5 for those who dont know me i won both of the smogon draft team tours this year insert muscle emoji (world cup and champions league)

draft as a format is easy to pick up, hard to master. very prep heavy format of course. i dont think the tours having big sign up numbers is a compelling argument to add it as a slot here (majority little timmys), however i do think draft has many other epic qualities that do warrant at least consideration to be added to the big smog team tours. its certainly one of the best formats to collaborate with teammates while building

draft is absolutely not a gimmicky tier as some seem to believe. theres an established metagame with established top players, with many ways for innovation to create advantages. ive played over 100 team tour draft games myself and the times ive seen a completely unwinnable matchup is exactly 1, and that was absolutely my opponents fault for drafting a garbage team.

realistically i dont care too much if draft does end up in SCL or not, theres still plenty of tours for me to play in. but all the criticisms of draft i see in this thread range from half baked to fully cooked. the only argument to not include it is that its too fundamentally different than standard tiers

 

[MANNAT]

Snake's mission statement is ostensibly being the SPL mirror for lower tiers.

If anything, Snake's mission statement is being the SPL mirror for the current generation of Pokemon, hence why tiers like Doubles OU and Ubers are in it. This is a pretty irrelevant point.

I also agree with Icemaster that this sounds like a tb nightmare.

In my experience the only time that you truly got "counter teamed" by another draft is when you made mistakes in your drafts rather than any inherent issue with the format. Knowing exactly what you're facing is a powerful tool, and when you're drafting a team of like 10-12 Pokemon it's pretty hard to just autolose to threats outside of a bad draft.

draft is a COMPLETELY different format from regular singles play. i would literally rather have any OMs in SPL/SCL over this. the builder restrictions enforced by the draft mode make it an entirely different game, it just makes no sense at all to toss this into SCL

I despise the whole "this tier isn't the same as the others in the tour" as an argument to not include tiers in team tournaments. Bringing in a different format with different dynamics that make the tour more interesting and compelling is good and adds depth. As long as it passes the baseline for competitiveness that we're looking for tournament formats. Also let's be honest here we're just playing another flavor of "fan made rules for 6v6 singles" here, it's not remotely comparable to a Unite slot lol.

The main appeal of including draft in SCL to me has already been stated already but the way it brings the team together in a really cool way and allows for collaboration in a way that other slots don't. Teams can talk through their drafts together and make it a collaborative effort that will
show fruit throughout the season. Like people mentioned above, someone that doesn't have a ton of metagame specific knowledge in OU or UU or whatever is going to have trouble rating teams or offering advice because they don't have a great grasp of what you need to cover or what sets stuff usually runs, but these issues aren't nearly as true in draft.

Please add draft to SCL, it would be extremely sick and would level up the tour a ton. It is ironically an awesome solution to the current SPL slots issue, but it's unfortunately too close to that tournament to suggest such a change now.

 

[JCMShadow]

i'm not sure what there is to elaborate on, it is a different format. maybe it's slight hyperbole to say that it is a different game, but it is just a fundamentally different format

magic the gathering professional circuit has constructed formats, it does not mix draft formats with them because they are fundamentally not the same
hearthstone world championships (constructed) don't have an arena section or an arena slot, because they are fundamentally not the same
any other card game i've ever played has clearly distinct constructed and draft ladders and competitive ecosystems, because they are fundamentally not the same
football with 11 players and football with 8 players are different sports that do not share a competitive scene, and so on

just because the mechanics of the game are the same doesn't mean that it makes sense for the competitive scenes to be merged, when the fundamental rules are so completely different
i think draft is great but it just has nothing to do with classic smogon formats. give it its own trophy or trophies, do not force it into SCL

SCL already has Doubles which is very fundamentally different than standard 6v6 so how is Draft too fundamentally different to be included? Same as L5 I don't care too much if Draft gets added, but it's just funny to see this as an argument against draft

 

[Amaranth]

SCL already has Doubles which is very fundamentally different than standard 6v6 so how is Draft too fundamentally different to be included? Same as L5 I don't care too much if Draft gets added, but it's just funny to see this as an argument against draft

you can actually change your team from week to week in doubles. hope that helps