Tournament DWL I Format Discussion

[OdinRM]

Along with the announcement of our 2026 Tournament Calendar, we announced a new team tournament that would be taking up the DLWC slot called the Draft Winter League I, that came with a proposed format that was discussed internally between the mod team.

Initial DWL Format idea

SV Standard
SV Standard
SV Low Tier
SV Low Tier
SV VGC
SV VGC
SV National Dex
SV National Dex

Following the feedback we got from the initial announcement it is clear to us that theres no longer a demand for a team tournament that is focused on current generation metagames, like Clash of Kings did in past generations, and that the demand for past generations is bigger than ever. So we have come to propose a new format based on internal discussion and feedback from different contributors. But first some quick points to catch up on the DWL concept:

• Traditional 8 teams, Best of 8 auction-based Draft team tournament
• Each team will be allowed 2-3 managers
• Self-buy rules TBD
• Will have a custom avatar prize

The format we are looking at using is adapted from NUCL, where in this case there would be 2 fixed SV slots and 6 flex slots - with each team picking 3 (but a team cant pick the same format twice). Here are two Format examples the team came up with:

Format Idea

2x SV
6x Flex

Flex can include 5 or 6 of the following formats:
SS, USUM, ORAS, SV VGC, SV NatDex, SV Low Tier, BW, DPP

We are also open to other format structures that prove to be popular among the community, as long as they fit the criteria we set up for this tournament:

Tournament Criteria

• The tour will not have more than 2x SV standard slots; this thus rule out Draft creation formats by extension
• The tour must be unique from DCL/DPL
• The forum mod team is only open to adding any of the following tiers, all other tiers are not up for discussion: SS, USUM, ORAS, SV VGC, BW, DPP, SV NatDex, SV Low Tier
• The format must "make sense", for example randomly cutting SS but having USUM and ORAS in the tour will not be allowed

Along with the format, other topics up for discussion are:

• Updates to the self-buy rules - only one self-buy but buying the slot not the player/ 2 selfbuys but bigger increase on the second one
• Decreasing the number of drafts for the non SV formats

We are looking foward to new feedback regarding the proposed formats or new ideas the community might have for the first DWL. Comments that are off-topic or not relevant at all to DWL discussion will be deleted

Manager signups open December 15th.

 

[ThinkingSceptile]

NatDex and Low Tier feel like outliers in their own specific ways (fake format, only tier with a slashed dex/intentionally gutted power level). My thoughts on VGC haven't changed since DCL [one slot alienates the VGC player unless the teammates take a concerted effort to learn the tier, with many of the playerbase refusing to do so], so I'm not sure about it's inclusion. I think as a tour if it was 2 SV, then all the gens down to DPP it could be a fresh enough gimmick to run well as a tour

 

[Hacker]

I support the flex system we have proposed.

I'm the most in favor of 6 possible flex tiers, those being
SWSH, USUM, ORAS, BW, DPP, NatDex

VGC feels pretty unethical to the entire gimmick of the tour for me. Nobody besides a select few are gonna flex into the slot. I also don't really think anyone is really having an itch for Low Tier to be in the tour.

I like NatDexs inclusion here bc it is a pretty damn huge part of the community, even if not the traditional team tour community really. Comments about it being an unbalanced hellhole don't really resonate with me because we ran it as the main format for all of gen 8, and whlie SV did bring up the power level a lot, I don't think its quite to the point where it doesn't deserve any representation. Was anybody complaining about the NatDex team tour we had earlier this year being unbalanced in terms of the format itself? I don't feel too worked up about including NatDex in the tour, but the signups NatDex tours get feel significant enough to me with it outdoing all of 8/7/6 on signup numbers alone for our indivs

A few months ago I definently would have been super skeptical of putting DPP in a team tour, but the offsite Distortion Tour did end up getting a ton of traction so it feels like a good oppurtunity to include it whlie its hot. BW feels like a pretty justified add to me, the reception to the BW tour ended up feeling pretty nice to me and theres clearly a few dudes who have a ton of passion for the format. Including one of BW/DPP and not the other doesn't make a ton of sense in my mind

Onto other topics of discussion

• I like 2 managers with just one being allowed to selfbuy for a set price. Power duo managers will naturally always be favored in these tours thats life but being able to buy 2 guaranteed positive slots before the auction for a discount of ~15k is a lot. Buying the slot and not the player is fine this works well in DPL. If we wanna make it 2-3 managers with 1 selfbuy still thats fine just feels easier to have 2
• With our proposed format I like 3 SV drafts and 2 of each other tier. Having to bring both drafts is fine. It can be a little punishing but just give extra changes to drafts at midseason and in the end of the day it always comes down to a skill issue. Drafting week is always hell with the 3 drafts for gens with one slot and I'd like to just kill the concept bc it doesn't feel very rewarding for the amount of work put into drafting week just for a team to never see the light of day anyways

 

[KCric12]

Keep vgc

 

[LogIce]

I want to propose the following formats:

Option 1

1x SV
1x ND
1x SS
1x USUM
1x ORAS
1x VGC
1x BW
1x DPP

Option 2

Keep the proposed format in the OP, but make formats not double-able by any capacity. Meaning, teams cannot choose the same format as one another. This would eliminate the need to narrow the 8 "flex format" options down to 5 or 6, giving teams more options when choosing tiers.

Option 3

A 9 slot tour with no ties, which would look like this:
2x SV or 1x SV, 1x Low Tier (really couldn't care less which is in)
1x ND
1x SS
1x USUM
1x ORAS
1x VGC
1x BW
1x DPP

I am not in favor of flex slots for many reasons. Flex slots defeat the purpose of this tour, which is to highlight to formats that are not SV and/or not typically run in team tours. If the proposed format is run, there is nothing from stopping repeat formats from being chosen by multiple teams (ie both teams choose ss, usum, and oras) leading to a tour where the formats that are meant to be further explored are not given playtime. In summary, I would prefer the first option I proposed, but 2 or 3 would be fine as well.

Other topics - drafts per tier should just be 2 per with my proposed formats, with 3 for SV if there are 2 slots. Managers should be 1 max buyin with both sharing the slot, as hacker mentioned this works for DPL so why wouldn't it be fine for smogdraft.

 

[~Undead~]

Comments about it being an unbalanced hellhole don't really resonate with me because we ran it as the main format for all of gen 8, and whlie SV did bring up the power level a lot, I don't think its quite to the point where it doesn't deserve any representation.

Well for starters gen 9 national dex is not even comparable to gen 8 natdex,,, You have koko giving electric terrian to half the new gen 9 guys, sun buffing half ur team and new mons getting insane moves like medicham or heracross speed maxing with trailblaze and you'll see different rulesets across many leagues regarding tera z moves and banlists etc. Saying it is at all comparable to gen 8 natdex is insane

Onto other topics of discussion

• I like 2 managers with just one being allowed to selfbuy for a set price. Power duo managers will naturally always be favored in these tours thats life but being able to buy 2 guaranteed positive slots before the auction for a discount of ~15k is a lot. Buying the slot and not the player is fine this works well in DPL. If we wanna make it 2-3 managers with 1 selfbuy still thats fine just feels easier to have 2

After fact checking this isnt even close to being true, here are the list of the captains records last season that self bought
Gorex 2-3
Luxanase 2-4
Habaduh 4-4
Hacker 3-3
King L5 4-3
AsterJ 3-4
Jscarf 2-4
Panda 3-4
Kyle 5-2
Odin 1-4
Addison 5-4
Rye 6-2
GeniusX 7-2
Kcric 5-3

Only about 6 of these players went positive out of 14 of the self buys last DCL. My personal philosphy is that you should not be trying to nerf the top players as opting into not self buying is already a huge buff for teams. Last season players like Lax,Eye, Ipro etc went for about the buy in price and all these guys are easily considered top in their respected tiers played. Going into an auction if you are a less skilled player you should be able to bridge that gap by grabbing any of the best players with ur alloted budget while still providing support for your team. In draft 2 captains have always been allowed to play and i dont think its fair to try to accomdate the weaker cores to bridge that game instead of said captains being smart and opting to not buy in to get more budget

NUMBER OF DRAFTS: Any gen that has the potential to play 2 games a week should have 3 draft just makes the most sense to me tbh. Anyone who complains about going through hell for 1 week is dumb rather do that then suffer for 2 months of being locked to the same 2 drafts in weeks that tiers are doubled in

AS ONE OF THE GOATS OF DRAFT I'LL GIVE EVERYONE THE RUN DOWN OF MY THOUGTHS ON THE TIERS INCLUSIONS IN THIS TOUR
First i'll just start off with the flex slot as i feel this whole idea defeats the purpose of the tour. From my understanding this tour is supposed to give more spotlight to more of the other formats like SV and the standard old gens. If flex is added i think youll see a very large amount of teams either just both doubling all the modern gens from SV - ORAS unless you add a limit to them getting picked from both sides i guess? (ex: only 2 of sv/sm/oras/ss can get picked a week or cant pick the same tiers the following weeks idk not great either i think but throwing out suggestions)

National Dex: While the national dex tier is mostly micky Since we do not want this to just be a carbon copy of DCL/DPL giving it an inclusion in the tour is fair considering it is one of the most played formats in draft

LowTier: Respectfully no one who actually WANTS the tier will get drafted realistically... it will just be people who are already good at the standard formats being flexed into this slot as this has already been the case in Clash Of Kings and from when i've played and captained that event multiple times its not like people really had an urge to play that tier specifically but maybe this has changed since idk. Also this is not a case of playing an older gen or VGC as any draft player has been playing with shitter mons throughout draft u dont neccasarily need indepth knowledge of the tier as someone who has played lowtier in Clash and had good success (In all honesty me personally i'd rather have low tier be in the tour and just slot a good player into it then have the other tiers but i feel like this doesnt give the tour a good identity so probably shouldnt be in it IMO)

VGC: This tiers cool ig dont hate it or love it but its definitely had a place in the community for a while now with its own events flourishing

DPP/BW - I dont really personally follow these 2 scenes myself so cant really say too much but if i would have to choose probably DPP over BW if it comes down to it since it is the more fleshed out format in draft, both seem quite micky from the games ive been watching idk tho.


TLDR - Keep captain buy ins, 3 drafts for tiers that have potential to play 2 games a week, Keep 2 SV and 1 of SS SM ORAS and VGC and last 2 slots between Nat dex and DPP (lesser of 2 evils)

 

[olivia]

i dont support killing vgc out of dcl only for it to just get shelved in flex where teams might just not pick it most weeks this part was fact checked by true american patriots

i dont really see a point in making the tour sv/ss/oras/usum + 1 random other because then it's just dcl weenie hut jr when team tour saturation is already at an all time high

we've seen communities grow for gens 3/4/5 draft and though including gen 3 at this juncture might not be possible i think including 4 and 5 in some form makes the most sense in giving this tour a proper identity

gen 9 natdex is very fake and will probably get tremendously exposed in a team tour where people are actually taking it seriously, teams that suck at drafting here are probs just gonna be autolose slots

low tier is cool include low tier, i dont even play it but its entertaining to watch

i dont like flex slots as an idea, i dont really like the flex slot tours in general as some players just get shafted by the format and i think that's lame

8 or 9 slot tour like logice proposed with one of each sounds fun, drafting week will be disgusting but in ybtt which was like *kinda* similar it was not that bad and the format was pretty fun

thanks for coming to my ted talk #announcelittlecup

 

[Hacker]

What if we just make it so teams can't pick more than 2 of gens 8/7/6 with the flex picks? This would make sense anyways as they get tons of play in every other draft team tour and limiting it to 2 still wouldn't really limit strategy of picking tiers

I feel like this addresses a lot of the criticism pretty well of putting formats in a team tour that will rarely see play in it anyways with the nature of the format. I don't really agree with a lot of the posts saying that bc if you buy someone good at a niche tier, you'll want to pick flex for them or if some team drafts terrible teams in one of the tiers you will naturally want to pick the tier. However, I at least can semi-understand where its coming from

An alternative proposal dropped in our forum mods chat was to make it so you can't pick the same 3 tiers 2 weeks in a row and I think that also addresses it decently enough. However, compared to this to me anyways it feels a little more complicated and has more work involved. I still would not mind it as a compromise even if I think the proposed format is fine though

 

[Marshy.]

i like usum and bw and dpp and swsh. delete vgc.
doogalhh and MonkeBoi215 i would like to hear your thoughts on the format.

 

[StreetCredCookie]

Regarding Flex, I think it's a neat idea that's worth a try. I'm not sure how I feel about doubling up on formats or creating rules that force older gens/off tiers to be played. Just an idea, but perhaps you could force each team to select every playable tier at least once across the whole season? We see a similar rule in DFL where you have to slot every player, so I feel this would be in a similar vein. This doesn't seem too demanding and it guarantees that every team has to respect every tier knowing it'll get played at least once. I'm not really willing to die on this hill, though, so whatever works.

The only thing I'm sure about is that if you do flex, leave vgc out of it. A lot of the mainers don't really like to flex singles tiers so it might be an awkward fit with the flex format.

Regarding tiers, SV and SS/USUM/ORAS are all fine. You can't really cut these while still expecting a good turnout for the tour. For the last 3 my picks are BW, DPP, and reluctantly, by process of elimination, Low Tier, with all reasoning below.
SS/USUM/ORAS are staple tiers at this point. There's been talk about this tour creating an identity for itself compared to DCL, but in reality I think flex serves that purpose. I think removing these tiers will overall hurt signups for the tour.
Natdex still seems like a more casual format to me. The power level just doesn't translate well to 8 mon and there are certain complexes involving learnsets and generation mechanics that can prove confusing at times.
VGC is a great format, and I'll often rally for its inclusion in tours, but I just don't like it in flex as I mentioned. If we don't end up doing flex, it works, though if it's between this tour or DCL I'd rather see it in DCL.
Low Tier might be fine? I agree with a lot of Undead's points here in that this is just an extension of SV and you're just getting SV mainers. It's not difficult to pick up the metagame knowledge needed to do well. If you need a format to fill the tour, it works, but it doesn't seem that necessary.
BW and DPP are formats that I don't have extensive knowledge in but they seem like solid picks here. I don't see why they can't be part of the tour, and there's a lot of metagame knowledge that can give the mainers a leg up in drafting and in play. I think these should both be included.

Regarding buy-ins, I like 2-3 managers with 2 buy ins and am okay with a small tax on buying in both. I think most of the better captains will be very upset with you for forcing maximum 1 captain buy in, so it should definitely be 2 buy ins. I like the option for a 3rd non buy in, I think it's definitely worth a try here. As for a tax on buying both in, I also think this is worth trying so long as it starts out relatively low. I don't know exactly where that'd be so I'll leave it at that.

Regarding number of drafts, I think it should generally be number of drafts used +1, but it gets weird with flex. One thing I didn't love about DCL last season is that we had 3 drafts in tiers with 1 slot per week, so a lot of drafts just go unused. I don't mind having lots of drafts but if they aren't being used there's no point. For flex, if it's possible to see 2 slots of a tier in a given week, I suppose you'd need 3 drafts per tier, but if not I think I'd prefer keeping it to 2 per tier.