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Announcement LC Team Tournament Schedule Discussion

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LC & Draft Leader
With LCWC nearing its end, I wanted to open up discussion for our next team tour. We went off schedule for LCWC and I am under the impression that people are burnt out from team tours and want a break because of LCWC's length. With this in mind:
  • Do we want another team tour right after LCWC?
  • If so, what kind of team tour. What tiers should be included in it? Normal auction?
  • How long should the tournament be?
Some things to think about are:
  • The earliest LCWC can end if there are no more tiebreaks is the end of this month
  • LCPL timing feels pretty well received and we shouldn't want to change it much, if at all. Last time Manager signups went out May 19th and games started the first week of June. How much of a buffer should there be between LCPL and another tour?
  • If we don't have another team tour, LC UU and Doubles LC would lose their current representation in team tours
Please use this thread to discuss the above!
 
With that said, I propose a 6 teams 5 week long team tournament with the LCBC fixed tier lineup. The tour would start in February and have the following tier lineup:

SV LC
SV LC
SV LC
SV LC
LC UU
Doubles LC
SS LC
SM LC
XY LC
BW LC
DPP LC
ADV LC

It should just be a normal auction instead of the janky LCBC auction style. Top 2 teams out of 6 make playoffs. I would probably be against running a team tour with any length longer than this so people can have breathing room between team tournaments and not get burnt out by LCPL. We could add something like the first seed gets to pick an extra tier to make finals BO13 if we wanna avoid tiebreaks and keep the tour as short as possible. Also would incentivise people to continue aiming for the 1st seed.

I also wouldn't personally oppose replacing an SV LC slot for some other off meta experimental slot if people wanted one. Whether that be something like Monotype LC, LC 1v1, some rebrand of SV with a more questionably short banlist, etc. Demand obviously should be exceedingly high for any of this. The tour, if there is one, should really be something casual and fun for every1 to enjoy
 
The hacker idea with 6 team seems good
SV LC
SV LC
SV LC
Classic BO3
LC UU
Doubles LC
SS LC
SM LC
XY LC
BW LC
DPP LC
ADV LC

but instead of 4th SV i propose a BO3 pick and ban formats with classic tiers. If its better to have two picks before the ban phase or not can be discussed but overall I think the format would be really interesting. I’m sure we have enough players for it since it’s basically the same as classic playoffs but bo3 instead of 5. Mystery box instead of ADV LC could be cool to if it includes adv lc alongside some funky metas.
 
I also support a Pick n Ban slot somewhere in this tour, most likely over SV4. Specifically though, I think it following the structure shown in my example graphic below is better than the players getting to lock a tier, then ban things out until a decider tier is left. This would reward the players who are great at multiple tiers, and a way like the Oldgen Classics to see which players have the best pool of tiers they can play competently.

This system would also allow for the vetoing to have actual strategy, and not just locking up your best tier for an "easy" win then hoping to luck in one of the two remaining games. The main things I could see happening with this system in mind are:
  • Deciding if you're going to have a "perma ban" regardless of who you're playing (ex. always banning ADV)
  • Target banning your opponent's best tier (ban DPP for HSOWA, ORAS for Heysup, SV for Lokifan, etc.)
  • Floating tiers you are worse at to gamble that your opponent will ban it for you (ex. I leave BW available hoping that reggg bans it for me)

1765572918476.png

(Ignore my graphic being ripped from Valorant VCT)

Week Example
Matchups go up, and Host flips a coin to decide who get choice of ban order. We'll say it lands on Player 2. Player 2 decides to have second pick/ban, meaing Player 1 goes first in the order. The veto goes as shown above, tiers played would be SM Game 1, ORAS Game 2, ADV Game 3.

Worst case scenario I'm also down to just host this format as an indiv at some point in 2026, my tier pool isn't wide enough yet to do well.
 
Last edited:
I mentioned this about seven months ago, and I’d like to propose this type of tournament once again. The idea is to use a randomized system: players will be shuffled every week, and each player will only be able to “lock out” one slot in their signup post. There will be a draft where you can buy the players you want, but you won’t be able to choose which slot they end up playing in. The only exceptions would be for tiebreaks and possibly playoffs.

I think this format could be fun and would help new people learn old gens while also encouraging everyone to become more versatile. Being versatile is really important if you want to improve in this game. I’m not sure how many teams or managers there should be, but that’s the general idea, something innovative and different from what we’ve seen in recent years.

As for the tier/gen distribution, I’m not sure if having four SV slots would work well with this format, but everything else should be fine.

SV LC
SV LC
SV LC
SV LC
LC UU
Doubles LC
SS LC
SM LC
XY LC
BW LC
DPP LC
ADV LC
 
I think having a team tour start around February would be a good shout - that gives people time to enter LC Seasonals/similar tours, and have a small break after LCWC (likely end of December). A lot of team tours also start to take place around February/March, so I think it makes sense to start a new team tour then as well.

I would like to see LCBC return - I agree with the idea of having 6 teams and a shorter season to avoid burnout and increase competition for the playoff spots:

Week 1 > Week 2 > Week 3 > Week 4 > Semifinal > Final (potentially exclude week 4)

As for tiers, I would propose:
  • SV LC BO3
  • SV LC
  • SV LC
  • SV LC
  • SV Doubles
  • SV UU
  • SS LC
  • SM LC
  • ORAS LC
  • BW LC
  • DPP LC
  • ADV LC
To give an opportunity for newer players, each manager should be required to field this player at least 1-2 times in the tournament - the experience of the player can be agreed between the hosts as prices can vary depending on the tour and isn't a quantifiable way to determine this.

LCPL should be in the summer months like standard, but I wonder whether LCSL should start a few weeks before to give managers an insight on who could be given the opportunity for the next stage (both competitions clashing can also work, although I felt that LCSL was slightly too short).
 
Incognition said:
LCPL should be in the summer months like standard, but I wonder whether LCSL should start a few weeks before to give managers an insight on who could be given the opportunity for the next stage (both competitions clashing can also work, although I felt that LCSL was slightly too short).
Click to expand...
I think the problem with LCSL starting earlier is it’s for the people who didn’t make it into LCPL. We would need to restructure that idea if we wanted to start LCSL earlier. Last LCPL, everyone who signed up and did not get in was automatically on a LCSL team. How do we decide who’s allowed to play in LCSL?
 
Winterbub said:
I think the problem with LCSL starting earlier is it’s for the people who didn’t make it into LCPL. We would need to restructure that idea if we wanted to start LCSL earlier. Last LCPL, everyone who signed up and did not get in was automatically on a LCSL team. How do we decide who’s allowed to play in LCSL?
Click to expand...

I was thinking about that - I guess you could look at people who were undrafted in the previous LCPL and LCBC, and people who maybe hadn't entered these tournaments before with less experience in the meta?

It's probably better to have both tournaments happening at the same time, but was a thought.
 
Personally I support a short team tournament with a model similar to that of NUCL. In that format, managers from each team pick 4-5 old gen formats for each slot for each week except for 2-4 sv slots that are guaranteed. I believe that it's a strong format, because it encourages most players to play different formats weekly while still allowing players who only want to play 1 format to be accommodated for. We could potentially change the format from its standard ruleset by allowing teams to pick an sv slot, or maybe pick up to two of any specific oldgen if we go 12 slots. I want to be able to play different tiers weekly without making it suboptimal to do so, while allowing players who like 1 tier to be able to play that tier only.
 
Drawing on my personal experience, 10 slots lc teamtours sucks.

We have a little playerbase and getting 10 slots instead of 8 slots decreases the skill by a good margin.

I think both colin and laro gave good teamtour ideas, so nothing else to add there.

I guess that with my proposal the decision that makes the most sense is removing lc uu/ doubles, so we would get the same lcwc format:
  • SV LC
  • SV LC
  • SV LC
  • SS LC
  • SM LC
  • ORAS LC
  • BW LC
  • DPP LC

But honestly if you want to add doubles/ lc uu / adv and remove some old gens that’s fine by me. Just don’t add more slots, if newcomers want a shot there is always lpl/individuals, I think we should try to keep forum tours skill as high as possible. Im more concerned about the number of slots than the tiers / tour concept.
 
Wail Wailord said:
Drawing on my personal experience, 10 slots lc teamtours sucks.

We have a little playerbase and getting 10 slots instead of 8 slots decreases the skill by a good margin.

I think both colin and laro gave good teamtour ideas, so nothing else to add there.

I guess that with my proposal the decision that makes the most sense is removing lc uu/ doubles, so we would get the same lcwc format:
  • SV LC
  • SV LC
  • SV LC
  • SS LC
  • SM LC
  • ORAS LC
  • BW LC
  • DPP LC

But honestly if you want to add doubles/ lc uu / adv and remove some old gens that’s fine by me. Just don’t add more slots, if newcomers want a shot there is always lpl/individuals, I think we should try to keep forum tours skill as high as possible. Im more concerned about the number of slots than the tiers / tour concept.
Click to expand...
In a vacuum I think 8 slot team tours are bad, but with all the additional factors surrounding this tour just makes it feel worse. 12 might be a bit much compared to a flex slot format or something similar, but with 8 an unlucky game or 2 feels so much worse, not just because you have less games to compensate, but also from a mental perspective where it feels harder to claw back from a bad start that's not your fault. When you have less slots, you're usually cutting into sign ups to some degree as well, as by cutting unique tiers from the tournament the people who would only play those formats have a lessened incentive to sign up and a lower likelihood of being drafted. I think the arguement that "oh newcomers have LPL and Individuals to play" also feels weak, because LPL's significance has been diminished over the past 2 years & the fact we went down to 1 LPL a year to include this very tour in the year. In addition to all of this, the tour is very likely to be 6 teams, which if we were to have only 8 slots would only allow for 48 players to start every week.
 
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