Tournament Teamballo II - Commencement Thread

Lalaya

Banned deucer.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the second edition of the Italian room's annual team tournament, the TEAMBALLO! You might be asking "wasn't the tournament just 6 months ago?" Indeed, but we decided to anticipate this second edition following the release of Scarlet and Violet to give you a taste of everything these new games have to offer, especially in the wilder, early stages!
The TEAMBALLO is a team tournament where the managers need to build their team by buying players that have signed up in a auction-style draft; then, after 7 weeks of regular season where the teams will fight each other in a round robin format, the top four teams will advance to the final stage, where they will battle each other to reach, and win the finals!
The winners of the whole tournament will win a team custom avatar with their team's mascot on Pokémon Showdown and a special role in the Italian room's Discord!
This year's hosts are myself (Lalaya) and Amaranth!

Basic rules of the tournament:
  1. Managers are allowed one (1) Assistant Manager.
  2. The total credits for each team is 140k.
  3. Managers can buy themselves for 20k.
  4. Players cannot be traded at any point.
  5. Midseason signups are restricted to people that signed up for the original auction.
  6. The minimum amount of players in a team is 14.
  7. The maximum amount of players in a team is 20.
  8. There will be a severe penalty for any team that picks up a known alt of a banned player, or any player masquerading as another person to lower their cost in the auction. This has not been a big issue in the past, but it is important to establish that both parties will be penalized immediately and harshly if they are found doing so.
Also, the general forum tournament rules will also apply.

This year's format will be:
- SV OU
- SV OU
- SV OU
- SV DOU
- SV Ubers
- SV Monotype
- SV LC
- SS OU
- SM OU
- ORAS OU


The teams present will be (links to tryouts will be provided, if present):

Player sign-ups will go up at the same time as or shortly after this commencement thread is made. When a prospective player signs up, they are expected to also note which tiers they are interested in playing during the tournament. In order to ensure the best possible experience for yourself, the managers, and your team, please do NOT sign up for any tier you are unwilling to play. If you would not seriously consider playing that tier in a tournament environment, do not list it.

General Teamballo Rules and Regulations:
The Manager of a team is essentially the boss of a team. The Manager is the final word in all decisions (barring the hosts) regarding his team. The Manager decides which players play on the team, who plays in what position, and even handles the team finances.

If a team fails to complete the games by the end of the allotted time, it is up to the manager to inform the Tour Directors of what happened to ensure that the appropriate activity calls are made.

Managers and co-managers can be drafted within their own team. In particular, the cost of the self-buy is fixed, equal to 20k credits.

Lastly, the General Manager has the following duties:
  • They shall choose one Assistant Manager.
  • They shall be present at the live auction, or appoint someone (preferably the Assistant Manager) to participate in the live auction in their stead.
  • They shall send the hosts weekly rosters.
  • They shall ensure to the best of his/her abilities that their battlers complete their matches on time.
  • In the event that a match fails to be completed, they shall inform the hosts as to why the match failed to be completed, and what his/her battler did in order to finish the match.
  • They shall communicate any grievances with the hosts.
All players must register if they wish to participate in the TEAMBALLO. It is important to note that this tour is an event that will last TWO MONTHS on average, so player activity is significant. Do not sign up to play for a team if you do not intend to see the tournament through to the end. This includes maintaining a competitive attitude if your team is already eliminated from playoff contention. You never know whether or not winning your end-season matches will make you a more valued player next season, so even if your team isn’t necessarily in the playoff picture anymore, there’s always value in playing your best. Failure to complete matches in a timely manner consistently may result in being barred from entering the TEAMBALLO, or other Italian room events, in future seasons.
Total credits for teams are 140k. In the weeks leading up to the auction, all managers will choose a time to meet and organize the draft in order to select players. At least one Tour Director will have to attend the auction for the entire duration, which should take approximately 2-3 hours.

Once a time is set, all 8 managers + the hosts will enter the place where the auction will be held, most likely a subroom of Italiano. Spectators are allowed to join in to watch the fun unfold, but will not be able to speak.

The hosts will first ask a team to nominate a player. The hosts will then tell the details of said player and bidding will commence, starting at 3000 credits, with the nominating team automatically placing the first bid. The auction will then be in real time. Managers will simply put in their bids in the chat, raising a minimum of 500 credits. If after 15 seconds there are no new bids, the player is sold to the highest bid in the channel. The hosts or utilized bot will provide a 5 second warning before bidding is closed on a player. The updated credit totals will then be posted and then the next manager in the rotation will be prompted to nominate a player.

Managers are advised that placed bids are final, and we will generally not permit an undo in the case of a mistake. Exceptions can be made in cases where a team nominates an incorrect player or if a typo in a bid amount would threaten the integrity of the team as a whole. Please make sure to double check your bids before sending them!

It is necessary for you to field a roster of 10 starters and a minimum of 4 substitutes, with a maximum of 10 substitutes being allowed of which all must be paid at least 3000 credits. This creates a soft cap of 101.000 credits on any particular bid - that is, the maximum amount of money you can spend on any one player and still have enough money left over to pay the minimum bid (3000 credits) for the remaining 13 players.

Finally, to allow maximum inclusion of the Italian room community, there will be a second draft phase in which each team will be assigned a even X number of users who have shown great participation in the Italian room in the previous months.
It is at this time that the tournament will commence. The league stages consist of a Round Robin tournament. Every team will face every other team once through 9 weeks of play. Each manager will submit to the hosts a roster no later than the deadline of the previous week. This roster will list the starting players and what metagames they will play.

When the week starts, teams' players will face off in their respective metagames / tiers. The SV OU 1 from Team A will face the SV OU 1 from team B, SV OU 2 will face SV OU 2, and so on. Whichever team wins the most battles will be declared the victor for the week. Rather than score based on how many individual battles a team wins, the primary thing that matters is who beat the most teams. As such, points are awarded based only on wins and losses versus teams as a whole, not individual players. Beating a team in a week’s matchups is worth two points, tying with a team is worth one point, and losing is worth none, simple as that. At the end of the round robin, the top four teams in the points proceed to the playoffs and will be seeded into a knock-out style bracket where they will face off until only one team remains.
in case of two teams tied at points after the end of the main season, the tie-break criterias are, in order:
- Battle difference — total # of battles won - total # of battles lost.
- The 1v1 matchup(s) between the involved teams.
- The number of weeks won.
In case all of those criterias are tied, a 3v3 tiebreak round will be played, with one SV OU game, and the other two decided one each by each of the involved teams.
Sellbacks
Up until the third week, Managers will have the opportunity to report players that they believe are not meeting minimum activity requirements and/or sabotaging their team to the hosts. The hosts will review the team situation on the first 2 days of week 4, and if it is found that the player in question is indeed guilty of one or both, the team will be allowed to sell them back. Players who are banned from the Smogon Forums or from the Italian room/Discord for a duration longer than the rest of the tournament and players who are banned from tournaments for actions unrelated to the TEAMBALLO will also be eligible for a sellback.
If a player is sold back before Week 1, the team will be compensated with a refund of 3k to be used prior to the start of the season. In addition, teams will receive a half of the lost player's original cost, less 3k and rounded up to the nearest 0.5k, in sellback credits to be used at the midseason auction. If a player is sold back after Week 1, their team obtains 3k of their value as credits to be used in the midseason auction. Players who get sold back will be put under scrutiny and may be punished if the hosts deem it necessary.

Midseason Auction
During Week 3, the signups will re-open for 4 days. Players that signed up for the original auction and weren't drafted will sign up and a new free agent list will be made. Note: Even if you signed up the first time around, you must re-signup in order to get on the midseason free agent list. After sign-ups close, the host will remind each manager how many credits they have left over from the original live auction.

Instead of having another live auction, the new auction will happen via Discord. A manager will post their bids and the other managers will have 12 hours from the current bid to make a higher bid on the player. If after 12 hours the player has not been outbid, the player will go to the team with the highest bid. The midseason auction will last 5 days during the second part of Week 3. Players purchased here will be able to play starting in Week 4. There is no use for leftover credits after the midseason auction, so it's in the Managers' best interest to spend all of their remaining credits at this time. No players may enter the TEAMBALLO after the midseason auction, except in the case of a team falling below the minimum number of starters due to their players being banned, in which case they'll be allowed to pick players from the undrafted pool until they reach the minimum.
1. Substitutes – At any point in time during the week, a team may make a substitution for a currently slotted player. In order to do this a manager must post in the thread, tagging the hosts, the opposing managers and the opposing player stating which player is substituting out, and which player is substituting in. A player that has substituted out for a week cannot be substituted back in. In addition, all substitutions are subject to veto by the hosts if the substitution is suspected to be attempting to “game” the system. Substituting in a player who is unavailable to play at any of the times the opposing team has previously offered in order to force a double substitution is not permitted and the player who was substituted in will be required to be substituted out.

2. There will be no trades allowed at any point during the TEAMBALLO, nor retains before the live auction.

3. Activity decisions – There are inevitably times where two players simply fail to complete a match; however, the nature of the tournament system sometimes makes it advantageous to purposely fail to play (such as when a team is up 6-5 in a week). Because of this, it is necessary to make activity decisions on matches. Hosts are required to make thorough investigations regarding each and every potential failed match during a week. If both parties are deemed to be equally apathetic or enthusiastic about getting the match done, but just have not had the opportunity to make it happen, the match will result in a no contest. However, if it is deemed that one party made significantly more effort than the other in attempting to get the match done, then a win will be awarded to that player. Things that will make it very likely that you will lose via activity include: failing to VM your opponent immediately upon the week’s start, scheduling a match and being documented as missing the match time, failing to provide any concrete times for which you can be reached, failing to respond to an opponent’s VM at all. Please be certain to review the guidelines for a favorable judgement in an activity decision. Note that this is a tournament that requires a very high level of activity and diligence, if you don’t think you can get your matches done, quite simply don’t sign up.

4. Rule Breaking – There is no excuse for breaking any of the predetermined rules. If you are caught breaking a rule, you will lose your match. There is no lenience with regards to this. Break a rule, you lose. Period.

5. Reversing Rulings - No ruling will be retroactively overturned once the week following the week that the ruling has been made has ended. This includes: activity rulings / rulings based on rule breaking / anything else under the sun. Any appeals to a ruling must be made during the week that the ruling is made; beyond that, all rulings are final once the week ends.

Lastly, always remember the common sense rule: if there's any sort of unforeseen happening in the tournament, the hosts will decide about it. If you have any questions that this post or the General Tournament Guides and Guidelines haven't covered or haven't made clear, feel free to ask the tournament's hosts about it.

With all this outlined, let us start the second edition of the TEAMBALLO!
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: MTB
Ok guys since me and howkings won the last edition of the tour, we want to win that again and we'll host tryouts/pm players if necessary. If anyone is interested to win, to put effort in new SV tiers, contact or me or howkings on discord / smogon. See you all :)
 
Ok due to the overload of requests and since we already have some idea about the draft I'll only accept from now SV OU ONLY tryouts. In case you want to be tryoutted in SV OU I'll only accept tryouts if you have peaked around top 50 in SV OU ladder.

For other tiers I close tryouts.
 
Last edited:

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top