Announcement Draft League Calendar 2024

[Nyx]

Amazing artwork made by vmnunes
Thanks to Fc and Ubers for letting us steal parts of the OP
The Draft League subforum is ready to announce the schedule for the 2024 calendar year! The schedule will show tours in the 2024 Circuit, unofficial tours and team tours. Please note that not all individual tours in this post will be apart of the circuit.

Explanation on the Draft League Circuit

The circuit is a collection of individual tournaments spread throughout the year with varying classifications, generations, and formats all coming together to allow players to earn points for the final showdown - the Draft League Championship, where the top 16 performers will battle to earn the title of Circuit Champion, the Draft League Circuit Champion ribbon

and a custom avatar on PS!

Tours that are individuals but not apart of the circuit are unofficials. These tournaments will have distinctly different rulesets and formats, from trusted individuals within the community using the subforum's extensive resources. They may be added at any point throughout the year and the tiering/ruleset will not be held to as high a scrutiny as an official circuit tour. Feel free to reach out if you have a format you'd like to run as an unofficial.

Circuit Tour Classification

Type A: Tournaments given a significant weight in the circuit, awarding the most points, we aim to have 2 per year. Doing well in Type A tournaments will be of the greatest help to a budding Championship contender.
Type B: These tours will primarily feature the 3 main past generations of draft as a format (ORAS, USUM and SS) due to their formats being not only past gens but also being far more developed than those formats in type C. While they award fewer points than type A, doing well in each tour will still be worthwhile for those aiming for the Championship.
Type C: Tours that are here will tend to revolve around less explored metagames, with the idea being to flesh them out through play testing. There is scope in future years to move some of these tours to type B if they end up flourishing (both on Smogon and in the wider draft community as a whole). This will also be the classification in which OMs and ADV/DPP draft tours will be placed if we go down those routes. Type C tournaments should be seen as a small bonus towards a Championship run.

Key: Tournament Name | Signups date | Expected Finals date | Tour Type | Host

Winter
Winter Seasonal I: 1st January - 22nd April (Type A), hosted by Theia & olivia7
NatDex Ubers I: 15th January - 25th March (Type C), hosted by vmnunes & Aberforth

Spring
ORAS II: 3rd March - 19th May (Type B), hosted by a fairy and RoiDadadou
NatDex I: 31st March - 9th June (Type C), hosted by TRowePrice667 & ultraplayer
SS NatDex: 12th May - 21st July (Unofficial), hosted by Hacker

Summer
USUM II: 26th May - 11th August (Type B), hosted by ? & ?
Summer Seasonal II: 9th June - 29th September (Type A), hosted by Nyx & ?
Low Tier II: 16th June - 25th August (Type C), hosted by ? & ?

Autumn
SS II: 18th August - 3rd November (Type B), hosted by ? & ?
Draft Factory: 6th October - 1st December (Unofficial), hosted by Rissoux & ComputerWhiz

Draft League Championship I
17th November - 22nd December, hosted by ? & ?

Team Tournaments
(These will NOT count towards the circuit)
Draft League World Cup 2023: 7th April - 9thJune, hosted by Rissoux & @Tjb145
Draft Champions League II: 28thJuly - 24th November, hosted by Theia & ?


Tournament Information
Unless stated otherwise below, all tours will consist of the following: 8 Pokémon per draft, battle pools of 4 or 5 players, and 2 players maximum per battle pool advancing on to the single elimination bracket stage. All games are best-of-one.

Type A
Winter/Summer Seasonal: The only Swiss tours within our schedule. SV standard Draft with a Swiss-style schedule into a single elimination bracket. Players can reach the single elimination stage by going X-2 or better in the Swiss.

Type B
ORAS/USUM/SS II: Standard individual tours, SS being played with the post-DLC Galar Dex.

Type C
NatDex Ubers I: Lets unleash almost everything, this will be fine. The only non-8 Pokémon format in the circuit, drafts will consist of 10-12 Pokémon and have a budget of 200 points. There may be more than 8 people per draft pool. Z-Moves, Terastallization, Hidden Power and Refresh are banned.
NatDex I: Classical SV NatDex but in draft form. Z-Moves and Hidden Power are banned.
Low Tier II: Draft's take on RU, what happens when you ban the best Pokémon in standard draft?
More type C tours may be added as the year progresses.

Unofficials
SS NatDex: Hacker's personal rework of SS ND draft, introducing (most) cut moves back into a format that was largely played without them last gen. This tour will most likely feature larger draft pools to accommodate for the sheer number of Pokémon.
Draft Factory: It's like Battle Factory but for Draft League! Matchups from our seasonals and DLWC will be input into a database, which will then randomly pull matchups out, giving each player real teams that were brought to games. This will also be Best-of-Three due to its random battle nature.
More unofficial tours may be added as the year progresses.

The spreadsheet will be linked here once we've reworked point values for tours.

Tournament Staffing
To run this circuit, we'll need people who are willing to staff and tier it. If this interests you, reach out to any Forum Moderator (Nyx, Rissoux, Tjb145, a fairy, vmnunes) via Smogon or Discord. Staffing tours gives you the Tournament Staff role in the Discord, as well as the potential pre-Contributor/Community Contributor badges on Smogon if done consistently well.

A reminder that this is not an exhaustive list of tours that we'll host. We may add more unofficial tours, as well as other Type C tours throughout the year. Type Cs will be announced in advance.

Here's a graphic with an overview of this year's calendar as it stands. The numbers refer to weeks within the year.

 

[Nyx]

With DLWC less than 2 months away, we'd like to clarify the tour's structure and timeline so that everyone is aware. DLWC will consist of teams of 1-2 managers, 12 players (managers can play), with 8 being starters and 4 being substitutes. All games will be [Gen 9] Tera Preview Draft, with teams drafting internally amongst themselves rather than in normal draft pools. The schedule for the tour will be as follows:

• Monday 8th April: Manager signups and player signups will both open concurrently.
• Sunday 14th April: The hosts will announce the selected managers for each team; other teams will be allowed to form after this date but they'll have to reach out to the hosts personally. The draft board for the tour will be released here.
• Sunday 21st April: Managers must submit a finalised roster of 8 players and 4 substitutes.
• Monday 22nd-Sunday 28th April: Drafting week. Each team will draft 10 teams internally, with no overlapping Pokémon across their drafts. These must be submitted to the hosts before the end of the week.
• Monday 29th April: Managers will submit a list of their starting players, and the draft that they will use for the battle pools phase.
• Tuesday 30th April-Sunday 19th May: Battle pools begin. Players are randomly put into pools of 4, against players from other countries and can earn points for their teams by winning games. This format will be identical to WCoP, you can find its pools here as an example.
• Monday 20th May onwards: The top X teams will advance onto a best-of-8 playoffs, following DCL style lineup submissions.

We'll clarify more about the tour and the intricacies surrounding it down the line, but this should help people plan for the coming months.

TL;DR DLWC SIGNUPS BEGIN MONDAY 8TH APRIL

 

[Nyx]

Here's the points breakdown for this year's circuit/ These are all designed for single elimination. I'll post the expanded Type A Swiss table some point next week when I've the time to writeup an explanation. # is ur placement, the header is the number of players in the tour.