Tournament Draft League Circuit 2023 - Administrative Decisions

[a fairy]

by the lovely vmnunes

This thread will contain rulings for the Draft League Circuit.​

Rulings:

- All
On tournament sizes
On substitutes, bans, and dropping from tournaments
On Showdown outages
Circuit Bans

- Smogon Draft Kickoff Tour

- ORAS Cup I

- USUM Cup I

- SS Cup I
On untiered Pokémon
On untiered Pokémon 2

- Summer Seasonal
On tiering changes

- Classic Playoffs

- LC I

- LT I

- Circuit Championship

 

[a fairy]

On Classic Cup Sizes

The three Classic Cups have been expanded to allow for more variance in the amount of players per tournament. For example, rather than defaulting down to 256 participants if valid signups do not reach 512 or more, hosts may elect to start a tournament with a participant count of 384.

To ensure that byes or round robins are not needed in later rounds, a certain number of players may receive byes in the round immediately following Battle Pools. In the case of a participant count of 384, 64 players with the best ranking out of the Battle Pools would receive a Bye.

This change will be represented in the Scoring Tables shortly as well, to represent the additional possible tournament participant numbers and how those tournaments would be scored for Circuit and Classic.

Hosts are given the ability to determine ideal participant count for their tournaments, taking into account the percentages given here. Given the need for substitutes, hosts may place benchmarks for the different tournament sizes to ensure that there are folks who signed up available to substitute in on the chance that participants go missing.

 

[a fairy]

RE: Removal from Tournaments, Dropping Out, and Substitutes


Events: Choomie has been forum banned for reasons unrelated to ORAS Cup I. In accordance with current tour policy, he will not be allowed to participate in the remainder of ORAS Cup I. Additionally, towards the end of the drafting phase, IronFlashGaming requested to be substituted out of the tournament, and a while later after a substitute had been placed in their position requested to rejoin the tournament.

Results: Once a person has been removed from a tournament, either at their request or in accordance with current tour policy, they will not be readded to the tournament. IronFlashGaming was replaced with a12qsd too when they requested to be removed from the tournament. Choomie has been substituted out of the tournament, with iPro taking their place. iPro will retain the draft and battle results (if any) of Choomie, but any incomplete matches and further rounds (if applicable) will be played by iPro.

Additionally: ORAS Cup I hosts have determined that due to the strict timeframes that the Draft and Battle Pool phases operate at, substitutes need to have already been present in the Discord server for ease of substitute implementation. These two substitutions and any further necessary ones during these phases must be present in the server with the correct information in their signup post.

 

[Nyx]

re: Untiered Pokémon in SS
The following Pokémon were missing on the originally released draft board, they've now been placed accordingly:

Ban
Landorus-Incarnate

3 Points
Aggron
Arctovish
Kingler
Swoobat

2 Points
Absol
Golduck
Klinklang
Luxray
Munchlax

1 Point
Rookidee
Galarian Linoone

If you notice any other untiered Pokémon that are available in SS, please notify a host.

 

[vmnunes]

RE: Tiering update for SS

Vullaby
Vullaby was missing from the draft board and is now correctly placed at 2 points.

Deerling and Sawsbuck
These pokemon were present in the draft board despite not being available in the format. They have been removed.

If you notice any other untiered Pokémon that are available in SS, or pokemon on the draft board that are not available in SS, please notify a host.

 

[Nyx]

re: Showdown outage

Due to the Showdown server outages, we've decided to extend the ongoing USUM and SS cup rounds (round 4 for USUM and battle pools for SS) until 11:59pm GMT+0 on 14th May. ORAS semi finals will not be extended at the moment. Apologies for any inconveniences caused.

 

[Nyx]

re: Tiering update for Summer Seasonal

We've gone ahead and made some revisions to the Draft Board for this year's Summer Seasonal.
Chi-Yu: Banned
Chien-Pao: Banned
Palafin: 18 Points
Volcarona: 18 Points
Zamazenta-Crowned: 18 Points
Enamorus-Incarnate: 17 Points
Garchomp: 17 Points
Sneasler: 17 Points
Urshifu-Single-Strike: 17 Points
Baxcalibur: 16 Points
Kingambit: 16 Points
Meowscarada: 16 Points
Greninja: 15 Points
Tornadus-Therian: 15 Points
Regieleki: 10 Points

Furthermore, the following Pokémon are now also Tera Banned.
Baxcalibur
Regieleki
Tornadus-Therian
Urshifu-Single-Strike

 

[SparksBlade]

The Tournament Directors have been provided with evidence of multiple participants of the Smogon Draft Kick-Off tournament breaking Tournament and Smogon rules during their involvement. Two users were found to have colluded and rigged their game against each other, and two others were found supporting and actively involved in the discussion leading to the rigged game. The Smogon Draft team have reviewed the recommendations from the Tournament Director team and are implementing the following as concurred:

• supersayan and iMox will receive an infraction for Unsportsmanlike Conduct and a one-year ban from the Smogon Draft Circuit for colluding and rigging a tournament match.
• Lizardu'' and ButterCHOKE will receive an infraction for Unsportsmanlike Conduct and a nine month ban from the Smogon Draft Circuit for supporting and being actively involved in the collusion for rigging a tournament match.

Moderator Edit: Following an appeal, Lizardu'''s circuit ban has been reduced to three months.

 

[TTK]

Re: Quick Claw's Legality in Low Tier I

It has come to the attention of the tour hosts that the replay between BaitWiz and austinerzs (here), austinerzs brought Quick Claw, which is a banned item. However, the result of the end of the game will be staying intact, with the win going to austinerzs. This is due to the fact that the OP thread for Round 1 was not updated to accommodate for the Quick Claw ban, which was only made known on the Smogon Draft Discord Server.

This was an issue caused by the hosts, and moving forward, any other games where Quick Claw is used will automatically be a loss to the player using the item. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.