Rules Draft League Rules and Announcements

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Rissoux

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributor
Draft Leader
Welcome to the Draft forum! This is Smogon's onsite hub for all things relating to draft leagues. Please take a minute to read through our forum rules:

Smogon Draft Discord Server.
  • All of Smogon's Global Rules apply.
  • Ask for moderator approval before posting a new thread and avoid posting duplicate threads. Moderators have the right to lock any unapproved or duplicate threads.
  • Do not insult or flame other users.
  • Avoid double posting in threads, there's an edit button for a reason.
  • Do not create threads just to ask questions - refer instead to the Simple Questions, Simple Answers thread.
  • Do not create threads plugging your draft league - refer to the League Advertisement thread.
  • In-game topics belongs either in Orange Islands (for discussion of in-game content) or the Wi-Fi forum (for in-game trading/battling/breeding).
The current Draft staff team is:
Tier Leaders
Rissoux
Tjb145

Forum Moderators
a fairy
Nyx
Theia
vmnunes

C&C Moderators
Nyx
Hacker
Theia

Discord Moderators
Aberforth
abriel
ComputerWhiz
Hacker
Happygate
PZZ
SparksBlade
olivia7
Thomas18
TRowePrice667
ultraplayer
UT

As a rule of thumb, remember that the application of each and every rule is subject to moderator discretion. If you have questions about the rules, their interpretation, or anything else related to the Draft forum, then feel free to contact one of the Draft forum moderators above via private message.

Thank you for reading and we hope you enjoy your time in the Draft forum!
 
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Rissoux

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributor
Draft Leader
Please note that a ban from the Discord server will result in an indefinite circuit ban from all future Draft League subforum tours, as well as any tours in the draft pools phase. It will not remove you from any ongoing tours in the battle pools/bracket phases. This is because you must be in the Discord server to be able to take part in the draft. While this has been an implied rule since day one of the forum, we're posting this now to make it abundantly clear.
 

Rissoux

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributor
Draft Leader
In preparation for the 2023 Summer Seasonal we asked the ever-talented Kris to create a custom version of our SV dex Draft and National Dex Draft tiers to include the terastallization mechanic in a new way: Tera Preview! Getting a look at your opponent's tera options at the game's onset, we hope, will further help people adapt to this generation's new mechanic in Draft League. The tiers are now publicly available for anyone to use, pictured below for your reference:

Untitled_design_81.png


Additionally, the 4v4 draft tier has been edited to allow evasion boosting abilities because this format is based off of the VGC ruleset.

image.png
 

Rissoux

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributor
Draft Leader
Yesterday we relaunched the Draft room on PS! and hope to host community polls, draft factory tournaments when it debuts, as well as various games like pokemon hangman and uno! Come join us if you haven't already QOTDs and more as we discuss Draft League and all it's intricacies.
:Squad:

https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/draft

The current staff team for the room is as follows:
Room Owners: Rissoux Nyx Theia
Mods: vmnunes a fairy Tjb145 Hacker ComputerWhiz UT SparksBlade abriel
Drivers: TRowePrice667 ultraplayer Happygate Thomas18
 
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Rissoux

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributor
Draft Leader
In preparation for the 2023 Summer Seasonal we asked the ever-talented Kris to create a custom version of our SV dex Draft and National Dex Draft tiers to include the terastallization mechanic in a new way: Tera Preview! Getting a look at your opponent's tera options at the game's onset, we hope, will further help people adapt to this generation's new mechanic in Draft League. The tiers are now publicly available for anyone to use, pictured below for your reference:

View attachment 526602

Additionally, the 4v4 draft tier has been edited to allow evasion boosting abilities because this format is based off of the VGC ruleset.

View attachment 526604
The Draft League admin team is dedicated to ensuring maximum efficiency pertaining to the organization of channels in the PS! teambuilder. While we may not readily offer an exhaustive list of formats, we do offer those most used and routinely update the naming conventions and formats consistent with the most popular formats in the community. This is in effort to best use the limited category space we offer.

We will always take considerations for validation suggestions (for what's legal/banned) in our formats, as well as suggestions for new formats to add when the interest arises. Please utilize the general discussion thread to discuss and request such changes so we can field them appropriately. I've been getting more and more individuals DMing me asking for changes to the formats so putting the "official" process to paper should be the best way to field these requests.

Understandably, we can't add every format that we want, so I implore you to familiarize yourself with the following resources on generating challenge codes to get the correct battle rules in your games:
Custom Rules and Verification Help
/buildformat (In any PS! chat room, type /buildformat and the client will walk you through the clauses for your format based off a pre-existing format)
 
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Rissoux

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributor
Draft Leader
This post will formally describe how Draft Factory will work. This is an endeavor originally started by a separate private PS! client, however it is no longer maintained. I feel it is absolutely worthwhile to expand the Draft League player base and provide a much needed method for new and seasoned players to practice the format without the massive organization that it usually requires:

Draft Factory will mirror Battle Factory in structure (I'll link the official description of Battle Factory for those unfamiliar) and will recreate a matchup that has occurred in one of our SV draft league tournaments. ("Matchup" in this instance means a pairing of player 1 vs player 2 and the corresponding teams that they drafted.)
1. It eliminates the need for players to find/organize a Draft League, draft their own team, and prep with that team versus another team. Essentially piggybacking off of other's effort to quickly participate in the format.

2. Draft Factory will help standardize and offer quick familiarization for what Draft League offers as a competitive format. For players unfamiliar with how intricate the Draft League format is, this will provide invaluable insight into the format's potential.

3. Draft Factory matchups will feature high replicability, as we will generate up to or around 200 pairings per round per tournament. (With anywhere from 6-10 rounds per tournament, there will be no shortage of teams for individuals to practice the format with.)
- All competitors in Draft League tournaments are given a budget to draft eight Pokémon from a tier list in which Pokémon are priced according to their general value. I've linked an example tournament post that has all the pertinent format details. These rules will be largely the same for all Gen 9 SV Tournaments held this year by the Draft League sub-forum.

- For the 2024 Winter Seasonal, competitors were asked to send the team of 6 Pokémon that they are bringing to each round's match (in a pokepaste) to a Winter Seasonal tournament host. Those hosts will compile and organize the pokepastes into pairings for each round. For subsequent Gen 9 SV tournaments, PS! administrators will have the ability to download the pokepastes automatically without competitors sending them to hosts (whether or not we choose to utilize this approach will be decided at a later date.)

- By signing up for our Gen 9 SV tournaments, competitors agree to comply voluntarily or involuntarily with the parameters outlined in this breakdown. Submitting teams is a participation requirement and will always be listed in sign up OPs. While we understand competitors may want to keep their prep a secret, that privacy is waived when choosing to voluntarily compete in these tournaments. Users who do not comply with the mandate described above will not be infracted or otherwise punished, however, consistently not complying as described above may make it less likely a competitor will be chosen to participate in further sub-forum events.

- Sub-forum staff will comb through the team pairings after the tournament has concluded (to avoid any appearance of impropriety in case staff are also participating in the tournament) and quality check teams, removing any that are objectively non-competitive or otherwise unfit for official use on the PS! client (such as having offensive nicknames). At this time, staff will also make a note of which Pokémon that were brought to each match were tera captains. For Battle Factory's purpose, only the Pokémon drafted as legal tera captains will be able to terastallize into their predetermined tera type.

- After the teams and pairings have been collated, they will be forwarded to PS! admins for entering into the client. Once this happens, anyone will be able to play a randbat that loads a competitively balanced and unique matchup that actually happened in one of our official and ribbon'd tournaments.
As the 2024 Draft League Circuit continues throughout the year and we have our other two Gen 9 SV tournaments, Draft Factory will either see teams swapped or added to the current large database of pairings (depending on limitations related to memory and storage capabilities of the PS! client and the developers thereof). Sub-forum staff may also choose to impose a round-requirement in order to further filter the quality of teams inputted into the Draft Factory tier. Please reach out to myself or another sub-forum staff memeber if you have questions about this initiative!
 
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Rissoux

is a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributor
Draft Leader
We worked with the developer team to implement some QOL updates to the Draft tiers:

"[Gen 9] Paldea Dex Draft" became "[Gen 9] Draft"
"[Gen 9] Tera Preview Paldea Dex Draft" became "[Gen 9] Tera Preview Draft"
We added the "best of 3" feature to the 4x4 Doubles Draft tier

Many thanks to Kris for continuing to help us streamline the Draft League experience!
 
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