Hey guys~ First off, thanks for participating in this testing phase. I really appreciate it. The more people we have, the better we can approximate the live tourney.

So, what exactly is all this anyway? Well, this all started when a user asked a really weird question in #discordfeedback over on the public server. He asked "Who are our elite 4 and champion?" and of course everyone was like ???? especially me, since that's what I usually call Archaic, Evie, Koggerz, and evkl. So I asked them to elaborate, and eventually discerned that they were basically asking who the best battlers were, and if we didn't have a "Champ and E4" then we should battle to figure it out. I thought about it for a bit, and then took the idea and ran with it.

Being a n00b to the competitive scene (having a grand total of two PvP battles under my belt across all games and not even knowing what the heck Showdown was at the time) I was like "How can we do this? Battle videos from the game...? I think we can upload those...?" and some people were like "duhhhhhh use Showdown." So now we're using Showdown.

So what are we doing these for? My vision is that, after all the testing is over and done with, we hold an actual tourney amoungst the staff to determine our first Elite 4 and Champion (so the top battlers will automatically get E4 status but battle eachother (how is still to be determined as we're still testing) to determine who is actually the Champion). After those titles are determined, we'll go live with the tourney and after awhile hold another tourney so the regular users (and any staff who aren't current title-holders) battle eachother for the right to battle our E4/Champ. The top five spots will then pick their target and battle that target to attempt to take the E4 title. Anyone going after the Champion title will of course have to win against all four E4 members and then beat the Champ to take his title. The winners (whether it's new people or not) will get to keep those titles until about a month or two later, when another tourney is held (how often these are held to be determined by how many people are interested in participating).

These "titles" probably won't be roles (up to Froyo really but it'd have to be 2+ roles so probably not feasible) but just unofficial titles on a Google doc somewhere or something and, of course, bragging rights. If we get enough people participating this opens up the possibility of having gym leaders also, under the same format (staff tourney first to determine who starts with the title and then open it up to the users, where at the end they can choose E4 or gym leaders as their targets). So yes, staff can participate in the tourneys once they go live and can definitely come back and try to reclaim their title if their title gets taken away from them. This will be open to all Discord users (people can join from the forums to Discord if they're interested) but we're trying to make it as automated as possible so you don't have to talk in the public server if you don't want to. Dylan is bringing his bot expertise in for the automation part so don't worry about having to step into the madhouse that is the public server if you don't like it there :P

I'm also hoping to expand this to other sections of Bulba. Currently the Social Media section is hoping to record the replays and post them on our YouTube channel, and are also looking in to doing Showdown tutorials as some staff members have done so in the past.

We have the @Bulbaleague role that everyone who's expressed interest so far has already, so I can tag you guys for important stuff (or you guys tag all of us for stuff, whichever)

As previously stated, we use Showdown for our tourneys. The current format (still up for discussion) is Gen 7 OU singles with no custom bans and no timer (unless both sides agree to use the timer beforehand).

The list of who's who is here, so use this to find eachother's Showdown usernames.

We currently use #publicdiscordadmin and this thread on the forums for discussing the tourney. Please feel free to give any input you've got on anything you can think of. I appreciate any feedback (obviously, or we wouldn't even be using Showdown in the first place ^^;; )

We use Challonge at the moment for team registration. Every Wednesday I will post the link for the new tourney and you can copy-paste your teams from the Export function in Showdown to the Discussion section in Challonge. You may change your team as little or as much as you want for the new tourney but once you register your team this way on Challonge you cannot change it again until the next tourney. And yes, at the moment every Wednesday is the start of a new tourney. If there's a change to this I will announce it using the @Bulbaleague tag.

Once you know who your partner is, please contact your opponent and arrange to battle at a time that works for both of you. After you battle, send me your replay links via pm or post in the thread on the forums (do not post the replays in #publicdiscordadmin or it will get lost in the flood and I definitely won't see them if I have work that day). You have until 11:59pm EST (6am CET) to send me your replay vids (and please tell me who won cause if I have a busy work week I won't have time to watch all of them).