Brand New Cup Qualification Rules

Hello friends!

Today we have a couple cool things to announce - a streamlined Cup Qualification system and a Discord League Invitational (in it's own post here).

Firstly, new Cup Qualification guidelines:

As many of you know the previous Wildcard system just wasn't working, as the Wildcard round never took place. We're announcing a new system for Cup Qualification that is very similar to the previous system but improves a number of things, so without further adieu:

1. Group winners will automatically qualify for the Cup as before
1a. #2 finishers are no longer guaranteed a Cup spot, but mathematically most #2 players will earn a Cup spot
2.  Any player who achieves a 4-3+ record now qualifies for the play-in round, if not the Cup itself
3. Players will be seeded into the Cup under the following seeding rules:

1. # of wins
2. # of true wins
3. Random

This allows us to stack-rank all Cup participants which makes seeding the Cup easier as well as enables the new Play-in system described below.

4. The Cup is still a Top 64, in the event there are more than 64 qualified players after the criteria above a Play-in Round will be initiated. This round will include the lowest seeded players and will be a number of games equal to the number of players beyond 64 who have qualified.

That's hard to follow via text, so let's take Season 3 as an example. 67 players qualified under the new criteria. Therefore, the bottom 6 seeded players (#62-67) would play in 3 games as part of the 'Play-in Round', with the victors taking the final three spots of the Cup.

This season we're on pace for 73 players to qualify at 4-3+, which will require 18 players to play 9 games in the Play-in Round

The Play-in Round will be scheduled just like the other rounds, albeit with a shorter timeframe. Unlike the previous Wildcard system this ensures participants know who they're playing and it also affords them a short window to schedule their game.
5.  Sample Timeline Under these New Rules
 This information will be in a League Calendar SOON(TM) as well

25th Feb S4 Cup Deck submits goes live
25th Feb S5 Sign ups close
26th Feb S4 ends
27th Feb S4 Cup Deck submits ends
28th Feb S4 Cup Bracket goes live
1st March S5 Groups go live

March
1st - 4th S4 Challenger round 
5th - 11th S4 Top 64
12th - 18th S4 Top 32
19th - 25th S4 Top 16
26th - 31st S4 Top 8

April
1st - 6th Top 4
7th - S4 Live Final

You'll notice we're also extending the length of the Cups slightly, as this spills over into April.

We feel these changes make Cup Qualification a more fair and streamlined process. Players no longer need to wait for their whole group to finish to know their individual results and the Play-in Round replaces the Wildcard in a far more controlled manner.

As always, please feel free to leave feedback on this post, in the league channels, or via direct messages!

For Rokugan!