FABL Rules

Format

FABL will run over 7 weeks comprising of eight days of events, with 6 weeks for each of the qualifiers, and a 2 day tournament for the finals.

In each qualifier, all eligible players will acquire points that will determine their leaderboard placement. The top 32 players from the qualifiers will move on to the finals.

Eligibility

Players must be in the Alpha bracket of each qualifier to earn points on the leaderboard. To enter the alpha bracket, players must have achieved at least a power of 2100 in any mode in X Battle.

If a player is ineligible for the Alpha bracket, additional brackets will be available for players to participate in. However, these brackets will not accrue points onto the leaderboard.

The intention of this is to allow players to enter a free-agent tournament, given that we will be running the next IDTGA in May.

Leaderboard Points

For each qualifier, each player within a team will receive the same amount of points.

All players will receive 30 points for playing
All players will receive the same amount of points accrued in the swiss stage of the qualifiers

Additional points will be awarded to the top 4 teams of each qualifier.

4th place: 10 points
3rd place: 20 points
2nd place: 30 points
1st place: 40 points

If a player does dropout from a qualifier tournament, that player will not receive any qualification points.

If a player participates in four or more qualifiers, their learderpoint points will consist of their three highest-scoring qualifier tournaments.

Qualifier Rules

Additional Brackets

Each qualifier tournament will have multiple brackets.
There will be at least two brackets for each qualifier, and up to four brackets can be used, dubbed Alpha, Beta, Delta and Gamma.
Only the Alpha bracket will accrue leaderboard points.

Preliminaries:

Format: Swiss
Matches: Play all 3
There are 4 rounds in each bracket.
There is no elimination, remember to play all of your rounds!

Point Distribution (Preliminaries)

3 points for each game win
6 points for each round win
5 points for each round draw
8 points for each round bye

Top Cut:

Format: Single Elimination
Matches: Best of 5
The top 4 teams advance from the preliminaries.
There is a third-place match.

Schedule

The 6 qualifiers will occur on the following weekends;

March 11/12 - Qualifier 1
March 18/19 - Qualifier 2
March 25/26 - Qualifier 3
April 1/2 - Qualifier 4
April 8/9 - Qualifier 5
April 15/16 - Qualifier 6

Registration opens!
72 hours before the tournament:

Check-in opens 24 hours before registration closes! Please remember to check-in within those 24 hours or you will be removed from the tournament.
48 hours before the tournament:

Both registration and check-in close, if you haven't checked in by this point you will be removed. You're still able to sign up as an emergency sub!
24 hours before the tournament:

The #reporting-players channel is opened. For more info, please refer to the Reporting Players section.
The tournament begins!

All tournaments begin on the same minute/hour, but may be at a different hour depending on your timezone. Only standard timezones are listed below, if daylight savings / summer time is in effect, please add an hour:
```
PST  - 12pm Saturday
MST  - 1pm Saturday
CST  - 2pm Saturday
EST  - 3pm Saturday
GMT  - 8pm Saturday
CET  - 9pm Saturday
JST  - 5am Sunday
AEST - 6am Sunday
```
The qualifier tournaments are scheduled to last 4:00 hours total.
- Preliminaries take approximately 2:25 hours in total.
- Top cut takes approximately 1:35 hours in total.

Round Durations

Each swiss round lasts 35 minutes.
Each top cut round lasts 40 minutes.
The very first swiss round lasts 5 more minutes, for 40 minutes total.
Players must start their matches within 5 minutes of the round (or 10 minutes for the first round).
- If the match has not started yet, the first game will be awarded to the waiting team.
- For each additional 5 minutes that the match still hasn't started, another game will be awarded.
- Please call a moderator in start.gg when this occurs so we can set the score.
There is a 5-minute break before the top cut commences.

If a match has not been completed by the end of the round, the match will be marked as a draw.

FABL Finals

Schedule

8 days before Day 1:

Check-in opens 24 hours before registration closes! Please remember to check-in within those 24 hours or you will be removed from the tournament.
7 days before Day 1:

Check-in closes.
6 days before Day 1:

Teams are released
5 days before Day 1:

The #reporting-players channel is opened. For more info, please refer to the Reporting Players section.
Day 1 of Finals

Day 1 of the finals commences on April 29th at 4pm EDT.
Day 2 of Finals

Day 2 of the tournament commences on April 30th at 4pm EDT - however, this may change.

Format

Double Elimination
Winners Round 1, Losers Rounds 1 and 2: Best of three
Winners Round 2, Losers Round 3: Best of five
Winners Finals, Losers Finals: Best of seven
Grand Finals: Best of nine (Showdown Ruleset)

Day 1

Day 1 consists of Winners rounds 1, 2, and finals, as well as Losers rounds 1, 2, 3, and finals.
Counterpick will be available after game 1 for all rounds. Counterpicks can't repeat the same map/mode combinations.

Day 2

Day 2 consists of just the Grand Finals and will use the new Showdown ruleset.

Best of nine
There will be a map pool consisting of 15 map/mode combinations.
The first game will occur on a predetermined Splat Zones map (outside of the map pool).
The winners of any game in the set can ban a map/mode combination from the map pool
The losers of the previous game can then pick any map/mode combination that has not been previously played, or banned.
If game 9 occurs, it must be played on the remaining map/mode that hasn’t been played or banned.

General Rules

These rules apply to both the qualifiers and finals.

Disconnects (DC)

To end the game early, any player can push the ZL, ZR, L, R as well as push down LS (left stick) and RS (right stick) all at the same time for 3 seconds. This is not a rage-quit feature, misuse of this feature will result in the entire set loss. Abuse of this feature will result in disqualification and/or a permanent ban. Remember to use the switch capture feature to record misuse if it has occurred.

If either 2 DCs occur in the same lobby, the host DCs, or there are a significant amount of complaints about lag; the team currently not hosting must host the new lobby.

To reduce the chances of a DC happening, please check you have a good internet connection with low ping and/or have a LAN adapter for a smoother experience. If not, consider switching hosts.

If there's a dispute, or something unforeseen occurs during the set, feel free to bring it up to the helpdesk.

Redo the game if:

The objective has not passed 50 points remaining for either team.
The game has not passed 2:30 before the DC has occurred.
Both teams use the same weapons/gear shown on the results screen.

Do NOT redo the game if:

Any player on the same team DC's again in the same round.
The host DC's. In this case, the game is rewarded to the team not hosting.
There was a misuse of ending the game early, see above.

Reporting players

Sometimes, your team needs a replacement for one of your team members. Some examples may include:

A team member notifies you that something has come up and they need to drop out.
A team member just isn't responding to any of your messages.
A team member is being toxic to the rest of your team.
A team member is making one or more of your other team members uncomfortable.

To solve this, we have a system for reporting such players and receiving a sub, to make sure that your team can have a good experience in the tournament!

Your team can report players 24 hours after teams are released.
Everyone on your team (besides the player getting reported) must approve of the report.
Your sub is not allowed to play for any other player on your team except for the reported player they are replacing.
Once your sub is assigned, the reported player is no longer allowed to play.
This is an irreversible action, so be thoughtful when you report!

How to report

To report a player, send a message in the #reporting channel, formatted like this:

@Lynel - Reason for reporting

If you don't feel comfortable reporting them publicly, you can send a staff member a DM 💙

Please ping the person that you are reporting, don't just give their username.
For better chances of approval, make sure your reason is specific and detailed. for example:

@Lynel - Despite their status being set to online, they haven't responded to any of our DMs since teams have been created, multiple of our team members have attempted to get in contact with them, but to no avail.

Once you have made your report, our staff members will update you with the status of your report by reacting to your report message:

🗒️ - We've noted your report, and are working on matching a sub.
✅ - The report has been resolved, we have assigned a sub.
🚫 - We don't approve of the report. This usually doesn't happen, assuming you did everything correctly.

If there is no reaction, we haven't seen your report yet. Please note that it may take up to 24 hours to receive a sub.

Receiving your sub

Once you've been assigned your sub, you should see a reply to your original report, usually formatted like this:

@DJam98 > >@Lynel

You now know your sub. Friend them on discord, add them to your group chat, and hopefully get some practice in!

When we have no available subs

Sometimes, there are no available subs to substitute for missing players. In this case, the team is responsible for finding a new sub. This can be done by using the #lf-pickup channel in Off the Dial, or on another server.

Note that this is not applicable to the FABL finals.

Subs must be approved by a TO and have signed up as a sub at otd.ink/signup.

If all options are exhausted, your team will be disbanded and become emergency subs.

Team Updates

Changing Captains

Usually, the player with the highest signal strength is automatically assigned as captain.

If you were assigned as captain but would like to opt out, please talk to your team to decide who will be captain, and let a staff member know in the #team-updates at the latest 12 hours before the tournament starts.

Changing Names

Team names are randomly generated. If you want to change your team name, here are the following conditions:

Must be posted in the #team-updates at the latest 12 hours before the tournament starts.
Must be a 2-word alliteration that starts with the same letter as the original team name.
Must be appropriate, use common sense for this one.
Must be under 25 characters.
Must be approved by a staff member (indicated by a checkmark reaction to the message)

Cheating

Forms of cheating include, but are not limited to, playing under false names, bracket manipulation, providing false information in your profile or on start.gg, anything considered cheating by Nintendo, controller mods, and failure to comply with any of the rules on this document.

If you cheat:

Instant disqualification from the tournament.
A permanent ban from Off the Dial and all tournaments.

This is a strict no-chances policy, and we do not make exceptions to this. Staff also reserve the right to disqualify or ban players at their discretion.

Others

Rules are subject to change between seasons, Make sure to reread the rules each season, you can check the patch notes to see what we changed.
Signups are first-come-first-serve. If there are an uneven number of players, the latest ones will become emergency subs. Make sure to sign up early!
Aliases are permitted in the tournament, however, this is purely for the use of adding on a team tag. If a player is caught impersonating, it will fall under the cheating rules.
If third-party services, such as Nintendo Online or start.gg become unavailable, the tournament may be delayed, change format, or even cancelled. If we need to make adjustments, please be patient with us.
Head TOs reserve the right to make any changes to the tournament at any time on a case-by-case basis.
By registering you agree to abide by our terms and conditions, thank you!

That’s it! If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask in #helpdesk. Good luck in the tournament!