For a little while now, there has been some talk on the forums about having a playoff for the Blackbox Trophy roster winners, and this is something we have been hearing on and off again for a while. So me and Bazakastine talked about this and decided it is indeed a good idea. So with this blog post, we are introducing the latest major tournament for FUMBBL:



While all the details aren't finalized at this point, we wanted to announce it early to give people some heads up about this new tournament in order to prepare for it.

The Steel Gauntlet is different from other majors in that this will run in lockstep with the Blackbox Trophy, and indeed use the trophy as its qualifying system (the cynics among you could say that's a cop-out to allow us to maintain that majors are open for all teams :) ).

After a Blackbox Trophy season has completed, one team from each roster will be given an opportunity to enter the Steel Gauntlet play-offs to take the title. The exact format of this play-off isn't finalized at this point and we are considering a single- or double-elimination KO formats.

Either way, the way to qualify was sort of hinted at with the site update roughly 24 hours ago when the Blackbox Trophy page was updated with team standings. Essentially, all teams which have played a minimum of 10 games of their trophy run are eligible, and the basic idea is that the top team for each roster according to the team standings will be given a spot.

Teams are seeded as follows (ie, this is the sorting for team standings with tie-breakers being listed in order):
1) Team score, including the played game bonuses. Higher score first.
2) Total score for the squad. Higher score first.
3) Raw number of wins. Higher score first.
4) Time of run completion. Earlier completion first (ie, a team that finishes their 15 games first will have an advantage here.

A couple of extra rules:
- Teams can not play games outside the trophy season the play-off applies to. Doing so will disqualify the team from participating.
- A coach can only bring a single team. Unless the coach explicitly declines the invitation (which needs to be done prior to the draw being made), the highest scoring team will be entered. The ability to decline the play-off is not implemented as of yet, but will be prior to the first play-off.
- Teams must be "ready to play" prior to the draw being made, or they will lose their spot
- Given that there are 28 rosters and typical KO formats require powers of 2 (ie 32 in this case), the top seeded teams will automatically be pushed through to round 2 of the play-off.

The tournament prize for winning the Steel Gauntlet will be... A Steel Gauntlet special item for one of the players. Details about this Steel Gauntlet will be announced at a later date, but will essentially be a variation of other major tournament prizes and apply some form of skill to a player on the team.

Both me and Bazakastine feel that this is a really cool concept and we are both excited to hear what you all think of this, and follow the meta of how people run their squads.

I wanted to make this announcement prior to all the details being fully fleshed out because it can potentially affect the squads people choose to run for BBT8, and we wanted to push this information out as soon as possible.

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned it, we will start this as of BBT8, so this current season is the qualifier for the first Steel Gauntlet!

Happy boxing!

PS. The Team Standing page will show which teams are currently qualifying for the play-off and lets you check how close to the top each team is.