Australian fighting game event runners and community. Hosts of BAM: Battle Arena Melbourne, Australia's largest fighting game/open entry esports event.
We are proud to announce SteelSeries is the Official Headset partner for BAM 2024!
The Arctis Nova Pro will provide crisp audio on main stages for FGC, including Street Fighter 6, TEKKEN 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy VS Rising & Super Smash Bros Ultimate
We’ll have fantastic PRIZES to give away, with the Nova Pro & new Nova 5 for Platinum & Gold Games, Door prize, and Bounties!
It’s that very special time of year again, one we’ve all been looking forward to for months. A chance to celebrate with friends and loved ones, to look back on the year’s efforts, and then to top it all off with a huge day of fighting game tournaments. That’s right, CouchWarriors Crossupreturns in a new one-day format to close out 2023!
This event will also be the CouchWarriorsLeague Winter Season Finale, where our best players land their final blows in the struggle for leaderboard supremacy. There will also be plenty of side-game tournaments, the launch of a Guilty Gear card game, and the CW Community Awards presentation! Read on for the dates and sign-up links for all of December’s #CWLeague events.
Our first CouchWarriors League circuit for 2023 concluded in epic fashion at Battle Arena Melbourne 13, crowning national champions for your favourite fighting games in front of a raucous crowd. But with the book now closed on that chapter of history, CWL competition is already building up a fresh head of steam!
It’s time for the Winter 2023 season, and now with the leaderboards wiped clean there’s a massive opportunity for new challengers to step up and make their names. Let’s quickly set the scene: what games are featured as major titles, which tournaments will earn you points to climb the CWL leaderboards, and what is it all leading up to come the end of the year!?
CouchWarriors League is officially back for 2023, announcing a new format and points system for the Summer and Winter championship seasons.
The 2023 format emphasizes more local and community events while pivoting the CWL Online schedule from weekly to monthly tournaments. The points awarded at each state’s monthly ranbats have been doubled, making them an even more important battleground for our championship hopefuls.
We’re just days away from the sensational last event of CouchWarriors League 2022, and the last Australian major of the year. CouchWarriors Crossup returns to Melbourne this weekend, with a bigger venue and bigger selection of fighting games to cap off another year’s competition. That includes the highlight game from last CWC, DragonBall FighterZ – and the stakes will be high, as we are once again a DBFZ World Tour Power Event.
CouchWarriors Crossup (CWC) returns. The end of year major for the community has all the fantastic FGC and Smash titles. This year we are also hosting Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour with a Power Event, a call back to the first CWC
We’re at a fantastic new venue of St Kilda Town Hall for the CouchWarriors League end of season finals.
If you ask the question, “why are the CouchWarriors events all called Ranbats?” It’s short for Ranking Battle – a long standing tradition in the community, offering players an incentive to compare their progress and get ever stronger! Today we’re announcing an update to the point system to make it more inclusive of players of all levels.
Of course, all our Ranking Battle live events are not just about tournaments, they’re perhaps moreso about socialising, casual matches and even long sets, with a great opportunity to learn and improve.
By also having tournaments this adds some goals and structure for a day’s play – and the point system is part of that. Tying all our offline and online events together via the points is CouchWarriors League – the league ladder tracks each game and region, which you can filter here on the website. This has been a great way to determine seeding and invitations for events, and prize rewards.
Now as we dive into the 2nd half of this year’s season under CouchWarriors League, we’ve updated the system, in consultation with the tournament teams.Lets take a look:
What’s new and why do we like it?
Expands the point system down to all participants, not just top 4-8
This means participation is encouraged for those who think they can’t place, they can build up a small base of points just by entering consistently.
We have kept the weighting towards offline tournaments vs online, however all points totals are increased, so if you play consistently, even online, you have a chance to post a good score
This provides a nice second split/half season boost as we go towards finals. We won’t reset the points completely, but it provides an effective reset for those actively playing thanks to the increase.
Still acknowledges season 1 players who get a kick start, recognizing due to COVID, its been an uneven year for live events.
The system gives more scope for flexibility in determining prizes and finals seeding.
The point system will be in effect from July events onwards! Yes, that means you can earn more points for playing any of the current tournaments! Register here
Rewards
We recognise this year has been uneven due to Covid, so some regions may have more events than others. This is why we will award end of season prizes to the top players in every game – in each region.
So if you’re the best player in a feature title in your state, or online, which is treated as its own region, you’ll be rewarded!
Current online feature titles are Street Fighter V, Guilty Gear Strive, Tekken 7 and Super Smash Bros Ultimate. These run monthly, so there’s a tournament each week and a prize will be allocated each month.
An additional two titles, while not guaranteed to run an online tournament each month, are staples of offline and will also have an end of season prize: Dragon Ball FighterZ and Super Smash Bros Melee.
Prizes are to be announced as the season progresses. You can count on support from our excellent sponsors Astro and Mwave for starters.
Regular titles you find at your local ranbat are all tracked in the points system, and at minimum we will add rewards at the finals.
Finals
On finals we will be planning to conclude the CWLeague season at CWC – CouchWarriors Crossup – in December with a boosted prize pool and more, to be announced.
If it is impossible for us to run a live finals event, we will run an online invitational using the league ladder. Last year there were over $5,000 in prizes and we are aiming high for this year. We will have more to share on this soon, but rest assured those points are worth striving for!
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone across the AUNZ FGC! 2019 has been a year of big tournament turnouts and big tournament performances, capped off by the year-ending mini major CouchWarriors Crossup. Full results from the event have already been reported here, but there’s so much more that goes on at any event like this than those results can really tell.
To make sure we can celebrate everything great about our community and the events we put together, this will be the first of a string of tournament recaps focusing on the best moments, images and personal achievements from those events. If you have any great moments to share or captured some good energy on camera, go ahead and send it to [email protected] so we can add them to the list!
THE SEASON FINALE
The BAM Path to EVO has continued to raise the stakes and bring a little continuity to tournaments in its 2nd season. Having shared leaderboards for MK11, SFV, Tekken 7 and Smash Ultimate across multiple regions has also helped spice up the interstate competition, which finally came to a head at this final event of the season. CouchWarriors sponsored travel for the Season 2 winners from interstate, who then had to run the gauntlet of local Victorian killers to make good on their titles.Read more
The second edition of CouchWarriors Crossup, our end-of-year Mini-Major, was held December 14th at Bayview on the Park in Melbourne. Here’s a summary of the results in every game and how the top matches turned out. A complete listing of match results and brackets for each game can be viewed on Smash.gg here.
CWC2 marked the finale for Season 2 of the BAM Path to EVO! The top ranked players in each of Street Fighter V, Tekken 7, Mortal Kombat 11 and Smash Ultimate received sponsored flights to the event to compete. The final standings can be viewed here. Note that NZ players Daniel “Kanga|Wowzer” Cossington (Tekken) and Reagan “S-NET|GhostChips” Kelly (SFV) finished on top in their respective games, but declined the prize.
This special Ranking Series ties across the community monthly RanBat tournaments across Australia and New Zealand, and in regular online events. Gathering these points lets us find the top players across the region, award prize, and provide a free trip to CouchWarriors Crossup at end of year.
Every month as events conclude you can follow the player rankings on a central points ladder. The ladder can be found at BamPathtoEvo.com.au
Each event is live streamed and featured in Twitch.TV front page promotion in ANZ.
Now, as BAM11 has wrapped, we’re resetting the points, adding a NEW game in MK11, and kicking off a new season!
Season 2 Changes
BAM Path To EVO Season 2 will use the same points system, with a twist for upcoming majors, and provide players a set of goals for the second half of 2019. This Season will lead into our end of year finals event, CouchWarriors Crossup (CWC).
CWC in turn will be the curtain raiser for the next phase, leading to BAM and EVO in 2020.
In a nutshell:
Season Dates – June to November, 2019
Games:
Mortal Kombat 11 (NEW)
Street Fighter V
Tekken 7
Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Double Points at Majors – BPTE Points will apply to the following interstate Majors with DOUBLE points. Support your regional major!
Sunny Side Up (Brisbane, August 10-11) Register Now
Ozhadou Nationals (Sydney, September 20-22)
Southern Crossup (Auckland NZ, October 5-6)
Top points per game get travel & entry to CouchWarriors Crossup
We’ll reimburse your flight if coming interstate and provide free venue
Prizes!
Tournament prizes and Subscriber rewards are to be announced.
Channels To Follow Subscribe – Sub to any below to CrowdFund more ANZ Player Travel!