Australian fighting game event runners and community. Hosts of BAM: Battle Arena Melbourne, Australia's largest fighting game/open entry esports event.
BAM12 was a huge success and a well-earned celebration of everything fighting games… but that doesn’t mean we’re taking the next month off! Here are the dates and sign-up links for all June’s CouchWarriors League events, both online and offline.
You can also send us your highlights, photos and stream links on Discord, Facebook or Twitter – help us share your favourite tournament moments with the rest of the AUS FGC!
With a ton of buzz in the air from the BAM2022 announcement, you could feel the extra motivation throughout last month’s CouchWarriors League events. Whether it was perennial champions holding down their turf or a nailbiting duel between evenly-matched rivals, every game on the list had something exhilarating to offer!
Here’s a quick game-by-game breakdown of the action and results before we launch into our April events:
We now have the complete first month of CWL Online play for 2022 in the books, as the monthlies for Smash Ultimate and Guilty Gear: Strive rounded out February. Even at this early stage, the lack of offline ranbats means the results for CWL Online will be incredibly important to the seasonal points race.
Many eyes were locked on the stream to find out who would claim the first leaderboard points of the year – and an Astro Gaming A20 headset into the bargain.
The first month of CouchWarriors League 2022 is already underway, with ranking points available in both online and offline events around the country. Here are the dates and sign-up links for our February ranbats across Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
You can get all this event information delivered by Twitter or email if you subscribe to our new Revue newsletter!
You can also send us your highlights, photos and stream links on Discord, Facebook or Twitter – help us share your favourite tournament moments with the rest of the AUS FGC!
A fierce new wave of competition has struck the Australian FGC, as the CouchWarriors League 2022 season is officially underway. While the status of in-person ranbat play is still up in the air for certain states, online monthlies will remain a vital source of leaderboard points for their communities.
In addition to the honour of becoming the first points leader for 2022 in their chosen game, our CWL Online winners this month will be rewarded with an Astro Gaming A20 Headset. So who has been keeping their form over the offseason? Who will set the early pace? For Street Fighter V and Tekken 7, we now have those answers.
A new month in the CouchWarriors League brings fresh opportunities to score ranking points in your favourite games. Here are the dates and sign-up links for all our November ranbats and CWL Online events across Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
You can get all this event information delivered by Twitter or email if you subscribe to our new Revue newsletter!
You can also send us your highlights, photos and stream links on Discord, Facebook or Twitter – help us share your favourite tournament moments with the rest of the AUS FGC!
A new month in the CouchWarriors League brings fresh opportunities to score ranking points in your favourite games. Here are the dates and sign-up links for all our October ranbats and CWL Online events – plus, a new mini-major presented by CouchWarriors SA!
Remember, you can have event information emailed to you every month by subscribing to our newsletter! You can also send us your highlights, photos and stream links – help us share your favourite tournament moments with the rest of the AUS FGC!
When we write fighting game history, 2021 is going to go down as the Year of Gear. The bold presentation and fortuitous timing of Guilty Gear: Strive has brought the hard-rocking franchise from the fringe of the FGC into the mainstream. And the willingness of Arc System Works to remodel some aspects of the core system has invited many new Guilty Gear players to make Strive their entry point, mixing it up with anime veterans on more even footing.
With all that momentum it was inevitable that GG:ST would make it onto the CouchWarriors League circuit as our newest featured title. Last month’s Battle Arena Nightclub was the first opportunity for players to pick up ranking points on the Strive leaderboard. But even that clash of Melbourne’s finest turned out to just be an appetizer for August’s CWL Online event – the first real chance to see who could stand supreme in this new game at the national level.
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:
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
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.
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!
In the past, the league rankings have often been dominated by a handful of regional champions who can reliably scoop their local tournament every time – but 2021 is looking different. Not only have we seen a few instances of top players traveling interstate to play spoiler for one event, but almost every game and region is seeing a more even spread of winners as the months roll on. It’s been the perfect way to foreshadow the inevitable clash for bragging rights we’ll see at BAM.