CouchWarriors League: Winter 2023 Season Details

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!?

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CouchWarriors Crossup is Upon Us!

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.

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CWL Results & Roundup for October

October’s events were the finish line of our CouchWarriors League points race, and with how fierce the competition has been this year that meant a ton more pressure on any leaderboard hopefuls.

CouchWarriors Crossup still looms as the season finale. But the points championship for each game is still a big prize – and for players who can’t travel to that event in person, the biggest one. With one more chance at the 2022 crown, who among them would muster the strength to seize it?

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PHANTOM 2022 Major Recap

It’s now been just over a week since Phantom 2022 rocked Sydney – hopefully long enough for all attendees and competitors to have fully recovered!

Phantom was a truly massive weekend for our elite Smash players and for the whole community, with 575 entrants across Melee, Ultimate, P+ and Rivals of Aether. They traveled from the outer suburbs, from regional NSW, from interstate – and from overseas. Thanks to the diplomatic efforts of players like MF|Joshman and recognition as a Platinum event from the Smash World Tour, this Phantom boasted many of the most respected names in Smash, and was streamed live by VGBootCamp, Mang0 and Ludwig Ahgren to thousands all over the world.

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CWL November Report – Melee & Tekken

The pivotal final month of Saturday online events for CouchWarriors League 2020 has delivered a barrage of top-flight competition, with three games having concluded their ranking seasons so far. The last two weekends were a study in contrasts; Smash Melee was reduced to a victory lap for an unstoppable champion, while Tekken 7’s overall season winner wasn’t decided until the very last blow!

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CWL November Report – SFV

This strange, abbreviated but intense 14-event season of CouchWarriors League SFV came to a head on Saturday with the final CWL Online for the year. Doubled ranking points meant stakes were high, with the ladderboard leaders desperately holding onto the cash bounties attached to their top 3 spots. Even those well outside the top 3 were playing for keeps, since reaching the Grand Final here would be enough to earn another shot at the money in next month’s Season Finale. The competition has been fierce all year long, but now the finals atmosphere was palpable as players busted out pocket picks and some elite ringers showed up to snare qualification.

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CWL October Report – Smash Ultimate

Another weekend has passed, and the last CWL Online event for the month is in the books. With only one more event left on the schedule for each game, October represented the last real chance for any new names to show up and make a tilt at qualification for the Season Finale. Players whose qualification was already locked in were still there at full force as they battled tooth and nail for top placegetter payouts.

This weekend also saw a bit of league rules weirdness, as players in the South Australian scene seemed like they might have grabbed an extra chance at those prizes. Capitalizing on their relative freedom from COVID-19, the locals took this chance to finally restart their “Cheese League” ranbat series, which in an ideal season would have been the main way for SA players to earn their CWL points. 

While it’s a terrific sign that we have players getting back into offline play, CouchWarriors quickly clarified that there were no extra points suddenly up for grabs as a result – to be fair to players in other states, it would still be CWL Online or bust!

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CWL October Report – SFV & Melee

The 2020 CouchWarriors League is well onto the home stretch, and halfway through October competition we can really see who is pulling ahead among the top contenders for each game.

Both the Street Fighter bracket on the 3rd and the Melee competition on the tenth pulled 24 attendees, giving us short but extremely fierce tournaments. It seems like after the initial boom of contenders entering following the double-points announcement, we have once again crunched the numbers down to just those players with the most points, or the most self-confidence. Read more

CWL September Report – SFV & Melee

The first fortnight of September has kicked off the endgame for CouchWarriors League 2020, with the national FGC organiser announcing that the remaining events on its tournament calendar would award double the normal ranking points to top 8 finishers! 

This change goes some way to addressing the unexpectedly low number of points available this season after COVID forced a switch to monthly online events. Now you can imagine a chance for almost anyone to make a late run at top 16 – the cutoff point for invitation to the $2000 season finale event!

The new points bonus looks to be most impactful for the leaderboards in Street Fighter V and Smash Bros. Melee, which were the first two games contested for the month. These points races have been static and lopsided all season, with interstate rivals Joshua “GZ|Sora” Lyras and Davin “Davox” Mai dominating Melee while Ervin-Jason “pahnda” Garanovic and Xavier “DS|Somniac” Nardella were holding it down in SFV.

These players amassed their lead in the first months of the year while full points were still available at offline events, and then have continued to put in enough work over the monthly CWL Online events to remain above the reach of their competition. Will a few months of double points give in-form players like ORDER|Travis Styles or Jacob “Sock” Waddell the chance to reel these frontrunners in, or will they just lift their game to match the higher stakes? These September online events were our chance to find out.
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