8v8

TAWF fields eight franchises: four in the Canadian Conference and four in the US Conference. Teams play within their conference through the regular season and meet across conferences in the Grand Final.

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Women. Each league team has three women on its roster. They pull a women's 3v3 league game, on the women's classes, before the men's 8v8 game. Women also compete in the No Elimination Tournament.

Your weigh-in weight sets your class. Decimals round down, so the decimal never moves you up: 175.9 lbs is Lightweight, and 176 lbs is Middleweight. These are the 8v8 classes only; the 3v3 and No Elimination use their own.

• —A roster has 12 athletes, three per weight class.
• —A game fields 8: two per class, one for the left arm and one for the right.
• —The roster locks 48 hours before the game. No roster changes after the lock, and no reserves.
• —If an athlete fails to make weight, the team competes without that athlete.
• —There is no clothing allowance at weigh-in. The weigh-in rules for every format are in the shared rules on the Official Rules page.

An 8v8 game is 4 rounds of 8 matches, 32 in all. Each round pulls one left-arm and one right-arm match in each class, Lightweight first, in the same order every round:

Before each round, Managers have 2 minutes to submit their picks for each match. After that, a pick changes only by substitution. The clock between matches runs 30 seconds.

All three are the Manager's. A gamble or a timeout is called before the match starts; once a match starts, neither can be called until it ends. The position command, “look at your hand,” is for the athlete's awareness only: it is not a warning, it carries no foul, and the match does not stop. An athlete may ask the referee for clarification during setup, but may not argue with or challenge a call.

The 8v8 uses the points every format shares, plus these:

Pulling Up in the 8v8 is the Manager's call: picking a lighter athlete to pull in a heavier class for the bonus.

A flagrant foul is unsportsmanlike conduct, such as arguing with the referee or aggressive actions after a match. The opponent takes the match as a +5 win. The Head Referee may also eject, at their discretion, and the league reviews every flagrant foul.

A team wins by being first to 100 points, or by holding the most points after all 32 matches. There is no early win by point margin. A game tied after 32 matches goes to extra rounds until a team reaches 100.

Season 1 is a 12-game regular season across the league, three games for each team, all within its own conference, one game each Saturday for 12 weeks. A rest week follows, then the Grand Final: 14 weeks in all.

Standings

Teams are ranked by win-loss record. Total points break any tie in the record.

The Grand Final

One game: the top team in the Canadian Conference against the top team in the US Conference. There are no semi-finals in Season 1. Referee roles, injury protocols and the code of conduct are the same in every format and are in the shared rules on the Official Rules page.

Game disputes

A Manager who believes a call was wrong may request a game dispute right after the game. A review committee of TAWF officials examines the footage, and its decision is final: if the outcome changes, the score is adjusted and a re-game may be scheduled. Game disputes exist only in the 8v8; in the 3v3 and No Elimination the Head Referee's call is final.

Prizes

The winning team of each game shares the game's prize pool evenly among its athletes and managers. The Season Champion takes the TAWF Trophy and prize money. Prizes are handed out at the Post-Event Ceremony; a team or athlete found to have broken the code of conduct may forfeit its prize, at the review committee's decision.