Boss invitations to Masters have been sent, and will close in 8 days, or sooner if they all respond. At that point we'll put up public Boss signups for the rest of the spots (if any) and also signups for Expert Panel most likely. Boss signups maybe runs a week, then we'll have auction signup for maybe 2-3 weeks, then auction for a week and then Round 1 will probably start. These are very preliminary times and can change depending on a number of factors (Such as me actually discussing these times with ARTHA) and I just came up with these times on the spot. But something like this seems likely, and in that case Round 1 would start around the end of February.
If you want to speed up the start of Brawl, go bug the Masters and tell them that they should answer yes/no to our PM.