I definitely won't pretend to say that the superheavies turned people away. It certainly did. I think I'm okay with that though. Like I've said before, I'm not going to try to appeal to every player with every event. We had some Abington regulars / casuals come out for this one that either haven't played in an event or haven't played in a really long time. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Such a small turnout requires a minimal amount of prep and bookkeeping before and during and it also takes up a tiny amount of space. It's not like the whole store was taken over, which is a non-obvious and very important thing to consider.
Not every doubles event will allow superheavies.
I think I've mentioned this before, but it may have been a little cryptic. Battleground will run the following events:
GT "Primers" that use whatever rules (or as close to them as we feel is reasonable) the GT is using.
Other events that cater to the perceived wants / needs of the community. (The vocal few do have an influence here.)
New ideas like this Attacker Defender thing coming up.
The days of dry, everything allowed "1850 Singles" and "1000ppp Doubles" every month died the second GW felt the need to put out a billion supplements that 1) We can't sell. 2) Not everyone has easy access to. 3) Are too much work to stay up on. 4) Lots of people dislike. 5) May or may not distort the game in a major way.
I'd imagine as time goes on BG will end up with what it likes as a "standard" event again. At this time I can't speak to whether or not it'll incorporate things like 2+ (or ++?) rerollable saves, digital everything, superheavies in any capacity, void shields, etc. etc.
I feel like it's both good and bad for players and event attendance will usually tell us what people like or dislike. That's the way it should be.