After lineups are made public, they are to be counted towards the slots.
Citing relevant conversation from a different division,
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/331408-clan-league-11-qualifier-2-official-thread(ง︡'-'︠)ง let's fight!! :
Just for clarification: when I substitute a player A with player B before the tournament begins. Do both players use up 1 slot then? I ask because player A actually never is 'playing this tournament'.
TBest:
Yes, they both use slots at that point. The one exception being, if such a sub is done before lineups are made public. (An exception I have, since the time between templates and lineups is on the shorter end)
Because we don't have CLOT which checks the SLOT limit during the substitutions, I had explicitly mentioned few words on slot limit for substitution:
-Every clan can replace 6 slots (out of 18) over the course of the season. Remember that for Q2 each player is allowed a maximum of 2 slots. Make sure to not go over this slot and pick the player from the roster while making a substitution.I am not sure if there are different rules for different divisions, but my understanding is that substitution(MH EU 3v3) can't be made and instead of restarting the tournament, it is easier to make manual games in a given schedule.