User blog comment:Zolnir/Episode Premier Volume 3/@comment-18396318-20150907013852/@comment-18396318-20150907175520

"Miles and Kerry have been writing a set of 12 chapters"

Definitely 12 episodes. And I don't doubt that they'll be covering the things that have happened with other characters. Even with the food fight, there was time to very effectively introduce Emerald and Mercury in Best Day Ever, and they were able to quickly establish Ironwood within the first minutes of Welcome to Beacon.

As far as JNPR's mission goes, you have to remember that Jaune assured Ren that they'd get out to the village another time. I would suspect that, given the events in Breach, a lot of the missions were delayed. If they want to do something interesting with it, they would probably want to spend a few episodes on the mission anyway, and that would mean waiting until after the tournament, or at least until JNPR are out.

It is distinctly possible that they won't open up directly with the tournament. Just like with Emerald and Mercury, they could open with Roman and Ironwood, or Qrow and Winter, or something else entirely. But I'm pretty confident in saying that it was episode 1, and that it was the first time we see team RWBY again.