THE RULEBOOK

Format & Scoring

Everything that decides who wins a game, a match, a fixture, a phase and a season.

STRUCTURE

Seasons, phases, fixtures

Season

A season lasts a year, running between October set releases.
Four phases per season, one per quarterly set release.
Season 1 opens with Radiance on 23 October 2026.

Phase

Starts and ends with each set release.
A double round-robin: every team in your group, home and away.
Captains and store managers arrange the actual dates, spread across the phase and roughly in round order.

Fixture

A two-hour scheduled event at the home team's venue.
Five concurrent matches, position against position.
Tracked in the official tournament software as a single round with manual pairings

At A Fixture

Meet and greet - players introduce themselves and both teams announce their 12 legends (just legends, not deck lists).
Consultation - teams separately discuss their opponent's legend choices and team composition.
Veto - Starting with the away team, each team chooses 1 legend to veto. Such vetoed legends are non-playable at this fixture for either team.
Legend Drafting - Starting with the home team's player A, followed by away team's player A, then away's B, home's B, etc. each player picks a remaining legend from their team's choices of legends. Once a legend is selected, it cannot be selected again by either team. Each player will play with their team's deck for their selected legend. Teams have 1 deck per legend, not a choice of decks depending on who you match against.
Matches - Players of each position play against the other team's counterpart in a best of 3 match, 60 minutes with 3 rounds of overtime (requiring a 2 point lead to win) at high OPL.
Cooldown - After the matches players are encouraged to hang out at the venue and enjoy some casual (non-league scoring) games.

TEAM ROSTER

Teams and positions

Who's on a team

Five primary players, who'll try to attend most events.
Up to ten secondary players, who'll jump in when needed.
A judge, who may also be a player.
A captain, who should be a primary player and is the point of contact for the team.

Roster rules

Players and judges register for one team per phase, but may switch teams between phases.
The player roster is locked once a phase starts; their positions, judges and captains can still change.

Positions

Primary players hold one position: A, B, C, D or E.
Secondary players hold two positions, and no two secondaries should share the same pair.
A secondary permanently swapping in should share the position of the player they replace, and takes it on; the replaced player inherits both of theirs.
Either swapped player should attend a fixture before swapping again.

We use "should" for the team rules rather than "must" as we understand that this is not a professionally paid role and life will er.. find a way. Talk to Jim if you need some extra flexibility, we're much more interested in getting games played than blocking them.

Attendance & byes

Can't play? A secondary (preferably with your position) steps in. No judgement, life happens.
You can even attend fixtures you "should" be playing at. We just ask that if you think you're going to be out of action for a while, to just step down as a primary until things are settled.
Never pass off an unregistered person as a player: points will be forfeited, repeat offences mean disqualification.
Short-handed teams shift players up towards A; an unopposed player takes a bye that counts as a win.
If both teams are short at a position it's a draw towards the fixture result.
A team fielding 2 players less than the other team cannot win a fixture. Best to reschedule as there is little honour is a win by default.

Legendary Choices

A team registers 12 Legends they'll play as per phase.
In the first month of a phase a team may swap up to four of its twelve legends.
Officially banned legends can be replaced.
Legend choices are public, but the actual deck lists are not, and can change between fixtures.

SCORING

From Games to Seasons

Game

Standard 1v1 to 8 points. Overtime runs three rounds; a two-point lead wins, otherwise it's a draw.

Match

Regular best of three.

60 minutes with overtime.

Fixture

Best of the five positions. A single match win takes the fixture if the rest are drawn.

Phase

3 points for a fixture win, 1 point for a draw, none for a loss.

Season Ranking

Your rank is based on the average of your best three phase scores.

First tiebreak: match win difference across those three phases. Second: matches won head-to-head between the tied teams.

Still level? Teams place jointly — except for the champion spot, which is decided by a final fixture at a neutral venue.

SCALE

Groups and fairness

Group Size

No store should have to face more than one fixture a week, which caps a group at seven teams over expected twelve-week long phases.

With more than seven stores, teams are randomly split into multiple groups, reshuffled (although, perhaps not randomly) each phase.

Uneven Groups

Smaller groups play fewer fixtures, so their scores are scaled up to match the largest group by fixture averages.

Example: 12 points in a group of 3 from 4 fixtures (2 other teams, x2 home/away) during a phase where another group has 5 teams becomes (12 / 4) × 8 = 24 points.

Withdrawals & Joining late

A withdrawing team's current phase is voided: fixtures cancelled and points removed as though they were never there.

New stores can register up to a week before a phase begins and join then, but not mid-phase.

A team joining in phase four does not score for that season.

Forfeits

Forfeiting awards the opponent five byes; a no-show forfeits automatically.

We should be mindful of other players' time and travel expenses and give as much notice as possible if we're not able to make a fixture. The organisers will always recommend that fixtures try to be rescheduled, but this might not always be possible.