Seasons & competitions

A season is 13 weeks of 7 days, one in-game day per real day. League matches play Monday / Wednesday / Friday, the academies' amateur league Tuesday / Thursday, the Starleague every Saturday, and Sunday the books close — wages paid, sponsor income booked, scout calls refreshed. Mid-season, the Sundays of weeks 4–9 also host the Junior Starleague.

Weeks 1–11 are the regular season. Week 12 is finals week: playoff ties announced at its start, semifinals and survival battles on Wednesday, the playoff final on Friday, the Starleague final on Saturday. Week 13 is the off-season: final tables ranked, prizes paid, promotion and relegation applied, salaries re-set — then the next season schedules itself. Nothing needs an admin's hand; the world rolls on its own.

Clubs play in divisions of up to 12, arranged in tiers — one top flight, fed by lower divisions, which may be fed by divisions below them in turn as the world grows. The top flight is the Proleague; the divisions beneath it are numbered from 1 — 1.1 and 1.2 directly below the Proleague, then 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 below those, and so on down. Every division plays a triple round-robin (three phases, everyone thrice, 33 rounds at full size) — with the middle phase in KOF format (see Match day).

League matches are fully official: ratings, experience and condition all on the line, and every league win pays your sponsor's win bonus. Standings count match wins first, then game difference. Two clubs still level are split by their head-to-head — in a full season every pair meets three times, so between two there is always a winner — and three or more by games won, any pair left level by head-to-head again.

Each division draws a seven-map pool for the season — balanced to span the spectrum, from rushy grounds through the middle to macro country, so no season's meta belongs to one race by accident — and every fixture's maps are announced when the schedule is drawn. Preparation is part of the game.

At season's end the top four contest the title playoffs: semifinals 1st-v-4th and 2nd-v-3rd on Wednesday of week 12, the final on Friday — all best-of-seven. The playoff winner is the season's champion, takes the champion's bonus on top of the prize table, and heads the Chronicle forever. Every playoff tie — semifinal, survival battle, and the final — appears among your upcoming fixtures on Team → Matches, marked as a playoff tie: open it and prepare exactly like any league match, seven games with the ace last, scout's desk and all. The maps are announced with the bracket — every tie's seven battlegrounds drawn from the league's season pool the moment week 12 opens, so you pick your seven knowing the terrain. The league page shows the bracket for everyone. The final's seats fill the moment Wednesday's semifinals decide them, so the finalists have until Friday to set their seven. And mind the bench: regulation games field distinct players — a club without six fit men concedes the maps it cannot man as walkovers (only the ace may repeat), so keep the roster deep before week 12.

The drop zone looks the same on every table that has a tier below it: the bottom two relegate automatically, places 9–10 defend their seats in survival battles, and the middle is safe. That silhouette is fixed — on the Proleague and on every division of every lower tier alike.

Promotion adapts to fill those seats. Each tier offers two automatic places and two battle tickets per division, and the tier below splits them evenly among its divisions. Two divisions under the Proleague: each sends its champion up automatically and its runner-up to a battle. Two divisions under those two: each sends its top two up automatically and its 3rd–4th to the battles. A tier with a single division below it gets the same arithmetic — top two up, 3rd/4th fight. When the seats don't divide evenly, the leftover spots rotate between divisions by the season's draw, and the table legend says so.

The pairings themselves are division-blind: who defends against whom — and therefore whose seat a winner takes — is drawn across the whole tier boundary when the battles are announced at the start of week 12, not read off a fixed map. Every movement is a straight swap: the climber takes the seat of the club that fell, and the relegated club drops into the division its replacement came from. One more small print: the promotion picture is provisional until week 6 — a new division opening in a tier before then reshapes how its seats split, and the league tables flag it while it can still happen. A division that opens later plays a real but short season and sits the promotion race out: under six weeks of play, its table can't send anyone up that year, so its siblings share the tier's seats as if it weren't there. Its clubs can climb from their first full season, and its own table says so.

One standing rule across every boundary: bot clubs never promote — and neither does an abandoned seat: a club whose manager has been away nine weeks, its caretaker grace run out (see Your club → Stepping away), counts the same as a bot club in the promotion race, while a club still inside its grace is its manager's club and promotes by its finish. Every promotion spot and every survival-battle ticket goes to the highest-finishing manager-run club, however the table reads around it — the pyramid's ladders exist for the people climbing them. (A division with no human sides simply sends nobody up that season.)

And the rule runs both ways: bots are first down the trapdoor, and abandoned seats with them. When a division must shed a place, a bot club — or a club whose manager has been away nine weeks — gives it up before a manager-run club does, even one finishing below it — so over the seasons the padding sinks toward the bottom of the pyramid and the upper divisions fill with people. Because that club takes an automatic drop, the survival battles move one place up the table: with one abandoned seat in a division, 10th and 11th defend instead of 9th and 10th, and the table's fine print says so while it is the case. A survival battle hosted by an abandoned seat is a walkover for the challenger. The exception is the title race: a bot inside the playoff places is safe, because relegating a club that just won its league would be absurd whatever the reason.

Prize money follows the final table — champion's money down to a floor for last place, with playoff and Starleague earnings on top (see Your club for the money side).

The pyramid is never finished. As new managers arrive, they take over caretaker clubs — and when every seat is full, new clubs wait in preseason camp until the season rollover, when expansion day opens new bottom-tier divisions for them, padded with fresh caretaker clubs for the next wave (see Your club → Joining mid-season).

It shrinks too. If a whole division's worth of seats is standing empty of people, the off-season closes the lowest division and packs the managers together: every club still run by somebody keeps its place — one rung up, never a free promotion — and the caretaker clubs holding the rest are released, their players to free agency. The closed division keeps its name, its tables and every season it played, and it opens again the moment there are people to fill it.

If a whole wave arrives at once, the pyramid doesn't make them wait: six or more clubs in camp get a division on the next Sunday and start playing the Monday after, on a shortened season. A division with six or more weeks left counts as a season like any other; open one later than that and it plays for pride only — the climb starts properly next year.

The Individual Starleague is the flagship solo event, and every player on a manager-run club enters — free agents included. The one exception is the caretaker padding: bot clubs send nobody, so the bracket belongs to the people playing the game and buffer divisions never dilute it. A club under a caretaker does enter — it is still its manager's club until dissolution, and he may be back before the final. It runs all season, one stage per Saturday (a very large field is the one exception: when the preliminaries need more than five rounds, the earliest Saturdays carry two, kicking off ten minutes apart, so the last preliminary round still falls on week 5):

The draw is made on week 1's Friday, at noon Eastern — the third league matchday, a day ahead of the first Starleague Saturday. Whoever is eligible at that moment is the field: a player you promote from the academy or sign in the season's first days makes the bracket; one who arrives after the draw waits for next season's. The Starleague page counts down to it from the off-season onward.

Weeks 1–5 — preliminaries. Best-of-three single-elimination trees, one per open main-event spot, seeded so the strongest get the byes. Every eligible player who isn't seeded plays here — the preliminaries are where rookies earn their official games and their first ratings.

Weeks 6–8 — the group stage. Thirty-two players in eight groups of four (sixteen or eight while the world is young), every duel best-of-three. The previous edition's top eight defend seeded spots, one per group, the reigning champion heading Group A. The top two of each group advance.

The other three seats are filled by the players themselves, at the group selection ceremony. Each seed calls an opponent into his own group, then the men they called make the next round of calls, then those men make the last — three rounds of eight, snaking down the line and back. Most call the softest name of the race they beat best; some settle an old score instead, and every so often somebody takes the biggest name on the board and dares it. The calls and the reasons are written up on the Starleague page and filed as a report in the Press.

The pick order keeps the groups broadly even — each one ends up with a man from roughly each quarter of the field — but an odd choice can still leave a group of death behind it. That is the point of holding it.

The group format alternates with the season. Odd seasons play a round-robin — six duels a group. Ties break by match wins, then head-to-head, then map score — and only whoever is still level after all that plays for it: a best-of-one tiebreak round-robin between the tied players, held the same Saturday as the final group round and replayed until every place is settled. Two players level on wins never need the table — the one who won their meeting places higher, always. A three-way circle is split by map score where the numbers differ; a circle with equal maps meets again on the table.

Even seasons play the dual tournament instead: #1 v #4 and #2 v #3, then the two winners meet and the two losers meet, then the loser of the winners' match plays the winner of the losers' match for the second qualifying spot. Five duels rather than six, over the same three Saturdays — and nobody can finish level, so it needs no tiebreaks at all.

Weeks 9–12 — the playoff. A seeded bracket: round of 16 at Bo3 (group winners meet a neighbouring group's runner-up — no group-mate rematches before the final), quarterfinals and semifinals at Bo5, and the grand final at Bo7 on week 12's Saturday — the last trophy of the season.

ISL games are official, and a prize ladder pays the players' clubs at every exit — group stage through champion. The page shows every edition, the current bracket, and what plays next Saturday; your own players are highlighted throughout, and their pages carry their current Starleague status.

Two honours hang above it all: win the crown on your first group-stage appearance and it's a Royal Road; win three crowns and the Golden Mouse is yours. Profiles also count career main-event appearances — "Starleagues played" is its own quiet badge of longevity.

Mid-season the academies get their own stage: the Junior Starleague, one giant single-elimination bracket for every amateur in the world aged 20 or under, played on the Sundays of weeks 4–9. Whoever is an eligible amateur on draw day is in — and finishes the run even if he turns pro mid-tournament.

The opening Sunday clears every early round at Bo1 until 32 remain; the round of 32 opens the tournament proper — it and the round of 16 take a Bo3 Sunday each, the quarterfinals and semifinals a Bo5 Sunday each, and the final is a Bo7. The champion carries a permanent honour on his page forever — for many stars, the 🌟 next to their name is where the story started.

The academies also play a weekly league: every club with at least two amateurs is shuffled into divisions of up to 12 each season, playing a double round-robin of best-of-five fixtures on Tuesdays and Thursdays, each division on its own seven-map pool. Amateur games are unofficial — no ratings — but they are where the kids grow up: experience accrues at half the pro rate and stops at 5 — a third of a professional's ceiling, so the academy teaches a kid the game and the pro tour finishes the education. A graduate carries what he earned, never more. Every game is real engine play.

Every amateur fixture has a full match page — who played whom game by game, the army charts, the complete battle report with commentary. Results and lineups are permanent history; the report prose itself is archived away after a few seasons. An academy that can't field a side at all forfeits 0–3 — and the same discipline applies map by map: games 1–4 each demand a fresh kid, a map you cannot field is conceded by walkover, and only the ace (game 5) may repeat a player. Keep four active kids or pay in forfeits.

Any manager can open a community cup: a tournament lobby of 4–32 clubs, series or KOF format, on a map pool of the creator's choosing. Clubs sign up from the cup page — setting their starting lineup as they enter, editable until the field is full — and the bracket seeds and plays itself the moment it fills. Cups are exhibitions: no ratings move and no money changes hands — but the Chronicle remembers the winners all the same.

Any club can challenge another to a friendly — best-of-3/5/7 or KOF — from its club page, on a map pool of the challenger's choosing (shown to the other manager before they accept); both managers set lineups, and self-running clubs accept on the spot. The same map choice applies to 1v1 sparring. Friendlies produce full battle reports and move nothing — and, like every exhibition, they are played at full condition: nobody's tired week follows him onto the stage.

Sparring is 1v1 practice. Your own players spar each other instantly from their pages at Bo3/5/7; to spar a rival club's player you send a request their manager may accept or decline — no farming someone's roster without their say. Practice only, in both directions.

One ground stands outside the map pool altogether. Big Game Hunters — The Hunters with a fortune in every main — is a casual ground: when you open a cup — a community cup or an individual tournament — send a challenge or set up a spar, the form's Ground choice lets you play it instead of a map pool. Every game of that cup, friendly or spar is then played there and nowhere else. An academy player's practice games can be sent there the same way — the academy's league and the Junior Starleague never are.

It plays by its own rules. Nobody needs to expand — each main is worth a whole map's bases from the first minute, so income is a player's Macro and nothing else, and both armies grow to the supply cap before they meet; games run several times longer than a league game. And its eight mains are a lottery: two are drawn for every game, and the walk between them decides how rushable that game is — neighbours are a short walk, cross-map a long one. The report opens by telling you which you drew. Game Sense and Strategy decide most here; Micro and Harassment count for less than on a league map.

The same form offers NR20 — "no rush for 20 minutes", the old public-game house rule. Tick it and nobody may open with an all-in — no proxy, no early pool, no bunker rush — and nobody attacks during the early game. Both economies come up first, and the armies decide it: under NR20 almost every game is a war between two maxed armies, and a long one.

It already plays on next season's match engine. Big Game Hunters runs on the engine the whole game moves to in season 2, so a game here shows your players under those rules — the reports name their openings, and the skills pull the way the Balance (Season 2) page describes — not the way this season's league plays. Treat it as a first look, not as a rehearsal for Friday's match. Pair games on the ground arrive with season 2.

It is unofficial through and through. Big Game Hunters is in no league, playoff, Starleague or academy pool, and nothing played there moves a rating, a record or a condition bar. You will find it on the Maps page, in a section of its own.