League and seasons

The league pyramid

5 tiers of 8 clubs, and you start in tier 3.

A season is 14 matchdays: everyone plays everyone, home and away.

The top 2 promote and the bottom 2 relegate (Season rollover).

Every AI match is simulated by the real engine; the other tiers are played out as the game needs them (a look on the League tab, the paper's tier-1 check-in, season end) and keep those results.

Every club in the league wears a short clan tag before its name on match screens, like "[kbr] Kobrra Gaming", and an AI club keeps its tag for life.

Scrim opponents have none, and your own club can wear one once you own it (Your clan tag).

Season rollover

The rollover is everything between the last matchday and the next season, and the cup comes first (The Invitational).

Then you resolve any expiring contracts, renewing or letting go (Wages & contracts).

The pre-season transfer window is already open, so you can buy and sell before you press Start season on the Transfers tab (The windows and Deadline Day).

The moment you do, season bonuses and sponsor objectives are settled and paid.

Trophies and awards are handed out, and aging and decline are applied to every player.

Finally the table decides promotion and relegation, and new fixtures are drawn.

Squad strength (STR column)

STR in the standings is a club's squad strength: the average rating of its best five players.

Your club shows the exact number.

A rival shows only the tens digit, like "7?", so scouting them still matters (Scouting (fog of war)).

Top Players & Season MVP

The Top Players board ranks every player in a tier by average match rating.

It takes 7 matches to qualify for it.

The best qualified player wins Season MVP at the final whistle.

That is a permanent badge on their card (Trophies & season history).

Map pool

The active competitive pool holds 8 maps.

Every league match is played on one of them, and a retired map only appears in old demos.

The pool can change over time: a map may be rested and a new one added in its place.

A season you are already playing keeps its maps to the end, and the new pool takes over when your next season starts.

A rested map is not gone for good, and it can return in a later season.

You are not told your map in advance because it is not decided in advance: each match picks its own on the day (The veto).

Map names and demos

Maps go by their server-browser names, the way the old scene knew them.

The "de_" prefix marks a defusal map, and the name stays lowercase everywhere.

Replays keep the same habit: the viewer titles every match as a demo file, like the recordings players traded back in the day.

A demo re-plays the match exactly as it happened.

Your demo shelf is bigger than it looks: page back through the matchdays on the League tab, and every match your club played this season offers Watch.

A season ends and its matches go with it, so a match worth keeping belongs in your demo folder.

Map strength

Every club has a strength number on each map in the pool, shown on the League screen.

50 is neutral, and higher means the club is better on that map.

Your club starts every map at 50 and earns its numbers purely through results.

Each league win on a map raises it by 4 and each loss lowers it by the same, and a new season starts the earning over.

Map strength is knowledge, not a match modifier: it never changes how a match plays out.

What you can see of a rival's: reading their maps.

Reading a rival's maps

Other clubs are not like you: each has lasting comfort maps and weak maps of its own, on top of what its results add.

That makes their habits worth learning over a season.

You see your own numbers exactly.

A rival's come as a range, in their scouting report and again in the map veto.

A better Analyst makes that range narrower, so you can tell a comfort map from a weak one before you ban (Analyst and PR Manager).

Their wins and losses on each map are public, so those are always exact.

The Invitational

The Invitational is the season's climax: a knockout cup for the pyramid's best 8 clubs.

It is played after the last matchday and before the season rolls over (Season rollover).

You qualify by finishing high enough, and there is no entry fee (Getting in).

Every tie is a single match, and the whole bracket is drawn at random (The draw).

Every club that qualifies is paid (The money), and it lands at the season rollover.

A win puts a trophy in your cabinet, and every edition leaves a line in your season history: champion, runner-up, how far you got, and the event MVP.

Getting into the Invitational

You qualify by finishing high enough: there is no entry fee and no wildcard.

The top 6 clubs of tier 1 are invited.

So are the top 2 of tier 2.

Nobody else is, however well they played.

The Tournaments tab shows where you stand against that line all season (The Invitational).

The Invitational draw

Every qualified club is paired completely at random in one go, and that draw fixes the whole road to the final.

There are no protections and no re-draws, so the two best clubs can meet in the first round.

Every tie is a single match on a fixed map: win or go home.

Your own ties play exactly like league matches, with your tactics, watchable live and re-watchable afterwards.

You can simulate them instead if you would rather.

Cup matches do NOT develop your players: training and development stay a league matchday business.

What the Invitational pays

Every club that qualifies is paid, on a ladder topping out at the biggest single cheque in the game: 2× what the tier-1 title pays.

Champion: €135,000

Runner-up: €67,500

Semifinalist: €27,000

Quarterfinalist: €13,500

Winning moves your fame by 6, the same as a league title; the runner-up gets 4, and going out earlier pays money but no fame (Fame).

Scene news

Scene news is your club's newspaper, opened from the News card on HQ; Back to HQ takes you back, and it has no tab of its own.

It writes about your club in the third person: every result with the score and the map, promotions and relegations, transfers, the season review and cup coverage.

Under those it prints what the other clubs in your tier did, up to 2 deals a matchday between the clubs near you (how they trade), and one headline a matchday can carry a quote.

Headlines print newest first, grouped by matchday, with your own club's above the scene's, and each matchday's first headline is the lead and prints larger.

The strip under the masthead counts each kind: click a word to read only that kind, and click Headlines to see everything again.

The News card counts what you have not read, opening the paper marks it read, and the paper keeps the newest 100 headlines.

What the scene desk writes

The scene desk adds up to 3 lines a matchday about the other clubs in your tier, the biggest story first.

A run of 5 or more that ends, a new club at the top, or an upset, meaning a club at least 3 places lower wins.

A run of wins OR losses as it reaches 3, then 5, and then every 3 after that.

The title race and the drop fight late in the season, the player of the matchday, or the result of the club nearest you in the table.

The two table lines, a new leader and an upset, only count from matchday 4, while the table is still churning.

At season end one line per tier names the champion and who goes up and down; on matchdays 7 and 12 the paper checks in on tier 1, unless you play there yourself.

The voices in the paper

At most 1 headline a matchday carries a quote, and the biggest story of the day gets it.

A quote sits inside the headline, under the fact.

Every AI club has a head coach, who speaks when the club's run ends, when it takes the top, or when it wins an upset.

The player of the matchday speaks in person: the best MVP among the other clubs' matches.

They are named only on the tier's best rating or highest kill count of the season so far, and not while the table is still churning (What the scene desk writes), so most matchdays name nobody.

Your own players are never the subject: the narrator writes about your club (Scene news).

Storylines & rivalries

After each matchday the league press writes about what actually happened.

The stories print in Scene news, at most 2 a matchday, so it stays readable.

They cover rivalries, hot and cold runs, and club records as they fall.

A rivalry can be earned or simply declared (How a rivalry starts).

This is commentary only: a storyline never changes a result, a player, or what the AI clubs do.

How a rivalry starts

Most rivalries are earned rather than chosen: repeat meetings with the same club build heat.

Only close games, decided by a round or two, and matches with the title, promotion or relegation at stake really count.

A decider is worth double a close game.

At 4 heat the press starts calling them your rival, and it remembers across seasons.

The other way is to say so yourself, free and at any time (Declaring a rival).

A declared rival outranks the earned kind: those matches are written up as derbies and get first call on the day's stories.

Where a player has played

Every player keeps a running record of the clubs they have played for.

You see it on their player card, and on the transfer market before you buy, so you always know where a target has played.

Two limits come from when the game started writing this down.

Seasons your club played before then have no win-loss score on file, so those rows show a dash instead of a result.

A player's earlier clubs, from before the record began, are simply not known and do not show.

The one exception: buying or selling a player records the OTHER club in that deal at once, though not since when they had been there.