Season structure

A season moves in a fixed order: free-agent signup, captain selection, Draft Day (captain poll plus snake draft), a round-robin regular season, then double-elimination finals seeded from regular-season standings.

Regular-season series are best-of-three map sets. Playoff series lengths follow the double-elimination bracket configuration for that season.

Roster

Each team fields four starters and two substitutes. Substitutes are full roster members. The primary captain and co-captain may swap starters and substitutes for a match from the match hub.

When a starter or sub leaves mid-season, the next player on the waitlist is offered that seat automatically in FIFO order. The offer lasts 48 hours. Decline or timeout advances the offer to the next waitlisted player. Captains do not choose who receives the offer.

Primary captains may override co-captain within the post-draft co-override window when that window is open. Captain succession lives under My Team team ops for the active roster.

Scheduling

The only player-facing schedule path is propose, counter, and accept on the match hub.

• Open the upcoming match from My Team.
• A captain proposes one or more preferred date and time slots in America/New_York (Eastern).
• The opposing captain may counter with different slots until both sides agree.
• Accepting a slot writes the agreed time to the match calendar (scheduled_at), marks the match scheduled, and clears conflict flags.

Weekly availability on My Team is an optional legacy helper for admin fallback only. It is not a parallel primary schedule engine. Automatic Thursday pairing is demoted: it does not run for players unless an operator explicitly enables auto-pair or runs an admin schedule action, and even then it will not overwrite a match that already has an agreed time.

Ready-up and forfeit

Once a match has an agreed start time, both sides ready up from the match hub. Required starters must mark Ready before the grace window ends.

Default grace is 15 minutes after the scheduled start. If a side has not readied when grace expires, the match auto-forfeits against the unreadied side. If neither side readies, both sides forfeit.

A one-sided forfeit with no played map score is recorded as a 3–0 map line for standings. Play the series when both sides are ready; do not rely on forfeit as a scheduling strategy.

Points and standings

Round-robin standings award series points equal to maps won in the best-of-three: 3, 2, 1, or 0. A 2–1 win therefore earns two points for the winner and one for the loser; a 2–0 (or forfeit 3–0 line) earns three and zero.

When teams are tied on points, standings break ties in this order: head-to-head result, maps (rounds) won, average map margin, then commissioner/admin flag if still unresolved.

After the round-robin closes, double-elimination finals seed from those standings. Standings surface inside League views; there is no separate site-wide Standings nav item.

Trades

When Draft Day ends, a post-draft trade window opens (default 48 hours). During that window each team may complete at most one one-for-one trade with another team.

• Trades are 1↔1 between two teams only.
• Freshly drafted players are locked for that window (snake picks stay put).
• No free-agent pickups and no three-team deals through the trade desk.
• When the window closes, rosters lock for the season except waitlist FIFO fills for mid-season drops.

Captains manage trade offers under My Team team ops while a window is open.

Reporting

Both captains submit a Halo Tracker link for each game in the series from the match hub. A best-of-three therefore expects a link from each captain per map played.

The series result is not official until opposing captains’ links cross-check as a match. Pending and mismatch states stay visible on the hub until resolved. League Admin override for disputes is planned and is not a live player tool yet.

Competition stores submitted links and verification state. Tracker fetch and parse remain on the Bracket path when that integration is live for the season.

Map modes

Series map-mode slots for display are Obj / Slayer / Obj.

Map pick-ban / veto is on HOLD. Slots above are labels only until pick-ban is designed and unlocked. Do not treat this page as a live veto procedure.

Where captains manage

Public League pages (Overview, Draft Day, Teams, Calendar, Rules, Previous seasons) do not host match management. Captains and rostered players use My Team for the upcoming-match list, then open a match hub for schedule propose/counter/accept, ready-up, lineup swaps, dual tracker submit, and results.

Play fair, show up ready, and keep disputes on the match hub until League Admin tooling ships. Commissioner decisions override edge cases the automation cannot settle.