So I invited everyone to a private team game in the forums last week and the game filled in a couple of days with an extra team signed up soon after the game started..  I'm thinking there's at least some interest is starting a private league and I thought I'd start the conversation by throwing out a few concerns/considerations/ideas.

So with 15 jumping on that game, and assuming that most of us could recruit 1 or 2 members each. it seems reasonable to assume that we should be able to get at least 30+ involved - so maybe setting a membership goal of something like 40 or 50 before kicking things off is reasonable.  I've never been involved with games that have guilds so I'm just flailing with my ideas, but here goes..

Certainly, between the forums, message boards, and Wiki, there's ample infrastructure to support leagues/guilds

Guilds would need to be large enough able to muster up enough players to participate in a game/tournament/ladder on a variety of boards, and especially team games with 3 and even 4 on a team.

Unless there's an independent guild-based GR type of system within the existing GR system, there probably needs to be some kind of formal consideration for equity based on existing WG ratings that would prevent all of the highest ranking players from playing in the top guild.  There are probably a number of ways accomplish this.. 

For example: Your guild is asked to bring a team to a certain game or tournaments with a GR mean between 1800-2300, or an H-rating of 60-65, etc.  This would force teams to recruit members with lower GRs and H-ratings. So if the average GR in the league is 2000, the criteria for games would be informed by that number.  Care would need to be taken to make it so that players with astronomically high stats could participate.  Maybe a ceiling, e.g. All GR's of 3000+ participate as if they had GR's of 3000.

Guild managers (I'm sure there's more appropriate word) might be necessary to maintain/recruit/assign/negotiate trades etc..

That's all I got for now..  Certainly, there are folks out there with more experience and better ideas, but shooting down bad ideas might be as good a place to start as any.

I think this sounds like fun.  I think it should be done as simply as possible, and then additional rules, changes, etc. done as is necessary.  

I played TRIBES in a "tribe" for about a year, and it was really fun.

Some possible structure:

Guild's Requirements

• 5-10 total players in a guild.
• responsible for maintaining a guild wiki page.  (guild name, roster, etc.?)
• Ability to field some minimum # of seats to fill league games.

League Games

Each month we pick two maps (maybe a simple vote, or a top-3 vote like we do for map making contests, or maybe choice rotates between active teams, or last place teams, maybe some restrictions on what maps (no map from last 12 months, etc.))  Maybe one team and one individual?

Then we pay a "Meta Tournament" (MT) on each map.  I call it Meta, because these would just be private games, not a real tournament.  

Each team sits N players (usually 3-4ish).  Some meta tournaments are skill-limited (something like what M57 suggests), some are open.  We play enough games to get everyone to play against each other.  I guess private games?  We'd have to tally wins/losses by hand.  Create a google sheet for each meta tournament to help track.  Each guild is responsible for ensuring their games are entered correctly.

Then I guess we start tracking MT stats...

Alternatively (or in addition) - on TRIBES, we had a ladder.  I only have the vaguest understanding of how it worked back then, but something like this:

Initially we all get assigned random positions.  Then you can attack above you on the ladder.  When you attack, you play 3 games.  Attacker picks 1 map, defender picks 2.  You play best of 3 on each map to determine winner of the map, and then whoever wins 2 maps is the winner. 

We'd need some system to decide who got to attack each round or something.  I can imagine various ways to do that, but I'm not sure how it was handled, although there may be standard ways to deal with it.

I like the ladder idea -  3 person games - doing some websearching on how it was set-up.  Found these -

I think challenger (lower ranked) had to pick an opponent maximum a certain amount of spots above them. They win, they climbed like half the ranks between them and the opponent dropped a rank.

and this -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_tournament

http://www.tennisplayandstay.com/competition/challenge/ladder-formats.aspx

https://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/rball/html/tourney-rules.html

Ozyman wrote:

Guild's Requirements

• 5-10 total players in a guild.
• responsible for maintaining a guild wiki page.  (guild name, roster, etc.?)
• Ability to field some minimum # of seats to fill league games.

League Games

Each month we pick two maps (maybe a simple vote, or a top-3 vote like we do for map making contests, or maybe choice rotates between active teams, or last place teams, maybe some restrictions on what maps (no map from last 12 months, etc.))  Maybe one team and one individual?

Then we pay a "Meta Tournament" (MT) on each map.  I call it Meta, because these would just be private games, not a real tournament.  

Each team sits N players (usually 3-4ish).  Some meta tournaments are skill-limited (something like what M57 suggests), some are open.  We play enough games to get everyone to play against each other.  I guess private games?  We'd have to tally wins/losses by hand.  Create a google sheet for each meta tournament to help track.  Each guild is responsible for ensuring their games are entered correctly.

Then I guess we start tracking MT stats...

Ladders are cool, but I see them working better with individuals, not so much with teams, and even less with tribes. After all, the make-up of tribe-created teams is more volatile, with attrition, etc.  Also ladders don't make as much sense to me in the context of their being so many boards to choose from. I'm more inclined to start with Ozyman's blueprint, but with tournaments rather than a ladder.

A shared Google sheet would be very efficient, perhaps someone can host one, teams might prefer to use them, but they are not as accessible as using the Wiki, which though admittedly more cumbersome to manage, is available to all and a way for others to see what's going on and join in on the fun.  Think of it as a recruitment tool.

This is jumping off into the deep-end and totally different than a ladder, but there's something about the diversity of boards on WG that makes me think of golf's Ryder Cup, where a tournament consists of a number of differently formatted games. Some H2H, some with variable numbers of teams, w and w/o fog, different maps, etc. With each game being worth a point and the team captain deciding who plays in which game.

Also, and I think this will be a tricky debate - If you really want to recruit into the larger pool of players on this site, you have to consider creating a significant number of WGWF based games and tournaments.  I'm guessing this should be addressed earlier than later in the process.