EDIT: Registration for Season Zero of the X-wing Vassal League is now closed.

Thanks to everybody who has signed up for the league- the league will feature 207 competitors!

If you signed up on Challonge, but haven’t checked in on reddit or signed up for the Challengeboards.net ELO ladder, please do so.

What Happens Next

We’re going to take a look at who has signed up, and create your first round of six player pods.

You’ll be podded with players of similar time zone for scheduling convenience (Those of you who didn't check in on reddit will be placed in general pods without time zone preference). Your pod assignments will appear on Thursday, January 14th Tuesday, January 12th in two places:

• On the challonge.com league table itself. This is where you’ll report your results and keep track of standings.

• In the xwingonline subreddit, where we’ll have a stickied thread for each pod. Here you can begin planning your schedules with your podmates, size up your rivals and share war stories.

You’ll have until Monday, February 15 to complete your games and report your results. Full instructions for reporting your results will be posted with pod assignments.

Scheduling and format change for Season 0:

The response to this league has been outstanding, but it has far outstripped our original league format, which was designed with about 60 players in mind. We’re likely going to cut Season zero short at 10 games, rather than the planned 15, and use the results from those games to seed players into Season 1.

As a result, here’s the revised schedule for Season 0:

• Round 1, 5 games: Six player pods seeded by time zone. Mid January to Mid February

• Round 2, 5 games: Six player pods seeded first by record in round 1, then by time zone if possible. Mid/Late February to Mid/late March.

We’ll re-assess our progress and should be ready to begin Season 1 Mid-April. Season 1 will also consist of 10 games and run through June.

Rewards: in Season Zero, players will be playing for:

1. Prize support in the form of Team Covenant loot from the Scum and Villainy Podcast! We’re not sure what yet, stay tuned :-)

2. Winning a spot into your Season One Division (see the Season 1 Sneak Peak below)

3. To preview the excitement of the English Football Promotion/Relegation system, the first and second player in each pod will win a bonus to their Season One seeding (weighting to be determined).

Season 1 Sneak Peak:

We’ll be modeling season 1 after the English football league system.

We’ll likely have a couple of upper divisions, with the top seeded players from all over the world, and below that, two tiers of (very likely) geographically divided regions. Division size is planned be 9 players, and each division will be a round robin with a twist: two of your games will games against players from other divisions! This means the season will 10 games long.

Unlike the English Football System, we are doing something different: no scheduled games. You can play all of your 10 games in the first week if you like: we’ll pre-assign your inter-league opponents at the start of the season. But, after five weeks the league commish (Earthworm) is going to do a check-in on the overall progress of the league, and so we ask that all players do their best to get in half of their season’s game by the fifth week.

To create movement within the divisions, we are copying the English Football System’s promotion/relegation system: players will migrate up and down between divisions, creating excitement and drama for players at every level. And because of the short 10 week season, everyone should have plenty of opportunity to make their way to the top!

Playoffs: multiple playoff options for Season One have been discussed. Right now our best idea is 1) to have a playoff where the top one or two players from every division play in a single elimination tournament, and 2) each tier will have its own single elimination tournament (either anyone-can-join or with some cut criteria). We welcome feedback on these two formats, or other tournament ideas you may have!

This is the coolest thing ever. I love the community built around this game.

MajorJuggler volunteered to help us with the maths behind the league construction. You can find his model here.

Below is an (appropriately Star Wars-y) example of what the league might look like with the current 184 player count:

So this is just a flavor suggestion, but I think it would be great if we promoted the idea of naming your games in vassal appropriate to the the pod you are in. For example- "Sozin v Earthworm on Corellia" or the like. Easy way to distinguish league games and a fun little bit of flavor.

And if there was any way Mu0n could get maps on vassal with each of these planets in the background... Oooh man that would just be thematic gravy!

The Coruscant Starfighter Arena, sponsored by Sinear Fleet Systems.

That would be sick.

I am pumped for the league! Will be awesome to play so many different people! Thanks so much for putting the time into the game and the community for really showing up to make this a reality! Going to be awesome!

Wow, we're at 192 players now. Officially biggest online event on record I think.

We're at 199 players right now (196 on Challonge, plus 3 pending on Reddit).

Let's make it 200!

Last second addition! I will make the commitment to play season zero, regardless of Chinese internet!

Registration for Season Zero of the X-wing Vassal League is now closed.

Thanks to everybody who has signed up for the league- the league will feature 207 competitors!

If you signed up on Challonge, but haven’t checked in on reddit or signed up for the Challengeboards.net ELO ladder, please do so.

We believe that this is the largest online X-wing event ever held.

Wow. 200 exactly right now. That is so awesome haha.

Registration for Season Zero of the X-wing Vassal League is now closed.

Thanks to everybody who has signed up for the league- the league will feature 207 competitors!

If you signed up on Challonge, but haven’t checked in on reddit or signed up for the Challengeboards.net ELO ladder, please do so.

I was going to jokingly say "Now lets get 200!" When we hit 100.

Little did I know...

The Challonge page shows 200, but we had a few people not able to sign in for technical reasons, bringing us to our total of 207.

We've done a preliminary grouping of players by timezones - it ended up being 34 pods. 31 of the 34 pods are 6 player pods with good time zone grouping, and the last 3 pods are where we put 21 players for whom we had no TZ info.

Man, Hate that I was lazy about signing up. Should have gotten in when I was first reading the original thread.

Just a thought, and you guys might just answer it soon with the first months pods, but, have you guys put thought into list reporting? Maybe something like a special list juggler league page? As this thing progresses, the next logical step for players will be tracking winning lists or ships. The scope will be huge with up to 5 different lists per player per month, but we'll want to know at some point. For starters at least, maybe when reporting each match, require a link to the squad each player used be reported with results, so at least someone has the data.

Of course, i could see keeping it off a mass scale as a good thing, to promote list diversity, mostly, haha.

Just curious if you guys had any plans! I didnt see anything mentioned, and got a little worried

Man, Hate that I was lazy about signing up. Should have gotten in when I was first reading the original thread.

there will be plenty of drops. can you please sign up and I'll put you on the wait list?

Just a thought, and you guys might just answer it soon with the first months pods, but, have you guys put thought into list reporting? Maybe something like a special list juggler league page? As this thing progresses, the next logical step for players will be tracking winning lists or ships. The scope will be huge with up to 5 different lists per player per month, but we'll want to know at some point. For starters at least, maybe when reporting each match, require a link to the squad each player used be reported with results, so at least someone has the data.

Of course, i could see keeping it off a mass scale as a good thing, to promote list diversity, mostly, haha.

Just curious if you guys had any plans! I didnt see anything mentioned, and got a little worried

definitely in the works.

Man, Hate that I was lazy about signing up. Should have gotten in when I was first reading the original thread.

there will be plenty of drops. can you please sign up and I'll put you on the wait list?

Looks like the sign-up is closed and the Reddit post for the Season 0 is now locked.

Here's the stuff it asked for though:

-Challonge handle: SPE825

-Your ELO handle: SPE825

-Your time zone: EST (but I'd play late in the evening after 8PM EST)

Great, I added you to the 'Alt' tab of our player tracking sheet.

I have a question about lists, I could not find answered anywhere. Do players have one permanent list or can they change between games? The latter creates the "problem" of putting the ships on the table first. If I put down my list on the table first, my opponent might "accidentally" have a hard counter to my list in mind. (I personally would not care, but some might object to that.)

I have a question about lists, I could not find answered anywhere. Do players have one permanent list or can they change between games? The latter creates the "problem" of putting the ships on the table first. If I put down my list on the table first, my opponent might "accidentally" have a hard counter to my list in mind. (I personally would not care, but some might object to that.)

I believe they are working on an escrow feature. Until then, I would simply suggest grabbing a 3rd person to declare your list to, and the 3rd party will say what the lists are once they are both PM'ed to them.

I have a question about lists, I could not find answered anywhere. Do players have one permanent list or can they change between games? The latter creates the "problem" of putting the ships on the table first. If I put down my list on the table first, my opponent might "accidentally" have a hard counter to my list in mind. (I personally would not care, but some might object to that.)

New list every game if you want.

We prepare links to the list in an online squadbuilder and then count down 3, 2, 1 and both copy paste the links into the chat log at the same time.

Just found vassal not as daunting as I expected! Is there still any point in signing up for the reserve list now though?