Unless otherwise stated, standard Nexus Gaming Series rules (RULES) apply.
Note: Nexus Gaming Series holds the right to modify the rules.
Structure:
- Storm Division will feature 6-10 teams that compete for a crowd funded prize pool
- All teams must qualify for Storm Division
- Storm Division teams will not be able to compete in other NGS divisions
- Individuals from Storm Division teams will be unable to play for other NGS teams, either on the roster or as an off roster sub
Roster:
- Each team must have between 5-9 players
- Each team must designate a team captain who will be responsible for communicating with staff on behalf of the team and communicating to their team
- Teams will be allowed a max of 1 non-roster substitute per series provided that they inform both the moderator and opposing captain of the player a minimum of 1 hour before a scheduled match start
- Teams will be allowed a maximum of 3 roster changes (adding or swapping of a player) per season once the team has qualified
Meta Madness:
- All Storm Division matches (qualifiers, regular season and playoffs) will be played with Meta Madness draft rules.
- Once a hero has been played by either team in a series, they may not be played for the rest of that series.
- Heroes that are banned during each draft phase do remain available to be picked in proceeding games during that series.
- At this time there will be no pre-banned or globally banned heroes.
- All reported match results will be checked by the Storm Division moderator. If a team is found to have violated the Meta Madness draft rules, that game and any proceeding games in that series will be forfeited by the offending team.
- If a mistake is made and a banned hero gets drafted, you will immediately bail out of draft, recreate the draft up until the point where the mistake was made, and continue from there on.
- If the mistake is not noticed until the game starts, the game can be remade up until the 2:00 minute mark of in-game time. If it is before the 2:00 minute mark, the game can be abandoned, and the draft recreated up until the point where the mistake was made. If it is after the 2:00 minute mark, the offending team will forfeit the map.
- If the map is forfeited in this way, heroes that were being played will remain playable in the following game.
Qualification:
- In order to qualify for Storm Division, there will be 4 qualifier tournaments teams can compete in. These qualifiers will be single elimination brackets with each series being a best of 5 for every round
- Qualifiers will take place over two days with no more than 2 rounds being played per day. Qualifiers will take place on Saturday and Sunday unless otherwise listed
- If there are 2 or fewer rounds of matches, all matches will be played on the Saturday
- Map pick and first pick will be decided via coin toss with the winner of the coin toss receiving their choice of map pick or first pick. The map pick team will then ban the first map, the draft pick team will ban the second map, the map pick team will ban the third map and then the draft pick team will ban the fourth map. The Storm Division map pool can be checked in discord by using the !stormmaps command
- The higher seeded team will play on the left and the lower seeded team will play on the right
- There will be 4 qualifier tournaments on the following dates starting at 1pm PST/4pm EST:
- Qualifier 1: Jan 6/7, 2024
- Qualifier 2: Jan 13/14, 2024
- Qualifier 3: Jan 20/21, 2024
- Qualifier 4: Jan 27/28, 2024
- The winner of each qualifier will automatically receive a guaranteed spot in Storm Division
- Teams will accumulate points following each qualifier according to the following table:
- 2nd: 95
- 3rd/4th: 45
- 5th-8th: 20
- 9th-16th: 10
- 17th-32nd: 5
- Each team will receive a minimum of 1 point for participating in the qualifier. In order for a team to receive points beyond the participation point, they must win at least 1 map
- Points will be used for determining seeding of each qualifier bracket
- The 5th and beyond spots in Storm Division will be awarded to the teams with the most points who have yet to qualify following the 4th and final Qualifier
- In order for a team to maintain their points through qualifiers, the roster must feature a minimum of 4 players who played in the previous qualifier
- Rematches in the first round will be avoided where possible
- Once a team has qualified for Storm Division, either through winning a qualifier or via accumulating enough points to be mathematically guaranteed a spot, they will not be able to enter another qualifier tournament
Registration:
- Registration will be completed on the NGS website
- Registration for the first qualifier will open December 26th, 2023
- Registration for the 4 qualifiers will close at 11:59pm PST on the Thursday before the qualifier
- The schedule including the bracket will then be released the Friday afternoon/evening before the qualifier
- Registration for the following tournament will be opened after the final game of the previous qualifier is played.
Regular Season:
- The regular season will follow either a single or double round robin format, depending on how many teams are accepted
- Each team will have one series a week and each series will be a best of 5 maps
- Matches will be scheduled by the teams themselves
- Matches must be scheduled, on the NGS website calendar, at least by the end of day Saturday before the week’s matches start. Any teams that are unable to schedule by that time, without informing Krushinator#3231 in advance, will risk forfeit of the match
Playoffs:
- There will be a 1 week break between the end of the regular season and the start of playoffs
- Top 4 teams from the regular season will qualify for playoffs
- Playoffs will be a double elimination bracket with best of 5 matches
- Playoffs will take place over 4 weeks
- The weekly playoff structure is as follows:
- Week 1: Opening Matches (1 vs 4, 2 vs 3)
- Week 2: Losers Semifinals (Week 1 losers) and Winners Semifinals (Week 1 winners)
- Week 3: Losers Finals
- Week 4: Grand Finals
