Commander Pod League: How to Track Your Friend Group's MTG Games

A Commander pod league on Nerd Leagues is a regular league set up for a friend group — four-player Commander, the same six or eight people rotating through. It keeps the standings so you can get back to arguing about who's the best pilot at the table.

Set up a Commander pod league

A Commander pod league starts with the same flow as any league. Open My Stats and use Create League. The form asks for three things:

• Game — Magic: The Gathering.
• League Name — name it after the pod (The Wednesday Pod, Garage Magic).
• Description — optional. A line about the pod ("Casual EDH, no infinite combos, drinks at Mike's") tells anyone you invite later what they're walking into.

Click Create League and you're the commissioner. How to Create a League has the line-by-line.

Settings worth touching for a casual pod

Open Manage League and look at League Settings:

• Invite Code — auto-generated as a card name plus four digits (lightning-bolt-4729). You can replace it with anything URL-safe. This is the code you share so friends can join.
• Allow any member to invite players — on by default. Leaving it on means any member can send an in-app invite, not just you.
• Discord Webhook URL — paste your pod's Discord webhook and every recorded game posts to the channel, along with flag events. The Test button next to the field confirms it works before you save.

The Commissioner Role documents the rest of the panel.

Who can see a pod league

Nerd Leagues has no public-vs-private toggle. League pages require an account, so anonymous visitors and search engines can't reach your pod's standings at all. The thing that controls membership is the invite code: nobody joins unless someone with the code shares it. Public vs Private Leagues has the full breakdown.

Adding decks to your pod league

There's no add-deck step. The first time someone records a Commander game in the pod league with a given deck, that deck registers itself and appears under the league's Decks tab with a starting ELO of 1000. Adding Decks to an MTG League covers the mechanic.

Over a few months the Decks tab shows how often each deck actually gets played.

Recording a Commander pod game

Click Play Game in the nav, pick Already Played, and the form opens. For a four-player pod night most defaults already fit:

• League — pick your pod league from the dropdown.
• Format — EDH.
• Sub Format — Multiplayer for a four-player free-for-all. Switch to Two Headed Giant for team nights.
• Number of Players — defaults to 4.

Add a row per player, pick each player's deck, mark the winner, and submit. The username field autocompletes from your friends, friends of friends, and people you share a league with. Recording an MTG League Game is the full walkthrough.

The Notes field accepts [[Card Name]] shorthand — "Cyc Rift on turn 8 again, [[Cyclonic Rift]] strikes" — and those become card links on the game page.

Running a season for your pod

A pod league tracks all-time ELO by default: every game, forever. A season adds a date-bounded scoreboard alongside it — everyone resets to 1000 at the start, every game inside the window updates the season standings, and it closes when the dates run out.

MTG League Seasons covers what a season is; Creating and Managing MTG League Seasons is the walkthrough.

What the pod standings look like over time

Every player and every deck starts at 1000. Each recorded game moves those ratings based on the result and the table size — a four-player Commander win moves your rating noticeably, a loss nudges it. Over twenty or thirty games the standings separate.

The league page is where to look: Members ranks the pod by ELO, ELO History plots each trajectory, and Decks ranks decks instead of pilots. MTG League ELO has the math.

Where to go next

Running a cEDH League is the competitive variant. Season Standings covers reading a season once you've started one.