How to Create a League
Creating a league is intentionally light — you don't need to configure ELO, set up seasons, or invite anyone first. The goal is to get you a working league in three fields and one click. You can refine everything afterward.
Before You Start
You'll need:
- An account. Sign in with Google or Facebook from the home page.
- A league name. That's it — you don't need invite codes, member lists, or a season planned. You can add all of that later.
The only game currently selectable is Magic: The Gathering.
Step 1 — Open the Create League Panel
From the top navigation, click My Stats. There are two ways to open the create panel from there:
- + New menu. In the top-right of the page header, click the + New button and choose Create League.
- Leagues grid. Scroll to your leagues and click the Join or Create a League tile, then hit Create a League at the bottom of the panel that opens.
Both routes open the same slide-in form.
Step 2 — Fill Out the Form
The form has three fields:
- Game — Magic: The Gathering (the only option for now).
- League Name — Required. This is what members will see on their leagues list.
- Description — Optional. A sentence or two about the league's vibe, format, or playgroup.
Click Create League when you're done.
Step 3 — What Happens Next
When you submit, Nerd Leagues:
- Creates the league with you as the commissioner.
- Adds you as the first member automatically.
- Generates an invite code by lowercasing your league name and stripping anything that isn't a letter, number, or hyphen (spaces become hyphens). If that code is already taken by another league, a random unique code is generated instead.
- Redirects you to the Leagues tab of My Stats, where your new league appears in the list.
That's the whole creation flow.
Settings You Can Change Later
Once the league exists, the commissioner can open the league page and click Manage League to adjust:
- League Name
- Description
- Invite Code — yes, you can rewrite the auto-generated code to something cleaner (e.g. friday-night-edh).
- Member Invites — a checkbox controlling whether any member can invite players, or only the commissioner. It's enabled by default.
- Discord Webhook URL — optional. Paste a Discord webhook (must be a https://discord.com/api/webhooks/... URL) to receive a Discord message in your league's channel whenever a game in the league is flagged.
None of these are required at creation time, so don't worry about getting them right up front.
What's Next
You have a league with one member: you. The natural next steps are:
- Invite your playgroup — see Inviting Players: Invite Codes and Joining a League.
- Register decks so each one tracks its own per-league ELO — see Adding Decks to a League.
- Set up a season if you want a time-bounded competitive window — see What Are Seasons and Why Use Them?