Creating and Managing MTG League Seasons

You create and manage MTG league seasons in Nerd Leagues from your league's Manage League page. The Seasons panel is commissioner-only, and the whole workflow — create, edit, archive, delete — lives inside a single section. Here's exactly what each control does and which one to reach for.

Manage MTG league seasons from the Manage League page

Manage MTG league seasons by opening your league, clicking Manage League, and expanding the Seasons panel. Inside you'll find the create form at the top and a list of every season you've ever made — active, expired, and archived — sorted by start date with the newest first.

Only the commissioner can see this section. Members and non-members opening the league page won't even know the panel exists.

If you haven't decided yet whether to run a season at all, read MTG League Seasons: What They Are and Why You'd Run One first. This article assumes you've already decided you want one.

Create an MTG league season

Create an MTG league season by filling out four fields and clicking Create Season:

• Season Title — required, up to 100 characters. This is what shows up as the season's pill on the public league page, so keep it short and recognizable (e.g. Spring 2026, Q1 League, March Madness).
• Description (optional) — a short note that displays under the title in the Manage League list. Players don't see this on the public league page; it's just for your own bookkeeping.
• Start Date — required. The first day games will count toward this season.
• End Date — required, and must be on or after the start date. The last day games will count.

Date matching is inclusive on both ends. A game's recorded date — not the date it was played — is what determines whether it falls inside the season window. That distinction matters if you log a game several days after the table broke up.

One thing to know up front: there is no validation against overlapping date ranges. You can intentionally run a monthly season alongside a quarterly one, or a "playoffs" season nested inside an "annual" season, and a single recorded game will count toward all of them. If overlap isn't what you want, just don't make overlapping seasons.

Edit a season after it's already running

Edit a season by clicking the Edit button on its row in the Seasons list. An inline form expands underneath with the same four fields plus Save and Cancel buttons. The same validation rules apply — title plus both dates are required, and the end date can't be before the start date.

Editing a season's dates does not retroactively rescore games. The auto-update path only fires when a game is recorded inside a season's current window, so games already in the database keep whatever season scoring they had at record time. If you've shifted a season's dates significantly after games have been logged, ask an admin to run a season ELO recalculation so the standings match the new window cleanly.

Archive a season when it's over

Archive an MTG league season by clicking Archive on its row. Archiving is the right move when a season has ended and you don't want it cluttering the public league page anymore — but you still want to keep the standings, the ELO history, and every game it scored.

What an archive does:

• Hides the season's pill from the public league page (Members, Decks, ELO History, and Games tabs all stop offering it as a filter).
• Keeps the row in your Manage League list, dimmed and labeled with an Archived badge.
• Stops new games from updating its standings, even if they fall inside the date range.
• Preserves every stored ELO snapshot — wins, losses, plus/minus, ELO history — exactly as it was when you archived.

Archiving is reversible. The same button reads Unarchive on archived rows; clicking it puts the season back to active. Note that any games recorded while the season was archived won't have updated its standings — those games stay outside the season's stored data — but unarchiving doesn't damage anything.

Delete a season only if you really mean it

Delete a season by clicking Delete on its row. A browser confirmation dialog asks: "Are you sure you want to delete the season '[title]'? All ELO data for this season will be permanently deleted."

Read that warning literally. Delete is a hard delete and it cannot be undone:

• The season is removed from your league.
• Every per-player and per-deck ELO snapshot tied to it is erased.
• Every per-game ELO change tied to it is erased.
• The season disappears from the public league page and from your Manage League list.

If you might want the standings later — even years later — archive instead of deleting. Reach for Delete only when you're cleaning up seasons you created by mistake, test seasons, or seasons whose data you genuinely never want to see again.

Where to go next

Once a season exists and isn't archived, every league game whose recorded date falls inside its window automatically updates its standings — no extra step on your part. That auto-update uses the same K-factor and expected-score math that drives per-league and yearly ELO; for those calculation details, see MTG League ELO: How Per-League Ratings and Standings Work.

Other articles in this category go deeper on the season machinery: how a single recorded game can update multiple overlapping seasons at once, and how the per-season standings, ELO chart, and game list show up to your players on the public league page. Those slot in as cross-links once published.

Not the commissioner of the league? You won't see the Seasons section. The commissioner role article walks through everything else commissioner permissions unlock.