Adding Decks to an MTG League
There's no "add deck" button on a Nerd Leagues league page, and there's no commissioner approval step. Decks register themselves: the first time someone records a league game with a deck, that deck shows up in the league's standings with a starting ELO of 1000. From then on, every league game it plays moves its rating in that league specifically.
Below: where to find your league's decks, how the auto-registration actually fires, and what to do if you want to keep a deck out.
Where to See League Decks
League decks live on the league page. Open /leagues/<id> and click the Decks tab. Every deck that's been used in at least one recorded game in this league shows up — sorted by per-league ELO with the highest at the top.
Each deck card shows the commander art, deck name, owner, color identity, current league ELO, and W-L record inside this league. The controls above the grid let you search by deck or commander name, swap to a list view, and re-sort by ELO: High → Low, ELO: Low → High, Name: A → Z, or Name: Z → A. Past 16 decks, a Show All Decks button reveals the rest.
Yearly tabs and per-season tabs sit alongside the all-time view — same UI, scoped to a year or a season window. Until the league's first game is recorded, the tab reads No decks yet.
How Decks Get Added
Adding a deck to a league means recording a game with it. That's the entire mechanism:
- Click Play Game in the nav, then choose Already Played on the Record Game screen (or Start New Game if you want to track life totals through Life Tracker and let the app record the game when it ends).
- Under Game Setup, open the League dropdown and pick your league. The dropdown also has a Non-League option for casual games — pick that and the game won't count toward any league.
- Add the players. For each player, the deck dropdown lists their own decks that match the game's format.
- Submit the game.
The instant the game saves, every deck used in it gets a row in the league's deck list with a starting ELO of 1000. Players who weren't already members are auto-added to the league at the same time. A casual pod of friends can spin up a league and just start recording games — no roster setup, no invitation chase for decks.
The mobile Life Tracker hits the same path. End a tracked game with a league selected and every deck on the table registers automatically.
Per-League ELO Is Its Own Scoreboard
League ELO for a deck is independent of every other rating that deck holds. A Najeela list used in three different leagues carries three separate per-league ELOs, plus a separate all-time deck rating, plus a yearly ELO that resets each January. They never mix.
That means a deck quietly stomping a casual pod league can still have a humble all-time record, and a deck that's a beast in cEDH circles might look ordinary in a Pioneer-themed league. The deeper mechanics — K-factor, multi-winner splits, what each game actually does to the number — live in the MTG League ELO article.
Keeping a Deck Out of a League
The simplest way to keep a deck out of a league is not to use it in a recorded game with that league selected. Either pick a different deck for the night, or pick Non-League in the dropdown so the game doesn't count anywhere.
Once a deck has registered in a league, the row sticks. Nerd Leagues treats league decks as a historical record, not a curated roster. The deck stays in the standings even if:
- You stop playing it. The ELO simply stops moving.
- The owner leaves the league. Past games are still part of the league's history.
One way to remove a deck from the Decks tab: archive the deck from its profile. Archived decks drop out of league deck listings but their game history stays intact. Restoring the deck brings it back into the tab with the same per-league ELO it had before.
What Decks Show Up in the Picker
The deck dropdown on the record-game form is filtered by two things: the player's username and the format you've chosen for this game. Recording a Commander pod surfaces only that player's Commander decks; switching the format swaps the list.
Leagues themselves don't lock to a single format — a league can host Commander one week and Modern the next, and each game decides its own format independently. The format filter happens at the dropdown, not at the league level.
That's the whole story. Pick the league, pick the deck, record the game — the league bookkeeping happens behind the scenes.