Run a tournament
A practical Organizer checklist from the first draft to final placements.
- Who this is for
- League Organizers
- When you’re done
- A tournament with a confirmed field, recorded results, and final placements.
Organizers control the tournament configuration, field, schedules, results, corrections, and finalization. A Roster Captain can register while registration is open, withdraw that Roster during the draft, and edit its lineup before the event starts. While the tournament is running, a Captain requests a substitution and an Organizer applies it; after completion or cancellation, lineups are read-only.
Before you start
Check the League’s tournament limits, decide whether results should affect Elo, and confirm who is eligible to enter. For your first event, choose a standard single-elimination bracket unless your rules need something more complex.
The normal lifecycle is Draft → Group or Bracket → Complete. A draft can also be cancelled; a running event can be cancelled before completion. Complete and Cancelled are terminal states. Expanded stage plans show their current stage inside the running competition status.
1. Create the draft
Open your League’s Tournaments page and choose New tournament. On Create a tournament, enter the name and configure:
- The competition format and capacity.
- Ranked or unranked play.
- Registration, capacity, and closing time if entrants should sign up themselves.
- Any stage or series rules required by your event.
Choose Create tournament draft. A draft gives you a place to prepare the event; it does not start play.
2. Prepare the field
Use the preparation page to add eligible League Rosters or configure the custom entries supported by an unranked event. Review every entrant, resolve duplicates, and set seeds before starting.
You can auto-fill from eligible League Rosters and let Heir seed the remaining field by Roster strength. A self-entered custom participant must use the open registration controls and an unranked tournament; its roster is captured for the tournament and does not change because the League roster changes later. Registration capacity can be below the competition capacity, and a closing date stops new sign-ups when it passes.
When registration is enabled, entrants can use the tournament’s registration controls. Check the actual field after sign-ups close rather than assuming an invitation or expression of interest is a confirmed entry.
The configuration and field are separate parts of preparation. Save changes to the configuration before starting. If the page reports a capacity, eligibility, or format error, resolve it and recheck the preview.
A player blocked by an Organizer in this League cannot be selected for a new lineup or custom entry. Existing lineup snapshots are preserved, but a blocked player in one prevents tournament starts and score reports involving that entry until the lineup is corrected or the block is lifted. Past results are not erased. Follow the allowed lineup/substitution workflow; do not remove entrants from a running event to bypass it. See player eligibility controls.
Before the start, the Roster Captain or Organizer can replace the lineup through the entry’s lineup control. During Group or Bracket play, the Captain can submit a substitution request and an Organizer can apply a validated replacement. The replacement must be a current League Member with the required game identity and valid consent for that Roster.
3. Check the rules and start
Review the competition preview, advancement counts, seeds, series lengths, and any third-place or grand-final reset settings. Then choose Start tournament.
Starting locks the competition’s field and rules for play. Check that the tournament now shows its running stage and ready fixtures. Do not use the start action as a preview of an unfinished configuration.
For an expanded competition, Heir generates the first stage at start. After every match in the current round or stage is completed, a manager can choose Generate next round or Start next stage. Swiss pairing can stop with an explicit review error when no fair rematch-free pairing is available; leave the generated state unchanged and resolve the event before trying again.
4. Schedule and report matches
Open a ready fixture (or a pending expanded-competition match when you are only scheduling it) to set its start time or report a result. For a standard two-sided bracket, enter the maps won by each side using that stage’s series rule. For an expanded competition, enter a pairwise score, every participant’s finishing place in a multi-participant match, or every participant’s numeric score in a leaderboard round. Elimination matches must produce a winner; standings stages follow their configured draw and scoring rules.
After reporting, check both the recorded score and the next fixture or standings. For a ranked event, also check the linked League result before reporting anything again.
For a large bracket, use the canvas navigation and zoom controls. The selected fixture is where you inspect and act on the match.
Expanded competition matches also have public detail pages at /<league>/s/<match-id>, but they do not have the prediction panel or an in-game match code. Use the Record result and Schedule controls on the competition board.
Correct a mistaken result
Open the affected result and use the available void/correction control. A result with played downstream matches cannot be silently rewritten: resolve dependent results in the order Heir requests, then enter the corrected score.
Record gameplay on a tracked server
Use the fixture’s match code with the supported in-game control, for example .start K7QX (illustrative code). Check the tracking state and approval status. Ranked automatic reporting also needs the configured series to complete and the fixture to qualify. Unranked observations do not change League Elo; verify and report the bracket score as needed.
This match-code path applies to a standard two-sided tournament fixture with League Rosters. Expanded competition matches have no match code and must be reported from the web. A tracked session can still be incomplete, pending, or rejected by fixture rules, so do not submit a duplicate result while automatic reporting is finishing.
Read tracking rules before relying on automatic recording for an event.
5. Finish the event
When the required matches are complete, use Finalize and check the final placements. With the relevant Discord integration enabled, the podium announcement is delivered separately.
If the event cannot continue, Cancel ends it without a champion. Played results remain on record; eligible open predictions are refunded. Cancellation is not a way to reverse previously played ranked results.
The current supported workflow does not provide a return-to-draft transition after a tournament starts. If the editor shows an Unpublish control but the action is rejected, treat the tournament as still running. Use Cancel only when ending that event is intended, then create a new draft; cancellation is terminal, retains played results, and refunds open prediction markets for standard tournament matches.
Older tournaments
A compatible older tournament draft that never took entrants opens in the current editor, so you can finish setting it up instead of starting over. Tournaments from earlier versions that are not compatible stay available to read: their results, schedules, stat links, and lineups remain viewable, and only their editing is unavailable.
If you reload after an action that Heir already accepted, the tournament resumes from where it got to rather than submitting the same action twice.
Next: Review results and corrections, or prepare a future event with formats and stage rules.